Thomas had composed his answer as the King’s letter was read to him. There was no need for hard thinking about what to do next. Henry and his adherents would receive justice until they begged for mercy.
The King must be brought to see reason. All his life Henry had got out of difficulties, often of his own making, by kicking and screaming and losing his temper; now he would find himself opposed by a good-tempered but immovable antagonist. The Church of Christ was more important than the realm of England, and once Henry understood that he would find Thomas waiting to help him, to help him to rule England as it should be ruled. But first Henry must understand. Therefore there must be no giving way.
He dismissed the messenger, and turned to the tangled business of persuading the Abbot of St. Augustine’s that the Archbishop of Canterbury was entitled to visit his Abbey. Long absence had undoubtedly impaired the rights of his See, which he must hand on undiminished to his successors.
At Henry’s court in Normandy the magnates were assembled for the Christmas crownwearing, though it was yet late in Advent. The King was feasting in a crowded hall when the messenger from the Wardrobe brought him Thomas’s answer. The courier read the letter aloud for all to hear, and at first the magnates thought it fair enough, perhaps better than it might have been; for all knew that Thomas would stand on his rights against the Crown.
But to one man it brought deep disappointment. Roger, Archbishop of York, sat at the high table, as was his due in right of his great position in the Church; but he wore none of the insignia of his episcopal rank, for he was suspended from all spiritual functions, unable even to offer Mass as a simple priest. Now he heard it confirmed that his suspension would hold over Christmas, in fact until he had accomplished the long and expensive journey to Rome to seek absolution at the hands of the Pope. He had taken it for granted that Thomas would grant the first friendly request he received from the King after his reconcilation, and the shock of refusal was more than he could bear.
After the interruption of the courier’s letter a trouvere was about to continue his recitation of a new epic on the subject of King Arthur; but Roger rose from his seat, silenced the minstrel with an imperious wave of his hand, and bustled round the high table to stand before the King.
‘My lord,’ he said with a sob in his voice, while tears started from his eyes, ‘you must order my brother of Canterbury to lift my suspension. Can I sit through the Christmas feasting, the three Masses of the Nativity and all the splendour of Epiphany, as a mere tonsured clerk, unable to participate in these great actions? Bailhache oppresses me, because I remember his vile origin. Command him to be merciful.’
‘I have commanded him, and he will not obey. You must approach the Holy Father,’ the King answered shortly. He felt indifferent to the distress of any Archbishop, even an Archbishop who supported him.
‘Do you refuse aid, my lord?’ asked Roger, weeping copiously. ‘You cannot refuse. You are my lord and I am your vassal. You owe me protection.’ Then he flung himself on his knees, while the courtiers craned to see this moving episode, so much more interesting than even the best epic about King Arthur.
‘Haro, my lord, I suffer wrong,’ Roger said formally, as though repeating a ritual. ‘Haro,’ he said again, turning to face the body of the hall. ‘Men of Normandy, I cry Haro to your Duke.’
There was a stir of interest, and someone whispered to his neighbour: ‘Perhaps the King doesn’t understand. This may not be the custom of Anjou.’
Henry overheard the comment, which touched him on a tender spot. Though he was only half a Norman he was the head of the Norman race, secretly a little ashamed of his Angevin blood. He had ruled Normandy for more than forty years, and he was proud of his knowledge of Norman custom.
He stood, reaching his right hand over the table that the kneeling Archbishop might clasp it between his joined hands. ‘My vassal calls for aid with the cry of Haro,’ he announced. ‘Men of Normandy, I have heard him. I shall not rest until his wrongs are righted.’
As Roger, still weeping, returned to his place, the King sat brooding and silent. The cry of Haro was the ultimate appeal, the naked call to the lord to stand by his follower regardless of justice and right. In making it Roger had bound himself to be the vassal of Normandy in the humblest sense of that elastic term; if his lord helped him the Archbishopric of York might become almost a personal possession of the crown.
