The Canterbury Sisters

by Kim Wright

  Despite the fact that we stopped on a side street for gyros and despite the fact that we dropped our bags off at the surprisingly large and modern lodge, Valerie and I are still early. We give our names to one of the elderly ladies working the group tour desk and she says she will call Matthew. We tell her not to worry, that we’re the ones who are off schedule, a remark that seems to confuse her.

  “But you have walked, have you not, from London?” she asks. Apparently most tourists come in by bus or train and now, in this modern age, those rare pilgrims who arrive on foot enjoy an elevated status.

  The woman consults her computer screen again. “And one of you is ill?”

  Evidently she’s referring to me. Valerie steps away from the window, which looks just like the will-call booth at a theater, and I step up. “I’m fine now,” I say through the little hole in the glass, but Tess must have been very thorough when she called this morning with her instructions, for the woman is still staring at the computer screen, her lips moving slightly as she reads.

  “Lovely thing you did, my dear,” she says, her small, red-rimmed eyes flicking up to me with respect. “Matthew will be here in a jiffy.”

  A jiffy? It’s hard to imagine a priest doing anything in a jiffy, and Valerie and I both revert back into our daughter-of-an-interesting-mother routine, falling all over ourselves to assure this woman that we will wait, that we expect no special treatment, that the schedule of this priest should not be shuffled around to accommodate our unexpected early arrival. But this lady’s having none of it. She waves her hand to shush us and picks up a phone. The big retro kind, black and heavy. She talks to someone and when she puts it down she says, “Ten minutes.”

  “Do you want your boots back?” Valerie says as we wait. We’ve sprawled on the grass, our heads resting on our backpacks. There’s no sense of religious formality here on the lip of lawn that circles the Cathedral, but rather the air of a picnic, with schoolkids and tourists lounging about.

  “They suck, don’t they?”

  “No,” she says. “They haven’t bothered me at all and I’ll take them back if you like when the tour is over. I just thought that if the priest is going to wipe the dust from our boots as part of the ceremony, it might be nice if, you know, if it’s our own dust that he’s wiping off our own boots.”

  “When was the last time you were in a church?”

  “My niece got baptized. You?”

  “Diana’s memorial.”

  And with that the shadow of Matthew falls across us. We both look up, squinting, but the sun behind him makes it impossible to see his face. All I can make out is the bright outline of a large man wearing a dress.

  “It will be my honor to lead you through the Cathedral,” he says. “Intones” might be a better verb, for he has the voice of a movie priest—low and calm and certain—and God help me, that’s all it takes. I’m already tearing up, even as he extends two hands down to help pull us from the grass. He looks from me to Valerie, then back again. “Which one of you is ill?”

  “We both are,” Valerie says. “In different ways, of course.”

  He nods. “Of course.”

  We follow him through an unassuming side door leading into a chapel, which is a good thing. I’m not sure I could handle seeing the entire expanse of the Cathedral at once. Better to sidle up on it, to come to the center incrementally, and Matthew says we will start our tour in the chapel where Becket was killed. It’s one small cell within the great body of Canterbury, an edifice that probably has a dozen such crannies. But this one, where the saint met his doom, is the most famous.

  I know the story by heart and I suspect Valerie does too, but Matthew tells it to us anyway, guiding us from spot to spot within the chapel while he talks. Thomas Becket started his life not as a priest, but as the friend of Henry II, a notorious womanizer and rake. By all accounts, Becket matched the king thrust for thrust in their debaucheries and together the young men enjoyed all the perks of fame and wealth.

  But as Henry progressed through his reign, he became frustrated by the fact that the Catholic church held as much power in England as did the monarchy. This was long before Henry VIII broke from the Catholic church and established the Church of England, before church and state were effectively merged, Matthew says. We have a bit of the background, do we not? He says this with uncertainty, for he knows we are Americans—which, after all, rhymes with “barbarians”—but both Valerie and I hasten to assure him we’re up on our English history, or at least on those fascinating Henrys. We’ve read Philippa Gregory; we’ve seen every episode of The Tudors.

