A Column of Fire by Ken Follett EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Authors:Ken Follett
- Publish Date: September 15, 2020
- Language: English
- Genre: Historical Mystery, Thriller & Suspense Fiction
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Pages:926
- Price: Free
Ned Willard came home to Kingsbridge in a snowstorm.
He sailed upstream from Combe Harbour in the cabin of a slow
barge loaded with cloth from Antwerp and wine from Bordeaux.
When he reckoned the boat was at last nearing Kingsbridge, he
wrapped his French cloak more tightly around his shoulders, pulled
the hood over his ears, stepped out onto the open deck, and looked
ahead.
At first he was disappointed: all he could see was falling snow. But
his longing for a sight of the city was like an ache, and he stared into
the flurries, hoping. After a while his wish was granted, and the storm
began to lift. A surprise patch of blue sky appeared. Gazing over the
tops of the surrounding trees, he saw the tower of the cathedral – four
hundred and five feet high, as every Kingsbridge Grammar School
pupil knew.
The stone angel that watched over the city from the top
of the spire had snow edging her wings today, turning the tips of her
feathers from dove-grey to bright white. As he looked, a momentary
sunbeam struck the statue and gleamed off the snow, like a benison;
then the storm closed in again and she was lost from view.
He saw nothing except trees for a while, but his imagination was
full. He was about to be reunited with his mother after an absence of
a year. He would not tell her how much he had missed her, for a man
should be independent and self-sufficient at the age of eighteen.
But most of all he had missed Margery.
He had fallen for her, with
catastrophic timing, a few weeks before leaving Kingsbridge to spend
a year in Calais, the English-ruled port on the north coast of France.
Since childhood he had known and liked the mischievous, intelligent
daughter of Sir Reginald Fitzgerald. When she grew up, her
impishness had taken on a new allure, so that he found himself
staring at her in church, his mouth dry and his breath shallow.
He
had hesitated to do more than stare, for she was three years younger
than he, but she knew no such inhibitions. They had kissed in the
Kingsbridge graveyard, behind the concealing bulk of the tomb of
Prior Philip, the monk who had commissioned the cathedral four
centuries ago. There had been nothing childish about their long,
passionate kiss: then she had laughed and run away.
But she kissed him again the next day. And on the evening before
he left for France they admitted that they loved one another.
For the first few weeks they exchanged love letters. They had not
told their parents of their feelings – it seemed too soon – so they
could not write openly, but Ned confided in his older brother, Barney,
who became their intermediary. Then Barney left Kingsbridge and
went to Seville. Margery, too, had an older brother, Rollo; but she did
not trust him the way Ned trusted Barney. And so the correspondence
ended.
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