Page 242 of A Column of Fire

SYLVIE STILL HAD NOTclimbed the cathedral tower to look at the view. After the Sunday service, with a spring sun shining through the coloured windows, she looked for the staircase up. There was a small door in the wall of the south transept that opened on to a spiral staircase. She was wondering whether she should ask permission, or just slip through the door, when Margery approached her. ‘I had no right to come storming into your house and make such a scene,’ Margery said. ‘I feel ashamed.’

Sylvie closed the little door. This was important and the view from the tower would always be there.

She felt that she was the lucky one, and therefore she should be magnanimous to Margery. ‘I understand why you were so upset,’ she said. ‘At least, I think I do. And I really don’t blame you.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You and Ned should be raising Roger together. But you can’t, and it breaks your heart.’

Margery looked shocked. ‘Ned swore he would never tell anyone.’

‘He didn’t. I guessed, and he couldn’t deny it. But the secret is safe with me.’

‘Bart will kill me if he finds out.’

‘He won’t find out.’

‘Thank you.’ There were tears in Margery’s eyes.

‘If Ned had married you, he would have had a house full of children. But it seems I can’t conceive. It’s not as if we don’t try.’ Sylvie was not sure why she was having such a candid conversation with the woman who loved her husband. It just seemed pointless to pretend.

‘I’m sorry to hear that . . . though I had guessed it.’

‘If I die before Ned, and Bart dies before you, then you should marry Ned.’

‘How can you say such a thing?’

‘I’ll look down from heaven and bless your marriage.’

‘It’s not going to happen – but thank you for saying it. You’re a good woman.’

‘You are too.’ Sylvie smiled. ‘Isn’t he lucky?’

‘Ned?’

‘To have the love of both of us.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Margery. ‘Is he?’

*

ROLLO WAS AWESTRUCKby the Guise palace. It was bigger than the Louvre. With its courtyards and gardens it covered at least two acres. The place was thronged with servants and men-at-arms and distant relations and hangers-on, all of whom were fed daily and lodged every night. The stable block alone was bigger than the entire house Rollo’s father had built in Kingsbridge at the height of his prosperity.

Rollo was invited there in June of 1583 for a meeting with the duke of Guise.

Duke ‘Scarface’ François was long dead, as was his brother Cardinal Charles. François’s son Henri, aged thirty-two, was now the duke. Rollo studied him with fascination. By a coincidence that was regarded, by most Frenchmen, as divinely ordained, Henri had been wounded in the face, just like his father. François had been disfigured by a spear, whereas Henri had taken a bullet from an arquebus, but both had ended up with conspicuous marks, and now Henri, too, was nicknamed Scarface.

The famously cunning Cardinal Charles had been replaced, in the councils of the Guise family, by Pierre Aumande de Guise, the low-born distant relative who had been Charles’s protégé. Pierre was patron of the English College, and had given Rollo his alias of Jean Langlais, the name by which he was always known when engaged in secret work.

Rollo met the duke in a small but opulent room that was hung with paintings of biblical scenes in which many of the women and men were naked. There was a distinct air of decadence that made Rollo uncomfortable.

Rollo was flattered, but somewhat intimidated, by the high status of the other attendees. Cardinal Romero was here to represent the king of Spain, and Giovanni Castelli the Pope. Claude Matthieu was the rector of the Professed Jesuits. These men were the heavy artillery of Christian orthodoxy, and he felt amazed to find himself in their company.

Pierre sat next to Duke Henri. Pierre’s skin condition had worsened over the years, and now there were red flaking patches on his hands and neck as well as at the corners of his eyes and mouth, and he scratched himself continually.

Three Guise attendants served wine and sweetmeats as the notables took their seats, then stood by the door awaiting further orders. Rollo assumed they were thoroughly trustworthy, but all the same he would have made them wait outside. Secrecy had become an obsession with him. The only person in this room who knew his real name was Pierre. In England it was the opposite: no one knew that Rollo Fitzgerald was Jean Langlais, not even his sister, Margery. Rollo was theoretically employed by the earl of Tyne, who was a timid Catholic, devout but frightened of conspiracy; the earl paid him a salary, gave him indefinite leave of absence, and asked no questions.

Duke Henri opened the discussion with a statement that thrilled Rollo: ‘We are here to talk about the invasion of England.’