He was not long in discovering that his qualms were well founded. He saw several familiar faces, but none greeted him, averting their eyes as if he were a moral leper, one infected with some dreadful malady of the soul. And no sooner had he entered the great hall when a known figure stepped into his path, barring his way.
“Master Fitz Stephen, as I live and breathe! Passing strange, your turning up here. I was reading Scriptures a few nights ago, Leviticus 26:36, if memory serves, and suddenly it was as if you were right there in the chamber with me.”
Fitz Stephen was not the biblical scholar that Herbert of Bosham was; the other man even had knowledge of Hebrew, a rarity in the most learned circles. But Fitz Stephen, subdeacon and lawyer, was well versed enough in the Scriptures to appreciate the insult.
The sound of a driven leaf shall put them to flight, and they shall flee as one flees from the sword, and they shall fall when none pursues.
His first instinct was to strike back with scriptural weapons of his own; Matthew was certainly apt, with its admonition to
judge not, that ye be not judged.
But that would be an exercise in futility, exactly what Herbert wanted him to do. Instead, he smiled blandly. “It is always good to be remembered.”
Herbert’s dark eyes glowed like embers. “You are not welcome here!”
“That is not for you to say.”
“You abandoned our lord in his hour of jeopardy and embraced his persecutor!”
“I made my peace with our lord king, as the archbishop himself did at Fréteval!”
“A false peace, just as you are a false friend!”
“Could you say that more loudly, Master Herbert? I doubt that they could hear you across the river in London.”
At the intrusion of this new voice, both Herbert and Fitz Stephen swung toward the sound. Herbert scowled, for Becket’s Welsh cross-bearer was the only one of the archbishop’s clerks who could match him in rhetorical flourishes, boldness of speech, and pure lung power. While he acknowledged Alexander Llewelyn’s unwavering loyalty to their lord, a trait he found to be conspicuously rare amongst the Welsh, he was invariably perplexed by the other man’s drolleries and insouciance. He assumed now that this was a jest of some sort, although the humor of it escaped him, as humor always did.
“If you choose to consort with apostates, Master Llewelyn,” he said loftily, “that is your right. I, however, do not.” And he made a dignified departure, marred only by the hostile glare he flung over his shoulder at Fitz Stephen as he strode off.
“Why is it,” Alexander wondered, “that I always feel the urge to applaud after one of Herbert’s speeches?”
Fitz Stephen grinned, for that had been a standing joke between them, that Herbert of Bosham secretly yearned, not for a bishopric as most clerks did, but for the starring role in a troupe of players. His pleasure was sharp at this proof that their friendship had survived the vicissitudes of the past six years. “You do not blame me, then, for making peace with the king?”
“You did what you had to do,” Alexander said, accepting life’s inequities and anomalies with the fatalism of the true Celt. “My family is safely out of the king’s reach in Wales, but yours was in . . . Gloucester-shire, was it not? Who could blame you for not wanting to see them banished from England? How are your sisters? And that brother of yours? They are well?”
“Yes, thank God Almighty, they are. Ralph has entered the king’s service, in fact.” Fitz Stephen hesitated, but his were the instincts of a lawyer; better to scout out the terrain first. “Sander . . . does the lord archbishop feel as you do? Or as Herbert does?”
Alexander gestured toward a window recess. “Let’s talk over there.” Once they were seated, he took his time in answering. Fitz Stephen was a patient man, though, content to wait.
“I remember something that the Bishop of Worcester said to me last year. He said that any friend of the archbishop’s was an enemy of the king’s, with one exception . . . himself. And he was right. The king is fond enough of Lord Roger to overlook his dual loyalties. I think that also holds true for you and Lord Thomas. We both know that he and the king share the same creed: ‘He that is not with me is against me.’ But I can truthfully tell you that I have not heard Lord Thomas speak against you, not once in all those years of our exile. He does not doubt your fidelity, Will,” the Welshman said seriously, and then laughed. “Much to Master Herbert’s dismay!”
“God grant it so,” Fitz Stephen said softly. “I rejoiced to hear of the archbishop’s accord with the king, Sander, for I’d given up hope that it would ever come to pass. Herbert called it a ‘false peace.’ Is there truth in that?”
