The Lions' Torment

by Blanche d'Alpuget

  ‘Disrespectful!’ one of the scholars remarked in Latin. Henry turned to glance at him, the force of his eyes making the man, who was tall and well built, take a step backwards.

  A deacon hurried forward. The King dismounted. ‘I’ve come to embrace my dear friend Theobald.’

  ‘Lord King, he may be asleep.’

  ‘I’ll wait beside him until he wakes.’

  The Archbishop’s bedchamber was luxuriously furnished. A narrow bed was made comfortable with lambskins, red silk sheets and white lambswool blankets. Braziers kept it warm, while a fragrant smoke of herbs wandered from the lattice of a golden thiruble. Beside the bed a table was arranged with gold goblets and cakes. Pictures of the Saviour in His mother’s arms swelled and subsided in blue and gold with the ebb and flow of weak winter sun that passed through a small pane of glass in the chamber’s window. Close to the Archbishop’s side, eight clergy chanted in almost unearthly beauty sinuous hallelujahs that floated with the gentle indecision of falling autumn leaves.

  Outside the doorway, Henry halted to unbuckle his sword and hand it to the deacon, who momentarily lost his balance under its weight. The King stood looking at the clergy, and beyond them to his sleeping friend. He jerked his head for them to leave.

  ‘Sire, he needs constant attention. He may be thirsty …’

  ‘I’m a soldier. D’you think I’ve never held a man’s head to give him drink? Out. All of you.’

  Theobald’s lids fluttered. When his eyes focused on who it was who sat beside him, holding his knobbly hand in a large warm paw, his plain old face wreathed with a smile. ‘Dear boy! You’ve come to me.’ He began to struggle to sit up. Henry lifted him and, once his back was settled against pillows, stroked his wispy pate. Theobald was approaching eighty.

  ‘Old friend,’ the King said. ‘Tell me your news.’

  ‘All bad! They cluster like carrion birds, waiting for me to die. Each day I draw breath is a disappointment to them.’

  ‘The bishops?’

  ‘And their supporters.’ Theobald was from Normandy, and down to earth. ‘My court is a pit of intrigue, full of men seeing their way to prestige if Bishop Shit or Bishop Piss is elected to replace me.’

  Henry gave a sigh that turned into a soft growl. Now is the moment for you to confide your own wishes and for me to discover if that strange letter is a forgery. ‘I believe senior prelates favour my kinsman, Bishop Foliot of Hereford.’

  Theobald’s eyes fluttered. ‘They do. But he’s too strict. Too arid. This vocation, Henry, requires a man better able to adjust than Gilbert Foliot. Bishops and monks revere his erudition and wit, but the lower clergy, the faithful …’ His breath ran out.

  ‘The lower clergy, even senior men, defy my laws, Tibolt.’

  ‘I thought you came to comfort me,’ the Archbishop answered petulantly.

  ‘I did. I do. You and I have worked in harmony for six years. The two swords. Together we have upheld England. But now …’

  ‘I know. Everyone lies to me, but I know what’s happening. My orders are ignored.’ Tears dribbled from Theobald’s rheumy eyes. Henry patted them with a handkerchief.

  The Archbishop’s mind seemed to wander. ‘You know why we say “two swords” rather than “sword and cross”?’

  Henry had known the answer from childhood, but indulged his dying friend.

  ‘The word of God is a sword,’ Theobald continued, as if the King were a novitiate. ‘A country needs rule by iron and by God. The cross means eternal life and has nothing to do with government.’

  ‘Indeed.’ He’s not going to tell me. ‘Tibolt, if you don’t favour the Bishop of Hereford, is there someone else you have in mind?’

  The Archbishop’s mind seemed to focus and his smile turned crafty. Not without guile, this son of a modest Norman knight risen to become the second most powerful man in England. ‘I wondered when you’d ask me, Henry, dear.’

  ‘And your answer?’

  ‘I wrote you a letter.’

  Henry let his chin slump to his chest. ‘I have to tell you, darling friend, I’m so displeased with that man, I dismissed him from my court only three days ago. I won’t invite him back.’

  The Archbishop closed his eyes. ‘He displeases you. How much do you think he displeases me? My own Archdeacon has not found time in almost two years to drag himself away from you to sail the Narrow Sea and bid me farewell before I die. The ingrate! I’ve a mind to excommunicate him.’