  Matthew believes us and cranks his story into a higher gear. The point is that when Henry took the throne in 1154, he often felt that his power was eclipsed by that of the church, specifically the archbishop of Canterbury, who was practically a royal in his own realm. When the old archbishop finally died, Henry named his friend Thomas Becket to the post, thinking this was his chance to gain control over the church. “But things,” Matthew says gravely, “did not turn out as the king planned.”

  Here in the darkened chapel I can see him better, and Matthew is quite a vision. He is wearing a white cassock, tied with a rope belt. He has a broad, honest face and he is younger than I would have guessed, probably no more than thirty, with deep-set blue eyes and straw-colored hair that is quite a bit longer than current fashion. His wife, he has already informed us, also works for the church, as do about three hundred other people. Her specialty is glass restoration and there is plenty here to keep her busy. The Cathedral is one of the major employers of the town, along with the universities. In other words, little in Canterbury has changed since the 1100s. Tourism is still the big business.

  Valerie and I sit down on a pew and Matthew paces before us. Not nervously, but more in the manner of an actor or a professor. No, he says, nothing ever turns out quite like one expects, does it, not even if you’re the King of England. Because almost immediately after being named as archbishop, Thomas Becket pulled a Diana de Milan. He got religion. True religion, the most improbable and inconvenient kind. To the king’s great dismay, Becket took his role as archbishop seriously and in fact advocated for the church so enthusiastically that the two former friends were soon at odds. They may have once been lads together, drinking and carousing, riding shoulder-to-shoulder through the land that Henry ruled, but then Thomas repented. Changed, and no one likes it when their friends change. No one likes it when his friend grows up without him, precedes him down that thorny path to adulthood. The man who Henry had assumed would be an unquestioning patsy had turned into a powerful adversary and one day, in a fit of exasperation, the king muttered, “Who will rid me of this troublesome priest?”

  Here’s the thing: he didn’t mean it. Despite their recent differences, Thomas Becket was still the king’s best friend and on some deep interior level, Henry even admired him. It was a momentary outburst.

  But the irony and the tragedy is that the slightest outburst from a king can have immediate consequences. A couple of minor-league lords, eager to ingratiate themselves with their monarch, rode to Canterbury vowing to put the archbishop to death.

  Becket knew they were coming. A man who rules a great church has spies of his own and besides, even if it hadn’t been this particular band of fools, others very much like them were certain to eventually attack. He had spoken out against the throne too many times and he must have known his day of reckoning would eventually arrive, even if he didn’t know precisely how or when fate would find him. And then one night, as Becket was at vespers, came a pounding at the door.

  Matthew says the line just like that, “came a pounding,” a rather awkward and old-fashioned phrase he must have read somewhere, and then he nods solemnly toward the door where we entered. “We do a reenactment,” he says, “each year on the anniversary of the archbishop’s murder. Our little theatrical ends with that same pounding on the door and guests
tell us that they find the moment quite dramatic.”

  But not, I suppose, as dramatic as it would be if the church didn’t cut the scene there, but rather attempted to replicate the bloodbath that had followed the knock. For the monks of Canterbury tried to persuade Becket to bar the door and hide, but he said no, that the doors to a church must never be barred. And thus he stood a willing victim. The intruders rushed him as a group, slicing off the top of his head with their swords, and he died on the spot.

  “King Henry was devastated,” Matthew tells us. “So the historians say, and I believe them. He had never intended for his comment, said in a moment of impatience, to be taken as a royal edict, and now his boyhood friend was dead.” Matthew pauses. He is like Tess, professionally doomed to tell the same stories day after day but, also like her, he has made an art of it, weaving in little beats and asides to the audience. In this case, his audience is only Valerie and I, but we are still getting the full-throttle performance.

