Time and Chance

  The knights were a terrifying sight, having shed their mantles to reveal chain-mail underneath, naked swords in one hand, the stolen workmen’s axes in the other. Neither of the de Brocs were with them, although Robert de Broc’s renegade clerk, Hugh de Horsea, was. As they fanned out, approaching Becket from the left and right sides of the massive central column, one of the two remaining monks lost his nerve and bolted for the stairs. Hugh de Morville took up position between the nave and the choir, sword leveled menacingly at a few citizens who’d arrived early for the second Vespers service. Becket continued down the steps, moving at a measured pace, and then halted by the pillar between the Lady Chapel and the Chapel of St Benedict.

  Without warning, Fitz Urse raised his sword and used its point to flick Becket’s tonsure cap from his head. There were muffled cries from the monks cowering in the shadows, but Becket did not even flinch.

  “Absolve the bishops!”

  “I have already said what I will and will not do.”

  “If you do not, you are a dead man!”

  “I am ready to die for God and the Church. But in the Name of the Almighty, I forbid you to harm any of my own.”

  “Come with us, then!” When Becket refused, Fitz Urse dropped the axe and grabbed for his mantle.

  Becket jerked free and shoved the other man, sending him reeling back. “Let me go, you pimp!”

  Fitz Urse snarled and lunged forward, seizing Becket again. The other men moved in, too, and attempted to drag him from the church. Bounding down the choir steps, Edward Grim joined the fray, throwing his arms around the archbishop to keep them from moving him from the pillar. He was resisting so fiercely that, with Grim’s help, he was able to shake them off.

  Fitz Stephen was still standing on the steps, unable either to flee or to go to the archbishop’s defense, unable to move. The scene had lost all reality for him. He heard Grim shouting that the men must be mad, heard William de Tracy calling the archbishop a traitor. And then he saw a shivering glimmer of light as an altar candle reflected off Fitz Urse’s upraised sword.

  Grim flung up his arm to shield Becket and the blade came down upon them both, slicing off some of the archbishop’s scalp and all but severing Grim’s arm at the elbow. Both men began to bleed profusely. Fitz Stephen made a shaky sign of the cross, closing his eyes as de Tracy struck. The confessor standing beside him would later tell him he’d said, “ ‘The waters that were in the river were turned to blood.’ ” But he had no recollection of his own words. He remembered only what Thomas Becket said as he fell to his knees. “Into Thy Hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit.”

  Fitz Urse and de Tracy stood over the fallen archbishop, swords dripping blood. Hugh de Morville was still holding back the people in the nave. Richard le Bret rushed forward to deliver the death blow, almost slipping in Becket’s blood, and brought his sword down with such force that it split the archbishop’s skull and broke in two upon the pavement. “Take that for the love of my lord William, the king’s brother!”

  Grim was trying to crawl toward the altar. The knights were staring down at Becket’s body as if stunned by their own deed. It was suddenly quiet, with no sound but the rasping of labored, ragged breathing. Becket’s killers raised their swords again, threatening any who would dare to stop their escape, and then plunged toward the door. But Robert de Broc’s subdeacon turned back. Setting his foot on the archbishop’s neck, he thrust the point of his sword into the gaping wound and scattered Becket’s brains over the floor.

  “Let’s go,” he said. “He’ll not rise again.”

  ROBERT DE BROC had remained in the archbishop’s private chambers to watch over Becket’s treasure chests, and after the killing, his men looted the palace. They took all the papal letters and documents they found, in the hope that they’d prove treasonous. But they also took Becket’s silver plate, his gold chalice, costly vestment cloths, jewels, and silver coins. Loading their plunder upon horses from the archbishop’s own stables, they rode out of Canterbury, leaving behind a scene of utter devastation.

  Men began to emerge from their hiding places in the cathedral. Few dared to approach the archbishop’s body, keeping their eyes averted as if that would somehow allow them to deny that murder had been done in God’s House. Fitz Stephen and Robert of Merton, Becket’s confessor, shook off their paralysis and rushed over to the crumpled form of Edward Grim. To their great relief, he was still alive, still conscious. They were soon joined by Master William, who set about halting the bleeding. It was not long before other victims staggered into the church, for the servants caught in the hall had been brutally beaten by de Broc’s men.

