London

  “To take advantage of a crusader like that. And to do it with a heathen Jew!” She had thrown up her hands in despair.

  And then, having had no success, she had secretly gone to see Michael.

  At first it seemed to Brother Michael that things were going well.

  Sampson Bull, whatever his faults, was a man of his word. He had promised to come and be reconciled. He would do his best. He had prepared himself for the ordeal and even forced a smile on to his face.

  It was a long time since he had bothered to visit St Bartholomew’s, and as Michael escorted him round, he could not help admiring the place. The priory consisted of a large Norman church, cloisters, a refectory and richly furnished monastic buildings. Not only was the priory well endowed, but every August, at the feast of St Bartholomew, it held an important cloth fair at Smithfield, from which it enjoyed a handsome profit. The members of the community, known as canons regular, were a small but distinguished company who lived in pleasant comfort.

  The church itself was a noble structure with a broad, high nave, massive pillars, Roman arches and barrel vaults. The more intimate choir was especially fine, with a two-tiered screen of rounded pillars and arches forming a semicircle at the eastern end behind the altar. As the early autumn light filtered softly into this mellow interior, even the red-faced alderman was affected by its atmosphere, a mixture of Norman strength and Oriental warmth that conjured up images and echoes of the Host, the chalice, and of knights on crusade to the Holy Land.

  Yet even though he tried to be agreeable, Bull could not help it if certain things began to irritate him. Somehow the sight of his brother’s bare toes and the faint slapping sound of his sandals upon the flagstones annoyed him. And why did this Barnikel woman with her strangely squinting eye keep staring at him so malevolently? As they toured the cloister, he was already breathing heavily.

  Then came the moment Bull dreaded: they entered the hospital.

  St Bartholomew’s Hospital was quite separate from the priory. Its brothers and sisters were not canons regular but a much humbler order of folk. The main building, to which Brother Michael now cheerfully led them, was a long, undecorated, rather narrow dormitory like a cloister walk, with a simple little chapel at one end.

  Like most hospitals at that time, Bartholomew’s had begun as a hospice, a place of rest for weary travellers and pilgrims. But that had soon changed and Brother Michael and Sister Mabel were proud of their collection – now numbering over fifty – of the sick and helpless. There were three blind men, half a dozen crippled to some degree, several senile old women. There were men with ague, women with boils, the ill and suffering of every kind. As was the custom of the age, they were placed two, three or even more to a bed. The alderman looked at them with horror.

  “Are any of them lepers?” he asked. Only a month before, a leprous baker had been discovered selling bread in the city.

  “Not yet.”

  Bull shuddered. What was he doing here? And what was his own brother, who might at least have upheld the family honour in a prestigious monastery, doing in such a disgusting place?

  It was as they came out into the sunshine that Brother Michael made his move. The alderman had to admit that he did it with grace. Taking him gently by the arm and leading him a few paces away from Mabel, he began quietly: “My dear brother,” he said with obvious sincerity, “I’m sure our mother plagued you, but it has still touched my heart to see you here. You must forgive me, therefore,” he smiled, “if now, for a moment, I try to save your immortal soul.”

  Bull grinned ruefully. “You think I’ll go to hell?”

  His brother paused. “Since you ask, yes.”

  “You wouldn’t want Bocton back in the family?”

  “It is family pride, my dear brother, that is blinding you to your sin.”

  “Someone else will buy Bocton if I don’t.”

  “That doesn’t make it right.”

  They had turned round and were pacing back towards Mabel, whom they had both forgotten for a moment. It was then that Bull, with a sigh and a shake of his head, uttered the terrible words: “It’s all very well to lecture me, Brother Michael, but you’re wasting your time. I’m not afraid of damnation. The fact is, I don’t believe in God.”

  Mabel gasped.

