Some miles away, back at the Abbey of Faversham, the dead King’s brother, Henry of Blois, Bishop of Winchester, had exercised his authority to requisition a chamber reserved for England’s High Priest, the Archbishop of Canterbury. By strange coincidence the Archbishop had fallen ill the day before and had been unable to officiate, as he should have, at the King’s funeral. He’d sent his Archdeacon, Becket, to represent him. ‘An insult and a scandal,’ Winchester had muttered inside the Abbey to every prelate with whom he was still on speaking terms. ‘An Archdeacon. He’s not even clergy! Never said Mass in his life.’
Now, closeted in this well-furnished chamber, his tears of an hour earlier dried without trace, he summoned to his side the remaining members of the late King’s family, plus a handful of barons and magnates. Refreshments were brought.
When the Bishop’s servants withdrew he waited for silence. His glance first fell upon his nephew, Stephen’s younger son, William, who had refused the crown. This youth was slender, gentle and scholarly. His passion was the study of classical texts. He’d taken little part in the civil war. Fighting men said he was too young, weak and clumsy to stay on a galloping horse. He was now seventeen. His wife, Isabel of Warenne, Countess of Surrey, was twenty-three. This refined and beautiful woman had a vocation to become a nun, but King Stephen had plucked her from her abbey before she was ordained, ordering her to marry his son. The civil war was at a dangerous point and Stephen needed to marry the House of Blois to the House of Surrey. At the time, the groom was thirteen and his bride twenty. The marriage had produced no children and was, as spies informed the Bishop, ‘white’. Isabel had the straight nose, high brow and small cleft chin of a Minerva, her features set off by long greenish-brown eyes. Seated beside her husband who, like his uncle, had wept copiously throughout the funeral rites, she dabbed at her eyes from time to time in a show of respect. An impulse of compassion for her young husband made her take his hand. Winchester noticed the gesture with satisfaction, his smooth, fat features betraying no sign of his glee.
The Bishop was reputed to be the greatest chess player in England, able to suppress any hint of triumph as he moved in for the kill. He glanced at the others he had invited to join him for refreshments. There was Baron Pontefract, young and hot-headed, and several other men of the north, magnates who would never forget the massacre of William the Bastard, great-grandfather of their soon-to-be King. The Bastard’s harrowing of the north had entered into legend that children learned at their mother’s knee. The men gathered this funeral day had managed, through hard work and cunning over two generations, to scrape back lands, houses and honours that the Bastard had despoiled. Winchester smiled at their expectant faces.
‘Well, well, well,’ the Bishop began. ‘How do we feel about returning to the rule of Normandy?’
His nephew shifted uncomfortably. ‘Actually, Uncle, as the son of the Count of Anjou, and himself born in Anjou, our new King is not strictly Norman. He’s Anjevin.’
The Bishop smiled. ‘You, dear nephew, Henry’s brother by fiat of King Stephen, spent time with him. You’re not unobservant. What did you notice about him?’
William blushed. ‘He’s … adventurous.’
The Bishop annunciated slowly. ‘Adventurous.’ His eyes darted from their fat-padded crevices towards his nephew. ‘I heard something about the adventures you and he enjoyed together.’
William’s soft, white cheeks flamed. Isabel withdrew her hand from his.
‘Well, friends, my nephew is virtue itself in discretion and modesty, so unhappily it falls to me to say more about our monarch-to-be. In my view he resembles both sides of his execrable lineage; the lecherous, murderous Anjevins and the ruthless, violent Normans. He holds in highest regard his grandfather, Henry the Lion. Our England, poor England, will once more be gripped by the paws of that terrible beast.’
The barons from the north exchanged glances. Silence fell in the crowded chamber.
‘Of course,’ the Bishop added, ‘we can do nothing about this lamentable situation. The country is war-weary. It craves stability and peace. Our new King is no fool. I think you’d agree with that, Nephew?’
William nodded miserably.
Suddenly Winchester’s fat face glowed. His attention turned to the gracefully lowered head of the only woman present. ‘Dear lady, I am remiss. We must consult you. How do you imagine the people of England will respond to a queen whom the King of France divorced for adultery – let’s not any of us pretend we believe that nonsense about “consanguinity” – it was for adultery he got rid of her. Dear Isabel, do you believe the English people will take to their hearts a foreign adulteress, a harlot – if you’ll forgive my frankness – from Aquitaine? You’re all familiar with Aquitaine?’ The barons’ wary looks made him realise that they wouldn’t know Aquitaine from their left foot. ‘She owns the southern half of France, not only Aquitaine but Poitou. The scandalous creature is black with money. The richest woman in Europe. In the world!’
‘Uncle,’ William interrupted, ‘Please excuse me. I know the Duchess and I assure you she’s a lady of wisdom and—’
‘She is a creature of unfathomable wiles, Nephew. Clearly she exercised them on you.’ He returned his attention to Isabel. ‘Whereas your wife, I cannot help but note, is the perfection of modest womanhood.’
William nodded, but refused to be brow-beaten just yet. He also played chess and he saw the moves his Grace had in mind for an endgame. ‘Uncle, I rejected the crown when my father offered it to me. I cannot …’
Winchester smiled indulgently. ‘Dear boy, as I said before, nothing can be done. Yet.’