  The King decided against speaking. You’d excommunicate the man whom you favour as your successor? Who has never said Mass? Who is not even a priest? Whose hands are more scarlet with blood than my own? War is a necessity for kings. For Thomas, it is an entertainment.

  ‘But I can’t,’ Theobald added. ‘He’s too important to the Church.’

  ‘You refer to the money he’s collected as Archdeacon? He constantly filled your coffers.’ And his own pockets.

  The Norman knight’s son looked sharp. ‘Henry, the Church in England has become dissolute. What it needs is someone …’ He turned to stare into the monarch’s face.

  Dying you may be, thought Henry, but your mind hasn’t softened. ‘Someone …?’ he prompted.

  ‘Someone ruthless.’

  ‘Ruthless,’ Henry repeated quietly. ‘Becket is certainly ruthless.’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  By the time Henry descended to the courtyard, the early dark of late winter was closing the day and bells announced the call to vespers. A procession of black-clad monks, their bodies a stench but their robes perfumed by incense, made their way towards the cathedral church, heads bent, passing by like a file of black lilies kept too long in stagnant water. But the bell calling them to prayer could barely be heard above an uproar coming from clerks, scholars and young priests, heralding the arrival of the mercenaries, with the captured priest in irons.

  Tall, thin and in the torchlight indeed resembling a demon, the priest raised his manacled wrists, ranting, ‘Scum! Idolators! You’ll burn in hellfire! The Day of Judgement comes …’ Mercador, the mercenary captain, strolled to him and retied a gag around his mouth. Beside him stood the sheriff and his assistants, also ironed.

  The deacon who had conducted the King to the Archbishop wrung his hands. ‘Sire, what am I to do with the priest?’

  ‘You’ve got somewhere here to hold clergy accused of crimes against the Church?’

  ‘We have one cell.’

  ‘The priest is your prisoner. The sheriff and his accomplices will be charged under royal law. How soon can the priest be tried?’

  ‘Sire, it may be months. We need a bench of bishops.’

  ‘Canterbury, I believe, swarms with bishops at the moment.’

  ‘Yes, but for such a minor accusation …’

  ‘What is a major accusation, Deacon?’ Henry’s voice was terrifying.

  ‘If he were accused of stealing a gold chalice and selling it …’

  ‘Do you suggest he might not be found guilty, stripped of his order and handed to my justiciars for punishment?’ Henry took a step forward. In the torchlight, his uncovered hair glowed like polished copper. His face was in shadow.

  ‘L-Lord King, I cannot know what the learned bishops may decide.’

  ‘But you may convey to them my displeasure.’

  The deacon bobbed his head. His eyes swivelled towards the doorway into the church.

  ‘Off you go. We’ll follow you.’

  The royal party strode to the front of the church, nearest the altar, to spend half an hour in soothing prayer. Afterwards, outside, Henry buckled on his sword belt and addressed his escort. ‘We sleep in town tonight, in comfortable quarters.’ They smiled. Some sighed with relief. ‘A few of you know our host, Sir Ranulf de Broc.’ He was jovial again. ‘There may even be some entertainment.’

  One of the mercenaries elbowed another. ‘Sir Ranulf picks the women for His Highness’s brothels.’

  The other man sighed. ‘I’m too tired.’

 
; ‘But tomorrow morning? Wakey-wakey, hello, Snaky.’ The bells had stopped ringing and their laughter ricocheted off the high stone walls.

  Two days later, Henry sailed for Rouen while the knights who understood the Kentish dialect escorted the sheriff and his accomplices to London for trial. One carried a message from the King to Queen Eleanor:

  Dearest Wife,

  Greetings to you and our beautiful children. As soon as these men have been tried, I ask you to persuade the Countess of Surrey to sail with you to join me and William in Normandy. It’s time she and her fiancé met. As I very much desire to meet you once more.

  Your loving husband.

  Instead of his initials, he had drawn a heart shot with Cupid’s arrow.

  The Queen, as regent, was in the Palace of Westminster in charge of the day’s legal proceedings. The common people had elbowed their way inside the gorgeously decorated audience chamber, where they stood on tiptoe to snatch a glimpse of the Queen Regent’s sumptuous clothing. Today her robe was blue-purple, her head covering edged with garnets, but the chamber was too vast ever to be properly heated in winter, so she and the rest of the bench wore scarlet cloaks lined with ermine over their robes.

