‘You need not waste his learning. He’s not cut out for religion, but he will make a good clerk, say a lawyer. There are good grammar schools in London; let him live at home and study at one of them for a year or so. Then, if he still shows promise, you could send him to some greater school oversea where he can learn Canon Law.’
‘Very well, Father Prior. It shall be as you advise. I won’t press him to be a monk against his inclination. Perhaps the priesthood is the career for him.’
‘I doubt it. He thinks too much of his repute in this world. Subdeacon and lawyer is nearer his mark. But he is intelligent, and his conduct will never disgrace you.’
So it was arranged. As usual, Thomas was not consulted; he was merely informed that next September he would be entering the grammar school conducted by the Canons of St. Paul’s Cathedral; and that this summer would be his last holiday at Pevensey.
He went there fiercely determined to make the most of his last chance of learning the arts of chivalry. He astonished his companions by his daring and energy when they jousted with padded lances in the lists; he could not always stop his horse, but certainly he could urge it to the charge.
He also threw himself into the business of falconry, and that brought him into mortal danger for the first time in his life.
When the lord Richer rode out with falcons and spaniels on the wide expanse of Pevensey Level Thomas was merely an onlooker in the background, unless he was permitted to make himself useful as a cadger, bearing the wooden cadge on which falcons travelled. But he was allowed a sparrow-hawk to man himself, for those short-winged ‘birds of the bush’ were not nearly so valuable as the graceful ‘birds of the tower’, which mounted into the sky before stooping on a quarry flushed by the spaniels; sparrow-hawks chase their prey from behind, and so are less interesting to the watching sportsman.
In one way birds of the bush might afford more excitement. While a falcon could be watched from any open space, even by a dismounted man, Thomas must ride after his hawk. She would follow her chosen prey wherever it flew, and when she killed she would loiter to eat it unless he had kept her in sight. The gallop through thick bush beside a stream could be as exciting as hunting at force after a stag.
On one August afternoon Thomas rode out alone on a spirited hobby, hawk on fist. He considered his bird manned, and was determined to lure her back from her kill without help from the astringer who had shown him how to educate her. Near the millstream he put up a teal, and cast off his hawk. But he was not quite quick enough, the quarry had a good start, and he settled down to ride in pursuit.
The day was warm, but the bushes were in full leaf, and he pulled forward his hood to protect his face from scratches. He crouched on the neck of his little horse, the reins loose, peeping up to keep his hawk in sight and leaving his mount to pick the way. As he galloped down stream he heard, above the patter of hooves, the clacking of the millwheel. The teal heard also, and jinked from the sound; his hawk cut a corner and overtook to kill. Thomas saw her standing on her prey, just below the mill but on the far side of the stream.
There was only one thought in his mind; this was the first time he had flown a hawk by himself, and he must lure her before she was lost. The stream was too wide to jump and too deep to ford, but the millrace was spanned by a little plank bridge. A sportsman won praise by riding over difficult places. In two strides he would be over, before he had time to be frightened. With a wrench at the bit he set his horse straight at the bridge, and again dropped the reins on his neck.
Then things began to happen all at once. Hooves slipped on the wet planking, and the horse, striving to keep its feet, gave a wriggle of its backbone more disconcerting than any buck. As Thomas shot out of the saddle he was conscious of a single agonizing thought: the hobby had his feet under him again, and would cross the stream safely; he, Thomas, had ‘dismounted of his own free will’, as the grooms said caustically when an unpractised jouster lay on the ground with his destrier standing over him. As a horseman he was disgraced, and at Pevensey horsemanship counted for more than anything else in the world.
A moment later panic displaced shame. He was borne along by the current, unable even to call for help; for his hood, twisted in the water, now completely covered his face. He could hear the clack of the wheel, though he could not see when he would reach it to be flogged to pieces by the great baulks of timber. In a few seconds he would be dead.