He then asked everyone except his nephew to leave. When the door closed he turned to William. ‘You rejected the crown, young man, at a time when it was clear the Duke of Normandy had won the war. It would have been suicide to do otherwise. But all Kings make mistakes. Errors of judgment are as intrinsic to the exercise of power as sin is intrinsic to humanity. When a King’s mistakes accumulate, barons and common people become rebellious. I’d give Henry five years. Meanwhile, it’s advisable for you and Isabel to have a child.’
When his nephew blushed he raised an eyebrow. ‘Your marriage is still white?’
‘My beautiful Isabel says that when I’m full-grown …’
The Bishop crossed himself to control his temper. ‘You’re full-grown in the region that matters, boy. Everyone knows you went whoring with Henry and his wicked half-brother, the one who sings like a nightingale and has ladies of every rank falling at his feet.’
‘Yes, Uncle,’ William muttered. ‘Isabel was very angry with me. I was only fifteen. She’s promised she’ll lie with me when I turn twenty.’
Winchester sighed. ‘As a prelate I’ve had scant experience of women, except for the scandalous stories I hear during confession. But I observed a softening of your wife’s lips when I mentioned elliptically that the people of England would prefer her as their queen. I suggest that in an intimate setting you discuss this possibility with her. Unless I’m a very stupid man, I believe our lovely Isabel may consent to lie with you before your twentieth birthday. As we both know, a queen needs to prove herself fertile.’ He noted the youth’s breathing quicken. ‘The House of Blois, William, is ancient and proud. In recent centuries it has suffered depredations from Anjevins and Normans. Your father, King Stephen, in seizing this island from under The Lion’s nose restored pride to our lineage.’
‘But I’m now English, Uncle.’
‘English binglish. You’re a Blois, William. The County of Blois existed before Charlemagne was born.’ He rose.
William de Warrenne, Count of Surrey thanks to his wife, recognised that he had been dismissed.
Among the other prelates at King Stephen’s funeral was Gilbert Foliot, Bishop of Hereford, previously Archdeacon of Canterbury. He was the man whom senior churchmen favoured to become England’s High Priest when the current Archbishop, Theobald, ascended to heaven. Foliot was scion of one of the greatest families in England, a man of forbidding rectitude, a baron thanks to his wealth in lands and honours, and a scholar whose books were read throughout civilised Europe. He was tall, lean, ascetic, his features so chiselled that his grey eyes resembled slits in a rock. He was witty but laughed so rarely Thomas Becket had wondered loudly to a choirboy seated beside Foliot if the Archdeacon had teeth.
‘I do,’ Foliot had replied. ‘For my enemies.’
Nobody thought he manifested the mercy of the Saviour, but his peers recognised his political acumen, his mastery of canon law, his qualities of leadership. It was helpful that the future King was his nephew, albeit several times removed. Foliot had developed a loathing for Thomas whom he described as a ‘son of a man in trade who spent two years at St Peter’s in Paris where he indulged in licentious amusements but failed to master Latin verse’. One morning, passing the Chapter House he noted aloud, ‘The Toad is puffed up in a gown of lime-green silk today. I wonder who paid for that?’
Anonymous beneath a cowl, a monk’s voice muttered, ‘The widow’s mite.’
To Canterbury’s monks, the men whose honour it was to elect the Archbishop, Gilbert Foliot addressed an embarrassing question. ‘Would you have elected Theobald if he was then as you see him now, under the influence of Oily Tom?’
Their faces gave the answer.
When Archbishop Theobald promoted Thomas to be Foliot’s successor as Archdeacon, the recently appointed Bishop of Hereford remarked: ‘Toadying goes far in Canterbury.’ He asked Thomas if the role of Archdeacon ‘will give sufficient scope to defraud Our Mother to meet your need for luxury?’
But then, a month before King Stephen died, an unusual visitor arrived at Foliot’s palace in Hereford. He was an ill-clad youth who spoke the local dialect so perfectly, whose manner was so graceful, whose face was of such astonishing loveliness, he persuaded a servant to conduct him to His Grace’s private chamber. Once in the Bishop’s presence, the visitor fell to his knees and in fluent Latin asked if he might make confession. His physical beauty was remarkable, but it was his facility with language that intrigued the prelate.
‘How many tongues do you speak, my son?’
‘Twelve, Your Grace.’
In all England and Wales it was thought only one person existed with such knowledge. He was a child who had been page to King Stephen’s elder son, Crown Prince Eustace. It was known to very few that this boy was not only a page and linguist. He was also a code-breaker. He had long since disappeared, seemingly another casualty of the war of succession.
As a priest, Foliot was aware of every snare the devil employed. The travel-soiled fourteen year old who knelt before him was, he saw, a certain type of boy. He extended his hand above the youth’s head, anticipating tales of fornication, possibly with other bishops. ‘Confess, child.’
Weeping, the penitent gasped, ‘Your Grace, on the orders of my former liege, Prince Eustace, when I was but a child, I attempted to murder Henry of Normandy, rightful heir to the throne. As the mighty Henry will soon be our next King, I fear to be accused of attempted regicide.’
