KINGSBRIDGE WAS STILL GROWING. It had long ago overflowed its original walls, which now enclosed fewer than half the houses. About five years ago the guild had built a new wall, taking in the suburbs that had grown up outside the old town; and now there were more suburbs outside the new wall. The meadow on the other side of the river, where the townspeople had traditionally held Lammas Day and Midsummer Eve festivities, was now a small village, called Newport.
On a cold Easter Sunday, Sheriff William Hamleigh rode through Newport and crossed the stone bridge that led into what was now called the old town of Kingsbridge. Today the newly completed Kingsbridge Cathedral would be consecrated. He passed through the formidable city gate and went up the main street, which had recently been paved. The dwellings on either side were all stone houses with shops in the undercrofts and living quarters above. Kingsbridge was bigger, busier and wealthier than Shiring had ever been, William thought bitterly.
He reached the top of the street and turned into the priory close; and there, before his eyes, was the reason for the rise of Kingsbridge and the decline of Shiring: the cathedral.
It was breathtaking.
The immensely tall nave was supported by a row of graceful flying buttresses. The west end had three huge porticos, like giants’ doorways, and rows of tall, slender, pointed windows above, flanked by slim towers. The concept had been heralded in the transepts, finished eighteen years ago, but this was the astonishing consummation of the idea. There had never been a building like this anywhere in England.
The market still took place here every Sunday, and the green in front of the church door was packed with stalls. William dismounted and left Walter to take care of the horses. He limped across the green to the church: he was fifty-four years old, and heavy, and he suffered constant pain from gout in his legs and feet. Because of the pain he was more or less permanently angry.
The church was even more impressive inside. The nave followed the style of the transepts, but the master builder had refined his design, making the columns even more slender and the windows larger. But there was yet another innovation. William had heard people talk of the colored glass made by craftsmen Jack Jackson had brought over from Paris. He had wondered why there was such a fuss about it, for he imagined that a colored window would be just like a tapestry or a painting. Now he saw what they meant. The light from outside shone through the colored glass, making it glow, and the effect was quite magical. The church was full of people craning their necks to stare up at the windows. The pictures showed Bible stories, Heaven and Hell, saints and prophets, disciples, and some of the Kingsbridge citizens who had presumably paid for the windows in which they appeared-a baker carrying his tray of loaves, a tanner and his hides, a mason with his compasses and level. I bet Philip made a fat profit out of those windows, William thought sourly.
The church was packed for the Easter service. The market was spreading into the interior of the building, as always happened, and walking up the nave William was offered cold beer, hot gingerbread and a quick fuck up against the wall for threepence. The clergy were forever trying to ban peddlers from churches but it was an impossible task. William exchanged greetings with the more important citizens of the county. But despite the social and commercial distractions William found his eye and his thoughts constantly drawn upward by the sweeping lines of the arcade. The arches and the windows, the piers with their clustered shafts, and the ribs and segments of the vaulted ceiling all seemed to point toward heaven in an inescapable reminder of what the building was for.
The floor was paved, the pillars were painted, and every window was glazed: Kingsbridge and its priory were rich, and the cathedral proclaimed their prosperity. In the small chapels of the transepts were gold candlesticks and jeweled crosses. The citizens also displayed their wealth, with richly colored tunics, silver brooches and buckles, and gold rings.
His eye fell on Aliena.
As always, his heart missed a beat. She was as beautiful as ever, although she had to be over fifty years old now. She still had a mass of curly hair, but it was cut shorter, and seemed to be a lighter shade of brown, as if it had faded a little. She had attractive crinkles at the corners of her eyes. She was a little wider than she used to be, but she was no less desirable. She wore a blue cloak with a red silk lining, and red leather shoes. There was a deferential crowd around her. Although she was not even a countess, merely the sister of an earl, her brother had settled in the Holy Land, and everyone treated her as the earl. She carried herself like a queen.
The sight of her brewed hatred like bile in William’s belly. He had ruined her father, raped her, taken her castle, burned her wool and exiled her brother, but every time he thought he had crushed her she came back again, rising from defeat to new heights of power and wealth. Now William was aging and gouty and fat and he realized that he had spent his life in the power of a terrible enchantment.
Beside her was a tall red-haired man whom William at first took for Jack. However, on closer examination the man was obviously too young, and William realized it must be the son of Jack. The boy was dressed as a knight, and carried a sword. Jack himself stood next to his son, an inch or two shorter, his red hair receding at the temples. He was younger than Aliena, of course, by about five years, if William’s memory was right, but he, too, had lines around his eyes. He was talking animatedly to a young woman who was surely his daughter. She resembled Aliena, and was just as pretty, but her abundant hair was pulled severely back and plaited, and she was quite plainly dressed. If there was a voluptuous body under that earth-brown tunic she did not want anyone to know it.
Resentment burned in his stomach as he regarded Aliena’s prosperous, dignified, happy family. Everything they had should have been his. But he had not given up the hope of revenge.
The voices of several hundred monks were raised in song, drowning the conversations and the cries of the hawkers, and Prior Philip entered the church at the head of a procession. There never used to be this many monks, William thought. The priory had grown along with the town. Philip, now over sixty years old, was almost completely bald, and rather stout, so that his formerly thin face had become quite round. Not surprisingly, he looked pleased with himself: the dedication of this cathedral was the aim he had conceived when he first came to Kingsbridge, thirty-four years ago.
There was a murmur of comment when Bishop Waleran came in, clad in his most gorgeous robes. His pale, angular face was frozen in a stiffly neutral expression, but William knew he was seething inside. This cathedral was the triumphant symbol of Philip’s victory over Waleran. William hated Philip too, but all the same he secretly enjoyed seeing the supercilious Bishop Waleran humbled for a change.
Waleran was rarely seen here. A new church had finally been built in Shiring-with a special chapel dedicated to the memory of William’s mother-and although it was nowhere near as large or impressive as this cathedral, nevertheless Waleran had made the Shiring church his headquarters.
However, Kingsbridge was still the cathedral church, despite all Waleran’s efforts. In a war that had raged over three decades, Waleran had done everything he could to destroy Philip, but in the end Philip had triumphed. They were a bit like William and Aliena. In both cases, weakness and scruples had defeated strength and ruthlessness. William felt he would never understand it.
The bishop had been obliged to come here today, for the dedication ceremony: it would have looked very peculiar if he had not been here to welcome all the celebrity guests. Several bishops from neighboring dioceses were here, as well as a number of distinguished abbots and priors.
The archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket, would not be here. He was in the throes of a quarrel with his old friend, King Henry; a quarrel so bitter and fierce that the archbishop had been forced to flee the country, and had taken refuge in France. They were in conflict over a whole list of legal issues, but the heart of the dispute was simple: Could the king do as he pleased, or was he constrained? It was the dispute William himself had had with Prior Philip. William took the view that the earl could do anything-that was what it meant to be earl. Henry felt the same about kingship. Prior Philip and Thomas Becket were both bent on restricting the power of rulers.
Bishop Waleran was a clergyman who sided with the rulers. For him, power was meant to be used. The defeats of three decades had not shaken his belief that he was the instrument of God’s will, nor his ruthless determination to do his holy duty. William felt sure that even while he conducted the consecration service for Kingsbridge Cathedral, he was casting about for some way to spoil Philip’s moment of glory.
William moved about throughout the service. Standing was worse for his legs than walking. When he went to Shiring church, Walter carried a chair for him. Then he could doze off for a while. Here, though, there were people to talk to, and much of the congregation used the time to conduct business. William went around ingratiating himself with the powerful, intimidating the weak, and gathering information on all and sundry. He no longer struck terror into the hearts of the population, as he had in the good old days, but as sheriff he was still feared and deferred to.
The service went on interminably. There was a long interval during which the monks went around the outside of the church sprinkling the walls with holy water. Near the end, Prior Philip announced the appointment of a new sub-prior: it was to be Brother Jonathan, the priory orphan. Jonathan, now in his middle thirties and unusually tall, reminded William of old Tom Builder: he too had been something of a giant.
When the service finally ended, the distinguished guests lingered in the south transept, and the minor gentry of the county crowded around to meet them. William limped over to join them. Once upon a time he had treated bishops as his equals, but now he had to bow and scrape with the knights and small landowners. Bishop Waleran drew William aside and said: “Who is that new sub-prior?”
“The priory orphan,” William replied. “He’s always been a favorite of Philip’s.”
“He seems young to be made sub-prior.”
“He’s older than Philip was when Philip became prior.”
Waleran looked thoughtful. “The priory orphan. Remind me of the details.”
“When Philip came here he brought a baby with him.”
Waleran’s face cleared as he remembered. “By the cross, yes! I’d forgotten Philip’s baby. How could I have let something like that slip my mind?”
“It is thirty years. And who cares?”
Waleran gave William the scornful look that William hated so much, the look that said You dumb ox, can’t you figure out something that simple? Pain stabbed his foot, and he shifted his weight in a vain attempt to ease it. Waleran said: “Well, where did the baby come from?”
William swallowed his resentment. “It was found abandoned near his old cell in the forest, if I remember rightly.”
“Better and better,” Waleran said eagerly.
William still did not see what he was getting at. “So what?” he said sullenly.
“Would you say that Philip has brought the child up as if it was his own son?”
“Yes.”
“And now he’s made him sub-prior.”
“He was elected by the monks, presumably. I believe he’s very popular.”
“Anyone who is sub-prior at thirty-five must be in line for the post of prior eventually.”
William was not going to say So what? again so he just waited, feeling like a stupid schoolboy, for Waleran to explain.
At last Waleran said: “Jonathan is obviously Philip’s own child.”
William burst out laughing. He had been expecting a profound thought, and Waleran had come up with a notion that was totally ludicrous. To William’s satisfaction, his scorn brought a slight flush to Waleran’s waxy complexion. William said: “No one who knows Philip would believe such a thing. He was born a dried-up old stick. The idea!” He laughed again. Waleran might think he was ever so clever, but this time he had lost his sense of reality.
Waleran’s hauteur was icy. “I say Philip used to have a mistress, when he ran that little priory out in the forest. Then he became prior of Kingsbridge and had to leave the woman behind. She didn’t want the baby if she couldn’t have the father, so she dumped the child on him. Philip, being a sentimental soul, felt obliged to take care of it, so he passed it off as a foundling.”
William shook his head. “Unbelievable. Anyone else, yes. Philip, no.”
Waleran persisted: “If the baby was abandoned, how can he prove where it came from?”
“He can’t,” William acknowledged. He looked across the south transept to where Philip and Jonathan stood together, talking to the bishop of Hereford. “But they don’t even look alike.”
“You don’t look like your mother,” Waleran said. “Thank God.”
“What good is all this?” William said. “What are you going to do about it?”
“Accuse him before an ecclesiastical court,” Waleran replied.
That made a difference. No one who knew Philip would credit Waleran’s accusation for a moment, but a judge who was a stranger to Kingsbridge might find it more plausible. William saw reluctantly that Waleran’s idea was not so stupid after all. As usual, Waleran was shrewder than William. Waleran was looking irritatingly smug, of course. But William was enthused by the prospect of bringing Philip down. “By God,” he said eagerly. “Do you think it could be done?”
“It depends who the judge is. But I may be able to arrange something there. I wonder…”
William looked across the transept at Philip, triumphant and smiling, with his tall protégé beside him. The vast stained-glass windows threw an enchanted light over them, and they were like figures in a dream. “Fornication and nepotism,” William said gleefully. “My God.”
“If we can make it stick,” Waleran said with relish, “it will be the finish of that damned prior.”
No reasonable judge could possibly find Philip guilty.
The truth was that he had never had to try very hard to resist the temptation of fornication. He knew, from hearing confession, that some monks struggled desperately with fleshly lust, but he was not like that. There had been a time, at the age of about eighteen, when he had suffered impure dreams, but that phase had not lasted long. For most of his life chastity had come easily to him. He had never performed the sexual act and he was now probably too old for it.
However, the Church was taking the accusation very seriously. Philip was to be tried by an ecclesiastical court. An archdeacon from Canterbury would be present. Waleran had wanted the trial to be held at Shiring, but Philip had fought against that, successfully, and it would now be held at Kingsbridge, which was, after all, the cathedral city. Now Philip was clearing his personal possessions out of the prior’s house to make way for the archdeacon, who would be staying here.
Philip knew he was innocent of fornication, and it followed logically that he could not be guilty of nepotism, for a man cannot favor his sons if he has none. Nevertheless he searched his heart to see whether he had done wrong in promoting Jonathan. Just as impure thoughts were a kind of shadow of a graver sin, perhaps favoritism toward a loved orphan was the shadow of nepotism. Monks were supposed to forgo the consolations of family life, yet Jonathan had been like a son to Philip. Philip had made Jonathan cellarer at a young age, and had now promoted him to sub-prior. Did I do that for my own pride and pleasure? he asked himself.
Well, yes, he thought.
He had taken enormous satisfaction from teaching Jonathan, watching him grow, and seeing him learn how to manage priory affairs. But even if these things had not given Philip such intense pleasure, Jonathan would still have been the ablest young administrator in the priory. He was intelligent, devout, imaginative and conscientious. Brought up in the monastery, he knew no other life, and he never hankered after freedom. Philip himself had been raised in an abbey. We monastery orphans make the best monks, he thought.
He put a book into a satchel: Luke’s Gospel, so wise. He had treated Jonathan like a son, but he had not committed any sins worth taking before an ecclesiastical court. The charge was absurd.
Unfortunately, the mere accusation would be damaging. It diminished his moral authority. There would be people who would remember the charge and forget the verdict. Next time Philip stood up and said: “The commandment forbids a man to covet his neighbor’s wife,” some of the congregation would be thinking But you had your fun when you were young.
Jonathan burst in, breathing hard. Philip frowned. The sub-prior ought not to burst into rooms panting. Philip was about to launch into a homily on the dignity of monastic officers, when Jonathan said: “Archdeacon Peter is here already!”
“All right, all right,” Philip soothed. “I’ve just about finished, anyway.” He handed Jonathan the satchel. “Take this to the dormitory, and don’t rush everywhere: a monastery is a place of peace and quiet.”
Jonathan accepted the satchel and the rebuke, but he said: “I don’t like the look of the archdeacon.”
“I’m sure he’ll be a just judge, and that’s all we want,” Philip said.
The door opened again, and the archdeacon came in. He was a tall, rangy man of about Philip’s age, with thinning gray hair and a rather superior look on his face. He seemed vaguely familiar.
Philip offered a handshake, saying: “I’m Prior Philip.”
“I know you,” the archdeacon said sourly. “Don’t you remember me?”
The gravelly voice did it. Philip’s heart sank. This was his oldest enemy. “Archdeacon Peter,” he said grimly. “Peter of Wareham.”
“He was a troublemaker,” Philip explained to Jonathan a few minutes later, when they had left the archdeacon to make himself comfortable in the prior’s house. “He would complain that we didn’t work hard enough, or we ate too well, or the services were too short. He said I was indulgent. He wanted to be prior himself, I’m sure. He would have been a disaster, of course. I made him almoner, so that he had to spend half his time away. I did it just to get rid of him. It was best for the priory and best for him, but I’m sure he still hates me for it, even after thirty-five years.” He sighed. “I heard, when you and I visited St-John-in-the-Forest after the great famine, that Peter had gone to Canterbury. And now he’s going to sit in judgment on me.”
They were in the cloisters. The weather was mild and the sun was warm. Fifty boys in three different classes were learning to read and write in the north walk, and the subdued murmur of their lessons floated across the quadrangle. Philip remembered when the school had consisted of five boys and a senile novice-master. He thought of all he had done here: the building of the cathedral; the transformation of the impoverished, run-down priory into a wealthy, busy, influential institution; the enlargement of the town of Kingsbridge. In the church, more than a hundred monks were singing mass. From where he sat he could see the astonishingly beautiful stained-glass windows in the clerestory. At his back, off the east walk, was a stone-built library containing hundreds of books on theology, astronomy, ethics, mathematics, indeed, every branch of knowledge. In the outside world the priory’s lands, managed with enlightened self-interest by monastic officers, fed not just the monks but hundreds of farm workers. Was all that to be taken from him by a lie? Would the prosperous and God-fearing priory be handed over to someone else, a pawn of Bishop Waleran’s such as the slimy Archdeacon Baldwin, or a self-righteous fool such as Peter of Wareham, to be run down to penury and depravity as quickly as Philip had built it up? Would the vast flocks of sheep shrink to a handful of scrawny ewes, the farms return to weed-grown inefficiency, the library become dusty with disuse, the beautiful cathedral sink into damp and disrepair? God helped me to achieve so much, he thought; I can’t believe he intended it to come to nothing.
