“I know,” Roger said, with such stark, despairing candor that she at once regretted her levity.
“Tell me,” she said, “about the council meeting today. What are these customs that Harry is demanding you all abide by?”
“He claims that those pleas concerning advowsons belong in the king’s court. That no cleric may leave England without his consent. That no man holding his lands directly from the king may be excommunicated or his lands laid under interdict without the king’s prior consent. That sons of villeins may not be ordained without the permission of their lords. That appeals are not to be made to the papal court without first passing through the appropriate Church courts, and then not without the king’s consent. That the king should control vacant bishoprics, abbeys, and priories. That when there are evildoers whom people fear to accuse, twelve respected men of the town or vill shall be chosen to take oath that they will seek out the truth of the matter. That once criminous clerks have been taken before an ecclesiastical court, found guilty, and degraded of their clerical office, they should then be turned over to the king’s court for sentencing as laymen.”
It was an impressive display of memory, but no more than Maud would have expected. Her brother’s keen intellect had helped, as much as his royal connections, to propel him to prominence at such a young age. “Are they, indeed, the customs of the realm in the days of the old king, Harry’s grandfather?”
Roger nodded tersely. “With one or two exceptions, I would say so.”
Maud reached over and squeezed his arm. “Can you not accept them, then?”
“No…” The look he gave her was anguished, revealing not only the conflicted state of his soul, but his bleak awareness of the high stakes involved. “In good conscience, we cannot, Maud. How can we agree to let the king circumscribe appeals to the Apostolic See? That would violate our consecration oaths. And how can we accede to the king’s demand that we must secure his permission to leave the realm? That would hinder pilgrimages, at the very least. And what would I do if I were summoned to Rome by the Holy Father and the king then refused to let me go?”
“What did priests and bishops do in the old king’s time?”
He was silent for some moments, gazing out upon the expanse of pristine, moonlit snow. “There must be accommodation between Church and Crown. If the king refused to unsheathe his secular sword to enforce spiritual penalties, how effective would those penalties be? The Church might, of necessity, have to tolerate certain practices that are in violation of canon law. But it is not possible to confer official sanction upon those deviant practices. So we have no choice but to refuse.”
“You mean that by making this public demand, Harry has taken away your wriggling room?” It was a colloquial expression, but one that accurately summed up their dilemma, and Roger smiled in wry recognition of that. Maud understood perfectly what he meant; she was first and foremost a realist. But she understood, too, why her cousin had been driven to such measures.
“This accommodation you spoke of can work only if there is trust on both sides. And Harry no longer believes that he can trust Thomas Becket.”
“I know,” he admitted softly.
“What happens now?”
“When the council resumes on the morrow, we shall seek to make the king understand why we cannot accede to his demands.”
“And if you cannot?”
He slowly shook his head. “Then God help us all.”
The council was already in session the next morning when Maud slipped unobtrusively in a side door of the great hall. Her son was seated on one of the long wooden benches, next to his uncle, Rainald, Earl of Cornwall. Hugh looked ill at ease, but then, so did many of the men. The tension was almost tangible, blanketing the hall like wood-smoke. The only one who seemed unaffected by the disquieting atmosphere was Henry’s young son. Hal was presiding with his father over the council; just a month shy of his ninth birthday, he was fidgeting in his seat, scraping with his thumbnail at the candle wax that splattered the wooden arm of his chair. Maud had heard that he’d become very fond of Becket during his eighteen months in the archbishop’s custody, and she wondered if it was painful for him to see his father feuding so publicly and acrimoniously with Becket. At the least, she imagined it must be confusing for the boy. But his face masked his thoughts; a handsome, sturdy youngster, he looked bored and faintly sullen.
Henry was pacing like a caged lion, never taking his eyes off his archbishop. “We have gone over this again and again. I am not claiming the right to try criminous clerks in my courts. They will be judged first in an ecclesiastical court, and if found guilty, degraded of their priestly office. It is only then that they will be returned to the royal courts for sentencing. Where is the unfairness in that?”
Becket shook his head wearily. “As we’ve tried to make you see, my liege, that would still be a double punishment: first degradation and then whatever penalty your court might choose to mete out. That would be like… like bringing Christ before Pontius Pilate a second time.”
Henry stared at him and then exploded. “That is arrant nonsense! There is no honesty in your arguments, my lord archbishop, nothing but prevarication and contumacy. As long as you persist in this obdurate attitude, further discussion is meaningless. I would suggest that you and your fellow bishops retire to reconsider your position. And whilst you do, bear this in mind. I have sought to convince you by logic and common sense. But if need be, I can find other means of persuasion.”
Maud would not have believed that a crowded hall could have fallen so silent so fast. But in the moments that followed, there was no sound at all, no whispering or murmuring, not even the catch of indrawn breaths, only an unnatural stillness.
The chamber was heated by charcoal braziers, but they did little to chase away the cold. Roger was the youngest of all the bishops, but the stress was telling upon him, too, as their deliberations dragged on into a third day. He’d slept little that night and suspected that few of the other suffragans had either. So far this morning the arguments being made were merely a rehash of the previous day’s heated discussions. They’d already exhausted all their options. Roger knew that not a man among them wanted to swear to obey these abhorrent customs, for to do so would be a de facto concession that the king and not the Pope was the true head of the English Church. But did they have the collective courage to defy him? If they held firm, would he back down? Roger felt reasonably confident that his cousin was bluffing. Harry was neither a monster nor a fool. Surely he’d not bring down the anathema of Holy Church upon his head by persecuting the greatest prelates of his realm?
But others were not as sure of that as Roger, and several of the bishops were imploring Becket to yield. The Bishops of Salisbury and Norwich, in particular, were insistent that a compromise be sought, for they were already in Henry’s bad graces, and admitted quite candidly their fear that they would be the ones to suffer the most if Henry’s anger were not deflected or appeased.
In truth, few among them had the stomach for this looming confrontation between Church and Crown. By Roger’s reckoning, only he and Henry of Blois, the wily Bishop of Winchester, and possibly the Bishop of Hereford, backed Becket without reservation. The Archbishop of York so disliked his fellow archbishop that even his courtesy seemed grudgingly given. Gilbert Foliot had reluctantly concluded that they could not obey the customs. But he was furious with Becket for having allowed himself to be cornered like this, and his anger made him a prickly, irascible ally. Hilary of Chichester had so far taken little part in their emotional debates, which did not surprise Roger. His assessment of Chichester was of a man slippery and shallow and clever, an opportunist who’d seen the priesthood as a profession, not a vocation. The Bishops of Ely and Lincoln were elderly and ailing, poor soldiers in this war of wills. Bartholomew of Exeter and the Bishop of Coventry were good men, but not the stuff of which martyrs are made. And the Bishops of Durham, Bath, and Rochester were fortunate enough to be absent, spared this harrowing test of their own fortitude.