Foliot had a tilted, sardonic smile complimenting his fast wit. For more than an hour he questioned his visitor until convinced that here, indeed, was the Prince’s linguist, said to be the bastard of a brilliant but wicked churchman who’d ended his execrable life in suicide. The youth mentioned he was christened Aelbad, but was now calling himself ‘James’.
‘Did you abandon Prince Eustace because he was losing the war against the rebels, James?’
‘No, my Lord! I was his true vassal until … Your Grace, the Prince became an enemy of Mother Church. I heard him boast he would loot and burn St Edmund’s.’ He looked up into the thin, elegant features, his own expression willing Foliot to accept what he had just said. Sin has many tools, Aelbad knew, but a lie is the handle that fits them all and he lied as comfortably as he breathed. The Bishop frowned. There was something convincing about the boy. Aelbad babbled on about how he had rushed to warn the Abbot that Prince Eustace with a body of knights approached, bent on pillage and murder. ‘I then ran into an orchard.’
The confessor gave a nod of encouragement.
‘After they looted the treasury they locked the holy Abbot and all the monks inside and burned them to death. The Prince and his army bivouacked that afternoon in a reaped cornfield. With my own ears I heard my former liege lord scream as the Hand of God smote him dead. His army fled in panic. The Prince died alone in the field in the liquids of his body.’
He could see a hundred questions forming in the Bishop’s mind. To distract him he reached into his travel sack.
‘I did something wicked, Your Grace. I stole these sacred objects I found strewn through the corn stubble. May God forgive me!’
Foliot took a jewelled cross, a chalice and a golden paten. He walked to an open window where he turned them this way and that against the light until satisfied they were genuine. How much more has he stashed away? he wondered. And where? Despite searches by monks from other monasteries through the field where Eustace had suddenly died on the night of his hideous crime, almost nothing of the treasury had been found.
While Foliot was absorbed in testing the authenticity of the gold, Aelbad sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the Bishop’s throne, his eyes downcast. Through his mind flowed pleasant memories – how he’d poisoned Prince Eustace with death angel mushrooms; how he’d murdered his gaoler in Carlisle with a poker; how he’d burnt to death an abbot and the inmates of a leper house in Normandy, how he’d killed more lepers in a leprosarium outside Paris, how he’d murdered a physician with his pet viper, how he’d poisoned a bear. His one fierce sorrow was that one night, when he’d attempted once more, on Prince Eustace’s orders, to murder Henry of Normandy, a beautiful, naked pregnant woman had leapt in front of his quarry, and it was she, not the Duke, into whose heart his blade had sunk. Ever since she had appeared to him in dreams and visions, a ripe body crowned with abundant black hair. Sometimes she cradled her unborn baby in the crook of her arm. ‘Aelbad, I understand your terror of being an orphaned, penniless starveling,’ she said. ‘I too was once in that circumstance. Queen Eleanor rescued me when she came to Byzantium. Then, one night in Paris, Henry of Normandy abducted me and we fell in love. This infant you see is his second with me. The first still lives.’
‘Please forgive me for killing you,’ Aelbad whimpered whenever she appeared. At times when his loneliness seemed unbearable he felt her embrace and, on his cheek, the fragrance of her breath. ‘I forgive you,’ she said. ‘I’ll guide you.’ It was she who had told him to load the Abbey’s looted treasure on a donkey as soon as the army had run away, and to bury it in the graveyard of the still-smoking ruin. Digging out a grave was back breaking, but Aelbad was strong from years of living in the forests where at night he’d climb trees to escape the embraces of outlaw men. ‘Dig a second grave nearby and make a tunnel to the treasure. You must retrieve objects you need through the tunnel.’ She did not need to add, ‘But only on moonless nights.’
At last the Bishop announced, ‘I absolve your childhood wickedness, for you were the instrument of a wicked lord. I also absolve you of the theft of sacred objects. You must do penance, however.’
‘Your stables. The servants’ latrines. Anything, Your Grace.’ His pale eyes looked up, shining with hope.
That look could melt a stone. The Deceiver has chosen his instrument with all the guile he commands, Foliot thought. ‘What is it you most desire?’ he asked abruptly.
Aelbad was taken off-guard. ‘Never again to starve, sir.’
He wants to be part of a community. Many had died of the famines caused by civil war and he supposed ‘James’ had gone to St Edmund’s Abbey begging alms. An interesting thought struck the Bishop of Hereford. ‘You still recall how to write in code?’
‘I do.’
He indicated parchment, an inkhorn and quills on his desk. He watched with astonishment as Aelbad wrote at his dictation a verse in Latin that he translated into gibberish, then read back, word for word in its original form. He suddenly switched hands. He could write with his left as perfectly as with his right.
Foliot crossed himself. Writing with each hand was a sure sign of the Evil One. In a thin, sharp voice he asked, ‘The code?’
‘It’s quite simple, Your Grace. King David of Scotland used it to write to Henry of Normandy. I deciphered it for Prince Eustace.’
The Bishop nodded. ‘Now you shall write it out for me.’
‘Certainly, sir.’
As the youth was writing, Foliot stretched out his long legs, wondering how, once launched upon the use he had thought out for him, he could control this Limb of Satan. He recognised the boy’s confession as a mixture of truth and lies, impossible to disentangle. ‘Your penance is to work as a scribe,’ he announced. The boy’s cheeks turned pink with pleasure. Foliot studied him. Youths from the Welsh marcher lands had a certain appearance; their skins were so white they could be made from silver, their eyes were of the palest blue that in rainy weather changed to grey. ‘Do you have family here?’
