The priests and attendants who surrounded Becket were alarmed; they wanted to close all the doors and barricade the house, begging the bishop to take refuge in the church. He refused. Already the noise of battle-axes rattling against the entrance was heard. Fitzurse was endeavoring to break open the door, which an attendant had shut upon the intruders, who had now come back with their weapons. The bell of the church was ringing for vespers. "Since it is my duty, I will go to the church," said Becket, and, preceded by a priest carrying a cross, he passed slowly through the cloisters and entered the cathedral. The door had not given way, but the conspirators had just entered the palace by the window. The clergy were hastening to close the doors of the church. "No," said the archbishop, "the house of God should not be barricaded like a fortress." He was ascending the steps leading to the choir when Reginald Fitzurse entered abruptly at the other end of the church. He was brandishing his sword and crying, "Come, loyal subjects of the king." It was late; the movements of the conspirators were scarcely observable, neither could the latter see the priests distinctly. The archbishop was urged to descend into the crypt. He refused, and advanced boldly towards the sacrilegious intruders, who were brandishing their swords within the holy precincts. {168} His cross-bearer alone had not fled "Where is the traitor?" cried a voice. Becket did not answer. "Where is the archbishop?" repeated Fitzurse. "I am here," said Becket, "but no traitor, only a priest of the Lord. What are you here for?" "Absolve all those whom you have excommunicated." "They have not repented, and therefore I cannot." "You shall die then." "I am ready, in the name of the Saviour; but I forbid you, by the Lord Almighty, to touch any of these present, either priests or laymen." At this moment he received between the shoulders a blow with the flat part of a sword. "Fly," they cried, "or you are a dead man." The archbishop did not stir; the intruders endeavored to drag him out, not daring to kill him in the sanctuary; he was struggling in their grasp. At length William de Tracy raised his sword and wounded the archbishop in the head, striking down at the same time the hand of Edward Gryme, the brave cross-bearer. Becket had clasped his hands together: "I confide my soul and the cause of the Church to God, to the Virgin Mary, to the patron saints of this church, and to St. Denis," he cried. A second thrust from a sword laid him prostrate upon the ground near St. Bennet's altar; a third blow split his skull, and the sword was broken on the paved floor. "Thus perish all traitors," cried one of the conspirators, and they left the church hurriedly, while the monks were tearfully laying the archbishop's body out at the foot of the altar, taking up his blood in vessels, leaving exposed to view the hair-cloth which he wore, and already revering him as a martyr.