They turned, then, began to push their way toward the door. Becket strode after them, crying out, “I am quite easy to guard, for I shall not run away. You will find me here!”
Fitz Urse swung around, his hand groping for his belt, the instinctive gesture of a man accustomed to the weight of a sword at his hip. “Thomas, in the name of the king, I repudiate your fealty!” The other knights also repeated this most solemn oath of renunciation and a chill swept through the chamber. Even Becket appeared shocked.
Shouting “To arms!” the knights shoved through the doorway, seizing Becket’s steward as they exited. As they pushed him ahead of them, he looked back over his shoulder at the archbishop. “My lord, you see what they are doing to me?”
“I see,” Becket replied. “They have the force and the power of darkness.” There were loud gasps, for those clerks and monks familiar with Scriptures at once recognized that as a paraphrase of the words spoken by the Lord Jesus Christ as He was arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane.
As the knights clattered down the stairs to the great hall, Becket returned to his chamber and sat down upon his bed. At first, there was a deathly stillness and, then, uproar. Most of the monks and clerks began to voice their opinions. Some dismissed the knights’ threats as drink-sodden posturing, for it was evident that Fitz Urse and his companions had drunk their fill at Abbot Clarembald’s table; they’d also appeared to be utterly fatigued, not surprising in light of their nonstop journey from Bures to Canterbury. Others insisted that they’d not dare to commit violence at Christmastide. Those who knew better moved to the windows on the north side of the chamber and fumbled to unlatch the shutters so they could monitor the moves of the men outside.
“My lord, it really is quite amazing that you never will take any notice of our advice.” John of Salisbury sounded fretful and reproachful and, above all, fearful. “You always say and do what seems right to yourself alone. Was there any need for a great and good man like yourself to provoke those wicked men still more by following them to the door? Would it not have been better to have given a softer answer to men who are plotting to do you all the harm they can?”
Becket regarded his clerk and friend calmly. “We all must die, John. We should not swerve from justice for fear of death. I am more ready to meet death for God and His Church than they are to inflict it on me.”
“We are all sinners and not yet ready for death. I can see no one here who wants to die needlessly, apart from you.”
Some of the clerks were offended that John should dare to speak so disrespectfully to the archbishop. Becket merely said, “May the Lord’s Will be done.”
John would have argued further had Fitz Stephen not put a restraining hand upon his arm. As their eyes met, they shared a moment of frustrated, haunted understanding, the awareness that as clay was in the potter’s hands, so were they all in God’s Hands, and they could not save Thomas Becket unless he chose to save himself.
Just then there was a sharp cry from Edward Grim, standing watch at one of the windows. With a young man’s keen eyesight, he’d seen in the fading light what the older sentinels had not, the activity under the ancient mulberry tree. “They are arming themselves!” Hanging so far out the window that he was in danger of falling, he soon reported, “Men are pouring into the outer court! They’ve seized the gatehouse and… Jesus wept! My lord, your steward has joined them! He is helping to guard the gate!”
Through the open windows, they could hear now the shouting, the Norman battle cry of “King’s men, king’s men!” Other sounds were coming from the west, the laments of townspeople gathered outside the priory walls, crying out their fear that the archbishop and his monks were “sheep for the slaughter.” The noise was intensifying, curses and heavy pounding filling the air. Within the archbishop’s bedchamber, some of the monks and clerks fled while they still could, realizing what that new clamor meant: that quick-witted servants had barred the door to the hall and the knights were attempting to force their way back in.
“My lord, we must get to the church!” Becket’s confessor was tugging at his sleeve and others at once added their pleas to his, entreating the archbishop to flee whilst there was still time. Becket refused, insisting that he would not budge a foot from this chamber, for here he would await God’s Will. The hammering suddenly stopped and Fitz Stephen darted toward the windows in the south wall, where he soon confirmed his worst fears.
“Robert de Broc has led them around the side of the hall. They are going to try to enter by the external stairway!”