  “Can you imagine the horror of having that sort of power?” Matthew is saying. “The sort of power where a comment made against a friend could result in his actual murder? How many people might we have spoken dead with our words throughout the years? The king’s guilt was enormous and the canonization of Thomas Becket was the fastest in all of church history, the process beginning almost as he still lay bleeding in front of this altar.”

  He now directs our attention toward the shrine of Becket, but after all this buildup, the altar itself is a rather humble affair, probably just like dozens more within the Cathedral. “The monks were busily wiping up the gore even as Becket lay dying,” Matthew says, “already certain they could sell any scrap of cloth that was dotted with the archbishop’s blood.”

  “That’s sort of like what they did with Elvis Presley,” Valerie says. “His promoters would take the sheets that he slept on during his tours and cut them into little squares and sell them to his fans.”

  Great. I like her better now, know her better now, but still . . . She has a knack for saying the most inappropriate and god-awful things in the world, always in that same cheerful tone of voice. But Matthew seems to be taking her seriously, as if Valerie were a fellow theologian, come from America on foot to discuss the mysteries of sainthood.

  “Just so,” Matthew says. “Precisely. Becket was the medieval equivalent of your own Mr. Presley. Everything that touched him was rumored to have holy power.”

  “My mother had a square of Elvis’s sheet, but she always told me she got it the honest way,” Valerie says.

  “The honest way?” asks Matthew.

  “She claimed she slept with him. Do the Brits say it like that? You know what I mean. Had carnal knowledge.”

  “Ah,” said Matthew. “That would indeed seem to earn her a scrap of his sheet.”

  “I don’t know how it’s possible,” I say to Valerie, “that you and I would turn out to have the same mother. Because that sounds exactly like something Diana would say.”

  “I’ve always thought perhaps all American women of a certain age once slept with Elvis,” Matthew says. “And that perhaps all their daughters were his illegitimate love children, scattered across the land. It’s the only way I’ve ever been able to make sense of your country.”

  “People go to Graceland,” Valerie says, “to be healed, so I guess it’s the American version of Canterbury. They say it has the same magic.”

  I’m not sure she should have called it “magic.” I understand the point she’s trying to make, but I wince again. Because “magic” is a dismissive word, implying that Canterbury is more scam than salvation, more tourist trap than house of worship.

  But Matthew seems unperturbed. He brushes back his pale bangs and looks up at the shrine with a small smile. I guess there’s nothing we could say about Canterbury that he hasn’t thought of first.

  “I’m sorry,” Valerie says softly, as if she realizes she’s been disrespectful, but Matthew shakes his head.

  “No, you’re quite right. It’s just as you say, that Becket became a celebrity. History’s first rock star. The blood of the martyr went up for sale and the claims of miraculous healing began almost at once. There was a stampede of the lost and broken, all heading to this one particular shrine, just as Chaucer tells us in his Canterbury Tales.”

  “‘The holy blissful martyr for to seek,’” Valerie says, maybe showing off to regain any ground she’s lost. “‘So he would helpen them when they were weak.’ Or I think the prologue goes something like that.”

  “Quite good, very good,” Matthew says. “For there is weakness in everyone, is there not? Have not all of us been drawn here to the shrine of the martyr because, consciously or unconsciously, we seek some sort of help?”

  It’s just the opening I was waiting for. I get up and wander over to the altar, presumably to study the inscriptions, but actually to give the two of them a moment alone. Because this would be the perfect time and place for Valerie to tell Matthew why she has come to Canterbury. I don’t know if she will, or what she might say, but they need a moment of privacy.

  Besides, it’s also a good opportunity to drop a pinch of Diana. There’s not that much of her left, so I’m going to have to be judicious and I don’t want Matthew to see what I’m doing. There’s undoubtedly some sort of ordinance against it. I mean, let’s face it, a rather high percentage of people in the world eventually die and you can’t have all their relatives dragging them to Canterbury and throwing their ashes around the Cathedral. The place is big, but not that big, and while Matthew seems like the kind of priest who might be sympathetic to my mission, I don’t want to put him on the spot.

