Becket And Other Plays Part 25

These are by-things In the great cause.

BECKET.

The by-things of the Lord Are the wrong'd innocences that will cry From all the hidden by-ways of the world In the great day against the wronger. I know Thy meaning. Perish she, I, all, before The Church should suffer wrong!

HERBERT.

Do you see, my lord, There is the King talking with Walter Map?

BECKET.

He hath the Pope's last letters, and they threaten The immediate thunder-blast of interdict: Yet he can scarce be touching upon those, Or scarce would smile that fas.h.i.+on.

HERBERT.

Winter suns.h.i.+ne!

Beware of opening out thy bosom to it, Lest thou, myself, and all thy flock should catch An after ague-fit of trembling. Look!

He bows, he bares his head, he is coming hither.

Still with a smile.

_Enter_ KING HENRY _and_ WALTER MAP.

HENRY.

We have had so many hours together, Thomas, So many happy hours alone together, That I would speak with you once more alone.

BECKET.

My liege, your will and happiness are mine.

[_Exeunt_ KING _and_ BECKET.

HERBERT.

The same smile still.

WALTER MAP.

Do you see that great black cloud that hath come over the sun and cast us all into shadow?

HERBERT.

And feel it too.

WALTER MAP.

And see you yon side-beam that is forced from under it, and sets the church-tower over there all a-h.e.l.l-fire as it were?

HERBERT.

Ay.

WALTER MAP.

It is this black, bell-silencing, anti-marrying, burial-hindering interdict that hath squeezed out this side-smile upon Canterbury, whereof may come conflagration. Were I Thomas, I wouldn't trust it.

Sudden change is a house on sand; and tho' I count Henry honest enough, yet when fear creeps in at the front, honesty steals out at the back, and the King at last is fairly scared by this cloud--this interdict. I have been more for the King than the Church in this matter--yea, even for the sake of the Church: for, truly, as the case stood, you had safelier have slain an archbishop than a she-goat: but our recoverer and upholder of customs hath in this crowning of young Henry by York and London so violated the immemorial usage of the Church, that, like the gravedigger's child I have heard of, trying to ring the bell, he hath half-hanged himself in the rope of the Church, or rather pulled all the Church with the Holy Father astride of it down upon his own head.

HERBERT.

Were you there?

WALTER MAP.

In the church rope?--no. I was at the crowning, for I have pleasure in the pleasure of crowds, and to read the faces of men at a great show.

HERBERT.

And how did Roger of York comport himself?

WALTER MAP.

As magnificently and archiepiscopally as our Thomas would have done: only there was a dare-devil in his eye--I should say a dare-Becket. He thought less of two kings than of one Roger the king of the occasion.

Foliot is the holier man, perhaps the better. Once or twice there ran a twitch across his face as who should say what's to follow? but Salisbury was a calf cowed by Mother Church, and every now and then glancing about him like a thief at night when he hears a door open in the house and thinks 'the master.'

HERBERT.

And the father-king?

WALTER MAP.

The father's eye was so tender it would have called a goose off the green, and once he strove to hide his face, like the Greek king when his daughter was sacrificed, but he thought better of it: it was but the sacrifice of a kingdom to his son, a smaller matter; but as to the young crownling himself, he looked so malapert in the eyes, that had I fathered him I had given him more of the rod than the sceptre. Then followed the thunder of the captains and the shouting, and so we came on to the banquet, from whence there puffed out such an incense of unctuosity into the nostrils of our G.o.ds of Church and State, that Lucullus or Apicius might have sniffed it in their Hades of heathenism, so that the smell of their own roast had not come across it--

HERBERT.

Map, tho' you make your b.u.t.t too big, you overshoot it.

WALTER MAP.

--For as to the fish, they de-miracled the miraculous draught, and might have sunk a navy--

HERBERT.

There again, Goliasing and Goliathising!

WALTER MAP.

--And as for the flesh at table, a whole Peter's sheet, with all manner of game, and four-footed things, and fowls--

HERBERT.

And all manner of creeping things too?

WALTER MAP.

--Well, there were Abbots--but they did not bring their women; and so we were dull enough at first, but in the end we flourished out into a merriment; for the old King would act servitor and hand a dish to his son; whereupon my Lord of York--his fine-cut face bowing and beaming with all that courtesy which hath less loyalty in it than the backward sc.r.a.pe of the clown's heel--'great honour,' says he, 'from the King's self to the King's son.' Did you hear the young King's quip?

HERBERT.

No, what was it?

WALTER MAP.

Glancing at the days when his father was only Earl of Anjou, he answered:--'Should not an earl's son wait on a king's son?' And when the cold corners of the King's mouth began to thaw, there was a great motion of laughter among us, part real, part childlike, to be freed from the dulness--part royal, for King and kingling both laughed, and so we could not but laugh, as by a royal necessity--part childlike again--when we felt we had laughed too long and could not stay ourselves--many midriff-shaken even to tears, as springs gush out after earthquakes--but from those, as I said before, there may come a conflagration--tho', to keep the figure moist and make it hold water, I should say rather, the lacrymation of a lamentation; but look if Thomas have not flung himself at the King's feet. They have made it up again--for the moment.

HERBERT.

Thanks to the blessed Magdalen, whose day it is.

_Re-enter_ HENRY _and_ BECKET. (_During their conference the_ BARONS _and_ BISHOPS _of_ FRANCE _and_ ENGLAND _come in at back of stage_.)

BECKET.

Ay, King! for in thy kingdom, as thou knowest, The spouse of the Great King, thy King, hath fallen-- The daughter of Zion lies beside the way-- The priests of Baal tread her underfoot-- The golden ornaments are stolen from her--

HENRY.

Have I not promised to restore her, Thomas, And send thee back again to Canterbury?