‘Friar Marsh: I am bidden to summon you, and bring you to the Archbishop. And he bids me say: The King is with us.’
Adam took a deep breath and covered his forehead with his wimple. ‘Bless you,’ he said, ‘and lead me; for the love of Christ
our Lord.’
‘We thank you; enough,’ Henry said, resettling the silver clasp of his robes on his right shoulder with slender fingers. ‘We
forgive you these ceremonies; there is work to be done, and quickly. Take your places.’
Adam studied him as they all moved to the table. In this vein the King was sometimes at his most dangerous, because least
like himself. His white hands were bare, and so were his robes; in fact he wore no ornament to body forth what he was except
the workaday fleur-de-lis coronet. Beneath that circlet his handsome, long-nosed countenance with its delicious red mouth
was both framed and softened by the curls of his hair, almost like those of a page, and of his short silky beard. By the many
furrows between his brows, and the set of his lips, it might have been thought that the King was only troubled, or perhaps
even sorrowful, but no more than that. His voice was even and reasonable.
It was when Adam looked into Henry’s eyes that he knew he had reason to be frightened. He wondered, a little, why he was not.
‘My lord King, an it please you,’ Edmund Rich said, and, bowed his head. The iron fleur-de-lis tilted almost imperceptibly,
as if in the gentlest of hot breezes, while the Archbishop made some brief benediction too much under his breath for Adam
to catch. Possibly Henry could not hear much of it either, though Edmund stood immediately on his right hand. Then they were
all seated around the table and Adam had a moment to tell over the beads of these his confreres in this hermetic conference.
To Henry’s left, Simon de Montfort, in half mail. To Edmund’s right, a thin sallow grey-haired man with a pointed nose, wearing
a spotted pallium, with inkpot and
quills before him; Adam remembered him without quite being able to name him. To Simon’s left, Adam himself. Between Adam and
the man in the pallium, a baron Adam had never seen before, and knew better than to heed,: an abject thing created by Henry
to honour the letter of the barons’ demand that one of them be always in attendance in matters of state; if he held any castle,
it was probably something like Pontrhydfendigaid or Biddenden the Less. He was magnificently attired, but might equally well
have come in cap and bells.
A small company, in a small bare ancient hall; and the air as taut and full of incipient thunder as a drying drum-hide.
‘We are not again to be menaced and forestalled by the Bishop of Lincoln,’ Henry said pleasantly. ‘We have called you here
for your advice as to the means, but the end is already fixed in our heart. To wit, this
teste synodak
is pernicious, and must be ended.’
‘How, my lord King?’ Edmund Rich said. ‘It is dangerous, yes; pernicious, perhaps; but eke an established and ordered procedure
of the Church. How prevent an ordained bishop from it?’
‘This we have summoned you to ask,’ Henry said. ‘We are not ignorant in these matters. The great Grosseteste may use this
procedure, or not use, according to his best judgment for the cure of souls. We do not hold his judgment in the highest regard
today. We still bear in mind the congratulations he sent to us in Wales.’
This reference baffled Adam entirely, as by their expressions it did also Simon and the counterfeit baron. Edmund only shrugged.
‘You cannot choose not to understand us.’ Henry said, his eyes narrowing. ‘Matthew, enlighten them.’
The narrow man in the pallium, whose pen had been squeaking and sticking away over a new parchment at almost miraculous speed,
dropped his quill on to the table, where it made a shiny irregular black clot. He bent out of sight, and materialized from
between his feet a thick roll of manuscript. This, when he began to read from it, turned out to be
part of a mensual of Henry’s reign – an account so detailed and full of gossip that Adam was amazed to find the King even
tolerating it, let alone sponsoring it.
Now he knew the man in the pallium: this was the clerk Matthew Paris, appointed by Henry to continue the history of the Plantagenet
kingships begun by Roger of Wendover, and whom Adam had first seen at Beaumont, avidly recording Henry’s strafing of Hubert
de Burgh. Incredible! Henry was a notable patron of the secular arts, that was well known; but how could he stomach a historian
so contemptuous, and not only between the lines, even of his good gifts? Like much else about the King, it passed understanding,
or even the hope of understanding this side Jordan.
