A Column of Fire by Ken Follett

kind of distinction. He put on a heavy cloak of chestnut-brown cloth. Lady Jane, small and thin, had a sharp nose and darting eyes that did not miss much. She wore a coat lined with fur.
    Margery, also short, was more rounded. She was in a furious sulk, and had not been allowed out of the house since the earl’s party; but she could not be held incommunicado for ever, and this morning the bishop of Kingsbridge would be at Mass, a powerful ally whom the family could not risk offending.
    Margery had clearly decided not to look as miserable as she felt. She had put on a coat of Kingsbridge Scarlet and a matching hat. In the past year or so she had grown up to be the prettiest girl in town – even her brother could see that.
    The fifth member of the family was Rollo’s great-aunt. She had been a nun at Kingsbridge Priory, and had come to live with the Fitzgeralds when the priory was shut down by King Henry VIII. She had turned her two rooms on the top floor of the house into a little nunnery, the bedroom a bare cell and the parlour a chapel; Rollo was awed by her devotion. Everyone still called her Sister Joan. She was now old and frail, and walked with two sticks, but she insisted on going to church when Bishop Julius was there. The maid Naomi would carry a chair to the cathedral for Sister Joan, for she could not remain standing a whole hour.
    They stepped outside together. They lived at the crossroads at the top of the main street, opposite the Guild Hall, a commanding position, and for a moment Sir Reginald paused and looked down over the close-packed streets descending like stairs to the river. A light snow was falling on the thatched roofs and smoking chimneys. My town, his expression said.
    As the mayor and his family made their stately procession down the slope of the main street their neighbours greeted them respectfully, the more prosperous ones wishing them good morning, the lower classes silently touching their hats.
    In the daylight Rollo noticed that his mother’s coat was slightly moth-eaten, and he hoped no one would notice. Unfortunately, his father had no money for new clothes. Business was bad in Combe Harbour, where Sir Reginald was Receiver of Customs. The French had captured the port of Calais, the war dragged on, and Channel shipping was minimal.
    As they approached the cathedral, they passed the other cause of the family’s financial crisis: the new house, to be called Priory Gate. It stood on the north side of the market square, on land that had been attached to the prior’s house in the days when there had been a priory. Construction had slowed almost to a stop. Most of the builders had gone elsewhere, to work for people who could pay them. A crude wooden fence had been erected to discourage curious people from entering the unfinished building.
    Sir Reginald also owned the complex of priory buildings on the south side of the cathedral: the cloisters, the monks’ kitchen and dormitory, the nunnery and the stables. When Henry VIII had dissolved the monasteries, their property had been given or sold to local magnates, and Sir Reginald had got the priory. These mostly old buildings had been neglected for decades and were now falling down, with birds’ nests in the rafters and brambles growing in the cloisters. Reginald would probably sell them back to the chapter.
    Between the two shabby lots the cathedral stood proud, unchanged for hundreds of years, just like the Catholic faith it represented. In the last forty years Protestants had tried to alter the Christian doctrines that had been taught here for so long: Rollo wondered how they had the arrogance. It was like trying to put modern windows in the church walls. The truth was for eternity, like the cathedral.
    They went in through the great arches of the west front. It seemed even colder inside than out. As always, the sight of the long nave with its ordered lines of precisely repeated columns and arches filled Rollo with a reassuring sense of a