Time and Chance (71 page)

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 Nôtre-Dame-du-Pré. 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 nearby table and he quickly crossed to it, filling a wine cup with an unsteady hand. Hugh de Nonant was the sort of worldly, devious cleric he most despised, a man who saw the Stations of the Cross as rungs on the ladder of his own advancement. Like his uncle, his piety was befouled by ambition, his intelligence corrupted by amorality. John was convinced that Arnulf never did anything without an ulterior motive, and Hugh was cut from the same shabby cloth.

Was he the king’s agent, sowing seeds of dissension amongst the archbishop’s clerks and councilors? Was he seeking to spread rumors about the archbishop’s troubled state of mind? Thomas had enemies in plenitude: men he’d antagonized during his years as Henry’s chancellor, those who mistrusted his abrupt and enigmatic conversion from king’s man to king’s foe, those who’d profited from his exile and feared his return to royal favor. Was Hugh de Nonant in league with some of them? It was not that difficult to believe. But there had been enough truth in what Hugh had said to leave John with a lingering sense of unease.

CHAPTER THIRTY

 

 

 

 

 

 

RAIN WAS AS MUCH a part of the Welsh landscape as its mountains and ice-blue lakes and low-lying valley mists. But even for Wales, the weather that November had been exceedingly wet, day after day of ash-colored skies and relentless downpours. The rivers and streams were swollen with weeks of runoff, the roads clogged in mud, and Ranulf’s family began to curse the rain with as much rancor as Noah. An invitation to the court of Owain Gwynedd was a great honor, and Enid vowed that they’d attend even if they had to swim the miles between Trefriw and Aber.

Two days before the fête, though, the inhabitants of Gwynedd were dazzled by the sight of an almost forgotten phenomenon—the sun. And so on a Thursday in Martinmas week, Ranulf, Rhodri, and Enid were where they’d hoped to be, dining in the great hall of their prince’s palace in celebration of his seventieth birthday.

Rhiannon was present, too, but Ranulf knew it was a sense of duty that had prompted her to accept the invitation. She did not enjoy being on display, and a blind woman at a banquet was enough of a novelty to guarantee that she’d be the object of unwanted attention. He had tried to convince her that she need not attend, knowing all the while that she would insist on accompanying him. Watching as she concentrated carefully upon the venison frumenty that had been ladled onto her trencher, it occurred to Ranulf—not for the first time—that there was a manifest measure of gallantry in his wife’s brand of quiet courage.

Taking a swallow of mead, he resumed his role as her eyes, continuing his description of the hall and guests. “Cristyn looks bedazzling, as usual, in a gown the color of plums. And Owain . . . well, the only word for him would be ‘regal.’ He most definitely does not look like a man who has reached his biblical three-score years and ten. Three of his sons are seated at the high table: Hywel, of course, and Cristyn’s fox cubs. Neither Davydd nor Rhodri seems very pleased to see me; if looks could kill, I’d have breathed my last ere the servers brought in the roast goose.”

They’d been speaking softly in French, for discretion’s sake. Rhiannon wiped her mouth with her napkin, then murmured, “
Ni wyr y gog ond ungainc,
” and Ranulf grinned, for that was an old Welsh proverb:
The cuckoo knows but one tune.
Hywel had once said of his half-brothers that they’d ever been ones for fleeing the smoke so they could fall into the fire, and as he intercepted their sullen, baleful glares, Ranulf found himself in full agreement with his friend; Davydd and Rhodri had so far shown no sign whatsoever that they were capable of learning from past mistakes. The most successful rulers—like Owain or Harry—knew when to hold fast and when to give ground. The ones who did not were likely to end their days like Stephen, dying alone and unmourned.

But Ranulf did not want to harbor any regrets today, and made a conscious effort to banish these ghosts, casting both his doleful dead cousin and his estranged nephew out of his thoughts. Mead helped, he soon discovered, and as his eyes met Hywel’s across the hall, he raised his cup in a playful salute.

“Who else is here?” Rhiannon resumed, and Ranulf took another look at their fellow guests.

“Owain’s brother, Cadwaladr. He’s been given a seat at the high table as a courtesy, but no one seems to be paying him much mind. Passing strange that he was once considered a threat to Owain’s rule, so completely has Owain brought him to heel. Also on the dais is Owain’s son-in-law, Gruffydd Maelor of Powys, and Owain’s daughter Angharad. And at Owain’s right is Rhys ap Gruffydd.”

Ranulf was impressed by Rhys’s presence at Aber, for his own lands lay many miles to the south. Rhys had come with a large entourage, as much to reflect his own prestige and power as to honor his ally and uncle, but his wife, Gwenllian, had remained behind in Deheubarth; Rhys was not known for being uxorious.

“Several of Owain’s other sons are here, too, although not at the high table. Cynan seems to be enjoying himself; that one could find sport at a wake. And Iorwerth, who always looks as if he is attending a funeral, Lord love him. There are clergy present, as well; I recognize the Archdeacon of Bangor and I overheard someone say that the Cistercian monk with Rhys is the abbot of Strata Florida, that abbey in Dyfed.”

Rhiannon found that as interesting as Ranulf did. “So the Welsh Church is not recognizing Owain’s excommunication?”

“It would seem not.” Ranulf was not surprised by the recalcitrance of the Welsh clergy, not if the views of his neighbors in Trefriw were any gauge of public opinion. When the Archbishop of Canterbury had excommunicated Owain for his refusal to end his marriage to Cristyn, most of Owain’s subjects reacted with outrage, sure that Becket was punishing Owain for their conflict over the bishopric of Bangor. Ranulf had his suspicions, too, although he usually tried to give Becket the benefit of every doubt. But the timing did seem odd to him, that as soon as Owain had defied Becket by having his candidate consecrated as Bishop of Bangor in Ireland, his marriage to his cousin was suddenly a matter of grave concern to the Church.