‘Also in this month of 1236 was issued by the King to the Abbott of Ramsey a mandate requiring that he act as an itinerant
judge in the counties of Buckingham and Bedford,’ Paris read in a sort of scornful gabble. ‘To this Grosseteste Bishop of
Lincoln raised strong protests and asked recall of the mandate, declaring to all who would heed that canon law forbade all
clerks below the rank of sub-deacon to become justiciars under princes; to which purpose he cited 2 Tim. ii. 4,
nemo militans Deo implicat se negotiis saecularibus,
and many other authorities both sacred and secular; among these being his contention that such a king treads on the verge
of the sin of Uzzah, who usurped unto himself the office of priest—’
‘My lord King, have we not laid this ghost these ten years bygonnen?’ Edmund Rich broke in. ‘I see that this ill-favoured
scribe hath been a-reading at my letters, and indeed intercepting them unless I doubt mine ears. Thereby he knows, and my
lord should know, that neither I nor any other prelate of substance supported the Bishop of Lincoln’s position on this question
to such an extreme; finding which, he fell silent.’
‘We assure you that he was still sending us archdeacons to the very field of battle, a good four years later, to accuse us
of violation of the liberties of the Church,’ Henry said. ‘This is the Welsh affair of which we spoke; had the preferment
at issue not been resigned by him whom we had named, the Bishop’d be gnawing at our laces still.’
‘Sure not, my lord,’ Edmund Rich said, forcibly calm. ‘I deem we’ll hear no more of it henceforth.’
‘Will we not?’ the King said. ‘Matthew, read on.’
Matthew Paris peeled off a great limp sheaf of pages, tucked the roll of them under the rungs of his stool, and resumed reading
at once, as though he had targeted this next passage like a lancer aiming his point at his challenger’s visor.
‘And in this month of 1245—’
Adam stiffened; suddenly this was no longer a history. Whatever Paris was about to read had happened only last year.
‘… King Henry was much vexed to be told by the Bishop of Lincoln that he would not yield the church of St. Peter in Northampton
to one Ralph Passelew, a forest judge deserving in the sight of the King. And to the King’s vexation the Bishop replied, first,
that he sought not to give offence but only to make composition of the difference, out of concern for the souls of the said
parish, and out of zeal for the King’s honour; second, that he begged the King’s clemency for opposing him; third, that he
hoped for an audience; and fourth, that he hoped that the King shared with the Bishop the desire that all things be directed
to the glory of God, the salvation of souls, and the liberty of the Church. And fifth, that the Bishop was right, and the
King wrong.’
‘But this should indeed all have been settled, my lord King!’ Edmund Rich protested, his face white. ‘I wis nat how it came
into your majesty’s hands at all. Ralph Passelew himself never took it to the secular arm. He sued Archbishop Boniface under
canon law for a mandate of institution in eight days, and won it; but I was forced to tell the most holy Boniface that such
an appointment would bring scandal upon the Church, and also assuredly upon himself—’
‘“ … since thou wilt be acting not out of zeal to do what is right, but only out of fear of the King,”’ Matthew Paris added
from text, his forefinger following the contracted,
unforgiving minuscules of the code on the page before him.
Edmund stared at the historian, and after a moment’s thought, crossed himself. Adam did likewise, but only abstractedly, as
a man who would do himself no harm but did not seek to ward off any positive ill. He had found himself wondering why Matthew
Paris should have written of these matters with such malice, and why he was now contributing his most carefully selected arrows
to the King’s bow. It was plain that Paris did not love the King; nor could he have borne any grudge against the Capito for
past visitations, for his own monastery at St. Albans was exempt and always had been. Could it be that he was a man compelled
by his single gift of history to take no man’s part but his own, or that of his words? If so, never mind that to declare any
man surely damned was a sin; Matthew Paris was as damned as any living soul could conceivably be, and the
Logos itself
would forbear to pity him.
‘And?’ the King said.
‘You have exhausted my knowledge of the matter, my lord King,’ Edmund Rich said. ‘But I had thought it composed; and well
it should have been, long ere now.’
Adam raised his hand. The circlet inclined toward him, and the eyes looked at him.
‘Most Christian Adam: proceed.’