Jonathan said: “All the same, Archdeacon Peter can’t possibly find you guilty.”
“I think he will,” Philip said heavily.
“In all conscience, how can he?”
“I think he’s been nursing a grievance against me all his life, and this is his chance to prove that I was the sinner and he was the righteous man all along. Somehow Waleran found out about that and made sure Peter was appointed to judge this case.”
“But there’s no proof!”
“He doesn’t need proof. He’ll hear the accusation, and the defense; then he’ll pray for guidance, and he’ll announce his verdict.”
“God may guide him aright.”
“Peter won’t listen to God. He’s never been a listener.”
“What will happen?”
“I’ll be deposed,” Philip said grimly. “They may let me continue here as an ordinary monk, to do penance for my sin, but it’s not likely. More probably they will expel me from the order, to prevent my having any further influence here.”
“What would happen then?”
“There would have to be an election, of course. Unfortunately, royal politics enter into the picture now. King Henry is in dispute with the archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket, and Archbishop Thomas is in exile in France. Half his archdeacons are with him. The other half, the ones who stayed behind, have sided with the king against their archbishop. Peter obviously belongs to that crowd. Bishop Waleran has also taken the king’s side. Waleran will recommend his choice of prior, backed by the Canterbury archdeacons and the king. It will be hard for the monks here to oppose him.”
“Who do you think it might be?”
“Waleran has someone in mind, rest assured. It could be Archdeacon Baldwin. It might even be Peter of Wareham.”
“We must do something to prevent this!” Jonathan said.
Philip nodded. “But everything is against us. There’s nothing we can do to alter the political situation. The only possibility…”
“What?” Jonathan said impatiently.
The case seemed so hopeless that Philip felt there was no point in toying with desperate ideas: it would excite Jonathan’s optimism only to disappoint him. “Nothing,” Philip said.
“What were you going to say?”
Philip was still working it out. “If there was a way to prove my innocence beyond doubt, it would be impossible for Peter to find me guilty.”
“But what would count as proof?”
“Exactly. You can’t prove a negative. We would have to find your real father.”
Jonathan was instantly enthusiastic. “Yes! That’s it! That’s what we’ll do!”
“Slow down,” Philip said. “I tried at the time. It’s not likely to be any easier so many years later.”
Jonathan was not to be discouraged. “Were there no clues at all to where I might have come from?”
“Nothing, I’m afraid.” Philip was now worried that he had raised hopes in Jonathan which could not be fulfilled. Although the boy had no memories of his parents, the fact that they had abandoned him had always troubled him. Now he thought he might solve the mystery and find some explanation which proved they had loved him really. Philip felt sure this could only lead to frustration.
“Did you question people living nearby?” Jonathan said.
“There was nobody living nearby. That cell is deep in the forest. Your parents probably came from miles away, Winchester perhaps. I’ve been over all this ground already.”
Jonathan persisted. “You didn’t see any travelers in the forest around that time?”
“No.” Philip frowned. Was that true? A stray thought tugged at his memory. The day the baby was found, Philip had left the priory to go to the bishop’s palace, and on his way he had spoken to some people. Suddenly it came back to him. “Well, yes, as a matter of fact, Tom Builder and his family were passing through.”
Jonathan was astonished. “You never told me that!”
“It never seemed important. It still doesn’t. I met them a day or two later. I questioned them, and they said they hadn’t seen anyone who might have been the mother or father of an abandoned baby.”
Jonathan was crestfallen. Philip was afraid this whole line of inquiry was going to prove doubly disappointing to him: he would not find out about his parents and he would fail to prove Philip’s innocence. But there was no stopping him now. “What were they doing in the forest, anyway?” he persisted.
“Tom was on his way to the bishop’s palace. He was looking for work. That’s how they ended up here.”
“I want to question them again.”
“Well, Tom and Alfred are dead. Ellen is living in the forest, and only God knows when she will reappear. But you could talk to Jack or Martha.”
“It’s worth a try.”
Perhaps Jonathan was right. He had the energy of youth. Philip had been pessimistic and discouraging. “Go ahead,” he said to Jonathan. “I’m getting old and tired; otherwise I would have thought of it myself. Talk to Jack. It’s a slender thread to hang on to. But it’s our only hope.”
The design of the window had been drawn, full size, and painted, on a huge wooden table which had been washed with ale to prevent the colors from running. The drawing showed the Tree of Jesse, a genealogy of Christ in picture form. Sally picked up a small piece of thick ruby-colored glass and placed it on the design over the body of one of the kings of Israel-Jack was not sure which king: he had never been able to remember the convoluted symbolism of theological pictures. Sally dipped a fine brush in a bowl of chalk ground up in water, and painted the shape of the body onto the glass: shoulders, arms, and the skirt of the robe.
In the fire on the ground beside her table was an iron rod with a wooden handle. She took the rod out of the fire and then, quickly but carefully, she ran the red-hot end of the rod around the outline she had painted. The grass cracked neatly along the line. Her apprentice picked up the piece of glass and began to smooth its edges with a grozing iron.
Jack loved to watch his daughter work. She was quick and precise, her movements economical. As a little girl she had been fascinated by the work of the glaziers Jack had brought over from Paris, and she always said that was what she wanted to do when she grew up. She had stuck by that choice. When people came to Kingsbridge Cathedral for the first time, they were more struck by Sally’s glass than her father’s architecture, Jack thought ruefully.
The apprentice handed the smoothed glass to her, and she began to paint the folds of the robe onto the surface, using a paint made of iron ore, urine, and gum arabic for adhesion. The flat glass suddenly began to look like soft, carelessly draped cloth. She was very skillful. She finished it quickly, then put the painted glass alongside several others in an iron pan, the bottom of which was covered with lime. When the pan was full it would go into an oven. The heat would fuse the paint to the glass.
She looked up at Jack, gave him a brief, dazzling smile, then picked up another piece of glass.
He moved away. He could watch her all day, but he had work to do. He was, as Aliena would say, daft about his daughter. When he looked at her it was often with a kind of amazement that he was responsible for the existence of this clever, independent, mature young woman. He was thrilled that she was such a good craftswoman.
Ironically, he had always pressured Tommy to be a builder. He had actually forced the boy to work on the site for a couple of years. But Tommy was interested in farming, horsemanship, hunting and swordplay, all the things that left Jack cold. In the end Jack had conceded defeat. Tommy had served as a squire to one of the local lords and had eventually been knighted. Aliena had granted him a small estate of five villages. And Sally had turned out to be the talented one. Tommy was married now, to a younger daughter of the earl of Bedford, and they had three children. Jack was a grandfather. But Sally was still single at the age of twenty-five. There was a lot of her grandmother Ellen in her. She was aggressively self-reliant.
Jack walked around to the west end of the cathedral and looked up at the twin towers. They were almost complete, and a huge bronze bell was on its way here from the foundry in London. There was not much for Jack to do nowadays. Where he had once controlled an army of muscular stonecutters and carpenters, laying rows of square stones and building scaffolding, he now had a handful of carvers and painters doing precise and painstaking work on a small scale, making statues for niches, building ornamental pinnacles, and gilding the wings of stone angels. There was not much to design, apart from the occasional new building for the priory-a library, a chapter house, more accommodation for pilgrims, new laundry and dairy buildings. In between petty jobs Jack was doing some stone carving himself, for the first time in many years. He was impatient to pull down Tom Builder’s old chancel and put up a new east end to his own design, but Prior Philip wanted to enjoy the finished church for a year before beginning another building campaign. Philip was feeling his age. Jack was afraid the old boy might not live to see the chancel rebuilt.
However, the work would be continued after Philip’s death, Jack thought as he saw the enormously tall figure of Brother Jonathan striding toward him from the direction of the kitchen courtyard. Jonathan would make a good prior, perhaps even as good as Philip himself. Jack was glad the succession was assured: it enabled him to plan for the future.
“I’m worried about this ecclesiastical court, Jack,” said Jonathan without preamble.
Jack said: “I thought that was all a big fuss about nothing.”
“So did I-but the archdeacon turns out to be an old enemy of Prior Philip’s.”
“Hell. But even so, surely he can’t find him guilty.”
“He can do anything he wants.”
Jack shook his head in disgust. He sometimes wondered how men such as Jonathan could continue to believe in the Church when it was so shamelessly corrupt. “What are you going to do?”
“The only way we can prove his innocence is to find out who my parents were.”
“It’s a bit late for that!”
“It’s our only hope.”
Jack was somewhat shaken. They were quite desperate. “Where are you going to start?”
“With you. You were in the area of St-John-in-the-Forest at the time I was born.”
“Was I?” Jack did not see what Jonathan was getting at. “I lived there until I was eleven, and I must be about eleven years older than you…”
“Father Philip says he met you, with your mother and Tom Builder and Tom’s children, the day after I was found.”
“I remember that. We ate all Philip’s food. We were starving.”
“Think hard. Did you see anyone with a baby, or a young woman who might have been pregnant, anywhere near that area?”
“Wait a minute.” Jack was puzzled. “Are you telling me that you were found near St-John-in-the-Forest?”
“Yes-didn’t you know that?”
Jack could hardly believe his ears. “No, I didn’t know that,” he said slowly. His mind was reeling with the implications of the revelation. “When we arrived in Kingsbridge, you were already here, and I naturally assumed you had been found in the forest near here.” He suddenly felt the need to sit down. There was a pile of building rubble nearby, and he lowered himself onto it.
Jonathan said impatiently: “Well, anyway, did you see anyone in the forest?”
“Oh, yes,” Jack said. “I don’t know how to tell you this, Jonathan.”
Jonathan paled. “You know something about this, don’t you? What did you see?”
“I saw you, Jonathan; that’s what I saw.”
Jonathan’s mouth dropped open. “What… How?”
“It was dawn. I was on a duck-hunting expedition. I heard a cry. I found a newborn baby, wrapped in a cut-up old cloak, lying beside the embers of a dying fire.”
Jonathan stared at him. “Anything else?”
Jack nodded slowly. “The baby was lying on a new grave.”
Jonathan swallowed. “My mother?”
Jack nodded.
Jonathan began to weep, but he kept asking questions. “What did you do?”
“I fetched my mother. But while we were returning to the spot, we saw a priest, riding a palfrey, carrying the baby.”
“Francis,” Jonathan said in a choked voice.
“What?”
He swallowed hard. “I was found by Father Philip’s brother, Francis, the priest.”
“What was he doing there?”
“He was on his way to see Philip at St-John-in-the-Forest. That’s where he took me.”
“My God.” Jack stared at the tall monk with tears streaming down his cheeks. You haven’t heard it all yet, Jonathan, he thought.
Jonathan said: “Did you see anyone who might have been my father?”
“Yes,” Jack said solemnly. “I know who he was.”
“Tell me!” Jonathan whispered.
“Tom Builder.”
“Tom Builder?” Jonathan sat down heavily on the ground. “Tom Builder was my father?”
“Yes.” Jack shook his head in wonderment. “Now I know who you remind me of. You and he are the tallest people I ever met.”
“He was always good to me when I was a child,” Jonathan said in a dazed tone. “He used to play with me. He was fond of me. I saw as much of him as I did of Prior Philip.” His tears flowed freely. “That was my father. My father.” He looked up at Jack. “Why did he abandon me?”
“They thought you were going to die anyway. They had no milk to give you. They were starving themselves, I know. They were miles from anywhere. They didn’t know the priory was nearby. They had no food except turnips, and turnips would have killed you.”
“They did love me, after all.”
Jack saw the scene as if it were yesterday: the dying fire, the freshly turned earth of the new grave, and the tiny pink baby kicking its arms and legs inside the old gray cloak. That little scrap of humanity had grown into the tall man who sat weeping on the ground in front of him. “Oh, yes, they loved you.”
“How come nobody ever spoke of it?”
“Tom was ashamed, of course,” Jack said. “My mother must have known that, and we children sensed it, I suppose. Anyway, it was an unmentionable topic. And we never connected that baby with you, of course.”
“Tom must have made the connection,” Jonathan said.
“Yes.”
“I wonder why he never took me back?”
“My mother left him quite soon after we came here,” Jack said. He smiled ruefully. “She was hard to please, like Sally. Anyway, that meant Tom would have had to hire a nursemaid to look after you. So I suppose he thought: Why not leave the baby at the monastery? You were well cared for there.”
Jonathan nodded. “By dear old Johnny Eightpence, God rest his soul.”
“Tom probably spent more time with you that way. You were running around the priory close all day and every day, and he was working there. If he’d taken you away from the priory and left you at home with a nursemaid, he’d actually have seen less of you. And I imagine as the years went by, and you grew up as the priory orphan, and seemed happy that way, it felt more and more natural to leave you there. People often give a child to God, anyway.”
“All these years I’ve wondered about my parents,” Jonathan said. Jack’s heart ached for him. “I’ve tried to imagine what they were like, asked God to let me meet them, wondered whether they loved me, questioned why they left me. Now I know that my mother died giving birth to me and my father was close to me all the rest of his life.” He smiled through his tears. “I can’t tell you how happy I am.”
Jack felt close to tears himself. To cover his embarrassment he said: “You look like Tom.”
“Do I?” Jonathan was pleased.
“Don’t you remember how tall he was?”
“All adults were tall then.”
“He had good features, like you. Well-carved. If ever you’d grown a beard, people would have guessed.”
“I remember the day he died,” Jonathan said. “He took me around the fair. We watched the bearbaiting. Then I climbed the wall of the chancel. I was too frightened to come down, so he had to come up and carry me down. Then he saw William’s men coming. He put me in the cloisters. That was the last time I saw him alive.”
“I remember that,” Jack said. “I watched him climb down with you in his arms.”
“He made sure I was safe,” Jonathan said wonderingly.
“Then he took care of the others,” Jack said.
“He really loved me.”
Jack was struck by a thought. “This will make a difference to Philip’s trial, won’t it?”
“I’d forgotten that,” Jonathan said. “Yes, it will. My goodness.”
“Have we got irrefutable proof?” Jack wondered. “I saw the baby, and the priest, but I never actually saw the baby delivered to the little priory.”
“Francis did. But Francis is Philip’s brother, so his evidence is tainted.”
“My mother and Tom went off together that morning,” Jack said, straining his memory. “They said they were going to look for the priest. I bet they went to the priory to make sure the baby was all right.”
“If she would say so in court, that would really sew it up,” Jonathan said eagerly.
“Philip thinks she’s a witch,” Jack pointed out. “Would he let her testify?”
“We could spring it on him. But she hates him, too. Will she testify?”
“I don’t know,” said Jack. “Let’s ask her.”
“Fornication and nepotism?” Jack’s mother cried. “Philip?” She started to laugh. “It’s too absurd!”
“Mother, this is serious,” Jack said.
“Philip couldn’t fornicate if you put him in a barrel with three whores,” she said. “He wouldn’t know what to do!”
Jonathan was looking embarrassed. “Prior Philip is in real trouble, even if the charge is absurd,” he said.
“And why would I help Philip?” she said. “He’s caused me nothing but heartache.”
Jack had been afraid of this. His mother had never forgiven Philip for splitting her and Tom. “Philip did the same to me as he did to you-if I can forgive him, you can.”
“I’m not the forgiving type,” she said.
“Don’t do it for Philip, then-do it for me. I want to continue building at Kingsbridge.”
“Why? The church is finished.”
“I’d like to pull down Tom’s chancel and rebuild it in the new style.”
“Oh, for God’s sake-”
“Mother. Philip is a good prior, and when he goes Jonathan will take over-if you come to Kingsbridge and tell the truth at the trial.”
“I hate courts,” she said. “No good ever comes out of them.”
It was maddening. She held the key to Philip’s trial: she could ensure that he was cleared. But she was a stubborn old woman. Jack was seriously afraid he would not be able to talk her into it.
He decided to try stinging her into consenting. “I suppose it’s a long way to travel, for someone of your age,” he said slyly. “How old are you now-sixty-eight?”
“Sixty-two, and don’t try to provoke me,” she snapped. “I’m fitter than you, my boy.”
It could be true, Jack thought. Her hair was white as snow, and her face was deeply lined, but her startling golden eyes saw just as much as ever they had: as soon as she looked at Jonathan she had known who he was, and she had said: “Well, I’ve no need to ask why you’re here. You’ve found out where you come from, have you? By God, you’re as tall as your father and nearly as broad.” She was also as independent and self-willed as ever.
