Page 265 of A Column of Fire

‘What do you mean?’

‘Mary Stuart is a prisoner, but you’re not. You’re no threat to the crown of England. You don’t pretend to have a claim on the English throne. You have no powerful relatives at the court of the king of France. You don’t write letters to the Pope and the king of Spain. You could walk out of Chartley Manor and nobody would mind. Why do you stay?’

It was a question she sometimes asked herself. ‘Queen Mary and I were girls together,’ she said. ‘I’m a little older, and I used to look after her. Then she grew into a beautiful, alluring young woman, and I fell in love with her, in a way. When we returned to Scotland, I got married, but my husband died soon after the wedding. It just seemed to be my destiny to serve Queen Mary.’

‘I understand.’

‘Do you?’

Out of the corner of her eye, Alison saw the men come back out with the empties – including one containing secret letters in bottles – and load the barrels onto the cart. Once again, all Ned had to do was give the order and the barrels would have been opened, revealing their secret. But Ned made no move to speak to the draymen. ‘I understand,’ he said to Alison, continuing their conversation, ‘because I feel the same way about Queen Elizabeth. And that’s why I was so angry when I found that the earl of Shrewsbury was letting her down.’

The brewer’s men went into the kitchen for their dinner before setting off again. The crisis was over. Alison breathed easier.

Ned said: ‘And now it’s time for me to leave. I must get back to London. Goodbye, Lady Ross.’

Alison had not known he was about to leave. ‘Goodbye, Sir Ned,’ she said.

He went into the house.

Alison returned to Queen Mary. Together they watched through the window. Ned came out of the house with a pair of saddlebags presumably containing his few necessaries. He spoke to a groom, who brought out his horse.

He was gone before the deliverymen finished their dinner.

‘What a relief,’ said Queen Mary. ‘Thank God.’

‘Yes,’ said Alison. ‘We seem to have got away with it.’

*

NED DID NOTgo to London. He rode to Burton and took a room at the Lion’s Head.

When his horse was taken care of and his bags unpacked, he explored the inn. There was a bar opening on to the street. An arched vehicle entrance led to a courtyard with stables on one side and guest rooms on the other. At the back of the premises was a brewery, and a yeasty smell filled the air. It was a substantial business: the tavern was full of drinkers, travellers arrived and left, and drays were in and out of the yard constantly.

Ned noted that empty barrels from incoming drays were rolled to a corner where a boy removed the lids, cleaned the insides with water and a scrubbing brush, and stacked the barrels upside down to dry.

The owner was a big man whose belly suggested that he consumed plenty of what he brewed. Ned heard the men call him Hal. He was always on the move, going from the brewery to the stable, harrying his employees and shouting orders.

When Ned had the layout of the place in his head, he sat on a bench in the courtyard with a flagon of beer and waited. The yard was busy, and no one paid him any attention.

He was almost certain the messages were going in and out of Chartley Manor in beer barrels. He had been there for a week and had watched just about everything that went on, and this was the only possibility he could see. When the beer arrived he had been partly distracted by Alison. It could have been a coincidence that she chose to chat to him just at that moment. But Ned did not believe in coincidences.

He expected that the draymen would travel more slowly than he had coming from Chartley, for his horse was fresh and the carthorses tired. In the end it was early evening by the time the dray entered the courtyard of the Lion’s Head. Ned stayed where he was, watching. One of the men went away and came back with Hal while the others were unhitching the horses. Then they rolled the empty barrels over to the boy with the scrubbing brush.

Hal watched the boy remove the lids with a crowbar. He leaned against the wall and looked unconcerned. Perhaps he was. More likely, he had calculated that if he opened the barrels in secret his employees would know that he was up to something seriously criminal, whereas if he feigned nonchalance, they would assume it was nothing special.

When the lids came off, Hal looked into each barrel. Bending over one, he reached inside and brought out two bottle-shaped objects wrapped in rags and tied with string.

Ned allowed himself a satisfied sigh.

Hal nodded to the boy, then crossed the courtyard to a doorway he had not used before and went inside.

Ned followed rapidly.

The door led to a set of rooms that appeared to be the publican’s home. Ned walked through a sitting room into a bedroom. Hal stood at an open cupboard, obviously stashing the two items he had taken from the barrel. Hearing Ned’s step on the floorboards, he spun round and said angrily: ‘Get out of here, these are private rooms!’

Ned said quietly: ‘You are now as close as you have ever come to being hanged.’

Hal’s expression changed instantly. He went pale and his mouth dropped open. He was shocked and terrified. It was a startling transformation in a big, blustering fellow, and Ned deduced that Hal – unlike poor Peg Bradford – knew exactly what kind of crime he was committing. After a long hesitation he said in a frightened voice: ‘Who are you?’