‘None living, Your Grace. My father disappeared when people said he was a Druid. My mother drove me from her house. She threw a stone at me and screamed, “Turn it into bread, little bastard!” I was six years old.’
‘What happened to her?’
I denounced her to Prince Eustace as a supporter of the rebels. He had her and my younger siblings drowned. ‘She died of starvation, I believe.’
‘A lamentable story. Well then, I’ll tell you a slightly happier one about your family,’ Foliot said. ‘Your mother was visiting a friend in Bath when, unexpectedly, she went into labour. So that’s where you were born. Your father was the younger son of a baron from further west. Unhappily he died during the civil war. Your poor mother died of grief.’
‘Exactly, my Lord.’
‘Your name is neither James nor Aelbad,’ Foliot continued. ‘It’s Richard. I’ll write today to my friend, Theobald of Canterbury.’
‘I’m to work in Canterbury!’
Urbanity usually protected Foliot against emotions that would disturb a less cultured man. Suddenly it abandoned him. From his thin lips to his high forehead his face glowed with amusement. ‘I do believe that The Almighty, who works in mysterious ways as we all know, sent you to me, Richard, and I am meant to send you to the holiest church in England.’
The youth was alert. The prelate hesitated, but it had to be said. ‘You’re a virgin. Is that clear?’
‘I’m a purest virgin, Your Grace.’
And I’m a Turk. Foliot’s abhorrence of the flesh in all its forms was famous. He ate neither fish nor fowl. ‘If you hear a rumour that the Archdeacon of Canterbury is to be appointed Chancellor, you’re to tell me immediately.’
‘In code, Your Grace?’
‘Of course in code.’ He paused, still ruminating on how to keep a grip on this slippery elver. The Bishop was a consummate lawyer and it was the lawyer in him, a love of documentation, that came to his aid. ‘Your case, Richard, is most unusual,’ he said at last. ‘Since it is, I require a written account.’
‘In which language shall I write?’ You old fool.
‘English.’
With a shock the Bishop realised his error. Because the youth was not of the Church, he, Foliot, could not find him guiltless of crime as he could if the boy had ‘benefit of clergy’. What’s more he had the protection of confession. Were he to be discovered in the future, he could plead he had confessed and repented, and call on Foliot to support him. Foliot himself would become the butt of the King’s wrath. The young fiend has befuddled me.
When the confession was written His Grace held it by one corner and threw it into a brazier, feeling slightly nauseous from the animal smell of burning parchment. ‘There,’ he said. ‘Your crimes vanish.’
Aelbad thought, You worked it out, eventually. He had chosen to confess to the Bishop of Hereford for a reason. From his years of living as a vagrant in the forests, he knew a secret about His Grace. If worst came to worst, he believed he could use the information to keep Foliot’s mouth shut. It concerned an unusual penance the Bishop practised on the fourth day of a full moon. In the forest near his palace lived a woman skilled in the use of herbs. Years earlier she had taught Aelbad poison-making. She could also heal. She could make a smoke that caused unconsciousness. The prelate had her render him unconscious. In that state he underwent a penance for which he paid handsomely.
Already Foliot had turned his attention away from the youth to a letter he would send to Archbishop Theobald. Thomas Becket read all the Archbishop’s mail, sorting the important from the trivial. This letter would be the first slender rope of a seine to net Oily Tom and drag him, gasping and helpless, to the Bishop’s feet. He pointed to the inkhorn and quills. ‘Richard, you’re to write for me,’ he ordered.
After the customary greetings and some local news of his see, Foliot described for Archbishop Theobald some details about his unexpected young visitor. He said, ‘I would prefer to keep him here but the work of our scriptorium is insufficiently complex to engage Richard’s God-given gifts, which include an extraordinary beauty of face. It’s my duty to offer his services to you, dear Father. In this letter you see an example of his hand.’
Some days later, in Canterbury, the Archbishop examined the letter his Archdeacon had just handed to him. He admired the elegance of the script and the drawings of acanthus leaves, grapes and quinces with which Aelbad-now-Richard had decorated the parchment’s margin. ‘What makes you nervous this morning, Tom?’ he asked mildly.
‘My sleep was disturbed. I had an unpleasant dream.’
‘Do you recall it?’
Thomas shook his head. He had slept well for someone who often slept poorly and on most evenings needed an infusion of valerian. But he had read Foliot’s letter an hour earlier and was desperate for the Archbishop to agree to have the young scribe employed in the Canterbury scriptorium. The Bishop’s letter said, ‘He seems to be without vices and assures me he is a virgin. His constitution is sound, due perhaps to early years of good nourishment while his parents were still alive. I’m confident his health will cause you no problems. I suspect he has a head for figures, which may make him useful to the Archdeacon.’
Tom’s voice was off-hand. ‘I suppose we’re obliged to take him?’ He pretended not to see the misery in Theobald’s eyes. The Archbishop had been in love with him since the day he had first arrived at Canterbury. Theobald was a man of honour and his vow of celibacy remained unbroken, sweeter and stronger for its testing by Thomas.
