Time and Chance

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

September 1170

Bec-Hellouin, Normandy

Soft shadows and silence. That was the boy’s first impression of the interior of the abbey church. Outside, the sun was blazing across a noonday sky, but within the nave, it could have been dusk. Blinking, he stumbled over a prayer cushion and lurched into the font. The noise he’d made seemed to roil through the stillness like thunder, and he flushed, relieved when the kneeling figure of his father did not react. The marble tomb glimmered in the gloom. He wondered if it was as cold and smooth as it looked. The woman buried here was his aunt, but she was a stranger to him. He’d never even laid eyes upon her and was sure that she’d not have welcomed him into her family circle, for she had been a great lady, an empress, and he was a lord’s bastard, born in sin.

“Requiescas in pace, Maude.” Rainald rose stiffly to his feet, for physical activity without aching muscles and creaking bones was as long-gone as his youth. Peering into the dimness, he beckoned to the boy.

As they emerged into the September sunlight, Rainald collided with a man striding briskly along the cloisters walkway. “Whoa!” Recognizing the chasuble and cope of a prince of the Church, Rainald began to offer a laughing apology. “I’m not always blind as a mole, my lord, but these old eyes of mine need time to-” As his gaze rose to the bishop’s face, he broke off with a cry of delighted surprise and enfolded the other man in an enthusiastic embrace. “Roger!”

Roger grinned and fended off another hug. “Nay, Uncle, my ribs will snap like twigs. For all your talk of aging eyes, your clenches could put a bear to shame.”

“Only an elderly bear with the joint-evil and a potbelly! What are you doing here, Roger?”

“The same as you, Uncle… paying honor to Maude.”

Rainald shook his head. “I can hardly believe that she’s been dead three years. Will you be saying the Requiem Mass?” Getting an affirmation, he smiled, and then remembered the boy. “Come here, lad. Roger, I want you to meet Rico… my son. Rico, this is your cousin Roger, the Bishop of Worcester.”

Rico made his father proud by kneeling and kissing the bishop’s ring. Roger was impressed by the boy’s good manners and he acknowledged the introductions with deliberate warmth, knowing that would please Rainald. It was a poorly kept family secret that Rainald adored this unlawfully begotten son of his and felt remorse and anxiety that he could not give Rico all that his legitimate heir, Nicholas, would one day claim. Roger had an uneasy sense that Nicholas would not long enjoy the honors of his father’s earldom, for the youth had inherited his mother’s frail physique and delicate health. An image of Nicholas flashed into his memory as he looked upon Rainald’s other son, for the contrast between them could not have been more dramatic: Nicholas, hollow-eyed and arrow-thin, with a winter-white pallor even in midsummer, and Rico, a youngster of sturdy build and obvious energy, a handsome lad who’d likely grow into a handsome man if the fates were kind.

There was a wooden bench in one of the cloister carrels and Rainald headed toward it now, making one of his usual jokes about “old bones.” Roger followed willingly and Rico dutifully. Taking pity on the boy, Roger concocted an interesting errand for him to run, and Rico was soon trotting across the grass toward the slype. Just before he disappeared into the passage, he suddenly did a handstand, for no other reason but the bliss of being ten years old and on his way to the stables on a mild September afternoon.

Both men exchanged a rueful smile, one that acknowledged the pure joys of childhood were distant memories, and thank God for it. “I thought,” Roger said, “that you named the lad Henry.” When Rainald confirmed that he had, the bishop looked puzzled. “Then why Rico?”

“Well, you saw him, dark as a Saracen, no? After he was born, I was joking that he looked as dusky as a Sicilian and we ought to christen him Enrico rather than Henry. The next I knew, his mother was calling him Rico and soon I was, too.”

Rainald’s eyes took on a fond, faraway look and Roger surprised himself by feeling a small dart of envy. He’d known when he’d taken his vows as a priest that he’d be forswearing those sinful pleasures that other men held most dear: carnal lust and good wine and bad company. He’d also be renouncing the Almighty’s blessings of marriage and fatherhood. He had never repented his choice, could not even envision a life not given over to God. But there were times when he wondered about that road not taken and the sons he’d never have.

“Speaking of sons,” he said, “I recently heard that Eleanor had young Richard invested as Count of Poitou this spring. I suppose that explains why she was absent from Hal’s coronation.”

“Well, she was also occupied with guarding the coast for Harry.. as you ought to know, lad. She kept you from sailing from Dieppe, no?”

