Hilary Mantel
From "Fludd"
"There was a bluish wild darkness outside, and rain rattled past her into the hall. Before her was a tall, dim shape, a man wrapped in a dark cloak, holes for mouth and eyes, a hat pulled over the brow; then, as her eyes became accustomed to the exterior murk, she distinguished the figure of a young man, holding in his left hand what appeared to be a doctor's black bag".
"The night chill crept into her, from the open door, and, as she went to close it, she began to tremble, and she clamped her jaws, to stop her teeth from chattering audibly."
"He sat up, rubbed his palms over his face, put the heel of his hands into his eyes and rubbed them, stroked his chin and thought of shaving, conversed mentally with his empty stomach and promised it a digestible coddled egg.
Then, in his stockinged feet, his shoes in his hands, he crept down the passage and pushed open the door of the curate's room".
"Faith is dead. It's time is up. And faith being dead, if we are not to become
automatons we must hang on to our superstitions as hard as we may".
"She knew it was the fields, and not the roads, because of the burrs and dead leaves that clung to the girl's habit, and because of the mud on her shoes."
From "Bring Up the Bodies"
The word 'however' is like an imp coiled beneath your chair. It induces ink to form words you have not yet seen, and lines to march across the page and overshoot the margin. There are no endings. If you think so you are deceived as to their nature. They are all beginnings. Here is one.
"You think you cannot keep breathing, but your ribcage has other ideas, rising and falling, emitting sighs. You must thrive in spite of yourself; and so that you may do it, God takes out your heart of flesh, and gives you a heart of stone.
"It was one of those days, rare in the north of England, when a pale sun picks out every black twig of a winter tree; when a ground-frost forms a gilded haze over the pavements; and great buildings, the temples of commerce, shimmer as if their walls were made of air and smole."
From "A Place of Greater Safety"
When it was time to write, and he took his pen in his hand, he never thought of consequences; he thought of style. I wonder why I ever bothered with sex, he thought; there's nothing in this breathing world so gratifying as an artfully placed semicolon.
From "Giving Up the Ghost"
You come to this place, mid-life. You dont know how you got here, but suddenly youre staring fifty in the face. When you turn and look back down the years, you glimpse the ghosts of other lives you might have led; all houses are haunted. The wraiths and phantoms creep under your carpets and between the warp and weft of fabric, they lurk in wardrobes and lie flat under drawer-liners. You think of the children you might have had but didnt. When the midwife says, Its a boy, where does the girl go? When you think youre pregnant, and youre not, what happens to the child that has already formed in your mind? You keep it filed in a drawer of your consciousness, like a short story that never worked after the opening lines.
From "Wolf Hall"
"He doesnt believe that the dead come back; but that doesnt stop him from feeling the brush of their fingertips, wingtips, against his shoulder. Since last night they have been less individual forms and faces than a solid aggregated mass, their flesh slapping and jostling together, their texture dense like sea creatures, their faces sick with an undersea sheen."
It is the absence of facts that frightens people: the gap you open, into which they pour their fears, fantasies, desires.
The trouble with England, he thinks, is that it's so poor in gesture. We shall have to develop a hand signal for Back off, our prince is fucking this man's daughter. He is surprised that the Italians have not done it. Though perhaps they have, and he just never caught on.
Suppose within each book there is another book, and within every letter on every page another volume constantly unfolding; but these volumes take no space on the desk. Suppose knowledge could be reduced to a quintessence, held within a picture, a sign, held within a place which is no place. Suppose the human skull were to become capacious, spaces opening inside it, humming chambers like beehives.
Over the city lies the sweet, rotting odor of yesterday's unrecollected sins.
You can have a silence full of words. A lute retains, in its bowl, the notes it has played. The viol, in its strings, holds a concord. A shriveled petal can hold its scent, a prayer can rattle with curses; an empty house, when the owners have gone out, can still be loud with ghosts.
" Felled, dazed, silent, he has fallen; knocked full length on the cobbles of the yard. His head turns sideways; his eyes are turned toward the gate, as if someone might arrive to help him out. One blow, properly placed, could kill him now. Blood from the gash on his headwhich was his fathers first effortis trickling across his face. Add to this, his left eye is blinded; but if he squints sideways, with his right eye he can see that the stitching of his fathers boot is unraveling. The twine has sprung clear of the leather, and a hard knot in it has caught his eyebrow and opened another cut."
From "Wolf Hall"
"Whats her crime? he said, and they said, she is a Loller. Thats
one who says the God on the altar is a piece of bread. What, he
said, bread like the baker bakes? Let this child forward, they said.
Let him be instructed, it will do him good to see up close, so he
always goes to Mass after this and obeys his priest. They pushed
him to the front of the crowd. Come here, sweetheart, stand with
me, a woman said. She had a broad smile and wore a clean white
cap. You get a pardon for your sins just for watching it, she said.
Any that bring faggots to the burning, they get forty days
release from Purgatory.
When the Loller was led out between the officers the people
jeered and shouted. He saw that she was a grandmother, perhaps
the oldest person he had ever seen. The officers were nearly
carrying her. She had no cap or veil. Her hair seemed to be torn
out of her head in patches. People behind him said, no doubt she
did that herself, in desperation at her sin. Behind the Loller came
two monks, parading like fat grey rats, crosses in their pink
paws. The woman in the clean cap squeezed his shoulder: like a
mother might do, if you had one. Look at her, she said, eighty
years old, and steeped in wickedness. A man said, not much fat
on her bones, it wont take long unless the wind changes.