Someone said that the stairway was being repaired and was not accessible, but Fitz Stephen had to puncture that faint hope. “The workmen left their ladder and tools there and de Broc is climbing up! Once he gets into the hall, he’ll take them right here!”
The monks renewed their pleading, imploring the archbishop to seek safety in the cathedral, and again he refused, scorning them for their cowardice. It was Edward Grim who finally offered a reason for leaving that Becket could not reject out of hand. “Vespers is nigh, my lord. Would you keep the Lord and your flock waiting?”
When Becket hesitated, the other men took physical action, seizing his arms and compelling him toward a long-unused door that led down to a private passageway to the cloisters. The door had to be forced, but they could hear now the splintering sound of wood and knew that Robert de Broc had broken into the hall. Shoving the archbishop into the stairwell, they fled into the corridor, fear making them fleet. But then they discovered that the door to the cloisters was barred. Some of the monks began to panic, crying out that they were trapped. When the bolt was suddenly lifted on the other side of the door, only the narrow, cramped space kept them from dropping to their knees in wonder at this miracle of God. A moment later, the door swung open, revealing the Almighty’s instrument to be none other than Richard, the cellarer.
Spilling out into the cloisters, the archbishop’s clerks and monks continued to push him toward the door leading into the northwest transept of the cathedral. He eventually stopped struggling once he realized he could not prevail against them and sought to preserve his dignity, insisting that his cross-bearer proceed ahead of them with his archiepiscopal cross. Nor would he permit the cellarer to bar the door to the cloisters.
When they reached the church, vespers for the monks was already in progress, but the service was halted in confusion. As some of them came down the steps leading up to the choir, Becket ordered them to “Go back and finish divine office.” Monks and clerks continued to crowd into the church, and a cry soon went up that there were armed men in the cloisters. Several men ran to close the door and slide its heavy iron bar into place.
“No!” Becket’s voice carried loudly and clearly across the cathedral, halting the men in the act. To their utter dismay, he commanded them to reopen the door. “Christ’s Church is not a fortress. Let anyone enter who wishes.”
They dared not disobey and he returned to the door, shoved it open, and pulled in a few stragglers seeking refuge in God’s House. He then turned and walked without haste toward the choir. He was mounting the steps when Fitz Urse and the other knights burst into the cathedral.
Darkness had fallen and the church was lit only by a few oil lamps up in the choir and candles at the High Altar. The knights peered uncertainly into the murky, swirling shadows, their task made no easier by the fact that Becket and the Benedictine monks were clad in black. Advancing warily into the transept, one of them shouted, “Where is Thomas Becket, traitor to the king and realm?”
Their demand was met with silence. Fitz Urse swore and then called out, “Where is the archbishop?”
Becket turned and slowly started down the steps. “Here I am, no traitor to the king, but a priest of God. What do you want of me?”
Some of the monks had already faded away into the blackness of the nave. Now Becket’s clerks abandoned him, too, even John of Salisbury and Henry of Auxerre, the cross-bearer substituting for the absent Alexander Llewelyn. They hid behi
nd altars, fled down to the safety of the crypt, up the stairs to the Chapel of St Blaise. Only Robert of Merton, his confessor, Fitz Stephen, two monks, and Edward Grim stood their ground behind him on the choir steps.
The knights were a terrifying sight, having shed their mantles to reveal chain-mail underneath, naked swords in one hand, the stolen workmen’s axes in the other. Neither of the de Brocs were with them, although Robert de Broc’s renegade clerk, Hugh de Horsea, was. As they fanned out, approaching Becket from the left and right sides of the massive central column, one of the two remaining monks lost his nerve and bolted for the stairs. Hugh de Morville took up position between the nave and the choir, sword leveled menacingly at a few citizens who’d arrived early for the second Vespers service. Becket continued down the steps, moving at a measured pace, and then halted by the pillar between the Lady Chapel and the Chapel of St Benedict.
Without warning, Fitz Urse raised his sword and used its point to flick Becket’s tonsure cap from his head. There were muffled cries from the monks cowering in the shadows, but Becket did not even flinch.
