A Column of Fire (113 page)

In the mirror she did not look much like a man. She was too pretty, and her hands were too small. She put a coal shovel up the chimney and brought down a quantity of soot, then used it to besmirch her hands and face. That was better, the mirror told her. Now she could pass for a grubby little old man of the kind who might well be used as a messenger.

She left the house by the back door and hurried away, hoping that any neighbours who glimpsed her would not recognize her. She went east to Ald Gate, and passed through it out of the city. She walked through fields to the village of Hoxton, where Monteagle had a suburban house in a large garden. She went to the back door, as a scruffy messenger would.

A man with his mouth full of food came to the door. She handed the letter to him and said in her gruffest voice: ‘For Lord Monteagle, personal and very important.’

The man chewed and swallowed. ‘And who is it from?’

‘A gentleman that gave me a penny.’

‘All right, old boy, here’s another.’

She held out her hand, small but dirty, and took the coin, then she turned away.

*

N
ED
W
ILLARD AND
most of the Privy Council were sitting around Robert Cecil’s dining table when a servant came in to tell Cecil that Lord Monteagle needed to speak to him very urgently.

Cecil excused himself and asked Ned to go with him. Monteagle was waiting in a side room, looking anxious, holding a sheet of paper as if it might explode. He began with what was obviously a prepared sentence. ‘The writer of this letter appears to think me a traitor,’ he said, ‘but I hope to prove I am not by bringing the letter to you, the secretary of state, within an hour of having received it.’

It struck Ned as ironic that the tall, strapping young Lord Monteagle was so visibly frightened of the dwarfish Cecil.

‘Your loyalty isn’t in doubt,’ Cecil murmured pacifically.

That was not quite true, Ned thought; but Cecil was being polite.

Monteagle proffered the letter and Cecil took it. His high, white forehead creased in a frown as he began to read. ‘By the Mass, this is untidy handwriting.’ He read to the end, then passed it to Ned. Cecil’s hands were long and fine-boned, like those of a tall woman.

Cecil asked Monteagle: ‘How did this come to you?’

‘My manservant brought it to me at supper. It was given him by a man who came to the kitchen door. My man gave the messenger a penny.’

‘After you had read the letter, did you send someone to fetch the messenger back?’

‘Of course, but he’d disappeared. Frankly, I suspect my servant may have finished his supper before bringing the letter to me, though he swore otherwise. At all events, we couldn’t find the messenger when we looked for him. So I saddled my horse and came straight here.’

‘You did the right thing, my lord.’

‘Thank you.’

‘What do you think of it, Ned?’

‘The whole thing is plainly some kind of fake,’ said Ned.

Monteagle was surprised. ‘Really?’

‘Look. The writer cares for your preservation, he says, out of the love he bears some of your friends. It seems a bit unlikely.’

‘Why?’

‘The letter is proof of treason. If a man knows of a plot to kill the king, his duty is to tell the Privy Council; and if he does not do so he may hang for it. Would a man endanger his own life for the sake of a friend of a friend?’

Monteagle was bewildered. ‘I never thought of that,’ he said. ‘I took the letter at face value.’

Cecil smiled knowingly. ‘Sir Ned never takes anything at face value,’ he said.

‘In fact,’ Ned went on, ‘I suspect the writer is very well known to you, or at least to someone to whom you might show the letter.’

Once again Monteagle looked out of his depth. ‘Why do you say that?’

‘No one writes like this except a schoolboy who has not yet gained full control of his pen. Yet the phrasing is that of an adult. Therefore the writing is deliberately disguised. That suggests that someone who is likely to read the letter knows the sender well enough to recognize his hand.’

‘How dreadful,’ said Monteagle. ‘I wonder who it can be?’

‘The sentence about the wickedness of the time is mere padding,’ Ned went on, thinking aloud. ‘The meat of the message is in the next sentence. If Monteagle attends Parliament, he may be killed. That part, I suspect, is true. It fits with what I learned in Paris.’

Cecil said: ‘But how is the killing to be done?’

‘Key question. I believe the writer doesn’t know. Look at the vagueness. “They shall receive a terrible blow . . . they shall not see who hurts them.” It suggests danger from a distance, perhaps by cannon fire, but nothing more specific.’

Cecil nodded. ‘Or, of course, the whole thing could be a figment of a madman’s imagination.’

