Eleanor Of Aquitaine (22 page)

"What'" exclaimed Henry. "The queen at this moment is in Falaise, and the constable is either with her or will shortly be. You cannot mean that either of them intercepted you in contravention of my summons."

"I do not cite the queen," replied the bishop, "for either her respect or fear of you will make her conceal the truth, so that your anger against me will be increased; or if she states the truth, your indignation will fall upon that noble lady. Better that I should lose a leg than that she should hear one harsh word from you."

Thus Henry was reminded that in his situation with the queen, Worcester, not only as bishop but as his kinsinan, sought to shield the Countess of Poitou.

*

All the incidents of the coronation were at once known to Becket and his party. Louis promptly answered the insult to his dynasty by making incursions in Normandy. That Louis should raise outcries about the offense to his daughter was inevitable, but he was never beyond the reach of appeasement. The case of Becket would be more difficult. Henry had the best of reasons to fear that Thomas would now procure some invalidation of the coronation, and that he would certainly launch the interdict upon England. He therefore resolved that, having gained his principal point, he would propitiate the archbishop on other counts at any price. Since his visit to Britain he had come to recognize advantages in getting Thomas back to his see, where his onsets could be more effectually contained. He opened his mind again hospitably to overtures for Thomas' return to Canterbury.

The Angevin appeased Louis for the indignity to his daughter by promising that, when Thomas should presently be restored to his see, there should be a second final crowning in which Marguerite should share with the young king the blessings of the primate. The King of the Franks, as a sign of his restored good will, brought Becket to Fretcval in the Chartiain for the feast of Saint Mary Magdalene on July 20 and for a conference with Henry. Becket's faithful Herbert Bosham reports the interview. Thomas found Henry softened as if by some stirring of his conscience. He was docile under rebuke, admitted he had wronged the church and injured Canterbury, and promised to make amends. As for the coronation, he cited historical precedent for the procedure. Becket, he promised again, should recrown his foster son. The king again assented to the terms of Montmartre and even hinted that, if this were demanded of him for the sake of removing all suspicion of lingering enmity, he would yield that kiss of peace he had formerly refused.

Those who stood apart from the colloquy beheld the king and Becket in such intimacy as they had kept in the days of Thomas' chancellorship, except that now the king showed a befitting deference to Thomas as to a spiritual father. He was seen to spring from his horse and hold the archbishop's stirrup, so that the latter could mount. Henry, who possessed the valued gift of tears, now shed them abundantly for Thomas. All was well at last after the terrible misunderstandings, the excommunications, the kiss denied.

"Come, my Archbishop," said the king, "let us renew our ancient love for one another; let us show each other all the good we can and forget our old quarrel… But, I beseech you, show me honor in the sight of those who watch us from afar."

Later they went over the terms for the restoration more particularly, and struck a difficulty when one of the Norman bishops demanded absolution of the English bishops as a precondition, and satisfaction of this demand in turn was made conditional upon amendment of the bishops. The tinder did not quite break into blaze. Henry and Thomas retired from Fréteval in outward amity; but each carried away his reservation: Thomas kept a free hand with his suffragans, and Henry withheld the indispensable kiss of peace.

The King of the English had no sooner left Fréteval than he came to his senses. He saw, in the course of a fever that presently overtook him, that he had conceded too much. As in other times of indecision, he took to restless journeyings. He wore out his following bustling from place to place, so that Thomas could not surprise him with demands for the kiss. Twice Thomas, who had been warned not to return to Britain without that guarantee, caught up with him. When other expedients failed, the archbishop sought to obtain the token by the ruse of standing next to the king at mass and offering him the pax. But Henry managed to have a requiem sung that day, so that no kiss should be required of the communicants.

The king and the archbishop who had quarreled so long, who had been the nearest of friends, the bitterest of foes, whose salvos had embroiled the century, met for the last time at Chaumont, between Amboise and Blois. The old terms were again confirmed. Becket, escorted by the king himself in token of their reconciliation, was to go home. Afterwards, in England, the kiss should be accorded him. Neither dared any longer to stir up the fiery embers of their old enmity.