  Yet it was not such a shocking statement. Even in that religious age there were plenty of men who had doubts. Two generations before, King William Rufus had made no secret of his hearty scepticism about the Church and all its religious claims. Thinkers and preachers still found it necessary to argue the case for God’s existence. In a way, Bull’s view that with their endowments, their special courts, and all the accretions of the centuries churches were nothing more than the creation of men was testament to a certain fearless, if brutal, honesty not so very different from his brother’s.

  But not to Mabel. She knew Bull was avaricious; she knew he scorned his saintly brother; she knew he planned to rob a crusader with the help of a Jew. Here, now, was the final proof of his absolute wickedness.

  It was, for Brother Michael, one of the charms of Mabel’s character that it had never in her life occurred to her not to say what was on her mind. But even he was a little startled when, fixing the burly alderman with her straight eye, she burst out: “You’re a very wicked man. You’ll go to hell with the Jews. You know that?” She wagged her finger, not afraid to admonish the Devil himself. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Why don’t you give money to the hospital instead of robbing pilgrims who are a lot better than you could ever hope to be?” And she stared at him so hard it seemed she expected him to give in.

  It was a mistake.

  For months Bull had listened to his mother’s complaints. Now he was not only being lectured at by Michael, but he was being attacked by this madwoman whose brother had almost destroyed his ship. It was too much. The blood rose to his face; his head hunched down like a bull about to charge; his shoulders bunched with rage. Then he exploded.

  “Damn your hospital and your lepers, and your old hags covered in their own filth. Damn your monks and your stupid crusaders and your hypocritical priests. Damn you all. I tell you this, Brother,” he roared at Brother Michael, “if ever I need a religion, then by God I’ll be a Jew.”

  It was not original. It was exactly what King William Rufus had once threatened to do when some complaining bishops were boring him. But it served to shock Mabel well enough. She had already crossed herself seven times before he reached the word “Jew”.

  He had not finished, though. His parting shot, after only a second’s pause, was reserved for his brother.

  “You were born a fool. You’re a fool now. What do you do with your life? You make no money because you took a vow of poverty. You never have a woman because you took a vow of chastity. You never even think for yourself because you took a vow of obedience. What for? Who knows?” And then, as if suddenly inspired: “What’s more, I don’t even believe you can keep your stupid vows.” He grinned furiously. “So I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll even put it in my will. Send for me, or my successors, on your deathbed. Swear before God and a priest that you have never broken your vows from this day to your ending, and by God I’ll give Bocton to Bartholomew’s. There now.”

  And with this astonishing challenge, he wheeled round and stamped away towards the city gate.

  “Oh dear,” said Brother Michael.

  During the autumn of 1170, news of an unexpected event began to filter back to England.

  Days after his encounter with poor Silversleeves, King Henry II of England had hurried over to Normandy, where he had met with the exiled Archbishop of Canterbury. There, Becket, probably spurred by the humiliation of knowing the heir to England had been crowned without him, had at last become reconciled with his king. Soon, there were rumours that Becket was coming back. But he did not appear.

  For the Silversleeves family it was an anxious time. Pentecost did not dare show his face at the Michaelmas Exchequer. What did t
he new turn of events mean? Had the king agreed not to prosecute criminous clerks, or would Becket hand them over? They tried to get information from Normandy, but no one knew. October passed. Then November. Finally, at the start of December, the news came flying up from Kent: “He’s here.”

  He did not come like a lamb. Becket might have made peace with the king, but not with the bishops who had insulted him by crowning the prince in his absence. Within days he had excommunicated the Bishop of Sarum and Gilbert Foliot, the contemptuous Bishop of London. The English Church was in an uproar. “It’s worse than when he was away,” his opponents protested. Foliot and his supporters sent messengers across the sea to Normandy, to let King Henry know what was passing in his kingdom.

  One of them was also paid, by the Silversleeves family, to keep them informed.

  In the mid-afternoon of 30 December 1170, Pentecost Silversleeves, dressed in several layers of clothes to keep himself warm, was engaged in a curious activity. With a pair of waxed and polished beef shin bones attached to his feet by leather thongs, he was pushing himself along with the aid of a stick. He was skating.

