hall to open the door and admit their comrades. From the archbishop's
room a second passage, little used, opened into the northwest corner
of the cloister, and from the cloister there was a way into the north
transept of the cathedral. The cry was "To the church! To the church!"
There at least there would be immediate safety.

The archbishop had told the knights that they would find him where
they left him. He did not choose to show fear; or he was afraid, as
some thought, of losing his martyrdom. He would not move. The bell had
ceased. They reminded him that vespers had begun, and that he ought to
be in the cathedral. Half yielding, half resisting, his friends swept
him down the passage into the cloister. His cross had been forgotten
in the haste. He refused to stir till it was fetched and carried
before him as usual. Then only, himself incapable of fear, and
rebuking the terror of the rest, he advanced deliberately to the door
into the south transept. His train was scattered behind him, all along
the cloister from the passage leading out of the palace. As he entered
the church, cries were heard, from which it became plain that the
knights had broken into the archbishop's room, had found the passage,
and were following him. Almost immediately Fitzurse, Tracy, De
Morville, and Le Breton were discerned in the dim light, coming
through the cloister in their armor, with drawn swords, and axes in
their left hands. A company of men-at-arms was behind them. In front
they were driving before them a frightened flock of monks.

From the middle of the transept in which the archbishop was standing,
a single pillar rose into the roof. On the eastern side of it opened a
chapel of St. Benedict, in which were the tombs of several of the old
primates. On the west, running of course parallel to the nave, was a
Lady chapel. Behind the pillar, steps led up into the choir, where
voices were already singing vespers. A faint light may have been
reflected into the transept from the choir tapers, and candles may
perhaps have been burning before the altars in the two chapels; of
light from without through the windows at that hour there could have
been none. Seeing the knights coming on, the clergy who had entered
with the archbishop closed the door and barred it. "What do you fear?"
he cried in a clear, loud voice. "Out of the way, you coward! the
Church of God must not be made a fortress." He stepped back and
reopened the door with his own