"My heart tells me," said Becket, "that I shall see you no more in this life."

Henry read his thought. "Dost take me for a traitor?"

"That be far from me, my lord."
(Absit, absit.)
³

When Becket came to Rouen where Henry was to join him for the crossing, the king was not there. Instead, there was a letter
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explaining that Henry had been obliged to go to Auvergne to quench disturbances in that province. But he had sent a deputy to escort Thomas to Canterbury. This guarantor proved to be John of Oxford, whom Becket had excommunicated four years before at Vézelay for his "damnable traffic with the schismatics of Cologne." The archbishop, who had hoped to go back to England in a kind of triumph accompanied by the king and distinguished by marks of honor, saw himself in the custody of one of his most relentless foes. There was no fleet ready, nor the promised sterling for the passage. The Archbishop of Rouen gave Becket a sum to make his crossing with a solitary ship. In these dismal circumstances, Becket, before putting forth upon the Channel, took the precaution of disarming those rebellious suffragans of his who might be contriving in England only God knew what connivance with the king to enslave Canterbury. He suspended the Archbishop of York and renewed the excommunication of the Bishops of London and Salisbury, who had been relieved of his censures all out of season by the Archbishop of Rouen to make way for the coronation.

It was late November, six years almost to a day from the time of Thomas' flight from Henry's wrath in Northampton, that he embarked for home. When he set sail from Wissant with his little company, he planted his primatial cross in the prow of his vessel,
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and under this protection alone he came at length into the haven of Sandwich in his own see, the port from which he had fled to exile. The nobles, not knowing certainly under what terms the peace had been made, held aloof. But the common folk of the diocese made festival of his return. They drew up his boat upon the pebbly beach, spread their coats upon the road, and scattered autumn branches in his path, hymning and rejoicing as if for the return of Israel from captivity. The young king, who had been instructed to confirm all the elder king's promises to Becket, took no part in the welcome, but kept his court at a distance in Winchester, surrounded by the most reliable of Henry's justiciars. As for the Archbishop of York and the Bishops of London and Salisbury, they did not go to greet the primate. They were in Dover seeking passage to Normandy when Thomas' letters renewing their suspension were delivered into their hands.

As Henry came northward from his campaign in Auvergne, he bore toward Bures where the queen, his sons, and his vassals were convening for his Christmas court. As he approached his castle he encountered those outlawed prelates of Britain recently arrived from Dover, and these gave him their own account of the incidents of Becket's return to his see. They reported the extravagant rejoicing of the common people of the diocese, where whole towns and villages had emptied themselves of folk to join the archbishop's cavalcade
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They described Thomas' entry barefoot into his city of Canterbury amidst the joyful tears of the monks and his old retainers. They related a progress Thomas had made toward Winchester, gathering a rabble as he went, on the pretext of taking a gift of Flemish horses to the young king who had formerly been his dear foster son — a progress promptly held up in London by young Henry's wardens, who suspected an armed uprising to deprive the prince of his crown.
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They told of the clashes in divers places between the lieges of the king and those of Thomas. Then the bishops rehearsed the insolent, the unmerited affront, all in violation of the peace, to York, London, and Salisbury, now again interdicted from the use of fire and water.

"By God's eyes," exclaimed the king, "if all who shared the coronation of my son are to be excommunicated, I will be counted one of their number."

"Have patience, my lord," said the Archbishop of York. "By proper management we may yet turn the case to some advantage."

"How will you so?" asked the king.

"It is not our business to counsel your Majesty," replied the Archbishop of York, "but…"

"But," interrupted one of the barons, "so long as Thomas lives, you will never know an hour of peace."

Thereupon a fit of passion seized the king. His choleric eyes flashed fire His whole countenance was disordered.

"A curse," he cried, "a curse on all the false varlets I have nursed in my household, who leave me thus exposed to the insolence of a fellow that came to my court on a lame sumpter mule, and now sits without hindrance upon the throne itself."

