In the year 1257, an elephant died in the Tower menagerie and was buried in a pit near the chapel. But the following year he was dug up and his remains sent to Westminster Abbey. Now, what did they want at Westminster Abbey, with the remains of an elephant? If not to carve a ton of relics out of him, and make his animal bones into the bones of saints?
Martyr More,’ he says. ‘The word is in Rome that he and Fisher are to be made saints.
Each action contains its opposite. Each action contains the shadow-trace of the choice not made, the seeds of infinite variation. Each choice, once made, trips contingencies, alternatives; each choice breeds its own universe.
He did not relish the topic; he sensed in Jane Rochford’s tone the peculiar cruelty of women. They fight with the poor weapons God has bestowed – spite, guile, skill in deceit – and it is likely that in conversations between themselves they trespass in places where a man would never trust his footing.
So much has been said between them that is is needless to add a marginal note. It is not for him now to gloss the text of their dealings, nor append a moral.
Once the queen’s head is severed, he walks away. A sharp pang of appetite reminds him that it is time for a second breakfast, or perhaps an early dinner. The morning’s circumstances are new and there are no rules to guide us. The witnesses, who have knelt for the passing of the soul, stand up and put on their hats. Under the hats, their faces are stunned.
This is the best he can hope for, unless. There is always unless.
He saw how, as she received the bundle, the woman shuddered from the nape of her neck to her feet. She held it fast though, and a head is heavier than you expect. Having been on a battlefield, he knows this from experience too.
At Smithfield Frith is being shoveled up, his youth, his grace, his learning and his beauty: a compaction of mud, grease, charred bone.
God loves us, after all; He manifests it in cancer, cholera, Siamese twins. Not all forms of love are comprehensible, and some forms of love destroy what they touch.
Now the elm chest is carried towards the chapel, where the flags have been lifted so she can go in by the corpse of her brother, George Boleyn. “They shared a bed when they were alive,” Brandon says, “so it’s fitting they share a tomb. Let’s see how they like each other now.
Life do your worst; we are plump of knee and mild of eye, we are douce, glib and blithe; we inherit the semi, while others inherit the wind.
By the blood of creeping Christ, stand on your feet.” Creeping Christ? he thinks. What does he mean?
They always say, we’ll just do another year. It’s called the golden handcuffs.
To gentle pressure, King Henry capitulated; the White Rose, aged twenty-four, was taken out into God’s light and air, in order to have his head cut off. But there is always another White Rose; the Plantagenets breed, though not unsupervised. There will always.
These are days of brutal truth from Tyndale. Saints are not your friends and they will not protect you. They cannot help you to salvation. You cannot engage them to your service with prayers and candles, as you might hire a man for the harvest. Christ’s sacrifice was done on Calvary; it is not done in the Mass. Priests cannot help you to Heaven; you need no priest to stand between you and your God. No merits of yours can save you: only the merits of the living Christ.
He admires these speculative worlds, that grow up in the crevices between truths.
He would have explained, if he’d known what sort of explanation Wykys would understand. I gave up fighting because, when I lived in Florence, I looked at frescoes every day? He said, “I found an easier way to be.
What is a woman’s life? Do not think, because she is not a man, she does not fight. The bedchamber is her tilting ground, where she shows her colours, and her theatre of war is the sealed room where she gives birth.
It is not as if it is tales out of Boccaccio.′ She laughs. ‘They could tell Boccaccio a tale, those sinners at Wolf Hall.