were hanging over my head, you could not turn me from God’s Justice and my obedience to the Lord Pope. You will find me ready to meet you eye to eye in the Lord’s battle. Once I ran away like a frightened priest. Never will I desert my Church again. If I am allowed to perform the duties of the priesthood in peace, I shall be glad. If not, then God’s Will be done.”

As more members of the archbishop’s household were drawn by the commotion, the knights seemed to take silent counsel, communicating by meaningful looks. Fitz Urse turned toward their audience, saying roughly, “We warn you all in the king’s name to abandon this man!” Stunned, the monks and clerks remained motionless, and he amended his order. “Guard him so that he does not flee!”

They turned, then, began to push their way toward the door. Becket strode after them, crying out, “I am quite easy to guard, for I shall not run away. You will find me here!”

Fitz Urse swung around, his hand groping for his belt, the instinctive gesture of a man accustomed to the weight of a sword at his hip. “Thomas, in the name of the king, I repudiate your fealty!” The other knights also repeated this most solemn oath of renunciation and a chill swept through the chamber. Even Becket appeared shocked.

Shouting “To arms!” the knights shoved through the doorway, seizing Becket’s steward as they exited. As they pushed him ahead of them, he looked back over his shoulder at the archbishop. “My lord, you see what they are doing to me?”

“I see,” Becket replied. “They have the force and the power of darkness.” There were loud gasps, for those clerks and monks familiar with Scriptures at once recognized that as a paraphrase of the words spoken by the Lord Jesus Christ as He was arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane.

As the knights clattered down the stairs to the great hall, Becket returned to his chamber and sat down upon his bed. At first, there was a deathly stillness and, then, uproar. Most of the monks and clerks began to voice their opinions. Some dismissed the knights’ threats as drink-sodden posturing, for it was evident that Fitz Urse and his companions had drunk their fill at Abbot Clarembald’s table; they’d also appeared to be utterly fatigued, not surprising in light of their nonstop journey from Bures to Canterbury. Others insisted that they’d not dare to commit violence at Christmastide. Those who knew better moved to the windows on the north side of the chamber and fumbled to unlatch the shutters so they could monitor the moves of the men outside.

“My lord, it really is quite amazing that you never will take any notice of our advice.” John of Salisbury sounded fretful and reproachful and, above all, fearful. “You always say and do what seems right to yourself alone. Was there any need for a great and good man like yourself to provoke those wicked men still more by following them to the door? Would it not have been better to have given a softer answer to men who are plotting to do you all the harm they can?”

Becket regarded his clerk and friend calmly. “We all must die, John. We should not swerve from justice for fear of death. I am more ready to meet death for God and His Church than they are to inflict it on me.”

“We are all sinners and not yet ready for death. I can see no one here who wants to die needlessly, apart from you.”

Some of the clerks were offended that John should dare to speak so disrespectfully to the archbishop. Becket merely said, “May the Lord’s Will be done.”

John would have argued further had Fitz Stephen not put a restraining hand upon his arm. As their eyes met, they shared a moment of frustrated, haunted understanding, the awareness that as clay was in the potter’s hands, so were they all in God’s Hands, and they could not save Thomas Becket unless he chose to save himself.

Just then there was a sharp cry from Edward Grim, standing watch at one of the windows. With a young man’s keen eyesight, he’d seen in the fading light what the older sentinels had not, the activity under the ancient mulberry tree. “They are arming themselves!” Hanging so far out the window that he was in danger of falling, he soon reported, “Men are pouring into the outer court! They’ve seized the gatehouse and… Jesus wept! My lord, your steward has joined them! He is helping to guard the gate!”

Through the open windows, they could hear now the shouting, the Norman battle cry of “King’s men, king’s men!” Other sounds were coming from the west, the laments of townspeople gathered outside the priory walls, crying out their fear that the archbishop and his monks were “sheep for the slaughter.” The noise was intensifying, curses and heavy pounding filling the air. Within the archbishop’s bedchamber, some of the monks and clerks fled while they still could, realizing what that new clamor meant: that quick-witted servants had barred the door to the hall and the knights were attempting to force their way back in.

