Ken Follett: The Pillars Of The Earth

For Philip, the importance of the whole phenomenon lay in what it demonstrated about the power of the State. The death of Thomas had shown that, in a conflict between the Church and the Crown, the monarch could always prevail by the use of brute force. But the cult of Saint Thomas proved that such a victory would always be a hollow one. The power of a king was not absolute, after all: it could be restrained by the will of the people. This change had taken place within Philip’s lifetime. He had not merely witnessed it, he had helped to bring it about. And today’s ceremony would commemorate that.

A stocky man with a large head was walking toward the city out of the mist of rain. He wore no boots or hat. At some distance behind him followed a large group of people on horseback.

The man was King Henry.

The crowd was as quiet as a funeral while the rain-drenched king walked through the mud to the city gate.

Philip stepped into the road, according to the prearranged plan, and walked in front of the barefoot king, leading the way to the cathedral. Henry followed with head bowed, his normally jaunty gait rigidly controlled, his posture a picture of penitence. Awestruck townspeople gazed on in silence as the king of England humbled himself before their eyes. The king’s entourage followed at a distance.

Philip led him slowly through the cathedral gate. The mighty doors of the splendid church were open wide. They went in, a solemn procession of two people that was the culmination of the political crisis of the century. The nave was packed. The crowd parted to let them through. People spoke in whispers, stunned by the sight of the proudest king in Christendom, soaking wet, walking into church like a beggar.

They went slowly along the nave and down the steps into the crypt. There, beside the new tomb of the martyr, the monks of Canterbury were waiting, along with the greatest and most powerful bishops and abbots of the realm.

The king knelt on the floor.

His courtiers came into the crypt behind him. In front of everyone, Henry of England, second of that name, confessed his sins, and said he had been the unwitting cause of the murder of Saint Thomas.

When he had confessed he took off his cloak. Beneath it he wore a green tunic and a hair shirt. He knelt down again, bending his back.

The bishop of London flexed a cane.

The king was to be whipped.

He would get five strokes from each priest and three from each monk present. The strokes, would be symbolic, of course: since there were eighty monks present a real beating from each of them would have killed him.

The bishop of London touched the king’s back five times lightly with the cane. Then he turned and handed the cane to Philip, bishop of Kingsbridge.

Philip stepped forward to whip the king. He was glad he had lived to see this. After today, he thought, the world will never be quite the same.

I owe special thanks to Jean Gimpel, Geoffrey Hindley, Warren Hollister and Margaret Wade Labarge for giving me the benefit of their encyclopedic knowledge of the Middle Ages.

I also thank Ian and Marjory Chapman for patience, encouragement and inspiration.

KEN FOLLETTlives in London with his wife, Barbara, and children. He was only twenty-seven when he wrote Eye of the Needle . Since then he has written five more international best sellers. Published shortly after his fortieth birthday, The Pillars of the Earth is the culmination of a lifelong fascination with the astonishing Gothic cathedrals and the turbulent era that produced them.