Towards dusk, a fortnight after King Stephen’s funeral, Aelbad-now-Richard rode into Canterbury on a donkey. He held himself with such élan his mount could have been a destrier. Thomas watched from an upper cloister as he trotted into the courtyard. And then it struck him. Here was the youth who had opened the carriage door for him and Richer outside Faversham Abbey. Foliot, you supercilious, self-starving streak of shit, you’re trying to set a trap for me!
A yell of laughter rang from the upper cloister.
The fishermen who brought the news that King Stephen was dead had left England before dawn to be the first to reach the palace of Rouen. Guards held them at the gatehouse, allowing only the captain through. Henry shouted from a balcony, ‘Let ’em all in!’ Ten wet, exhausted men trudged on wooden clogs into the great hall, their dark blue smocks and pantaloons stiff with salt and stinking of fish. The Duke hugged them, one by one, pressing coins into horny palms. By the time they reached the kitchens for a meal, the palace was in an uproar. Soldiers in the barracks threw their caps in the air.
Henry’s half-brother, Guillaume, rushed from his apartment, his long black hair still wet from a bath. ‘You vermin!’ he yelled. ‘If you make me call you “Highness” I’ll kick your bollocks.’
‘You’ll break your puny ankle. Call me “Highness”, swine!’
Guillaume ran back five steps.
An instant before their chests crashed they flung their arms open to embrace. ‘I’m going to cry,’ Guillaume said. He gave an exaggerated sniff, but tears of joy stood in his eyes. ‘My baby brother! My hideous little brother …’
Henry had already dashed off a note to Eleanor.
Ma Belle,
You’re to be a queen once more. Please wait until this evening when I’ll pay you homage, At least four times.
H
They’d lain together each night since she’d arrived in Rouen five days earlier, accompanied by an escort of fifty knights, sumpter wagons, falconers and hounds, plus her personal maid and the baby son, William. Eleanor was already swelling with a second child. The Empress Matilda had stood beside her son at the palace doorway to welcome the former Queen of France, managing to do so with a slow, gracious lowering of her head, without smiling. A small curl formed at the edge of her mouth as her son rushed forward to embrace his wife while she, the Empress, stared with one raised eyebrow at the dark-haired infant whom a servant carried forward to present to his grandmother. After this greeting, Henry’s mother had found herself indisposed at meal times and too busy with other duties to speak to her daughter-in-law, even to congratulate her for being pregnant again. For her part, the Duchess seemed to have forgotten she had a mother-in-law and made no inquiry about her.
‘Where’s Little Geoffrey?’ Henry asked.
A nursemaid arrived with a four-year-old, whose head was a corona of almost black curls. His father hoisted him up. ‘Papa’s going to be a king.’
‘Like Louis?’
‘No.’
‘Like Ste-ste …?’
‘Not like him, either.’
The child frowned. ‘What sort of king will you be, Papa?’
Thirty yards away a voice penetrated the audience hall with the force of a well-flung spear. ‘Papa will be the greatest king in Europe. He’ll outshine every other monarch.’
The Empress had arrived.
‘Mother,’ Henry said.
‘My Lady,’ Guillaume murmured.
A tower of grey velvet and pearls swept forward. To the astonishment of her son and his half-brother the dowager sank to one knee in a curtsey. ‘Lord King,’ she said. ‘I am your vassal. My life is yours, Sire.’
‘Mother, there’s no need …’ Henry answered.
‘Of course there is,’ Matilda snapped. She accepted his extended hand to raise her to her feet. ‘I’ll make the whole vow publicly after your coronation. We need to get to work.’ The glance she gave Guillaume and the nursemaid ushered them from the room.
‘How long do I wait?’ Henry asked.
‘Weather permitting you’ll arrive in England, at the latest, in the first week of December. You’ll need a fortnight in London for your coronation garments to be tailored, and the crown to be altered. Your head is bigger than his.’ The Empress couldn’t bring herself to mention Stephen by name. ‘Six weeks gives the Archbishop and court officials time to arrange the coronation. By then it will be just before Christmas. You should begin your reign with a grand Christmas Court. Grandeur, Henry. Never underestimate grandeur.’ Her eyes travelled over him. ‘Did a servant give you that sheepskin?’
‘I bought it from one of our shepherds. It’s comfortable.’
‘Immodestly short. It shows your legs …’
‘They’re shapely. My subjects enjoy seeing them. Mother, the English exchequer has diminished by two-thirds. Half the palaces and hunting lodges are in ruins. There’s not a penny for a Christmas Court.’ He was thinking, I could ask Eleanor to pay. Already she’d paid from her Aquitaine treasury for the war he had to fight against Louis for marrying her.
Matilda smiled. ‘I know exactly how you’ll pay for it, Henry.’
‘Don’t say “Thomas”.’
‘Thomas,’ she said.
Henry folded his arms. ‘Oily Tom!’
‘Don’t call him that. It’s unkind.’
‘Well earned, I hear.’
‘Henry, he can extract blood from a turnip. And you, son, will demand he pay for the office of chancellor. There’s no one better as I’ve been telling you for months and as the Archbishop advises you. Thomas has been our supporter—’
‘He’s been our supporter only because he toadies to the Archbishop. If Theobald ordered him to fart he’d ask, “Loud or soft, sir? Savoury or sweet?”’ His eyes locked onto his mother’s.