But whats her sin? he said.
I told you. She says the saints are but wooden posts.
Like that post theyre chaining her to?
Aye, just like that.
The post will burn too.
They can get another next time, the woman said. She took her
hand from his shoulder. She balled her two hands into fists and
punched them in the air, and from the depth of her belly she let
loose a scream, a halloo, in a shrill voice like a demon. The press
of people took up the cry. They seethed and pushed forward for
a view, they catcalled and whistled and stamped their feet. At the
thought of the horrible thing he would see he felt hot and cold.
He twisted to look up into the face of the woman who was his
mother in this crowd. You watch, she said. With the gentlest
brush of her fingers she turned his face to the spectacle. Pay
attention now. The officers took chains and bound the old
person to the stake.
The stake was on top of a pile of stones, and some gentlemen
came, and priests, bishops perhaps, he did not know. They
called out to the Loller to put off her heresies. He was close
enough to see her lips moving but he could not hear what she
said. What if she changes her mind now, will they let her go?
Not they, the woman chuckled. Look, she is calling on Satan to
help her. The gentlemen withdrew. The officers banked up
wood and bales of straw around the Loller. The woman tapped
him on the shoulder; lets hope its damp, eh? This is a good
view, last time I was at the back. The rain had stopped, the sun
broken through. When the executioner came with a torch, it was
pale in the sunshine, barely more than a slick movement, like the
movement of eels in a bag. The monks were chanting and
holding up a cross to the Loller, and it was only when they
skipped backwards, at the first billow of smoke, that the crowd
knew the fire was set.
They surged forward, roaring. Officers made a barrier with
staves and shouted in great deep voices, back, back, back, and the
crowd shrieked and fell back, and then came on again, roaring
and chanting, as if it were a game. Eddies of smoke spoiled their
view, and the crowd beat it aside, coughing. Smell her! they cried.
Smell the old sow! He had held his breath, not to breathe her in.
In the smoke the Loller was screaming. Now she calls on the
saints! they said. The woman bent down and said in his ear, do
you know that in the fire they bleed? Some people think they
just shrivel up, but Ive seen it before and I know.
By the time the smoke cleared and they could see again, the
old woman was well ablaze. The crowd began cheering. They
had said it would not take long but it did take long, or so it
seemed to him, before the screaming stopped. Does nobody pray
for her, he said, and the woman said, whats the point? Even after
there was nothing left to scream, the fire was stoked. The officers
trod around the margins, stamping out any wisps of straw that
flew off, kicking back anything bigger.
When the crowd drifted home, chattering, you could tell the
ones whod been on the wrong side of the fire, because their faces
were grey with wood-ash. He wanted to go home but again he
thought of Walter, who had said that morning he was going to
kill him by inches. He watched the officers strike with their iron
bars at the human debris that was left. The chains retained the
remnants of flesh, sucking and clinging. Approaching the men,
he asked, how hot must the fire be, to burn bone? He expected
them to have knowledge in the matter. But they didnt understand
his question. People who are not smiths think all fires are
the same. His father had taught him the colours of red: sunset
red, cherry red, the bright yellow-red with no name unless its
name is scarlet.
The Lollers skull was left on the ground, the long bones of her
arms and legs. Her broken ribcage was not much bigger than a
dogs. A man took an iron bar and thrust it through the hole
where the womans left eye had been. He scooped up the skull
and positioned it on the stones, so it was looking at him. Then he
hefted his bar and brought it down on the crown. Even before
the blow landed he knew it was false, skewed. Shattered bone,
like a star, flew away into the dirt, but the most part of the skull
was intact. Jesus, the man said. Here, lad, do you do you want a go? One
good swipe will stove her in.
Usually he said yes to any invitation. But now he backed away, his hands behind his back.
God's blood, thc man said, I wish I could afford to be choosy. Soon after that it came on to rain. The men wiped their hands, blew their noses and walked off the job. They threw down their iron bars amid what was left of the Loller. It was just splinters of bone now, and thick sludgy ash. He picked up one of the iron bars, in case he needed a weapon. He fingered its tapered end, which was cut like a chisel. He did not know how far he was from home, and whether Walter might come for him. He wondered how you kill a person by inches, whether by burning them or cutting them up. He should have asked the officers while they were here, for being servants of the city they would know. The stink of the woman was still in the air. He wondered if she was in Hell now, or still about the streets, but he was not afraid of ghosts. They had put up a stand for the gentlemen, and though the canopy was taken down, it was high enough off the ground to crouch underneath for shelter. He prayed for the woman, thinking it could do no harm. He moved his lips as he prayed. Rainwater gathered above him and fell in great drops through the planking. He counted the time between drops and caught them in his cupped hand. He did this just for a pastime. Dusk fell. If it were an ordinary day he would have been hungry by now and gone looking for food. In the twilight certain men came, and women too; he knew, because there were women, that they were not officers or people who would hurt him. They drew together, making a loose circle around the stake on its pile of stones. He ducked out from under the stand and approached them. You will be wondering what has happened here, he said. But they did not look up or speak to him.