“Absolve the bishops!”
“I have already said what I will and will not do.”
“If you do not, you are a dead man!”
“I am ready to die for God and the Church. But in the Name of the Almighty, I forbid you to harm any of my own.”
“Come with us, then!” When Becket refused, Fitz Urse dropped the axe and grabbed for his mantle.
Becket jerked free and shoved the other man, sending him reeling back. “Let me go, you pimp!”
Fitz Urse snarled and lunged forward, seizing Becket again. The other men moved in, too, and attempted to drag him from the church. Bounding down the choir steps, Edward Grim joined the fray, throwing his arms around the archbishop to keep them from moving him from the pillar. He was resisting so fiercely that, with Grim’s help, he was able to shake them off.
Fitz Stephen was still standing on the steps, unable either to flee or to go to the archbishop’s defense, unable to move. The scene had lost all reality for him. He heard Grim shouting that the men must be mad, heard William de Tracy calling the archbishop a traitor. And then he saw a shivering glimmer of light as an altar candle reflected off Fitz Urse’s upraised sword.
Grim flung up his arm to shield Becket and the blade came down upon them both, slicing off some of the archbishop’s scalp and all but severing Grim’s arm at the elbow. Both men began to bleed profusely. Fitz Stephen made a shaky sign of the cross, closing his eyes as de Tracy struck. The confessor standing beside him would later tell him he’d said, “ ‘The waters that were in the river were turned to blood.’ ” But he had no recollection of his own words. He remembered only what Thomas Becket said as he fell to his knees. “Into Thy Hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit.”
Fitz Urse and de Tracy stood over the fallen archbishop, swords dripping blood. Hugh de Morville was still holding back the people in the nave. Richard le Bret rushed forward to deliver the death blow, almost slipping in Becket’s blood, and brought his sword down with such force that it split the archbishop’s skull and broke in two upon the pavement. “Take that for the love of my lord William, the king’s brother!”
Grim was trying to crawl toward the altar. The knights were staring down at Becket’s body as if stunned by their own deed. It was suddenly quiet, with no sound but the rasping of labored, ragged breathing. Becket’s killers raised their swords again, threatening any who would dare to stop their escape, and then plunged toward the door. But Robert de Broc’s subdeacon turned back. Setting his foot on the archbishop’s neck, he thrust the point of his sword into the gaping wound and scattered Becket’s brains over the floor.
“Let’s go,” he said. “He’ll not rise again.”
Robert de Broc had remained in the archbishop’s private chambers to watch over Becket’s treasure chests, and after the killing, his men looted the palace. They took all the papal letters and documents they found, in the hope that they’d prove treasonous. But they also took Becket’s silver plate, his gold chalice, costly vestment cloths, jewels, and silver coins. Loading their plunder upon horses from the archbishop’s own stables, they rode out of Canterbury, leaving behind a scene of utter devastation.
Men began to emerge from their hiding places in the cathedral. Few dared to approach the archbishop’s body, keeping their eyes averted as if that would somehow allow them to deny that murder had been done in God’s House. Fitz Stephen and Robert of Merton, Becket’s confessor, shook off their paralysis and rushed over to the crumpled form of Edward Grim. To their great relief, he was still alive, still conscious. They were soon joined by Master William, who set about halting the bleeding. It was not long before other victims staggered into the church, for the servants caught in the hall had been brutally beaten by de Broc’s men.
The silence was absolute, eerie. People wandered about aimlessly, faces blank and dazed. Fitz Stephen still knelt by Grim’s side, cradling his head as Master William improvised a bandage. John of Salisbury had crept out from the altar where he’d taken shelter. He sagged down upon the choir steps, and Fitz Stephen and he looked at each other across the wounded priest. Although neither spoke, Fitz Stephen knew what they both were thinking. The only one who’d tried to protect Lord Thomas was a stranger, a man who’d known him but a few days.