“Sally is like you,” Jack said.
She was pleased. “Is she?” She smiled. “In what way?”
“In her mulish obstinacy.”
“Huh.” Mother looked cross. “She’ll be all right then.”
Jack decided he might as well beg. “Mother, please-come to Kingsbridge with us and tell the truth.”
“I don’t know,” she said.
Jonathan said: “I have something else to ask you.”
Jack wondered what was coming. He was afraid Jonathan might say something to antagonize his mother: it was easily done, especially by clergymen. He held his breath.
Jonathan said: “Could you show me where my mother is buried?”
Jack let his breath out silently. There was nothing wrong with that. Indeed, Jonathan could hardly have thought of anything more likely to soften her.
She dropped her scornful manner immediately. “Of course I’ll show you,” she said. “I’m pretty sure I could find it.”
Jack was reluctant to spend the time. The trial would start in the morning and they had a long way to go. But he sensed that he should let fate take its course.
Mother said to Jonathan: “Do you want to go there now?”
“Yes, please, if it’s possible.”
“All right.” She stood up. She picked up a short cape of rabbit fur and slung it across her shoulders. Jack was about to tell her she would be too warm in that, but he held back: old people always felt colder.
They left the cave, with its smell of stored apples and wood smoke, and pushed through the concealing vegetation around its mouth to emerge into the spring sunshine. Mother set off without hesitation. Jack and Jonathan untied their horses and followed. They had to lead their mounts, for the terrain was too overgrown for riding. Jack noticed that his mother walked more slowly than she used to. She was not as fit as she pretended.
Jack could not have found the site on his own. There had been a time when he could find his way around this forest as easily as he could now move around Kingsbridge. But one clearing looked very much like another to him these days, just as the houses of Kingsbridge would all look the same to a stranger. Mother followed a chain of animal trails through the dense woodland. Now and again Jack would recognize a landmark associated with some childhood memory: an enormous old oak where he had once taken refuge from a wild boar; a rabbit warren that had provided many a dinner; a trout stream where, it seemed in retrospect, he had been able to catch fat fish in no time. For a while he would know where he was, then he would be lost again. It was amazing to think he had once felt totally at home in what was now an alien place, its brooks and thickets as meaningless to him as his voussoirs and templates were to peasants. If he had ever wondered, in those days, how his life would turn out, his best guess would have been nowhere near the truth.
They walked several miles. It was a warm spring day, and Jack found himself sweating, but Mother kept the rabbit fur on. Toward midafternoon she came to a halt in a shady clearing. Jack noticed she was breathing hard and looking a little gray. It was definitely time she left the forest, and came to live with him and Aliena. He resolved that he would make a big effort to persuade her.
“Are you all right?” he said.
“Of course I’m all right,” she snapped. “We’re there.”
Jack looked around. He did not recognize it.
Jonathan said: “Is this it?”
“Yes,” Mother said.
Jack said: “Where’s the road?”
“Over there.”
When Jack had oriented himself with the road, the clearing began to look familiar, and he was flooded with a powerful sense of the past. There was the big horse-chestnut tree: it had been bare of leaves, then, and there had been conkers all over the forest floor, but now the tree was in blossom, with big white flowers like candles all over it. The blossom had started to fall already, and every few moments a cloud of petals drifted down.
“Martha told me what had happened,” Jack said. “They stopped here because your mother could go no farther. Tom made a fire and boiled some turnips for supper: there was no meat. Your mother gave birth to you right here, on the ground. You were perfectly healthy, but something went wrong, and she died.” There was a slight rise in the ground a few feet from the base of the tree. “Look,” Jack said. “See the mound?”
Jonathan nodded, his face taut with suppressed emotion.
“That’s the grave.” As Jack spoke, a drift of blossom fell from the tree and settled over the mound like a carpet of petals.
Jonathan knelt beside the grave and began to pray.
Jack stood silent. He remembered when he had discovered his relatives in Cherbourg: it had been a devastating experience. What Jonathan was going through must be even more intense.
Eventually Jonathan stood up. “When I’m prior,” he said solemnly, “I’m going to build a little monastery just here, with a chapel and a hostel, so that in future no traveler on this stretch of road will ever have to spend a cold winter’s night sleeping in the open air. I’ll dedicate the hostel to the memory of my mother.” He looked at Jack. “I don’t suppose you ever knew her name, did you?”
“It was Agnes,” Ellen said softly. “Your mother’s name was Agnes.”
Bishop Waleran made a persuasive case.
He began by telling the court about Philip’s precocious development: cellarer of his monastery when he was only twenty-one, prior of the cell of St-John-in-the-Forest at twenty-three; prior of Kingsbridge at the remarkably young age of twenty-eight. He constantly emphasized Philip’s youth and managed to suggest there was something arrogant about anyone who accepted responsibility early. Then he described St-John-in-the-Forest, its remoteness and isolation, and spoke of the freedom and independence of whoever was its prior. “Who can be surprised,” he said, “that after five years as virtually his own master, with only the lightest and most distant kind of supervision, this inexperienced, warm-blooded young man had a child?” It sounded almost inevitable. Waleran was infuriatingly credible. Philip wanted to strangle him.
Waleran went on to say how Philip had brought Jonathan and Johnny Eightpence with him when he came to Kingsbridge. The monks had been startled, Waleran said, when their new prior arrived with a baby and a nurse. That was true. For a moment Philip forgot his tension, and had to suppress a nostalgic smile.
Philip had played with Jonathan as a youngster, taught him lessons, and later made the lad his personal assistant, Waleran went on, just as any man would do with his own son, except that monks were not supposed to have sons. “Jonathan was precocious, just like Philip,” Waleran said. “When Cuthbert Whitehead died, Philip made Jonathan cellarer, even though Jonathan was only twenty-one. Was there really no one else who could be cellarer, in this monastery of more than a hundred monks; no one but a boy of twenty-one? Or was Philip giving preference to his own flesh and blood? When Milius went off to be prior at Glastonbury, Philip made Jonathan treasurer. He is thirty-four years old. Is he the wisest and most devout of all the monks here? Or is he simply Philip’s favorite?”
Philip looked around at the court. It was being held in the south transept of Kingsbridge Cathedral. Archdeacon Peter sat on a large, ornately carved chair like a throne. All of Waleran’s staff were present, as were most of the monks of Kingsbridge. There would be little work done in the monastery while the prior was on trial. Every important churchman in the county was here, even some of the humble parish priests. There were also representatives from neighboring dioceses. The entire ecclesiastical community of southern England was waiting for the verdict of this court. They were not very interested in Philip’s virtue, or lack of it, of course: they were following the final trial of strength between Prior Philip and Bishop Waleran.
When Waleran sat down Philip took the oath, then began to tell the story of that winter morning so long ago. He started with the upset caused by Peter of Wareham: he wanted everyone to know that Peter was prejudiced against him. Then he called Francis to tell how the baby was found.
Jonathan had gone off, leaving a message to say that he was on the track of new information about his parentage. Jack had disappeared too, from which Philip had concluded that the trip had something to do with Jack’s mother, the witch Ellen, and that Jonathan had been afraid that if he stayed to explain, Philip would have forbidden the journey. They had been due back this morning, but had not yet arrived. Philip did not think Ellen would have anything to add to the story Francis was telling.
When Francis had done, Philip began to speak. “That baby was not mine,” he said simply. “I swear it was not mine, in peril of my immortal soul I swear it. I have never had carnal knowledge of a woman, and I remain to this day in that state of chastity commended to us by the Apostle Paul. So why, the lord bishop asks, did I treat the babe as if it were my own?”
He looked around at the listeners. He had decided that his only chance was to tell the truth and hope that God would speak loud enough to overcome Peter’s spiritual deafness. “When I was six years old, my father and mother died. They were killed by soldiers of the old King Henry, in Wales. My brother and I were saved by the abbot of a nearby monastery, and from that day onward we were cared for by monks. I was a monastery orphan. I know what it’s like. I understand how the orphan yearns for a mother’s touch, even though he loves the brothers who care for him. I knew that Jonathan would feel abnormal, peculiar, illegitimate. I have felt that feeling of isolation, the sense that I am different from everyone else because they all have a father and a mother and I do not. Like him, I have felt ashamed of myself for being a burden on the charity of others; have wondered what was wrong with me, that I should have been deprived of what others took for granted. I knew that he would dream, in the night, of the warm, fragrant bosom and soft voice of a mother he never knew, someone who loved him utterly and completely.”
Archdeacon Peter’s face was like stone. He was the worst kind of Christian, Philip realized: he embraced all of the negatives, enforced every proscription, insisted on all forms of denial, and demanded strict punishment for every offense; yet he ignored all the compassion of Christianity, denied its mercy, flagrantly disobeyed its ethic of love, and openly flouted the gentle laws of Jesus. That’s what the Pharisees were like, Philip thought; no wonder the Lord preferred to eat with publicans and sinners.
He went on, although he understood, with a sinking heart, that nothing he could say would penetrate the armor of Peter’s righteousness. “Nobody could care for that boy as I could, unless it were his own parents; and those we never could find. What clearer indication of God’s will…” He tailed off. Jonathan had just come into the church, with Jack; and between them was the witch, Jack’s mother.
She had aged: her hair was snow-white, and her face was deeply lined. But she walked in like a queen, her head held high, her strange golden eyes blazing with defiance. Philip was too surprised to protest.
The court was silent as she entered the transept and stood facing Archdeacon Peter. She spoke in a voice that rang like a trumpet, and echoed from the clerestory of her son’s church. “I swear by all that is holy that Jonathan is the son of Tom Builder, my dead husband, and his first wife.”
There was an astonished clamor from the crowd of clergy. For a while nobody could be heard. Philip was completely bowled over. He stared openmouthed at Ellen. Tom Builder? Jonathan was the son of Tom Builder? When he looked at Jonathan he knew immediately that it was true: they were alike, not just in their height, but facially. If Jonathan had had a beard it would have been obvious.
His first reaction was a sense of loss. Until now, he had been the nearest Jonathan had to a father. But Tom was Jonathan’s real father, and although Tom was dead, the discovery changed everything. Philip could no longer secretly think of himself as a father; Jonathan would no longer feel like his son. Jonathan was Tom’s son now. Philip had lost him.
Philip sat down heavily. When the crowd began to quiet down, Ellen told the story of Jack hearing a cry and finding a newborn baby. Philip listened, dazed, as she told how she and Tom had hidden in the bushes, watching, as Philip and the monks came back from their morning’s work to find Francis waiting for them with a newborn baby, and Johnny Eightpence trying to feed it with a rag dipped into a bucket of goat’s milk.
Philip remembered very clearly how interested the young Tom had been, a day or so later, when they had met by accident and Philip had told him about the abandoned baby. Philip had assumed his interest was that of any compassionate man in a touching story, but in fact Tom had been learning the fate of his own child.
Then Philip recalled how fond Tom had been of Jonathan in later years, as the baby turned into a toddler and then a mischievous boy. Nobody had remarked on it: the whole monastery had treated Jonathan as a pet in those days and Tom spent all his time in the priory close, so his behavior was completely unremarkable; but now, in retrospect, Philip could see that the attention Tom paid to Jonathan was special.
As Ellen sat down, Philip realized that he had been proved innocent. Ellen’s revelations had been so devastating that he had almost forgotten he was on trial. Her story of childbirth and death, desperation and hope, ancient secrets and enduring love, made the question of Philip’s chastity seem trivial. It was not trivial, of course; the future of the priory hung on it; and Ellen had now answered the question so dramatically that it seemed impossible the trial should continue. Even Peter of Wareham can’t find me guilty after evidence like this, Philip thought. Waleran had lost again.
Waleran was not quite ready to concede defeat, however. He pointed an accusing finger at Ellen. “You say Tom Builder told you that the baby brought to the cell was his.”
“Yes,” Ellen said warily.
“But the other two people who might have been able to confirm this-the children Alfred and Martha-did not accompany you to the monastery.”
“No.”
“And Tom is dead, So we only have your word for it that Tom said this to you. Your story cannot be verified.”
“How much verification do you want?” she said spiritedly. “Jack saw the abandoned baby. Francis picked it up. Jack and I met Tom and Alfred and Martha. Francis took the baby to the priory. Tom and I spied on the priory. How many witnesses would satisfy you?”
“I don’t believe you,” Waleran said.
“You don’t believe me?” Ellen said, and suddenly Philip could see she was angry, deeply and passionately angry. “You don’t believe me? You, Waleran Bigod, whom I know to be a perjurer?”
What on earth was coming now? Philip had a premonition of cataclysm. Waleran had blanched. There’s something more here, Philip thought; something Waleran is afraid of. He felt an excited fluttering in his belly. Waleran had a vulnerable look all of a sudden.
Philip said to Ellen: “How do you know the bishop to be a perjurer?”
“Forty-seven years ago, in this very priory, there was a prisoner called Jack Shareburg,” Ellen said.
Waleran interrupted her. “This court isn’t interested in events that took place so long ago.”
Philip said: “Yes it is. The accusation against me refers to an alleged act of fornication thirty-five years ago, my lord bishop. You have demanded that I prove my innocence. The court will now expect no less of you.” He turned to Ellen. “Continue.”
“No one knew why he was a prisoner, least of all himself; but the time came when he was set free, and given a jeweled cup, perhaps as recompense for the years he had been unjustly confined. He didn’t want a jeweled cup, of course: he had no use for it, and it was too precious to be sold at a market. He left it behind, in the old cathedral here at Kingsbridge. Soon afterward he was arrested-by Waleran Bigod, who was then a plain country priest, humble but ambitious-and the cup mysteriously reappeared in Jack’s bag. Jack Shareburg was falsely accused of stealing the cup. He was convicted on the oaths of three people: Waleran Bigod, Percy Hamleigh, and Prior James of Kingsbridge. And he was hanged.”
There was a moment’s stunned silence, then Philip said: “How do you know all this?”
“I was Jack Shareburg’s only friend, and he was the father of my son, Jack Jackson, the master builder of this cathedral.”
There was uproar. Waleran and Peter were both trying to speak at the same time but neither could be heard over the astonished hubbub of the assembled clergymen. They came to see a showdown, Philip thought, but they never expected this.
Eventually Peter made himself heard. “Why would three law-abiding citizens conspire to falsely accuse an innocent stranger?” he said skeptically.
“For gain,” Ellen said. “Waleran Bigod was made an archdeacon. Percy was given the manor of Hamleigh and several other villages, and became a man of property. I don’t know what reward was received by Prior James.”
“I can answer that,” said a new voice.
Philip looked around, startled: the speaker was Remigius. He was well past his seventieth year, white-haired and inclined to ramble when he talked; but now, as he stood up with the help of a walking stick, his eyes were bright and his expression alert. It was rare to hear him speak publicly: since his downfall and return to the monastery he had lived a quiet and humble life. Philip wondered what was coming. Whose side was Remigius going to take? Would he seize a last opportunity to stab his old enemy Philip in the back?
“I can tell you what reward Prior James received,” Remigius said. “The priory was given the villages of Northwold, Southwold and Hundredacre, plus the forest of Oldean.”
Philip was aghast. Could it be true that the old prior had given false testimony, under oath, for the sake of a few villages?
“Prior James was never a good manager,” Remigius went on. “The priory was in difficulty, and he thought the extra income would help us out.” Remigius paused, then said incisively: “It did little good and much harm. The income was useful for a while, but Prior James never recovered his self-respect.”
Listening to Remigius, Philip recalled the stooped, defeated air of the old prior, and at last understood it.
Remigius said: “James had not actually perjured himself, for he swore only that the cup belonged to the priory; but he knew Jack Shareburg was innocent, yet he remained silent. He regretted that silence for the rest of his life.”
He would, Philip thought; it was such a venal sin for a monk. Remigius’s testimony confirmed Ellen’s story-and condemned Waleran.
Remigius was still speaking. “A few of the older ones here today will remember what the priory was like forty years ago: rundown, penniless, decrepit, demoralized. That was because of the weight of guilt hanging over the prior. When he was dying, he finally confessed his sin to me. I wanted-” Remigius broke off. The church was silent, waiting. The old man sighed and resumed. “I wanted to take over his position and repair the damage. But God chose another man for that task.” He paused again, and his old face worked painfully as he struggled to finish. “I should say: God chose a better man.” He sat down abruptly.
