London (44 page)

His biblical name, as it happened, was the least unusual thing about him, for in the religious revival that had swept London in recent generations it had become rather popular. His father, Henri’s grandson, now head of the Silversleeves family, would have preferred something Norman, but then a certain widowed aunt who had become a nun made it clear that she would provide a legacy for a son of that name. So Pentecost it was.

His looks were typical of his family: dark hair, a large, long nose, and mournful eyes. But nature had decided to deal Pentecost Silversleeves several particular blows. His shoulders sloped forwards; his hips were broader than his chest; his limbs were weak. As a boy, he had seldom been able to catch a ball thrown to him, and never in his life had he been able to hang by his arms. However, these physical shortcomings were compensated for by phenomenal mental gifts.

When Master Thomas Brown tested the young clerks – “Thirty-five knights must be paid five pence a day for sixty days. What is the total cost?” or “The county of Essex owes three hundred pounds. There are forty-seven knight’s fees. How much per knight?” – Silversleeves was forbidden to reply. He needed neither abacus nor writing tablets. He knew the answers instantly. He knew the entire contents of the Pipe Rolls, not because he had tried to memorize them, but because he had that kind of memory.

Such gifts should have made him a fine scholar, yet he had failed to excel. His parents had sent him first to the school at St Paul’s, then to another, then to the smaller school that had started at St Mary-le-Bow. At each he learned just enough to get by. Always his teachers complained: “It comes too easily to him, so he won’t really work.”

He had been sent to Paris. Here were the greatest scholars in Europe. Only recently, the famous Abélard had lectured, until his illicit affair with Héloïse had led to his castration and disgrace. Fellow Englishmen, like John of Salisbury, who had studied there had risen to high office and were today men of letters. It was a golden opportunity. A man who completed his studies in Paris was called, by courtesy,
Magister
– Master. Yet somehow young Silversleeves never completed his studies. He drifted briefly to Italy, then returned home. No one called him Master.

What did he know? He had mastered the basic trivium: grammar, meaning Latin, rhetoric and dialectic. Since the days of the Roman Empire, these had formed the foundation of the European educated class, the common language of which was still Latin. He had also studied the quadrivium of music, arithmetic, geometry and astronomy, which meant he knew a little Euclid and Pythagoras, could name the constellations, and believed that the sun and the planets revolved in a complex pattern around the Earth. His study of divinity allowed him to quote biblical texts, in Latin, to buttress any argument. He could expose a dozen half-forgotten heresies. He knew enough law to prove to an abbot what money he owed the king. In Italy, he had been to a lecture on anatomy. Plato and Aristotle were no strangers to him. In short, he knew only what was necessary, and no more.

But if not a
magister
, what was he? The answer to this was simple. He was a clerk, a man in holy orders.

This was not surprising. In a world where few could read, all education was in the Church’s hands. It was normal, therefore, for a young man who had finished his schooling to have his head shaved in a monk’s tonsure and be admitted to the minor orders.

Technically, young Silversleeves was a deacon. As such, he was free to marry, enter business, do as he pleased. Later, should it suit him, he could enter the higher orders. In the meantime, he could claim all the privileges of the Church.

As the Christian inheritor of the ancient Roman Empire, the Church’s influence and network throughout Europe was vast. And whether they were saintly or corrupt, scholars or scarcely able to get through the Lord’s Prayer in Latin, all society’s educated men had the Church to thank for their learning. Even if there were occasional schisms, even if at this moment the German emperor was trying to promote a rival claimant of his own for the Holy See, the fact remained that the Pope was the direct inheritor of St Peter. With an authority far older than theirs, he could admonish feudal kings. Bishops walked with the greatest nobles in the land. In a feudal society where it was hard to change classes, a clever man, even the son of a lowly serf, might still rise through the Church to the pinnacles of society – and at the same time, it was presumed, serve God as well.

