Maggie Sinclair and her students Rose, Sean, and Anna are in Glastonbury for the semester, studying the Arthurian legends.  On one of their first days there, Rose discovers the body of a murder victim in the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey.

Meanwhile in Scotland, Mick Dewar receives a phone call from his father, Calum, who claims to be pursued by some menace and tries to warn Mick, before the call is cut off.  It turns out Mick’s father was last seen with the murdered woman Rose discovered, and so the two parties are brought together in the course of the investigation.

The students are staying in a bed and breakfast which is now run by a couple, but whose former owner, Thomas London, still lives in a cottage on the premises.  Thomas London is, of course, none other than Thomas Becket.  He wasn’t killed in 1170; he took refuge in the crypt, but a monk, David, was killed in his place, for which he still feels guilty.  As punishment for his last-minute cowardice, Thomas is cursed with eternal life.  Fairly soon, Thomas shares his secret with Maggie.  Actually, he has to do it in order to unburden his conscience and become strong enough to confront Robin Fitzroy, who is behind all the bad stuff.

Robin Fitzroy started life not all that long before Thomas of London, at least not long when you’re dealing with this many centuries.  He was originally Robert, the father of William the Conqueror.  As a result of some kind of diabolical pact, Robin is as immortal as Thomas and has the power to appear and disappear and to change his appearance into that of other people.  Right now he’s in charge of a sort of right-wing religious organization, the Freedom of Faith Foundation, which purports to stand up for traditional morality.  Of course their “traditional values” really mean that they’re anti-immigrant (and anti-nonwhite descendants of immigrants), think women’s place is barefoot and pregnant, etc.  Ellen Sparrow, the daughter of the proprietress of the B&B, is a member, and in fact is favored by Robin, but only because he wants access to Thomas through her.

Robin is, in fact, trying to bring about the end of the world, in a manner of speaking.  Not the actual end of life on earth, but the end of any hope or meaning in living.  It’s the end of the year 2000, and on the eve of the new year (the turn of the millennium) he hopes to bring his plans to fruition.  But he needs the Grail.  That’s right, the Holy Grail comes into this too.  It’s not just the cup, although that’s part of it; there are three parts which, together, make up the Grail.  There’s the cup, the book (the Lindisfarne Gospels), and the stone (of Scone).  The book has been stolen by Robin’s henchmen, and that has to be recovered.  No one knows where the real Stone of Scone is (the one that was in Westminster and then returned to Scotland is a copy), so that has to be found.  Thomas is the keeper of the cup, which he had the foresight to hide in a fairy mound.  Under Glastonbury Tor, actually.

During the course of the story, the group tries to recover all three parts of the Grail while avoiding Robin’s wiles.  He does things like appear in the guise of someone else and try to lead people astray or discourage them, or even high-schoolish things like sending fake e-mails to people so that they think the objects of their affections don’t reciprocate.  Because during all of this, Rose and Mick fall in love.  Also, Maggie falls in love with Thomas.   He likes her, but won’t break his vows, though he will sort of bend them a little.  Sean tries to reform Ellen, but he and Anna are more peripheral and don’t know the full story.

Finally, our team has all parts of the Grail…and then Robin gets the cup.  Both sides head to Canterbury for the dénouement.  All three objects are brought together in the crypt, in front of the chapel of Mary Magdalene, the real, but unknown, resting place of David.  Robin and a few followers from the Freedom of Faith Foundation face off against Thomas, Maggie, and the students.  Fortunately for the side of good, Ellen has been having some doubts and wavers at the last minute.  She tries to stab various people, including herself, and Robin uses her motions to stab Thomas.  Despite this setback, Thomas prevails, and Robin is sent to his reward.  The world doesn’t end.

In the aftermath, Robin’s accomplices (except Ellen, whose ultimate fate is left up in the air) are arrested for various secular crimes, such as the murder of Calum.  Thomas finally succumbs to loss of blood.  While sad for his companions, it’s good news for him: he’s finally managed to redeem himself.
 