Suddenly he was calm. He could do nothing to save himself, but he had been granted the great mercy of knowing he was about to die. His eyes were so absorbed in studying the weave of his hood against the grey underwater light that he could not fix his mind on the Judgment of God which he was about to experience; but his training at Merton came to his help, and mechanically he repeated the Act of Contrition. Then something hit him on the back of the neck. That must be the wheel, though dying was not so painful as he had expected. He blew a bubble, and fainted.
When he came to himself he was lying prone over a log, vomiting water. As someone turned him over he groaned. Then he was aware of a rough figure looming over him, rumbling quietly but continuously in the English of Sussex. ‘Eh, master, you were born to be hanged, that I see. Falling into the race with the wheel going, and your mouth stopped by your hood! Water won’t drown a skylarking boy, so they say; but you tried your luck very high. Bothering me when I have all that grist to sack and weigh! Boys and hawkers, they’re always a nuisance to an honest miller; but a boy with a hawk beats all! Are you feeling better? I’ll catch your pony and set you on your way.’
Thomas sat up, found himself fainting, and lay back again.
‘Ah, you’ll have to wait a bit, master,’ the miller continued. ‘You’re not the first I’ve fished out of the race, and ’tis a fearful thing. But, come to think of it, you’re the first who couldn’t cry for help. I just came forth to stop the wheel, with the stones grinding air; and there you were. ’Tis so damned lucky it must mean something. Maybe your doom is a great one, and you must live until it comes to you. Tell me your name, lad, and I’ll remember it. I may hear it again.’
‘I am Thomas fitzGilbert, or Thomas Becket, or Thomas of Cheapside in London. And I thank you for saving my life,’ Thomas murmured.
‘Don’t rub it in. Maybe I saved your life, but then, d’ye see, I owe a life to the river. Better say an angel saved your life. So you’re a Norman? Well, there may be some good ones. I can’t say your father’s name, and London is a big place; but Becket I can remember, it’s the name we give to that black bird over there. If ever Thomas Becket makes a stir in the world I shall know for sure that this morning’s work was a miracle.’
Thomas rode gently home by the high road (but the hawk flew away and was never recovered). His talk with the miller had given him something to think over. It was really very extraordinary that the man should have come out to stop his wheel at the exact moment that a drowning boy was being swept to his death, and that the current should have carried him to the feet of his rescuer. He knew the rustic superstition that it is dangerous to cheat a river of its prey; that was why the miller had tried to lay the responsibility on Fate. But the miller might be right, all the same. Perhaps he, Thomas, was reserved for some great destiny.
2. Thomas of Cheapside
At the age of fifteen he had the freedom of an adult. For the discipline of St. Paul’s grammar school seemed as light as silk after the unrelenting rectitude of Merton. At the Priory he could never let himself go; even Recreation was no more than decorous conversation on seemly subjects, and the cowl all wore reminded them that they must behave as Augustinians every waking moment. Now he wore the blue tunic and grey chausses that had been his livery at Pevensey, only donning the black gown of a clerk when he was in the class room. In the evening he was free to wander through the streets of London.
The most fascinating part of the city lay at his own doorstep, Cheapside of the goldsmiths and drapers. Here were the wealth and luxury which had made London famous: silk mantle
s from the great Christian cities of the eastern Mediterranean, sugar from infidel lands even farther to the eastward, ginger from the realm of Prester John on the far side of the infidels, and parrots and monkeys, fashionable pets for fashionable ladies, from beyond the known world. Just as valuable, though they came from nearer home, were the trinket-boxes decorated with enamel from Limoges or Cosmati-work from Rome. Drapers sold heavily embroidered vestments and mantles of ceremony, stiff with gold and silver thread; these were just beginning their long journey, for Opus Anglicanum, English embroidery, was the best in the world, sold by merchants in Poland and Constantinople. For these luxuries, which they could get nowhere else in England, great men or their stewards visited Cheapside; the taverns and cookshops catered for the rich, and the merchants standing in their doorways were dressed like great lords. But Goodman Gilbert was grander than the grandest draper. He never stood in his doorway, soliciting custom. He lived chiefly by the rent of house-property he had bought, and nowadays when he dealt in hides it was often by letter. His home showed no trace of vulgar commerce, and all through the summer a shield above his door indicated that some lord had accepted the hospitality of a fellow-Norman while he settled his affairs in the city.
