HENRY (calling out).
Ho there! thy rest of life is hopeless prison.
ELEANOR.
And what would my own Aquitaine say to that?
First, free thy captive from her hopeless prison.
HENRY.
O devil, can I free her from the grave?
ELEANOR.
You are too tragic: both of us are players
In such a comedy as our court of Provence
Had laugh’d at. That’s a delicate Latin lay
Of Walter Map: the lady holds the cleric
Lovelier than any soldier, his poor tonsure
A crown of Empire. Will you have it again?
(Offering the cross. He dashes it down.)
St. Cupid, that is too irreverent.
Then mine once more. (Puts it on.)
Your cleric hath your lady.
Nay, what uncomely faces, could he see you!
Foam at the mouth because King Thomas, lord
Not only of your vassals but amours,
Thro’ chastest honour of the Decalogue
Hath used the full authority of his Church
To put her into Godstow nunnery.
HENRY.
To put her into Godstow nunnery!
He dared not — liar! yet, yet I remember —
I do remember.
He bad me put her into a nunnery —
Into Godstow, into Hellstow, Devilstow!
The Church! the Church!
God’s eyes! I would the Church were down in hell!
[Exit.
ELEANOR.
Aha!
Enter the four KNIGHTS.
FITZURSE.
What made the King cry out so furiously?
ELEANOR.
Our Becket, who will not absolve the Bishops.
I think ye four have cause to love this Becket.
FITZURSE.
I hate him for his insolence to all.
DE TRACY.
And I for all his insolence to thee.
DE BRITO.
I hate him for I hate him is my reason,
And yet I hate him for a hypocrite.
DE MORVILLE.
I do not love him, for he did his best
To break the barons, and now braves the King.
ELEANOR.
Strike, then, at once, the King would have him — See!
Re-enter HENRY.
HENRY.
No man to love me, honour me, obey me!
Sluggards and fools!
The slave that eat my bread has kick’d his King!
The dog I cramm’d with dainties worried me!
The fellow that on a lame jade came to court,
A ragged cloak for saddle — he, he, he,
To shake my throne, to push into my chamber —
My bed, where ev’n the slave is private — he —
I’ll have her out again, he shall absolve
The bishops — they but did my will — not you —
Sluggards and fools, why do you stand and stare?
You are no king’s men — you — you — you are Becket’s men.
Down with King Henry! up with the Archbishop!
Will no man free me from this pestilent priest?
[Exit.
[The KNIGHTS draw their swords.
ELEANOR.
Are ye king’s men? I am king’s woman, I.
THE KNIGHTS.
King’s men! King’s men!
Scene II
A Room in Canterbury Monastery.
BECKET and JOHN OF SALISBURY.
BECKET.
York said so?
JOHN OF SALISBURY.
Yes: a man may take good counsel
Ev’n from his foe.
BECKET.
York will say anything.
What is he saying now? gone to the King
And taken our anathema with him. York!
Can the King de-anathematise this York?
JOHN OF SALISBURY.
Thomas, I would thou hadst return’d to England,
Like some wise prince of this world from his wars,
With more of olive-branch and amnesty
For foes at home — thou hast raised the world against thee.
BECKET.
Why, John, my kingdom is not of this world.
JOHN OF SALISBURY.
If it were more of this world it might be
More of the next. A policy of wise pardon
Wins here as well as there. To bless thine enemies ——
BECKET.
Ay, mine, not Heaven’s.
JOHN OF SALISBURY.
And may there not be something
Of this world’s leaven in thee too, when crying
On Holy Church to thunder out her rights
And thine own wrong so pitilessly. Ah, Thomas,
The lightnings that we think are only Heaven’s
Flash sometimes out of earth against the heavens.
The soldier, when he lets his whole self go
Lost in the common good, the common wrong,
Strikes truest ev’n for his own self. I crave
Thy pardon — I have still thy leave to speak.
Thou hast waged God’s war against the King; and yet
We are self-uncertain creatures, and we may,
Yea, even when we know not, mix our spites
And private hates with our defence of Heaven.
[Enter EDWARD GRIM.
BECKET.
Thou art but yesterday from Cambridge, Grim;
What say ye there of Becket?
GRIM.
I believe him
The bravest in our roll of Primates down
From Austin — there are some — for there are men
Of canker’d judgment everywhere ——
BECKET. Who hold
With York, with York against me.
GRIM. Well, my lord,
A stranger monk desires access to you.
BECKET.
York against Canterbury, York against God!
I am open to him.
[Exit Grim.
Enter ROSAMUND as a Monk.
ROSAMUND.
Can I speak with you
Alone, my father?
BECKET.
Come you to confess?
ROSAMUND.
Not now.
BECKET.
