Page 74 of A Column of Fire

Ned put on a coat over his nightshirt and went outside. The morning air smelled of wood smoke.

The Cobley family were there, and most of the other Protestants arrived shortly afterwards. The crowd swelled within minutes. By first light, as the torch flames seemed to fade, there were at least a thousand people in the square in front of the cathedral. The men of the watch forced the spectators to keep their distance.

The crowd was noisy, but they fell silent when Osmund Carter appeared from the direction of the Guild Hall, with another watchman, the two men again carrying Philbert between them on a wooden chair. They had to force their way through the crowd, who made way reluctantly, as if they would have liked to obstruct the progress of the chair but did not quite have the courage.

The women of the Cobley family wailed piteously as the helpless man was tied upright to a wooden stake in the ground. He kept slipping down on his useless legs, and Osmund had to bind him tightly to keep him in place.

The watchmen piled firewood around him while Bishop Julius intoned a prayer in Latin.

Osmund picked up one of the torches that had lit their night-time labours. He stood in front of Philbert and looked at Sheriff Matthewson, who held up a hand indicating that Osmund should wait. Matthewson then looked at Julius.

In the pause, Mrs Cobley started screaming, and her family had to hold her.

Julius nodded, Matthewson dropped his arm, and Osmund put the torch to the firewood around Philbert’s legs.

The dry wood caught quickly and the flames crackled with hellish merriment. Philbert cried out feebly at the heat. Wood smoke choked the nearest watchers, who backed away.

Soon there was another smell, one that was at once familiar and sickening, the smell of roasting meat. Philbert began to scream in pain. In between screams he yelled: ‘Take me, Jesus! Take me, Lord! Now, please, now!’ But Jesus did not take him yet.

Ned had heard that merciful judges sometimes allowed the family to hang a bag of gunpowder around the neck of the condemned man so that his end would be quick. But Julius evidently had not permitted that kindness. The lower half of Philbert’s body burned while he remained alive. The noise he made in his agony was unbearable to hear, more like the squealing of a terrified animal than the sound of a man.

At last Philbert fell silent. Perhaps his heart gave out; perhaps the smoke suffocated him; perhaps the heat boiled his brain. The fire continued to burn, and the dead body of Philbert turned into a blackened ruin. The smell was disgusting, but at least the noise had stopped. Ned thanked God it was over at last.

*

In my short life I had never seen anything so dreadful. I did not know how men could do such things, and I did not understand why God would let them.

My mother said something that I have remembered all the subsequent years: ‘When a man is certain that he knows God’s will, and is resolved to do it regardless of the cost, he is the most dangerous person in the world.’

When the spectators began to drift away from the marketplace I remained. The sun rose, though it did not shine on the smouldering remains, which were in the cold shadow of the cathedral. I was thinking about Sir William Cecil, and our conversation about Elizabeth on the Twelfth Day of Christmas. He had said, ‘She has told me many times that if she should become queen, it is her dearest wish that no Englishman should lose his life for the sake of his beliefs. I think that’s an ideal worthy of a man’s faith.’

At the time it had struck me as a pious hope. But after what I had just seen, I thought again. Was it even possible that Elizabeth would get rid of dogmatic bishops such as Julius and end scenes such as the one I had just witnessed? Might there come a time when people of different faiths did not kill one another?

But would Elizabeth become queen when Mary Tudor died? That would depend, I supposed, on what kind of help she got. She had the formidable William Cecil, but one man was not enough. She needed an army of supporters.

And I could be one.

The prospect lifted my heart. I stared at the ashes of Philbert Cobley. I felt sure it did not have to be like this. There were people in England who wanted to stop this happening.

And I wanted to be with them. I wanted to fight for Elizabeth’s tolerant ideals.

No more burnings.

I decided to go to Hatfield.

8

Ned walked from Kingsbridge to Hatfield, a journey of a hundred miles, not knowing whether he would be welcomed and given employment, or sent ignominiously home.

For the first two days he was with a group of students going to Oxford. Everyone travelled in groups: a man on his own was in danger of being robbed; a woman on her own was more vulnerable to worse dangers.

As he had been taught by his mother, Ned talked to everyone he met, acquiring information that might or might not be useful: prices of wool, leather, iron ore, and gunpowder; news of plagues and storms and floods; bankruptcies and riots; aristocratic weddings and funerals.

Each night he stayed in taverns, often sharing beds, an unpleasant experience for a boy from the merchant class used to his own room. However, the students were lively companions on the road, switching from coarse jokes to theological arguments and back again effortlessly. The July weather was warm, but at least it did not rain.

During pauses in the conversation, Ned worried about what awaited him at Hatfield Palace. He hoped to be greeted as just the young assistant they were looking for. But Cecil might say: ‘Ned who?’ If he was rejected, he did not know quite what he would do next. It would be humiliating to return to Kingsbridge with his tail between his legs. Perhaps he would go to London, and try his luck in the big city.

In Oxford he stayed at Kingsbridge College. Established by the great Prior Philip as an outpost of Kingsbridge Priory, it had become independent of the monastery, but it still provided accommodation for students from Kingsbridge, and hospitality to Kingsbridge citizens.