But how could his lord help him? Henry perceived that Thomas was taking refuge in legal quibbles, a thing he did often himself but disliked when it was done to him by others. In fact Thomas was thwarting and defying him.
The usual stimulus brought the usual response. He was the greatest King in Christendom, and he deserved to have his own way in everything; it was intolerable that he should be thwarted or defied. If he made enough fuss they would let him have his way. He could feel his ancestor, the Devil, telling him what to do. In yielding to the Tempter he risked his soul, but there was no real danger; some priest was sure to give him absolution before he died. He recalled that even Thomas, his foe, had once withheld a sentence of excommunication because of a rumour that he lay dying. He could afford to run risks, for a King has plenty of priests to serve him.
That was better; he could feel the warm surge of wrath flooding his brain. In a few minutes he would be writhing on the floor, hysterical and incoherent; but to get the full effect he must first shout insults and threats. His knights looked at him curiously, some of them shocked at his lack of self-control. They were a set of boring hidebound stick-in-the-muds, who should have done something (though it was hard to say what) when he was crossed by a vulgar Archbishop picked up from the gutter of Cheapside. After he had told them what he thought of them he would feel easier.
‘What sluggards, what cowards, have I reared in my court,’ he screamed. ‘Recreants, men who care nothing for the welfare of their lord. Not one will deliver me from this turbulent priest.’
Now the glorious intoxication of rage possessed him utterly. He wallowed on the floor, cramming rushes in his mouth as his heels drummed on the paving-stones. Men came running from every side, and he knew himself the centre of attention.
When the screaming was over, and he sat once more in his high seat before the wine-cup, the Justiciar broke one of the most stringent rules of etiquette by referring to what he had said in his paroxysm.
‘My lord,’ he urged anxiously, ‘it might be wise if you proclaimed once more that the Archbishop of Canterbury is within your peace and friendship. There are knights in this hall who may have taken your threats seriously. I saw a group of them go out immediately you had spoken.’
‘I don’t know what you are talking about,’ the King answered crossly. ‘Perhaps I threatened the Archbishop, though I can’t remember exactly what I said. Everyone knows I am not myself when the Devil my grandfather takes possession of me. I am a great King, not to be judged as ordinary men are judged. Why, you must remember: I have threatened to kill my dear son Henry, and my gracious Queen, and all sorts of other people. Once I said I would tear the guts from the body of King Louis, to use as my girdle. The French envoy heard me say it, but he only laughed and proposed to adjourn negotiations until I was restored to health. Nobody takes my threats seriously, or would dream of acting on them.’
‘A bit of a fright would do Bailhache no harm,’ put in the Archbishop of York, who seemed to have recovered from his fit of weeping. ‘He has given me a thousand-mile journey to get my suspension lifted. Perhaps when he punished me for serving my lord the King he also was chewing the rushes from the floor.’
‘That’s nonsense, Roger,’ said the King with a petulant frown. ‘You can’t frighten Thomas. If you could, I would have frightened him at Northampton, and all these bothers would have been avoided. As for his chewing rushes from the floor, he is as famous for self-control as I am for a noble and kingly rage.’
‘I believe you still love the sanctimonious old troublemaker,’ answered Archbishop Roger. ‘Well, h
e is more your enemy than mine. He cannot harm me, for I am his peer, and I can remember him as the uncouth hatchet-carrier who joined Theobald’s household. I am not impressed by his Metropolitan cross, for I have one of my own, just as good.’
‘Then let us forget the whole thing,’ said the Justiciar. ‘In that case you, my lord Archbishop, must face a long journey before you say your next mass. I suppose the King will not seek favours from Archbishop Thomas.’
‘I shall never ask him for a favour. But neither do I wish him harm. As the Justiciar says, let us forget the unimportant episode. Now I would like to hear more of that new song about my predecessor, King Arthur.’
The court settled down to drink wine and listen to poetry.