Then speak; this is my other self,
Who like my conscience never lets me be.
ROSAMUND (throwing back the cowl).
I know him; our good John of Salisbury.
BECKET.
Breaking already from thy noviciate
To plunge into this bitter world again —
These wells of Marah. I am grieved, my daughter.
I thought that I had made a peace for thee.
ROSAMUND.
Small peace was mine in my noviciate, father.
Thro’ all closed doors a dreadful whisper crept
That thou wouldst excommunicate the King.
I could not eat, sleep, pray: I had with me
The monk’s disguise thou gavest me for my bower:
I think our Abbess knew it and allow’d it.
I fled, and found thy name a charm to get me
Food, roof, and rest. I met a robber once,
I told him I was bound to see the Archbishop;
‘Pass on,’ he said, and in thy name I pass’d
From house to house. In one a son stone-blind
Sat by his mother’s hearth: he had gone too far
Into the King’s own woods; and the poor mother,
Soon as she learnt I was a friend of thine,
Cried out against the cruelty of the King.
I said it was the King’s courts, not the King;
But she would not believe me, and she wish’d
The Church were king: she had seen the Archbishop once,
So mild, so kind. The people love thee, father.
&n
bsp; BECKET.
Alas! when I was Chancellor to the King,
I fear I was as cruel as the King.
ROSAMUND.
Cruel? Oh, no — it is the law, not he;
The customs of the realm.
BECKET.
The customs! customs!
ROSAMUND.
My lord, you have not excommunicated him?
Oh, if you have, absolve him!
BECKET.
Daughter, daughter,
Deal not with things you know not.
ROSAMUND. I know him.
Then you have done it, and I call you cruel.
JOHN OF SALISBURY.
No, daughter, you mistake our good Archbishop;
For once in France the King had been so harsh,
He thought to excommunicate him — Thomas,
You could not — old affection master’d you,
You falter’d into tears.
ROSAMUND.
God bless him for it.
BECKET.
Nay, make me not a woman, John of Salisbury,
Nor make me traitor to my holy office.
Did not a man’s voice ring along the aisle,
‘The King is sick and almost unto death.’
How could I excommunicate him then?
ROSAMUND.
And wilt thou excommunicate him now?
BECKET.
Daughter, my time is short, I shall not do it.
And were it longer — well — I should not do it.
ROSAMUND.
Thanks in this life, and in the life to come.
BECKET.
Get thee back to thy nunnery with all haste;
Let this be thy last trespass. But one question —
How fares thy pretty boy, the little Geoffrey?
No fever, cough, croup, sickness?
ROSAMUND. No, but saved
From all that by our solitude. The plagues
That smite the city spare the solitudes.
BECKET.
God save him from all sickness of the soul!
Thee too, thy solitude among thy nuns,
May that save thee! Doth he remember me?
ROSAMUND.
I warrant him.
BECKET.
He is marvellously like thee.
ROSAMUND.
Liker the King.
BECKET.
No, daughter.
ROSAMUND.
Ay, but wait
Till his nose rises; he will be very king.
BECKET.
Ev’n so: but think not of the King: farewell!
ROSAMUND.
My lord, the city is full of armed men.
BECKET,
Ev’n so: farewell!
ROSAMUND.
I will but pass to vespers,
And breathe one prayer for my liege-lord the King,
His child and mine own soul, and so return.
BECKET.
Pray for me too: much need of prayer have I.
[Rosamund kneels and goes.
Dan John, how much we lose, we celibates,
Lacking the love of woman and of child.
JOHN OF SALISBURY.
More gain than loss; for of your wives you shall
Find one a slut whose fairest linen seems
Foul as her dust-cloth, if she used it — one
So charged with tongue, that every thread of thought
Is broken ere it joins — a shrew to boot,
Whose evil song far on into the night
Thrills to the topmost tile — no hope but death;
One slow, fat, white, a burthen of the hearth;
And one that being thwarted ever swoons
And weeps herself into the place of power;
And one an uxor pauperis Ibyci.
So rare the household honey-making bee,
Man’s help! but we, we have the Blessed Virgin
For worship, and our Mother Church for bride;
And all the souls we saved and father’d here
Will greet us as our babes in Paradise.
What noise was that? she told us of arm’d men
Here in the city. Will you not withdraw?
BECKET.
I once was out with Henry in the days
When Henry loved me, and we came upon
A wild-fowl sitting on her nest, so still
I reach’d my hand and touch’d; she did not stir;
The snow had frozen round her, and she sat
Stone-dead upon a heap of ice-cold eggs.
Look! how this love, this mother, runs thro’ all
The world God made — even the beast — the bird!
JOHN OF SALISBURY.
Ay, still a lover of the beast and bird?
