The king and the saint and the writer caught between them

I am happy to report that the Deadline Dragon and his accomplice, the Proofreader Dragon, are preparing to depart on the morrow, for I expect to be able to send off the finished queries tonight. It has been a very hectic week, for they are doing some long overdue house renovations and that means my world is in total chaos. But all the inconvenience will eventually be worth it; at least, that is what I keep telling myself. 😊 There have been some bright spots, though. I am evicting the large fire-breathing reptiles. Holly is getting extra play dates at the kennel to keep her from volunteering to help the contractors. I leased a new Toyota Camry and am so glad I listened to the friends who told me to check them out. And football season is less than six weeks away!

Since I missed so many historical events for July, I have plenty to choose from now that I am able to spend time again with you guys. (Guys being a noun without gender, applying equally to men and women, young and old; it may be a Jersey thing.) Today I decided to revisit an old post from 2012, for it focuses upon what may be my favorite scene in all my books—when a desperate and despairing King Henry II swallows his pride and humbles himself before the Canterbury tomb of his beloved friend turned mortal enemy, Thomas Becket. Did Henry ever believe that Becket was truly a saint? I have him ask Ranulf that question in Time and Chance. Ranulf admits that he does not know, and Henry concludes their discussion with a sardonic observation, that in gaining martyrdom, “Thomas got the last word for certes.”

Below is my original post about Henry’s penance in Canterbury Cathedral, as written in Devil’s Brood.
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Henry’s penance actually carried over from July 12th to the 13th, as he insisted upon kneeling all night long by Becket’s tomb. And he was to be spectacularly rewarded for his ordeal, for while he was doing penance, his forces captured the King of Scotland outside Alnwick Castle. Naturally, medievals attributed this to the intervention of the martyred archbishop, Thomas Becket. The Great Rebellion against Henry fell apart and within two months, his sons were suing for peace.

Some scenes are innately challenging, and the scene in the cathedral was certainly one of them. I approached it with some unease, for if it fell flat, I feared it could adversely affect the rest of Devil’s Brood. Henry’s decision to do penance was so very medieval, after all, and it is not always easy for us to identify with the medieval mind-set. To my surprise and relief, it turned out to be very easy to write. I was even able to insert a few touches of humor into this highly charged, dramatic scene: Driven to distraction by a garrulous monk, Henry wonders, “Was there a way to murder Brother Benedict and make it seem as if he’d been smitten by the wrath of the unforgiving Thomas? A vengeful saint was surely a contradiction in terms, but he alone seemed to think so.” Brother Benedict, by the way, would later pen a history of the miracles he was boring Henry with. I searched diligently for a copy, and finally found one on-line in a Tokyo bookstore; I admit I loved the symmetry of that—an American author buying a book written by a medieval monk and translated by a Victorian historian from a Japanese bookseller.

The trickiest part of the scene was Henry’s monologue after Brother Benedict finally departs. I wasn’t sure how I’d handle this, but Henry’s character chose to talk conversationally to his former friend, and I just followed his lead. He is by turns emotional, cynical, and challenging, calling Thomas a chameleon, denying that he wanted Becket’s death, and confiding “Did I grieve for you? No, I did not.” He accuses Thomas of craving martyrdom, points out the absurdity of Becket’s position that only the Church could punish its own, for it meant that he could take no action against the assassins, who escaped with a papal slap on the wrist, sent off on penitential pilgrimages to the Holy Land. Henry being Henry, he cannot resist sarcasm; “Come, Thomas, hold up your part of the conversation. You need not do anything dramatic, like loosing a thunderbolt or performing one of your miracles. But at the least, you could extinguish a few candles to show me you are paying attention.” He ends up confessing, though. “Do you know why I did not grieve for you when you died, Thomas? Because I’d already done my grieving. I trusted you, I had faith in you, I loved you more than my own brother.” He admits he does not understand how they came to this, and he truly does not, just as he will not understand why his marriage crumbles or his sons do not love him as he loved his own father. He waits in vain in the empty cathedral crypt for a response from the new saint, and finally entreats in desperation, “St Thomas, guard my realm.” I, for one, was very glad that St Thomas came through for him.

I have a confession of my own; I think this may be my favorite of all the scenes I’ve written, for it shows Henry at his most human. After three novels with him, I miss writing about him very much, and while I did manage to give him a brief scene in Ransom, that only made me mourn his loss all the more. I’ve been able to write about some memorable characters over the years, but Henry is very close to my heart.