Page 300 of A Column of Fire
Sylvie felt safe, surrounded by her prattling family, with food on the table and a fire in the hearth. England’s enemies were defeated, for now, though no doubt there would always be more. And Ned had heard from a spy that Pierre Aumande was dead, murdered on the same day as his master, the duke of Guise. There was justice in the world.
She looked around the table at the smiling faces and realized that the feeling that suffused her was happiness.
After dinner they put on heavy coats and went out. To replace the play at New Castle, the Bell inn had a company of actors to perform on a temporary stage in the large courtyard of the tavern. The Willards paid their pennies and joined the crowd.
The play,Gammer Gurton’s Needle, was a broad comedy about an old woman who lost her only needle and could not sew. Other characters included a japester called Diccon who pretended to summon the devil and a servant called Hodge who was so frightened that he soiled his breeches. The audience laughed uproariously.
Ned was in a merry mood, and he and Barney left the courtyard to go into the tap-room and buy a jug of wine.
On stage, Gammer began a hilarious fist-fight with her neighbour Dame Chat. Sylvie’s eye was caught by one man in the courtyard who was not laughing. She felt instantly that she had seen that face before. It had a gaunt look of fanatical resolve that she would not forget.
He met her eye and seemed not to recognize her.
Then she remembered a street in Paris and Pierre Aumande standing outside his little house, giving directions to a priest with receding hair and a reddish beard. ‘Jean Langlais?’ she muttered incredulously. Could it really be the man Ned had been hunting for so long?
He turned his back on the play and walked out of the courtyard.
Sylvie had to make sure it was him. She knew she must not lose sight of him. She could not allow him to disappear. Jean Langlais was the enemy of the Protestant religion and of her husband.
It occurred to her that the man might be dangerous. She looked for Ned, but he had not yet returned from the tap room. By the time he came back, the man she thought might be Langlais could have vanished. She could not wait.
Sylvie had never hesitated to risk her life for what she believed in.
She followed.
*
ROLLO HAD DECIDEDto return to Tyne Castle. He knew that he could no longer use New Castle for any secret purpose. Margery would not betray him intentionally – it would lead to the execution of her sons – but her vigilance might slip, and she would become a security risk. Better that she should know nothing.
He was still in the pay of the earl of Tyne, and in fact still carried out legal tasks for the earl from time to time to give credibility to his cover story. He was not sure what clandestine duties there might be for him to do now. The Catholic insurrection had failed. But he hoped fervently that sooner or later there would be a renewed effort to bring England back to the true faith, and that he would be part of it.
On his way to Tyne he had stopped over at Kingsbridge where he joined up with a group of travellers heading for London. It happened to be the twelfth day of Christmas, and there was a play in the courtyard of the Bell, so they were going to see the show then set off the following morning.
Rollo had watched for a minute, but he thought the play vulgar. At a particularly uproarious moment he caught the eye of a small middle-aged woman in the audience who stared at him as if trying to place him.
He had never seen her before and had no idea who she was, but he did not like the way she frowned as if trying to remember him. He pulled up the hood of his cloak, turned away, and walked out of the courtyard.
In the market square he looked up at the west front of the cathedral. I might have been bishop here, he thought bitterly.
He went mournfully inside. The church was a drab and colourless place under the Protestants. Sculptured saints and angels in their stone niches had had their heads chopped off to prevent idolatry. Wall paintings were dimly perceptible through a thin coat of whitewash. Amazingly, the Protestants had left the gorgeous windows intact, perhaps because it would have cost so much to replace the glass; but the colours were not at their best on this winter afternoon.
I would have changed all this, Rollo thought. I would have given people religion with colour and costume and precious jewels, not this cold cerebral Puritanism. His stomach churned with acid at the thought of what he had lost.
The church was empty, all the priests having gone to the play, he thought; but, turning around, he looked back the length of the nave and saw that the woman who had stared at him in the market square had followed him into the cathedral. When he met her eye again, she spoke to him in French, and her words echoed in the vaulting like the voice of doom. ‘C’est bien toi – Jean Langlais?Is it really you – Jean Langlais?’
He turned away, mind racing. He was in terrible danger. He had been recognized as Langlais. It seemed she did not know Rollo Fitzgerald – but she soon would. At any moment she would identify him as Langlais to someone who knew him as Rollo – someone such as Ned Willard – and his life would be over.
He had to get away from her.
He hurried across the south aisle. A door in the wall there had always led to the cloisters – but now, as he jerked on the handle, it remained firmly shut, and he realized it must have been blocked off when the quadrangle had been turned into a market by Alfo Willard.
He heard the woman’s light footsteps running up the nave. He guessed that she wanted to see him close up – to confirm her identification. He had to avoid that.
He dashed along the aisle to the crossing, looking for a way out, hoping to disappear into the town before she could get another look at him. In the south transept, at the base of the mighty tower, there was a small door in the wall. He thought it might lead out into the new market but, when he flung it open, he saw only a narrow spiral staircase leading up. Making a split-second decision, he went through the door, closing it behind him, and started up the steps.
He hoped the staircase would have a door leading to the gallery that ran the length of the south aisle, but as he went farther up he realized he was not going to be that lucky. He heard footsteps behind him, and had no option but to carry on up.
He began to breathe hard. He was fifty-three years old, and climbing long staircases was more difficult than it had been. However, the woman chasing him was not much younger.
