Henry was pacing like a caged lion, never taking his eyes off his archbishop. “We have gone over this again and again. I am not claiming the right to try criminous clerks in my courts. They will be judged first in an ecclesiastical court, and if found guilty, degraded of their priestly office. It is only then that they will be returned to the royal courts for sentencing. Where is the unfairness in that?”
Becket shook his head wearily. “As we’ve tried to make you see, my liege, that would still be a double punishment: first degradation and then whatever penalty your court might choose to mete out. That would be like . . . like bringing Christ before Pontius Pilate a second time.”
Henry stared at him and then exploded. “That is arrant nonsense! There is no honesty in your arguments, my lord archbishop, nothing but prevarication and contumacy. As long as you persist in this obdurate attitude, further discussion is meaningless. I would suggest that you and your fellow bishops retire to reconsider your position. And whilst you do, bear this in mind. I have sought to convince you by logic and common sense. But if need be, I can find other means of persuasion.”
Maud would not have believed that a crowded hall could have fallen so silent so fast. But in the moments that followed, there was no sound at all, no whispering or murmuring, not even the catch of indrawn breaths, only an unnatural stillness.
THE CHAMBER was heated by charcoal braziers, but they did little to chase away the cold. Roger was the youngest of all the bishops, but the stress was telling upon him, too, as their deliberations dragged on into a third day. He’d slept little that night and suspected that few of the other suffragans had either. So far this morning the arguments being made were merely a rehash of the previous day’s heated discussions. They’d already exhausted all their options. Roger knew that not a man among them wanted to swear to obey these abhorrent customs, for to do so would be a de facto concession that the king and not the Pope was the true head of the English Church. But did they have the collective courage to defy him? If they held firm, would he back down? Roger felt reasonably confident that his cousin was bluffing. Harry was neither a monster nor a fool. Surely he’d not bring down the anathema of Holy Church upon his head by persecuting the greatest prelates of his realm?
But others were not as sure of that as Roger, and several of the bishops were imploring Becket to yield. The Bishops of Salisbury and Norwich, in particular, were insistent that a compromise be sought, for they were already in Henry’s bad graces, and admitted quite candidly their fear that they would be the ones to suffer the most if Henry’s anger were not deflected or appeased.
In truth, few among them had the stomach for this looming confrontation between Church and Crown. By Roger’s reckoning, only he and Henry of Blois, the wily Bishop of Winchester, and possibly the Bishop of Hereford, backed Becket without reservation. The Archbishop of York so disliked his fellow archbishop that even his courtesy seemed grudgingly given. Gilbert Foliot had reluctantly concluded that they could not obey the customs. But he was furious with Becket for having allowed himself to be cornered like this, and his anger made him a prickly, irascible ally. Hilary of Chichester had so far taken little part in their emotional debates, which did not surprise Roger. His assessment of Chichester was of a man slippery and shallow and clever, an opportunist who’d seen the priesthood as a profession, not a vocation. The Bishops of Ely and Lincoln were elderly and ailing, poor soldiers in this war of wills. Bartholomew of Exeter and the Bishop of Coventry were good men, but not the stuff of which martyrs are made. And the Bishops of Durham, Bath, and Rochester were fortunate enough to be absent, spared this harrowing test of their own fortitude.
Roger glanced then toward the man in the center of the storm. Thomas Becket was very pale. His cheekbones were thrown into sudden prominence, and his eyes shone with feverish brightness. Roger knew, as few did, how delicate his friend’s health was, and he feared that the older man might fall ill under the strain. For the full brunt of the king’s wrath would come down upon those thin, squared shoulders. If they did not yield, what would their defiance cost them?
As troubling as that question was, there was one that weighed even more heavily upon Roger. What damage would be done to the Church as a result of this dangerous breach with the king? His eyes again sought out Becket. As much as he admired and liked the other man, he did not fully understand him. Although loyalty kept him silent, he agreed with Foliot that this was a battle that need not have been fought. But now that they were forced to fight it, they could not afford to lose. All they could do was to hold fast to their faith and hope that the king’s rage would cool enough for him to see reason.
