Becket was more than twelve years his elder, and this coming December would be his fiftieth. To Henry, he looked at least ten years older than that, hair gone silver-grey, dark eyes circled, furrows cut deeply into his brow. He’d been told that Thomas suffered from a painful inflammation of the jawbone and that he’d inflicted harsh penances upon himself during his years in exile, even immersion in the drains beneath Pontigny Abbey. Why? Why had he sought out such suffering? Why had he spurned their friendship and embraced the Church with a zealot’s fervor?
That was not a question Henry could ask. He had already done so, out on a wind-scourged field under the walls of Northampton, nigh on seven years ago. And it had gained him nothing but bloodied pride, no answer that explained the mysterious transformation of this man who had once been his most trusted friend. He took refuge, instead, in a heavy-handed joke, one that was more revealing than he realized.
“Why can you not do what I want, Thomas? For if you would, I’d entrust my realm and my soul to you! As Scriptures say, ‘All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.’ ” Remembering then that humor had become a foreign tongue for the archbishop, however fluent the chancellor had once been, Henry added hastily, “That is a jest, of course! I do not even demand that of my bedmates, after all.”
Henry was heartened when Becket smiled, for he’d been half-expecting a lecture on blasphemy, and as they continued along the garden path, he laid out his plans for the archbishop’s return from exile. They would meet at Rouen after Martinmas, and he would satisfy Becket’s creditors from the Royal Exchequer. He would then either conduct the archbishop himself to England or, if that was not possible, send the Archbishop of Rouen in his stead. As they had agreed upon at Freteval, he would bestow the Kiss of Peace upon his arrival back on English soil.
They faced each other on the walkway, their eyes catching and holding. “Go in Peace,” Henry said. “I will follow and meet you as soon as I can, either at Rouen or in England.”
Becket nodded somberly. “My lord king, I feel in my heart that when I leave you now, I shall never see you again in this life.”
Henry was too startled for anger. “Surely you are not accusing me of treachery?”
“God forbid, my lord.”
And after that, they walked on in silence.
John of Salisbury had already packed his coffer chest, dispatched letters of farewell to his friends in France, and paid for his passage on a ship sailing at week’s end. On the morrow he would depart for the port of Barfleur. A Channel crossing was a daunting prospect to most men, but John loved traveling. The horizons of his world were boundless, ever beckoning him onward, and he accepted the discomforts of the road as the price he must pay for admittance to exotic, foreign locales.
This trip’s destination was a familiar one: England. Six years of exile, though, had sharpened his hunger for his homeland. Even if his mission for the archbishop came to naught, at least he’d be able to visit his aged mother, to breathe again the air of Old Sarum, his birthplace.
A muffled knock distracted him from his reverie and he turned toward the door with a certain wariness. By the time he’d gotten to Rouen, the archbishop’s entourage had taken up most of the available lodgings and he’d been forced to seek shelter on the city’s outskirts, at the priory of Notre-Dame-du-Pre. Since the monks were still devoted to their illustrious patroness, the late Empress Maude, John’s welcome had been a frosty one; even the youngest novice knew of John’s long-standing friendship with Thomas Becket.
The youth at the door was a lay servant and seemed better suited to work in the stables than in the priory guest hall, for his information was annoyingly scant. All he could tell John was that a visitor awaited him in the parlor, one of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s clerks whose name had been utterly expunged from his memory during his brief dash out into the November rain. Fortunately, John had a high tolerance for the foibles of his fellow men. Picking up his mantle, he sighed, “Lead on.”
His visitor was still cloaked, for the priory parlor lacked a fireplace. John knew all of the archbishop’s clerks, some better than others. Hoping that this unexpected caller wasn’t the tiresome Herbert of Bosham, John fumbled in his scrip until he found a coin for the servant. “You wished to speak with me?”
As soon as the other man turned around, John’s polite smile faded and he began to bristle. There were few men he loathed as much as Arnulf, the wily Bishop of Lisieux, and Hugh de Nonant was Arnulf’s nephew. Even though Hugh had loyally followed Thomas Becket into exile, John did not trust him, sure that any kinsman of Arnulf’s was bound to be self-serving and unscrupulous.
“What are you doing here, Hugh? You think I haven’t heard about your defection?”
“It is true I have left the archbishop’s service, but I do not see it as a defection and I resent your describing it as such. After enduring six years of exile with him, I do not deserve to be accused of disloyalty or bad faith for departing once he made peace with the English king.”
“You say that as if this peace will magically make all his problems disappear!”
“Of course I do not believe that,” Hugh snapped, surprising John by his irascibility, for he’d always cultivated a languid air of jaded sophistication that John considered more appropriate in a royal courtier than a man of God. “I know full well the dangers Thomas will be facing upon his return to England,” he said testily, with none of his usual studied nonchalance.
“Then why,” John asked bluntly, “did you balk at accompanying him back to England?”
Hugh’s mouth twisted. “Because I do not want to watch him die!”
John’s breath caught. “Merciful God! What have you heard, Hugh? Have you warned Thomas? Are you sure-”
“I do not know of any conspiracy to murder the archbishop,” Hugh interrupted impatiently. “That is not what I meant.”
John frowned. “What, then?”
The younger man frowned, too. “I’d hoped to ease into this. But since that is no longer possible, let’s have some plain speaking, then. You do not like me. Fair enough, for I do not particularly like you, either. But you are the archbishop’s friend, and one of the few whose counsel can be trusted. If anyone can talk some sense into him, it would be you, and that is why I am here.”
“If this is your idea of ‘plain speaking,’ God spare me when you’re being evasive. I still have no idea what you want me to do.”
“I want you to save the archbishop from himself.” Hugh held up a hand to cut off John’s protest. “This infernal quarrel with the king could have been avoided, and should have been, for the good of the Church. And this peace patched and stitched together by the Pope is too fragile to bear close scrutiny.”
“Hellfire and damnation, Hugh, you think I do not know that?”
“I think,” Hugh said grimly, “that you do not know the archbishop’s nerves are as frayed as this so-called peace. Wait, John, hear me out. How often did you visit him during the last six years? Yes, you were in exile, too, but you chose to make a safe nest for yourself at Reims, not with us at Pontigny or Sens. You have not seen for yourself the toll this struggle has taken upon Thomas. For the king, Thomas is a source of anger and aggravation. Yet he also rules an empire, and I daresay long periods of time go by when he does not think of Thomas at all. For Thomas, the world has shrunk to the confines of his monastery refuge and, like any prisoner, he has been brooding incessantly about what he lost. Unlike the king, he has had no respite from his woes. He is still convinced that he has been greatly wronged, and although he yielded to the Holy Father’s pressure, he will be taking his grievances back to England with him-”
“You’ve said enough! Thomas deserves better from you than backbit ing and petty gossip. Why you thought that I, of all men, would want to hear this rubbish-”
“Listen to me, damn you! I am here because I fear for him, because his judgment is no longer to be trusted and he has surrounded himself with zealots like Herbert of Bosham and firebrands like Alexander Llewelyn, men who will spur him on instead of reining him in.”
John strode to the parlor door and jerked it open. “Thomas is my friend. I’ll not listen whilst you malign him.”
Hugh de Nonant was deeply flushed, his lip curling with scorn. “My uncle Arnulf was right about you. I should have known better than to come here.” Brushing past John, he stalked across the threshold and then turned around, so abruptly that his mantle flared out dramatically behind him. “If this ends as badly as I fear, you will not be able to say you were not warned, John of Salisbury.”
John reached for the door and slammed it shut, almost in the other man’s face. There was a flagon on a