‘Why do you dislike him?’ she demanded.
Henry’s colour was rising.
The maternal bosom heaved. Since he’d become Duke of Normandy at the age of eighteen the Empress had learned when to tread carefully around an argument with her son. She was nonplussed when he knuckled water from his eyes.
‘Rachel warned me against him,’ he muttered.
Leaning forward she laid a hand on his knee. ‘Rachel warned you? What did she say?’
‘His soul is rebellious. There are at least two men inside his skin. Only a Solomon can discern his heart for he has a desire to please and lives in constant fear that he may disappoint expectations of him. She said, “He resembles kneaded dough. He accommodates himself to be pulled and twisted to any shape. He fascinates because he must.”’
Both fell into silence.
Rachel’s murder had happened two years earlier, but every night Matilda lit a candle in remembrance of Henry’s concubine, mother of Little Geoffrey. She addressed Rachel’s shade as ‘My son’s true wife’. At length she asked, ‘She told you this in a vision? Or while she lived?’
‘She was alive. Thomas came to Rouen, you recall, having escaped the White Tower when the Usurper imprisoned him and the Archbishop.’
After some thought the Empress said, ‘I agree with everything Rachel observed about Tom. You know the description of Archdeacons? “They love gifts, they are inclined to outrage, they rejoice in false accusation, turn the sins of the people into food and drink, live by plunder so that a host is not safe with his guest. The most admirable of them preach the Law of God, but do it not.” None of that, Henry, disqualifies him as England’s Chancellor.’
‘You’d put such a snake in my bed?’
‘Tom has a genius for raising money. And money is your pressing concern. During the first stages of the civil war you and I went to Canterbury. Tom took you for a walk in the garden while Theobald and I talked of what to do next. You were only nine years old, so you’ve forgotten.’
His eyes slanted. ‘I haven’t.’ While his mother and the Archbishop talked politics, Thomas had taken Henry’s hand and led him to the back of the monastery. ‘Can you keep a secret, young man? If you can, I’ll show you something naughty,’ he’d said.
‘What?’ the boy demanded.
‘Monkeys.’
‘Monkeys! I thought churchmen were forbidden to keep wild animals.’
‘I’ve taken no vows. I please myself.’
‘I’ve never seen a monkey.’ As Henry ran forward the creatures rushed at the bars of their cage, baring brown teeth, their eyes darting glances this way and that, as fast as swallows on the wing.
‘Look at those two!’ Tom said. A pair were copulating.
‘Horses do it better. The stallion’s cock is …’ the boy held out his arm. ‘… longer than this.’
The deacon stared down at him, smiling. ‘I apologise for boring you. With your noble upbringing, your descent from kings back to the legendary Arthur, of course you’re accustomed to much more interesting sights than a pair of dirty old monkeys, Your Highness.’
‘I’m not a Highness, sir. My father is Count of Anjou and Maine. My only title is FitzEmpress.’ He had both front teeth but his lateral incisors were still growing though the gum. He added with a rabbity grin, ‘As yet.’
Thomas laughed out loud and ruffled the child’s thick red hair.
The boy reared away. ‘Neither am I a spaniel, sir.’
The deacon gave a slight bow. ‘A-a-apologies. Again.’ Humiliated by a nine year old! I could strangle him.
‘Where were you?’ the Archbishop asked when they returned.
‘Admiring the garden, Your Grace,’ Henry said.
‘What a lovely boy!’ Thomas exclaimed to Matilda. He had understood instantly why, in the midst of a civil war, she had brought her son to the one man in England who could crown him King. Despite a gale that was the worst in living memory she had ordered her child to sail across the Channel to prove she had an appropriate heir for the throne. ‘Empress, you’ve raised a real prince.’
She rewarded him with a brilliant smile. ‘Don’t flatter him, Tom. Flattery spoils a child as over-feeding spoils a falcon.’
When she and her son had left, the Archbishop said to Thomas, ‘She is the rightful heir; all her father’s vassals swore to accept her. But prejudice against females is too intense for Matilda to be King. The Church, I fear …’ He did not finish the sentence. There was no need since Thomas knew as well as he that the Reform Movement, with its embrace of suffering and rejection of pleasure, its passion for Original Sin (mysteriously, never mentioned by the Saviour), had brought from hidden places in men’s minds a fear of women that easily turned to hatred. Mother Church’s edict on celibacy had been issued decades earlier, but many young priests who had anticipated both a career in the Church and a wife to share it decided the edict too harsh. A hairless boy was the logical answer. It was a sin for a man to lie with another man. But with a boy? Not even St Paul had raised the issue. Those with wives already renamed them ‘housekeepers’. Their children became ‘nephews’ and ‘nieces’.
Thomas nodded. ‘She’s hard on her son. Not once did she show him affection.’
‘In her own way she’s as brutal as her grandfather, the Conquerer.’ The Archbishop felt his heart throb with pity for young Henry. ‘She’s toughening him for the rigours of monarchy.’
‘All the same, Father, he has the look of a lad who yearns for a mother’s caress.’
You understand that better than anyone, Theobald reflected.