The tension was such that they all flinched at the sudden loud knocking. Becket gestured for one of his clerks to open the door, frowning at the sight of Roger de Clare, for the Earl of Hertford flaunted his enmity like a battle flag. “What do you wish . . . ,” he began coolly, then got hastily to his feet as the earl pushed past the clerk into the chamber, with others on his heels.
“We’ve grown tired of waiting,” Hertford declared combatively. “Do you mean to obey the king or not?”
Roger had risen, too, moving to stand at Becket’s side. He recognized most of these intruders: the Earl of Salisbury; the king’s bastard half-brother, Hamelin; the one-eyed John Marshal, a Wiltshire baron with the soul of a pirate; the Earl of Essex, whose father, Geoffrey de Mandeville, had died in rebellion against his king. Behind them, more men were seeking to crowd into the chamber, shoving and pushing and cursing. The bishops instinctively recoiled; only Becket, Roger, Gilbert Foliot, and the aged Bishop of Winchester stood their ground.
“We are not answerable to you,” Becket said sharply. “When our deliberations are done, we will return to the hall, not before.”
“What is there to deliberate? Either you are loyal to our lord king or you are not. Which is it?” Hamelin’s freckled face was suffused with angry color, his eyes narrowed accusingly; he looked so much like his elder brother that the Bishop of Norwich could not suppress a gasp, shrinking back in his seat as if to escape notice. Several of the other bishops were also trying to appear as inconspicuous as possible.
But the Bishop of Winchester reached for his cane, glowering at this threatening mob with the icy aplomb of a man in whose veins flowed the blood of William the Bastard, England’s conqueror. “Be gone from here,” he said scathingly. “You honor neither your king nor your God by this churlish display.”
“We have no intention of going anywhere,” Hertford insisted, “not until you agree to obey the customs as your predecessors and betters did!”
“We have nothing to say to you.” Becket sought to stare the earl down, without success. “Your intrusion into this chamber is an affront to the Almighty. Withdraw at once, lest you imperil your immortal souls!”
A few of the men had begun to squirm. But John Marshal sneered, “Better you should worry about yourself, priest! Your skin will bruise and your bones will break like any other man’s. Even the Pope will bleed if cut.”
“How dare you threaten the archbishop!” Roger found he was gripping his crosier as if it were a weapon, so great was his outrage. “If ever there was a man heading for Hell, it would be you, John Marshal. And the fires of Hell will be even hotter than the flames in that burning bell tower!”
Marshal scowled at this pointed reminder of the calamity that had cost him an eye. Before he could retort, though, there was a commotion to the rear. Men were reluctantly moving aside, clearing a path for the king’s justiciar and the king’s uncle.
The Earl of Leicester and Rainald bulled their way through the crowd, trampling on toes and jabbing their elbows into ribs. “What in hellfire are you fools up to?” Rainald’s florid face was nearly crimson now. “Who told you to harry the bishops like this?”
Leicester was shaking his head in disgust. “The lot of you ought to be ashamed of yourselves, threatening men of God. Get out of here, and just hope this deplorable lapse does not reach the king’s
ears.”
Some of the men did seem shamed by the justiciar’s tongue-lashing, others merely disgruntled. But none of them resisted, and within moments all were in retreat. Leicester strode to the door, rather ostentatiously slid the bolt into place. “The king sent my lord earl of Cornwall and me to discuss this lamentable impasse—fortunately for you, my lord bishops. I regret to say that feeling is running high against you amongst the king’s barons. Who’s to say what those dolts might have done if we’d not arrived when we did?”
