The wagons moved off into an enchanted world. Snow smoothed every crease and lump, turning trees to glittering castles of gold when a shaft of sunlight struck them. The palace of Rouen transformed to a white mountain that was grey only at its chimneys, from which smoke wandered out into the hushed, still air. Iron wheels and the hooves of the horses that pulled the Chancellor’s sumpter wagon and the steps of the two huge, shaggy beasts pulling the wagon in which he rode, were as quiet as the paws of cats. The tinkle of harness bells and the huffing of the horses was the loudest noise.
Inside Richer’s wagon there was silence as the two old friends stared into each other’s faces, each wanting the other to speak first. He’s gone mad, the Baron thought. Their wagon jolted downhill towards the gatehouse where guards, ignorant of what had just taken place inside the palace, bobbed their heads in respect for the Lord Chancellor of England. He returned the greeting with his usual haughty nod.
Richer broke the silence. ‘Guards won’t be bowing to you in future, Tom.’ His tone was as sour as his expression. When he smiled slightly, menace seemed to accompany his amusement.
The Chancellor had slumped in a stupor of misery and fury. ‘You add fuel to my hatred, Riche.’
‘That is the last time you’ll ever use that word in reference to His Highness, Tom. I realise that revenge is your heart’s desire, but hatred proclaimed loses its chance for vengeance.’
Thomas barked with ghastly laughter. ‘How to revenge myself now he’s reduced me to impotence? I’m just another vassal, a house churl, a kitchen maid.’
Quite so, Richer thought. But he’s so unhinged he’s capable of any recklessness. I must try to bring sense into his head. ‘At the height of your grandeur as a member of his inner circle, Tom, you were still only a vassal, my dear. We’re all his vassals. Every Englishman, every man of Normandy, Anjou, Maine, Aquitaine and Brittany. A prince with such vast territory makes a hundred decisions in a week. Some are sure to be wrong. When they are, you’ll have your chance for vengeance.’
Becket whimpered. ‘The shock of losing everything I worked a lifetime to attain has dulled my wits. I don’t see how, in my impotence, I can attack his puissance.’
The Baron smiled to himself, thinking of the agility with which Thomas had climbed the ladder of the Church and from there leapt into court. ‘Henry is a practical king,’ he said. ‘And you, Tom, have a talent he needs. The finances of his continental lands are a shambles. You yourself told me he ordered the Queen to sail through a storm from Barfleur to Southampton to collect gold from his treasury and bring it to him here in Normandy. Just as you reformed the collection of royal taxes in England, he needs you to perform the same service on this side of the Channel.’
Becket gave a grim laugh. ‘I’m to seek revenge by helping him burgeon in wealth and power?’
‘Vengeance is patient, Tom. It waits quietly. It keeps its own counsel. It walks silently like the panther cat.’
‘His brother walks like a panther.’
Richer turned and smacked the Chancellor across the face. ‘You’ll never pull the King to his knees if you allow your thoughts to wander about, drooling over his brother. I glimpsed him the other day. He is divinely beautiful. Despite, or perhaps because of, that streak of white hair.’
‘Snow on a raven’s wing,’ Becket murmured. ‘And in appearance so like the dead brother, Guillaume. But ten years younger. Riche, Guillaume’s voice was a nightingale’s. Five hundred guests in a banquet hall would weep to hear him sing.’ He pressed a hand to his cheek and began weeping himself. ‘Henry said to me, “you came from the gutters of London, hungry as a rat”. Can you imagine how that tore my heart? Can you imagine, Riche, what it was to hear him deny he had lain with me as with a woman? He said it was a vassal who impersonated him. I LOVED HIM! I adored him. Day and night I thought of him. I believed he loved me.’
‘If you don’t stop slobbering I’ll hit you again. He never loved you, Tom. Kings only love their countries. For their countries they’ll give their lives. Everyone else – wives, children, chancellors – is valued or despised only to the degree they’re useful to the realm. You were useful. You made him rich. You made England rich. He indulged you.’
‘He fought savagely with his mother to have me elevated to the royal familiares. She opposed me.’
He’s like an outraged, sulking child. ‘The Empress Matilda knows you well. She understood better than her son that one day you would overreach yourself. You did. Now you pay the price.’
Again, Becket let his head fall back against the padded side of the wagon. Suddenly he blinked and a small smile crossed his lips. ‘I still have the Crown Prince in my household. I don’t think Henry will take him from me because it would cause a scandal in England, would it not? Every tavern a beehive of rumour and conjecture.’
The Eagle reached a gloved hand to stroke the cheek he had slapped. ‘Your capacity for reason has returned. You see, my dear, you have a great weapon already in your armoury. Of course the King wants no scandal in England. Over there only the familiares will know you’re no longer one of them. What? A half dozen people in total, including the Queen, his brother, that ruffian de Broc and the justiciars? None will talk. You’ll keep the boy under your roof, as foster son, and there you can—’
‘Turn him against his father!’
‘Precisely. You’ll cosset him, pamper him …’
‘I will. I will.’ The Chancellor’s large body relaxed, but after a few minutes he sat bolt upright. ‘There’s Richard! He knows. He knows everything. The venomous little serpent was in the chamber when Henry dismissed me.’
You boasted how you’d seduced that little serpent. You bragged he was the most delightful boy you’d ever had, and of aristocratic lineage. The Baron frowned. ‘Richard is a problem,’ he agreed. ‘But let’s concentrate on our dangerous and mighty prey, and leave the small thing for later. Another cup?’
They had reached a tributary of the Seine, on the other bank of which an old Roman road led through broad, white expanses that a few months earlier had been fields of corn, to the baron château. Henry had burned it down a decade earlier as punishment for a theft of horses, but the Baroness de l’Aigle’s had deep pockets and she had opened them for her husband to rebuild it. The wagons slowed, then halted as the drivers clambered down to check the wooden bridge for strength. The weight of the second wagon, with the Chancellor’s mound of possessions, was of greatest concern. Richer lifted a canvas covering to stick his head out. In the local dialect he called, ‘Safe?’ His driver walked slowly back to him to give a nod. ‘We go first and wait on the other side. The sumpter can follow.’
He dropped the canvas, turned to Becket and clinked his cup to his friend’s.
‘Tom, it’s not too late to turn back. If you go now and on your knees ask Henry’s forgiveness for insulting him, heap coals of fire on your own head, plead your lack of rank and breeding, demean yourself in every way to excuse your outrageous insult to his honour in public, swear allegiance to him forever, beg from him the Kiss of Peace, he’ll reconsider. Tom, he can be soft-hearted. Your skills in grovelling are superlative. I don’t believe six years at court have made you forget how to grovel. Henry’s temper is like a fire. It’s probably cooled already. If we turn the wagons and you go now, he’ll take you back. All that happened in Toulouse can be forgotten.’
For a moment Becket’s expression was sombre. He smiled slowly. ‘You don’t know me, Riche.’ His voice was as cold and treacherous as ice on a pond. ‘Till the day I die I’ll never forgive or forget how he ill-used me.’ Suddenly he yelled with laughter and pointed in the direction of the river that stood before them.
‘The Rubicon!’ he shouted. ‘I, Sir Thomas of London, Lord Chancellor of England and Archdeacon of Canterbury, cross the Rubicon! I shall strike down Henry Plantagenet!’
‘Alea iacta est,’ the Baron murmured.