“So you heard about that, did you?” Roger could jest about it now, but at the time, he’d found no humor in his plight. Having learned that Henry planned to crown his son, Thomas Becket had instructed Roger to go at once to England with papal letters forbidding the coronation. At the same time, Henry had commanded Roger to return to England so that he could attend the coronation. Roger felt that he had no choice but to obey his archbishop, although painfully aware that if he thwarted Hal’s coronation, his cousin the king would never forgive him. There was a certain relief, therefore, in discovering that the Bishop of Lisieux had alerted the queen about his mission for Becket and she’d given orders that no ship in any Norman port was to give him passage.

“Did you also hear about the public brawl that Harry and I had upon his return to Normandy?”

Rainald shook his head, looking so expectant that Roger had to smile; few men savored gossip as much as his uncle. “Harry was on his way to Falaise and I rode out to meet him. He at once began to berate me for not attending Hal’s coronation. When I told him that the queen had forbidden me to sail, he cursed me all the more loudly for trying to lay the blame on her. By then, I was no less wroth than he, and I shouted back that he was fortunate I was not present at the coronation for I’d not have allowed it to take place. I also accused him of ingratitude, reminding him of how much my father had done to secure his crown and how little he had done for my brothers after gaining the throne.”

Rainald whistled admiringly, only half in jest. He did not consider himself a timid soul, but he knew he’d not have spoken up as boldly as Roger, not to the man who was his king as well as his nephew. “Do not stop now. What happened then?”

“Our quarrel was being conducted on horseback, out on the Falaise Road, so we had a large, interested audience. Some of the knights in the king’s household began to mutter amongst themselves and one man sought to curry favor with Harry by heaping abuse on me as an ingrate and traitor.”

Rainald let out a short bark of laughter. “I can well imagine Harry’s reaction to that!”

Roger grinned. “Yes… Harry damned near took the poor fool’s head off! Who was this miserable wretch, that he dared to insult the Bishop of Worcester and the king’s kinsman? Harry stopped in mid-harangue, as if hearing himself-fiercely defending the very man he’d been threatening but moments before-and then burst out laughing. As our eyes met, I could not help laughing, too, and no more needed to be said. We rode on into Falaise and dined together that noon. And after Harry met with the Holy Father’s envoys and agreed to their terms for making peace with the archbishop, he asked me to accompany him to Freteval, which I did.”

“You were at Freteval?” Rainald was delighted. “Word reached us in England, of course, about their accord, but an eyewitness account is more than I hoped for.”

“As you doubtless know, the agreement they reached is basically the same one that they were quarreling over at Montmartre. Harry agreed to allow Thomas to return to his diocese at Canterbury and to restore the episcopal estates and to permit Thomas to re-crown Hal, along with Louis’s daughter. Thomas in turn agreed to defer his claims for damages done to his lands during his exile and promised to render to Harry his love and honor and all the services which an archbishop could do for a king. Harry then promised to give Thomas the Kiss of Peace once they were in England, saying it was meaningless unless done of his own free will and not under compulsion, and Thomas accepted that.”

Roger paused. “All in all, the meeting between them was surprisingly cordial and amicable, with no eleventh hour ambushes by either side. Harry had made peace with Louis on the preceding day, and he seemed quite satisfied with the results of the Freteval council. So, too, did Thomas and his clerks. As for the papal legates, they were overjoyed.”

Rainald’s first impulse was to take Roger’s account at face value. But Roger’s narration had been curiously flat, as sparse as a skeleton, devoid of all flesh and blood and marrow.

“Then why,” he asked with a sigh, “are you not better pleased by it? I should think that you, of all men, would thank God fasting for a reconciliation between Harry and Becket.”

“Yes… if only I could believe their differences had truly been resolved. But they were not, Uncle. They were merely ignored.”

“I do not follow you.”

“Not a mention was made of the Constitutions of Clarendon, and that was at the heart of their antagonism. The Freteval agreement was riddled with such dangerous omissions and equivocations. Harry agreed that Thomas had the right to discipline the bishops who’d taken part in his son’s coronation, but what precisely does that mean? To Harry, that is likely to mean a slap on the wrist, a minor penalty. What if Thomas interprets those same ambiguous words much more harshly?

“Moreover, Harry will want the sentences of excommunication lifted from Geoffrey Ridel and his other men, and Thomas is already finding excuses to delay that action. And when Thomas demands an exact accounting of the moneys he claims he lost in revenues during his absence, how amenable is Harry going to be to that demand? No, Uncle, I very much fear that this was not so much a peace as a truce.”