Roger swallowed a skeptical rejoinder, for he suspected this entire scene had been staged for their benefit, a not-so-subtle warning of what could befall enemies of the Crown. “Uncle,” he said coldly to Rainald, while wishing suddenly that his other uncle, Ranulf, had been able to attend the Clarendon council. Mayhap Ranulf could have talked some sense into the king. It would not even occur to Rainald to try.
“What would you say to us, my lord earls?” Becket’s pallor was stained by blotches of hectic color burning across his cheekbones. “Do you speak on the king’s behalf?”
“Nay, my lord archbishop. I speak for myself,” Leicester said, his eyes sweeping the chamber, moving slowly and searchingly from bishop to bishop. “The king wishes to know how your deliberations are progressing. But nothing has changed. He’ll not give ground on this, my lords, for he has the right of it. In those lawless years under the usurper, Stephen of Blois, Crown prerogatives were lost and Church encroachments proceeded apace, if you’ll forgive an old soldier for speaking bluntly. It is only natural that the king should want to recover what was lost, to restore the—”
“This serves for naught,” Becket interrupted, with a rudeness that betrayed the shaken state of his nerves. “We already know the king’s views on this matter. If you have nothing new to offer, I see no point in prolonging this conversation.”
“How can you be so shortsighted?” Rainald glared at Becket. “My nephew is an honorable, God-fearing man, one who has the makings of a great king. But he is known to be . . . hasty in his tempers. Do not push him so far, my lords, that he takes measures he may well later regret.”
Leicester nodded grimly. “I must obey the king’s commands. I believe myself to be a good son of the Church, and it would not be easy to arrest an archbishop. But I would do it, my lords, if the order were given. I would have no choice.”
“You do what you must,” Becket said. “As will we.”
After Leicester and Rainald had departed, the silence was smothering. No one seemed to have the heart for further argument. Slumped in their seats, the bishops stared off into space, each man lost in his own dark musings. Roger’s head had begun to throb, and he rubbed his temples gingerly. How were they to escape this trap?
THE NEXT ONES to try their luck at breaking the bishops’ resolve were the Templars—the English Grand Master Richard de Hastings and Tostes de St Omer. With a solemnity that seemed more appropriate for a wake than a council, the two urged Becket and the other prelates to reconsider, to think of the good of the Church. That argument hit home with Roger, whose greatest fear was that this acrimony would poison the well for years to come. They had spoken with the king at great length, the Templars reported, and he was willing to be reasonable. If the bishops would agree to accept the customs, that avowal would be enough to satisfy the king.
“This we faithfully promise you,” the Templars’ Grand Master concluded earnestly, “and may our souls be condemned to eternal damnation if henceforth the king demands of you anything contrary to your will or your order.”
Becket heard them out in silence and then announced that he would go to the chapel to pray for divine guidance. The atmosphere lightened a bit after his departure. The Bishop of Winchester ordered wine and wafers to be brought in. He no longer seemed to harbor the political ambitions that had once helped to wreak such havoc upon the kingdom. Those days when he’d dreamed of the archbishopric of Canterbury for himself, the throne at Westminster for his brother, were long gone. Now in his life’s winter, he still retained a healthy appreciation for the pleasures of fine wine and good food, and he ate with a relish that few of the others could match.
Roger had no appetite. When Gilbert Foliot took the seat beside him, he found for the Bishop of London a crooked smile. “Well, it has been an interesting afternoon. Shall we toss a coin to see who gets to give the king the bad news?”
Roger’s flippancy didn’t go over well with Foliot, who was still silently fuming at the idiocy of it all. “As soon as Becket returns, we’d best go back to the hall and get this over with whilst we can still pretend to a semblance of unity.”
The Bishop of Winchester finished one wafer, reached for another. “Just be thankful,” he said, “that the king’s termagant mother is in Normandy. If you think Harry can be a raving lunatic, you ought to have seen the Lady Maude in one of her imperial fits of fury.”