On the 29th of December 1170 the Archbishop feasted in the hall of his palace in Canterbury, as was fitting during every one of the Twelve Days of Christmas. Crowded tables filled the spacious room, and the high table on the dais was also crowded. Outside the open doors waited the poorer inhabitants of the city of Canterbury; some were in truth hungry beggars, and the rest wore their shabbiest clothes; for even the leavings from the Archbishop’s table were better than the feasts of many a prosperous burgess.
Thomas was sipping that queer drink made from boiled hay with which he soothed his stomach at the end of a long meal. Most of the clerks at his table were still drinking their wine, though a few, influenced by their environment, had changed to English beer. The talk was gloomy, chiefly about the unexpected hostility of young Henry fitzHenry, who nominally ruled England as deputy for his father.
William fitzStephen, a veteran clerk of the Archbishop’s household, was expounding Norman usage to Grim of Cambridge, a newcomer and the only Englishman in the company. ‘Perhaps you don’t understand the bond that should persist between a young knight and the lord who nourished him. It should be as strong as fosterage, or the spiritual relationship of a godparent. That makes young Henry’s behaviour quite unpardonable, for he was reared in the Archbishop’s household. Yet he returned the Christmas present we sent him, three magnificent destriers. In a way that’s not a bad thing, for I don’t know how we could have paid for them; we shall have no money until next Michaelmas. Furthermore, he spoke openly of the Archbishop as his father’s enemy. That’s no way to keep the peace. You should not call anyone the King’s enemy until swords have been drawn.’
‘Even I can see that, though I can’t follow all your distinctions about homage, and the occasions when rebellion may be honourable and blameless. To call a man the King’s enemy is to put him out of the King’s peace. All the same, our lord the Archbishop seems to have gone rather far in his Christmas sermon. I was on my way here at the time, and I didn’t hear it; but it sounds seditious to compare our lawful King Henry with the drunken and heathen invaders who martyred St. Alphege. They tell me he said as much.’
‘Not quite, though his hearers were encouraged to make the comparison. What he actually said was that the Cathedral contains the tombs of several holy Archbishops, one of them a martyr. That was going far enough, and I wish he hadn’t said it. But our lord is apt to see himself from the outside, as it were, and then act as a man would be expected to act in that position. They tell me he was once a caricature of a money-grubbing archdeacon; certainly as Chancellor, when I first knew him, he was the quintessence of a chivalrous knight; since his consecration he has been an Archbishop from a book of homilies. I’ve heard men say that proves him insincere, but I don’t see it myself. He is a holy Archbishop, even if he has to stop and think how to behave like one; instead of his good deeds coming to him naturally.’
‘Oh, everyone agrees he is a holy man. We know that even in Cambridge. But the omens are against him. Did you hear that in Eastry was born a two-headed calf, which shouted “Woe to the Archbishop” as it expired?’
‘You had better not mention that here, unless you saw the calf and heard it speak. The Archbishop does not hold with omens.’
‘Oh, I am a simple rustic, and I know it. But in the lives of all holy men, as you hear them read at Collation, the omens come thick. The Archbishop is a holy man, and twice his life has been preserved by miracle; once when he fell into a millrace, once when the gate of Northampton castle was opened for him by an angel, as he fled from the wrath of the King.’
‘The angel was Herbert of Bosham, across the table. There was nothing extraordinary except that he had very good luck in picking the right key at once out of a large bunch. Of course, if the Archbishop is under the protection of Heaven we have nothing to fear. But I lack your faith … Hallo, who are those strangers who thrust themselves on the Archbishop?’
Thomas was talking earnestly to his old confessor, Prior Robert, about the state of his soul and his plans for the government of the Diocese.
‘I don’t think I am unduly influenced by anger. When you consider how the King speaks of me, I haven’t said anything about him to match it. But I shall have to do something about those Brocs in my castle of Saltwood. They hold it by force, against the King’s peace. By rights the sheriff ought to expel them for me.’
‘He won’t, of course,’ said Prior Robert grimly. ‘The King’s friends are above the Law, though his opponents must obey it. If you send your mesnie against Saltwood you will be amerced for breaking the peace.’