Ned said: ‘I don’t think so.’

Cecil shrugged. ‘There’s no concrete evidence, and nothing we can check. An anonymous letter is just a piece of paper.’

Cecil was right, the evidence was flimsy – but Ned’s instinct told him the threat was real. Anxiously he said: ‘Whatever we think, the letter must be shown to the king.’

‘Of course,’ said Cecil. ‘He’s hunting in Hertfordshire, but this will be the first thing he sees when he returns to London.’

*

M
ARGERY HAD ALWAYS
known this terrible day would come. She had managed to forget the fact, even for years at a time, and she had been happy, but in her heart she had realized there would be a reckoning. She had deceived Ned for decades, but a lie always came back to you, sooner or later, and now that time had come.

‘I know that Jean Langlais means to kill the king,’ Ned said to her, worried and frustrated. ‘But I can’t do anything about it because I don’t know who Langlais is or where to find him.’

Margery felt crucified by guilt. She had known that the elusive man Ned had been hunting most of his life was Rollo, and she had kept this knowledge to herself.

But now it seemed that Rollo was going to kill the king and queen and their two sons, plus all the leading ministers including Ned himself. She could not allow that to happen. Yet still she was not sure what to do, for even if she revealed the secret it might not save anyone. She knew who Langlais was but not where he was, and she had no idea how he planned to kill everyone.

She and Ned were at home in St Paul’s Churchyard. They had eaten a breakfast of hen’s eggs with weak beer, and Ned had his hat on, about to leave for Robert Cecil’s house. At this moment in the day he often lingered, standing by the fire, to share his worries with her. Now he said: ‘Langlais has been very, very careful – always.’

Margery knew that was true. The secret priests she had helped Rollo smuggle into England had known him as Langlais, and none of them had been told she was his sister. The same went for all the people he conspired with to free Mary Stuart and make her queen: they all knew him as Langlais, none as Rollo Fitzgerald. In being so cautious he was unlike most of his co-conspirators. They had approached their mission in a daredevil spirit, but Rollo had known the quality of the people he was up against, especially of Ned, and he had never taken unnecessary risks.

Margery said to Ned: ‘Can’t you cancel the opening of Parliament?’

‘No. We might postpone it, or move it to a different location; though that would look bad enough: James’s enemies would say the king is so hated by the people that he’s afraid to open his own Parliament in case he might be assassinated. So James will make the decision himself. But the ceremony has to take place some time, somewhere. The country must be governed.’

Margery could bear it no longer. She said: ‘Ned, I did a terrible thing.’

At first he was not sure how to take this. ‘What?’

‘I didn’t lie to you, but I kept a secret from you. I thought I had to. I still think I had to. But you will be terribly angry.’

‘What on earth are you talking about?’

‘I know who Jean Langlais is.’

Ned was uncharacteristically bewildered. ‘What? How could you – who is it?’

‘It’s Rollo.’

Ned looked as if he had been told someone had died. He went pale and his mouth dropped open. He staggered and sat down heavily. At last he said: ‘And you knew?’

Margery could not speak. She felt as if she were being strangled. She realized that tears were streaming down her cheeks. She nodded.

‘How long?’

She gasped, sobbed, and managed to say: ‘Always.’

‘But how could you keep this from me?’

When at last she found words, they came fast. ‘I thought he was just smuggling harmless priests into England to bring the sacraments to Catholics, then you found out he was conspiring to free Mary Stuart and Queen Elizabeth and he left the country, and he came back after the Spanish armada but he said it was all over and he wouldn’t conspire any more, and if I betrayed him, he would reveal that Bartlet and Roger had helped smuggle priests.’

‘You wrote the letter to Monteagle.’

She nodded. ‘I wanted to warn you without condemning Rollo.’

‘How did you find out?’

‘Bartlet told me he’s not coming to the opening of Parliament. He’s never missed it before. Rollo must have warned him.’

‘All this going on, and I didn’t know. Me, the master spy, deceived by his own wife.’

‘Oh, Ned.’

Ned looked at her as if she were the vilest criminal. ‘And Rollo was in Kingsbridge the day Sylvie died.’

His words were like a bullet, and she found she could no longer stand. She sank to her knees on the rug. ‘You want to kill me, I can tell,’ she said. ‘Go ahead, do it, I can’t live now.’