The business that brought great lords to London, when they were not buying amusing trifles in Cheapside, was usually with the Barons of the Exchequer. The Exchequer lay to the west side of the city, in the village that was growing up beside the royal Abbey of Westminster. There every sheriff must settle his accounts twice a year, and the lords of great Honours came to compound for Fines or Reliefs; but the village was always overcrowded, and unless the lords brought tents they must lodge in the city. When he was bored with the bustle of Cheapside Thomas might stroll to Ludgate to see them riding in and out on smart hackneys or fierce destriers.
Eastward on the river lay Billingsgate, and beyond it the tidal stream where moored the ships from oversea. That was the gay quarter, where wineshops full of painted women opened their doors to sailors. It was the favourite haunt of many London boys, eager to earn a tip as guides or by carrying the baggage of a foreigner; but Thomas seldom went there. He had an innate liking for order and good manners, which Pevensey had reinforced; low company had no charm for him.
His schoolfellows never tired of staring at the painted women, though they could not afford to do more than stare. To Thomas they were physically revolting. He was at the age to feel the curiosity of puberty, but since he went to Merton he had known that these urges would come, and that they must be resisted. Dignity forbade him to have an affair with a common drab. Sometimes he wondered whether one day he would fall in love with a noble lady, fall completely and utterly in love as did the knights in the Romances, so that comradeship and good repute, and even the oath to a liegelord which was the strongest tie in the secular world, were all as nothing against the power of Cupid. That was known to be the overwhelming passion, so strong that its victims could scarcely be blamed for yielding. But he thought he might be lucky enough to escape. He had been born with the handicap of a very quick temper, and by incessant discipline he had learned to master it; surely he would not also be afflicted by an overpowering temptation to lust.
To his contemporaries romantic love was a new and fashionable affliction, the latest and most interesting disease of the mind. All the best poets were embroidering the recently discovered history of King Arthur; to them Lancelot, compelled to betray his lord by love of Guinevere, was as much to be pitied as if he had been infected by a mortal sickness. That was how they saw the matter at Pevensey, listening to trouveres in the hall. But that was not how they saw the matter at Merton, and on this point Thomas considered Merton was right. If he followed his father in the family business he would presently marry the decent and well-dowered daughter of a fellow-burgess; if he became a tonsured clerk, which was what he wanted, he would never marry. Meanwhile, though he experienced some disturbing dreams, he remained a virgin.
There was another important quarter of London, besides the rich shops and the harbour. But good Londoners seldom went there, and did their best to forget about it. Where the eastern wall swept down to the river stood the Tower, astride the fortifications so that its garrison could enter or leave at will; and in the Tower lived the sheriff of Middlesex, with his band of unruly and bullying sergeants. Three times a year he met the burgesses assembled in their shire-court, and collected his farm. That was wrong, for any scholar would tell you that cities should collect their own taxes, as did the cities of antiquity. The Londoners could do it better by themselves, paying the King his due but collecting it on a fair assessment; in fact they had done it not so long ago. But nowadays King Henry, though he never demanded too much, liked to know that he had the physical power to tallage his burgesses at his own pleasure. His sheriff in the Tower, astride the circle of the cherished wall, was the symbol of royal dominion.
Thus the London of the burgesses lay between the King’s officials at Westminster and the King’s sergeants in the Tower. Nevertheless, the burgesses elected an alderman for each ward; and they all met in the folkmoot which had swallowed up the old shire-court of Middlesex. There was enough local politics to be interesting, and Goodman Gilbert, who had served one year as a rather weak alderman for Cheap, was interested in it.
