A Column of Fire (95 page)

She closed the shop and cooked some salmon in wine with rosemary. As they ate, in the dining room over the shop, he told her about Babington’s letter and Mary’s response. He had no secrets from Sylvie: they were spies together.

As they were finishing the fish, one of Ned’s assistants arrived with the decrypt.

It was in French. Ned could not read French as effortlessly as he could speak it, but he went through it with Sylvie.

Mary began by praising Babington’s intentions in general terms. ‘That’s already enough to convict her of treason,’ Ned said with satisfaction.

Sylvie said: ‘It’s very sad.’

Ned looked at her with raised eyebrows. Sylvie was a crusading Protestant who had risked her life for her beliefs many times, yet she felt pity for Mary Stuart.

She caught his look. ‘I remember her wedding. She was just a girl, but beautiful, with a wonderful future in prospect. She was going to be the queen of France. She seemed the luckiest young woman in the world. And look what has become of her.’

‘She’s brought all her troubles on herself.’

‘Did you make good decisions when you were seventeen?’

‘I suppose not.’

‘When I was nineteen I married Pierre Aumande. How’s that for bringing trouble on oneself?’

‘I see your point.’

Ned read on. Mary went farther than general praise. She responded to each element of Babington’s plan, urging him to make more detailed preparations to welcome the invaders, muster local rebels in support, and arm and supply everyone. She asked for a more precise outline of the scheme to free her from Chartley Manor.

‘Better and better,’ said Ned.

Most importantly, she urged Babington to give careful thought to exactly how the assassins of Queen Elizabeth would proceed with their murderous task.

When Ned read that sentence he felt as if a weight had been lifted from his aching back. It was incontrovertible proof. Mary was active in the planning of regicide. She was as guilty as if she wielded the knife herself.

One way or another, Mary Stuart was finished.

*

R
OLLO FOUND
Anthony Babington celebrating.

Babington was at the grand London home of Robert Pooley with several fellow conspirators, sitting around a table laden with roasted chickens, bowls of hot buttered onions, loaves of new bread and jugs of sherry wine.

Rollo was disturbed by their levity. Men who were plotting to overthrow the monarch should not get drunk in the middle of the day. However, unlike Rollo, they were not hardened conspirators but idealistic amateurs embarked on a grand adventure. The supreme confidence of youth and nobility made them careless of their lives.

Rollo was breaking his own rule in coming to Pooley’s house. He normally stayed away from the Catholics’ regular haunts. Such places were watched by Ned Willard. But Rollo had not seen Babington for a week and he needed to know what was happening.

He looked into the room, caught Babington’s eye, and beckoned him. Uncomfortable in the home of a known Catholic, he led Babington out. Alongside the house was a spacious garden, shaded from the August sun by a small orchard of mulberry and fig trees. Even this was not secure enough for Rollo, for only a low wall separated it from the busy street, noisy with cartwheels and vendors and the banging and shouting of a building site on the other side of the road. He insisted they leave the garden and step into the shady porch of the church next door. Then at last he said: ‘What’s happening? Everything seems to have gone quiet.’

‘Wipe that frown away, Monsieur Langlais,’ said Babington gaily. ‘Here’s good news.’ He took a sheaf of papers from his pocket and handed it over with a flourish.

It was a coded letter together with a decrypt written out by Babington. Rollo moved to the archway and read it in the sunlight. In French, it was from Mary Stuart to Babington. She approved all his plans and urged him to make more detailed arrangements.

Rollo’s anxiety melted away. The letter was everything he had hoped for, the final and decisive element in the plan. Rollo would take it to the duke of Guise, who would immediately muster his army of invasion. The godless twenty-eight-year tyranny of Elizabeth was almost over.

‘Well done,’ Rollo said. He pocketed the letter. ‘I leave for France tomorrow. When I return I will be with God’s army of liberation.’

Babington clapped him on the back. ‘Good man,’ he said. ‘Now come and dine with us.’

Rollo was about to refuse but, before he could speak, his instincts sounded an alarm. He frowned. Something was wrong. The street had gone quiet. The cartwheels had stopped, the vendors were no longer crying their wares, and the building site was silent. What had happened?

He grabbed Babington’s elbow. ‘We have to get away from here,’ he said.