Philip was shocked, bemused and grateful. Two old enemies, Ellen and Remigius, had rescued him. The revelation of these ancient secrets made him feel as if he had been living with one eye closed. Bishop Waleran was livid with rage. He must have felt sure he was safe after all these years. He was leaning over Peter, speaking into the archdeacon’s ear, while a buzz of comment rose from the audience.
Peter stood up and shouted: “Silence!” The church went quiet. “This court is closed!” he said.
“Wait a minute!” It was Jack Jackson. “That’s not good enough!” he said passionately. “I want to know why.”
Ignoring Jack, Peter walked toward the door that led into the cloisters, and Waleran followed him.
Jack went after them. “Why did you do it?” he shouted at Waleran. “You lied on oath, and a man died-are you going to walk out of here without another word?”
Waleran looked straight ahead, white-faced, tight-lipped, his expression a mask of suppressed rage. As he went through the door Jack yelled: “Answer me, you lying corrupt worthless coward! Why did you kill my father?”
Waleran walked out of the church and the door slammed behind him.
THE LETTER FROM KING HENRY arrived while the monks were in chapter.
Jack had built a big new chapter house to accommodate the one hundred and fifty monks-the largest number in a single monastery in all England. The round building had a stone vaulted ceiling and tiers of steps for the monks to sit on. Monastic officers sat on stone benches around the walls, a little above the level of the rest; and Philip and Jonathan had carved stone thrones against the wall opposite the door.
A young monk was reading the seventh chapter of the Rule of Saint Benedict. “The sixth step of humility is reached when a monk is content with all that is mean and vile…” Philip realized he did not know the name of the monk who was reading. Was that because he was getting old, or because the monastery was so big? “The seventh step of humility is reached when a man not only confesses with his tongue that he is most lowly and inferior to others, but in his inmost heart believes so.” Philip knew he had not yet reached that stage of humility. He had achieved a great deal in his sixty-two years, and he had achieved it through courage and determination and the use of his brain; and he needed to remind himself constantly that the real reason for his success was that he had enjoyed the help of God, without which all his efforts would have come to nothing.
Beside him, Jonathan shifted restlessly. Jonathan had even more trouble with the virtue of humility than Philip did. Arrogance was the vice of good leaders. Jonathan was ready to take over the priory now, and he was impatient. He had been talking to Aliena, and he was eager to try out her farming techniques, such as plowing with horses, and planting spring crops of peas and oats on part of the fallow land. I was just the same about raising sheep for wool, thirty-five years ago, Philip thought.
He knew he should step down and let Jonathan take over as prior. He himself should spend his declining years in prayer and meditation. It was a course he had often prescribed for others. But now that he was old enough to retire, the prospect appalled him. His constitution was as sound as a bell and his mind was as lively as ever. A life of prayer and meditation would drive him mad.
However, Jonathan would not wait forever. God had given him the skills to run a major monastery, and he was not planning to waste his talents. He had visited numerous abbeys over the years, and made a good impression wherever he went. One of these days, when an abbot died, the monks would ask Jonathan to stand for election, and it would be hard for Philip to refuse permission.
The young monk whose name Philip could not remember was just finishing the chapter when there was a knock on the door and the gatekeeper came in. Brother Steven, the circuitor, frowned at him: he was not supposed to disturb the monks in chapter. The circuitor was responsible for discipline, and like all such men Steven was a stickler for the rules.
The gatekeeper said in a loud whisper: “There’s a messenger from the king!”
Philip said to Jonathan: “See to it, would you?” The messenger would insist on handing his letter to a senior monastic officer. Jonathan went out. The monks were all whispering to one another. Philip said firmly: “We will continue with the necrology.”
As the prayers for the dead began, he wondered what the second King Henry had to say to Kingsbridge Priory. It was not likely to be good news. Henry had been at loggerheads with the Church for six long years. The quarrel had started over the jurisdiction of ecclesiastical courts, but the willfulness of the king and the zeal of the archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket, had prevented compromise, and a dispute had grown into a crisis. Becket had been forced into exile.
Sadly, the English Church was not unanimous in supporting him. Bishops such as Waleran Bigod took the king’s side in order to gain royal favor. However, the pope was putting pressure on Henry to make peace with Becket. Perhaps the worst consequence of the whole dispute was that Henry’s need for support within the English Church gave power-hungry bishops such as Waleran greater influence at court. That was why a letter from the king was even more ominous than usual to Philip.
Jonathan returned and handed Philip a roll of vellum fastened with wax, the wax impressed with the mark of an enormous royal seal. All the monks were looking. Philip decided it was too much to ask them to concentrate on praying for dead people when he had such a letter in his hand. “All right,” he said. “We’ll continue the prayers later.” He broke the seal and opened the letter. He glanced at the salutation, then handed the letter to Jonathan, whose young eyes were better. “Read it to us, please.”
After the usual greetings, the king wrote: “As the new Bishop of Lincoln, I have nominated Waleran Bigod, currently Bishop of Kingsbridge…” Jonathan’s voice was drowned by the buzz of comment. Philip shook his head disgustedly. Waleran had lost all credibility locally since the revelations at the trial of Philip: there was no way he could continue as bishop. So he had persuaded the king to nominate him bishop of Lincoln-one of the richest bishoprics in the world. Lincoln was the third most important diocese in the kingdom, after Canterbury and York. From there it was only a short step to an archbishopric. Henry might even be grooming Waleran to take over from Thomas Becket. The thought of Waleran as archbishop of Canterbury, leader of the English Church, was so appalling that Philip felt sick with fear.
When the monks calmed down Jonathan resumed: “… and I have recommended the Dean and Chapter of Lincoln to elect him.” Well, that was easier said than done, Philip thought. A royal recommendation was almost an order, but not quite: if the chapter at Lincoln took against Waleran, or if they had a candidate of their own, they would give the king trouble. The king would probably get his way in the end but it was not a foregone conclusion.
Jonathan went on: “I order you, the Chapter of the Priory of Kingsbridge, to hold an election for the new Bishop of Kingsbridge; and I recommend you to elect as Bishop my servant Peter of Wareham, Archdeacon of Canterbury.”
A collective shout of protest went up from the assembled monks. Philip went cold with horror. The arrogant, resentful, self-righteous Archdeacon Peter was the king’s choice as the new bishop of Kingsbridge! Peter was exactly the same type as Waleran. Both men were genuinely pious and God-fearing, but had no sense of their own fallibility, so they saw their own wishes as God’s will, and pursued their aims with utter ruthlessness in consequence. With Peter as bishop, Jonathan would spend his life as prior battling for justice and decency in a county ruled with an iron fist by a man with no heart. And if Waleran became archbishop there would be no prospect of relief.
Philip saw a long dark age ahead, like the worst period of the civil war, when earls of William’s type did as they pleased while arrogant priests neglected their people and the priory shrank once again to an impoverished and enfeebled shadow of its former self. The thought angered him.
He was not the only angry one. Steven Circuitor stood up, red-faced, and shouted, “It shall not be!,” at the top of his voice, despite Philip’s rule that in chapter everyone must speak calmly and quietly.
The monks cheered, but Jonathan proved his wisdom by asking the crucial question: “What can we do?”
Bernard Kitchener, fat as ever, said: “We must refuse the king’s request!”
Several monks voiced their agreement.
Steven said: “We should write to the king saying we will elect whom we please!” After a moment he added sheepishly: “With God’s guidance, of course.”
Jonathan said: “I don’t agree that we should refuse point-blank. The quicker we are to defy the king, the sooner we will bring his wrath down on our heads.”
Philip said: “Jonathan is right. A man who loses a battle with his king may be forgiven, but a man who wins such a battle is doomed.”
Steven burst out: “But you’re just giving in!”
Philip was as worried and fearful as all the others, but he had to appear calm. “Steven, be temperate, please,” he said. “We must fight against this awful appointment, of course. But we will do it carefully and cleverly, always avoiding open confrontation.”
Steven said: “But what are you going to do?”
“I’m not sure,” Philip said. He had been despondent at first, but now he was beginning to feel aggressive. He had fought this battle over and over again, all his life. He had fought it here in the priory, when he defeated Remigius and became prior; he had fought it in the county, against William Hamleigh and Waleran Bigod; and now he was going to fight it nationally. He was going to take on the king.
“I think I’ll have to go to France,” he said. “To see Archbishop Thomas Becket.”
In every other crisis, throughout his life, Philip had been able to come up with a plan. Whenever he or his priory or his town had been threatened by the forces of lawlessness and savagery, he had thought of some form of defense or counterattack. He had not always been sure of success but he had never been at a loss to know what to do-until now.
He was still baffled when he arrived at the city of Sens, southeast of Paris in the Kingdom of France.
The cathedral at Sens was the widest building he had ever seen. The nave had to be fifty feet across. By comparison with Kingsbridge Cathedral, Sens gave an impression of space rather than light.
Traveling through France, for the first time in his life he had realized there were more varieties of church in the world than he had previously imagined, and he understood the revolutionary effect travel had had on Jack Jackson’s thinking. Philip made sure to visit the abbey church of Saint-Denis when he passed through Paris, and he had seen where Jack got some of his ideas. He had also seen two churches with flying buttresses like those at Kingsbridge: obviously other master masons had been confronted with the problem Jack had faced, and had come up with the same solution.
Philip went to pay his respects to the archbishop of Sens, William Whitehands, a brilliant young clergyman who was the nephew of the late King Stephen. Archbishop William invited Philip to dinner. Philip was flattered, but he declined the invitation: he had come a long way to see Thomas Becket and now that he was so close he was impatient. After attending mass in the cathedral he followed the River Yonne northward out of the town.
He was traveling light, for the prior of one of the wealthiest monasteries in England: he had with him only two men-at-arms for protection, a young monk called Michael of Bristol as his aide, and a packhorse loaded with holy books, copied and beautifully illustrated in the scriptorium at Kingsbridge, to use as gifts for the abbots and bishops he called on during the journey. The costly books made impressive presents and contrasted sharply with the modesty of Philip’s entourage. This was deliberate: he wanted people to respect the priory, not the prior.
Just outside the north gate of Sens, in a sunny meadow by the river, he found the venerable abbey of Sainte-Colombe, where Archbishop Thomas had been living for the past three years. One of Thomas’s priests greeted him warmly, called servants to take care of his horses and baggage, and ushered him into the guesthouse where the archbishop was staying. It occurred to Philip that the exiles must be glad to receive visitors from home, not just for sentimental reasons, but because it was a sign of support.
Philip and his aide were given food and wine and introduced to Thomas’s household. His men were all priests, mostly young and-Philip thought-rather clever. Within a short while Michael was arguing with one of them about transubstantiation. Philip sipped a cup of wine and listened without taking part. Eventually one of the priests said to him: “What’s your view, Father Philip? You haven’t said anything yet.”
Philip smiled. “Knotty theological questions are the least worrying of problems, to me.”
“Why?”
“Because they will all be resolved in the hereafter, and meanwhile they can safely be shelved.”
“Well spoken!” said a new voice, and Philip looked up to see Archbishop Thomas of Canterbury.
He was immediately aware of being in the presence of a remarkable man. Thomas was tall, slender and exceptionally handsome, with a wide forehead, bright eyes, fair skin and dark hair. He was about ten years younger than Philip, around fifty or fifty-one. Despite his misfortunes he had a lively, cheerful expression. He was, Philip saw instantly, a very attractive man; and this partly explained his remarkable rise from humble beginnings.
Philip knelt and kissed his hand.
Thomas said: “I’m so glad to make your acquaintance! I’ve always wanted to visit Kingsbridge-I’ve heard so much about your priory and the marvelous new cathedral.”
Philip was charmed and flattered. He said: “I’ve come to see you because everything we’ve achieved has been put in peril by the king.”
“I want to hear all about it, right away,” Thomas said. “Come into my chamber.” He turned around and swept out.
Philip followed, feeling at once pleased and apprehensive.
Thomas led him into a smaller room. There was a costly leather-and-wood bed covered with fine linen sheets and an embroidered quilt, but Philip also saw a thin mattress rolled up in a corner, and he recalled stories that Thomas never used the luxurious furniture provided by his hosts. Remembering his own comfortable bed in Kingsbridge, Philip suffered a pang of guilt to think that he snored in comfort while the primate of all England slept on the floor.
“Speaking of cathedrals,” said Thomas, “what did you think of Sens?”
“Amazing,” Philip said. “Who’s the master builder?”
“William of Sens. I’m hoping to lure him to Canterbury one day. Sit down. Tell me what’s happening in Kingsbridge.”
Philip told Thomas about Bishop Waleran and Archdeacon Peter. Thomas appeared deeply interested in everything Philip said, and asked several perceptive questions. As well as charm, he had brains. He had needed both, to rise to a position from which he could frustrate the will of one of the strongest kings England had ever had. Underneath his archbishop’s robes, it was rumored, Thomas wore a hair shirt; and beneath that charming exterior, Philip reminded himself, there was a will of iron.
When Philip had finished his story, Thomas looked grave. “This must not be allowed to happen,” he said.
“Indeed,” Philip said. Thomas’s firm tone was encouraging. “Can you stop it?”
“Only if I’m restored to Canterbury.”
That was not the answer Philip had been hoping for. “But can’t you write to the pope, even now?”
“I will,” Thomas said. “Today. The pope will not recognize Peter as bishop of Kingsbridge, I promise you. But we can’t stop him from sitting in the bishop’s palace. And we can’t appoint another man.”
Philip was shocked and demoralized by the decisiveness of Thomas’s negative. All the way here he had nursed the hope that Thomas would do what he had failed to do, and come up with a way to frustrate Waleran’s scheme. But the brilliant Thomas was also stumped. All he could offer was the hope that he would be reinstated at Canterbury. Then, of course, he would have the power to veto episcopal appointments. Philip said dejectedly: “Is there any hope you’ll come back soon?”
“Some hope, if you’re an optimist,” Thomas replied. “The pope has devised a peace treaty which he urges me and Henry to agree to. The terms are acceptable to me: the treaty gives me what I’ve been campaigning for. Henry says it is acceptable to him. I have insisted that he demonstrate his sincerity by giving me the kiss of peace. He refuses.” As he spoke, Thomas’s voice changed. The natural rise and fall of conversation flattened out and became an insistent monotone. All the vivacity went out of his face, and he took on the look of a priest delivering a sermon on self-denial to a heedless congregation. Philip saw in his expression the stubbornness and pride that had kept him fighting all these years. “The refusal of the kiss is a sign that he plans to lure me back to England and then renege on the terms of the agreement.”
Philip nodded. The kiss of peace, which was part of the ritual of the mass, was the symbol of trust, and no contract, from a wedding to a truce, was complete without it. “What can I do?” he said, as much to himself as to Thomas.
“Go back to England and campaign for me,” Thomas said. “Write letters to your fellow priors and abbots. Send a delegation from Kingsbridge to the pope. Petition the king. Preach sermons in your famous cathedral, telling the people of the county that their most senior priest has been spurned by their king.”
Philip nodded. He was going to do nothing of the kind. Thomas was telling him to line up with the opposition to the king. That might do Thomas’s morale some good but it would achieve nothing for Kingsbridge.
Philip had a better idea. If Henry and Thomas were this close it might not take much to push them together. Perhaps, Philip thought hopefully, there was something he could do. The idea excited his optimism. It was a long shot, but he had nothing to lose.
After all, they were only arguing about a kiss.
Philip was shocked to see how his brother had aged.
Francis’s hair was gray, there were leathery bags under his eyes, and the skin of his face looked desiccated. However, he was sixty years old, so perhaps it was not surprising. And he was bright-eyed and sprightly.
Philip realized that what was bothering him was his own age. As always, seeing his brother made him aware of how he himself must have aged. He had not looked in a mirror for years. He wondered if he had bags under his eyes. He touched his face. It was hard to tell.
“What’s Henry like to work for?” Philip asked, curious, as everyone was, to know what kings were like in private.
“Better than Maud,” Francis said. “She was cleverer, but too devious. Henry is very open. You always know what he’s thinking.”
They were sitting in the cloisters of a monastery at Bayeux, where Philip was staying. King Henry’s court was billeted nearby. Francis was still working for Henry, as he had for the last twenty years. He was now head of the chancery, the office that wrote out all the royal letters and charters. It was an important and powerful post.
Philip said: “Open? Henry? Archbishop Thomas doesn’t think so.”
“Yet another major error of judgment on Thomas’s part,” Francis said scornfully.
