A Column of Fire (88 page)

It was a long time coming.

As she was passing through a grove, a man she did not know stepped from behind a massive oak tree and stood in front of her.

He startled Garçon, who skittered sideways. Alison brought the pony under control swiftly, but not before the stranger had come close enough to grab the bridle.

‘Let go of my horse, or I’ll have you flogged,’ she said firmly.

‘I mean you no harm,’ he said.

‘Then let go.’

He released the bridle and stepped back a pace.

He was a little under fifty years old, she guessed; his hair thinning on top, his reddish beard bushy. He did not seem very threatening, and perhaps he had taken the bridle only to help her control the horse.

He said: ‘Are you Alison McKay?’

She lifted her chin in the universal gesture of superiority. ‘When I married my husband I became Lady Ross, and when I buried him a year later I became the dowager Lady Ross, but I was Alison McKay once, a long time ago. Who are you?’

‘Jean Langlais.’

Alison reacted to the name, saying: ‘I’ve heard of you. But you’re not French.’

‘I am a messenger from France. To be exact, from Pierre Aumande de Guise.’

‘I know him.’ She recalled a young man with waves of blond hair and an air of ruthless competence. She had wanted him on her side, and imagined them as a team, but that had not been their destiny. He was no longer young, of course. ‘How is Pierre?’

‘He is the right-hand man of the duke of Guise.’

‘A bishop, perhaps, or even an archbishop? No, of course not, he’s married.’ To a servant girl who had been impregnated by one of the rowdy Guise adolescents, she remembered. Much to Alison’s regret.

‘His wife died recently.’

‘Ah. Now watch him rise. He may end up as Pope. What’s his message?’

‘Your imprisonment is almost over.’

Alison’s heart leaped in optimism, but she suppressed her elation. It was easy to say:
Your imprisonment is almost over.
Making it happen was another thing. She kept her expression neutral as she said: ‘How so?’

‘The duke of Guise plans to invade England, with the backing of King Felipe of Spain and Pope Gregory XIII. Mary Stuart must be the symbolic leader of this army. They will free her and put her on the throne.’

Could this be true? Alison hardly dared to think so. She considered what she should say. To gain time she pretended to muse. ‘Last time I saw Henri de Guise he was a little blond boy ten years old, and now he wants to conquer England.’

‘The Guises are second only to the royal family in France. If he says he will conquer England, he will. But he needs to know that his cousin Mary will play to the full her role in this revolution.’

Alison studied him. His face was lean and handsome, but his looks gave an impression of flinty ruthlessness. He reminded her somewhat of Pierre. She made her decision. ‘I can give you that guarantee here and now.’

Jean Langlais shook his head. ‘Duke Henri will not take your word for it – nor mine, come to that. He wants it in writing, from Mary.’

Alison’s hopes faded again. That would be difficult. ‘You know that all her outgoing and incoming letters are read by a man called Sir Ned Willard.’ Alison had met the young Ned Willard at St Dizier, with Mary’s half-brother James Stuart, and then again at Carlisle Castle. Like Pierre, Ned had come a long way.

Recognition flickered in Langlais’s eyes, and Alison guessed that he, too, knew Ned. He said: ‘We need to set up a secret channel of communication.’

‘You and I can meet here. I get to ride out alone about once a week.’

He shook his head. ‘That might do for now. I’ve been observing the castle, and I see that security around Queen Mary is slack. But it may be tightened up. We need a means that is more difficult to detect.’

Alison nodded. He was right. ‘What do you suggest?’

‘I was going to ask you that. Is there a servant, someone who routinely goes in and out of Sheffield Castle, who might be persuaded to smuggle letters?’

Alison considered. She had done this before, at Loch Leven, and she could do it again. Many people called at the castle every day. They had to supply food and drink and everything else needed by Queen Mary and her entourage of thirty people – even an imprisoned monarch had a court. And that was on top of family and hangers-on of the earl of Shrewsbury. But which of the callers could be charmed, bullied or bribed into this dangerous business?