  The silence was absolute, eerie. People wandered about aimlessly, faces blank and dazed. Fitz Stephen still knelt by Grim’s side, cradling his head as Master William improvised a bandage. John of Salisbury had crept out from the altar where he’d taken shelter. He sagged down upon the choir steps, and Fitz Stephen and he looked at each other across the wounded priest. Although neither spoke, Fitz Stephen knew what they both were thinking. The only one who’d tried to protect Lord Thomas was a stranger, a man who’d known him but a few days.

  By now most of the monks had thronged into the nave and choir. Prior Odo had surfaced from the crypt and, striding over to them, began to ask abrupt questions about Edward Grim’s prospects for recovery. Fitz Stephen felt rage welling up. Odo was so eager to assert his authority that he could not even wait for the archbishop’s body to cool. Doubtless he felt Lord Thomas’s death had been his own deliverance, his fears of removal seeping away with the archbishop’s lifeblood.

  Fitz Stephen been focusing all his attention upon Edward Grim, awed and shamed by the priest’s courage and not yet ready to accept what he’d just witnessed—an archbishop butchered in his own church. But Odo’s presumption had jarred the protective cobwebs from his brain, and his numbness began to ebb, giving way to an emotion as crippling and fierce as the most physical pain.

  He was becoming aware of a low droning of disapproval. The archbishop’s relationship with the monks of Christ Church had often been a fractious one and not all had welcomed his return from exile. To some, he had remained the worldly, high-living chancellor who’d been forced upon them, never truly one of them, and a violent death, while deplorable, did not change every mind. There were monks now expressing that skepticism, implying that Becket had been an accomplice in his own demise. Several spoke of the archbishop’s willfulness, his antipathy to compromise. Mention was made of his prideful manner, his vainglory, his inability to forgive wrongs. Someone muttered: “He wanted to be a king, to be more than a king. Let him be a king now.”

  Fitz Stephen, a man of the most equable temperament, found himself fighting back the urge to spill yet more blood in the defiled cathedral. Then he noticed Osbern, the archbishop’s longtime chamberlain. His face was bruised and swollen, several teeth knocked out by pummeling fists, for he had been the one who’d barred the door to the great hall. Kneeling by Becket’s body, he tore off a sleeve of his shirt and using it as a bandage, he wound it carefully around the archbishop’s shattered skull. There was such tenderness in that simple, futile gesture that Fitz Stephen’s throat closed up and his eyes burned with hot, bitter tears.

  Townspeople had ventured into the cathedral and were gathering around the body, weeping and wailing, crouching to kiss Becket’s hands and feet, ripping off pieces of their clothing to dip in the puddles of coagulating blood. Prior Odo and several of the monks hurried over to disperse them, eventually managing to clear the church of all but the members of the religious community.

  Slowly, haltingly, men began to function again, to deal with the immediate aftermath of the murder. Edward Grim and the other injured were ushered out to be tended at the infirmary. Fetching a bier, some of the monks lifted the corpse and carried it up into the choir and onto the High Altar. Benches were dragged into the transept and positioned to keep anyone else from stepping in the spillage of blood and brains.

  It was
then that Robert of Merton chose to reveal the archbishop’s secret. Lifting Becket’s black mantle and bloodied surplice and lambskin pelisse, he uncovered the monk’s habit beneath. The priory monks were deeply moved by this evidence of his camouflaged solidarity, evidence that he’d been one of them after all. But the confessor had one more surprise to disclose. Pulling up the habit, he showed them that Becket was wearing a hair shirt, even a pair of hair braies. The drawers were so tight that the seams had gouged a furrow from knees to hip and the skin was abraded and chaffed from continual contact with the rough, coarse cloth. The hair shirt had been split so that Becket could bare his flesh to daily flagellations and his back was scarred with the marks of past scourging. That very day, the confessor told them proudly, he had endured three such penitential whippings. As the awestruck, stunned monks crowded in closer, they saw that the braies were infested with vermin, swarming with lice and fleas, some of which had even burrowed into his groin.