‘My lord King, I know of this tangle, and the ways of it, all too well. Ralph Passelew is an outworn story to me, and to all
of us in the parish; was once much loved and honoured, and deservedly so by your majesty, as any wise and just master hunter
should be honoured. But in his dotage he bath presumed upon the Crown to aspire to a prebend, that should have rested in gratitude
in your majesty’s bounties. Robert Grosseteste had warned him, long before his dotard’s greed reached your majesty’s ears,
not to hope to exercise such an office, which if won would lead to imprisonment for all involved, clergy and laity alike.
So the law runs; but he was senile, and would not listen.
‘Only then was the Capito forced to appeal to Boniface,
begging him not to allow this most dearly beloved old man to sue for any post in the Church. I myself helped to compose that
letter, in which we said that such an installation would be to the detriment of Boniface his suffragens, whom it was his duty
to protect. Boniface was ne more pleased by this our intercession than is your majesty, but he was forced to allow us our
argument, seeing in the light of reason that it could hardly be gainsaid. Hence he proposed to us that he should instead institute
in Northampton in clue course a Master John Houten, then currently archdeacon of the church; to which we of course consented,
since pastoral care was our only object … not, not certainly, to thwart our King.’
‘Your King named Ralph Passelew,’ Henry said.
‘He was very old, my lord King,’ Adam said steadily, ‘and though every man loved him, he was not even a clerk, let alone a
prelate.’
‘Where is he now?’
‘He died, my lord King, on the feast of St. Blase. That this petty broil still diverts the most high King of England from
his affairs of state is not by the intention of Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln. God and the King I beg give me leave
to say that someone else is inflaming your majesty’s good sense.’
‘Beware,’ Henry said, almost sleepily. Matthew Paris’ quill squeaked and sputtered. Adam bent his head and fell silent. So
did they all.
‘But where are we now?’ Simon de Montfort said at last. ‘We’ve argued ourselves into an ingle, and yet it has nothing to do
with why we’re here.’
‘Nothing, Simon?’ Henry said.
‘Very little, my lord King. We have been talking all along about his complaints against the Crown; but let us look for a moment
at what the Capito doth to the realm now, and will do henceforth if we cannot say him, Stop! all in one voice. For look you,
I am but a plain soldier as God knoweth, yet it seemeth me that after contumacy the gravest of crimes for any monk is to publish
the secrets of hall or chapter to the
laity, whereby he becometh a fautor of popular scandal and bringeth holy Church herself into scorn and disrepute; which rule
of sense bath mostly prevailed in the practice of visitation, to the protection of rude and ignorant men such as I am, in
constant peril from the meanest of temptations. This rule the noble Robert of Lincoln bath now put into desuetude – in quest
of perfection of spirit among his flock as I ne doubt, but to visible confusion and despair.’
‘We dare not hope,’ Edmund Rich said heavily, ‘that corruption shall put on incorruption in this life.’
Adam was uncertain whether this was intended to be taken as agreement with Simon’s proposition, which had stricken Adam with
certain doubts as to the purity of his own attitudes which he had never entertained before. Simon, however, seemed to adopt
the Archbishop’s words as though they had been his own.
‘I thank you, my lord. Yet this is not yet all. These massive public examinations of the conscience of a whole cure bring
eke
in communis fama the
sins and purported crimes of everyone drawn into the net, noble and commoner alike – and so in the end, when the noble Robert
bath withdrawn to his next county, wife will ne longer bow the neck to her goodman, burgess hath no obedience from his citizens,
no landholder buys and sells from any other, sheriffs are scorned, serf thinketh his lord ne better nor worse than himself,
allegiances fall all awry, charters are turned into scraps; fealty itself becometh naught but a word, and may yet sink to
less than a word, even to you, my lord King: to the yelp of a kicked cur who kens the foot in his ribs and licks it, sithen
it belongeth to the only hand that will feed him.’
The counterfeit baron looked as though he were about to cheer, but somebody must have trodden on his toe; he looked glumly
down again. The King, who had been drumming his fingers upon the table-top, gradually brought his tattoo to a stop. It had
been slowing noticeably during Simon’s peroration.
‘Both halves of this judgment be but simple sooth,’ he said. ‘And so we will speak plainly. We doubt not any fraction
of the fealty of Robert of Lincoln; but ’tis mortal clear what dangers he is courting. The bondsmen hate the clergy, we need
not Grosseteste to be warranted of that – out of that passion sprang the last insurrection, which our barons were not loath
to channel under the pillars of our throne. We do not wish these nobles afforded another such pretext: wherefrom, this meeting.’