Alison’s mind went to Peg Bradford, a plain, raw-boned girl of eighteen who came to collect the soiled linen and took it home to wash it. She had never before seen a queen, and made no secret of her worship of Mary Stuart. The queen of Scots was past forty now, and her beauty had gone; captivity had made her heavy, and her once-luxuriant hair had deteriorated so much that in company she wore an auburn wig. But she was still that fairy-tale figure, an ill-fated queen, nobly suffering cruelty and injustice, irresistibly seductive to some people. Mary played up to Peg almost automatically, hardly thinking about it: to such people she was always regal but friendly, so that they thought she was marvellously warm and human. If you were a queen, Alison knew, you did not have to do much to be loved.

‘A laundress called Peg Bradford,’ Alison said. ‘She lives in Brick Street next to St John’s church.’

‘I’ll make contact. But you need to prepare her.’

‘Of course.’ That would be easy. Alison could picture Mary holding Peg’s hand, talking to her in a low, confidential voice. She could imagine the joy and devotion on Peg’s face when she was entrusted with a special task for the queen.

‘Tell her that a stranger will come,’ said Langlais. ‘With a purse of gold.’

*

I
N
S
HOREDITCH
,
JUST
outside the east wall of the city of London, between a slaughterhouse and a horse pond, there stood a building called The Theatre.

When it was built no one in England had ever seen a structure like it. A cobbled courtyard in the middle was surrounded by an octagon of tiered wooden galleries under a tile roof. From one of the eight sides a platform, called a stage, jutted out into the yard. The Theatre had been purpose-built for the performance of plays, and was much more suitable than the inn yards and halls where such events were normally put on.

Rollo Fitzgerald went there on an autumn afternoon in 1583. He was tailing Francis Throckmorton. He needed to forge one more link in the chain of communication between the duke of Guise and the queen of Scots.

His sister Margery did not know that he was in England. He preferred it that way. She must never get even a suspicion of what he was doing. She continued to smuggle priests from the English College into the country, but she hated the idea of Christians fighting each other. If she knew he was fomenting an insurrection, she would make trouble. She might even betray the plot, so strongly did she believe in nonviolence.

However, all was going well. He could hardly believe that the plan was working with no snags. It had to be the will of God.

The laundress Peg Bradford had proved as easy to persuade as Alison had forecast. She would have smuggled letters in the laundry just to please Queen Mary, and the bribe Rollo gave her had been almost superfluous. She had no idea that what she was doing could lead her to the gallows. Rollo had felt a twinge of guilt about persuading such an unworldly and well-meaning girl to become a traitor.

At the other end of the chain, Pierre Aumande de Guise had arranged for his letters to Mary to be held at the French embassy in London.

All Rollo needed now was someone to pick up the letters in London and deliver them to Peg in Sheffield; and Throckmorton was his choice.

Admission to The Theatre was a penny. Throckmorton paid an additional penny to get into the covered gallery, and a third penny to rent a stool. Rollo followed him in and stood behind and above him, watching for an opportunity to speak to him quietly and inconspicuously.

Throckmorton came from a wealthy and distinguished family whose motto was
Virtue is the only nobility.
His father had flourished during the reign of the late Mary Tudor, but had fallen from favour under Elizabeth Tudor, just like Rollo’s father. And Throckmorton’s father had eagerly agreed to harbour one of Rollo’s secret priests.

Throckmorton was expensively dressed, with an extravagant white ruff. He was not yet thirty, but his hair was receding into a widow’s peak which, together with his sharp nose and pointed beard, gave him a bird-like look. After studying at Oxford, Throckmorton had travelled to France and contacted English Catholic exiles, which was how Rollo knew of his leanings. However, they had never actually met, and Rollo was far from certain that he could persuade Throckmorton to risk his life in the cause.

The play was called
Ralph Roister Doister
, which was also the name of the main character, a braggart whose actions never matched his words. His boasting was exploited, by the impish Matthew Merrygreek, to get him entangled in absurd situations which made the whole place rock with laughter. Rollo was reminded of the African playwright Terence, who had written in Latin in the second century
BC
. All students had to read the plays of Terence. Rollo enjoyed himself so much that for a few minutes he even forgot his deadly mission.

Then an interval was announced and he remembered.

He followed Throckmorton outside and stood behind him in a queue to buy a cup of wine. Moving closer, Rollo said quietly. ‘Bless you, my son.’

Throckmorton looked startled.