Rainald sighed again, for he wanted to believe that Freteval had been the final destination and not just one more stop along a very rocky road. And because he’d had a lifetime’s experience in exiling unpleasant thought to the peripheral regions of his brain, he managed to push Roger’s qualms into a cobwebbed corner where they could be disregarded.

“Who’s to say a young truce cannot mature into a full-grown peace?” he joked, and then opted for an abrupt change of subject. “Do you know why Harry is missing Maude’s Requiem Mass? He had no choice about her funeral, what with his war in Brittany, but I’d have hoped that he’d make time for this.”

Roger swung around on the bench to stare at him. “Jesu! You do not know, do you?”

Rainald did not like the sound of that. “Know what?” he asked warily. “About Harry’s illness. He was stricken with a tertian fever last month, and for a time, the doctors despaired of his life.”

Rainald’s jaw dropped. “I heard not a word of this! But I went to my estates in Cornwall after the coronation. How does he? Is he still ailing? Was it as serious as all that?”

“Yes, indeed, it was. He made out a deathbed will, confirming the partition of his domains amongst his sons, and a false report of his death even reached Paris, so grievous was his condition. I did not mean to alarm you unduly, Uncle, for he is on the mend now, although I daresay it will take another fortnight ere he recovers his strength.”

Rainald didn’t doubt it, for he’d had some experience of his own with the ague, and knew how debilitating those deadly chills and fever could be. “Where is he? I’ll want to depart after the morrow’s Mass for Maude. Is Eleanor with him?”

“He was taken ill at Domfront and he is not yet up to riding, so for once you can actually be certain of his whereabouts, at least until he is strong enough to stay in the saddle. And no, Eleanor is in Poitiers.”

Rainald wondered if that Clifford chit had been there, but decided it was not a tactful query to put to a priest. “God be praised,” he said, “for sparing his life. I could not envision our world without Harry. It would be like blotting out the sun.” Thinking then of the coronation, he said softly, “I’d just as soon Hal’s kingship remained an empty honor for some years to come.”

“Deo volente,” Roger said, no more than that, but there was something in his tone which told Rainald that in this, they were of the same mind.

Upon his recovery, Henry and Eleanor made a pilgrimage to the shrine of St Mary at Rocamadour at Quercy in her duchy of Aquitaine to give thanks. In late September, Thomas Becket joined him at Tours, arriving before the start of daily Mass, where the king would have been compelled to offer him the Kiss of Peace. One of the archbishop’s most bitter enemies, Rannulph de Broc, had boasted that he would kill Becket before he had eaten one whole loaf on English soil, and the archbishop was alarmed enough to want the extra assurance of the Kiss of Peace. But Henry was alerted to Becket’s early arrival, and annoyed by what he saw as the archbishop’s duplicity, he instructed the priest to celebrate the Mass for the Dead, in which the ritual kiss is omitted.

October that year was uncommonly warm and the trees were still green and full; only an occasional flare of crimson or saffron reminded men that the autumnal season was past due. The fourteenth dawned with a summer’s languor, the sky above Chaumont-sur-Loire a patchwork of bleached blue and fleecy white, the air very still, without even a hint of a breeze. Henry had just finished two days of meetings with the Count of Blois and intended to leave Chaumont on the morrow for his castle at Chinon. His plans for this humid, sultry Wednesday-to hear petitioners, hold an audience with the Archbishop of Tours, and go hunting for roe deer in the forest north of the River Loire-were disrupted by the unexpected arrival of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Henry was not pleased, for it was beginning to seem as if his peace with Becket would unravel even before the archbishop set foot again on English shores. He’d been vexed to learn that Becket’s clerks were boasting of a “glorious victory” and frustrated by the archbishop’s insistence upon collecting every last farthing of the revenues that had accrued during his exile. He’d made a genuine effort to be accommodating at Freteval and felt that Thomas Becket was already taking advantage of his generosity. And so it was with a dangerous degree of resentment that he gave orders for the archbishop to be ushered into his presence.

The last time they’d met, it had been in anger, for they’d quarreled bitterly again after Henry’s refusal to give Becket the Kiss of Peace at Tours. But to Henry’s surprise, the archbishop made no mention of that unpleasant altercation. Their meeting was affable, even comfortable, almost as if their friendship had never been ruptured by events that Henry still did not fully understand. An exchange of courtesies flowed easily into more familiar conversation, and Henry found himself doing something utterly unanticipated: sharing a laugh with Thomas Becket.

