A Column of Fire (109 page)

Ned reflected that the three great women of the sixteenth century were now dead: Elizabeth, Queen Caterina of France, and Margherita of Parma, governor of the Netherlands. They had all tried to stop men killing one another over religion. Looking back, it seemed to him that their achievements had been pitifully limited. Evil men had always frustrated the efforts of the peacemakers. Bloody religious wars had raged for decades in France and the Netherlands. Only England had remained more or less at peace.

All Ned wanted to do, with what remained of his life, was to keep that peace.

Daylight dawned while they were still on the river. When they reached White Hall, Cecil summoned the Privy Council.

The council agreed a proclamation, and Robert Cecil wrote it out in his own hand. Then the councillors went out to the green opposite the Tiltyard, where a crowd had gathered, no doubt having heard rumours. A herald read out the announcement that Elizabeth had died and James of Scotland was now king.

After that they rode to the city, where again crowds had gathered in places where proclamations were usually made. The herald read the statement outside St Paul’s Cathedral then again at Cheapside Cross.

Finally, the council went to the Tower of London and formally took possession of the fortress in the name of King James I of England.

The reaction of Londoners was subdued, Ned observed with relief. Elizabeth had been popular, and they were sad. London merchants had prospered under Elizabeth, and their main wish was for no changes. James was an unknown quantity: a foreign king, though Scots was better than Spanish; a Protestant, but with a Catholic wife; a man, but rumoured to have womanly ways.

Queen Elizabeth’s funeral was held while James was still on the long journey from Edinburgh.

A thousand official mourners escorted the hearse on its short journey to Westminster Abbey, and Ned estimated that at least a hundred thousand people watched the procession. The coffin was covered in purple velvet and surmounted by a coloured wax model of Elizabeth in formal robes.

Ned had a designated place in the cortege, but when they entered the cathedral he was able to slip away and find Margery. He held her hand during the service and drew strength from her like warmth from a fire. She was grieving too, for she had come to share Ned’s conviction that peace between Christians was more important than doctrinal disputes, and Elizabeth had symbolized that life-saving creed.

When the coffin was lowered into its grave in the Lady Chapel, Ned wept all over again.

He considered what he was weeping for. It was partly for Elizabeth’s idealism, which had also been his own. He grieved because those ideals had been so grubbily compromised, over the years, by the demands of everyday politics; for, in the end, Elizabeth had put to death almost as many Catholics as Queen Mary Tudor – ‘Bloody Mary’ – had killed Protestants. Mary had killed them for their beliefs, whereas Elizabeth had killed them for treason, but the line was too often blurred. Elizabeth was a flawed human being, and her reign had been a patchwork. All the same, Ned had admired her more than anyone else under heaven.

Margery passed him a handkerchief for his tears. It was embroidered with a design of acorns and he recognized it, with a little jolt of surprise, as one he had given her for the same purpose almost half a century ago. He wiped his face, but it was like trying to dry the beach at Combe Harbour: the tears kept flowing with the relentlessness of the incoming tide.

The chief officers of the royal household ritually snapped their white staves of office and threw the pieces into the grave after the coffin.

As the congregation began to leave, it struck Ned that his life had been worth living because of the people who had loved him, and of those the most important were four women: his mother, Alice; Queen Elizabeth; Sylvie; and Margery. Now he was stricken with grief because Elizabeth was the third of them to die; and he clung hard to Margery as they walked together away from the great cathedral, for he realized that she was all he had left.

*

A
YEAR AFTER
the death of Queen Elizabeth, Rollo Fitzgerald swore that he would kill King James.

James had broken his vows to Catholics. He had renewed Elizabeth’s laws against Catholicism and had enforced them with extra savagery, as if he had never promised anyone tolerance or freedom of worship. Whether Queen Anne’s undertakings had been sincere Rollo would never know, but he suspected not. Together James and Anne had duped Rollo, and the community of English Catholics, and the Pope himself. Rollo’s rage came from the knowledge that he had been fooled, and had been used as the instrument of deceiving others.

But he was not going to give in. He would not concede victory to the lying James and the spiteful Puritans, the blasphemers and the rebels against the true Church. It was not over yet.

