Wolf Hall & Bring Up the Bodies: Two-Book Edition by Hilary Mantel

Author:Hilary Mantel [Mantel, Hilary]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Historical, Literary, Fiction
ISBN: 9780007511013
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2012-10-16T04:00:00+00:00

Three in the afternoon: candles brought in. He consults Richard’s day-book: John Fisher is waiting. It is time to be enraged. He tries thinking about Gardiner, but he keeps laughing. ‘Arrange your face,’ Richard says.

‘You’d never imagine that Stephen owed me money. I paid for his installation at Winchester.’

‘Call it in, sir.’

‘But I have already taken his house for the queen. He is still grieving. I had better not drive him to an extremity. I ought to leave him a way back.’

Bishop Fisher is seated, his skeletal hands resting on an ebony cane. ‘Good evening, my lord,’ he says. ‘Why are you so gullible?’

The bishop seems surprised that they are not to start off with a prayer. Nevertheless, he murmurs a blessing.

‘You had better ask the king’s pardon. Beg the favour of it. Plead with him to consider your age and infirmities.’

‘I do not know my offence. And, whatever you think, I am not in my second childhood.’

‘But I believe you are. How else would you have given credence to this woman Barton? If you came across a puppet show in the street, would you not stand there cheering, and shout, “Look at their little wooden legs walking, look how they wave their arms? Hear them blow their trumpets”. Would you not?’

‘I don’t think I ever saw a puppet show,’ Fisher says sadly. ‘At least, not one of the kind of which you speak.’

‘But you’re in one, my lord bishop! Look around you. It’s all one great puppet show.’

‘And yet so many did believe in her,’ Fisher says mildly. ‘Warham himself, Canterbury that was. A score, a hundred of devout and learned men. They attested her miracles. And why should she not voice her knowledge, being inspired? We know that before the Lord goes to work, he gives warning of himself through his servants, for it is stated by the prophet Amos …’

‘Don’t prophet Amos me, man. She threatened the king. Foresaw his death.’

‘Foreseeing it is not the same as desiring it, still less plotting it.’

‘Ah, but she never foresaw anything that she didn’t hope would happen. She sat down with the king’s enemies and told them how it would be.’

‘If you mean Lord Exeter,’ the bishop says, ‘he is already pardoned, of course, and so is Lady Gertrude. If they were guilty, the king would have proceeded.’

‘That does not follow. Henry wishes for reconciliation. He finds it in him to be merciful. As he may be to you even yet, but you must admit your faults. Exeter has not been writing against the king, but you have.’

‘Where? Show me.’

‘Your hand is disguised, my lord, but not from me. Now you will publish no more.’ Fisher’s glance shoots upwards. Delicately, his bones move beneath his skin; his fist grips his cane, the handle of which is a gilded dolphin. ‘Your printers abroad are working for me now. My friend Stephen Vaughan has offered them a better rate.’

‘It is about the divorce you are hounding me,’ Fisher says. ‘It is not about Elizabeth Barton.

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