  As the knights entered and bowed, Eleanor held up her hand to halt the case that was being heard. She read Henry’s letter, then looked up. ‘My lords, I wish to interrupt this issue for one that is more urgent.’

  The sheriff, his assistants and some villagers the knights had brought with them were pushed forward.

  ‘Bow!’ a guard ordered.

  The bench listened to the accusation of the townsmen. The Queen nodded at the sheriff. ‘Speak, man.’ He repeated the story he had told Henry.

  Seated beside Eleanor, the justiciar Robert de Beaumont, Earl of Leicester, a big-boned, grave and dignified courtier, enquired about a jury. The answer displeased him. The other justiciar, Richard de Lucy, slightly younger but already sixty, small, neatbodied, with a crisp brown beard, asked additional questions. Both were members of the familiares, permitted to address the monarchs by their Christian names, to sit while they stood, even to touch the Queen’s hands and arms and kiss her cheek.

  Beyond them sat two bishops, shaking their heads in disapproval.

  Eleanor whispered to de Beaumont, ‘Our ecclesiastical friends want them let off, because the men they hanged assaulted a priest.’

  ‘May I suggest we rise for dinner, Eleanor?’

  The Queen announced, ‘The court closes. Our verdict will be announced later.’ Her English was perfect, accented with a lilt of langue d’oc. She rose and swept out, her two most senior civil advisers at her side, followed by the bishops.

  At the dinner table she directed de Beaumont to sit on her right and the Bishop of London on her left. ‘This is a murky affair, Highness,’ said the Bishop.

  ‘I find it perfectly clear, Your Grace. The jury the sheriff assembled all spoke in favour of the two men he hanged, and against the priest. They were unanimous.’

  ‘But do we know that?’

  She raised an eyebrow. ‘Weren’t you listening? The spokesman for the town said so, and the sheriff himself agreed.’

  ‘I believe, Highness, it bears further investigation.’

  She turned away. ‘Robert, I have some urgent business for my husband. I’ll have to leave the rest of this case to you and Richard.’

  ‘Our verdict will be split. Richard and I against our learned bishops.’

  ‘I’ve come to my decision. I’ll put it in writing before I leave.’ She leaned to his ear. ‘I want all of them hanged. The priest, when he’s sent from the ecclesiastical court to ours for a heavier punishment.’

  ‘If he is sent,’ de Beaumont murmured.

  ‘If!’ she hissed. ‘One of the girls was five years old. She died from her injuries.’

  The justiciar pressed a finger against his lips. On the other side of Eleanor, the Bishop of London was eavesdropping.

  The chateau of Bonsmoulins was small but lavish, equipped with ten bedchambers, a bathhouse next to its kitchen, an audience hall, a park and a wood well stocked with deer and game birds. It had an orchard of fruit trees, predominantly apples, and a vegetable garden so fertile the Baron collected a reasonable income from the sale of its produce at weekly fairs. Its stables accommodated twenty-five horses; a byre housed fifteen milking cows. Hens and a high-stepping rooster roamed around their coop, and once the weather warmed the nearby stream, a mill would turn slowly, grinding corn.

  Richer installed Becket in the second-largest bedchamber, that of the Baroness, who avoided her husband as much as possible. Her apartment had one of the fashionable new luxuries, a Lombardy mirror. Becket took a look at himself on arrival and said, ‘For pity’s sake, cover it. I don’t want to see that wreck.’

  On his first morning as the Baron’s guest, the Chancellor was too lethargic to rise. ‘My humours are all black,’ he muttered.

  ‘Shall I call a physician?’ asked Richer.

  ‘Only if he’ll sell me poison.’

  ‘For you or for Henry?’

  ‘For me.’ Becket panted with distress. ‘No, for him! For both of us!’

  ‘That’ll be tricky, Tom. You’ll poison Henry, then poison yourself? What if the King needs so much to die, there’s not enough left for you?’ The Baron could barely stop himself laughing. ‘Oh, forgive me. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean …’

  The Chancellor fell back against his pillows, sobbing. My bones melt inside me, he wailed silently. Henry has stolen my strength.