  London’s skating rink lay just outside the centre of the city’s northern wall. Even now, eight hundred years after the Romans had left, the old watercourses, through which the Walbrook stream passed under the wall were still choked with rubbish, so that the undrained area outside remained a marsh. Moorfields, they called it. A morass in summer, in the harsh midwinter it froze into a vast, wild skating rink where Londoners came to enjoy themselves. It was a cheerful scene. There was even a man selling roasted chestnuts on the ice. But Pentecost was not cheerful.

  For the news the messenger had just brought from Normandy was very bad.

  “The king’s going to arrest Becket. Foliot has won,” his father had told him that morning. “That’s bad for you: Foliot hates criminous clerks as much as Henry does.”

  “Perhaps the king’s forgotten me by now.”

  “No. He still speaks of you. So,” his father concluded grimly, “there’s nothing for it. You’ll have to abjure the realm.” And his mother had begun to cry.

  Abjure the realm. Leave the kingdom. It was the only way a criminal could escape justice. But where could he go? Nowhere in Henry’s vast domains. “You could go to the Holy Land on pilgrimage,” his mother had piously suggested. But this did not appeal to Pentecost in the least.

  Mournfully therefore he pushed himself about, and the sun was dipping when a fellow came running out from the city, shouting the message that, within a month, would echo all round an astounded Europe.

  “Becket’s dead. The king’s men have murdered him.”

  And Pentecost ran home, to find out what it meant.

  The murder of Archbishop Thomas Becket took place before the altar of Canterbury Cathedral, at vespers on 29 December in the year of Our Lord 1170. Monastic historians, who at that date reckoned the new year from Christmas Day, often give the year as 1171. The details remain ambiguous.

  Four junior barons who were of the party sent to arrest Becket, went on ahead, confronted the archbishop themselves, and in a scene of the utmost confusion, killed him. Having heard Henry cursing Becket in one of his rages, they thought he would be pleased.

  But it was the aftermath that really shocked the world. For when the frightened monks began to strip the archbishop’s body, they found to their astonishment that, concealed under his clothing, the proud prelate had been wearing the rough hair shirt of the penitent. Not only that, it was crawling with lice. Now, suddenly, they saw him in a new light. The chancellor turned churchman, the unexpected martyr, was not what he had been content to appear. This was no obstinate actor. His rejection of his former worldly life had been far more complete than anyone had guessed. “He was a true penitent after all,” they cried. A son of the Church.

  The word began to spread, and with gathering force. London proclaimed the merchant’s son a martyr. Soon all England was saying it, and clamouring for him to be made a saint, no less. The chorus grew throughout Europe. The Pope, having already excommunicated the murderers and their accomplices, gave ear.

  For King Henry II of England it was a catastrophe. “If not culpable, at least responsible,” the greatest churchmen declared. To escape the growing storm, Henry quickly went on campaign to Ireland. As for the issue of the Church’s privileges, over which he had fought Becket so long, King Henry was quiet as a mouse.

  In the autumn of the year of Our Lord 1171, there was a great rejoicing in the house of Silversleeves.

  “I’ve talked to the justiciar and to the Bishop of London in person,” Pentecost’s father was able to announce. “The king’s fight with the Church is dead. As for criminous clerks, he’s terrified of even mentioning them. You’re safe. You can even go back to the Exchequer.”

  For the first time in many generations, they blessed the name of Becket.

  That the world was full of wonders, Sister Mabel never doubted. God’s providence was everywhere. The astonishing revelation of Becket’s sanctity was, for her, just another example of a process that was all the more splendid because she could not explain it.

  Even Alderman Bull’s angry promise to his brother, which the monk had not taken literally, was to her an article of faith. She knew Brother Michael was good. She knew Bull should not have acquired Bocton. “You’ll see,” she assured Brother Michael, “the hospital will get that legacy.”

  “On my deathbed,” Brother Michael gently reminded her.

