“Yes, but first I would like a few moments with you-alone.” Henry hesitated slightly, then made a gesture of dismissal. As the other men obediently trooped out, he moved to the hearth, reached for the fire tongs, and began to stir the flames.
“Harry…” Ranulf joined the younger man at the hearth, so obviously groping for words that Henry slanted him a grimly amused look.
“Spit it out, Uncle, ere it chokes you.”
“Harry, I was troubled by what occurred in the hall this afternoon.”
“Not as troubled, I trust, as Becket.”
“In all honesty, I think every man in that hall was troubled. You were justified to charge him with contempt, but to demand a full accounting… Jesu, that might well total as much as thirty thousand marks! It could take years to sort through the records, and there are bound to be discrepancies and missing receipts and errors-”
“So?”
“So it is beginning to look as if you are aiming for nothing less than the man’s ruination!”
“I am,” Henry said, with a bluntness that took Ranulf’s breath away. “I cannot dismiss him, but I can force his resignation, and by God, I will-one way or another.”
“At what cost, Harry? Have you not thought about the damage done to the Church-and the Crown-by this feud with Becket? I understand your disappointment with his performance as archbishop. For the life of me, I cannot understand why he felt the need to make you his enemy or to take such extreme, provocative positions. Yet getting rid of him might well give you more grief than ever he could. Granted that he was a mistake, but surely he is a mistake you can live with?”
“Can Will?” Henry demanded, so bitterly that Ranulf fell silent. There was no point in arguing that Becket had not brought about Will’s death. That wound was still too raw.
Saturday morning passed in endless and increasingly acrimonious discussion. All of the bishops had gathered in Becket’s priory guest quarters and proceeded to give the archbishop advice that was distinguished only by its discord. Gilbert Foliot argued brusquely for resignation, a course of action adamantly opposed by the Bishop of Winchester, who insisted this would set an invidious precedent for future prelates and undermine canon law. Hilary of Chichester contended that compromise was clearly called for under the circumstances, and the plain-spoken Bishop of Lincoln sent shivers of alarm through the room when he blurted out that Becket’s choices had narrowed to resignation or execution. “What good will the archbishopric do him if he is dead?”
The Bishop of Winchester shook off the gloom engendered by Lincoln’s tactless remark, getting stiffly to his feet and demanding his cane. “It has been my experience,” he said dryly, “that few problems will not go away if enough money is thrown at them. I shall go to the king and see what effect two thousand marks have upon his resolve.”
Becket had been slumped in his chair, letting the arguments swirl about him. At that he raised his head sharply. “I do not have two thousand marks to give the king,” he said and Winchester patted him on the shoulder.
“Ah, but I do,” he said, and limped purposefully toward the door.
His departure brought a hiatus in the day’s heated discussions. Some of the men went off to answer nature’s call, others to find food or drink in the priory guest hall. William Fitz Stephen had been hovering inconspicuously on the sidelines. He’d been deeply shaken by the Bishop of Lincoln’s terse warning, and when he saw the young Bishop of Worcester heading for the door, he swiftly followed.
He caught up with Roger out in the priory cloisters. “My lord bishop, might I have a word with you?”
“Of course, William.” Roger gestured toward a bench in a nearby carrel. “What may I do for you?”
“You are the king’s cousin. Surely you must know his mind. My lord, how far is he prepared to go? Think you that there is any chance the archbishop’s life might be at risk?”
“No,” Roger said firmly, “I do not. The king has the Devil’s own temper, as he’d be the first to admit. But for all that, I cannot see him being deliberately cruel or unjust.”
Fitz Stephen was heartened by the certainty in Roger of Worcester’s voice and he returned to the lord archbishop’s quarters with a lighter step. There he found that Hilary of Chichester was haranguing Becket on the need to resign his position, insisting that otherwise he faced imprisonment for embezzlement. Becket paid him no heed, but another of the bishops rebuked Chichester sharply, declaring that it would be shameful for the archbishop to consider his personal safety. The afternoon dragged on, one of the longest that Fitz Stephen could remember. And then the Bishop of Winchester was back, stoop-shouldered and grim-visaged.
“Well,” he said, heaving himself into the closest chair, “he turned me down. If he does not want money, what then? Blood?”
Fitz Stephen knew that the bishop, a highly erudite man, was speaking metaphorically. Still, he flinched, and as he looked around, he saw that he was not the only one disquieted by those ominous words.
On Sunday it rained, but Monday brought flashes of sun. Henry was just finishing his breakfast when he received a message from his one-time chancellor and friend. He read it hastily, swearing under his breath, and then shouted for his uncle.
Rainald pushed reluctantly away from the table, his trencher still heaped with sausages and fried bread. “What is amiss?”
“That is what I want you to find out. Becket claims that he is too ill to attend today’s session. Find Leicester and ride to the priory, see if he is truly ailing or if this is just a ruse.”
Rainald looked wistfully at his breakfast, but knew better than to argue. Out in the castle bailey, he ran into Ranulf and coaxed him into accompanying them. As they rode through the town’s stirring streets, they speculated amongst themselves whether Becket was feigning sickness. Rainald thought it highly likely, and the Earl of Leicester was somewhat dubious, although he did concede that he could hardly blame Becket if it were so, saying that a hunted fox would always go to earth if it could. Ranulf alone felt that Becket’s purported illness was genuine, and was still submitting to his brother’s good-natured raillery as they reached the priory of St Andrew.
All of their doubts were dispelled, though, with their first glimpse of Thomas Becket. He was paler than new snow, bathed in sweat, and clearly in considerable discomfort. Propped up in bed by pillows, he regarded them with dull, hollowed eyes, too preoccupied with his body’s pain to worry about the king’s enmity. Rainald and Leicester exchanged a martyred look of resignation, and then began their interrogation of the stricken archbishop on behalf of the king, constrained all the while to use the hushed, somber tones considered proper for the sickroom.
Ignoring the glares of the archbishop’s clerks and the hostility of Master William, his physician, they extracted from Becket the information they sought: that his malady was a colic, one he’d suffered from in the past. The faint stench of vomit and Becket’s occasional involuntary gasps bolstered his credibility even more than his faltering words. Rainald and Leicester were both uncomfortable in their role as inquisitors to an obviously ailing man, but Rainald knew what his nephew the king would most want to know, and girded himself to ask it.
“Think you that you’ll be well enough to attend the court session on the morrow?”
There were outraged murmurs from the clerks. But the last words were to be Becket’s. “I will be there,” he said hoarsely, “if I have to be carried in on a litter.”
The following morning, Ranulf was standing in the bailey of Northampton Castle when the Bishop-elect of Worcester rode in. Roger handed the reins to a groom, gestured for his clerks to go on into the hall, and then headed toward Ranulf.
“How is Thomas?” Ranulf asked quietly. “Is he well enough to attend today’s session?”
Roger nodded, but there was something in his face that Ranulf caught, a fleeting emotion of surprising intensity in his usually composed nephew. “What is it?” he asked. “What you tell me will go no further, Roger, if that is your concern.”
“It is not that, for the king will hear soon enough.” Roger’s voice was low, his dark eyes troubled. “Uncle Ranulf, I fear this will end very badly. Never have I seen Harry so… so unreasonable. If we are to avoid utter calamity, the lord archbishop must be the one to compromise… and he has begun listening again to those who are urging defiance. He seems to have taken his sudden illness as… as a sign. When we called upon him this morning, he forbade us to take part in a judgment against him and ordered us to excommunicate any man who dared to lay hands upon him. Gilbert Foliot angrily objected, pointing out that the bishops would then be in violation of their own