‘I was so angry when people said I could no longer be trusted to work for Queen Elizabeth because I had married a Catholic. What fools they were, I thought. Now it turns out that I was the fool.’

‘No, you weren’t.’

He gave her a look so full of rage that it broke her heart. ‘Oh, yes, I was,’ he said.

And then he went out.

*

N
ED AND
C
ECIL
saw King James on the first day of November. He received them at White Hall, in the Long Gallery that ran from the private rooms to the orchard. As well as paintings the gallery featured priceless draperies in gold and silver brocade, just the kind of thing James liked.

Ned knew that Cecil doubted the authenticity of the Monteagle letter, suspecting it might be no more than a piece of troublemaking. Cecil continued to believe this even when Ned told him that Earl Bartlet, a Catholic peer, was planning to miss the opening of Parliament for no plausible reason, and had probably been warned off.

Cecil’s plan was to take all possible precautions, but not to reschedule the ceremony. Ned had a different agenda.

Ned wanted to do more than prevent the planned murders. Too often he had been on the trail of traitors only to see them scared off, after which they lived to plot another day. This time he wanted to arrest the conspirators. He wanted, finally, to get Rollo.

Cecil gave the Monteagle letter to James, saying: ‘One would, of course, never keep something such as this from your majesty. On the other hand, it may not merit being taken seriously. It isn’t backed by any facts.’

Ned added: ‘No facts, your majesty, but there are supporting indications. I heard rumours in Paris.’

James shrugged. ‘Rumours,’ he said.

Ned said: ‘You can’t believe them, and you can’t ignore them.’

‘Exactly.’ James read the letter, holding it up to the lamp, for the winter light coming through the windows was weak.

He took his time, and Ned’s thoughts strayed to Margery. He had not seen her since her revelation. He was sleeping at a tavern. He could not bear the thought of seeing her or speaking to her: it was too painful. He could not even identify the emotion that swamped him, whether rage or hatred or grief. All he could do was look away and engage his mind with something else.

The king let the beringed hand holding the letter drop to his side, and he stood still for a minute or so, looking nowhere. Ned saw intelligence in his eyes, and a determined line to his mouth, but a streak of self-indulgence was evidenced by his blemished skin and puffy eyes. It was hard, Ned guessed, to be disciplined and moderate when you possessed absolute power.

The king read the letter again, then said to Cecil: ‘What do you think?’

‘We could reinforce Westminster Yard with guards and cannons immediately. Then we could close the gates and search the precincts thoroughly. After that we could control and monitor everyone entering and leaving until the opening of Parliament is safely past.’

This was Cecil’s preferred plan, but both he and Ned knew they had to give the king options, not instructions.

James was always conscious of his public image, for all his talk of the divine right of kings. ‘We must take care not to alarm the public over what might be nothing at all,’ he said. ‘It makes the king look weak and frightened.’

‘Your majesty’s safety is paramount. But Sir Ned has an alternative suggestion.’

James looked enquiringly at Ned.

Ned was ready. ‘Consider this, your majesty. If there is a plot, then perhaps the preparations are not yet complete. So if we act now we may fail to find what we’re looking for. Worse, we may find incomplete preparations, which would give us only questionable evidence at a trial. Then the Catholic pamphleteers would say the charges were trumped up as a pretext for persecution.’

James did not yet get the point. ‘We have to do something.’

‘Indeed. In order to catch all the plotters and seize the maximum amount of incriminating evidence, we need to pounce at the last minute. That will protect your majesty both immediately and, importantly, in the future as well.’ Ned held his breath: this was the crucial point.

James looked at Cecil. ‘I think he may be right.’

‘It’s for your majesty to judge.’

The king turned back to Ned. ‘Very well. Act on the fourth of November.’

‘Thank you, your majesty,’ Ned said with relief.

Ned and Cecil back away, bowing, then the king was struck by an afterthought and said: ‘Do we have any idea who is behind this wickedness?’

All Ned’s frenzy at Margery came back to him in a tidal wave, and he struggled to suppress the shaking of his body. ‘Yes, your majesty,’ he said in a voice that was barely controlled. ‘It’s a man called Rollo Fitzgerald from Shiring. I’m ashamed to tell you that he’s my brother-in-law.’