Plantagenet 1 - The Plantagenet Prelude

by Jean Plaidy

  Gilbert had reached London some months earlier. He had resumed his business and as before kept open house for visiting friends. One of these, a Norman knight named Richer de L’Aigle, a man of some culture, owned an estate in the country.

  Richer always enjoyed his visits to London, largely because it meant a pleasant evening or two spent with his old friend Gilbert Becket. They would talk into the night and discuss many subjects before Gilbert lighted his old friend to bed with a waxen candle.

  Richer had heard of Gilbert’s adventures in the Emir’s palace and was always interested to talk about them. Gilbert’s servant Richard, who had been at his master’s side through all that had happened, had also many a tale to tell of those adventures to his fellow-servants.

  When Gilbert was telling Richer more details of how he had made the escape which would have seemed impossible, he added that he believed only Divine help had brought them home.

  ‘During that perilous journey,’ he said, ‘I made a vow that if I could reach home safely once more I would pay another visit to the Holy Land within ten years.’

  ‘So you will be going again. Do not expect the same luck next time.’

  ‘I shall wait for God to show me His will,’ said Gilbert solemnly, ‘and whatever it may be I shall accept it.’

  ‘Still, perhaps it is tempting Providence when you consider you have done it once and come safely through. Think of all those who are lost on the way.’

  They were talking thus when Richard burst in upon them.

  ‘Master,’ he stammered, ‘I have seen … I have seen …’

  ‘Come, Richard, what have you seen?’ asked Gilbert.

  ‘A ghost it appears,’ put in Richer.

  ‘No, master. I have seen the Emir’s daughter.’

  ‘What?’ cried Gilbert.

  ‘I had heard that a strange woman was in the street. She was calling “Gilbert”. Just “Gilbert” again and again. I went to look at her. An apprentice told me she was close by and there she was.’

  ‘The Emir’s daughter, Richard. You are mistaken.’

  ‘Nay, master, I was not, for she saw me and she cried aloud with joy, for she knew me. She remembered me in her father’s palace.’

  Gilbert had risen to his feet.

  ‘You must take me to her.’

  ‘She is here, master. She followed me.’

  Gilbert hurried from the room and there standing in his doorway was Mahault. When she saw him she gave a cry of joy and fell on her knees before him.

  He lifted her; he looked into her face and he spoke to her in her own tongue which she had not heard for so long.

  ‘You came … so far.’

  ‘God guided me,’ she said simply.

  ‘So … you hoped to find me.’

  ‘I knew I should, if it were His will and it is.’

  Richer de L’Aigle looked on at the scene with amazement as Gilbert called for his servants to prepare hot food. She must be hungry, he said, and she was footsore and weary.

  She laughed and wept with happiness. A miracle had brought her across terrifying land and sea to Gilbert.

  He considered her. She was beautiful, young and ardent. She loved the Christian faith almost as much as she loved Gilbert. She was a living example of a soul that was saved.

  He could not keep her in his house. That was something the proprieties would not allow and Gilbert did not know what he could do with her. There was a good and sober widow who lived close by and for whom he had been able to do some favour. He went to her, told her of his predicament and asked if she would take the strange young woman under her care until something could be settled. This she agreed to do, and Gilbert conducted her to the widow’s house where he told her she must wait awhile.

  Gilbert had friends in the Church and he decided to ask the advice of some of its members as to what he could do. There was in London at the time a gathering of the bishops presided over by the Bishop of London, and since the Emir’s daughter was an infidel and would be so until she was baptised, the answer to his predicament could well come from the Church.

  Before the bishops, Gilbert related his adventure, and the Bishop of Chichester rose suddenly and spoke as though he were in a dream. He said: ‘It is the hand of God and not of man which has brought this woman from so far a country. She will bear a son whose labours and sanctity will turn to the profit of the Church and the glory of God.’

  These were strange words, for Gilbert had not mentioned the thought of marrying her - although it had entered his head. They sounded like a prophecy. Gilbert was then filled with a desire to marry the Emir’s daughter and have a son by her.

  ‘It would be necessary,’ said the Bishop of London, ‘for her to be baptised. If she agrees to this then you should marry her.’

  Gilbert went to Mahault and told her this. Her eyes sparkled with happiness. Most joyfully would she be baptised. She had come to England for this - and to marry Gilbert.

  So they were married and very soon she became pregnant. She was certain that she would bear a son who was destined for greatness.

  Thus before Thomas was born he had made his impact on the world.

  The daughter of the Emir, now baptised as Mahault, was the most devout of Christians. She was the happiest of women for God had shown her a miracle. She had asked and had been given. She was the wife of Gilbert, a fact which would have seemed impossible while she was in her father’s palace. Here it was the most natural thing in the world. Surely a miracle.

  And when very soon after the marriage she was pregnant, she was certain that she was going to have a son. The Bishop of Chichester had prophesied this. God had brought her through great difficulties; she had made a journey which many would have said was impossible; she had come to a strange country knowing only two words: ‘London’ and ‘Gilbert’. The first was easy to find; and God had brought her to the second.