The brilliant Christmas entertainments in which the young Counts of Poitou and Brittany were to shine amidst their followmgs were forgotten. In counsel with his barons, Henry rehearsed his wrongs. There was a great deal of talk, interspersed with anecdotes, that would have shocked the Pope and the King of the Franks. As for Thomas, the barons' advice was well summed up in the suggestion of a relative of the Bishop of Salisbury, himself under the ban.

"The only way to deal with such a traitor is to plait a few withes into a rope and hoist him therewith upon a gallows."

Before the counsel had arrived at any plan other than that of arresting the mischievous archbishop, it was noted with consternation that four courtiers, "hotheaded and in the flower of their age," had rushed from the chamber and taken leave of the court. Two nobles and the constable of Normandy were at once dispatched to overtake them, but they scoured the Channel ports in vain For two days an atmosphere heavy with foreboding hung over the festivities in Bures. At length in an evil and apprehensive humor, Henry dismissed his court and withdrew to Argentan.

Presently, on the last day of December, riders came foaming to the bridge of that bare fortress castle and were admitted to the king. Breathless they told their story. Thomas, the man of God, in the dim hour of vespers and on the very steps of the altar of Canterbury, had shed the red blood of the martyrs. Those who had slain him were the henchmen flying from the king's furious words in Bures. Thomas, finding the world too small a place for both himself and the king, had stood up to death for his salvo.

They told of the consternation among the monks of Canterbury, of the dumb awe of the populace. A violent storm, all out of season, had seemed to transport the soul of Thomas away in a whirl of thunder and fire. A strange succession of miracles instantly following the event attested God's certain favor. It was remembered that Thomas had foretold his martyrdom in his Christmas sermon, his discourse on Saint Stephen's day, and lo' under his sacerdotal robes the murdered prelate was found marked with scourgings and clothed in sackcloth from head to foot. His blood, spilled upon the pavement of the sanctuary, was already gathered in reliquaries by the faithful. The episcopal palace was sacked. The vandals and the assassins had fled. Even the young king, whose wardens had spurned Becket on his way to Winchester with the gift of horses, had cried out in anger at the elder king's implacable harshness to his dear foster father. "Alas'" said he, raising his hands and eyes to heaven, "but thank God it was done secretly and that no liege of mine had share in it."
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A consuming excitement, moved by something more than mortal, was spreading from the altars of Canterbury to the corners of the world.

Divining the heart of the message before it was uttered, the king burst into loud lamentations. He threw off his royal robes and called for sackcloth strewn with ashes. He dismissed even his own intimates. For days, eschewing all company and consolation, refusing food and rest, the king alternated outcries of grief with periods of fixity and silence from which no comforter could lure him.
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Before the familiar choir of Canterbury in the solemnity of twilight, the tall lean shade of Becket rose before the vision of the king, and as he looked, that somber figure was multiplied to serried ranks of other figures, clothed like Thomas in pallium and cope — the whole hierarchy of the church — all bending their gaze upon him; and the eyes of all that company were the accusing eyes of Becket. Canterbury, as he merged into "the dignity of his order," lost his familiar stamp of human singularity and became one of a cloud of witnesses, the quick and the dead. Thomas' vindication of his salvo with his life was seen as something more than the final episode in conflict to be swallowed up without memorial in time. Already the people, testifying to miracles, and attentive Rome invested the event with supernatural significance.

Now and again Henry called God to witness that he was in no way responsible for the death of Thomas, unless he had perhaps loved him too little and denied him the kiss of peace. Thus for days the king lay fasting and groaning, until his household feared for his very life.
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The aged Archbishop of Rouen was summoned from his see to comfort him spiritually, but his ministrations were of no avail. Another of his Norman bishops, Arnulf of Lisieux, wrote to the Pope and begged his Holiness to offer some healing consolation to the king for the loss of one who, though for a time estranged, had long before been his dearest, his most trusted friend. In Rome Alexander saw in a vision the chasuble of Thomas changed to the color of blood.