The idea of shooting or stabbing James was hazardous: in getting close to the king there was too much risk of being interfered with by guards or courtiers before the deed was done. On the roof of the tower at Tyne Castle, Rollo brooded over how the assassination could be managed, and as he did so his lust for revenge sharpened and his plan grew monstrously ambitious. How much better it would be to wipe out Queen Anne as well. And perhaps the royal children, too: Henry, Elizabeth and Charles. And the leading courtiers, especially Ned Willard. He wished he could shoot them all together with a double-shotted cannon as had been used against the armada. He thought of the fireships, and wondered if he could set light to a palace when they were all gathered together.

And, slowly, a plan began to form in his mind.

He travelled to New Castle and put the plan to Earl Bartlet and the earl’s elder son Swifty, who was eighteen. As a boy, Bartlet had hero-worshipped Rollo, and Rollo still had strong influence over him. Swifty had been told since he was old enough to talk that the fortunes of the Shiring earldom had shrunk under Elizabeth. Father and son were grievously disappointed that James was continuing Elizabeth’s persecution of Catholics.

Bartlet’s younger brother, Roger, was not present. He worked in London for Robert Cecil and no longer lived at New Castle – which was a good thing. Much influenced by his mother Margery and his stepfather, Ned Willard, Roger might have disapproved of Rollo’s plan.

‘The opening of Parliament,’ Rollo said, when the servants had gone and the three men were alone after dinner. ‘We get them all together: King James, Queen Anne, Secretary of State Robert Cecil, Sir Ned Willard, and the members of that heretical blaspheming Parliament – all dead with one fatal blow.’

Bartlet looked puzzled. ‘It’s a tempting prospect, of course,’ he said. ‘But I can’t imagine how it could possibly be achieved.’

‘I can,’ said Rollo.

29

Ned Willard was on the alert, looking anxiously around the chapel, studying the wedding guests, watchful for danger signs. King James was expected to attend, and Ned was as afraid for James’s life as he had been for Elizabeth’s. The secret service could never relax its vigilance.

It was three days after Christmas, 1604.

Ned did not much like King James. The new king had turned out to be less tolerant than Elizabeth, and not just of Catholics. He had a bee in his bonnet about witches – he had written a book on the subject – and he had brought in harsh legislation against them. Ned thought they were mostly harmless old women. All the same Ned was determined to protect James in order to prevent the civil war he dreaded.

The bridegroom was Philip Herbert, the twenty-year-old son of the earl of Pembroke. Philip had caught the eye of King James in the embarrassing way that charming young men often took the fancy of the thirty-eight-year-old king. A court wit had said: ‘Elizabeth was king, now James is queen,’ and this wisecrack had been repeated all over London. James had encouraged young Philip to get married, as if to prove that his interest in the boy was innocent – which no one believed.

The bride was Susan de Vere, granddaughter of the late William Cecil and niece of secretary of state Robert Cecil, Ned’s friend and colleague. Knowing that James was coming, bride and groom waited at the altar, for the king had to be the last to arrive. They were at a chapel within White Hall Palace, where it would be all too easy for an assassin to strike.

Ned was hearing rumours from his spies in Paris, Rome, Brussels and Madrid: English Catholic exiles all over Europe were conspiring to get rid of King James who, they felt, had betrayed them. But Ned had not yet learned the details of specific plots so all he could do, for the time being, was keep his eyes open.

If he had thought, when young, of what life would be like when he was sixty-five, he would have assumed that his work would be done. Either he and Elizabeth would have succeeded, and England would be the first country in the world to have freedom of religion; or he would have failed, and Englishmen would again be burned at the stake for their beliefs. He had never anticipated that the struggle would still be as fierce as ever when he was old and Elizabeth was dead; that Parliament would still be persecuting Catholics and that Catholics would still be trying to kill the monarch. Would it never end?

He glanced at Margery beside him, a bright blue hat set at an angle on her silver curls. She met his eye and said: ‘What?’

‘I don’t want the groom to see you,’ Ned murmured teasingly. ‘He may want to marry you instead of the bride.’

She giggled. ‘I’m an old lady.’

‘You’re the prettiest old lady in London.’ It was true.