‘Then I suppose I must bear it in silence, as I bear many other injuries. I have excommunicated Ranulf, the head of the family, which is the most I can do in my spiritual capacity. But the only argument a man like that understands is the point of a lance. I wish I could ride against him, as in the old days I rode against the men of Toulouse. Yet I suppose an Archbishop who takes the field in his own cause would give scandal to the faithful.’
‘Yes, it would be sinful for you to fight for a castle, even your own castle, I say that as your confessor. Heaven help us, what a mess we are in! I hoped that when we came home, reconciled to the King, we could make a fresh start.’
‘That’s what I thought, also. I have never quarrelled with young Henry fitzHenry. If he had received me at court I might have persuaded him to be friendly. But he follows his father blindly.’
‘By the way, my lord,’ said Prior Robert, almost interrupting in his anxiety, ‘have you noticed the knights sitting near you? They have been here some time, and they are trying to catch your attention.’
‘I noticed them, but it will do them no harm to wait until we have finished our wine. I recognize one, at least, as a household knight of King Henry. If he bore a message from the King he would have informed my steward. This must be a private visit, either mere curiosity or a plan to insult me under my own roof. I shall attend to them later … Now the thing that really makes my blood boil is the latest exploit of the Brocs. Young John, Ranulf’s nephew, captured a destrier of mine on the high road. It’s a valuable beast, but to give him his due he’s no thief. He cut off its tail and let it go. That’s an insult which should be wiped out in blood. Could I ask the Pope to make me a layman, just for a week? When I had killed all the Brocs in fair fight I could go back to being an Archbishop.’
Though he smiled at the extravagance, Robert of Merton was worried by this return of chivalrous feeling in his lord and penitent. Six years ago Thomas had still hankered after the free life of a warrior, as his confessor knew better than anyone else. Long exile had buried the sentiment; but here in Canterbury, where vassals crowded to do homage, it seemed to be reviving. He did his best to change the topic.
‘Curious how obsessed they are with tails, here in Kent,’ he said casually. ‘There is a story that they are born with tails themselves; or at least that is what they tell you in Sussex.’
‘In Paris they say it of all Englishmen,’ Thomas interrupted with a chuckle.
‘Well, why don’t you lay a curse on them, so that they are all born with tails in future? In Ireland holy men do that sort of thing, and it seems the only good custom in that queer country. My lord, if you keep those knights waiting much longer they will say in Normandy t
hat courtesy has been forgotten at Canterbury.’
Thomas turned to the newcomers. At that moment he saw himself as a knight, sitting once more in his hall surrounded by all the state of a great magnate; with dignified politeness he beckoned them to approach.
The four knights had entered the hall an hour ago, wearing everyday tunics and shabby travelling mantles. Without speaking to the steward they had wandered round the high table, searching for empty seats; since they carried no arms, and wore the gilded spurs of their rank, no one hindered them. At the high table there were no empty seats, so the strangers did what was often done in a crowded hall; they heaped up rushes from the floor and squatted on the bundles. However, they had taken neither food nor wine, which was rather ominous; it seemed they would not accept the Archbishop’s hospitality. And since they sat down they had been trying to catch his attention.
As soon as they were summoned they clustered round his high chair, all shouting together. For a moment Thomas was taken aback by this display of bad manners in a place where his authority was usually unquestioned – so taken aback that he could not catch what they shouted. Then he understood they were merely demanding, more peremptorily and in coarser language than was usual in addressing an Archbishop, that he should lift the suspension of Roger of York.
Everyone in the hall listened to the unexampled disturbance. Thomas was tempted to answer them as roughly as they had spoken; but he remembered that he must not give scandal to the crowd at the lower tables, and he replied with courteous moderation.
‘I could not lift the Archbishop’s suspension even if I desired it; which I do not, for his punishment is deserved. You must understand that the Pope suspended him, and therefore only the Pope can absolve him. If you give him that message he will understand it, for it is clear Canon Law.’
God and My Right Page 36