Page 240 of A Column of Fire

Alfo said to Ned: ‘What did he want?’

‘He’s having adolescent doubts. He treats me as a harmless friend of the family. How is school?’

Alfo sat down. He was nineteen now, and he had Barney’s long limbs and easy-going ways. ‘The truth is, a year ago the school had already taught me all it could. Now I spend half my time reading and the other half teaching the youngsters.’

‘Oh?’ It was clearly Ned’s day for counselling young men. He was only forty-three, not old enough for such responsibility. ‘Perhaps you should go to Oxford and study at the university. You could live at Kingsbridge College.’ Ned was only mildly keen on this idea. He himself had never studied at a university, and he could not say that he had suffered much in consequence. He was as smart as most of the clergymen he met. On the other hand, he occasionally noticed that university-educated men were more agile than he in arguments, and he knew that they had learned that in student debates.

‘I’m not cut out to be a clergyman.’

Ned smiled. Alfo was fond of girls – and they liked him, too. He had inherited Barney’s effortless charm. Timid girls were put off by his African looks, but the more adventurous were intrigued.

English people were illogical about foreigners, Ned found: they hated Turks, and they believed Jews were evil, but they regarded Africans as harmlessly exotic. Men such as Alfo, who somehow ended up in England, usually married into the community, where their inherited appearance disappeared in the course of three or four generations.

‘Going to university doesn’t mean you’re obliged to become a clergyman. But I sense that you have something else in mind.’

‘My grandmother Alice had a dream of turning the old monastery into an indoor market.’

‘That’s true, she did.’ It was a long time ago, but Ned had not forgotten looking around the ruins with his mother, imagining the stalls set up in the cloisters. ‘It’s still a good idea.’

‘Could I use the Captain’s money to buy the place?’

Ned considered. He had charge of Barney’s wealth while Barney was at sea. He kept a lot of it in cash, but he had made some investments too – an orchard in Kingsbridge, a dairy in London – and had made money for his brother. ‘I think we might, if the price is right,’ he said cautiously.

‘May I approach the chapter?’

‘Do some research first. Ask about recent sales of building land in Kingsbridge – how much per acre.’

‘I’ll do that,’ Alfo said eagerly.

‘Be discreet. Don’t tell people what you’re planning – say I’ve asked you to look for a building plot for myself. Then we’ll talk about how much to offer for the monastery.’

Eileen Fife came into the room with a packet in her hand. She smiled affectionately at Alfo and handed the packet to Ned. ‘A messenger brought this from London for you, Sir Ned. He’s in the kitchen, if you want him.’

‘Give him something to eat,’ Ned said.

‘I’ve done so already,’ Eileen said, indignant that Ned should think she might have omitted this courtesy.

‘Of course you have, forgive me.’ Ned opened the packet. There was a letter for Sylvie addressed in Nath’s childlike handwriting, undoubtedly forwarded by the English embassy in Paris. It would probably be a request for more books, something that had happened three times in the last ten years.

Ned knew, from Nath’s letters and from Sylvie’s visits to Paris, that Nath had taken over Sylvie’s role in more than bookselling. She still worked as maid to the family of Pierre Aumande de Guise, and she continued to watch Pierre and pass information to the Paris Protestants. Pierre had moved into the Guise palace, along with Odette, her son Alain, now twenty-two and a student, and Nath. This gave Nath extra opportunities for espionage, especially on English Catholics in Paris. Nath had also converted Alain to Protestantism, unknown to Odette or Pierre. All Nath’s information came to Sylvie in letters such as this one.

Ned set it aside for Sylvie to open.

The other letter was for him. It was written in clear, forward-slanted script, the work of a methodical man in a hurry, and Ned recognized it as that of Sir Francis Walsingham, his master. However, he could not read it immediately because it was in code. He said to Eileen: ‘I need time to compose a reply. Give the messenger a bed for the night.’

Alfo stood up. ‘I’ll make a start on our new project! Thank you, Uncle Ned.’

Ned began to decode his letter. There were only three sentences. It was tempting to write the decrypt above the coded message, but that practice was strictly forbidden. If a coded letter with its decrypt found its way into the wrong hands, the enemy would have a key to all other messages written in the same code. Ned’s code-breakers, working on intercepted correspondence of foreign embassies in London, had benefited more than once from such carelessness on the part of the people on whom they spied. Ned wrote his decrypt with an iron pencil on a slate that could be wiped clean with a damp cloth.

He had the code in his head, and he was able to decipher the opening sentence rapidly:News from Paris.

His pulse quickened. He and Walsingham were eager to find out what the French would do next. All through the sixties and seventies, Queen Elizabeth had held her enemies at bay by pretending to consider marriage proposals from Catholic princes. Her latest victim had been Hercule-Francis, the brother of King Henri III of France. Elizabeth would be fifty this year, but she still had the power to fascinate men, and she had enraptured Hercule-Francis, even though he was still in his twenties, calling him ‘my little frog’. She had toyed with him for three years, until he came to the conclusion reached eventually by all her suitors, that she had no intention of marrying anyone. But Ned felt she had played the marriage card for the last time, and he feared that her enemies might now do what they had been talking about for so long, and make a serious attempt to get rid of her.

Ned was beginning on the second sentence when the door was flung open and Margery burst in.

‘How dare you?’ she said. ‘How dare you?’

Ned was thunderstruck. Margery’s sudden rages were much feared by her servants, but he had never been subjected to one. His relationship with her was friendly to the point of affection. ‘What on earth have I done?’ he said.