His sarcasm struck a sour note with Roger; the Lady Maude, after all, was his aunt. It was also an impolitic reminder that Winchester had been on the wrong side in the great war that had torn England asunder for nigh on two decades. He was on the verge of an equally impolitic rebuke when the door opened and Thomas Becket entered the chamber.
He had the dazed look of a man bleeding from an inner wound, so ashen that even Foliot felt a twinge of involuntary pity for his plight. Waving aside Winchester’s offer of wine, he said abruptly, “If the king will have me perjure myself, so be it. I will agree to take the oath he demands, and hope to purge the sin by future penance.”
Roger was too stunned to speak. He stared at the archbishop mutely, having no idea what to say. Judging from the silence, none of the others did either.
BECKET’S SUDDEN CAPITULATION was greeted by Henry’s barons with surprise and jubilation. They sat upright on their benches, listening intently as the archbishop promised that he would “observe the customs of the kingdom in good faith.” Even his enemies would later remark that the man looked ill, but he spoke out firmly, loudly enough to be heard throughout the hall. Henry showed no emotion, his face impassive, grey eyes guarded. Once Becket had recanted, he said:
“You have heard the archbishop’s promise. All that remains is for the bishops to do the same, at his command.” And that was done. It was then that Henry startled them all, barons and bishops alike, by insisting that the customs should be committed to writing so as to avoid future misunderstandings.
The law, as they knew it, was oral tradition, passed down from one generation to the next. This was an innovation, one that stirred suspicion and alarm. But Henry had the momentum and the control of events, and his opponents were too demoralized by Becket’s volte-face to muster further opposition. This, too, was done as the king commanded, and the Constitutions of Clarendon were duly set down in a chirograph on January 29, the text written out three times on the same parchment and then torn so as to validate all three copies when joined together. With that, the historic and contentious Council of Clarendon drew to a close.
ROGER WAS SO TROUBLED by his friend’s despairing state of mind that he concocted an excuse to accompany the archbishop upon the first leg of his journey back to Canterbury. Becket had been bitterly assailed by some of the other bishops, accused of abandoning them in the midst of battle. Even his own clerks turned upon him, and as they rode toward Winchester, his cross-bearer, a fiery-tempered Welshman called Alexander Llewelyn, dared to accuse Becket of forsaking his flock and betraying his conscience, saying boldly, “When the shepherd has fled, the sheep lie scattered before the wolf.”
The archbishop offered no defense, flinching away from the words as if they were weapons. When Roger urged his mount closer so they might talk, Becket said huskily, “I have indeed betrayed my God, my friends, and myself. I do judge myself unworthy to approach as a priest Him Whose Church I have vilely bartered, and I will sit silent in grief until the ‘day spring from on high hath visited me,’ so that I merit absolution by God and the Lord Pope.”
Roger was taken aback by t
he emotional intensity of Becket’s remorse. But he did not doubt the other man’s sincerity and realized at once what this meant. His cousin the king may have won this battle, but the war would go on.
AN ICY FEBRUARY RAIN was drenching Winchester, turning the streets into muddy quagmires and driving people indoors, where they huddled around reeking hearths and cursed the vile winter weather. Within the castle, though, another storm raged, a battle royal between England’s king and his consort.
“I cannot believe,” Henry exclaimed, “that you are siding with Becket in this!”
Eleanor swore in exasperation. “Jesú! I am doing no such thing. I simply said that it might have been wiser if you’d concentrated upon a few important issues, such as the matter of the criminous clerks. You have the right of that argument and few save Becket would dispute it with you.”
“I have the right of all sixteen arguments—the Constitutions of Clarendon. They are indeed the customs of the realm from my grandfather’s time. I did not pluck them from the sky or invent them out of whole cloth.”
‘No, but you did a bit of embroidering,” she insisted, with a wry humor that he did not find amusing. “Harry, I think you overreached yourself, and for certes, you’d have done better not to have demanded that written recognition—”