When they arrived near Canterbury, they went around the city to enter by the famous Western gate, with its sixty-foot-high medieval fortificationthat Darcy imagined had changed little since Richard FitzUrse and his companions cantered through on their way to murder Thomas a Becket.
George stuck his head out the carriage window, looking at every bit of the castle. “Thousands must’ve died! When they attackedthatgate! There is nothing like it in London!” he said enthusiastically.
“What about the tower?” Elizabeth asked her son with a laughing tone.
“Ha, the tower,” George replied with a dismissive sneer.
“I do not think there were any substantial sieges of Canterbury,” Darcy said. “Not that I can recall, in any case.”
“Well, why not? No, there must have been. I bet dozens of people died right where the carriage went over.”
“The purpose of a fortification,” Darcy said, “is not to kill people when they attack. The purpose is to convince them to not attack, or if they are determined to attack, to force them to spend a great time and effort to build towers and ramps or dig mines so that they can defeat the walls without dying by the thousand.”
George frowned so deeply at that thought, that Darcy reached forward and ruffled the boy's hair. “But of a certaintysomeonedied attacking it.”
“Maybe it was someone in a forlorn hope. They are people who run at the door to a fort with a big bomb at the end of a stick,” George eagerly replied. “Bobby told me about them—the boy from the other end of the crescent. His father is a don at Oxford. They almost always died.”
“Did Bobby tell you,” Elizabeth asked, “how they found gentlemen to do this duty?”
“Murderers and poor people.” George smiled and then he tried out what Elizabeth suspected was a new word that he had learned from Bobby, “Scum! The scum of the earth!”
“Why would they do that duty?” Elizabeth asked.
“Uhhhhh...don’t know.”
“I believe they received pardons or a substantial bonus in the case of survival,” Darcy offered.
“How awful—and George, be kinder in what you say about poor people.” Then Elizabeth grinned at her son. “We’ll visit the gates and look at the cathedral tomorrow morning before we leave.”
“Do we have to visit the cathedral? I don’t wanna.”
“Did you not know?” Darcy asked. “The most famous murder in the history of England occurred in that cathedral.”
“What?” He now had George’s attention.
“Oh, yes,” Darcy said. “There was an old bishop who lived there, and he made the King very angry. This was in the old days, before our constitution was established, when Kings could do almost anything they wished to. But they still had to respect God and the church. But this King said to the men who hung about him, ‘oh, will no one rid me of this pestilential priest’, and—”
“Did this bishop have the plague or lots of lice? Aren’t bishops clean?”
Elizabeth laughed. “Henry II simply did not like Thomas a Becket, and he wanted to insult him. It’s like if someone calls someone a cur. Nobody thinks that means they are actually a dog.”
“IfIever called someone a cur, I would mean that they are actually a dog,” George replied.
“Also,” Elizabeth added in a tone that reminded Darcy again of Mr. Bennet, “quite likely the story we have heard does not match precisely what was actually said by Henry II.”
“Boooo,” George replied, clearly full of disdain forthatnotion. “The murder! The murder! Did this bishop murder someone? Tell me about the murder.”
“No, no. It was four of the king’s knights, and they killed the bishop,” Darcy said as the carriage went down the main street. It trundled past the great cathedral. “It was right in that church. The knights went in and said they were going to drag the bishop off, so he wrapped his arms around one of the pillars, and then they attacked the bishop with their swords. And if you want, you can see exactly where it happened tomorrow.”
“But they’ll have cleaned up the mess. Was there a lot of blood?”
“Yes,” Elizabeth smiled at her son, and answered for Darcy. “Supposedly they also kicked the brains about and scattered them on the floor.”
George’s eyes glowed. “Everyone knows that it is bad luck if you kill a priest!”
“It was bad luck for them,” Darcy said. “And for the king.”
“Maybe for his knights, but I do not think it hurtHenry II,” Elizabeth said. “He beat down those constant revolts, conquered Ireland, and ruled for another twenty-five years.”
