Page 8 of A Column of Fire

Ned’s mother would want to know about Cecil. A visitor brought news, and Alice was obsessed with news. She had always taught her sons that information could make a man’s fortune – or save him from ruin. But as Ned looked around for Alice he spotted Margery, and immediately forgot about William Cecil.

He was startled by Margery’s appearance. She looked older by five years, not one. Her curly dark hair was pinned up in an elaborate coiffure and topped by a man’s cap with a jaunty plume. A small white ruff around her neck seemed to light up her face. She was small, but not thin, and the fashionably stiff bodice of her blue velvet gown did not quite conceal her delightfully rounded figure. As always, her face was expressive. She smiled, raised her eyebrows, tilted her head, and mimed surprise, puzzlement, scorn and delight, one after another. He found himself staring, just as he had in the past. For a few moments it seemed as if there was no one else in the room.

Waking from his trance, he pushed through the crowd towards her.

She saw him coming. Her face lit up with pleasure, delighting him; then it changed, faster than the weather on a spring day, and her expression became clouded with worry. As he approached, her eyes widened fearfully and she seemed to be telling him to go away, but he ignored that. He had to speak to her.

He opened his mouth, but she spoke first. ‘Follow me when they play Hunt the Hart,’ she said in a low voice. ‘Don’t say anything now.’

Hunt the Hart was a hide-and-seek game played by young people at feasts. Ned was bucked by her invitation. But he was not willing to walk away from her without at least some answers. ‘Are you in love with Bart Shiring?’ he asked.

‘No! Now go away – we can talk later.’

Ned was thrilled, but he had not finished. ‘Are you going to marry him?’

‘Not while I have enough breath to say go to the devil.’

Ned smiled. ‘All right, now I can be patient.’ He walked away, happy.

*

ROLLO OBSERVED WITHalarm the interaction between his sister and Ned Willard. It did not last long but it was obviously intense. Rollo was concerned. He had been listening outside the library door yesterday, when Margery was beaten by their father, and he agreed with his mother that punishment just made Margery more obstinate.

He did not want his sister to marry Ned. Rollo had always disliked Ned, but that was the least of it. More importantly, the Willards were soft on Protestantism. Edmund Willard had been quite content when King Henry turned against the Catholic Church. Admittedly, he had not seemed very troubled when Queen Mary reversed the process – but that, too, offended Rollo. He could not bear people who took religion lightly. The authority of the Church should be everything to them.

Almost as importantly, marriage with Ned Willard would do nothing for the prestige of the Fitzgeralds: it would merely be an alliance between two prosperous commercial families. However, Bart Shiring would take them into the ranks of the nobility. To Rollo, the prestige of the Fitzgerald family mattered more than anything except the will of God.

The dancing finished, and the earl’s staff brought in boards and trestles to make a T-shaped table, the crosspiece at one end and the tail stretching the full length of the room; then they began to lay the table. They went about their work in a somewhat careless spirit, Rollo thought, tossing pottery cups and loaves of bread onto the white tablecloth haphazardly. That would be because there was no woman in charge of the household: the countess had died two years ago, and Swithin had not yet remarried.

A servant spoke to Rollo. ‘Your father summons you, Master Fitzgerald. He’s in the earl’s parlour.’

The man led Rollo into a side room with a writing table and a shelf of ledgers, evidently the place where Earl Swithin conducted business.

Swithin sat on a huge chair that was almost a throne. He was tall and handsome, like Bart, though many years of eating well and drinking plenty had thickened his waist and reddened his nose. Four years ago he had lost most of the fingers of his left hand in the battle of Hartley Wood. He made no attempt to conceal the deficiency – in fact, he seemed proud of his wound.

Rollo’s father, Sir Reginald, sat next to Swithin, lean and freckled, a leopard beside a bear.

Bart Shiring was there, too, and to Rollo’s consternation so were Alice and Ned Willard.

William Cecil was on a low stool in front of the six local people but, despite the symbolism of the seating, it looked to Rollo as if Cecil was in charge of the meeting.

Reginald said to Cecil: ‘You won’t mind my son joining us? He has been to Oxford University, and studied law at the Inns of Court in London.’

‘I’m glad to have the younger generation here,’ Cecil said amiably. ‘I include my own son in meetings, even though he’s only sixteen – the earlier they begin, the faster they learn.’

Studying Cecil, Rollo noticed that there were three warts on his right cheek, and his brown beard was beginning to turn grey. He had been a powerful courtier during the reign of Edward VI, while still in his twenties, and although he was not yet forty years old he had an air of confident wisdom that might have belonged to a much older man.

Earl Swithin shifted impatiently. ‘I have a hundred guests in the hall, Sir William. You’d better tell me what you have to say that is important enough to take me away from my own party.’

‘At once, my lord,’ Cecil said. ‘The queen is not pregnant.’

Rollo let out a grunt of surprise and dismay.

Queen Mary and King Felipe were desperate for heirs to their two crowns, England and Spain. But they spent hardly any time together, being so busy ruling their widely separated kingdoms. So there had been rejoicing in both countries when Mary had announced that she was expecting a baby next March. Obviously something had gone wrong.

Rollo’s father, Sir Reginald, said grimly: ‘This has happened before.’

Cecil nodded. ‘It is her second false pregnancy.’