  Pandemonium resulted. Men wept at this painful proof of sanctity. Monks expecting to find the archbishop garbed in silken braies and furs of fox or vair were overwhelmed by this discovery of his daily torment. Sobbing, they kissed his hands and feet, proclaiming him “Saint Thomas, martyr unto God.” A few thought to return to the transept where they carefully scooped up as much of the blood as they could, some of it undoubtedly Edward Grim’s. The broken blade of Richard le Bret’s sword was recovered and put aside with the archbishop’s bloodied clothing, to be cherished as holy relics, and many no longer mourned, rejoicing instead that their lord had died for God and Holy Church, martyr to the True Faith.

  The following day, Becket’s body was hastily buried in the cathedral crypt after the monks were threatened by Robert de Broc, who vowed that he would drag the corpse behind his horse to the nearest cesspit. The church had been polluted by the shedding of blood so there could be no funeral Mass. The archbishop was dressed in his hair shirt and the vestments he’d worn at his investiture eight years before. He was not washed, as he had already been washed in his own blood. The first miracle occurred three days later, when a woman stricken with palsy was reported to have been cured after drinking water sprinkled with a few drops of Becket’s blood.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  January 1171

  Argentan, Normandy

  THE ARCHBISHOP OF ROUEN had been summoned to the k ing’s solar for further discussions about the looming confrontation with the Archbishop of Canterbury, but he was still lingering in the great hall, not at all eager to jump back into that particular fire. Henry’s combustible temper had even more fuel to feed upon; yesterday he’d learned of Becket’s Christmas Day excommunications. The archbishop had long harbored a secret apprehension that this clash between two such stubborn, strong-willed men could not possibly end well, although he’d struggled to ignore his doubts and do whatever he could to make their peace a permanent one. But the peace had not even lasted through Christmastide, and he was grimly certain that far worse was to come.

  Getting reluctantly to his feet, he was adjusting his surplice when his attention was drawn by a new arrival to the hall. Waiting for the Bishop of Lisieux to join him, he said wryly, “You’re just in time, Arnulf, to enter the Valley of Death with me.”

  Getting no response, he subjected Arnulf to a closer scrutiny and felt a sudden chill, for the bishop was the color of curdled milk. What news could have so unnerved a man as worldly and urbane as Arnulf of Lisieux?

  THEY HUDDLED in the stairway by the solar door, Arnulf and Rotrou of Rouen and a travel-stained, disheveled young courier too fatigued for fear. Arnulf at last reached for the latch, mouthing the cry of the crusaders, “Deus vult,” in an attempt at sardonic bravado that rang hollow even to his own ears.

  The solar was crowded, well lit by flaring torches. Henry was standing in the center of the chamber, listening to several men at once. When the door opened and the two prelates entered, he greeted them with a scowl and sarcasm. “How kind of you to belatedly honor us with your presence, my lords.”

  Arnulf, as skilled as any diplomat in the arts of discretion and circumspection, could not believe that he had volunteered for such a thankless task as this. Balking at the very edge of the cliff, he decided to throw the hapless messenger into the void and beckoned the young man forward. “My liege, this is Lucas, whose lord is Hugh de Gundeville. He has come from Canterbury with grievous news for you.”

  Lucas stumbled and sank to his knees before Henry. “My lord king, the Archbishop of Canterbury is dead.”

  “What?” Henry stared at the man as if the words had no meaning. The blank look on his face was one Arnulf had seen before, a moment of desperate denial before the Apocalypse.

  “The young king sent my lord Hugh to Canterbury. We got there on Wednesday morn, after the murder was done.”

  Lucas paused, waiting politely for his lord’s response. When there was none, he made the sign of the cross, saying softly, “The archbishop was slain Tuesday eve at Vespers.” Remembering, then, the letter he’d almost forgotten in his exhaustion, he held it out.

