CANTERBURY'S TALES OF INTRIGUE.

Byline: Story and photos by Eric Noland Travel Editor

CANTERBURY, England - The mind's time machine shifted into high gear as tour guide Robin Westbrook pointed to a dark corner of Canterbury Cathedral and began to speak.

``Early on the evening of Jan. 29, 1170,'' he said, ``Thomas Becket came through that door there. Four knights were pursuing him. An argument ensued.''

And a horrific murder followed. Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, had been locked in a dispute with King Henry II over just how separate church and state should be. Henry, exasperated by Becket's inflammatory sermon on Christmas Day, is said to have thundered, ``Will nobody rid me of this turbulent priest?''

Four men loyal to the king took him at his word, and trapped Becket right here, at the foot of what used to be a stairway (you can still see its evidence in the wall). Even for the Middle Ages, the killing was brutal. The first sword blow sheared off the top of Becket's scalp, according to Nesta Pain in her book, ``The King and Becket.'' A fourth blow struck a fallen Becket so hard that the sword broke against the paving stones.

But ghastly though this event was, it ensured that Canterbury didn't go down in history as just another site of a magnificent church. It put it on the map.

``Within days of the burial, there were stories of miracles,'' said Westbrook. ``Within weeks, there were pilgrims.''

From all over England, Europe and the world they would come, some paying their respects, most imploring the martyred saint to deliver them from some malady. Twenty-nine such pilgrims - albeit fictitious ones - were the subject of Geoffrey Chaucer's 14th-century yarn about a medieval road trip, ``Canterbury Tales.''

Pilgrims are still pouring in, today to see the most significant cathedral in the Church of England, and to tread in the footsteps of some of the notable figures of history and literature.

A visit to this site in southeast England, an easy day trip from London, is particularly fascinating to visitors from America. In our country, we marvel at a Boston church that dates to the time of Paul Revere; Canterbury Cathedral's outer layer of grime is barely that old.

A church has been here continuously since A.D. 597, and the building's history is rich with stories of fire-wielding invaders (the Normans, 1067), an earthquake (1382), an outraged monarch (Henry VIII, who had Becket's tomb destroyed in 1538) and some thoroughly destructive Puritans (1640s).

Fourteen centuries of building projects have caused its architecture to be as multilayered as the wedding cake it resembles, with pointed Gothic arches grafted onto an earlier Romanesque design, but the net result is elaborate beauty. Inside are glorious stained-glass windows, the soaring arches of the nave and, in tiny St. Gabriel Chapel, ceiling paintings that date to 1135 - Becket himself would have gazed at them.

Admission to the cathedral is about $6 for adults, and brochures and audio guides are available for an additional sum if you wish to explore the place on your own. But I would recommend ponying up another $6 for a tour with a guide. Offered three times a day (except Sundays), they're intended to last an hour, but ours rolled on for another 20 minutes just because of the obvious enthusiasm of Westbrook, an elderly, droll Brit with a wealth of stories to tell.

We were most intrigued - and dismayed - by the stories of the Puritan rampages in the mid-1600s, when Oliver Cromwell's Roundheads briefly held sway over the Royalists in England.

A notable casualty of the conflict was the antiquity of Canterbury Cathedral.

Statues and stained-glass windows that depicted heavenly beings were considered idolatrous, and were accordingly smashed. Some have been restored, but to this day, you can walk around the cathedral and see beheaded statues, or alcoves where the statues were removed entirely, or stained-glass windows with clear-glass panes here and there.

Westbrook told of one particularly determined crusader who would come into the cathedral with a ladder, a notebook and a hammer. He'd climb the ladder and examine a window - perhaps a beautiful, intricate one that dated to the 1100s. If the figure was determined to be a mortal - perhaps a king, a prince or a princess - it was spared. If it was identified as a deity or an angel, out would come the hammer, and the panel would be punched out. Everything would be meticulously recorded in the notebook.

In other areas of the cathedral, Puritan soldiers would thrust upward with their pikes and shatter any panels they could reach, leaving the higher ones intact. Since stained-glass windows were employed in the Middle Ages to relate biblical stories to illiterate parishioners, the result was devastating. In a window that tells the birth of Christ in top-to-bottom sequence, the soldiers could only reach the bottom two rows of a window, so the story has confusing gaps as a result.

It was in the cathedral crypt that Westbrook seemed to delight in a small expression of the building's comeuppance. An arch above a tomb held angel statues, and the crusaders had systematically lopped the heads off each one ... almost. ``It must have been a dark winter day in Canterbury,'' our guide said with a satisfied gleam in his eye, ``because they missed one.'' And indeed, high in the arch, an angel still has its head.