  After a while, he collected himself. ‘When the two of us sat side by side at the chequered table as I taught him the finances of the realm, his knee would sometimes touch mine. He was twenty-one, Riche, and looked no more than seventeen. I used to feel my soul called out of my body. Have you never had your heart torn in two? I seem to remember a man …’

  ‘He was married,’ Richer snapped. ‘He deceived me.’ For gold. The Baron fell silent.

  Later that day, he coaxed his guest to get up for a walk in the park, but melting snow turned the ground to mud that fouled his expensive red boots, and after less than an hour he came indoors. ‘At least now you have some colour in your face,’ Richer said. ‘Tomorrow, we’ll ride.’

  ‘I doubt I’ll be able to rise to a trot. I’m consumed with impotent fury,’ retorted Becket.

  ‘You need a drink.’ The Baron poured two cups of the strongest beverage to be had outside monasteries. ‘Here. Mead!’

  Becket grimaced at its sweetness and turned away. He wandered to a writing desk, where he began with almost lifeless sloth to sharpen a quill.

  ‘You don’t have to do that, Tom. I employ an excellent scribe.’

  ‘What I have to communicate I don’t trust to scribes, but I’d be obliged if you could arrange a post rider.’

  The Chancellor wrote two letters, the first to his old friend John of Salisbury, with whom he had studied in Paris. That is, John had studied, while Becket had been too distracted by the delights of the city to master Latin grammar. The second letter was to Herbert of Bosham, a scholar at Canterbury Cathedral and a favourite of the Archbishop’s. The letter continued a dialogue Becket and Bosham had begun almost two years earlier when the Chancellor left English soil, a communication that was not quite code but in a language of delicate nuance. Translated to plain English, Becket wrote: Here, all is lost, but I can’t move from Normandy. I anticipate he’ll dismiss me as Chancellor and as Archdeacon. I pray he’ll order me into exile so I can seek refuge at the court of Louis without inviting a charge of treason. If Louis declines from fear of Henry, I’ll go east to Barbarossa. Our only hope now is the Old Man. Can you calculate how much longer he’ll draw breath?

  Henry had already sailed back to Rouen. After a good breakfast, he left to visit his mother. When pregnant with her first child, Matilda – a widowed empress now married off to a young count – dreamed a lion cub lay curled in her womb. She screamed in horror. It jumped from her belly fully grown, bu
t she had a whip and lashed at it. It leaped onto a chair that became a throne. A crown appeared on its head. The Empress had known how to injure Henry since the day of his birth, and that he must become a king.

  The heavy snow of ten days earlier had disappeared, and he arrived at her house of retreat within half an hour.

  She came to the point without delay or show of affection. ‘Highness, recently I entertained a prelate from Germany who was first presented to me when he was an oblate and I newly married to the Emperor. Apparently I gave him some gift. Now he’s risked his life to visit me. Barbarossa is planning war. His treasury is full and he’s determined that every other prince in Europe will accept his anti-pope as the Pope.’

  ‘Because?’

  She raised an eyebrow. ‘Really, son, I thought you might be able to work that out for yourself. Because he’s determined to be Holy Roman Emperor. He imagines himself a new Charlemagne.’ She smiled. Henry returned it.

  ‘Actually, Mother, I’m glad you’ve raised the subject of Charlemagne. His fame casts a long shadow over the mind of German kings. I believe Barbarossa would be gratified if I returned the giant emerald you took from the imperial treasury when you left all those years ago. Some eastern prince gave it to Charlemagne at his coronation. It’s said to have magical powers when in the right hands.’

  ‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.’

  ‘It’s the size of an egg from an estrich bird, Mother. It’s unique in the world.’

  Matilda gave a long sigh. ‘You force me to say something I wished to keep secret.’

  Henry waited.

  ‘It was stolen.’

  ‘By whom?’

  ‘A certain female. I showed it to her one day, and the next day it vanished.’

  Henry was home before dinner time, in a grey mood. It’s inconceivable that Eleanor stole the emerald, he thought. Mother may have lost it, or forgotten where in her hoarded treasure she’s hidden it. He ate alone and went to his apartment for a nap, but the interview had so disturbed him that when he closed his eyes, his mind roiled with dramatic possibilities. He summoned a milking maid to release his sperm with a rhythmic hand, to settle his humours; after the treatment, he relaxed and had drifted into a light sleep when Hamelin strolled in and shook him by the shoulder.