Philip thought Francis ought not to be so contemptuous of the archbishop. “Thomas is a great man,” he said.
“Thomas wants to be king,” Francis snapped.
“And Henry seems to want to be archbishop,” Philip rejoined.
They glared at one another for a moment. If we’re having a row already, Philip thought, it’s no surprise that Henry and Thomas are fighting so fiercely. He smiled and said: “Well, you and I shouldn’t quarrel about it, anyway.”
Francis’s face softened. “No, of course not. Remember, this dispute has been the plague of my life for six years now. I can’t be as detached about it as you.”
Philip nodded. “But why won’t Henry accept the pope’s peace plan?”
“He will,” Francis said. “We’re a whisker away from reconciliation. But Thomas wants more. He’s insisting on the kiss of peace.”
“But if the king is sincere, surely he should give the kiss of peace as a surety?”
Francis raised his voice. “It’s not in the plan!” he said in an exasperated tone.
“But why not give it anyway?” Philip argued.
Francis sighed. “He would gladly. But he once swore an oath, in public, never to give Thomas the kiss of peace.”
“Plenty of kings have broken oaths,” Philip argued.
“Weak kings. Henry won’t go back on a public oath. That’s the kind of thing that makes him different from the wretched King Stephen.”
“Then the Church probably shouldn’t try to persuade him otherwise,” Philip conceded reluctantly.
“So why is Thomas so insistent on the kiss?” Francis said in an exasperated tone.
“Because he doesn’t trust Henry. What is to stop Henry from reneging on the deal? What could Thomas do about it? Go into exile again? His supporters have been staunch, but they’re weary. Thomas can’t go through all this again. So, before he yields, he must have iron guarantees.”
Francis shook his head sadly. “It’s become a question of pride, now, though,” he said. “I know Henry has no intention of double-crossing Thomas. But he won’t be compelled. He hates to feel coerced.”
“It’s the same with Thomas, I think,” Philip said. “He’s asked for this token, and he can’t back down.” He shook his head wearily. He had thought that Francis might be able to suggest a way to bring the two men together, but the task looked impossible.
“The irony of the whole thing is that Henry would gladly kiss Thomas after they’re reconciled,” Francis said. “He just won’t accept it as a precondition.”
“Did he say that?” said Philip.
“Yes.”
“But that changes everything!” Philip said excitedly. “What did he say, exactly?”
“He said: ‘I’ll kiss his mouth, I’ll kiss his feet, and I’ll hear him say mass-after he comes back.’ I heard him myself.”
“I’m going to tell Thomas this.”
“Do you think he might accept that?” Francis said eagerly.
“I don’t know.” Philip hardly dared to hope. “It seems such a small climb-down. He gets the kiss-it’s just a little later than he wanted it.”
“And for Henry, a similar small climb-down,” Francis said with rising excitement. “He gives the kiss, but voluntarily, rather than under compulsion. By God, it might work.”
“They could have a reconciliation at Canterbury. The whole agreement could be announced in advance, so that neither of them could change things at the last minute. Thomas could say mass and Henry could give him the kiss, there in the cathedral.” And then, he thought, Thomas could block Waleran’s evil plans.
“I’m going to propose this to the king,” Francis said.
“And I to Thomas.”
The monastery bell rang. The two brothers stood up.
“Be persuasive,” Philip said. “If this works, Thomas can return to Canterbury-and if Thomas comes back, Waleran Bigod is finished.”
They met in a pretty meadow on the bank of a river at the frontier between Normandy and the Kingdom of France, near the towns of Fréteval and Vievy-le-Raye. King Henry was already there, with his entourage, when Thomas arrived with Archbishop William of Sens. Philip, in Thomas’s party, spotted his brother, Francis, with the king, on the far side of the field.
Henry and Thomas had reached agreement-in theory.
Both had accepted the compromise, whereby the kiss of peace would be given at a reconciliation mass after Becket returned to England. However, the deal was not done until the two of them had met.
Thomas rode out to the middle of the field, leaving his people behind, and Henry did the same, while everyone looked on with bated breath.
They talked for hours.
Nobody else could hear what was being said, but everyone could guess. They were talking about Henry’s offenses against the Church, the way the English bishops had disobeyed Thomas, the controversial Constitutions of Clarendon, Thomas’s exile, the role of the pope… Initially Philip was afraid they would quarrel bitterly and part worse enemies. They had been close to agreement before, and had met like this, and then something had come up, some point that touched the pride of one or both, so that they had exchanged harsh words and then stormed off, each blaming the intransigence of the other. But the longer they talked, the more optimistic Philip became. If one of them had been ready to storm off, it would surely have happened early on, he felt.
The hot summer afternoon began to cool, and the shadows of the elms lengthened across the river. The tension was unbearable.
Then at last something happened. Thomas moved.
Was he going to ride away? No. He was dismounting. What did it mean? Philip watched breathlessly. Thomas got off his horse, approached Henry, and knelt at the king’s feet.
The king dismounted and embraced Thomas.
The courtiers on both sides cheered and threw their hats into the air.
Philip felt tears come to his eyes. The conflict had been resolved-by reason and goodwill. This was how things ought to be.
Perhaps it was an omen for the future.
It was Christmas Day, and the king was in a rage.
William Hamleigh was frightened. He had known only one person with a temper like King Henry’s, and that was his mother. Henry was almost as terrifying as she. He was an intimidating man anyway, with his broad shoulders and deep chest and huge head; but when he was angry his blue-gray eyes became bloodshot, his freckled face went red, and his customary restlessness turned into the furious pacing of a captive bear.
They were at Bur-le-Roi, a hunting lodge of Henry’s, in a park near the Normandy coast. Henry should have been happy. He liked to hunt better than anything else in the world, and this was one of his favorite places. But he was furious, And the reason was Archbishop Thomas of Canterbury.
“Thomas, Thomas, Thomas! That’s all I hear from you pestilential prelates! Thomas is doing this-Thomas is doing that-Thomas insulted you-Thomas was unjust to you. I’m sick of Thomas!”
William furtively scrutinized the faces of the earls, bishops and other dignitaries around the Christmas dinner table in the great hall. Most of them looked nervous. Only one had a look of contentment: Waleran Bigod.
Waleran had predicted that Henry would soon quarrel with Thomas again. Thomas had won too decisively, he said; the pope’s peace plan forced the king to yield too much, and there would be further rows as Thomas tried to collect on the royal promises. But Waleran had not simply sat back to wait and see what would happen: he had worked hard to make his prediction come true. With William’s help, Waleran constantly brought Henry complaints about what Thomas had been doing since he returned to England: riding around the countryside with an army of knights, visiting his cronies and cooking up any number of treacherous schemes, and punishing clergymen who had supported the king during the exile. Waleran embroidered these reports before passing them on to the king, but there was some truth in everything he said. However, he was fanning the flames of a fire that was already burning well. All those who had deserted Thomas during the six years of the quarrel, and were now living in fear of retribution, were keen to vilify him to the king.
So Waleran looked happy while Henry raged. And well he might. He stood to suffer more than most from the return of Thomas. The archbishop had refused to endorse the nomination of Waleran as bishop of Lincoln. Nevertheless, Thomas had come up with his own nominee as bishop of Kingsbridge: Prior Philip. If Thomas had his way, Waleran would lose Kingsbridge but would not gain Lincoln. He would be ruined.
William’s own position would suffer too. With Aliena acting as earl, Waleran gone, Philip as bishop, and no doubt Jonathan as prior of Kingsbridge, William would be isolated, without a single ally in the county. That was why he had joined Waleran at the royal court, to collaborate in the undermining of the shaky concord between King Henry and Archbishop Thomas.
Nobody had eaten much of the swans, geese, peacocks and ducks on the table. William, who normally ate and drank heartily, was nibbling bread and sipping posset, a drink made with milk, beer, eggs and nutmeg, to calm his bilious stomach.
Henry had been driven into his current fury by the news that Thomas had sent a delegation to Tours-where Pope Alexander was-to complain that Henry had not kept his part of the peace treaty. One of the king’s older counselors, Enjuger de Bohun, said: “There will be no peace until you have Thomas executed.”
William was shocked.
Henry roared: “That’s right!”
It was clear to William that Henry had taken the remark as an expression of pessimism, rather than as a serious proposal. However, William had a feeling that Enjuger had not said it lightly.
William Malvoisin said idly: “When I was in Rome, on my way back from Jerusalem, I heard tell of a pope that had been executed, for insupportable insolence. Damned if I can think of his name, now.”
The archbishop of York said: “It looks as if there’s nothing else to be done with Thomas. While he’s alive he will foment sedition, at home and abroad.”
To William those three statements sounded orchestrated. He looked at Waleran. At that moment Waleran spoke. “There is certainly no point in appealing to Thomas’s sense of decency-”
“Be quiet, the lot of you!” the king roared. “I’ve heard enough! All you do is complain-when will you get off your backsides and do something about it?” He took a gulp of ale from his goblet. “This beer tastes like piss!” he shouted furiously. He pushed back his chair and, as everyone hastened to stand, he got up and stormed out of the room.
In the anxious silence that followed, Waleran said: “The message could hardly be clearer, my lords. We are to get up off our seats and do something about Thomas.”
William Mandeville, the earl of Essex, said: “I think a delegation of us should go to see Thomas and set him straight.”
“And what will you do if he refuses to listen to reason?” said Waleran.
“I think we should then arrest him in the name of the king.”
Several people started to speak at once. The assembly broke up into smaller groups. Those around the earl of Essex began to plan their deputation to Canterbury. William saw Waleran talking to two or three younger knights. Waleran caught his eye and beckoned him over.
Waleran said: “William Mandeville’s delegation will do no good. Thomas can handle them with one hand tied behind his back.”
Reginald Fitzurse gave William a hard look and said: “Some of us think the time has come for sterner measures.”
“What do you mean?” William said.
“You heard what Enjuger said.”
Richard le Bret, a boy of about eighteen, blurted out: “Execution.”
The word chilled William’s heart. It was serious, then. He stared at Waleran. “Will you ask for the king’s blessing?”
Reginald answered. “Impossible. He can’t sanction something like this in advance.” He grinned evilly. “But he can reward his faithful servants afterward.”
Young Richard said: “Well, William-are you with us?”
“I’m not sure,” William said. He felt both excited and scared. “I’ll have to think about it.”
Reginald said: “There’s no time to think. We’ll have to go now. We must get to Canterbury before William Mandeville, otherwise his lot will get in the way.”
Waleran addressed William. “They need an older man with them, to guide them and plan the operation.”
William was desperately keen to agree. Not only would this solve all his problems: the king would probably give him an earldom for it. “But to kill an archbishop must be a terrible sin!” he said.
“Don’t worry about that,” Waleran said. “I’ll give you absolution.”
The enormity of what they were going to do hung over William like a thundercloud as the group of assassins traveled to England. He could think of nothing else; he could neither eat nor sleep; he acted confused and spoke distractedly. By the time the ship reached Dover he was ready to abandon the project.
They reached Saltwood Castle, in Kent, three days after Christmas, on a Monday evening. The castle belonged to the archbishop of Canterbury, but during the exile it had been occupied by Ranulf de Broc, who had refused to give it back. Indeed, one of Thomas’s complaints to the pope was that King Henry had failed to restore the castle to him.
Ranulf put new heart into William.
Ranulf had ravaged Kent in the absence of the archbishop, relishing the lack of authority rather in the way William had in years gone by, and he was willing to do anything to retain the freedom to do as he pleased. He was enthusiastic about the assassination plan and welcomed the chance of taking part, and he immediately began to discuss the details with gusto. His matter-of-fact approach dispelled the fog of superstitious dread that had clouded William’s vision. William began once again to imagine how it would be if he were an earl again, with no one to tell him what to do.
They stayed up most of the night planning the operation. Ranulf drew a plan of the cathedral close and the archbishop’s palace, scratching it on the table with a knife. The monastic buildings were on the north side of the church, which was unusual-they were normally to the south, as at Kingsbridge. The archbishop’s palace was attached to the northwest corner of the church. It was entered from the kitchen courtyard. While they worked on the plan, Ranulf sent riders to his garrisons at Dover, Rochester and Bletchingley, ordering his knights to meet him on the road to Canterbury in the morning. Toward dawn the conspirators went to bed to catch an hour or two of sleep.
William’s legs hurt like fire after the long journey. He hoped this was the last military operation he would ever do. He would be fifty-five soon, if his calculations were right, and he was getting too old for it.
Despite his weariness, and the heartening influence of Ranulf, he still could not sleep. The idea of killing an archbishop was too terrifying, even though he had already been absolved of his sin. He was afraid that if he went to sleep he would have nightmares.
They had figured out a good plan of attack. It would go wrong, of course: there was always something that went wrong. The important thing was to be flexible enough to cope with the unexpected. But whatever happened, it would not be very difficult for a group of professional fighting men to overpower a handful of effeminate monks.
The dim light of a gray winter morning leaked into the room through the arrow-slit windows. After a while William got up. He tried to say his prayers, but he could not.
The others were up early too. They had breakfast together in the hall. As well as William and Ranulf, there were Reginald Fitzurse, whom William had made leader of the attack group; Richard le Bret, the youngster of the group; William Tracy, the oldest; and Hugh Morville, the highest-ranking.
They put on their armor and-set out on Ranulf’s horses. It was a bitterly cold day, and the sky was dark with low gray clouds, as if it might snow. They followed the old road called Stone Street. On the two-and-a-half-hour journey they picked up several more knights.
Their main rendezvous was at Saint Augustine’s Abbey, outside the city. The abbot was an old enemy of Thomas’s, Ranulf had assured William, but nevertheless William decided to tell him that they had come to arrest Thomas, not to kill him. That was a pretense they would keep up until the last moment: no one was to know the true aim of the operation except for William himself, Ranulf, and the four knights who had crossed from France.
They reached the abbey at noon. The men Ranulf had summoned were waiting. The abbot gave them dinner. His wine was very good and they all drank plenty. Ranulf briefed the men-at-arms who would surround the cathedral close and prevent anyone from escaping.
William kept shivering, even when he stood beside the fire in the guesthouse. It should be a simple operation, but the penalty for failure would probably be death. The king would find a way to justify the murder of Thomas, but he could never support the attempted murder: he would have to deny all knowledge of it and hang the perpetrators. William had hanged many people, as sheriff of Shiring, but the thought of his own body dangling at the end of a rope still made him shake.
He turned his mind to the thought of the earldom he could expect as a reward for success. It would be nice to be an earl again in his old age, respected and deferred to and obeyed without question. Perhaps Aliena’s brother, Richard, would die in the Holy Land and King Henry would give William his old estates again. The thought warmed him more than the fire.
When they left the abbey they were a small army. Nevertheless they had no trouble getting into Canterbury. Ranulf had controlled this part of the country for six years and he had not yet relinquished his authority. He held more sway than Thomas, which was no doubt why Thomas had complained so bitterly to the pope. As soon as they were inside, the men-at-arms spread out around the cathedral close and blocked all the exits.
The operation had begun. Until this moment it had been theoretically possible to call the whole thing off, with no harm done; but now, William thought with a shiver of dread, the die was cast.
He left Ranulf in charge of the blockade, keeping a small group of knights and men for himself. He installed most of the knights in a house opposite the main gateway to the cathedral close. Then he went through the gate with the remainder. Reginald Fitzurse and the other three conspirators rode into the kitchen courtyard as if they were official visitors, rather than armed intruders. But William ran into the gatehouse and held the terrified porter at sword point.
The attack was under way.
With his heart in his mouth, William ordered a man-at-arms to tie up the porter, then summoned the rest of his men into the gatehouse and closed the gate. Now no one could enter or leave. He had taken armed control of a monastery.
He followed the four conspirators into the kitchen courtyard. There were stables to the north of the yard, but the four had tied their horses to a mulberry tree in the middle. They took off their sword belts and helmets: they would keep up the facade of a peaceful visit a little longer.
William caught up with them and dropped his weapons under the tree. Reginald looked inquiringly at him. “All’s well,” William said. “The place is isolated.”
They crossed the courtyard to the palace and went into the porch. William assigned a local knight called Richard to stay in the porch on guard. The others entered the great hall.
The palace servants were sitting down to dinner. That meant they had already served Thomas and the priests and monks who were with him. One of the servants stood up. Reginald said: “We are the king’s men.”
The room went quiet, but the servant who had stood up said: “Welcome, my lords. I’m the steward of the hall, William Fitzneal. Please come in. Would you like some dinner?”
