He sounded nervous but calm. As he should be. As they all should be.
Becket was a very tall man – a good head taller than most of those around him. His face, austere but serene, glowed in the candlelight. Although many of the paintings of the scene have depicted him dressed in red robes, in fact he wore an outer robe of shimmering emerald green, with a white cross on its front, formed by bands of white from shoulder to shoulder and from neck to hem. He was bare-headed. I took a deep breath and tried not to remember that in a few minutes this man would be dead. And there was nothing we could do. Or should do. St Mary’s job is to observe and record. The trainees would observe events as they unfolded. Tim and I would observe them. This was their last test. A violent death was about to occur. How would they react?
The procession passed us, gently chanting and disposed themselves for vespers. A slight pause of expectation before the service began – and then, in the silence, a door boomed back against a stone wall, disturbingly loud in the darkness. Hasty footsteps sounded.
The singing faltered, but Becket appeared unmoved and unworried. Had he any idea what was about to happen? None of the eyewitness accounts, including that of Edward Grim, himself wounded, make any mention of Becket attempting to flee or defend himself in any way. I’ve often wondered if he took a deliberate decision to sacrifice himself, assure himself of martyrdom, and deal Henry a blow from which he would never recover.
We were about to find out.
The four knights emerged out of the darkness, like something from a bad dream. They had not, at this stage, drawn their weapons. One strode forwards and faced the congregation, hand suggestively on his sword hilt. Crowd control.
Two of them laid hands on Becket, attempting to drag him away from the altar. He clung to something – the altar, a pillar – I couldn’t see clearly. He shouted defiantly, his words lost in the echoes.
The third knight, clad in a red cloak, whom I took to be Reginald FitzUrse from the bear on his badge, roared an order and again they tried to dislodge the Archbishop’s grasp. At this point, it was unclear whether they simply wanted to remonstrate with him or remove him from consecrated ground and away from witnesses. They were in a difficult position and they knew it. For all they knew, the congregation would rally to Becket’s defence. Someone might already have gone for help. They were running out of time.
I saw FitzUrse draw his sword, as it glinted dully in the candlelight. He paused, possibly to gather his courage, and then struck.
The blow caught the monk, Edward Grim on the arm as he threw himself protectively at his archbishop.
With the courage of one who has not struck the first blow, William de Tracey closed in and struck harder. This time the archbishop staggered. De Tracey stepped back, I could hear his breath coming out in gasps. He waited, sword raised.
The crowd gasped in disbelief, but no one moved.
There was no going back now. Blood had been shed. And on consecrated ground. Another blow drove Becket to his hands and knees but he still would not give in. Bleeding heavily, he twisted his head and tried to speak, but I couldn’t make out what he said.
The third knight, Richard le Breton, who had chain mail under his brown cloak, probably wanting to get it over with, impatiently shoved his fellows aside, lifted his sword high and struck with all his might. The fearsome blow passed straight through Becket’s skull, completely severing the top of his head. The sword shattered on the flags beneath. Blood and brain matter exploded into the air.
Now the crowd shouted and tried to surge forwards. The fourth knight, who must have been Hugh de Morville, stepped into the light and drew his sword. The ring of metal on metal rang around the dark cathedral. The message was clear. They’d killed the Archbishop. No one had anything to lose now.
The scene was appalling. Three knights stood over the body, motionless, swords dripping blood. Their breath puffed in the icy air, forming a cruelly ironic halo around their heads. Edward Grim, that brave man, still tried to protect his Archbishop. His bloody arm hung uselessly as he weakly called for aid.
The Archbishop of Canterbury lay face down in his own cathedral. Blood, red and wet and bright in the candlelight spilled out across the reddish-brown flagstones in a dark, widening pool, the only movement in this frozen tableau.
And then, to pile horror upon horror, another man, a clerk, dressed all in brown, known everlastingly as Hugh the Evil, appeared from the shadows. He put his foot on Becket’s neck and grinding the remains of his face down into the flags, scattered brain tissue and blood even further across the stones. His voice carried clearly. ‘Let us away, knights. He will rise no more.’
Still with swords drawn, they wheeled about and were gone, back into the darkness whence they came. The door boomed closed behind them.