“I was wondering…” Cristyn smiled at Ranulf as if they were intimate friends and he found himself appreciating how adroitly she wielded the weapons God had given her. She did not let him forget for a moment that she was a beautiful, desirable woman, but one beyond reach, for she herself would never forget that she was the wife of Owain Gwynedd. Passing strange, he thought, that she could have birthed two sons so lacking in subtlety as Rhodri and Davydd. “What were you wondering, my lady?”
“I am somewhat shy of admitting it.” Her dimple deepened. “My lord husband does not like me to pay heed to gossip. But I heard an intriguing rumor from Cadwaladr’s English wife. She says that the Archbishop of Canterbury has forbidden the English king’s brother to wed the de Warenne heiress. Can this be true?”
“I am sorry to say that it is,” Ranulf confirmed. “I had a letter from my niece, the Countess of Chester, just a fortnight ago. Will is sorely distraught, for he had his heart set upon wedding Isabella and, in truth, I think he craves the lady as much as her lands. But unless the king can persuade Lord Thomas to withdraw his objections, the marriage is not likely to be. The Archbishop of Canterbury is the spiritual head of the Church in England, and his voice echoes loudest with His Holiness, the Pope.”
“Why does Becket oppose the marriage?”
“It offends the laws of consanguinity, for Will and Isabella are distant cousins, as was her late husband.”
Cristyn’s dark eyes shone with silent laughter. “Is that all? Owain and I are first cousins, for his mother and my father were sister and brother. But he did not let a minor matter like that deter him from taking me to wife. Poor Gwilym,” she said, making use of the Welsh equivalent for William. “I suppose he’d not dare to defy the archbishop? I confess that I was not much taken with this Thomas Becket at Woodstock. Is this why the English king is so wroth with him?”
“He is greatly vexed by the archbishop’s opposition to the marriage, for dispensations have been granted for those far more closely related than Will and Isabella. But this is just one more grievance amongst many.”
“You know the king so well,” she said admiringly, “from the skin out!” Ranulf wasn’t sure how to respond, for he still had not figured out what she wanted from him, sure only that she had more in mind than an exchange of court gossip. “Well, I am his uncle,” he said finally.
“Yes, but there is a closeness between you that goes deeper than blood. I saw that as soon as I saw you together at Woodstock,” she murmured and Ranulf suddenly understood her intent. She had revised her opinion of him after Woodstock, decided that he was worth cultivating on the off chance that she might be able to win him over to her side.
In light of his long-standing friendship with Hywel, Ranulf supposed he ought to be flattered that she thought it was still worth the effort. Their eyes met and he caught a glimmer-ever so briefly-of the steel beneath the silk. His gaze shifted from her face, across the hall to where Hywel was watching them, monitoring Cristyn’s maternal maneuverings with sardonic amusement, and he wished that his nephew had been blessed, too, with the ability to laugh at his foes. Mayhap then this looming confrontation between Harry and Thomas Becket would not seem so ominous, so fraught with peril.
From the dais, Henry had an unobstructed view of Westminster’s great hall. The men seated upon rows of benches were princes of the Church and lords of the realm, the most powerful men in his domains. On this mild October morning, they had gathered in answer to his summons, ostensibly to heal a rift between Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Roger de Pont l’Eveque, Archbishop of York. But Henry had a more ambitious agenda in mind. Now that the preliminary ceremonies were done, he held up his hand, waiting for silence.
“I would speak now of a serious matter, a grievous threat to the King’s Peace.” A murmur swept the hall, a rustling of leaves before the wind, and Henry rose to his feet. “I have been England’s king for nigh on nine years,” he said. “Do any of you know how many murders have been committed by clerics in that time? My lord archbishop?”
Thomas Becket had been given a seat of honor upon the dais. At Henry’s unexpected query, he shook his head, almost imperceptibly.
“More than one hundred murders… committed by men of God, most of whom were never called to account for their crimes.”
“We all answer to the Almighty for our sins, my liege.”
Henry smiled, very thinly. “I naturally defer to you, my lord archbishop, in spiritual matters. But my concern is not with the immortal souls of these criminous clerks. Whether they be damned or saved at God’s Throne does not interest me much. I seek to keep the peace in my domains and to provide justice to my subjects. And royal justice is perverted when men can rape and murder and then plead their clergy to escape the punishment they deserve.”
Gilbert Foliot tried and failed to catch Becket’s eye. He feared that Henry was about to bring up the case of that wretched Worcestershire cleric, an embarrassment to them all. If worse came to worst and the king demanded that they yield jurisdiction to the royal court, he hoped Becket would have the sense to temporize, offer to put the matter before the Pope. Sometimes a principle could be best defended by making a strategic retreat; the trick was to give up ground they could afford to lose.
But Henry now chose to drag another skeleton out of the Church’s closet. “I daresay you all remember the scandalous case of the Archdeacon Osbert, accused of poisoning the Archbishop of York. Out of the great respect I held for Archbishop Theobald, may God assoil him, I reluctantly agreed that the man should be tried in a Church court. What was the result? A formal judgment was never reached, thwarted by the man’s appeal to Rome. If Holy Church cannot provide justice to a murdered archbishop, what hope is there for victims of lesser rank? You need only ask the kinsmen of the knight slain by Philip de Brois.”
Thomas Becket got hastily to his feet. “My lord king, I must protest. Philip de Brois was found innocent by the Bishop of Lincoln’s court, as you well know.”
“Only because he found twelve men willing to swear on his behalf. Why should a sworn oath matter more than the evidence?”
“Need I remind you,” Becket said gravely, “that the act of perjury imperils a man’s immortal soul? Surely few men would dare to put their salvation at risk by lying under oath.”
“And surely few men would commit robbery and rape and homicide after taking holy orders,” Henry shot back. “Ah, but they do, my lord archbishop… they do! And what befalls these renegades once they are caught? They are degraded. But do you truly think a man capable of unholy murder will care if he is stripped of his priestly privileges? You might as well seek to deflect a charging bull by scattering straw in its path!”
The bishops were shifting uneasily in their seats, for Henry seemed poised for an all-out assault upon the Church’s exclusive jurisdiction. Foliot stared intently at Becket, willing the other man to tread with care; there was too much at stake for bravado. But Becket chose, instead, to fling down a challenge.
“Surely you do not have it in mind to encroach upon our courts, my liege? That issue was clearly settled in King Stephen’s charter of 1136, in which it was agreed that ‘Jurisdiction over clergy shall lie in the hands of the bishops.’ ”
Foliot winced, unable to believe Becket could have been so tactless, for Henry would be the last man alive to be swayed by precedent established during Stephen’s reign, which he considered a time of “unlaw.” Glancing toward Henry, he saw it was as he feared: the king’s jaw muscles had clenched, his color deepening.
“I doubt that the boundaries are as well defined as you seem to think, my lord archbishop. Be that as it may, I am not proposing to deny the Church jurisdiction over its own. I am prepared to be reasonable. I seek only to punish the guilty, those criminous clerks who have already been judged in the Episcopal courts. Once these men have been found guilty and degraded, they are no longer men of God. I would have them then turned over to my courts for sentencing.” Henry’s voice, normally hoarse, dropped even further, coming out as a low, ominous rasp. “Surely that seems fair,” he said, in what was not so much a question as a warning.