He was remarkably friendly, William thought, considering that his master was at loggerheads with the king. He could probably be suborned.
“No dinner, thank you,” said Reginald.
“A cup of wine, after your journey?”
“We have a message for your master from the king,” Reginald said impatiently. “Please announce us right away.”
“Very good.” The steward bowed. They were unarmed, so he had no reason to refuse them. He left the table and walked to the far end of the hall.
William and the four knights followed. The eyes of the silent servants went with them. William was trembling the way he used to before a battle, and he wished the fighting would start, for he knew he would be all right then.
They all went up a staircase to the upper floor.
They emerged in a roomy attendance chamber with benches around the sides. There was a large throne in the middle of one wall. Several black-robed priests and monks were sitting on the benches, but the throne was empty.
The steward crossed the room to an open door. “Messengers from the king, my lord archbishop,” he said in a loud voice.
There was no audible reply, but the archbishop must have nodded, for the steward waved them in.
The monks and priests stared wide-eyed as the knights marched across the room and went into the inner chamber.
Thomas Becket was sitting on the edge of the bed, dressed in his archbishop’s robes. There was only one other person in the room: a monk, sitting at Thomas’s feet, listening. William caught the monk’s eye, and was jolted to recognize Prior Philip of Kingsbridge. What was he doing here? Currying favor, no doubt. Philip had been elected bishop of Kingsbridge, but had not yet been confirmed. Now, William thought with savage glee, he never would be.
Philip was equally startled to see William. However, Thomas carried on speaking, pretending not to notice the knights. This was a piece of calculated discourtesy, William thought. The knights sat down on the low stools and benches around the bed. William wished they had not: it made the visit seem social, and he felt they had lost impetus somehow. Perhaps that was what Thomas had intended.
Finally Thomas looked at them. He did not rise to greet them. He knew them all, except William, and his eye came to rest on Hugh Morville, the highest-ranking. “Ah, Hugh,” he said.
William had put Reginald in charge of this part of the operation, and so it was Reginald, not Hugh, who spoke to the archbishop. “We come from the king in Normandy. Do you want to hear his message in public or in private?”
Thomas looked irritably from Reginald to Hugh and back again, as if he resented dealing with a junior member of the delegation. He sighed, then said: “Leave me, Philip.”
Philip stood up and walked past the knights, looking worried.
“But don’t close the door,” Thomas called after him.
When Philip had gone out, Reginald said: “I require you in the name of the king to go to Winchester to answer charges against you.”
William had the satisfaction of seeing Thomas go pale. “So that’s how it is,” the archbishop said quietly. He looked up. The steward was hovering at the door. “Send everyone in,” Thomas said to him. “I want them all to hear this.”
The monks and priests filed in, Prior Philip among them. Some sat down and others stood around the walls. William had no objection: on the contrary, the more people who were present, the better; for the object of this unarmed encounter was to establish before witnesses that Thomas refused to comply with a royal command.
When they were all settled, Thomas looked at Reginald. “Again?” he said.
“I require you in the name of the king to go to Winchester to answer charges against you,” Reginald repeated.
“What charges?” Thomas said quietly.
“Treason!”
Thomas shook his head. “I will not be put on trial by Henry,” he said calmly. “I’ve committed no crime, God knows.”
“You’ve excommunicated royal servants.”
“It was not I, but the pope, who did that.”
“You’ve suspended other bishops.”
“I’ve offered to reinstate them on merciful terms. They have refused. My offer remains open.”
“You’ve threatened the succession to the throne by disparaging the coronation of the king’s son.”
“I did no such thing. The archbishop of York has no right to crown anyone, and the pope has reprimanded him for his effrontery. But no one has suggested that the coronation is invalid.”
Reginald said exasperatedly: “The one thing follows from the other, you damn fool.”
“I’ve had enough!” Thomas said.
“And we’ve had enough of you, Thomas Becket,” Reginald shouted. “By God’s wounds, we’ve had enough of you, and your arrogance and troublemaking and treason!”
Thomas stood up. “The archbishop’s castles are occupied by the king’s men,” he shouted. “The archbishop’s rents have been collected by the king. The archbishop has been ordered not to leave the city of Canterbury. And you tell me that you have had enough?”
One of the priests tried to intervene, saying to Thomas: “My lord, let’s discuss the matter in private-”
“To what end?” Thomas snapped. “They demand something I must not do and will not do.”
The shouting had attracted everyone in the palace, and the doorway to the chamber was crowded with wide-eyed listeners, William saw. The argument had gone on long enough: nobody could now deny that Thomas had refused a royal command. William made a signal to Reginald. It was a discreet gesture, but Prior Philip noticed it and raised his eyebrows in surprise, realizing that the leader of the group was not Reginald but William.
Reginald said formally: “Archbishop Thomas, you are no longer under the king’s peace and protection.” He turned around and addressed the onlookers. “Clear this room,” he ordered.
Nobody moved.
Reginald said: “You monks, I order you in the name of the king to guard the archbishop and prevent his escape.”
They would do no such thing, of course. Nor did William want them to: on the contrary, he wanted Thomas to attempt an escape, for that would make it easier to kill him.
Reginald turned to the steward, William Fitzneal, who was technically the archbishop’s bodyguard. “I arrest you,” he said. He grabbed the steward’s arm and marched him out of the room. The man did not resist. William and the other knights followed them out.
They ran down the stairs and through the hall. The local knight, Richard, was still on guard in the porch. William wondered what to do with the steward. He asked him: “Are you with us?”
The man was terrified. He said: “Yes, if you’re with the king!”
He was too frightened to be any danger, whatever side he was on, William decided. He said to Richard: “Keep an eye on him. Let no one leave the building. Keep the porch door closed.”
With the others he ran across the courtyard to the mulberry tree. Hastily they began to put on their helmets and swords. We’re going to do it now, William thought fearfully; we’re going to go back in there and kill the archbishop of Canterbury, oh my God. It was a long time since William had worn a helmet, and the fringe of chain mail that protected the neck and shoulders kept getting in the way. He cursed his clumsy fingers. He did not have time to fumble anything just now. He spotted a boy watching him openmouthed and shouted to him: “Hey! You! What’s your name?”
The boy looked back toward the kitchen, unsure whether to answer William or flee. “Robert, lord,” he said after a moment. “They call me Robert Pipe.”
“Come here, Robert Pipe, and help me with this.”
The boy hesitated again.
William’s patience ran out. “Come here, or I swear by the blood of Jesus I’ll chop off your hand with this sword!”
Reluctantly the boy came forward. William showed him how to hold up the chain mail while he put on the helmet. He got it on at last, and Robert Pipe fled. He’ll tell his grandchildren about this, William thought fleetingly.
The helmet had a ventail, a mouth flap that could be pulled across and fastened with a strap. The others had closed theirs, so that their faces were hidden and they could no longer be recognized. William left his open a moment longer. Each of them had a sword in one hand and an ax in the other.
“Ready?” William said.
They all nodded.
There would be little talk from now on. No more orders were necessary, no further decisions had to be made. They were simply going to go back in there and kill Thomas.
William put two fingers in his mouth and gave a shrill whistle.
Then he fastened his ventail.
A man-at-arms came running out of the gatehouse and threw open the main gate.
The knights William had stationed in the house across the road came out and poured into the courtyard, shouting, as they had been instructed, “King’s men! King’s men!”
William ran back to the palace.
The knight Richard and the steward William Fitzneal threw open the porch door for him.
As he entered, two of the archbishop’s servants took advantage of the fact that Richard and William Fitzneal were distracted, and slammed the door between the porch and the hall.
William threw his weight against the door but he was too late: they had secured it with a bar. He cursed. A setback, and so soon! The knights began to hack at the door with their axes, but they made little headway: it had been made to withstand attack. William felt control slipping away from him. Fighting back the beginnings of a panic, he ran out of the porch and looked around for another door. Reginald went with him.
There was nothing on this side of the building. They ran around the west end of the palace, past the detached kitchen, into the orchard on the south side. William grunted with satisfaction: there on the south wall of the palace was a staircase leading to the upper floor. It looked like a private entrance to the archbishop’s chambers. The feeling of panic went away.
William and Reginald ran to the foot of the staircase. It was damaged halfway up, and there were a few workmen’s tools and a ladder nearby, as if the stairs were being repaired. Reginald leaned the ladder against the side of the staircase and climbed up, bypassing the broken steps. He reached the top. There was a door leading to an oriel, a little enclosed balcony. William watched him try the door. It was locked. Beside it was a shuttered window. Reginald smashed the shutter with one blow of his ax. He reached inside, fumbled, then opened the door and went in. William started to climb the ladder.
Philip was scared from the moment he saw William Hamleigh, but the priests and monks in Thomas’s entourage were at first complacent. Then, when they heard the hammering on the hall door, they became frightened, and several of them proposed taking refuge in the cathedral.
Thomas was scornful. “Take refuge?” he said. “From what? Those knights? An archbishop can’t run from a few hotheads.”
Philip thought he was right, up to a point: the title of archbishop was meaningless if you could be frightened by knights. The man of God, secure in the knowledge that his sins are forgiven, regards death as a happy transfer to a better place, and has no fear of swords. However, even an archbishop ought not to be so careless of his safety as to invite attack. Furthermore, Philip had firsthand knowledge of the viciousness and brutality of William Hamleigh. So when they heard the smashing of the oriel shutter, Philip decided to take a lead.
He could see, through the windows, that the palace was surrounded by knights. The sight of them scared him more. This was clearly a carefully planned attack, and the perpetrators were prepared to commit violence. He hastily closed the bedroom door and pulled the bar across. The others watched him, content to let someone decisive take charge. Archbishop Thomas continued to look scornful but he did not try to stop Philip.
Philip stood by the door and listened. He heard a man come through the oriel and enter the audience chamber. He wondered how strong the bedroom door was. However, the man did not attack the door, but crossed the audience chamber and started down the stairs. Philip guessed he was going to open the hall door from the inside and let the rest of the knights in that way.
That gave Thomas a few moments’ reprieve.
There was another door in the opposite corner of the bedroom, partly concealed by the bed. Philip pointed at it and said urgently: “Where does that lead?”
“To the cloisters,” someone said. “But it’s locked shut.”
Philip crossed the room and tried the door. It was locked. “Have you got a key?” he said to Thomas, adding as an afterthought, “My lord archbishop.”
Thomas shook his head. “That passage has never been used in my memory,” he said with infuriating calm.
The door did not look very stout, but Philip was sixty-three years old and brute force had never been his métier. He stood back and gave the door a kick. It hurt his foot. The door rattled flimsily. Philip gritted his teeth and kicked it harder. It flew open.
Philip looked at Thomas. Thomas still seemed reluctant to flee. Perhaps it had not dawned on him, as it had on Philip, that the number of knights and the well-organized nature of their operation indicated a deadly serious intention to do him harm. But Philip knew instinctively that it would be fruitless to try to scare Thomas into fleeing. Instead he said: “It’s time for vespers. We ought not to let a few hotheads disrupt the routine of worship.”
Thomas smiled, seeing that his own argument had been used against him. “Very well,” he said, and he got to his feet.
Philip led the way, feeling relief that he had got Thomas moving and fear that the archbishop still might not move fast enough. The passage led down a long flight of steps. There was no light except what came through the archbishop’s bedroom. At the end of the passage was another door. Philip gave it the same treatment as he had given the first door, but this one was stronger and it did not open. He began to hammer on it, shouting: “Help! Open the door! Hurry, hurry!” He heard the note of panic in his own voice, and made an effort to stay calm, but his heart was racing and he knew that William’s knights must be close behind.
The others caught up with him. He continued to bang the door and shout. He heard Thomas say: “Dignity, Philip, please,” but he took no notice. He wanted to preserve the archbishop’s dignity-his own was of no account.
Before Thomas could protest again, there was the sound of a bar being drawn and a key turning in the lock, and the door was opened. Philip grunted with relief. Two startled cellarers stood there. One said: “I didn’t know this door led anywhere.”
Philip pushed past them impatiently. He found himself in the cellarer’s stores. He negotiated the barrels and sacks to reach another door, and passed through that into the open air.
It was getting dark. He was in the south walk of the cloisters. At the far end of the walk he saw, to his immense relief, the door that led into the north transept of Canterbury Cathedral.
They were almost safe.
He had to get Thomas into the cathedral before William and his knights could catch up. The rest of the party emerged from the stores. Philip said: “Into the church, quickly!”
Thomas said: “No, Philip; not quickly. We will enter my cathedral with dignity.”
Philip wanted to scream, but he said: “Of course, my lord.” He could hear the ominous sound of heavy feet in the disused passage: the knights had broken into the bedroom and had found the bolthole. He knew the archbishop’s best protection was his dignity, but there was no harm in getting out of the way of trouble.
“Where is the archbishop’s cross?” Thomas said. “I can’t enter the church without my cross.”
Philip groaned in despair.
Then one of the priests said: “I brought the cross. Here it is.”
Thomas said: “Carry it before me in the usual way, please.”
The priest held it up and walked with restrained haste toward the church door.
Thomas followed him.
The archbishop’s entourage preceded him into the cathedral, as etiquette demanded. Philip went last and held the door for him. Just as Thomas entered, two knights burst out of the cellarer’s stores and sprinted down the south walk.
Philip closed the transept door. There was a bar located in a hole in the wall beside the doorpost. Philip grabbed the bar and pulled it across the door.
He turned around, sagging with relief, and leaned back against the door.
Thomas was crossing the narrow transept toward the steps that led up to the north aisle of the chancel, but when he heard the bar slam into place he stopped suddenly and turned around.
“No, Philip,” he said.
Philip’s heart sank. “My lord archbishop-”
“This is a church, not a castle. Unbar the door.”
The door shook violently as the knights tried to open it. Philip said: “I’m afraid they want to kill you!”
“Then they will probably succeed, whether you bar the door or not. Do you know how many other doors there are to this church? Open it.”
There was a series of loud bangs, as if the knights were attacking the door with axes. “You could hide,” Philip said desperately. “There are dozens of places-the entrance to the crypt is just there-it’s getting dark-”
“Hide, Philip? In my own church? Would you?”
Philip stared at Thomas for a long moment. At last he said: “No, I wouldn’t.”
“Open the door.”
With a heavy heart, Philip slid back the bar.
The knights burst in. There were five of them. Their faces were hidden behind helmets. They carried swords and axes. They looked like emissaries from hell.
Philip knew he should not be afraid, but the sharp edges of their weapons made him shiver with fear.
One of them shouted: “Where is Thomas Becket, a traitor to the king and to the kingdom?”
The others shouted: “Where is the traitor? Where is the archbishop?”
It was quite dark now, and the big church was only dimly lit by candles. All the monks were in black, and the knights’ vision was somewhat limited by their faceplates. Philip had a sudden surge of hope: perhaps they would miss Thomas in the darkness. But Thomas immediately dashed that hope by walking down the steps toward the knights, saying: “Here I am-no traitor to the king, but a priest of God. What do you want?”
As the archbishop stood confronting the five men with their drawn swords, Philip suddenly knew with certainty that Thomas was going to die here today.
The people in the archbishop’s entourage must have had the same feeling, for suddenly most of them fled. Some disappeared into the gloom of the chancel, a few scattered into the nave among the townspeople waiting for the service, and one opened a small door and ran up a spiral staircase. Philip was disgusted. “You should pray, not run!” he shouted after them.
It occurred to Philip that he, too, might be killed if he did not run. But he could not tear himself away from the side of the archbishop.
One of the knights said to Thomas: “Renounce your treachery!” Philip recognized the voice of Reginald Fitzurse, who had done the talking earlier.
“I have nothing to renounce,” Thomas replied. “I have committed no treachery.” He was deadly calm, but his face was white, and Philip realized that Thomas, like everyone else, had realized that he was going to die.
Reginald shouted at Thomas: “Run away, you’re a dead man!”
Thomas stood still.
They want him to run, Philip thought; they can’t bring themselves to kill him in cold blood.
Perhaps Thomas had understood that too, for he stood unflinching in front of them, defying them to touch him. For a long moment they were all frozen in a murderous tableau, the knights unwilling to make the first move, the priest too proud to run.
It was Thomas who fatally broke the spell. He said: “I am ready to die, but you are not to touch any of my men, priests or monks or laymen.”
Reginald moved first. He waved his sword at Thomas, pushing its point closer and closer to his face, as if daring himself to let the blade touch the priest. Thomas stood like stone, his eyes focused on the knight, not the sword. Suddenly, with a quick twist of the wrist, Reginald knocked Thomas’s cap off.
