Henry had paused on the walkway, gazing up unseeingly at the cloud-flecked sky. “I swear he takes pleasure in thwarting me at every turn. How can he be so ungrateful? All that he is, he owes to me. Yet each time I hold out an olive branch to him, he spits upon it. How long does he think he can trade on our past friendship? I will never understand how I could have misjudged him so badly-never!”
Eleanor did not fully understand it, either. How could these two men have been such close friends and yet misread each other so calamitously? Her husband had utterly failed to anticipate the archbishop Becket would become. But what of Becket? Had he learned nothing in their years together? How could he not realize what a formidable and unforgiving enemy Harry would make?
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
October 1163
Westminster, England
"Well?” Henry’s eyes moved from face to face, then focused intently upon Thomas Becket. “You’ve had an opportunity to confer. Are you willing to swear to obey the ancient customs of the realm?”
Becket met his gaze unwaveringly. “The customs of Holy Church are fully set forth in the canons and decrees of the Fathers. It is not fitting for you, my lord king, to demand anything that goes beyond these, nor ought we to consent to any innovations. We who now stand in the place of the Fathers ought to humbly obey the old laws, not establish new ones.”
“I am not asking you to do anything of the sort,” Henry snapped. “I ask only that the customs which were observed in the times of my predecessors be also observed in my reign. In those days there were holier and better archbishops than you who consented to these customs, raising no controversy about them with their kings.”
“Whatever was done by former kings that violated the canons and whatever practices were observed out of fear of those kings ought not to be called customs, but rather abuses. Scriptures teach us that such depraved practices ought to be abolished, not extended. You say that the holy bishops of those times kept silent and did not complain. Mayhap those were days for silence. But their example does not give us the authority to assent to anything that is done against God or our order.”
Henry’s breathing had quickened. “You are saying, then, that you refuse?”
“No, my liege. We have discussed your demand and we are willing to swear to honor the customs of the realm… saving our order.”
“And what in hellfire does that mean?”
“That we refuse to acknowledge those customs which we believe to violate canon law.”
“Just as I thought! This is a poisonous phrase,” Henry snarled, “full of guile, and I will not accept it! You will swear without conditions and you will swear now.”
“No, my liege,” Becket said, “we will not.”
“Does this man speak for you all?” Henry whirled around on the other bishops. “My lord bishop of London, what say you?”
Gilbert Foliot approached the dais. “I will swear to abide by the customs of the realm, my liege, but saving our order.”
Henry stared at him in disbelief. “What of the rest of you?” he demanded, his gaze raking the assembled prelates. “Speak for yourselves and speak now.”
One by one, they did. Stephen’s brother, Henry of Blois, Bishop of Winchester, whose ambition had once been all-consuming. Roger de Pont l’Eveque, the Archbishop of York, whose animosity toward Becket stretched back as far as their youthful service in the household of Archbishop Theobald of blessed memory. Roger of Gloucester, the Bishop-elect of Worcester, Henry’s own cousin. Jocelin de Bohun, Bishop of Salisbury, who’d long been out of Henry’s favor. Bartholomew, Bishop of Exeter. The aged Robert de Chesney, Bishop of Lincoln. Robert de Melun, a noted theologian and Bishop-elect of Hereford. As Henry listened in growing fury, each man echoed the oath offered by Thomas Becket, adding somberly or nervously the phrase he found so odious: “Saving our order.” Only Hilary, Bishop of Chichester wavered, offering instead to obey the customs in “good faith.”
But to Henry, that was no concession. To the contrary, he suspected Chichester of attempting to add another qualification to the oath and cut the older man off angrily in mid-explanation. “Enough of this sophistry and equivocation! I’ll put the question to you but one more time, and think carefully ere you answer. For all our sakes, think very carefully. Are you willing to swear to abide by the customs of the realm… or are you not?”
Becket stepped forward again. “My lord king,” he said, “we have already sworn fealty to you by our life and limbs and earthly honor, saving our order, and the customs of the kingdom are included in those words, ‘earthly honor.’ We cannot promise more than that.”
Henry swung toward his former chancellor, his one-time friend. Becket gazed back calmly. His face was impassive, but Henry thought he could detect a glint of triumph in the other man’s eyes. Instead of lashing out, he somehow managed to swallow the words, as bitter as bile. Coming down the steps of the dais, he stalked up the aisle. As the bishops and his barons watched in consternation, he strode out of the hall.
Eleanor raised herself up on an elbow, stifling a yawn. “I feel like I’m sharing my bed with an eel,” she complained, “what with all your squirming and thrashing about. Are you never going to sleep, Harry?”
“What do you think I’ve been trying to do?” he asked irritably. “Sleep is not a trained dog, coming when it’s called.” Sitting up, he occupied himself in pounding his pillow into submission, But no matter how he molded it, it was not to his satisfaction. “It is no use,” he said. “I just cannot get comfortable.”
Eleanor sighed. She did not want to rehash the day’s events, having spent the evening listening to her husband fulminate against Thomas Becket’s treachery. She’d had no success in soothing him, and was in no mood to continue trying. If he’d listened to her when he’d first gotten that foolhardy idea to make Becket an archbishop, how much grief they could all have been spared.
She found it both frustrating and vexing that he did not pay more heed to her advice. She had been counseling him for months that he should seek to isolate Becket from the other bishops, but he’d not taken the suggestion seriously until he’d heard it from Arnulf of Lisieux. Their world was full of men who seemed to think wombs and brains were incompatible, but she did not believe he was one of them. For certes, he respected his mother’s political judgment, honed as it had been on heartbreak and loss. Watching as Henry pummeled the pillow again, she remembered a remark he’d once made, that she and his mother and Becket were the only ones he truly trusted. Well, Becket was now the enemy and Maude in Normandy. Reaching over, she slid her hand up his arm.
“Becket’s triumph will be fleeting. Come the morrow, he will discover that there is a price to be paid for his defiance, higher than he expected, I daresay. Now put him out of your thoughts, for there is no room for three in our bed. Lie back and relax.”
“I cannot sleep, Eleanor,” he said impatiently, but when he turned toward her, he saw that she was smiling, a smile filled with indulgent amusement and sultry promise.
“I am not suggesting,” she said, “that we sleep.”
Henry’s abrupt departure had thrown the council into turmoil, and it had broken up in confusion and dismay. When the bishops assembled the next morning, it was evident that many of them had spent an uneasy night. Westminster’s great hall was a dismal scene, empty except for servants and a few men-at-arms. To more than one prelate, the air still echoed with the king’s wrathful warning: You will swear without conditions and you will swear now. What would be the consequences of defying him? His grandfather and great-grandfather had both had a summary way of dealing with opposition. So had his father. When Herbert of Bosham, one of Becket’s clerks, chose to remind the bishops that the Counts of Anjou were said to trace their descent from the Devil’s daughter, his ill-timed jest evoked no laughter.