CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
November 1170
Wissant, France
Thomas Becket was walking along the beach, gazing out across the sun-sparkled waters of the Channel. It was a cold d ay but clear, and the chalk cliffs of Dover could be seen glimmering in the far distance. Now that they were so close to ending their exile, some of his clerks were eager to return to their homeland and they’d been complaining among themselves about the delay in sailing. Although they were trailing behind the archbishop, the wind carried the words of one grumbler to Becket’s ears. Looking back over his shoulder, he queried, “What was that you said, Gunter?”
Gunter of Winchester smiled self-consciously, but his years of exile with the archbishop entitled him to speak candidly. “I said, my lord, that I was feeling like Moses, who saw the promised land and could not enter.”
Becket’s smile came and went so fast that some of the clerks missed it. “You ought not to be in such a hurry, Gunter. Before forty days are up, you will wish yourself anywhere but in England.”
This was not the first time that he’d made such ambivalent statements about their homecoming, and his companions exchanged worried glances. Becket had resumed walking and they hastened to catch up, Herbert of Bosham jockeying for position beside their lord, to the amusement of the others. When Becket stopped without warning, Herbert nearly ploughed into him, but the archbishop didn’t appear to notice, his attention drawn to a man striding purposefully across the sand toward them.
The newcomer was elegantly attired in a fur-trimmed woolen mantle and leather ankle boots, carrying in one hand a knitted pair of cuffed silk gloves. He looked like a royal courtier; in fact, he was a highly placed churchman, the Dean of Boulogne. He was also a fellow Englishman, and there was genuine pleasure in Becket’s cry of recognition.
“What are you doing here, Milo? Ah, I know… you heard we are about to sail and you’re hoping for a free ride with us to visit your kinfolk.”
Milo acknowledged the jest with a polite, perfunctory smile. “If I might have a word alone with you, my lord archbishop…?”
Becket acquiesced and, as the clerks watched intently, the two men walked together for a time along the shore, heads down, their mantles catching the wind and swirling out behind them. When they moved apart, Becket smiled and clapped Milo on the shoulder, then beckoned to his companions. “We are going back to our lodgings, where the Dean of Boulogne has graciously agreed to dine with us.”
The offer of hospitality was made with deliberate wryness, acknowledging the reduced circumstances of an archbishop in exile, and Becket’s clerks smiled dutifully. But they kept casting uneasy glances toward the dean, and when the opportunity presented itself, two of them dropped back to walk beside him.
Milo knew them both: Gunter was one of the archbishop’s most devoted clerks and, Master William had long plied his medical skills in the highest circles of the English Church, first as physician to Theobald, Archbishop of Canterbury, and then to his successor, Thomas Becket. It was easy for the dean to guess what they wanted to ask and he saw no reason not to tell them.
“I was sent at the behest of the Count of Boulogne,” he said quietly. “He wanted to warn the archbishop that his enemies are awaiting him at Dover, with evil intent in mind.”
They showed no surprise, for this was only one of several warnings that Becket had received in recent weeks. Neither man bothered to ask Milo what the archbishop had replied, for they already knew that. He’d been saying to anyone who’d listen that nothing would stop him from returning to England, that if he died en route to Canterbury, they must promise to see to his burial in Christ Church Cathedral.
“We must convince Lord Thomas to put in at any port but Dover, then,” Gunter declared and veered off to suggest that to one of the most persuasive of Becket’s clerks, Alexander Llewelyn, his Welsh cross-bearer.
Master William remained at Milo’s side. His shoulders hunched against the wind, hands jammed into the side slits of his cloak, he was scuffing his feet in the sand, trampling shells underfoot as if they were the enemy. “You do not look,” Milo observed, “like a man eagerly anticipating a return to his homeland, Will.”
“I fear what awaits us,” the physician said with despairing honesty. “If Lord Thomas’s enemies are already plotting against him, what will they do once they hear of the excommunications?”
“What excommunications?” Milo asked sharply, and Master William looked about furtively, then deliberately slowed his pace so that they lagged behind the others.
“I might as well tell you, for all will know soon enough. The English king has acted with his usual guile, and upon learning of his bad faith, Lord Thomas fell into a great rage and… and did something I fear we may all regret.”
The Dean of Boulogne came to an abrupt halt. “God in Heaven, do not tell me he has excommunicated the king!”
Master William shook his head dolefully. “No… but this morning he sent a trusted servant to Dover with papal letters of censure for the Archbishop of York and the Bishops of London and Salisbury.”
“Why would he do that? Has he lost his mind?”
“You must not be so quick to judge him,” Master William said defensively. “You do not yet know what the king did to provoke him. Despite his talk about peaceful cooperation, the king decided to fill the six vacant bishoprics ere Lord Thomas could be restored to power in England. York, London, and Salisbury had gathered at Dover, making ready to escort electors overseas to vote for the king’s nominees. But Lord Thomas learned of their duplicity ere they could sail for Normandy and acted to thwart them.”
Milo swore a most unclerical oath, stalked to the water’s edge and back again, mentally heaping curses in equal measure upon the heads of England’s king and archbishop. They were a matched pair, he thought angrily, prideful and obstinate and racing headlong into disaster. The worst of it, though, was the damage that had been done to the Holy Church by their infernal feuding. And, just as so many had long feared, there was no end in sight.
Henry, King of England, to his son, Henry the king, greetings. Know that Thomas, Archbishop of Canterbury, has made peace with me according to my will. I therefore command that he and all his men shall have peace. You are to see to it that the archbishop and all his men who left England for his sake shall have all their possessions as they had them three months before the archbishop departed from England. And you will cause to come before you the more important knights of the Honor of Saltwood, and by their oath, you will cause recognition to be made of what is held there in fee from the archbishopric of Canterbury… Witnessed by Rotrou, Archbishop of Rouen, at Chinon.
Earlier that day, the Archbishop of Canterbury had been welcomed joyfully into Southwark. He’d been escorted to his lodgings at the Bishop of Winchester’s manor by the canons of St Mary, followed by local priests and their parishioners. Hours later, church bells still pealed on both sides of the river, and the bankside crowds had yet to disperse, slowing William Fitz Stephen’s progress so that an early December dusk was already descending by the time he was allowed to pass through the great gate of Winchester Palace.
Fitz Stephen’s nerves were on edge, for he was not sure of his reception. He’d seen the archbishop only once in the past six years, a brief meeting at Fleury-sur-Loire. At the time, Thomas Becket had not indicated that he bore Fitz Stephen any grudge for failing to follow him into exile. But Fitz Stephen knew that others in the archbishop’s entourage were not as forgiving, and he feared that their rancor might have poisoned his lord’s good will.