Ned looked around the room restlessly. He recognized most of those present. He had been intimate with the Cecils for almost half a century, and he knew the groom’s family almost as well. Some of the younger people at the back were only vaguely familiar, and he guessed they were friends of the happy couple. Ned found it increasingly difficult, as the years went by, to tell one youngster from another.

He and Margery were near the front, but Ned was not comfortable there, and he kept looking over his shoulder; so in the end he left Margery and went to the back of the room. From there he could watch everyone, like a mother pigeon studying the other birds, looking for the magpie that would eat her chicks.

All the men wore swords, as a matter of course, so any one of them could have been an assassin, in theory. This generalized suspicion was next to useless, and Ned racked his brains as to how he might learn more.

The king and queen came in at last, safe and sound, and Ned was relieved to see that they were escorted by a dozen men-at-arms. An assassin would have trouble getting past such a bodyguard. Ned sat down and relaxed a little.

The royal couple took their time walking up the aisle, greeting friends and favourites, and acknowledging the bows of others graciously. When they got to the front, James nodded to the clergyman to begin.

While the service was going on, a new arrival slipped into the chapel, and Ned’s instincts sounded an alarm.

The newcomer stood at the back. Ned studied him, not caring whether the man knew he was being stared at. He was in his thirties, tall and broad, with something of the air of a soldier about him. However, he did not look stressed or even tense. He leaned against the wall, stroking his long moustache and watching the rite. He radiated arrogant confidence.

Ned decided to speak to him. He got up and walked to the back. As he approached, the newcomer nodded casually and said: ‘Good day to you, Sir Ned.’

‘You know me—’

‘Everyone knows you, Sir Ned.’ The remark was a compliment with an undertone of mockery.

‘—I don’t know you,’ Ned finished.

‘Fawkes,’ said the man. ‘Guy Fawkes, at your service.’

‘And who invited you here?’

‘I’m a friend of the groom, if it matters to you.’

A man who was about to kill a king would not be able to converse in this bantering manner. Nevertheless, Ned had a bad feeling about Fawkes. There was something about his coolness, his half-hidden disrespect, and his satirical tone that suggested subversive inclinations. Ned probed further. ‘I haven’t met you before.’

‘I come from York. My father was a proctor in the consistory court there.’

‘Ah.’ A proctor was a lawyer, and a consistory court was a Church tribunal. To hold such a post, Fawkes’s father would have to be an irreproachable Protestant, and must have taken the oath of allegiance that Catholics abhorred. Fawkes was almost certainly harmless.

All the same, as Ned returned to his seat he decided to keep an eye on Guy Fawkes.

*

R
OLLO
F
ITZGERALD
reconnoitred Westminster, looking for a weak spot.

A collection of large and small buildings clustered around a court called Westminster Yard. Rollo was nervous about prowling around, but no one seemed to pay him much attention. The courtyard was a gloomy square where prostitutes loitered. No doubt other nefarious doings took place there after dark. The complex was walled and gated, but the gates were rarely closed, even at night. Within the precincts were all the Parliament buildings plus several taverns, a bakery, and a wine merchant’s with extensive cellars.

The House of Lords, where the king would come to open Parliament, was a building on the plan of a squat letter H. The grand hall of the Lords, the biggest room, was the crossbar. One upright of the H was the Prince’s Chamber, used as a robing room; the other was the Painted Chamber, for committee meetings. But those three rooms were on the upstairs floor. Rollo was more interested in the ground-floor rooms underneath.

Beneath the Prince’s Chamber was a porter’s lodge and an apartment for the Keeper of the King’s Wardrobe. Alongside ran a narrow passage, Parliament Place, leading to a wharf called Parliament Stairs on the left bank of the Thames.

Rollo went to a nearby tavern called The Boatman and pretended to be a firewood dealer looking for storage space and willing to buy drinks for anyone who could give him information. There he gleaned two exciting nuggets: one, that the Wardrobe Keeper did not need his apartment and was willing to rent it out; and two, that it had a cellar. However, he was told, the place was reserved for courtiers, and was not available to common tradesmen. Rollo looked crestfallen and said he would have to search elsewhere. The regulars at the bar thanked him for the drinks and wished him luck.