Page 11 of A Column of Fire

‘I’m honoured,’ Ned said politely.

‘I want to know about Calais,’ Cecil began. ‘I gather you’ve just returned from there.’

‘I left a week before Christmas, and got here yesterday.’

‘I need hardly tell you and your mother how vital the city is to English commerce. It’s also a matter of national pride that we still rule a small part of France.’

Ned nodded. ‘And deeply annoying to the French, of course.’

‘How is the morale of the English community there?’

‘Fine,’ said Ned, but he began to worry. Cecil was not interrogating him out of idle curiosity: there was a reason. And, now that he thought about it, his mother’s face looked grim. But he carried on. ‘When I left, they were still rejoicing over the defeat of the French at St Quentin back in August. That made them feel that the war between England and France was not going to affect them.’

‘Over-confident, perhaps,’ Cecil muttered.

Ned frowned. ‘Calais is surrounded by forts: Sangatte, Fréthun, Nielles—’

Cecil interrupted him. ‘And if the fortresses should fall?’

‘The city has three hundred and seven cannons.’

‘You have a good mind for details. But can the people withstand a siege?’

‘They have food for three months.’ Ned had made sure of his facts before leaving, for he had known that his mother would expect a detailed report. He turned to Alice now. ‘What’s happened, Mother?’

Alice said: ‘The French took Sangatte on the first day of January.’

Ned was shocked. ‘How could that happen?’

Cecil answered that question. ‘The French army was assembled in great secrecy in nearby towns. The attack took the Calais garrison by surprise.’

‘Who leads the French forces?’

‘François, duke of Guise.’

‘Scarface!’ said Ned. ‘He’s a legend.’ The duke was France’s greatest general.

‘By now the city must be under siege.’

‘But it has not fallen.’

‘So far as we know, but my latest news is five days old.’

Ned turned to Alice again. ‘No word from Uncle Dick?’

Alice shook her head. ‘He cannot get a message out of a besieged city.’

Ned thought of his relations there: Aunt Blanche, a much better cook than Janet Fife, though Ned would never tell Janet that; cousin Albin, who was his age and had taught him the French words for intimate parts of the body and other unmentionable things; and amorous Thérèse. Would they survive?

Alice said quietly: ‘Almost everything we have is tied up in Calais.’

Ned frowned. Was that possible? He said: ‘Don’t we have any cargoes going to Seville?’

The Spanish port of Seville was the armoury of King Felipe, with an insatiable appetite for metal. A cousin of Ned’s father, Carlos Cruz, bought as much as Alice could send, turning it all into cannons and cannonballs for Spain’s interminable wars. Ned’s brother, Barney, who was in Seville, was living and working with Carlos, learning another side of the family business, as Ned had done in Calais. But the sea journey was long and hazardous, and ships were sent there only when the much nearer warehouse at Calais was full.

Alice replied to Ned’s question: ‘No. At the moment we have no ships going to or from Seville.’

‘So if we lose Calais . . .’