  She began to have visions. Her son was going to be a great man. It was to bear this son that God had brought her here. She dreamed of him; always she saw him in those dreams surrounded by a soft light. He would be a Christian and his life would be dedicated to God. It seemed likely that he would be a man of the Church and the highest office in the Church was that of an archbishop.

  ‘I know my son will be an archbishop,’ she said.

  Gilbert was uneasy. He was no longer a man who could go where he would. He had a wife and soon he would have a child.

  She sensed his fears and asked him what ailed him. He told her then that he had made a vow to God that if he arrived home safely, he would visit the Holy Land again and he feared that now he had such responsibilities he would be unable to keep his promise to God.

  She smiled at him. ‘You have made a promise to God,’ she said, ‘and that promise must be kept. Do not think of me. If Richard remains with me, as he speaks my tongue, I shall be well enough; and soon I shall speak English, for I must do so since I am to care for my son.’

  In due course her child was born. It was a boy, as she had known it would be, and when the midwife held him in her arms, Mahault heard a voice say, ‘It is an archbishop we are holding.’

  She could not ask the midwife what she meant by that because she could not make herself understood, but later she asked Gilbert to find out why the woman had made such a remark. The midwife’s answer was that she had said no such thing.

  The boy was called Thomas and he was the delight of his mother’s life. She was sure that nothing was too good for him. His education must be of the best. In the meantime since Gilbert had made his promise to God he should keep it without delay for when the boy grew older he would need a father more than he did when he was too young to recognise him.

  So Gilbert went off to the Holy Land once more and Mahault devoted herself to looking after her son and learning English.

  Her premonitions as to his future greatness continued. One night she dreamed that the nurse had left the baby without a quilt in his cradle and when she reproved her, the nurse replie
d: ‘But my lady, he is covered with a beautiful quilt.’ ‘Bring it to me here,’ she had answered, thinking to prove that the nurse was deceiving her. The nurse came with a large quilt of a beautiful crimson cloth. She put it on her mistress’s bed and attempted to unfold it, but the more she unfolded the larger it grew, and they took it to the largest room in the house because it was too big to unfold in a smaller one. Nor could it be unfolded there so they took it into the street. But they could not unfold it because the more they tried to the bigger the quilt grew, and suddenly it began to unfold itself and covered the street and houses around them, and went on and on, and they knew it had reached the end of the land.

  She awoke from this dream with the certainty that it had especial significance, which was that her son Thomas was destined for greatness.

  Because she could not be thankful enough to the God of her new religion who had brought her safely to London that she might bear this son, she would have him weighed often and give to the poor a weight of clothes or food equal to that of the boy.

  She would talk to him of the need to be good and serve God. and how this could best be done by caring for others.

  ‘Always help those poorer than yourself, my little one,’ she would say. ‘That is a good way to serve God.’

  Gilbert returned after three and a half years to find that at the age of four, young Thomas was already showing signs of great intelligence. Gilbert was glad to be home; he would make no more vows. Two trips to the Holy Land should be enough to placate his Maker for he had never been guilty of anything but the most venial sins.

  He soon became as certain as Mahault was that there was something special about their son.

  In the next few years they had two more children. These were daughters, good bright pleasant girls, but Thomas was apart from them. Sir Richer de L’Aigle had become an even more frequent visitor than he had been in the past. He had been fascinated by the account of Mahault’s determination to find Gilbert; he declared he would not have believed it possible for a young woman to find her way with nothing more to guide her than two words. He was of the opinion that only Divine providence could have brought her to Gilbert and his interest in their unusual son grew.

  As soon as Thomas was old enough his father put him in the care of the Canons of Merton to whom many well-born people sent the sons they hoped would enter the Church.

  ‘This would be but the beginning,’ Gilbert confided to his wife. ‘Afterwards Thomas must attend one of the great seats of learning, but Merton is a good beginning and it would mean that he was not too far from us.’

  At Merton Thomas was soon surprising his teachers by his ability to learn and so confirming his parents’ certainty that he was destined for a great future. It so happened that during harvest time when the great concern was to bring in the corn, the pupils of Merton were sent to their homes to get them out of the way, and during one summer Richer de L’Aigle happened to call on the Beckets. Finding Thomas there, home from school, he suggested that he take him with him to his residence at Pevensey Castle and there instil into him the gracious art of living like a nobleman. Thomas took to the life with as much eagerness as he had taken to learning.

  Richer instructed him how to ride like a knight, how to hunt with a falcon and all the accomplishments which could not have been acquired in his London home.

  So successful was this stay at Pevensey Castle and so fond had the young knight grown of Thomas that the invitation was repeated often. Mahault was delighted; she saw the change in her son. He had become fastidious in his dress; he spoke not only like a scholar but like a gentleman and she believed that God had sent Richer de L’Aigle into their lives that Thomas might be groomed to take one of the highest positions in the country.

  When Thomas was sufficiently educated to have earned his own living doing clerical work for a merchant of London, he left Merton, but his parents had plans for him. The centre of learning was said to be in Paris and no other place would be good enough for Thomas. So to Paris went Thomas.