Philip was suddenly filled with hope again. They can’t bring themselves to do it, he thought; they’re afraid to touch him.
But he was wrong. The knights’ resolution seemed to be strengthened by the silly gesture of knocking off the archbishop’s cap; as if, perhaps, they had half expected to be struck down by the hand of God, and the fact that they had got away with it gave them courage to do worse. Reginald said: “Carry him out of here.”
The other knights sheathed their swords and approached the archbishop.
One of them grasped Thomas about the waist and tried to lift him.
Philip despaired. They had touched him at last. They were, after all, willing to lay hands on a man of God. Philip had a stomach-lurching sense of the depths of their evil, like looking over the edge of a bottomless pit. They must know, in their hearts, that they would go to hell for this; yet still they did it.
Thomas lost his balance, flailed his arms, and began to struggle. The other knights joined in trying to lift him up and carry him. The only people left from Thomas’s entourage were Philip and a priest called Edward Grim. They both rushed forward to help Thomas. Edward grabbed Thomas’s mantle and clung on tight. One of the knights turned and lashed out at Philip with a mailed fist. The blow struck the side of Philip’s head, and he went down, dazed.
When he recovered, the knights had released Thomas, who was standing with his head bowed and his hands together in an attitude of prayer. One of the knights raised his sword.
Philip, still on the floor, gave a long, helpless yell of protest: “Noooo!”
Edward Grim held out his arm to ward off the blow.
Thomas said: “I commend myself to Go-”
The sword fell.
It struck both Thomas and Edward. Philip heard himself scream. The sword cut into the archbishop’s skull and sliced the priest’s arm. As blood spurted from Edward’s arm, Thomas fell to his knees.
Philip stared aghast at the appalling wound to Thomas’s head.
The archbishop fell slowly forward onto his hands, supported himself only for an instant, then crashed onto his face on the stone floor.
Another knight lifted his sword and struck. Philip gave an involuntary howl of grief. The second blow landed in the same place as the first, and sliced off the top of Thomas’s skull. It was such a forceful swing that the sword struck the pavement and snapped in two. The knight dropped the stump.
A third knight committed an act which would burn in Philip’s memory for the rest of his life; he stuck the point of his sword into the opened head of the archbishop and spilled the brains out onto the floor.
Philip’s legs felt weak and he sank to his knees, overcome with horror.
The knight said: “He won’t get up again-let’s be off!”
They all turned and ran.
Philip watched them go down the nave, laying about them with their swords to scatter the townspeople.
When the killers had gone there was a moment of frozen silence. The corpse of the archbishop lay facedown on the floor, and the severed skull, with its hair, lay beside the head like the lid of a pot. Philip buried his face in his hands. This was the end of all hope. The savages have won, he kept thinking; the savages have won. He had a giddy, weightless sensation, as if he were sinking slowly in a deep lake, drowning in despair. There was nothing to hold on to anymore; everything that had seemed fixed was suddenly unstable.
He had spent his life fighting the arbitrary power of wicked men, and now, in the ultimate contest, he had been defeated. He remembered when William Hamleigh had come to set fire to Kingsbridge the second time, and the townspeople had built a wall in a day. What a victory that had been! The peaceful strength of hundreds of ordinary people had defeated the naked cruelty of Earl William. He recalled the time Waleran Bigod had tried to have the cathedral built at Shiring so that he could control it for his own ends. Philip had mobilized the people of the whole county. Hundreds of them, more than a thousand, had flocked to Kingsbridge on that marvelous Whitsunday thirty-three years ago, and the sheer force of their zeal had defeated Waleran. But there was no hope now. All the ordinary folk in Canterbury, even the entire population of Christendom, would not be enough to bring Thomas back to life.
Kneeling on the flagstones in the north transept of Canterbury Cathedral, he saw again the men who had burst into his home and slaughtered his mother and father before his eyes, fifty-six years ago. The emotion that came to him now, from that six-year-old child, was not fear, not even grief. It was rage. Powerless to stop those huge, red-faced, bloodthirsty men, he had conceived a blazing ambition to shackle all such swordsmen, to blunt their swords and hobble their war-horses and force them to submit to another authority, one higher than the monarchy of violence. And moments later, as his parents lay dead on the floor, Abbot Peter had come in to show him the way. Unarmed and defenseless, the abbot had instantly stopped the bloodshed, with nothing but the authority of his Church and the force of his goodness. That scene had inspired Philip all his life.
Until this moment he had believed that he and people like him were winning. They had achieved some notable victories in the past half century. But now, at the end of his life, his enemies had proved that nothing had changed. His triumphs had been temporary, his progress illusory. He had won some battles, but the cause was ultimately hopeless. Men just like the ones who killed his mother and father had now murdered an archbishop in a cathedral, as if to prove, beyond all possibility of doubt, that there was no authority that could prevail against the tyranny of a man with a sword.
He had never thought they would dare to kill Archbishop Thomas, especially in a church. But he had never thought anyone could kill his father, and the same bloodthirsty men with swords and helmets had shown him the grisly truth in both cases. And now, at the age of sixty-two, as he looked at the grisly corpse of Thomas Becket, he was possessed by the childish, unreasoning, all-encompassing fury of a six-year-old boy whose father is dead.
He stood up. The atmosphere in the church was thick with emotion as the people gathered around the corpse of the archbishop. Priests, monks and townspeople came slowly nearer, stunned and full of dread. Philip sensed that behind their shocked expressions there was a rage like his own. One or two of them were muttering prayers, or just moaning half audibly. A woman bent down swiftly and touched the dead body, as if for luck. Several other people followed suit. Then Philip saw the first woman furtively collecting some of the blood in a tiny flask, as if Thomas were a martyr.
The clergy began to come to their senses. The archbishop’s chamberlain, Osbert, with tears streaming down his face, took out a knife and cut a strip from his own shirt, then bent down by the body and clumsily, gruesomely tied Thomas’s skull back on to his head, in a pathetic attempt to restore a modicum of dignity to the horribly violated person of the archbishop. As he did so, a low collective groan went up from the crowd all around.
Some monks brought a stretcher. They lifted Thomas onto it gently. Many hands reached out to help them. Philip saw that the archbishop’s handsome face was peaceful, the only sign of violence being a thin line of blood running from the right temple, across the nose, to the left cheek.
As they lifted the stretcher, Philip picked up the broken stump of the sword that had killed Thomas. He kept thinking of the woman who had collected the archbishop’s blood in a bottle, as if he were a saint. There was a massive significance to that small act of hers, but Philip was not yet sure exactly what it was.
The people followed the stretcher, drawn by an invisible force. Philip went with the crowd, feeling the weird compulsion that gripped them all. The monks carried the body through the chancel and lowered it gently to the ground in front of the high altar. The crowd, many of them praying aloud, watched as a priest brought a clean cloth and bandaged the head neatly, then covered most of the bandage with a new cap.
A monk cut through the black archbishop’s mantle, which was soiled with blood, and removed it. The man seemed unsure what to do with the bloody garment, and turned as if to throw it to one side. A citizen stepped forward quickly and took it from him as if it were a precious object.
The thought that had been hovering uncertainly in the back of Philip’s mind now came to the foreground in an inspirational flash. The citizens were treating Thomas like a martyr, eagerly collecting his blood and his clothes as if they had the supernatural powers of saints’ relics. Philip had been regarding the murder as a political defeat for the Church, but the people here did not see it that way: they saw a martyrdom. And the death of a martyr, while it might look like a defeat, never failed to provide inspiration and strength to the Church in the end.
Philip thought again of the hundreds of people who had flocked to Kingsbridge to build the cathedral, and of the men, women and children who had worked together half the night to put up the town wall. If such people could be mobilized now, he thought with a mounting sense of excitement, they might raise a cry of outrage so loud it would be heard all over the world.
Looking at the men and women gathered around the body, their faces suffused with grief and horror, Philip realized that they only wanted a leader.
Was it possible?
There was something familiar about this situation, he realized. A mutilated corpse, a crowd of onlookers, and some soldiers in the distance: where had he seen this before? What should happen next, he felt, was that a small group of followers of the dead man would range themselves against all the power and authority of a mighty empire.
Of course. That was how Christianity started.
And when he understood that, he knew what he had to do next.
He moved in front of the altar and turned to face the crowd. He still had the broken sword in his hand. Everyone stared at him. He suffered a moment of self-doubt. Can I do it? he thought. Can I start a movement, here and now, that will shake the throne of England? He looked at their faces. As well as grief and rage, he saw, in one or two expressions, a hint of hope.
He lifted the sword on high.
“This sword killed a saint,” he began.
There was a murmur of agreement.
Encouraged, Philip said: “Here tonight we have witnessed a martyrdom.”
The priests and monks looked surprised. Like Philip, they had not immediately seen the real significance of the murder they had witnessed. But the townspeople had, and they voiced their approval.
“Each one of us must go from this place and tell what he has seen.” Several people nodded vigorously. They were listening-but Philip wanted more. He wanted to inspire them. Preaching had never been his forte. He was not one of those men who could hold a crowd rapt, make them laugh and cry, and persuade them to follow him anywhere. He did not know how to put a tremor in his voice and make the light of glory shine from his eyes. He was a practical, earth-bound man; and right now he needed to speak like an angel.
“Soon every man, woman and child in Canterbury will know that the king’s men murdered Archbishop Thomas in the cathedral. But that’s just the start. The news will spread all over England, and then all over Christendom.”
He was losing them, he could tell. There was dissatisfaction and disappointment on some of the faces. A man called out: “But what shall we do?”
Philip realized they needed to take some kind of concrete action immediately. It was not possible to call for a crusade and then send people to bed.
A crusade, he thought. That was an idea.
He said: “Tomorrow, I will take this sword to Rochester. The day after tomorrow, London. Will you come with me?”
Most of them looked blank, but someone at the back called out: “Yes!” Then one or two others voiced their agreement.
Philip raised his voice a little. “We’ll tell our story in every town and village in England. We’ll show people the sword that killed Saint Thomas. We’ll let them see the bloodstains on his priestly garments.” He warmed to his theme, and let his anger show a little. “We’ll raise an outcry that will spread throughout Christendom, yes, even as far as Rome. We’ll turn the whole of the civilized world against the savages who perpetrated this horrible, blasphemous crime!”
This time most of them called out their assent. They had been waiting for some way of expressing their emotions, and now he was giving it to them.
“This crime,” he said slowly, his voice rising to a shout, “will never-never-be-forgotten!”
They roared their approval.
Suddenly he knew where to go from here. “Let us begin our crusade now!” he said.
“Yes!”
“We’ll carry this sword along every street in Canterbury!”
“Yes!”
“And we’ll tell every citizen within the walls what we have witnessed here tonight!”
“Yes!”
“Bring candles, and follow me!”
Holding the sword high, he marched straight down the middle of the cathedral.
They followed him.
Feeling exultant, he went through the chancel, over the crossing, and down the nave. Some of the monks and priests walked beside him. He did not need to look back: he could hear the footsteps of a hundred people marching behind him. He went out of the main door.
There he had a moment of anxiety. Across the dark orchard he could see men-at-arms ransacking the archbishop’s palace. If his followers confronted them, the crusade might turn into a brawl when it had hardly got started. Suddenly afraid, he turned sharply away and led the crowd through the nearest gate into the street.
One of the monks started a hymn. There were lamps and firelight behind the shutters of the houses, but as the procession passed by, people opened their doors to see what was going on. Some of them questioned the marchers. Some joined in.
Philip turned a corner and saw William Hamleigh.
William was standing outside a stable, and looked as if he had just taken off his chain mail prior to mounting a horse and leaving the city. He had a handful of men with him. They were all looking up expectantly, presumably having heard the singing and wondered what was going on.
As the candlelit procession approached, William at first looked mystified. Then he saw the broken sword in Philip’s hand, and comprehension dawned. He stared in awestruck silence for a moment more, then he spoke. “Stop this!” he shouted. “I command you to disperse!”
Nobody took any notice. The men with William looked anxious: even with their swords they were vulnerable to a mob of more than a hundred fervent mourners.
William addressed Philip directly. “In the name of the king, I order you to stop this!”
Philip swept past him, borne forward by the press of the crowd. “Too late, William!” he cried over his shoulder. “Too late!”
The small boys came early to the hanging.
They were already there, in the market square at Shiring, throwing stones at cats and abusing beggars and fighting one another, when Aliena arrived, alone and on foot, wearing a cheap cloak with a hood to hide her identity.
She stood at a distance, looking at the scaffold. She had not intended to come. She had witnessed too many hangings during the years when she had played the role of earl. Now that she no longer had that responsibility, she had thought she would be happy if she never saw another man hanged for the rest of her life. But this one was different.
She was no longer acting as earl because her brother, Richard, had been killed in Syria-not in battle, ironically, but in an earthquake. The news had taken six months to reach her. She had not seen him for fifteen years, and now she would never see him again.
Up the hill, the castle gates opened, and the prisoner came out with his escort, followed by the new earl of Shiring, Aliena’s son, Tommy.
Richard had never had children, so his heir was his nephew. The king, stunned and enfeebled by the Becket scandal, had taken the line of least resistance and rapidly confirmed Tommy as earl. Aliena had handed over to the younger generation readily. She had achieved what she wanted to with the earldom. It was once again a rich, thriving county, a land of fat sheep and green fields and sturdy mills. Some of the larger and more progressive landowners had followed her lead in switching to horse plowing, feeding the horses on oats grown under the three-field system of crop rotation. In consequence the land could feed even more people than it had under her father’s enlightened rule.
Tommy would be a good earl. It was what he was born to do. Jack had refused to see it for a long time, wanting his son to be a builder; but eventually he had been forced to admit the truth. Tommy had never been able to cut a stone in a straight line, but he was a natural leader, and at twenty-eight years of age he was decisive, determined, intelligent and fair-minded. He was usually called Thomas now.
When he took over, people expected Aliena to stay at the castle, nag her daughter-in-law and play with her grandchildren. She had laughed at them. She liked Tommy’s wife-a pretty girl, one of the younger daughters of the earl of Bedford-and she adored her three grandchildren, but at the age of fifty-two she was not ready to retire. She and Jack had taken a big stone house near the Kingsbridge Priory-in what had once been the poor quarter, although it was no longer-and she had gone back into the wool business, buying and selling, negotiating with all her old energy, and making money hand over fist.
The hanging party came into the square, and Aliena emerged from her reverie. She looked closely at the prisoner, stumbling along at the end of a rope, his hands tied behind his back. It was William Hamleigh.
Someone in the front spat at him. The crowd in the square was large, for a lot of people were happy to see the last of William, and even for those who had no grudge against him it was quite something to see a former sheriff hanged. But William had been involved in the most notorious murder anybody could remember.
Aliena had never known or imagined anything like the reaction to the killing of Archbishop Thomas. The news had spread like wildfire through the whole of Christendom, from Dublin to Jerusalem and from Toledo to Oslo. The pope had gone into mourning. The continental half of King Henry’s empire had been placed under interdict, which meant the churches were closed and there were no services except baptism. In England, people had started making a pilgrimage to Canterbury, just as if it were a shrine like Santiago de Compostela. And there had been miracles. Water tinctured with the martyr’s blood, and shreds of the mantle he had been wearing when he was killed, cured sick people not just in Canterbury but all over England.
William’s men had tried to steal the corpse from the cathedral, but the monks had been forewarned and had hidden it; and now it was secure within a stone vault, and pilgrims had to put their heads through a hole in the wall to kiss the marble coffin.
It was William’s last crime. He had come scurrying back to Shiring, but Tommy had arrested him, and accused him of sacrilege, and he had been found guilty by Bishop Philip’s court. Normally no one would dare to sentence a sheriff, for he was an officer of the Crown, but in this case the reverse was true: no one, not even the king, would dare to defend one of Becket’s killers.
William was going to make a bad end.
His eyes were wild and staring, his mouth was open and drooling, he was moaning incoherently, and there was a stain on the front of his tunic where he had wet himself.
Aliena watched her old enemy stagger blindly toward the gallows. She remembered the young, arrogant, heartless lad who had raped her thirty-five years ago. It was hard to believe he had become the moaning, terrified subhuman she saw now. Even the fat, gouty, disappointed old knight he had been in later life was nothing like this. He began to struggle and scream as he got closer to the scaffold. The men-at-arms pulled him along like a pig going to the slaughterhouse. Aliena found no pity in her heart: all she could feel was relief. William would never terrorize anyone again.
