“You and I will go in,” he said. “We will take ten men with us. It should be enough to do what needs to be done. Have the rest wait out here with the horses and prepare to fend off any papal soldiers who try to intervene.”
Kenan nodded firmly, relaying the message to the soldiers behind them. A fearless man, Kenan hadn’t taken issue with Henry’s directive in the least. He wasn’t a great supporter of the church, feeling that it was more a hotbed of greed for men pretending to be pious, so he was more than willing to help Val subdue Canterbury. Once the orders were delivered and he selected the men to accompany them inside, he turned to Val.
“Awaiting your move, my lord,” he said quietly.
Val silently dismounted his horse, handing the reins over to one of the soldiers remaining behind as he, Kenan, and ten men proceeded onto the grounds of Canterbury Cathedral. They were armed and it wasn’t usual to enter a house of worship armed, but since Val was here on official business, he maintained his weapons and so did his men. He also brought with him the warrant for Canterbury’s arrest, preparing to read it to the man before he took him into custody.
“Canterbury should be heading into the cathedral from the cloister by now,” Kenan said, looking around the grounds and spying papal guards spread out over the area. “Shall we intercept him before he gives mass?”
Val, too, was very attuned to their surroundings but he was mostly looking for the four knights who had come ahead of him. “Nay,” he replied. “We wait until he is finished and arrest him when he emerges from the cathedral. He will return to the cloister and that is where we shall wait for him. The less attention we draw to this, the better. I want to get the man out of Canterbury before we are mobbed by those trying to protect him.”
Kenan understood. He could tell Val was on edge, which had him on edge as well. There was prudence in a sense of fear in this situation. Fear equated to caution and, for something like this, they needed an abundance of it. This had the potential to be more volatile than they could imagine. Kenan quietly relayed the orders to the soldiers behind him, men bearing the colors of de Nerra of Hampshire.
Since it was dark, most of the worshippers had already gone into the cathedral as Vespers was about to begin. Only a few people saw the gang of soldiers led by two knights heading towards the cloister. But Val knew that, sooner or later, word would get around regarding their presence and it could, quite possibly, alert Canterbury or, worse, his guards.
Val had the law on his side but Canterbury had the church, and they were on church grounds, so the sooner they get in and out, the better. He fought down the apprehension he felt. Instead, he focused on what needed to be done. The moment was upon him and he would not fail. He and his men were just approaching the cloister entrance to the cathedral when they began to hear grunts and cries.
It sounded like a fight. Men were crying out and moaning. And the unmistakable sounds of weapons could be heard. Val and Kenan looked at each other in shock before breaking into a run, dashing to the cathedral entrance and entering into the dark, cold corridor that connected the cloister to the cathedral.
It smelled like earth and death in the corridor, linked to the vaults as well as the church beyond. Smells of the dead were permeating the very walls. Even though the corridor was weakly lit by intermittent torch light, they could immediately see a body prone on the ground, surrounded by men with weapons.
As Val watched in horror, someone– it wasn’t clear because of the darkness of the corridor– brought their weapon to bear on the prone form’s head. Bone and tissue went spraying onto the floor. The blow was so hard that a piece of skull ended up right by Val’s foot. Shocked, he unsheathed his weapon and charged forward only to see men he recognized standing over the body.
De Morville… FitzUrse… le Breton… de Tracy.
As their features became clearer in the weak light, Val could hardly believe the scene he was witnessing. Horror turned to confusion until he looked at the body on the ground and saw the unmistakable regalia of an archbishop– deep blue robe, red lining, and white under garment. Bile rose in his throat.
“Stop!” he gasped, reaching out to grab the man’s hand before he could come down again on the clearly dead body.“Clearly, this man will arise no more. What in the hell have you done?”
It was Hugh’s hand that he had grabbed. At the sound of Val’s voice, Hugh and the three knights looked at Val with great surprise.
“Val!” Hugh gasped. “You– you have come!”
Val’s astonishment and fury was written all over his face. “You knew I would,” he boomed. “You gave Calum Henry’s missive and told him that I should follow you to Canterbury with all due haste and here I am. But– dear God, what havoc have you brought about here?”
Moans and gasps caught his attention. It was becoming evident through the weak torchlight that there were other men who had been wounded in the fight. Val could see at least four priests, possibly more but it was difficult to tell in the weak light. Priests who had undoubtedly been attending Canterbury as he’d headed into the cathedral for Vespers and men who had fought back when the knights attacked. Of the four men Val could see, two were not moving, one was cringing against the wall in shock, and the last man– cut across the shoulder brutally– was trying to push himself into a sitting position.
“They have killed him,” the man wept, blood staining his clerical tunic. “Our most holy lord has been murdered!”
Those words hit Val as surely as if they had taken the form of a fist, driving into his chest and expelling the breath from him. He was stunned. He looked down at his feet, at the man in the archbishop’s robes whose head had been bashed in. The features were barely recognizable but in that mess of tissue, he saw features that were familiar.
It was Thomas Becket.
“My God,” he breathed. “Hugh, tell me what happened.”
Hugh was breathing heavily, still worked up from the fight. He struggled to answer the question. “It happened so quickly.”
“Tell me!”
Hugh swallowed hard. “This morning, we tried to convince Canterbury to surrender to you,” he said hoarsely. “We– all of us– had hoped to deliver him to you peacefully but he refused, so we returned this evening with weapons in the hope of forcing him to surrender. He… he fought back, Val. We had no choice.”
Val’s jaw ticked as he gazed down at the bloodied head. There was so much emotion pent up in him at the moment that he hardly knew where to begin with it.
“Was he armed?” he asked, teeth clenched.
Hugh glanced at the knights around him, the three he’d been in collusion with. “That staff,” he muttered. “That holy staff. He tried… I am not exactly sure, but I believe he tried to ram Reg with it. After that… after that, I do not recall what happened. It happened so quickly.”
Val looked around and saw no staff. At least, not obviously. He pointed to the dead man. “You killed him,” he hissed. “You lost control and you killed him. By all that is holy, Hugh, do you realize what you have done?”
