Page 7 of A Column of Fire

The door slammed, then she heard the belt whistle through the air. It landed on the backs of her thighs. Her dress was too thin to give her any protection, and she screamed again, in pain this time. She was lashed again, and a third time.

Then her mother spoke. ‘I think that’s enough, Reginald,’ she said.

‘Spare the rod and spoil the child,’ said Sir Reginald. It was a grimly familiar proverb: everyone believed that flogging was good for children, except the children.

Lady Jane said: ‘The Bible verse actually says something different. “He that spareth his rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes.” It refers to boys, not girls.’

Sir Reginald countered with a different verse. ‘Another biblical proverb says: “Withhold not correction from the child”, doesn’t it?’

‘She’s not really a child any more. Besides, we both know this approach doesn’t work on Margery. Punishment only makes her more stubborn.’

‘Then what do you propose?’

‘Leave her to me. I’ll talk to her when she’s calmed down.’

‘Very well,’ Sir Reginald said, and Margery thought it was over; then the belt whistled again, stinging her already painful legs, and she screamed once more. Immediately afterwards she heard his boots stamp across the floor and out of the room, and it really was over.

*

NED WAS SUREhe would see Margery at Earl Swithin’s feast. Her parents could hardly keep her away. It would be like an announcement that something was wrong. Everyone would be talking about why Margery was not there.

The cartwheel ruts in the mud road were frozen hard, and Ned’s pony picked her way daintily along the treacherous surface. The heat of the horse warmed his body, but his hands and feet were numb with cold. Beside him his mother, Alice, rode a broad-backed mare.

The earl of Shiring’s home, New Castle, was twelve miles from Kingsbridge. The journey took almost half a short winter day, and made Ned mad with impatience. He had to see Margery, not just because he longed for a sight of her, but also so that he could find out what the devil was going on.

Ahead, New Castle appeared in the distance. It had been new a hundred and fifty years ago. Recently the earl had built a house in the ruins of the medieval fortress. The remaining battlements, made of the same grey stone as Kingsbridge Cathedral, were adorned today with ribbons and swags of freezing fog. As he drew near, Ned heard sounds of festivity: shouted greetings, laughter, and a country band – a deep drum, a lively fiddle, and the reedy whine of pipes drifting through the cold air. The noise bore with it a promise of blazing fires, hot food and something cheering to drink.

Ned kicked his horse into a trot, impatient to arrive and put an end to his uncertainty. Did Margery love Bart Shiring, and was she going to marry him?

The road led straight to the entrance. Rooks strutting on the castle walls cawed spitefully at the visitors. The drawbridge had gone long ago, and the moat had been filled in, but there were still arrow-slit windows in the gatehouse. Ned rode through to the noisy courtyard, bustling with brightly dressed guests, horses and carts, and the earl’s busy servants. Ned entrusted his pony to a groom and joined the throng moving towards the house.

He did not see Margery.

On the far side of the courtyard stood a modern brick mansion, attached to the old castle buildings, the chapel on one side and the brewery on the other. Ned had been here only once in the four years since it had been built, and he marvelled again at the rows of big windows and the ranks of multiple chimneys. Grander than the wealthiest Kingsbridge merchants’ homes, it was the largest house in the county, although perhaps there were even bigger places in London, which he had never visited.

Earl Swithin had lost status during the reign of Henry VIII, because he had opposed the king’s breach with the Pope; but the earl’s fortunes had revived five years ago with the accession of the ultra-Catholic Mary Tudor as queen, and Swithin was once again favoured, rich and powerful. This promised to be a lavish banquet.

Ned entered the house and passed into a great hall two stories high. The tall windows made the room light even on a winter day. The walls were panelled in varnished oak and hung with tapestries of hunting scenes. Logs burned in two huge fireplaces at opposite ends of the long room. In the gallery that ran around three of the four walls, the band he had heard from the road was playing energetically. High on the fourth wall was a portrait of Earl Swithin’s father, holding a staff to symbolize power.

Some guests were performing a vigorous country dance in groups of eight, holding hands to form rotating circles then stopping to skip in and out. Others conversed in clusters, raising their voices over the music and the stomping of the dancers. Ned took a wooden cup of hot cider and looked around the room.

One group stood aloof from the dancing: the ship owner Philbert Cobley and his family, all dressed in grey and black. The Kingsbridge Protestants were a semi-secret group: everyone knew they were there, and could guess who they were, but their existence was not openly acknowledged – a bit like the half-hidden community of men who loved men, Ned thought. The Protestants did not admit to their beliefs, for then they would be tortured until they recanted, and burned to death if they refused. Asked what they believed, they would prevaricate. They went to Catholic services, as they were obliged to by law. But they took every opportunity to object to bawdy songs, bosom-revealing gowns, and drunk priests. And there was no law against dull clothes.

Ned knew just about everyone in the room. The younger guests were the boys with whom he had attended Kingsbridge Grammar School and the girls whose hair he had pulled on Sunday after church. The older generation of local notables were equally familiar; they were in and out of his mother’s house all the time.

In the search for Margery his eye lit on a stranger: a long-nosed man in his late thirties, his mid-brown hair already receding, his beard neatly trimmed in the pointed shape that was fashionable. Short and wiry, he wore a dark red coat that was unostentatiously expensive. He was speaking to Earl Swithin and Sir Reginald Fitzgerald, and Ned was struck by the attitudes of the two local magnates. They clearly did not like this distinguished visitor – Reginald leaned back with folded arms, and Swithin stood with legs apart and hands on hips – yet they were listening to him intently.

The musicians ended a number with a flourish, and in the relative quiet Ned spoke to Philbert Cobley’s son, Daniel, a couple of years older than himself, a fat boy with a pale round face. ‘Who’s that?’ Ned asked him, pointing at the stranger in the red coat.

‘Sir William Cecil. He is estate manager for Princess Elizabeth.’

Elizabeth Tudor was the younger half-sister of Queen Mary. ‘I’ve heard of Cecil,’ Ned said. ‘Wasn’t he secretary of state for a while?’

‘That’s right.’

At the time Ned had been too young to follow politics closely, but he remembered the name of Cecil being mentioned with admiration by his mother. Cecil had not been sufficiently Catholic for Mary Tudor’s taste, and as soon as she became queen she had fired him, which was why he now had the less grand job of looking after Elizabeth’s finances.

So what was he doing here?