There was one more element in this special relationship between the State and the educated class of churchmen. Centuries of donation meant that throughout Europe the Church was the greatest landowner. And though, a generation after the Conquest, most of the spare land in England had already been granted to feudal families, Church land was always available to provide huge incomes for the senior clergy of the day. If the king needed to reward his friends or servants, the solution was obvious:

“Let’s make him a bishop.”

In this way a curious but necessary system had developed. While certain bishoprics usually passed to men of impeccable piety and distinction, others often passed to great royal servants and statesmen. The present Bishop of Winchester was both a kinsman of the king and a statesman. Royal officials often held the sees of Salisbury, Ely and several others. Numerous officials had incomes from lesser offices – archdeaconries, canonries and rich livings. And at this moment, the Chancellor of England and the Archbishop of Canterbury were actually the same man, the king’s great servant, Thomas Becket.

Its own reformers might not approve of such practices, but on the whole the Church went along with it.

One day, perhaps, young Silversleeves too might become a bishop.

Why had he gone with them? Did he even like them?

No, but they were the young bloods of London – men from leading merchant families like his own. Once a month they went out. Black hoods. Daggers and swords. One time, over to the stews across the river. A whore at sword point. They made her give it to all of them for nothing. How she cursed! And the peasant they had found in the woods. They had taken him for such a ride in his cart. A moonlit night. The fellow was so frightened he thought he was bewitched. They drove him into a stream and left him there. How they’d enjoyed reliving that one
.

There was no harm in it. All the young bloods were playing these pranks. It was just the fashion. Nobody took it too seriously. The more daring the better
.

But why did he go along?

“
You look like a woman,” they used to chant at school. They used to laugh at him. “And you act like one too.” That stupid song. He’d shown them. He went with the wildest gang now. No one got caught
.

Until last night
.

“
We have to do something special.” That’s what Le Blond had said. “After all, it’s coronation day
.”

Coronation day. A strange business that had been. Perhaps if it had not been so strange, he might not have gone out drinking with his friends afterwards. He might never have gone along
.

They were all so drunk. How else could they have gone to the wrong house? Dear God. It wasn’t the baker at all. It was an armourer. A fellow with a coat of mail, strong as a blacksmith. What a fight he had put up. They were only going to steal the fellow’s shirt. Just a trophy
.

Then the apprentice. That wide-eyed boy with a knife. And then . . . He could not bear to think of it. His hands were clenched. Try to relax
.

Nobody had seen him. They had all run. The hue and cry had been raised. They’d scattered. Nobody could have seen him
.

The coronation that had taken place in Westminster Abbey the previous day, 14 June 1170, had been remarkable for two reasons. The first was that the young man being crowned was not, in fact, the king.

After the Conqueror’s sons Rufus and Henry I, and a period of feudal anarchy while the heirs in the female line fought for supremacy, the English Crown had settled upon an extraordinary man. Henry II had inherited England and Normandy through his mother, the Conqueror’s granddaughter. By a spectacular marriage he controlled the vast lands of Aquitaine in south-west France, including the rich wine region of Bordeaux. From his French father, he had also inherited the fertile region of Anjou, which lay between his Norman and his wife’s domains. The King of England was thus master of a feudal empire that stretched up Europe’s Atlantic coast from Spain to Scotland and threatened even the jealous king of France.

From his father he had inherited two other things. The first was a curious family name. A certain ancestor, it was said, had worn in his cap not a feather but a flower, a sprig of broom.
Plante à genêt
, they called it in French. In English, Plantagenet.

He had also inherited the Plantagenet family temperament. Brilliant and restless, the sharp-eyed Henry was seldom in one place for more than a few days as he laboured to secure and expand his empire. He was a wonderful administrator. Already he was transforming English justice, his trained judges offering his subjects royal courts instead of the unreliable ones of the feudal barons. His administration was strict. That very year half the sheriffs of England were trembling as the clerks of the Exchequer suddenly arrived to inspect their affairs. No wonder young Silversleeves’s father had admonished him: “If you would only work and serve the king well, the whole world would be at your feet.”