  “That’s right,” she replied, cheerfully.

  Yet even Sister Mabel was puzzled by the extraordinary event that took place on a bright, damp April morning in the year of Our Lord 1172.

  She had been over to the Aldwych. She had heard there was a leper there, but she could not find him, and was just returning across the empty space of Smithfield when she saw an unusual spectacle.

  It was a procession – a considerable one, coming down the western edge of Smithfield. The cortège was beautiful. A great company of knights and ladies on richly caparisoned horses led the way. Minstrels with pipes and tambourines ran beside them. Everyone seemed to be smiling and happy. Further behind, she could see, was a long procession of ordinary folk. But who could they be? What was the reason for this glittering throng? She stepped boldly forward and tried to ask one of the passing riders, but he rode by as though he had not seen her.

  It was only then that she noticed the strange thing. Just before reaching the city gate, the sparkling company was vanishing.

  She stared. There was no mistake. Horses and riders were dissolving as though they had passed into some unseen mist, or into the ground under London itself. Turning back to the horses passing by, she now realized something else. Their hooves were making no sound.

  And then she understood. It was a vision.

  She knew about visions, of course. Everyone did. But she had never expected to see one. To her surprise, she was not frightened. The riders, though she could almost touch them, seemed to be in a separate world of their own. Now she noticed that some of them were not knights and ladies, but humble folk. She saw a stonemason she knew, and a woman who sold ribbons. To her astonishment, she suddenly caught sight of one of the patients from the hospital dressed in a shining white robe, his thin face strangely serene.

  After a little time, the riders had all passed by, but now came the mass of folk behind them. They were a very different crowd – all conditions of men and women, from furious fishwife to shattered lord. Most were on foot, their dress ragged, their faces wan. Beside them walked not minstrels but the strangest creatures Mabel had ever seen. They resembled men, except that they had long legs like a bird’s with claws for feet, and curved tails. They stalked beside the crowd, occasionally prodding them with the tridents they were carrying in their sinewy hands. Though their sharp, hard faces were human, Mabel noticed that they had different coloured skin – some red, some green, others mottled. “They must be demons,” she murmured, and stepping forward to a green-
and-white one passing by she demanded: “What’s this procession?” And this time she had better luck.

  “Human souls,” the creature replied in a nasal voice.

  “Are they dead?”

  “No. Living.” He paused for a moment. “The ones in front are going towards heaven. These,” he prodded a bloated monk, “are on their way to hell.”

  “Have they committed such terrible sins?” she asked.

  “Not all. Some have yet to commit them.” He made a high-pitched, bird-like squawk. “But we have them in our hands already. We’re leading them towards temptation, and then to their doom.” He began to move on.

  “Will any of them be saved?” she called after him.

  He did not turn around, but gave a raucous chuckle.

  “A few,” his voice came back. “Only a few.”

  For some time she watched these desolate pilgrims crowding by. She saw numerous people she knew and murmured a prayer for each. Once or twice she called out to try to warn them, but it seemed they did not hear. Then she saw Alderman Bull. He was sitting on a horse, but the wrong way round. He was dressed, as usual, in red, and his huge frame looked as powerful as ever. But she noticed that his face and his hands were covered in boils, and shook her head sadly. She knew he would get to hell, and she did not even try to call out to him.

  But nothing had prepared her for what followed.

  Only a few paces behind the heavy alderman, his pale face looking tragically sad, walked a still more familiar figure, the sight of which caused her to gasp. It was Brother Michael.

  How could it be? He walked slowly and deliberately, as was his habit. His head was bent down, not in reflection, but in sorrow and shame. His eyes seemed to be fixed upon something just in front of him, as though he were hypnotized. What, she wondered, could he possibly have done? She cried out to him. She ran along beside the procession, calling to him again and again. Once, it seemed to her, his head raised as if he might have heard, but then, as though pulled by some unseen force, it bowed down again as he continued his dismal march.