  I fish out a few grains, then let them drop at the base of the shrine.

  A cat comes up. He rubs against my legs and looks at me expectantly, as if experience has taught him that sometimes pilgrims carry kitty treats. He notes the crumpled fish-and-chips bag in my hand with special interest, but just then I see Matthew and Valerie walking toward me. It’s only been a minute or two and it’s hard to determine what she’s told him, if anything, but his face is changed. Thoughtful, almost somber.

  “Off with you,” Matthew says gently. “Move along.” It takes me a minute to realize that he’s talking to the cat. “There are several of these furry little creatures living within the Cathedral,” he adds, this time to me and Valerie. “One of them likes to sleep curled up on the tomb of the Black Prince just beside the main altar. The ladies who run the restoration council find it a bit scandalous, but—”

  “I like them,” I say, thinking of the purple dragon back in that small church where we stopped two days ago. The chapel around us is filling. A large tour group has come in and another waits at the door behind them. The shrine of Becket is one of the most popular spots within the church, and Matthew notices them too and begins herding Valerie and me toward one of the halls.

  “This way next,” he says. “Toward the rear a bit.”

  Matthew steps between us as we walk along the side flanks of the Cathedral, glancing left and right at the various nooks as we pass. Some are dark and free of ornamentation, while others practically assault you with their displays of glitter and gold. The center section, where Matthew tells us that seven daily services are held, is raised and bright and full of the curious, as well as, I suppose, dead princes and sleeping cats. It is the place for great proclamations, the most public face of the Cathedral. But these side sections of the church, with their mazes of small rooms and narrow hallways, seem meant for a different purpose.

  We stop seemingly at random in front of a cluster of pews. I guess this is the rear of the building. I’m turned around.

  “We can do the blessing here, if you like,” Matthew says. “It’s private. It has access to water in case you . . . I should have thought to ask before we began. Do either of you call yourself Christian?”

  “I do,” I say. I say it so fast that I thin
k I startle all three of us. I certainly startle myself. Where the hell did that come from? Have I been dazzled by the setting, the splendor, the gentle drone of an organ in some distant hall, the story of Becket’s sacrifice, or by the mere fact that Matthew is kind? For he is kind, and this has not been my experience with most holy men, not at all. The cat has followed us. I don’t realize it until I sit down and he jumps on my lap.

  “Don’t feel you have to say that to please me,” Matthew says. He makes a halfhearted swatting gesture at the cat, who looks back at him with contempt before settling into the valley of my legs. “Canterbury offers a variety of blessings, suitable for all sorts of travelers. I was only asking if you wanted communion in addition to the prayer and foot-wiping.”

  “We want the whole package,” Valerie says, sitting down beside me. “I call myself a Christian too.”

  Matthew disappears. Valerie and I wait with the cat.

  “Oh God,” she mutters under her breath. “Are we going to hell? We’ve just lied to a priest.”

  “And a nice one,” I whisper back. “I think that’s worse. But I don’t believe in hell. I’m not sure I believe in any of this.”

  “Then why are you whispering?”

  “I don’t know. Just in case.”

  “It’s easy for you to blow it all off,” she says. “You haven’t gotten a look at your own expiration date.”

  “Did you tell him?”

  She nods. “You should tell him too.”

  “Tell him what?”

  “About your mother.”

  “I don’t think I’m supposed to be throwing her around in the church.”

  “Why not? They let cats in. You should talk to him. Seriously. He’s different. He looks right at you when he prays.”

  “I know.”

  He’s also back, coming toward us with a basin, a towel, and two bottles. He has a bottle, in fact, stuck under each armpit, even though one of them presumably contains holy water and the other one communion wine. So far our Canterbury blessing has not been what I expected.