But there was another side to the Plantagenets. Even by the standards of those dangerous times they were ruthless and devious. Some said they were descended from the Devil. “From the Devil they came,” the great Bernard of Clairvaux had grimly remarked, “and to the Devil they will return.” Their fits of temper were legendary.

King Henry II also had four turbulent sons. It was to secure the succession to the English throne, therefore, and to prevent anarchy, that he had summoned his family and magnates to Westminster Abbey to witness the coronation of his eldest son whilst he himself was still alive. “Perhaps,” the onlookers hoped piously, “this will bring some order to this devil’s brood.”

The other strange feature of the ceremony was that Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, the priest who should have officiated, was not even present. He had fled the country.

Becket. Cursed name. Cursed family. Strike them down and they rise up again like serpents
.

A dark night. That was what reminded him of Becket. Another dark night long ago. And another crime. A terrible one
.

Had his own family done it? Were they born criminals?

No. He could not accept that. If the Beckets drove men to dark deeds, it was they, the cursed Beckets, who were to blame. It must be so
.

The enmity between the Beckets and the Silversleeves had not simply continued from the preceding century, it had grown worse.

When Gilbert Becket, a prosperous mercer, and his family had arrived in London, the Silversleeves, still living in their stout stone hall in the shadow of St Paul’s, were rich, proud and respected. But when they had haughtily declared of the newcomers, “They’re interlopers,” no one seemed to take much notice. This was not really surprising. Already at that time London’s leading citizens included many new arrivals from France, Flanders and Italy. Names like Le Blond and Bucherelli soon became English as Blunt and Buckerell. The Beckets moved into a substantial house on the West Cheap, just below the Jewry. They bought a dozen other houses. They prospered. But when young Silversleeves’s grandfather, confidently expecting to be chosen for an important city position, had seen Gilbert Becket chosen instead, the old bitterness had turned to flaming hatred.

Who had started the fires? The first had begun at the Beckets’ house on the very night their son Thomas was born. The second, many years later, began elsewhere but destroyed most of their property. And then the rumours had begun. “It was the Silversleeves,” people began to whisper. “They started those fires. They ruined the Beckets.” It was outrageous. It cast a pall of suspicion over the entire Silversleeves family. However hotly Pentecost’s father had denied it, the hissing rumour spread and could not be quenched. Gradually a new and even more insidious thought crept into the mind of this gloomy family. “The Beckets started the rumour,” they decided. “They’ll torment us to the grave.” It did not make him any less resentful when young Pentecost secretly asked himself: could it be true?

And still those Beckets would not lie down. Londoners remembered young Thomas Becket very well. Thomas of London, he often used to call himself. A lazy fellow who, like young Silversleeves, had never become a
magister
. He became a clerk, though, and despite his father’s ruin got himself noticed. He was good at that, always making friends and dropping them, as the Silversleeves family liked to point out. Then the old Archbishop of Canterbury had taken him into his household. He charmed the king. He had a talent for that too, with his tall good looks, his elegance and his brilliant eyes. He must have served his masters well, even brilliantly, for suddenly, to all London’s astonishment, at the age of only thirty-seven he was made Chancellor of England.

Pentecost had once seen him riding down the West Cheap with his retinue. He had been magnificently dressed in a cloak lined with ermine. Jewels had flashed on his tunic. Even the men who rode with him looked like dukes. “He’s got style,” his father had conceded gloomily. And then, with irritation: “Look at him. He takes on more airs than the king.”

But the surprise of Becket’s rise to the chancellorship was nothing compared with the general stupefaction when, seven years later, he was made Archbishop of Canterbury. Thomas, the worldly servant of the king, Primate of all England? And to remain the king’s chancellor as well?

“The king wants the Church under his thumb,” young Silversleeves’s father had remarked. “With Becket there, that’s what he’ll get.” It was sensible enough, if a little shocking.