But these arm’d men — will you not hide yourself?
Perchance the fierce De Brocs from Saltwood Castle,
To assail our Holy Mother lest she brood
Too long o’er this hard egg, the world, and send
Her whole heart’s heat into it, till it break
Into young angels. Pray you, hide yourself.
BECKET.
There was a little fair-hair’d Norman maid
Lived in my mother’s house: if Rosamund is
The world’s rose, as her name imports her — she
Was the world’s lily.
JOHN OF SALISBURY.
Ay, and what of her?
BECKET.
She died of leprosy.
JOHN OF SALISBURY.
I know not why
You call these old things back again, my lord.
BECKET.
The drowning man, they say, remembers all
The chances of his life, just ere he dies.
JOHN OF SALISBURY.
Ay — but these arm’d men — will you drown yourself?
He loses half the meed of martyrdom
Who will be martyr when he might escape.
BECKET.
What day of the week? Tuesday?
JOHN OF SALISBURY.
Tuesday, my lord,
BECKET.
On a Tuesday was I born, and on a Tuesday
Baptized; and on a Tuesday did I fly
Forth from Northampton; on a Tuesday pass’d
From England into bitter banishment;
On a Tuesday at Pontigny came to me
The ghostly warning of my martyrdom;
On a Tuesday from mine exile I return’d,
And on a Tuesday ——
[TRACY enters, then FITZURSE, DE BRITO, and DE MORVILLE. MONKS following.
— on a Tuesday —— Tracy!
A long silence, broken by FITZURSE saying, contemptuously,
God help thee!
JOHN OF SALISBURY (aside).
How the good Archbishop reddens!
He never yet could brook the note of scorn.
FITZURSE.
My lord, we bring a message from the King
Beyond the water; will you have it alone,
Or with these listeners near you?
BECKET. As you will.
FITZURSE.
Nay, as you will.
BECKET.
Nay, as you will.
JOHN OF SALISBURY. Why then
Better perhaps to speak with them apart.
Let us withdraw.
[All go out except the four KNIGHTS and BECKET.
FITZURSE.
We are all alone with him.
Shall I not smite him with his own cross-staff?
DE MORVILLE.
No, look! the door is open: let him be.
FITZURSE.
The King condemns your excommunicating ——
BECKET.
This is no secret, but a public matter.
In here again!
[JOHN OF SALISBURY and MONKS return.
Now, sirs, the King’s commands!
FITZURSE.
The King beyond the water, thro’ our voices,
Commands
you to be dutiful and leal
To your young King on this side of the water,
Not scorn him for the foibles of his youth.
What! you would make his coronation void
By cursing those who crown’d him. Out upon you!
BECKET.
Reginald, all men know I loved the Prince.
His father gave him to my care, and I
Became his second father: he had his faults,
For which I would have laid mine own life down
To help him from them, since indeed I loved him,
And love him next after my lord his father.
Rather than dim the splendour of his crown
I fain would treble and quadruple it
With revenues, realms, and golden provinces
So that were done in equity.
FITZURSE.
You have broken
Your bond of peace, your treaty with the King —
Wakening such brawls and loud disturbances
In England, that he calls you oversea
To answer for it in his Norman courts.
BECKET.
Prate not of bonds, for never, oh, never again
Shall the waste voice of the bond-breaking sea
Divide me from the mother church of England,
My Canterbury. Loud disturbances!
Oh, ay — the bells rang out even to deafening,
Organ and pipe, and dulcimer, chants and hymns
In all the churches, trumpets in the halls,
Sobs, laughter, cries: they spread their raiment down
Before me — would have made my pathway flowers,
Save that it was mid-winter in the street,
But full mid-summer in those honest hearts.
FITZURSE.
The King commands you to absolve the bishops
Whom you have excommunicated.
BECKET.
I?
Not I, the Pope. Ask him for absolution.
FITZURSE.
But you advised the Pope.
BECKET.
And so I did.
They have but to submit.
THE FOUR KNIGHTS.
The King commands you.
We are all King’s men.
BECKET.
King’s men at least should know
That their own King closed with me last July
That I should pass the censures of the Church
On those that crown’d young Henry in this realm,
And trampled on the rights of Canterbury.
FITZURSE.
What! dare you charge the King with treachery?
He sanction thee to excommunicate
The prelates whom he chose to crown his son!
BECKET.
I spake no word of treachery, Reginald.
But for the truth of this I make appeal
To all the archbishops, bishops, prelates, barons,
Monks, knights, five hundred, that were there and heard.
Nay, you yourself were there: you heard yourself.
FITZURSE.
I was not there.
BECKET.
I saw you there.
FITZURSE. I was not.
BECKET.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson - Delphi Poets Series Page 165