He kicked and screamed as he was lifted up onto the ox cart. He looked like an animal, red-faced, wild and filthy; but he sounded like a child as he gibbered and moaned and cried. It took four men to hold him while a fifth put the noose around his neck. He struggled so much that the knot tightened before he dropped, and he began to strangle by his own efforts. The men-at-arms stepped back. William writhed, choking, his fat face turning purple.
Aliena stared aghast. Even at the height of her rage and hatred she had not wished a death like this on him.
There was no noise, now that he was choking; and the crowd stood still. Even the small boys were silenced by the horrible sight.
Someone struck the ox’s flank with a switch and the beast moved forward. At last William fell, but the fall did not break his neck, and he dangled at the end of the rope, slowly suffocating. His eyes remained open. Aliena felt he was looking at her. The grimace on his face as he hung there writhing in agony was familiar to Aliena, and she realized that he had looked like that when he was raping her, just before he reached his climax. The memory stabbed her like a knife, but she would not let herself look away.
It took a long time but the crowd remained quiet throughout. His face turned darker and darker. His agonized writhing became a mere twitching. At last his eyes rolled up into his head, his eyelids closed, he became still, and then, gruesomely, his tongue stuck out, black and swollen, between his teeth.
He was dead.
Aliena felt drained. William had changed her life-at one time she would have said he had ruined her life-and now he was dead, powerless to hurt her or anyone else ever again.
The crowd began to move away. The small boys mimicked the death throes to one another, rolling up their eyes and poking out their tongues. A man-at-arms climbed up on the scaffold and cut William down.
Aliena caught her son’s eye. He looked surprised to see her. He came over immediately, and bent down to kiss her. My son, she thought; my big son. Jack’s son. She remembered how terrified she had been that she might have William’s child. Well, some things had turned out right.
“I thought you didn’t want to come here today,” Tommy said.
“I had to,” she said. “I had to see him dead.”
He looked startled. He did not understand, not really. She was glad. She hoped he would never have to understand such things.
He put his arm around her and they walked out of the square together.
Aliena did not look back.
On a hot day in high summer, Jack ate dinner with Aliena and Sally in the cool of the north transept, up in the gallery, sitting on the scratched plaster of his tracing floor. The sound of the monks chanting the service of sext in the chancel was a low murmur like the rushing of a distant waterfall. They had cold lamb chops with fresh wheat bread and a stone jug of golden beer. Jack had spent the morning sketching the layout of the new chancel which he would begin building next year. Sally was looking at his drawing while she tore into a chop with her pretty white teeth. In a moment she would say something critical about it, he knew. He glanced at Aliena. She too had read Sally’s face and knew what was coming. They exchanged a knowing parental look, and smiled.
“Why do you want the east end to be rounded?” Sally said.
“I based it on the design of Saint-Denis,” Jack said.
“But is there any advantage?”
“Yes. You can keep the pilgrims moving.”
“So you just have this row of little windows.”
Jack had thought windows would come up soon, for Sally was a glazier. “Little windows?” he said, pretending to be indignant. “Those windows are huge! When I first put windows that size into this church the people thought the whole building would fall down for lack of structural support.”
“If the chancel were square-ended, you would have an enormous flat wall,” Sally persisted. “You could put in really big windows.”
She had a point, Jack thought. With the round-ended layout the entire chancel had to have the same continuous elevation, divided into the traditional three layers of arcade, gallery and clerestory, all the way around. A square end offered the chance to change the design. “There might be another way to keep the pilgrims moving,” he said thoughtfully.
“And the rising sun would shine through the big windows,” Sally said.
Jack could imagine it. “There could be a row of tall lancets, like spears in a rack.”
Sally said: “Or one big round window like a rose.”
That was a stunning idea. To someone standing in the nave, looking down the length of the church toward the east, the round window would seem like a huge sun exploding into innumerable shards of gorgeous color. Jack could just see it. “I wonder what theme the monks would want.”
“The Law and the Prophets,” Sally said.
He raised his eyebrows at her. “You sly vixen, you’ve already discussed this idea with Prior Jonathan, haven’t you?”
She looked guilty, but she was saved from answering by the arrival of Peter Chisel, a young stone carver. He was a shy, awkward man with fair hair that fell over his eyes, but his carvings were beautiful, and Jack was glad to have him. “What can I do for you, Peter?” he said.
“Actually, I was looking for Sally,” Peter said.
“Well, you’ve found her.”
Sally was getting to her feet, brushing bread crumbs off the front of her tunic. “I’ll see you later,” she said, and then she and Peter went through the low doorway and down the spiral staircase.
Jack and Aliena looked at one another.
“Was she blushing?” Jack said.
“I hope so,” said Aliena. “My goodness, it’s about time she fell for someone. She’s twenty-six years old!”
“Well, well. I’d given up hope. I thought she was planning to be an old maid.”
Aliena shook her head. “Not Sally. She’s as lusty as anyone. She’s just choosy.”
“Is she?” Jack said. “The girls of the county aren’t queuing up to marry Peter Chisel.”
“The girls of the county fall for big handsome men like Tommy, who can cut a dash on horseback and have their cloaks lined with red silk. Sally’s different. She wants someone clever and sensitive. Peter is just right for her.”
Jack nodded. He had never thought of it that way but he felt intuitively that Aliena was right. “She’s like her grandmother,” he said. “My mother fell in love with an oddity.”
“Sally’s like your mother, and Tommy is like my father,” Aliena said.
Jack smiled at her. She was more beautiful than ever. Her hair was streaked with gray, and the skin of her throat was not as marble-smooth as it used to be, but as she got older, and lost the roundness of motherhood, the fine bones of her lovely face became more prominent, and she took on a spare, almost structural beauty. Jack reached out and traced the line of her jaw. “Like my flying buttresses,” he said.
She smiled.
He ran his hand down her neck and across her bosom. Her breasts had changed, too. He remembered when they had stuck out from her chest as if they were weightless, the nipples pointing up. Then, when she was pregnant, they had become even bigger, and the nipples had grown larger. Now they were lower and softer, and they swung delightfully from side to side when she walked. He had loved them through all their changes. He wondered what they would be like when she was old. Would they become shriveled and wrinkled? I’ll probably love them even then, he thought. He felt her nipple harden under his touch. He leaned forward to kiss her lips.
“Jack, you’re in church,” she murmured.
“Never mind,” he said, and he ran his hand over her belly to her groin.
There was a footstep on the stair.
He pulled away guiltily.
She grinned at his discomfiture. “That’s God’s judgment on you,” she said irreverently.
“I’ll see to you later,” he whispered in a mock-threatening tone.
The footsteps reached the top of the stair and Prior Jonathan emerged. He greeted them both solemnly. He looked grave. “There’s something I want you to hear, Jack,” he said. “Will you come to the cloisters?”
“Of course.” Jack got to his feet.
Jonathan went back down the spiral staircase.
Jack paused at the doorway and pointed a threatening finger at Aliena. “Later,” he said.
“Promise?” she said with a grin.
Jack followed Jonathan down the stairs and through the church to the door in the south transept that led into the cloisters. They went along the north walk, past the schoolboys with their wax tablets, and stopped at the corner. With an inclination of his head Jonathan directed Jack’s attention to a monk sitting alone on a stone ledge halfway down the west walk. The monk’s hood was up, covering his face, but as they paused, the man turned, looked up, and then quickly averted his gaze.
Jack took an involuntary step back.
The monk was Waleran Bigod.
Jack said angrily: “What’s that devil doing here?”
“Preparing to meet his Maker,” Jonathan said.
Jack frowned. “I don’t understand.”
“He’s a broken man,” Jonathan said. “He’s got no position, no power and no friends. He’s realized that God doesn’t want him to be a great and powerful bishop. He’s seen the error of his ways. He came here, on foot, and begged to be admitted as a humble monk, to spend the rest of his days asking God’s forgiveness for his sins.”
“I find that hard to believe,” said Jack.
“So did I, at first,” said Jonathan. “But in the end I realized that he has always been a genuinely God-fearing man.”
Jack looked skeptical.
“I really think he was devout. He just made one crucial mistake: he believed that the end justifies the means in the service of God. That permitted him to do anything.”
“Including conspiring to murder an archbishop!”
Jonathan held up his hands in a defensive gesture. “God must punish him for that-not I.”
Jack shrugged. It was the kind of thing Philip would have said. Jack saw no reason to let Waleran live in the priory. However, that was the way of monks. “Why did you want me to see him?”
“He wants to tell you why they hanged your father.”
Jack suddenly felt cold.
Waleran was sitting as still as a stone, gazing into space. He was barefoot. The fragile white ankles of an old man were visible below the hem of his homespun habit. Jack realized that Waleran was no longer frightening. He was feeble, defeated and sad.
Jack walked slowly forward and sat down on the bench a yard away from Waleran.
“The old King Henry was too strong,” Waleran said without preamble. “Some of the barons didn’t like it-they were too restricted. They wanted a weaker king next time. But Henry had a son, William.”
All this was ancient history. “That was before I was born,” Jack said.
“Your father died before you were born,” Waleran said, with just a hint of his old superciliousness.
Jack nodded. “Go on, then.”
“A group of barons decided to kill Henry’s son, William. Their thinking was that if the succession was in doubt, they would have more influence over the choice of the new king.”
Jack studied Waleran’s pale, thin face, searching for evidence of guile. The old man just looked weary, beaten and remorseful. If he was up to something, Jack could see no sign of it. “But William died in the wreck of the White Ship,” Jack said.
“That shipwreck was no accident,” Waleran said.
Jack was jolted. Could this be true? The heir to the throne, murdered just because a group of barons wanted a weak monarchy? But it was no more shocking than the murder of an archbishop. “Go on,” he said.
“The barons’ men scuttled the ship and escaped in a boat. Everybody else drowned, except for one man who clung to a spar and floated ashore.”
“That was my father,” Jack said. He was beginning to see where this was leading.
Waleran’s face was white and his lips were bloodless. He spoke without emotion, and did not meet Jack’s eyes. “He was beached near a castle that belonged to one of the conspirators, and they caught him. The man had no interest in exposing them. Indeed, he never realized that the ship had been scuttled. But he had seen things which would have revealed the truth to others, if he had been allowed to go free and talk about his experience. So they kidnapped him, brought him to England, and put him in the care of some people they could trust.”
Jack felt profoundly sad. All his father had ever wanted to do was entertain people, Mother said. But there was something strange about Waleran’s story. “Why didn’t they kill him right away?” Jack said.
“They should have,” Waleran said unemotionally. “But he was an innocent man, a jongleur, someone who gave everyone pleasure. They couldn’t bring themselves to do it.” He gave a mirthless smile. “Even the most ruthless people have some scruples, ultimately.”
“Then why did they change their minds?”
“Because eventually he became dangerous, even here. At first he threatened no one-he couldn’t even speak English. But he learned, of course, and he began to make friends. So they locked him in the prison cell below the dormitory. Then people began to ask why he was locked away. He became an embarrassment. They realized they would never rest easy while he was alive. So in the end they told us to kill him.”
So easy, thought Jack. “But why did you obey them?”
“We were ambitious, all three of us,” Waleran said, and for the first time his face showed emotion, as his mouth twisted in a grimace of remorse. “Percy Hamleigh, Prior James, and me. Your mother told the truth-we all were rewarded. I became an archdeacon, and my career in the church was off to a splendid start. Percy Hamleigh became a substantial landowner. Prior James got a useful addition to the priory property.”
“And the barons?”
“After the shipwreck, Henry was attacked, in the following three years, by Fulk of Anjou, William Clito in Normandy, and the king of France. For a while he looked very vulnerable. But he defeated his enemies and ruled for another ten years. However, the anarchy the barons wanted did come in the end, when Henry died without a male heir, and Stephen came to the throne. While the civil war raged for the next two decades, the barons ruled like kings in their own territories, with no central authority to curb them.”
“And my father died for that.”
“Even that turned sour. Most of those barons died in the fighting, and some of their sons did too. And the little lies we had told in this part of the country, to get your father killed, eventually came back to haunt us. Your mother cursed us, after the hanging, and she cursed us well. Prior James was destroyed by the knowledge of what he had done, as Remigius said at the nepotism trial. Percy Hamleigh died before the truth came out, but his son was hanged. And look at me: my act of perjury was thrown back at me almost fifty years later, and it ended my career.” Waleran was looking gray-faced and exhausted, as if his rigid self-control was a terrible strain. “We were all afraid of your mother, because we weren’t sure what she knew. In the end it wasn’t much at all, but it was enough.”
Jack felt as drained as Waleran appeared. At last he had learned the truth about his father, something he had wanted all his life. Now he could not feel angry or vengeful. He had never known his real father, but he had had Tom, who had given him the love of buildings which had been the second greatest passion of his life.
Jack stood up. The events were all too far in the past to make him weep. So much had happened since then, and most of it had been good.
He looked down at the old, sorry man sitting on the bench. Ironically, it was Waleran who was now suffering the bitterness of regret. Jack pitied him. How terrible, Jack thought, to be old and know that your life has been wasted. Waleran looked up, and their eyes met for the first time. Waleran flinched and turned away, as if his face had been slapped. For a moment Jack could read the other man’s mind, and he realized that Waleran had seen the pity in his eyes.
And for Waleran, the pity of his enemies was the worst humiliation of all.
Philip stood at the West Gate of the ancient Christian city of Canterbury, wearing the full, gorgeously-colored regalia of an English bishop, and carrying a jeweled crozier worth a king’s ransom. It was pouring with rain.
He was sixty-six years of age, and the rain chilled his old bones. This was the last time he would venture so far from home. But he would not have missed this day for all the world. In a way, today’s ceremony would crown his life’s work.
It was three and a half years after the historic murder of Archbishop Thomas. In that short span of time the mystical cult of Thomas Becket had swept the world. Philip had had no idea of what he was starting when he led that small candlelit procession through the streets of Canterbury. The pope had made Thomas a saint with almost indecent speed. There was even a new order of monk-knights in the Holy Land called the Knights of Saint Thomas of Acre. King Henry had not been able to fight such a powerful popular movement. It was far too strong for any one individual to withstand.
For Philip, the importance of the whole phenomenon lay in what it demonstrated about the power of the State. The death of Thomas had shown that, in a conflict between the Church and the Crown, the monarch could always prevail by the use of brute force. But the cult of Saint Thomas proved that such a victory would always be a hollow one. The power of a king was not absolute, after all: it could be restrained by the will of the people. This change had taken place within Philip’s lifetime. He had not merely witnessed it, he had helped to bring it about. And today’s ceremony would commemorate that.
A stocky man with a large head was walking toward the city out of the mist of rain. He wore no boots or hat. At some distance behind him followed a large group of people on horseback.
The man was King Henry.
The crowd was as quiet as a funeral while the rain-drenched king walked through the mud to the city gate.
Philip stepped into the road, according to the prearranged plan, and walked in front of the barefoot king, leading the way to the cathedral. Henry followed with head bowed, his normally jaunty gait rigidly controlled, his posture a picture of penitence. Awestruck townspeople gazed on in silence as the king of England humbled himself before their eyes. The king’s entourage followed at a distance.
Philip led him slowly through the cathedral gate. The mighty doors of the splendid church were open wide. They went in, a solemn procession of two people that was the culmination of the political crisis of the century. The nave was packed. The crowd parted to let them through. People spoke in whispers, stunned by the sight of the proudest king in Christendom, soaking wet, walking into church like a beggar.
They went slowly along the nave and down the steps into the crypt. There, beside the new tomb of the martyr, the monks of Canterbury were waiting, along with the greatest and most powerful bishops and abbots of the realm.
The king knelt on the floor.
His courtiers came into the crypt behind him. In front of everyone, Henry of England, second of that name, confessed his sins, and said he had been the unwitting cause of the murder of Saint Thomas.
When he had confessed he took off his cloak. Beneath it he wore a green tunic and a hair shirt. He knelt down again, bending his back.
The bishop of London flexed a cane.
The king was to be whipped.
He would get five strokes from each priest and three from each monk present. The strokes, would be symbolic, of course: since there were eighty monks present a real beating from each of them would have killed him.
The bishop of London touched the king’s back five times lightly with the cane. Then he turned and handed the cane to Philip, bishop of Kingsbridge.
Philip stepped forward to whip the king. He was glad he had lived to see this. After today, he thought, the world will never be quite the same.