Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The poetical works of Alfred Tennyson. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material is part of the Elmer Belt Florence Nightingale collection. The original may be consulted at University of California Libraries.
772/870 page 736
![Eleanor. This is the likelier tale. We have hit the ])lace. Now let the King's hue game look to it- self. [Horn. Fitzurse. Again ! — Aud far on in the daric heart of iho wood I hear the yelping of the hounds of hdl. Eleanor. I have my dagge*' here to still their throats. Fitzurse. Nay, Madam, uot to-night — the niglit is fulling. What can be done to-night ? Eleanor. Well — well — away. SCENK III. — Traitor's Meadow at Freie- val. Pavilions and tents of the Enylish and French Baronage. Becket and Hekbert of Bosuam. Becket. See lure! Herbert. What's here? Becket. A notice from the priest, To whom our John of Salisbury com- mitted The secret of the bower, that our wolf- Queen Is prowling round the fold. I should be back In England ev'n for this. Herbert. These are by-things In the great cause. Becket. The by-things of the Lord Are the wrong'd innocences that will cry From ail tiic 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 sutler wrong! Herbert. Do you sec, my lord. There is the King talking with Walter Map ? Becket. He hath the Pope's last letters, and they threaten The immediate tliunderidast of interdict : Yet he can scarce ho touchinii- >ipon tho.se, Or scarce would smile that fashion. Herbert. Winter sunshine! 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 Jiis he^td, he is coming hither, Still with a smile. Enter King'Henrt 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 happi- ness are mine. yExeunt 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-hell-(ire, as it were ? Hi-rhtrt. Ay. Walter Map. It is this black, bell-si- lencing, anti - marrying, burial - hindering interdict that hath squeezed out this side- smile u]ion , Canterbury, whereof may come conflagration. Were I Thomas, I would n't trust it. Sudden change is a house ou .'-and; 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 hi, 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 : lor, truly, as the case stood, you had safelier have slain an archbishop than a she - goat: but our recoverer and up- holder of customs hath in this crowning of young Henry by York and London so violated the immemorial usage of the Church, th.it, like the grave-digger's child I have he:nd of, trying to ring the bell, he hath half-hanged liimself 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 yon there ? W<dtfr Map. In the church rope 1 — no. I was at the crowning, for I have jileasure in the pleasure of crowds, and to read the faces of men at a izrcat show. Herbert. And how did Roger of York comport himself ? Walter ^fap. As magnificently and ar chiepisco)>ally 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, jterhaps the better. Once or twice there ran a twitch acrosif his face, as who should say what's to follow 1 but](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b20452597_0772.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