Babington laughed. ‘What on earth for? In Pooley’s dining room there’s a keg of the best wine only half drunk!’

‘Shut up, you fool, and follow me, if you value your life.’ Rollo stepped into the church, hushed and dim, and quickly crossed the nave to a small entrance in the far wall. He cracked the door: it opened on to the street. He peeped out.

As he had feared, Pooley’s house was being raided.

Men-at-arms were taking up positions along the street, watched in nervous silence by the builders and the vendors and the passers-by. A few yards from Rollo, two burly men with swords stood at the garden gate, clearly placed to catch anyone trying to flee. As Rollo looked, Ned Willard appeared and banged on Pooley’s front door.

‘Hell,’ said Rollo. One of the men-at-arms began to turn towards him and he quickly closed the door. ‘We’re discovered.’

Babington looked scared. ‘Who by?’

‘Willard. He’s Walsingham’s right-hand-man.’

‘We can hide here.’

‘Not for long. Willard is thorough. He’ll find us if we stay here.’

‘What are we going to do?’

‘I don’t know.’ Rollo looked out again. Pooley’s front door now stood open, and Willard had vanished, presumably inside. The men-at-arms were tense, waiting for action, looking around them warily. Rollo closed the door again. ‘How fast can you run?’

Babington belched and looked green. ‘I shall stand and fight,’ he said unconvincingly. He felt for his sword, but he was not wearing one: Rollo guessed it was hanging on a hook in Pooley’s entrance hall.

Then Rollo heard a sheep.

He frowned. As he listened, he realized it was not one but a flock of sheep. He remembered that there was a slaughterhouse along the street. A farmer was driving the flock to be butchered, a daily occurrence in every town in the world.

The sound came nearer.

Rollo looked out a third time. He could see the flock now, and smell them. There were about a hundred, and they filled the street from side to side. Pedestrians cursed them and stepped into doorways to get out of their way. The leaders drew level with Pooley’s front door, and suddenly Rollo saw how the sheep might save him.

‘Get ready,’ he said to Babington.

The men-at-arms were angry about being shouldered aside by sheep, but they could do nothing. If humans had shoved them, they would have brandished their weapons, but already-terrified sheep could not be bullied into doing anything other than follow each other to their death. Rollo would have laughed if he had not been afraid for his own life.

When the leaders of the flock passed the two men standing by the garden gate, all the men-at-arms were trapped by sheep. At that point Rollo said: ‘Now!’ and flung open the door.

He stepped out, with Babington on his heels. Two seconds later their way would have been blocked by sheep. He ran along the street, hearing Babington’s footsteps behind him.

A shout of ‘Stop! Stop!’ went up from the men-at-arms. Rollo glanced back to see some of them struggling to push through the sheep and give chase.

Rollo ran diagonally across the street and past the front of a tavern. An idler drinking a pot of ale stuck out a foot to trip him, but Rollo dodged it. Others just watched. Londoners were not generally well disposed towards men-at-arms, who were often bullies, especially when drunk; and some bystanders cheered the fugitives.

A moment later Rollo heard the bang of an arquebus, but he felt no impact, and Babington’s pace did not falter, so the shot had missed. There was another shot, with the same lack of effect, except that all the bystanders scurried indoors to take cover, knowing well that bullets did not always go just where the gun was pointed.

Rollo turned into a side street. A man carrying a club held up a hand to stop him, shouting: ‘City watch! Halt!’ Members of the city watch had the right to stop and question anyone suspicious. Rollo tried to dodge past the man, but he swung his club. Rollo felt a blow on his shoulder, lost his balance, and fell. He rolled over and looked back in time to see Babington’s arm swing through a half-circle that ended with a mighty punch to the side of the watchman’s head, knocking him down.

He tried to rise but seemed too dazed, and he slumped on the ground.

Babington helped Rollo up and they ran on.

They turned another corner, ducked down an alley, emerged from it into a street market, and slowed to a walk. They pushed their way into the crowds shopping at the stalls. A vendor tried to sell Rollo a pamphlet about the sins of the Pope, and a prostitute offered to do them both together for the price of one. Rollo looked back and saw no one in pursuit. They had escaped. Perhaps some of the others had also managed to get away in the confusion.