Alexander’s amusement vanished as if it had never been. “I fear so,” he said at last. “We’ve been back in England less than a fortnight, and little has gone as it ought. There is continuing strife with the de Brocs. They still hold Saltwood Castle and they’ve shown no willingness to surrender their grip on the diocese as the king ordered. They even went so far as to collect the Christmas rents in advance from the archbishop’s tenants! And they have been harassing our lord in ways both petty and great. The king sent wine as a gift to the archbishop and they seized the ship and cargo, throwing the crew into gaol at Pevensey. They have stolen Lord Thomas’s hunting dogs, poached his game, felled his trees. And I am sorry to say that the young king has so far done nothing to rein in their malice. That is why we are at Southwark, Will. Lord Thomas means to go to the young king’s court at Winchester and assure him that there is no truth in the rumors the de Brocs are spreading, that he intends to overturn Hal’s coronation.”
“The de Brocs are evil men,” Fitz Stephen said grimly, “verily spawn of Satan. Did you know that Robert de Broc is an apostate Cistercian monk? It is only to be expected that they are stirring up as much trouble as they can. I thought the king was supposed to return to England with Lord Thomas. Why did that not come to pass?”
Alexander grimaced. “When we got to Rouen, the king was not there. He sent a message from Loches in Touraine, claiming that he’d had to hasten to Auvergne to fend off an attack by the French king and telling Lord Thomas to go on to England with the escort he’d provided. You care to guess who the escort was, Will?” When Fitz Stephen shook his head in puzzlement, he said, after a dramatic pause: “The Dean of Salisbury, John of Oxford.”
Fitz Stephen’s response was all that Alexander hoped for. He gaped at the Welshman in disbelief. “But Lord Thomas loathes John of Oxford! He even excommunicated him once! Whatever possessed the king to make such a choice? Was it meant as a deliberate insult?”
“That was Lord Thomas’s suspicion, too,” Alexander admitted. “He was quite indignant at having such a man foisted upon him. And that was not all. The king had promised our lord that he’d give him five hundred marks when they met at Rouen and take care of the debts he’d incurred in exile. But there was no money and our creditors had trailed after us all the way to Rouen. The Archbishop of Rouen was so embarrassed that he offered Lord Thomas three hundred pounds out of his own funds.”
“Hellfire and damnation,” Fitz Stephen muttered. There was much that he admired about his king, but he deplored Henry’s bad faith. He was not so naïve as to believe that all promises were hallowed. Men of intelligence and goodwill understood which ones could safely be broken and which ones must be honored. Alas, the king did not.
“It does not sound like an auspicious beginning,” he said, and Alexander gave a short laugh.
“You do not know the half of it, my friend. Whilst we were waiting to take ship at Wissant, the Count of Boulogne warned Lord Thomas that the de Brocs and the Sheriff of Kent were planning to arrest him upon his arrival at Dover. As a precaution, we landed instead at Sandwich, but word soon got out and the de Brocs, the sheriff, and one of the king’s justiciars, Reginald de Warenne, came galloping up from Dover with a force of armed men.”
“Jesú! What happened?”
“Well . . . we wronged the king by doubting his motives in sending John of Oxford with us. John proved to be a godsend. He stopped them in their tracks, for all the world like a broody hen protecting her chicks!” A reminiscent grin crossed his face. “He would not even allow them into the archbishop’s presence until they’d disarmed. He insisted upon accompanying us all the way to Canterbury to make sure there would be no further trouble. Lord Thomas was impressed enough to write to His Holiness the Pope and commend his good services, and I never thought I’d live long enough to hear him speak well of John of Oxford!”
Fitz Stephen was not easily roused to anger, but he felt a deep, slow-burning rage beginning to kindle, directed at the archbishop’s enemies, wolves harrying one of God’s own. Because it was in his nature to look for flowers among weeds, he sought to reassure Alexander by saying resolutely, “Once men find out that the archbishop has been restored to the king’s full favor, these provocations will cease.”
“It is rather more complicated than that.” The Welshman lowered his voice to the confidential tones of one privy to secrets of consequence, and then revealed that Thomas Becket had dispatched letters of censure for the Archbishop of York and the Bishops of London and Salisbury.
