Page 236 of A Column of Fire
‘I am pleased to meet you,’ the boy said formally. Someone had taught him good manners.
Ned said to Barney: ‘And his mother?’
Tears came to Barney’s eyes. ‘The loveliest woman I ever knew.’
‘Where is she?’
‘In a graveyard in Hispaniola, New Spain.’
‘I’m so sorry, brother.’
Alfo said: ‘Eileen looks after me.’
The house was still cared for by the Fifes, now an elderly couple, and their daughter Eileen, who was in her twenties.
Ned smiled. ‘And soon you’ll go to Kingsbridge Grammar School, like your father and me, and you’ll learn to write Latin and count money.’
‘I don’t want to go to school,’ Alfo said. ‘I want to be a sailor, like the Captain.’
‘We’ll see,’ said Barney. To Ned he explained: ‘He knows I’m his father, but on board ship he got into the habit of calling me Captain, as the men do.’
On the day after they arrived, Ned took Sylvie to meet the Fornerons, Kingsbridge’s leading Huguenot family, and they all chattered in French. Sylvie’s English was coming along fast, but it was a relief to be able to relax and talk without having to search for words. The Fornerons had a precocious ten-year-old daughter, Valerie, who took it upon herself to teach Sylvie some useful English phrases, which amused everyone.
The Fornerons wanted to know all about the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, which was still being discussed with horror all over Europe. Everyone Sylvie met asked about it.
On the third day Sylvie received a costly gift, a bolt of fine Antwerp cloth, enough to make a dress, from Dan Cobley, the richest man in town. Sylvie had heard his name before: she and Ned had sailed from Paris to London on one of Dan’s ships. ‘He wants to ingratiate himself with me,’ Ned said, ‘just in case one day he needs a royal favour.’
Dan called the next day, and Sylvie took him into the front parlour, the room with the view of the cathedral, and gave him wine and cakes. He was a pompous fat man, and Ned spoke to him in uncharacteristically curt tones. When Dan had gone, Sylvie asked Ned why he disliked Dan so much. ‘He’s a hypocritical Puritan,’ Ned said. ‘He dresses in black and complains about kissing in plays, then he cheats people in business.’
A more important blank in the story of Ned’s life was filled in when they were invited to dinner at the home of Lady Susannah Twyford, a voluptuous woman in her fifties. It took Sylvie about a minute to figure out that Susannah had been Ned’s lover. She talked to him with an easy intimacy that could only come from a sexual relationship. Ned looked happy and relaxed with her. Sylvie felt bothered. She knew Ned had not been a virgin when they married, but actually seeing him smiling fondly at an old flame was a bit hard to take.
Susannah must have picked up Sylvie’s anxiety, for she sat down next to her and held both her hands. ‘Ned is so happy to be married to you, Sylvie, and I can see why,’ she said. ‘I always hoped he would meet someone courageous and bright as well as beautiful. He’s a special man and he deserves a special woman.’
‘He seems very fond of you.’
‘Yes,’ Susannah admitted. ‘And I’m fond of him. But he’s in love with you, and that’s so different. I do hope you and I can be friends.’
‘I hope so too,’ said Sylvie. ‘I met Ned when he was thirty-two, so I’d be foolish to imagine I was the first woman he fell for.’
‘Funny, though, how we do sometimes imagine silly things when we’re in love.’
Sylvie realized this woman was wise and kind, and she felt easier in her mind.
Sylvie entered the cathedral for the first time on Whit Sunday for the festival of Pentecost. ‘This is wonderful,’ Sylvie said as they walked along the nave.
‘It’s a magnificent church,’ Ned agreed. ‘I never tire of studying it.’
‘It is, but that’s not what I mean. There are no marble statues, no garish paintings, no jewelled boxes of ancient bones.’
‘Your Huguenot churches and meeting halls are like that.’
Sylvie switched to French in order to express herself better. ‘But this is a cathedral! It’s huge and beautiful and hundreds of years old, the way churches are supposed to be, and it’s Protestant too! In France a Huguenot service is a hole-in-corner affair in some kind of improvised space, never seeming to be quite the right thing. To have a Protestant service in a place where people have worshipped God for centuries makes me rejoice.’
‘I’m so glad,’ said Ned. ‘You’ve been through more misery than any five other people. You’re entitled to some happiness.’
They approached a tall man of about Sylvie’s age, with a handsome face reddened by drink, his stout figure clad in a costly yellow coat. ‘Sylvie, this is Bart, the earl of Shiring. An earl is the same as a count.’
Sylvie remembered that Ned had to check on the local Catholics, of whom Bart was the most prominent. She curtsied.