‘Well, Tom, your intuition is sharp. Will that boy be our King one day?’
The Archdeacon grasped the High Priest’s hand. ‘He’ll be our King. And if fate smiles on me, I’ll serve him.’
Twelve years later, mother and son returned to the question at hand – should Thomas be Chancellor?
‘You have logic about raising money,’ Henry conceded. ‘The royal exchequer is not the focus of government – it’s the eye of the storm as you told me yourself. I intend to restore the exchequer to its power and prestige under Grandfather.’
‘How how will you perform this miracle?’
‘I’ll persuade his treasurer to come out of retirement and run it for me.’
‘He’s now Bishop of Ely,’ Matilda observed dryly.
‘Do you fancy, Mother, a bishop works hard?’
For a moment they smiled at each other. ‘Very well. What you need for the exchequer is a punctilious routine and proper procedures, and Nigel of Ely will do that for you. But, Henry, the barons of the exchequer meet only twice a year to scrutinise and audit the Crown’s revenues. You need someone with imagination and flair, someone who’ll discover new sources of income. Thomas of London is such a man. His mind’s as agile as a monkey.’
‘I noticed that. Years ago.’
She watched him with grim satisfaction. Henry, you never give an inch until you’re forced to, she thought. I drilled that into you. ‘So you agree to have Tom as Chancellor?’
He scowled. ‘I haven’t said that.’
‘Theobald would be delighted. The English prelates would be delighted. This could be a new chapter in the governance of England. The two swords, the Crown and the Church, in harmonious movement.’
He held up his hand. ‘Enough! I’ll have Oily Tom. Bec, Becket, whatever he calls himself.’ A smile suddenly sharpened his eyes. ‘Maybe I’ll demand that he farts: “Bec, give us a savoury. Not too loud”. He’ll be my Chancellor Bumbulum.’
‘I don’t know why you imagine vulgarity is amusing.’
‘The garrison enjoys my jests.’
The Empress snorted. ‘A king is polite, not vulgar. Witty, not humorous, Henry. Even your father told you that. We were discussing the coronation. On the dais you’ll have the Archbishops of Canterbury and York plus, at most, ten bishops. The fewer prelates, the more your subjects will concentrate on you. The clergy will wear crimson. I suggest you choose a colour that makes you stand out.’
‘If my subjects can’t discern their King from a bishop … All right, I’ll wear green.’
‘Green was your father’s colour. You look better in blue.’
‘Blue then.’
‘With gold boots and Grandfather’s sword.’ A sigh of contentment purred from her. ‘We’ve fought years for this.’
‘I’ll be a great king, Mother. I’ll be the cornerstone upon which England can be rebuilt. I’ll leave an imprint on her laws and institutions that will persist …’ He opened his hands, holding the palms upwards. ‘… as long as Heaven allows.’
On the same morning, in Canterbury, Thomas the Archdeacon entered Archbishop Theobald’s private apartment, dressed in a gown of duck-egg blue, its sleeves lined with squirrel fur. Pale clothes were a sign of pleasure-loving and an outrage at Canterbury. Monks wore black; clerks wore grey; when not at the altar the Archbishop wore a robe of dark brown. He suppressed a smile as he ran his eye over the blue silk. Fifteen years earlier, before he accepted into his demesne the young London financier whom two brothers from the county of Blois had recommended to him as a deacon, Theobald had a report done on the man’s background. Thomas’s understanding of finance was equal to the best in the city; he could do figures in his head as fast as a Jew with an abacus. He would be a bright spark in the slothful, dingy, mean-spirited atmosphere that emanated from a large body of monks. Unfortunately Thomas’s years as a student had been misspent and there was little he would add as a lawyer, still less a theologian, to the Cathedral. But he was amiable, strikingly handsome and of fine bearing. The Church was the ladder for clever boys of low rank to climb into the upper echelons of society, and Thomas of London would mount it vigorously. Everyone agreed on that.
He appeared to be all Theobald hoped for. His eyes sparkled, a smile came easily to his face, there was an air of excitement and novelty about him. His studies in Paris may have been neglected, but he had absorbed the intellectual excitement of The New Learning and the gaiety of Parisian students. Canterbury’s rigid daily rituals, its sour-faced monks, the minor orders of clergy with endless complaints and hair-splitting arguments, wearied the spirit of the Archbishop. What a relief to see a joyous face, he’d thought.
‘Before I appoint you I require a confession.’
Thomas had asked for a few days to reflect on his life.
That evening the Archbishop had prayed to the Virgin. ‘Please, Lady, give Thomas of London faith.’
Her response had been virulent. Pride, lust, envy and avarice beset him.
Theobald had felt giddy from shock. Lady, have mercy! He’s fragile. He’s insecure.
Her tears wet his cheeks. His soul bears a secret wound, Theobald.
You’ll love him because he’ll enchant you. He has the gift of enchanting others for reasons they can’t comprehend. It flows from his wound. All men are wounded. He preys on this fact.
‘So heal him, Lady!’
He refuses healing. He knows that, if healed, he’ll lose his power over others.
She had refused further discussion.