Intertwined with this mercantile city lay the London of the clerks, affected by business prosperity but holding aloof from commerce. Here was the greatest concentration of learned men in England, thirteen religious communities and the clergy of 126 parish churches, all under the Bishop and the Chapter of St. Paul’s. Unemployed clerks naturally collected round this great pool of benefices, which was also next door to the King’s offices at Westminster. There were no less than three grammar schools, and by common consent the best of these was St. Paul’s.
At St. Paul’s Thomas worked very hard, but he found the study of rhetoric most unlike the silent application of Merton. He was set to learn by heart famous speeches of antiquity, or the unintelligible Greek names for various figures and modes of argument. He did this as well as his fellows, for he had a good memory; but then everyone in the school had a good and well-trained memory, or he would not have survived the rigours of elementary education. The chief object of a liberal education was to teach skill in argument; that was done by frequent disputations, extempore debates on set themes. In these debates a quick wit and a knack of making memorable assonances and jingles in rhyme counted for more than deep thought. Thomas proved an effective debater, and soon made his mark in the school.
At Merton he had never been positively unhappy; but he was quick to take the colour of his surroundings, and in the quiet earnestness of the monastery he had been dimly sober and obedient. In addition there were physical reasons for his disciplined and unspectacular willingness to please. He had grown too fast; he was always cold and nearly always tired. Now, at St. Paul’s, his strength had caught up with his height, and he felt an ever-renewed energy bubbling inside him every morning. Besides, the tone of St. Paul’s was gay and flippant, and he became gay and flippant to match his company. He was still rather too self-centred and withdrawn to make intimate friends, but he became a popular and respected leader of schoolboy opinion.
As his character expanded so did his stature. By his fifteenth birthday, in December 1133, he had grown up to his large hands and feet. He was more than six foot tall, and growing fast. He remained very thin, and he felt cold so keenly that his extremities were usually purple. His mother, anxious, had him examined by a physician, but the doctor of Salerno declared there was nothing to be done about it; Thomas had been born with a frigid temperament, and he must wear thick clothes and eat as much pepper as he could afford; even then he would seldom feel warm, but he would live as long as the next man.
On the afternoons of holy days he sometimes joined the young apprentices at football. It was expected of him, though he did not like it; partly because he considered it beneath the dignity of a Norman and a clerk, partly because the jostling
tried his naturally quick temper. Once, when he had been kicked on the elbow, the old red mist closed over his eyes, the red mist which rose in him whenever he felt pain or fear. Luckily his adversary was as tall as he and a good deal heavier; he did the fellow no permanent harm, and when he came to himself, shaken and ashamed, he found that the other players were inclined to treat him as a hero. But he knew very well that anger is a mortal sin; he repented earnestly, and at the next holiday forced himself to play football, smiling and enduring blows without returning them. He was a model of strenuous self-improvement, and his masters, who did not look for the selfless desire to serve God which had been the model at Merton, were delighted with his progress.
The great aquiline beak of a Norman nose that grew on him at this time was the common hallmark of his family, unremarked at home; though in Gilbert it was combined with weakness and dislike of effort it looked very fierce and determined. Thomas was not a handsome youth in the eyes of ladies, but men saw in him the promise of a worthy Norman warrior.
During the Easter holiday of 1134 his father had a talk with him. It was time for him to choose either the tonsure or the life of a burgess; which meant in practice that his father would choose for him.
Gilbert had been persuaded by the enthusiastic reports of his son’s teachers. Thomas had it in him to become a really learned clerk, and he would have enough money for a celibate to live on. Nowadays the family business was shrinking. Gilbert seldom rode through the southern counties at Michaelmas, buying hides; a block of houses by St. Paul’s yielded him an annual income. Thomas might pick and choose, without being driven by hunger to take the first benefice that offered. He had time to complete his education.
‘I have been thinking,’ said his father, ‘about the Diocese you should choose for your ordination. That is, if you are still eager to be a clerk?’
God and My Right Page 4