“My lord, we must get to the church!” Becket’s confessor was tugging at his sleeve and others at once added their pleas to his, entreating the archbishop to flee whilst there was still time. Becket refused, insisting that he would not budge a foot from this chamber, for here he would await God’s Will. The hammering suddenly stopped and Fitz Stephen darted toward the windows in the south wall, where he soon confirmed his worst fears.

“Robert de Broc has led them around the side of the hall. They are going to try to enter by the external stairway!”

Someone said that the stairway was being repaired and was not accessible, but Fitz Stephen had to puncture that faint hope. “The workmen left their ladder and tools there and de Broc is climbing up! Once he gets into the hall, he’ll take them right here!”

The monks renewed their pleading, imploring the archbishop to seek safety in the cathedral, and again he refused, scorning them for their cowardice. It was Edward Grim who finally offered a reason for leaving that Becket could not reject out of hand. “Vespers is nigh, my lord. Would you keep the Lord and your flock waiting?”

When Becket hesitated, the other men took physical action, seizing his arms and compelling him toward a long-unused door that led down to a private passageway to the cloisters. The door had to be forced, but they could hear now the splintering sound of wood and knew that Robert de Broc had broken into the hall. Shoving the archbishop into the stairwell, they fled into the corridor, fear making them fleet. But then they discovered that the door to the cloisters was barred. Some of the monks began to panic, crying out that they were trapped. When the bolt was suddenly lifted on the other side of the door, only the narrow, cramped space kept them from dropping to their knees in wonder at this miracle of God. A moment later, the door swung open, revealing the Almighty’s instrument to be none other than Richard, the cellarer.

Spilling out into the cloisters, the archbishop’s clerks and monks continued to push him toward the door leading into the northwest transept of the cathedral. He eventually stopped struggling once he realized he could not prevail against them and sought to preserve his dignity, insisting that his cross-bearer proceed ahead of them with his archiepiscopal cross. Nor would he permit the cellarer to bar the door to the cloisters.

When they reached the church, vespers for the monks was already in progress, but the service was halted in confusion. As some of them came down the steps leading up to the choir, Becket ordered them to “Go back and finish divine office.” Monks and clerks continued to crowd into the church, and a cry soon went up that there were armed men in the cloisters. Several men ran to close the door and slide its heavy iron bar into place.

“No!” Becket’s voice carried loudly and clearly across the cathedral, halting the men in the act. To their utter dismay, he commanded them to reopen the door. “Christ’s Church is not a fortress. Let anyone enter who wishes.”

They dared not disobey and he returned to the door, shoved it open, and pulled in a few stragglers seeking refuge in God’s House. He then turned and walked without haste toward the choir. He was mounting the steps when Fitz Urse and the other knights burst into the cathedral.

Darkness had fallen and the church was lit only by a few oil lamps up in the choir and candles at the High Altar. The knights peered uncertainly into the murky, swirling shadows, their task made no easier by the fact that Becket and the Benedictine monks were clad in black. Advancing warily into the transept, one of them shouted, “Where is Thomas Becket, traitor to the king and realm?”

Their demand was met with silence. Fitz Urse swore and then called out, “Where is the archbishop?”

Becket turned and slowly started down the steps. “Here I am, no traitor to the king, but a priest of God. What do you want of me?”

Some of the monks had already faded away into the blackness of the nave. Now Becket’s clerks abandoned him, too, even John of Salisbury and Henry of Auxerre, the cross-bearer substituting for the absent Alexander Llewelyn. They hid behind altars, fled down to the safety of the crypt, up the stairs to the Chapel of St Blaise. Only Robert of Merton, his confessor, Fitz Stephen, two monks, and Edward Grim stood their ground behind him on the choir steps.

The knights were a terrifying sight, having shed their mantles to reveal chain-mail underneath, naked swords

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