Rollo was not wearing priestly robes, but he discreetly reached inside his shirt collar, grasped the gold cross that he wore under his clothes, showed it to Throckmorton for a second, then dropped it out of sight. The cross identified him as a Catholic: Protestants believed it was superstitious to wear one.

Throckmorton said: ‘Who are you?’

‘Jean Langlais.’

It had crossed Rollo’s mind that he might use other false names, to confuse his trail even more. But the name of Jean Langlais had begun to acquire an aura. It represented a mysteriously powerful figure, a ghost-like being moving silently between England and France, working secretly for the Catholic cause. It had become an asset.

‘What do you want?’

‘God has work for you to do.’

Throckmorton’s face showed excitement and fear as he thought what this might mean. ‘What sort of work?’

‘You must go to the French embassy – after dark, cloaked and hooded – and ask for the letters from Monsieur de Guise, then take those letters to Sheffield and give them to a laundress called Peg Bradford. After that you must wait until Peg gives you some letters in return, which you will bring back to the embassy. That’s all.’

Throckmorton nodded slowly. ‘Sheffield is where Mary Queen of Scots is imprisoned.’

‘Yes.’

There was a long pause. ‘I could be hanged for this.’

‘Then you would enter heaven all the sooner.’

‘Why don’t you do it yourself?’

‘Because you are not the only one who has been chosen by God to do his work. In England there are thousands of young men like yourself eager for change. My role is to tell them what they can do in the struggle to restore the true faith. I, too, am likely to go to heaven sooner rather than later.’

They reached the head of the line and bought their drinks. Rollo led Throckmorton away from the crowd. They stood on the edge of the pond, looking at the black water. Throckmorton said: ‘I have to think about this.’

‘No, you don’t.’ That was the last thing Rollo wanted. He needed Throckmorton to commit. ‘The Pope has excommunicated the false queen, Elizabeth, and forbidden Englishmen to obey her. It’s your holy duty to help the true queen of England regain her throne. You know that, don’t you?’

Throckmorton took a gulp of wine. ‘Yes, I know it,’ he said.

‘Then give me your hand and say you will play your part.’

Throckmorton hesitated for a long moment. Then he looked Rollo in the eye and said: ‘I’ll do it.’

They shook hands.

*

I
T TOOK
N
ED
a week to get to Sheffield.

Such a distance, 170 miles, could be covered faster by someone who kept horses permanently stabled at intervals along the route, so that he could change mounts several times a day; but that was mainly done by merchants who needed a regular courier service between cities such as Paris and Antwerp, because news was money to them. There was no courier service between London and Sheffield.

The journey gave him plenty of time to worry.

His nightmare was coming true. The French ultra-Catholics, the king of Spain and the Pope had at last agreed on joint action. They made a deadly combination. Between them they had the power and the money to launch an invasion of England. Already spies were making plans of the harbours where the invaders would land. Ned had no doubt that discontented Catholic noblemen such as Earl Bart were sharpening their swords and burnishing their armour.

And now, worst of all, Mary Stuart was involved.

Ned had received a message from Alain de Guise in Paris, via the English embassy there. Alain continued to live with Pierre and spy on him: this was his revenge. Pierre, for his part, treated his stepson as a harmless drudge, made him run errands, and seemed to like having him around as a dogsbody.

Alain’s message said Pierre was rejoicing that he had succeeded in making contact with the queen of the Scots.

This was bad news. Mary’s approval would give the whole treasonous enterprise a cloak of holy respectability. To many she was the rightful queen of England, and Elizabeth the usurper. Under Mary’s auspices, a gang of foreign thugs became an army of righteousness in the eyes of the world.

It was maddening. After all that Elizabeth had achieved, bringing religious peace and commercial prosperity to England for twenty-five years, they still would not leave her be.

Ned’s task of protecting Elizabeth was made more difficult by personal court rivalries – as happened so often in politics. His Puritan master, Walsingham, clashed with the fun-loving Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester. ‘Secret codes, and invisible ink!’ Leicester would jeer when he ran into Walsingham in the palace of White Hall or the garden of Hampton Court. ‘Power is won with guns and bullets, not pens and ink!’ He could not persuade the queen to get rid of Walsingham – she was too smart for that – but his scepticism reinforced her miserliness, and the work done by Walsingham and his men was never properly financed.