 

I wish I’d been able to read up to where Thomas reveals himself without knowing in advance who he was.  It would have been interesting to see if I’d realized before he told Maggie, as there are certainly plenty of clues to raise one's suspicion.  Unfortunately, his identity is revealed in the blurb on the book jacket.  But perhaps it’s not completely unfortunate, because I might not have picked up this book if not for that.  The idea of Thomas Becket being around in the present day (and discussing whether he prefers Anouilh's or Eliot's version of himself) is great, but the whole Grail/lowering evil aspects don't particularly interest me.

The author clearly likes Thomas and has done her research: he was wearing his dark cloak on the fatal day, David's bones are interred before the chapel of Mary Magdalene, a substitute skeleton was given to Henry VIII's commissioners, etc.  Which isn't to say there's nothing to nitpick, but that's part of the fun.

For instance: David's face was supposedly shattered, which is how no one realized he wasn't Thomas (he resembled him in other ways).  In reality, this was not the case.  And then, when you think on it further...was David also wearing verminous long underwear?  Robert of Merton knew about that and revealed it at the appropriate time, so unless there's a great chain of coincidences here, it stretches credulity a little.

Thomas reveals his past to Maggie after Robin causes him to be caught up in a vision of David's murder, which Maggie can also see and hear: "The monks' voices quavered as they sang Vespers, and the words - magnificat anima meum [sic] Dominum - resonated eerily amongst the columns" (page 117).  Besides the fact that someone's carelessness with cases makes this say "A soul magnifies my Lord," the Magnificat makes no appearance in what was sung that night.  (It is, however, a recurring theme throughout the book.)
 
Both Thomas and Maggie frequently point out the reasons or the real story behind legends or events (kind of like The Da Vinci Code, but less annoying).  And so it causes me some consternation when Thomas refers to Mary Magdalene as a prostitute.  If he still demonstrated a medieval mindset in other ways, I could forgive this lapse, but elsewhere he demonstrates that he appreciates the difference between Mary Magdalene, Mary of Bethany, Mary of Egypt, and all the other Marys.  He should know better than to continue to conflate Mary Magdalene with Luke's unnamed "sinner."

He also tells Maggie, "In the Greek, the word 'baptism' means catharsis" (page 364).  Well...not really.  Liddell and Scott say it means "dipping in water, ablution."  Although, since "catharsis" comes from a word meaning "cleansing," I suppose you could equate the terms on a metaphorical level.

This book raises a couple of interesting questions.  For instance, how much would a person who'd lived for almost 900 years have changed from his original self?  For instance, Thomas seems awfully open-minded at times for a medieval Catholic priest, like when the mother goddess manifests in front of him.  And he has no problem with this.  Actually, he invoked her.  Even if he does call her Shekinah and Sophia, among other names, it still seems a little too New Agey, Mists of Avalon-ish for Thomas Becket.

And then there's his relationship with Maggie.  Deo gratia, it doesn't go further than kissing, but it's not exactly what one could call a chaste kiss.  When you consider how Thomas struggled against such temptation during his life, to the point of soaking himself in the Pontigny drains (perhaps this was cathartic for him?), it seems a little out of character.  Unless, that is, his character has changed somewhat over the centuries.

When our heroes recover the real Stone of Scone from its hiding place in an old oratory, they have to do a little digging.  "We're committing archaeological vandalism here," Thomas says.  "Ian Graham [guardian of the Lindisfarne Gospels] has already offered absolution…."  While not on a par with the question about changing character, it did make me ask myself, "What if Thomas Becket vandalized my site?"  Clearing some mud off a stone floor isn't quite on a par with metal detecting for bullets, though.

One last small thing - there's an Inspector Mountjoy with the police, and I kept expecting his name to be significant somehow - Monjoie Saint Denis! - but alas, it came to naught.  Well, we are dealing with the Matter of Britain here, not that of France.