Our tour wandered through the nave, under the 480,000-brick Bell Harry tower, up the stairs and through the high-arched doorway of the pulpitum screen and into the elegant quire, where the church organist was practicing a tricky piece of music that he would be playing at Sunday's services.

The music was majestic beneath the towering arches. But as our tour wound to a close, we were drawn to much gentler strains. In the crypt, near where Becket used to lie, a few rows of folding chairs had been set up for one of the lunchtime concerts that are occasionally held in the cathedral.

Music students from Canterbury Christ Church University College proceeded to deliver a delightful program: vocal solos from works by Mozart, Schubert, Strauss, Purcell and Wagner; and a Bach overture for flute and piano. The high, stone ceilings created an echo that lent an angelic quality to the soprano voices.

Afterward, we walked through the gray, chilly arcade of the cloisters, built around a grassy courtyard that was a rich green following the rains of winter. Then we circumnavigated the cathedral's exterior, surveying its ornate flourishes. Not surprisingly, with 14th-century technology and building methods, it took 125 years to build this place.

After enduring a forced exit through the gift shop (the only option), we wandered the brick-paved pedestrian promenade that is St. Peter's Street, which seeks to maintain the medieval ambience but with modern appointments. Think Old Pasadena meets Renaissance Faire. Even the Starbucks has a wattle-and-daub facade.

Canterbury has gotten a lot of practice providing sustenance for pilgrims over the years, and the pilgrimages of 833 years have certainly shrunken the world for this little town. That was obvious during our lunch at the Old Weavers House on St. Peter's Street. In this 1500 building of sagging timbers and creaky floors, there was a faux coal fire in the grate, steaming meat-and-vegetable pies on the table, cold ale in the glass ... and Louie Armstrong on the sound system.

Chaucer's make-believe pilgrims would have passed beneath Westgate, the only one of seven gates remaining from what was once a walled city, fortified against invasion. We made our way through the same archway on our walk from Canterbury West Train Station.

It would have taken them four days to travel here from London, whereas our trip required only 90 minutes. But for travelers drawn to the story of Becket and his cathedral, the journey is the point, as ``to Caunterbury they wende.''

IF YOU GO

GETTING THERE: A relaxed and scenic way to get from London to Canterbury - without having to wrestle with driving on the left side of the road - is to travel by rail. Using BritRail passes (which you must purchase in the U.S. before you leave home), we caught a morning train from London's Charing Cross Station to Canterbury West Station. Trains leave every several minutes on this route, which takes about an hour and a half and provides pleasant views of the pastoral countryside of Kent. The cathedral and the medieval portion of Canterbury are an easy walk from either of the city's two train stations. Purchased separately, this round-trip ticket is about $27. After a few hours' visit, it's easy to catch an afternoon train back, although during the busy summer season it might be a good idea to reserve a seat if you know which train you're likely to return on.

CATHEDRAL: The main road through Canterbury's medieval district, St. Peter's Street/High Street, is a pedestrian walkway. From this, turn down Mercery Lane to the cathedral. From Easter through September, the cathedral is open to visitors from 9 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., although on selected Mondays it will close an hour earlier. From October through Easter it is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. On Sundays, visitors are welcome to attend services, but it is otherwise closed to them but for a couple of hours in the early and late afternoon. Admission is about $6. One-hour guided tours - highly recommended - cost another $6. They're offered Monday through Friday at 10:30 a.m., noon and 2:30 p.m. (the last tour is at 2 p.m. in winter) Saturday at 10:30 a.m., noon and 1:30 p.m. If you wish to explore on your own, audio guides and printed brochures are available at nominal costs.

INFORMATION: Cathedral: (011-1227) 762862; www.canterbury-cathedral.org. Train information: [phone]; www.britrail.com.

CAPTION(S):

8 photos, box

Photo:

(1 -- 4 -- color) The ornate construction of Canterbury Cathedral's towers can be surveyed from the serenity of the cloisters, above right. The interior of the cathedral includes such impressive features as, top to bottom above, the pulpitum screen, the nave and intricate stained-glass windows.

(5 -- 6) The elaborate facade of Canterbury Cathedral rises above the medieval village that surrounds it, above. Inside, the Gothic arches of the nave make for a majestic sight, right.

(7) Chaucer's pilgrims would have passed through the Westgate, one of seven gates that remain from the Middle Ages.

(8) Over the narrow streets of Canterbury's medieval district, a pub sign featuring a likeness of the martyred Archbishop Thomas Becket welcomes thirsty patrons.

Box:

IF YOU GO (see text)