Fitz Stephen was stunned. “Are you saying that the archbishop excommunicated them on the eve of his return to England?”
Alexander’s smile was beatific. “Indeed he did, and I’d have been willing to beg my bread by the roadside for the chance to witness their Judgment Day at Dover!”
Fitz Stephen did not share his friend’s satisfaction. “I know the depths of his anger toward them, justified anger. But . . . but why would he strike out at them now of all times, just after making peace with the king?”
“He’d not intended to do so. Remember that I said this was ‘compli cated’? When Lord Thomas first heard of the illegal coronation of the king’s son, he was told that Henry had perverted the coronation oath, demanding that his son swear to observe the ancient customs of the realm as set forth in the Constitutions of Clarendon. He wrote to His Holiness the Pope of this, with understandable outrage, for that would indeed have been salting the wound.”
“I agree. But the traditional oath was sworn, with no mention made of those accursed Constitutions!”
Alexander smiled ruefully. “I know. We soon learned that the first report was in error. But in the press of events this summer, getting ready to meet the king at Fréteval, Lord Thomas forgot to advise the Pope of this mistaken claim. In October, the papal letters reached him at Rouen, suspending the Archbishop of York and five other bishops and ordering that the Bishops of London and Salisbury relapse into the excommunication that had so recently been lifted. Lord Thomas at once wrote to the Holy Father, asking for another set of letters in which no mention was made of the customs of the realm or the perverted coronation oath, giving him the choice of suspending or excommunicating the offending bishops at his own discretion.”
Fitz Stephen was frowning. “Then how did this come about? He could not receive new letters of censure until after Christmas, at the earliest. So he must have made use of the first letters, the ones based on faulty information. Why, Sander? Why would he do that?”
“Because he learned that the three of them were going to advise and aid the king in his plan to fill the six English bishoprics that are still vacant.”
The pieces were coming together for Fitz Stephen, in a pattern as ominous as it was familiar. The king had acted with his customary arrogance, and the archbishop had reacted with fury as calamitous as it was understandable. “Clearly, word of these excommunications has not become public knowledge, for I’d heard nothing of them. Does the king know yet, Sander? You realize that he will take Lord Thomas’s actions as a declaration of war?”
“I do not know if the king has heard yet. If not, he soon will, for all that the bishops would prefer to keep this quiet in hopes of pressuring Lord Thomas to relent. That was the chief demand made upon him by the Sheriff of Kent and the others when they confronted him at Sandwich. As for the king’s rage, I do not doubt that it will be spectacular. But the archbishop has more than one arrow in his quiver. When he made peace with the king at Fréteval, the king agreed to let him discipline those bishops who’d taken part in the coronation.”
Alexander delivered this last revelation with the complacent pride of a court jongleur who’d just demonstrated an impressive sleight-of-hand trick. Fitz Stephen did not respond as expected, though. “He consented to further excommunications?” he said, sounding so skeptical that Alexander’s smile faded.
“Well, no, not exactly . . . not in those words. But he did concede that the archbishop could exact punishment upon them for defying the Pope.”
Fitz Stephen shook his head slowly. “And you truly think that is one and the same? Even if I did not know the king, I could tell you that he’d never equate a vague, ambiguous term like ‘discipline’ with the most lethal of the Church’s weapons. Knowing him as I do, I can say with certainty that there was no agreement, for there was no meeting of the minds upon this.”
Alexander shrank back in feigned horror. “Saints preserve us, you’re sounding like a lawyer again! Be that as it may, Will, it is done and the archbishop is not likely to undo it. He told the sheriff and that whoreson de Broc when they threatened him at Sandwich that the sentences were passed by the Pope and so only His Holiness could absolve the bishops.”
To Fitz Stephen’s legally trained mind, such an argument was a sophistry, for the archbishop had set the censures in motion by seeking them from the Pope. There was nothing to be gained, though, by saying so. He found it very easy to understand his lord archbishop’s fury and frustration, his need to strike out at his foes. But if only he’d stayed his hand! If only he’d waited until the storm provoked by his return had passed. Fitz Stephen suppressed a shiver, for he feared that Lord Thomas had given to his enemies a sharp sword indeed.