‘God sent his angels to help us,’ Rollo said solemnly.

‘In the shape of sheep,’ said Babington, and he laughed heartily.

*

A
LISON WAS ASTONISHED
when grumpy Sir Amias Paulet suggested to Mary Stuart that she might like to join him and some of the local gentry in a deer hunt. Mary loved riding and socializing, and she jumped at the chance to do both.

Alison helped her dress. Mary wanted to look both pretty and regal for people who would soon be her subjects. She put on a wig over her greying hair and anchored it firmly with a hat.

Alison was allowed to go too, along with the secretary, Nau. They rode out of Chartley courtyard and across the moat, then headed over the moors towards the village where the hunt was to rendezvous.

Alison was exhilarated by the sun, the breeze, and her thoughts of the future. Previously, there had been several conspiracies aimed at freeing Mary, and Alison had suffered a series of bitter disappointments, but this one seemed different, for everything had been taken into account.

It was three weeks since Mary had replied to Anthony Babington giving her approval of his plan. How much longer did they have to wait? Alison tried to calculate how many days it would take the duke of Guise to assemble his army: two weeks? A month? Perhaps she and Mary would hear advance rumours of the invasion. Any day now, word might reach England of a fleet of ships assembling on the north coast of France, and thousands of soldiers going aboard with their horses and armour. Or perhaps the duke would be subtle, and conceal the fleet in rivers and hidden harbours until the last minute, so that the invasion would come as a shock.

As she was mulling this, she saw a group of horsemen at a distance, riding fast. Her heart leaped. Could this be the rescue party?

The party drew closer. There were six men. Alison’s heart beat rapidly. Would Paulet put up a fight? He had brought with him two men-at-arms, but they would be outnumbered.

The leader of the group was someone Alison did not recognize. She noticed, despite her tumultuous excitement, that he was expensively dressed in a suit of green serge with extravagant embroidery. It must be Anthony Babington.

Then Alison looked at Paulet and wondered why he appeared unconcerned. The approach of a group of fast riders in open country was normally worrying, but he almost looked as if he had been expecting them.

She looked again at the riders and saw, with a horrible shock, that bringing up the rear was the slim figure of Ned Willard. That meant the riders were not a rescue party. Willard had been Mary’s nemesis for a quarter of a century. Now approaching fifty, he had streaks of grey in his dark hair and lines on his face. Even though he was riding last, Alison felt he was the real leader of this group.

Paulet introduced the man in green serge as Sir Thomas Gorges, an emissary from Queen Elizabeth, and Alison was seized by a fear as cold as the grave.

Gorges spoke what was obviously a rehearsed sentence. Addressing Mary, he said: ‘Madam, the queen my mistress finds it very strange that you, contrary to the pact and engagement between you, should have conspired against her and her State, a thing which she could not have believed had she not seen proofs of it with her own eyes and known it for certain.’

Alison realized that there was no deer hunt. Paulet had invented that as a way of separating Mary from the majority of her entourage.

Mary was horribly surprised. Her poise deserted her. Flustered, she spoke barely coherently. ‘I have never . . . I have always been a good sister . . . I am Elizabeth’s friend . . .’

Gorges took no notice. ‘Your servants, known to be guilty too, will be taken away from you.’

Alison said: ‘I must stay with her!’

Gorges looked at Willard, who gave a brief shake of his head.

Gorges said to Alison: ‘You will remain with the other servants.’

Mary turned to Nau. ‘Don’t let them do this!’

Nau looked terrified, and Alison sympathized. What could one secretary do?

Mary got off her horse and sat on the ground. ‘I will not go!’ she said.

Willard spoke for the first time. Addressing one of his group, he said: ‘Go to that house.’ He pointed to a substantial farmhouse half-hidden by trees a mile away. ‘They’re sure to have a cart. Bring it here. If necessary, we’ll tie up Mary Stuart and put her in the cart.’

Mary stood up again, giving in. ‘I shall ride,’ she said dispiritedly. She got back on her horse.

Gorges handed Paulet a piece of paper, presumably an arrest warrant. Paulet read it and nodded. He kept the paper, perhaps wanting proof – in case anything should go wrong – that he had been ordered to let Mary out of his care.