By now most of the monks had thronged into the nave and choir. Prior Odo had surfaced from the crypt and, striding over to them, began to ask abrupt questions about Edward Grim’s prospects for recovery. Fitz Stephen felt rage welling up. Odo was so eager to assert his authority that he could not even wait for the archbishop’s body to cool. Doubtless he felt Lord Thomas’s death had been his own deliverance, his fears of removal seeping away with the archbishop’s lifeblood.
Fitz Stephen been focusing all his attention upon Edward Grim, awed and shamed by the priest’s courage and not yet ready to accept what he’d just witnessed-an archbishop butchered in his own church. But Odo’s presumption had jarred the protective cobwebs from his brain, and his numbness began to ebb, giving way to an emotion as crippling and fierce as the most physical pain.
He was becoming aware of a low droning of disapproval. The archbishop’s relationship with the monks of Christ Church had often been a fractious one and not all had welcomed his return from exile. To some, he had remained the worldly, high-living chancellor who’d been forced upon them, never truly one of them, and a violent death, while deplorable, did not change every mind. There were monks now expressing that skepticism, implying that Becket had been an accomplice in his own demise. Several spoke of the archbishop’s willfulness, his antipathy to compromise. Mention was made of his prideful manner, his vainglory, his inability to forgive wrongs. Someone muttered: “He wanted to be a king, to be more than a king. Let him be a king now.”
Fitz Stephen, a man of the most equable temperament, found himself fighting back the urge to spill yet more blood in the defiled cathedral. Then he noticed Osbern, the archbishop’s longtime chamberlain. His face was bruised and swollen, several teeth knocked out by pummeling fists, for he had been the one who’d barred the door to the great hall. Kneeling by Becket’s body, he tore off a sleeve of his shirt and using it as a bandage, he wound it carefully around the archbishop’s shattered skull. There was such tenderness in that simple, futile gesture that Fitz Stephen’s throat closed up and his eyes burned with hot, bitter tears.
Townspeople had ventured into the cathedral and were gathering around the body, weeping and wailing, crouching to kiss Becket’s hands and feet, ripping off pieces of their clothing to dip in the puddles of coagulating blood. Prior Odo and several of the monks hurried over to disperse them, eventually managing to clear the church of all but the members of the religious community.
Slowly, haltingly, men began to function again, to deal with the immediate aftermath of the murder. Edward Grim and the other injured were ushered out to be tended at the infirmary. Fetching a bier, some of the monks lifted th
e corpse and carried it up into the choir and onto the High Altar. Benches were dragged into the transept and positioned to keep anyone else from stepping in the spillage of blood and brains.
It was then that Robert of Merton chose to reveal the archbishop’s secret. Lifting Becket’s black mantle and bloodied surplice and lambskin pelisse, he uncovered the monk’s habit beneath. The priory monks were deeply moved by this evidence of his camouflaged solidarity, evidence that he’d been one of them after all. But the confessor had one more surprise to disclose. Pulling up the habit, he showed them that Becket was wearing a hair shirt, even a pair of hair braies. The drawers were so tight that the seams had gouged a furrow from knees to hip and the skin was abraded and chaffed from continual contact with the rough, coarse cloth. The hair shirt had been split so that Becket could bare his flesh to daily flagellations and his back was scarred with the marks of past scourging. That very day, the confessor told them proudly, he had endured three such penitential whippings. As the awestruck, stunned monks crowded in closer, they saw that the braies were infested with vermin, swarming with lice and fleas, some of which had even burrowed into his groin.
Pandemonium resulted. Men wept at this painful proof of sanctity. Monks expecting to find the archbishop garbed in silken braies and furs of fox or vair were overwhelmed by this discovery of his daily torment. Sobbing, they kissed his hands and feet, proclaiming him “Saint Thomas, martyr unto God.” A few thought to return to the transept where they carefully scooped up as much of the blood as they could, some of it undoubtedly Edward Grim’s. The broken blade of Richard le Bret’s sword was recovered and put aside with the archbishop’s bloodied clothing, to be cherished as holy relics, and many no longer mourned, rejoicing instead that their lord had died for God and Holy Church, martyr to the True Faith.
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