The Archbishop was famous for stubbornness, courage and lack of diplomacy. He had driven King Stephen into rages. He’d had to flee to exile in France. The King had imprisoned him. The Crown Prince had urged his father to put him in irons. But never had the Virgin refused to speak to him. He knew Thomas had come to the Cathedral to better himself in rank. But while he hid it successfully from others, to the priest it had been clear all those years ago that the young man suffered agonies of fear he would not be accepted into Canterbury. He had made inquiries and learned that Tom’s mother, beloved, even adored by her son, had banished him to Paris to escape the seductions of a group of lascivious young aristocrats. While the youth was in exile, his mother had died; his father’s business was ruined in a fire; the house in which he had grown up burned down. He returned to England with ashes in his mouth.
By the following Sunday Thomas had prepared himself to make confession. In minutes he had been in tears. ‘When my mother died and my father lost all his money, some fiend told him I was a catamite. It was a lie, but he believed it. He rejected me! Gilbert Becket rejected me, his only son. He called me “dung-eater”. He dismissed me …’ Thomas had beaten himself on the chest.
He takes refuge in lies, as the Israelites had to, Theobald had thought. ‘The private wound is the deepest,’ he’d answered softly.
Thomas had pressed his wet cheek against the priest’s hand.
Theobald had again asked the Virgin to intercede on the young man’s behalf. Her response was so sharp he’d fainted.
Now, years later, he found his heart smiling as he ran his eye over the gown of duck-egg blue. ‘You appear well today, Tom. I thought at the funeral yesterday …’
‘People mistook me for the grave-digger. Black is a disaster for my complexion.’
Theobald laughed. ‘I expect you’d like to attend the coronation?’
‘If I may hold the hem of your garment, Father!’
‘You may. And stop blushing! A man who aspires to be Chancellor …’
Thomas fell to his knees. Theobald’s eyes twinkled with the pleasure he’d given his favourite son, but his deeper feeling was of apprehension. He had noted a ferment in Tom’s mind to have the post at court. He pestered the Archbishop to write letters on his behalf to the Empress. He strode around Canterbury declaring ‘England’s a shipwreck! Who can save the finances of our realm?’ He struck himself on the forehead as if cudgelling his brains for the answer.
That morning, the day after Stephen’s funeral, he left the Archbishop’s chambers with a little jump, left, then right, two clicks of his heels. He skipped the length of a cloister singing, ‘HALL-elujah! HALL-elujah!’ There were two issues to rejoice – Theobald would make a firm recommendation to the new King that Thomas should be Chancellor. And the lovely scribe from Hereford would be accepted for employment in the Canterbury scriptorium, where Thomas was lord and master.
When his Archdeacon departed, joyful and blithe, Theobald remained immobile, staring into the glow of a brazier, wondering if he were pushing his beloved into a lion’s den. He had warned him, ‘Behind the decorum and majesty that outsiders are permitted to observe, a royal court boils with dangerous intrigues, Tom,’ and had then recounted the legend of the Anjevins; that their counts were descendants of a witch. ‘Henry’s paternal ancestor, The Black Falcon, had one of his wives burned to death.’
Thomas had raised an eyebrow.
‘His father, Geoffrey the Handsome, ordered a prelate and three priests unmanned for defying him. He had their parts brought to him in a bowl.’
Thomas had nodded as if he sympathised with the Duke.
Almost desperate, Theobald had ploughed on. ‘Our new King’s maternal side has been equally violent in its passions. Just three years earlier, when Henry was eighteen, he beheaded the Seneschal of France.’
‘In battle?’ Tom asked.
‘Yes, in battle. But Tom, my darling, I want you to understand that a king is to be feared. You run to me in tears when you hear rumours the monks spread about you.’
‘Your court seethes with malice, intrigues and jealousy,’ Tom had replied.
‘Indeed it does. But a king’s court seethes with the passions of magnates and fighting men bent on increasing their wealth. They settle their scores not with words but with iron, unless the King can stop them. To do that he needs to terrify them.’ Can my Tom survive the turbulence of a royal court? he wondered. The blasphemies? The wantonness? The whores in every palace and hunting lodge?
‘Will you be sufficiently nimble to reject Henry’s invitations to enjoy the royal brothels without causing offence?’
‘I have the protection of Mother Church,’ Thomas had replied with offended dignity. ‘I’ll take cover behind her skirts.’
‘True. You may plead your vow to the Virgin never to touch female flesh.’
‘I shall!’ Thomas had leapt up and skipped from the chamber. Singing and skipping he made his way to the scriptorium where he dictated a letter to the vile, condescending Gilbert Foliot. It announced that the scribe His Grace had mentioned would be welcome at Canterbury. As soon as it was sealed Thomas ran to the stables calling, ‘Post-rider! An urgent letter to the Bishop of Hereford. He’s still nearby. Enquire at Faversham. You’ll catch him in London if you’re quick.’
Inside his apartment the Archbishop of Canterbury again contemplated the red glow of the brazier. He decided it was not the Virgin who had spoken with such vehemence against Thomas, but some spirit of malice who impersonated Her. I must have been lax, Theobald decided. I did not ask for the test of identity.
A fortnight later Aelbad-now-Richard rode his donkey into the courtyard of Canterbury Cathedral, and made Thomas the Archdeacon yell with outraged laughter. I’ll have revenge on you, Foliot, he vowed.