The Pillars of the Earth - Ken Follett [539]
The clergy began to come to their senses. The archbishop’s chamberlain, Osbert, with tears streaming down his face, took out a knife and cut a strip from his own shirt, then bent down by the body and clumsily, gruesomely tied Thomas’s skull back on to his head, in a pathetic attempt to restore a modicum of dignity to the horribly violated person of the archbishop. As he did so, a low collective groan went up from the crowd all around.
Some monks brought a stretcher. They lifted Thomas onto it gently. Many hands reached out to help them. Philip saw that the archbishop’s handsome face was peaceful, the only sign of violence being a thin line of blood running from the right temple, across the nose, to the left cheek.
As they lifted the stretcher, Philip picked up the broken stump of the sword that had killed Thomas. He kept thinking of the woman who had collected the archbishop’s blood in a bottle, as if he were a saint. There was a massive significance to that small act of hers, but Philip was not yet sure exactly what it was.
The people followed the stretcher, drawn by an invisible force. Philip went with the crowd, feeling the weird compulsion that gripped them all. The monks carried the body through the chancel and lowered it gently to the ground in front of the high altar. The crowd, many of them praying aloud, watched as a priest brought a clean cloth and bandaged the head neatly, then covered most of the bandage with a new cap.
A monk cut through the black archbishop’s mantle, which was soiled with blood, and removed it. The man seemed unsure what to do with the bloody garment, and turned as if to throw it to one side. A citizen stepped forward quickly and took it from him as if it were a precious object.
The thought that had been hovering uncertainly in the back of Philip’s mind now came to the foreground in an inspirational flash. The citizens were treating Thomas like a martyr, eagerly collecting his blood and his clothes as if they had the supernatural powers of saints’ relics. Philip had been regarding the murder as a political defeat for the Church, but the people here did not see it that way: they saw a martyrdom. And the death of a martyr, while it might look like a defeat, never failed to provide inspiration and strength to the Church in the end.
Philip thought again of the hundreds of people who had flocked to Kingsbridge to build the cathedral, and of the men, women and children who had worked together half the night to put up the town wall. If such people could be mobilized now, he thought with a mounting sense of excitement, they might raise a cry of outrage so loud it would be heard all over the world.
Looking at the men and women gathered around the body, their faces suffused with grief and horror, Philip realized that they only wanted a leader.
Was it possible?
There was something familiar about this situation, he realized. A mutilated corpse, a crowd of onlookers, and some soldiers in the distance: where had he seen this before? What should happen next, he felt, was that a small group of followers of the dead man would range themselves against all the power and authority of a mighty empire.
Of course. That was how Christianity started.
And when he understood that, he knew what he had to do next.
He moved in front of the altar and turned to face the crowd. He still had the broken sword in his hand. Everyone stared at him. He suffered a moment of self-doubt. Can I do it? he thought. Can I start a movement, here and now, that will shake the throne of England? He looked at their faces. As well as grief and rage, he saw, in one or two expressions, a hint of hope.
He lifted the sword on high.
“This sword killed a saint,” he began.
There was a murmur of agreement.
Encouraged, Philip said: “Here tonight we have witnessed a martyrdom.”
The priests and monks looked surprised. Like Philip, they had not immediately seen the real significance of the murder they had witnessed. But the townspeople had, and they voiced their approval.
“Each one of us must go from this place and tell what