(~3 minutes to read)
Headline: Remains of five ‘lost’ Archbishops of Canterbury found
Once he’d gotten over the surprise of meeting four people in the 56 mile-long tunnel, Archbishop John Moore said, “So where are we?” His question echoed its way along and around the walls of the underground chamber at which he had just arrived.
“Beats me,” replied Archbishop Cornwallis. “If it wasn’t so cold down here, I’d say we were in Satan’s domain.”
“None of us knows,” added Archbishop Thomas Tenison. “We’re hoping you can get us out of here,” he whined.
Archbishop Matthew Hutton felt the need to interject.
“I’d like to interject here, if I may,” he said.
The other four looked at him expectantly. After a suitably respectful pause, Archbishop Richard Bancroft said, “What didst thou desire to say?”
“Oh, nothing,” replied Hutton. “I just felt the need to interject.”
“Pillock!” muttered Bancroft under his breath.
“Let’s go over what we know,” suggested Archbishop Cornwallis. A tactician from a family of tacticians and strategists, he was a natural leader. “Young Moore here was on his way from Canterbury to Lambeth via the Old Kent tunnels.”
“That’s right,” said Archbishop Moore, the youngest, and therefore the life if not the soul of the party. “I needed to get to London to speak with His Majesty on the matter of my succession, and my advisers strongly recommended that I travel underground.”
“Sounds familiar,” interjected Archbishop Hutton.
“So they took me to the cloisters and dug a hole in the enclosure to gain access to the secret tunnel.”
“Don’t tell me—eight feet long, two-and-a-half feet wide and six feet deep,” interjected the interjectioner.
“Actually, yes,” said Moore, somewhat surprised at Hutton’s knowledge. “So anyway, they lowered me into the tunnel entrance, and I made my way to London. Kind of like the Canterbury Tales, but on my own, underground, and in the opposite direction.”
“So London and Canterbury marked the limits of the journey, but otherwise there was no similarity whatsoever,” observed Archbishop Tenison.
“Come to think of it, when you say it like that…” responded Archbishop Moore.
“Didst thou meet any personages along the way?” asked Archbishop Bancroft.
“If you mean millers, or summoners, or manciples, or whatever, then no,” replied Moore.
“Just out of interest,” interjected Hutton, “Did you feel like your advisers were keen to get you on your way?”
“They did advise haste in the matter,” replied Moore. “They kept on reminding me about what happened to Thomas a Becket. Not that I see any similarity in the situation.”
The group lapsed into silence— so quiet that you couldn’t even hear them breathe.
“So what do we do?” asked Hutton, feeling the need to break the silence but not to actually interject.
“What we always do when someone joins us,” said Cornwallis. We look for a way up to ground level. We’d most likely recognize where we are, and then we can ask for directions to Lambeth Palace.”
“I did attempt that when first I encountered this Godda… Godforsaken place,” Bancroft informed the gathered prelates. “Alack and alas, I failed in my quest.”
“But with five of us, at least one of us should recognize something up there. A church; a public building; an alehouse…” offered Moore.
“…a bawdy house…” interjected Hutton.
“Thou misunderstandeth me,” countered Bancroft. “I was unable to locate an egress to the upper world.”
“We’re not talking about a stairway to heaven,” scoffed Hutton, “just a ladder to street level.”
“And I speak of being unable to find any such access,” returned Bacroft.
There was another pause.
“We’re buggered then,” said Archbishop Moore. “We might just as well lie down and die.”
“That’s the ticket,” said Hutton. “That’s what we all did.”