London - Edward Rutherfurd [158]
“Your Church courts either find their own people innocent, or they give them a few penances and nothing more. You are defending the most utter rogues,” he had charged.
“The privilege of the Church must be sacrosanct,” Becket would respond. “It’s a matter of principle.”
True, those guilty of serious crimes were supposed to be stripped of their orders and handed over to the king’s courts for punishment. “But even that you oppose,” King Henry had protested. “It’s outrageous.” And many sensible men in the Church thought he was right. Nevertheless, Becket had refused to give in, remaining in exile instead, and the matter had still to be resolved.
The trial of Pentecost Silversleeves had taken place the day before, at a hearing hastily called and held in the hall of the Bishop of London’s house at St Paul’s. It had been a dour proceeding.
Gilbert Foliot, Bishop of London, was an aristocrat. His black robe was silken. His gaunt and yellowed face was like antique vellum drawn across a skull. His hands were thin as claws. He had no time for criminal clerics, nor for Becket, whom he regarded as a vulgar fool. As his hawkish eyes rested upon the trembling, long-nosed clerk, he had felt only contempt. “You should be handed over to the king for execution,” he had remarked drily. But there was nothing he could do about it.
For the ecclesiastical court still followed the ancient rules of oath-swearing. If an accused cleric said he was innocent and could provide enough reputable witnesses to swear to it, then he had to be found not guilty. Despite the fact that Pentecost’s accomplices, now suffering the king’s rougher justice, had all named him, the Silversleeves family had produced two priests, an archdeacon and three aldermen, all of whom either owed them favours or were subject to blackmail, to swear upon oath to the bishop that young Pentecost had never been near the scene of the crime.
“I am therefore obliged,” Foliot had said with a look of contempt for Silversleeves and his witnesses, “to find you innocent. And since technically you are innocent, you cannot be handed over to the king’s justice.” Then, with a cold menace, he had added: “However, I reserve the right to take my own view of this matter, and I tell you this: neither you, nor your mendacious witnesses, will ever, if I can prevent it, receive any preferment in this diocese again.” With which he had waved them away.
The other two had floated. They were all guilty. Now, upon the king’s particular orders, the sentence was to be carried out at once. Silversleeves trembled.
It was just then that he caught sight of the stout figure with the white patch in his hair. He was only thirty feet away and he had just turned round. Silversleeves tried to duck, but the master craftsman had seen him and a second later was jostling through the crowd. It was useless to try to get away. Silversleeves froze.
Simon the armourer was a conservative fellow. He lived in the house and followed the craft of his great-grandfather, Alfred. He still held several strips of land in the hamlet near Windsor, for which he paid rent. And he was proud of his skill as a master craftsman.
But he was far from the rich wholesale merchants, the aldermen, who ran the ever-growing city. “They never dirty their hands with work like we do,” he would say. “They hardly ever touch their goods. Their children are too proud to work at all, half of them. Think they’re nobles.” Here he would spit. “But they aren’t. They’re just merchants, no better than me.”
The intrusion of the young bloods into his house and the murder of his favourite apprentice had not only shocked and saddened him, it had positively infuriated him precisely because of the contempt for his class that it showed. “They’re no