“No, his wife’s lying-in is nigh, and he was loath to leave her. Nor is our cousin Will here, either.”
That Maud already knew; Will had departed for Rouen soon after Christmas, seeking to find some solace in his mother’s sympathy. “Poor Will. He deserves better than to be made a pawn in this infernal chess game Harry and Becket are playing.”
Roger’s frown was faintly discernible in the blanched moonlight. “I can assure you, Maud, that the archbishop’s objections to Will’s marriage are valid. Canon law prohibits marriage if the man and woman are related within the seventh degree, either by blood or marriage. Will and Isabella de Warenne’s husband were third cousins. Moreover, the girl herself is kin to Will through William the Bastard.”
“Then that makes her kin to her husband, too, does it not? So why was that marriage permitted and Will’s denied? Would Christendom have been imperiled had a dispensation been granted? For pity’s sake, Roger, Harry and Eleanor are distant cousins, too!”
“Yes, but the archbishop was not asked to pass judgment upon the validity of their marriage,” he pointed out, so reasonably that she groaned.
“You sound just like Papa,” she said, “always so rational and logical!” If it was a complaint, it was also a compliment. Neither one could envision a greater tribute than a comparison with the father they’d both adored. After a moment, they smiled at each other in unspoken acknowledgment of that family fact, and Maud said forthrightly:
“I do not want to quarrel with you. We will never see eye to eye upon the merits or the motives of your friend, Thomas Becket. But if you hold him in such esteem, I may have been too hasty in my judgment.”
“I wish I could convince you of Thomas’s sincerity. He seeks only to protect the Mother Church. Mayhap he has not always been as tactful as he ought—”
That was too much for Maud, who gave a derisive hoot. “Come now, Roger. The word you are groping for is
foolhardy,
not
tactless.
Bearbaiting may well be an exciting sport for some, but it is a most dangerous one, too.”
“I know,” Roger said, with such stark, despairing candor that she at once regretted her levity.
“Tell me,” she said, “about the council meeting today. What are these customs that Harry is demanding you all abide by?”
“He claims that those pleas concerning advowsons belong in the king’s court. That no cleric may leave England without his consent. That no man holding his lands directly from the king may be excommunicated or his lands laid under interdict without the king’s prior consent. That sons of villeins may not be ordained without the permission of their lords. That appeals are not to be made to the papal court without first passing through the appropriate Church courts, and then not without the king’s consent. That the king should control vacant bishoprics, abbeys, and priories. That when there are evildoers whom people fear to accuse, twelve respected men of the town or vill shall be chosen to take oath that they will seek out the truth of the matter. That once criminous clerks have been taken before an ecclesiastical court, found guilty, and degraded of their clerical office, they should then be turned over to the king’s court for sentencing as laymen.”
It was an impressive display of memory, but no more than Maud would have expected. Her brother’s keen intellect had helped, as much as his royal connections, to propel him to prominence at such a young age. “Are they, indeed, the customs of the realm in the days of the old king, Harry’s grandfather?”
Roger nodded tersely. “With one or two exceptions, I would say so.”
Maud reached over and squeezed his arm. “Can you not accept them, then?”
“No . . .” The look he gave her was anguished, revealing not only the conflicted state of his soul, but his bleak awareness of the high stakes involved. “In good conscience, we cannot, Maud. How can we agree to let the king circumscribe appeals to the Apostolic See? That would violate our consecration oaths. And how can we accede to the king’s demand that we must secure his permission to leave the realm? That would hinder pilgrimages, at the very least. And what would I do if I were summoned to Rome by the Holy Father and the king then refused to let me go?”
“What did priests and bishops do in the old king’s time?”
He was silent for some moments, gazing out upon the expanse of pristine, moonlit snow. “There must be accommodation between Church and Crown. If the king refused to unsheathe his secular sword to enforce spiritual penalties, how effective would those penalties be? The Church might, of necessity, have to tolerate certain practices that are in violation of canon law. But it is not possible to confer official sanction upon those deviant practices. So we have no choice but to refuse.”
“You mean that by making this public demand, Harry has taken away your wriggling room?” It was a colloquial expression, but one that accurately summed up their dilemma, and Roger smiled in wry recognition of that. Maud understood perfectly what he meant; she was first and foremost a realist. But she understood, too, why her cousin had been driven to such measures.
“This accommodation you spoke of can work only if there is trust on both sides. And Harry no longer believes that he can trust Thomas Becket.”
“I know,” he admitted softly.
“What happens now?”
“When the council resumes on the morrow, we shall seek to make the king understand why we cannot accede to his demands.”
“And if you cannot?”
He slowly shook his head. “Then God help us all.”
THE COUNCIL was already in session the next morning when Maud slipped unobtrusively in a side door of the great hall. Her son was seated on one of the long wooden benches, next to his uncle, Rainald, Earl of Cornwall. Hugh looked ill at ease, but then, so did many of the men. The tension was almost tangible, blanketing the hall like wood-smoke. The only one who seemed unaffected by the disquieting atmosphere was Henry’s young son. Hal was presiding with his father over the council; just a month shy of his ninth birthday, he was fidgeting in his seat, scraping with his thumbnail at the candle wax that splattered the wooden arm of his chair. Maud had heard that he’d become very fond of Becket during his eighteen months in the archbishop’s custody, and she wondered if it was painful for him to see his father feuding so publicly and acrimoniously with Becket. At the least, she imagined it must be confusing for the boy. But his face masked his thoughts; a handsome, sturdy youngster, he looked bored and faintly sullen.
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!”