He’d often wondered why Becket’s well of humor had gone dry as soon as the blessed pallium had been placed around his neck; God did not demand that His servants forswear laughter. They had left the stifling heat in the hall and were walking together in the gardens, trailed by attendants and several of Henry’s dogs. Henry studied the other man’s profile as they strolled, thinking that Thomas’s face was a testament to his adversities.

Becket was more than twelve years his elder, and this coming December would be his fiftieth. To Henry, he looked at least ten years older than that, hair gone silver-grey, dark eyes circled, furrows cut deeply into his brow. He’d been told that Thomas suffered from a painful inflammation of the jawbone and that he’d inflicted harsh penances upon himself during his years in exile, even immersion in the drains beneath Pontigny Abbey. Why? Why had he sought out such suffering? Why had he spurned their friendship and embraced the Church with a zealot’s fervor?

That was not a question Henry could ask. He had already done so, out on a wind-scourged field under the walls of Northampton, nigh on seven years ago. And it had gained him nothing but bloodied pride, no answer that explained the mysterious transformation of this man who had once been his most trusted friend. He took refuge, instead, in a heavy-handed joke, one that was more revealing than he realized.

“Why can you not do what I want, Thomas? For if you would, I’d entrust my realm and my soul to you! As Scriptures say, ‘All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.’ ” Remembering then that humor had become a foreign tongue for the archbishop, however fluent the chancellor had once been, Henry added hastily, “That is a jest, of course! I do not even demand that of my bedmates, after all.”

Henry was heartened when Becket smiled, for he’d been half-expecting a lecture on blasphemy, and as they continued along the garden path, he laid out his plans for the archbishop’s return from exile. They would meet at Rouen after Martinmas, and he would satisfy Becket’s creditors from the Royal Exchequer. He would then either conduct the archbishop himself to England or, if that was not possible, send the Archbishop of Rouen in his stead. As they had agreed upon at Freteval, he would bestow the Kiss of Peace upon his arrival back on English soil.

They faced each other on the walkway, their eyes catching and holding. “Go in Peace,” Henry said. “I will follow and meet you as soon as I can, either at Rouen or in England.”

Becket nodded somberly. “My lord king, I feel in my heart that when I leave you now, I shall never see you again in this life.”

Henry was too startled for anger. “Surely you are not accusing me of treachery?”

“God forbid, my lord.”

And after that, they walked on in silence.

John of Salisbury had already packed his coffer chest, dispatched letters of farewell to his friends in France, and paid for his passage on a ship sailing at week’s end. On the morrow he would depart for the port of Barfleur. A Channel crossing was a daunting prospect to most men, but John loved traveling. The horizons of his world were boundless, ever beckoning him onward, and he accepted the discomforts of the road as the price he must pay for admittance to exotic, foreign locales.

This trip’s destination was a familiar one: England. Six years of exile, though, had sharpened his hunger for his homeland. Even if his mission for the archbishop came to naught, at least he’d be able to visit his aged mother, to breathe again the air of Old Sarum, his birthplace.

A muffled knock distracted him from his reverie and he turned toward the door with a certain wariness. By the time he’d gotten to Rouen, the archbishop’s entourage had taken up most of the available lodgings and he’d been forced to seek shelter on the city’s outskirts, at the priory of Notre-Dame-du-Pre. Since the monks were still devoted to their illustrious patroness, the late Empress Maude, John’s welcome had been a frosty one; even the youngest novice knew of John’s long-standing friendship with Thomas Becket.

The youth at the door was a lay servant and seemed better suited to work in the stables than in the priory guest hall, for his information was annoyingly scant. All he could tell John was that a visitor awaited him in the parlor, one of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s clerks whose name had been utterly expunged from his memory during his brief dash out into the November rain. Fortunately, John had a high tolerance for the foibles of his fellow men. Picking up his mantle, he sighed, “Lead on.”

His visitor was still cloaked, for the priory parlor lacked a fireplace. John knew all of the archbishop’s clerks, some better than others. Hoping that this unexpected caller wasn’t the tiresome Herbert of Bosham, John fumbled in his scrip until he found a coin for the servant. “You wished to speak with me?”

As soon as the other man turned around, John’s polite smile faded and he began to bristle. There were few men he loathed as much as Arnulf, the wily Bishop of Lisieux, and Hugh de Nonant was Arnulf’s nephew. Even though Hugh had loyally followed Thomas Becket into exile, John did not trust him, sure that any kinsman of Arnulf’s was bound to be self-serving and unscrupulous.