  There he perfected his knowledge of the French language, his great aim being to speak it as a Frenchman; his easy manners - learned at Pevensey Castle - enabled him to mingle with members of high society and he found he had a taste for their company. No one would have guessed that the elegant Thomas was the son of a merchant; and Thomas’s great ambition at this time was to play a brilliant part in the world where he gained the respect of men and women and lived in comfort and luxury.

  When he returned to London he had the manners of a nobleman although he was educated far beyond most of them; and although she clung to her belief in the dreams and portents which she swore had come to her, even his mother had to admit that Thomas appeared to have no inclination towards the Church. Instead he became interested in business and joined the municipal administration of London. Here his alert mind immediately called attention to him and many rich merchants who were friends of his father sought to get him to join them in the management of their businesses.

  Mahault was not dismayed, so certain was she of his destiny. For several years she had suffered during the winter from a persistent cough, and the damp mist of the river after the dry sunny climate of her native land was having an ever-worsening effect upon her health. Strangely enough one of her daughters showed a desire for the religious life and was found a place in a convent at Barking; the other married a London merchant. They were happily settled; the only one not was Thomas. That would come, she was convinced. So great was his destiny that he must have experience of many ways of life before he realised it.

  He was twenty when Mahault died. He was with her at the end and on his knees told her of his love and gratitude. She lay smiling at him thinking of the day she had first seen Gilbert and had loved him and his God. She would not have had it otherwise, for she believed that everything that had happened to her had been but a preparation for Thomas.

  ‘God has chosen you, my son,’ she said, her eyes glowing with prophecy. ‘I was brought out of my native land that I might give birth to you.’

  And so convincing was she that Thomas believed her; and afterwards in his most trying moments he would remember the conviction in the eyes of his dying mother and a belief in himself would come to him, a belief which refused to accept failure.

  Mahault’s death was the first blow. Without her the household was a dull one. Gilbert seemed to lose heart in his business; Thomas was desolate. He no longer took pleasure in following the pursuits he had learned at Pevensey Castle. He knew that he had delighted too much in being on equal terms with the rich and well-born. He could think of little but the loss his mother’s passing had made in his life, and he reproached himself that he had not realised what she meant to him until he had lost her.

  A fearful disaster struck Gilbert when his house and business premises were burned to the ground. Once a blaze started in the wooden structure there was little hope of stemming it. His losses were great. The shock of this in addition to his wife’s death had a deep effect on Gilbert. He had lost too much, and with it the will to rebuild his business. Within a few months he was dead.

  Thomas was alone.

  He became melancholy. He gave up hunting and staying at the houses of his friends who in the past had delighted in his company. It seemed that he was adopting the life of a recluse when Theobald the Archbishop of Canterbury asked him to visit him.

  Theobald, who had played with Gilbert when they lived in their Norman village, had heard of Gilbert’s death and wished to renew his acquaintance with Gilbert’s son.

  They met, and there was an immediate affection between them. Theobald was lonely in his high office and saw in Thomas the son he had never had.

  To Theobald, Thomas could talk of his parents and Theobald listened intently. Their minds were in tune. When Thomas visited the Archbishop, Theobald was always loath to let him go and the visits became more and more frequent.

  Then one day Theobald said: ‘Thomas, come into my household. There is much work for y
ou to do. I need someone who will work with me, who will be close to me, whom I can trust.’

  Thomas hesitated. ‘Should I be starting out on a career in the Church?’ he asked.

  ‘Why should you not? You are fitted for it. Come, Thomas. Think of this.’

  For some time Thomas considered. Whither was he going? He knew that till now he had been marking time. He thought of his mother’s dreams of the archbishop’s quilt and he knew that he must go to Theobald.

  So when he was twenty-five years of age Thomas Becket joined the household of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

  The Archbishop’s palace was a manor house situated at Harrow on the Hill. Here he lived in a state which befitted his position. His power was great. He was more than head of the Church; he had the power to select certain officials of State; and his authority was second only to that of the King. Theobald was rich, for he possessed many castles and manors throughout the country, and from all over the world distinguished men came to visit him.

  Thomas, after the years he had spent working in municipal affairs and in a merchant’s counting-house, was amazed at the life into which he felt he had been thrust, and he realised that he had much to learn if he were to take his place in it.

  Theobald had a special interest in him and was certain that in a few years’ time Thomas would be ready for a high office. At the time of his arrival, however, he lacked the learning of the clerics in the Archbishop’s household and immediately set about remedying that. His innate elegance, his perfect manners, the purity of his existence and his dedication to learning soon won the admiration of the Archbishop and those who wished him well, but ambitious young men in the Archbishop’s household were beginning to regard Thomas with envious eyes.

  Why should Thomas Becket be specially favoured by the Archbishop? Who was Thomas Becket? The son of a merchant! And what was that rumour about a Saracen woman? Was this merchant’s son, this clerk, going to be put above them? There was no doubt that this young man among all those whom he gathered together in his household in order that they should be prepared to play their part in the Church, was his favourite.