  Henry took the letter, but he made no attempt to read it. His fingers tightened around the parchment roll, as if of their own volition. He looked at the horror-struck faces of the men encircling him, saying nothing. And before any of them could speak, he’d turned away and was gone, the door closing quietly behind him.

  WHEN HENRY ’S SON, the young king, was told of the archbishop’s murder, he exclaimed aloud, “Alas! But God, I give Thee thanks that this was done without my knowledge and that none of my people were involved.”

  THEY WERE WAITING inaprivate chamber in Eleanor’s palace at Poitiers. They had gathered to consult with their duchess about the latest crisis threatening to engulf the Angevin empire. They’d just begun, though, when Eleanor was called away. She’d not been gone long, but the delay was eroding their patience. They were experienced enough to know that she’d not have interrupted the council for a routine message.

  When she finally returned, it was to a sudden silence. Her face was expressionless, and to these men who knew her so well, the appearance of her inscrutable court mask was as sure a sign of a coming storm as northeast winds and a haloed moon. She paused for a long moment in the doorway and then strode into the chamber, head high and eyes guarded and opaque. The men were watching her, so only Raoul noticed as her son slipped inconspicuously in behind her and took up position in the shadows. He was not about to give the boy away though, believing that if Richard was old enough to sneak in, he was old enough to hear.

  “I’ve just received word from Argentan,” Eleanor said without preamble. “Thomas Becket was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral on the morrow after Holy Innocents’ Day.”

  Even the most irreverent of her lords could not suppress a shiver, for there were few crimes more sacrilegious than the killing of an archbishop in his own church. Once the initial shock passed, not all were displeased by the news. No one had yet asked the fateful question, but in a sense, it was not even necessary. Whether Becket had died at the English king’s connivance or not, the blame would still be laid at Henry’s throne.

  “The killers were four English knights, some of whom may be known to you,” Eleanor said dispassionately, “Hugh de Morville, William de Tracy, Reginald Fitz Urse, and Richard le Bret. The de Brocs were involved, too, although they apparently took no role in the actual slaying. They claimed that they were doing the king’s bidding. That is not true.”

  They already knew that was so, for she’d reported that her husband’s decision at Bures had been to demand that Becket absolve the English bishops or face arrest. A few speculated whether an assassination order might have been given without her knowledge, but none were foolhardy enough to suggest that. It was left to her trusted confidant and seneschal, Saldebreuil de Sanzay, to give voice to the other truth, the obvious truth.

  “I do not doubt that, Madame,” he said. “But it may not matter. Lord Henry’s enemies will care only that a weapon of
incomparable sharpness has been delivered into their hands.”

  “I know,” she acknowledged, and for a fleeting moment, she allowed her frustration and dismay to show. “What monumental, unforgivable folly . . .”

  It was then that Richard emerged from hiding. Eleanor stiffened at the sight of her son, but she did not send him away; it was too late for that. Richard had experienced a growth spurt that autumn and it was a minor surprise to realize that his eyes were level with her own, that it was like looking into her husband’s eyes, clear and sea-grey and impenetrable.

  “Will men blame my father for this killing?”

  Eleanor was not going to lie to him, not to Richard. “Yes,” she said, “I fear that they will,” and he nodded, apparently satisfied by her candor. What he thought about Becket’s murder, she did not know, would not know unless he chose to tell her.

  Raoul dared then to pose the question that many of them were wondering. It had not escaped him that she’d been ambiguous about the source of her information. He suspected that if she’d heard of the murder from Henry himself, she would have said so, which meant that the rumors of marital strife were becoming more and more credible. Nothing could please him more, but he took care to keep his voice perfectly neutral as he asked, “My lady . . . will you go to the king at Argentan?”

  Eleanor was not fooled by the detachment of his query; she well knew the depths of enmity between her husband and uncle. She regarded Raoul pensively, trying to decide if she should answer honestly, answer at all. “Yes,” she said, very evenly, “. . . if he sends for me.”

  “MY LAMB, you must cease your weeping. You’ll sicken upon your tears if you do not.”