Page 163 of A Column of Fire

Ebrima Dabo was living his dream. He was free, rich and happy.

On a Sunday afternoon in the summer of 1566 he and his partner, Carlos Cruz, walked out of the city of Antwerp into the countryside. They were two prosperous, well-dressed inhabitants of one of the richest cities in the world. Together they owned the largest iron-making concern in Antwerp. In brains they were about equal, Ebrima thought: he was older and wiser, but Carlos had the bold imagination of youth. Carlos was married to Imke, the daughter of his distant cousin Jan Wolman, and they had two small children. Ebrima, who would be fifty next year, had married Evi Dirks, a widow his own age, and had a teenage stepson who was employed in the ironworks.

Ebrima often thought nostalgically of the village where he had been born. If he could have turned back the years, and avoided being taken as a prisoner-of-war and sold into slavery, he would have had a long, uneventful and contented life in that village. When he thought this way he felt sad. But he could not go back. For one thing, he had no idea how to get there. But there was something else. He knew too much. He had eaten of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, like Eve in the myth the Christians believed, and he could never return to the garden. He spoke Spanish and French and the local Brabant Dutch dialect, and had not uttered a word of Manding for years. He hung oil paintings in his house, he loved to listen to musical groups playing complex scores, and he was particular about the quality of his wine. He was a different man.

With brains and hard work and luck he had forged a new life. All he wanted, now, was to keep what he had won. But he feared he would not be able to.

He and Carlos were not the only people leaving the city. Antwerpers often walked into the countryside in good weather, but today’s crowds were abnormal. There were hundreds of people on the narrow country road. Ebrima knew many of them: men who supplied him with ore, others who bought his iron, families who lived in his street, keepers of shops where he bought meat and gloves and glassware. All were heading for the same place, a broad meadow known as Lord Hubert’s Pasture. It was Carlos’s children’s favourite place to picnic. But the crowd on the road were not picnickers.

They were Protestants.

Many carried copies of the same small book, the Psalms translated into French by the poet Clément Marot, printed in Antwerp. It was a crime to own the book, and the penalty for selling it was death, but it was easily available and cost a penny.

Most of the younger men also carried weapons.

Ebrima guessed that Lord Hubert’s Pasture had been chosen for the meeting because it was outside the jurisdiction of the Antwerp city council, so the city watch had no authority there, and the rural police did not have the manpower to disperse such a crowd. Even so, there was always the danger of violence: everyone had heard of the Massacre of Wassy. And some of the younger men were undoubtedly in an aggressive mood.

Carlos was a Catholic. Ebrima was what the Christians would have called a pagan, if they had known what was in his heart, but of course they did not, for he pretended to be a devout Catholic like Carlos. Even his wife, Evi, did not know, and if she wondered why he liked to go for riverside walks at dawn on Sunday mornings she was tactful enough not to ask. Ebrima and Carlos both went regularly, with their families, to their parish church and, on big occasions, to Antwerp Cathedral. Both feared that religious warfare in the Netherlands could destroy their happiness as it had done for so many people across the border in France.

Carlos was a simple soul, philosophically, and he could not understand why anyone wanted to take up an alternative religion. But Ebrima saw, with sadness and alarm, what attracted so many Netherlanders to Protestantism. Catholicism was the creed of their Spanish overlords, and many Dutch people resented foreign domination. Also, Netherlanders were innovators, whereas the Catholic Church was conservative about everything, quick to condemn new ideas, slow to change. Worst of all, the clergy were not friendly to the commercial activities that had made so many Netherlanders rich, especially banking, which could not exist unless men committed the sin of usury. By contrast the influential John Calvin, leader of the Geneva Protestants until his death two years ago, had allowed interest to be charged on loans.

This summer, as a fresh wave of itinerant Calvinist pastors from Geneva gave informal sermons in the forests and fields of the Netherlands, the trickling spread of Protestantism had turned into a flood.

Persecution was fierce, but intermittent. The governor of the Netherlands was Margherita, duchess of Parma, the illegitimate half-sister of King Felipe of Spain. She was inclined to go easy on heretics for the sake of a quiet life, but her brother was determined to wipe out heresy in all his domains. When she became too tolerant, the bloodthirsty Chief Inquisitor Pieter Titelmans would crack down: Protestants would be tortured, mutilated and burned to death. But the hard line got little support even from Catholics. Most of the time, the laws were enforced lightly. Men such as Carlos were more interested in making and selling things. The new religion grew.

How big was it now? Ebrima and Carlos were on their way to the open-air meeting to find out. City councillors wanted to know just how popular the alternative religion was. It was difficult to tell, normally, because Protestantism was semi-hidden; today’s meeting would be a rare chance to see how many Protestants there really were. So a councillor had unofficially asked Carlos and Ebrima, as solid Catholic citizens without official status, to discreetly count them.

Judging by the numbers on the road, the total was going to be higher than expected.

As they walked, Ebrima asked: ‘How is the painting coming along?’

‘It’s almost finished.’ Carlos had commissioned a top Antwerp artist to paint a picture for the cathedral. Ebrima knew that in his prayers Carlos thanked God for his gifts and asked that he would be allowed to keep them. Like Ebrima, he did not take his prosperity for granted. He often mentioned the story of Job, the man who had everything and lost it all, and he would quote: ‘The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away.’

Ebrima was intrigued that Carlos did not reject the Church after the persecution he had suffered in Seville. Carlos was not very forthcoming about his spiritual life, but over the years Ebrima had gathered, from casual remarks and hints, that Carlos found great consolation in Catholic services, something similar to what Ebrima got from the water rite. Neither of them felt the same at an earnest Protestant service in a whitewashed church.

Now Ebrima said: ‘What subject did you decide upon, for the painting, in the end?’

‘The miracle at Cana, when Jesus turned the water into wine.’

Ebrima laughed. ‘Your favourite Bible story. I wonder why.’ Carlos’s love of wine was well known.

Carlos smiled. ‘It will be unveiled in the cathedral next week.’

The painting would, technically, be a gift from the city’s metalworkers, but everyone would know that it had been bought with Carlos’s money. This was a measure of how quickly Carlos had become one of Antwerp’s leading citizens. He was amiable and gregarious and very smart, and might be a city councillor one day.

Ebrima was a different kind of man, introverted and cautious. He was just as smart as Carlos but he had no political ambitions. Also, he preferred to keep his money for himself.

Carlos added: ‘We’ll have a big party afterwards. I hope you and Evi will come.’

‘Of course.’

They heard the singing before they reached their destination. Ebrima felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. The sound was awesome. He was used to chorus singing by choirs in Catholic churches – quite large choirs in cathedrals – but this was different. He had never before heard thousands of voices raised in the same song.

The road passed through a little wood then emerged at the top of a shallow rise from where they could see the whole of the meadow. It sloped down to a shallow stream and up the far side, and the entire space of ten acres or more was covered with men, women and children. On the far side a pastor stood on a makeshift platform, leading the singing.

The hymn was in French:

Si seurement, que quand au val viendroye