“What are you doing here, Hugh? You think I haven’t heard about your defection?”

“It is true I have left the archbishop’s service, but I do not see it as a defection and I resent your describing it as such. After enduring six years of exile with him, I do not deserve to be accused of disloyalty or bad faith for departing once he made peace with the English king.”

“You say that as if this peace will magically make all his problems disappear!”

“Of course I do not believe that,” Hugh snapped, surprising John by his irascibility, for he’d always cultivated a languid air of jaded sophistication that John considered more appropriate in a royal courtier than a man of God. “I know full well the dangers Thomas will be facing upon his return to England,” he said testily, with none of his usual studied nonchalance.

“Then why,” John asked bluntly, “did you balk at accompanying him back to England?”

Hugh’s mouth twisted. “Because I do not want to watch him die!”

John’s breath caught. “Merciful God! What have you heard, Hugh? Have you warned Thomas? Are you sure-”

“I do not know of any conspiracy to murder the archbishop,” Hugh interrupted impatiently. “That is not what I meant.”

John frowned. “What, then?”

The younger man frowned, too. “I’d hoped to ease into this. But since that is no longer possible, let’s have some plain speaking, then. You do not like me. Fair enough, for I do not particularly like you, either. But you are the archbishop’s friend, and one of the few whose counsel can be trusted. If anyone can talk some sense into him, it would be you, and that is why I am here.”

“If this is your idea of ‘plain speaking,’ God spare me when you’re being evasive. I still have no idea what you want me to do.”

“I want you to save the archbishop from himself.” Hugh held up a hand to cut off John’s protest. “This infernal quarrel with the king could have been avoided, and should have been, for the good of the Church. And this peace patched and stitched together by the Pope is too fragile to bear close scrutiny.”

“Hellfire and damnation, Hugh, you think I do not know that?”

“I think,” Hugh said grimly, “that you do not know the archbishop’s nerves are as frayed as this so-called peace. Wait, John, hear me out. How often did you visit him during the last six years? Yes, you were in exile, too, but you chose to make a safe nest for yourself at Reims, not with us at Pontigny or Sens. You have not seen for yourself the toll this struggle has taken upon Thomas. For the king, Thomas is a source of anger and aggravation. Yet he also rules an empire, and I daresay long periods of time go by when he does not think of Thomas at all. For Thomas, the world has shrunk to the confines of his monastery refuge and, like any prisoner, he has been brooding incessantly about what he lost. Unlike the king, he has had no respite from his woes. He is still convinced that he has been greatly wronged, and although he yielded to the Holy Father’s pressure, he will be taking his grievances back to England with him-”

“You’ve said enough! Thomas deserves better from you than backbit ing and petty gossip. Why you thought that I, of all men, would want to hear this rubbish-”

“Listen to me, damn you! I am here because I fear for him, because his judgment is no longer to be trusted and he has surrounded himself with zealots like Herbert of Bosham and firebrands like Alexander Llewelyn, men who will spur him on instead of reining him in.”

John strode to the parlor door and jerked it open. “Thomas is my friend. I’ll not listen whilst you malign him.”

Hugh de Nonant was deeply flushed, his lip curling with scorn. “My uncle Arnulf was right about you. I should have known better than to come here.” Brushing past John, he stalked across the threshold and then turned around, so abruptly that his mantle flared out dramatically behind him. “If this ends as badly as I fear, you will not be able to say you were not warned, John of Salisbury.”

John reached for the door and slammed it shut, almost in the other man’s face. There was a flagon on a nearby table and he quickly crossed to it, filling a wine cup with an unsteady hand. Hugh de Nonant was the sort of worldly, devious cleric he most despised, a man who saw the Stations of the Cross as rungs on the ladder of his own advancement. Like his uncle, his piety was befouled by ambition, his intelligence corrupted by amorality. John was convinced that Arnulf never did anything without an ulterior motive, and Hugh was cut from the same shabby cloth.

Was he the king’s agent, sowing seeds of dissension amongst the archbishop’s clerks and councilors? Was he seeking to spread rumors about the archbishop’s troubled state of mind? Thomas had enemies in plenitude: men he’d antagonized during his years as Henry’s chancellor, those who mistrusted his abrupt and enigmatic conversion from king’s man to king’s foe, those who’d profited from his exile and feared his return to royal favor. Was Hugh de Nonant in league with some of them? It was not that difficult to believe. But there had been enough truth in what Hugh had said to leave John with a lingering sense of unease.