Читать книгу Wolf Hall: Shortlisted for the Golden Man Booker Prize - Hilary Mantel - Страница 16

Halloween: the world's edge seeps and bleeds. This is the time when the tally-keepers of Purgatory, its clerks and gaolers, listen in to the living, who are praying for the dead.

At this time of year, with their parish, he and Liz would keep vigil. They would pray for Henry Wykys, her father; for Liz's dead husband, Thomas Williams; for Walter Cromwell, and for distant cousins; for half-forgotten names, long-dead half-sisters and lost step-children.

Last night he kept the vigil alone. He lay awake, wishing Liz back; waiting for her to come and lie beside him. It's true he is at Esher with the cardinal, not at home at the Austin Friars. But, he thought, she'll know how to find me. She'll look for the cardinal, drawn through the space between worlds by incense and candlelight. Wherever the cardinal is, I will be.

At some point he must have slept. When daylight came, the room felt so empty it was empty even of him.

All Hallows Day: grief comes in waves. Now it threatens to capsize him. He doesn't believe that the dead come back; but that doesn't stop him from feeling the brush of their fingertips, wing-tips, 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.

Now he stands in a window embrasure, Liz's prayer book in hand. His daughter Grace liked to look at it, and today he can feel the imprint of her small fingers under his own. These are Our Lady's prayers for the canonical hours, the pages illuminated by a dove, a vase of lilies. The office is Matins, and Mary kneels on a floor of chequered tiles. The angel greets her, and the words of his greeting are written on a scroll, which unfurls from his clasped hands as if his palms are speaking. His wings are coloured: heaven-blue.

He turns the page. The office is Lauds. Here is a picture of the Visitation. Mary, with her neat little belly, is greeted by her pregnant cousin, St Elizabeth. Their foreheads are high, their brows plucked, and they look surprised, as indeed they must be; one of them is a virgin, the other advanced in years. Spring flowers grow at their feet, and each of them wears an airy crown, made of gilt wires as fine as blonde hairs.

He turns a page. Grace, silent and small, turns the page with him. The office is Prime. The picture is the Nativity: a tiny white Jesus lies in the folds of his mother's cloak. The office is Sext: the Magi proffer jewelled cups; behind them is a city on a hill, a city in Italy, with its bell tower, its view of rising ground and its misty line of trees. The office is None: Joseph carries a basket of doves to the temple. The office is Vespers: a dagger sent by Herod makes a neat hole in a shocked infant. A woman throws up her hands in protest, or prayer: her eloquent, helpless palms. The infant corpse scatters three drops of blood, each one shaped like a tear. Each bloody tear is a precise vermilion.

He looks up. Like an after-image, the form of the tears swims in his eyes; the picture blurs. He blinks. Someone is walking towards him. It is George Cavendish. His hands wash together, his face is a mask of concern.

Let him not speak to me, he prays. Let George pass on.

‘Master Cromwell,’ he says, ‘I believe you are crying. What is this? Is there bad news about our master?’

He tries to close Liz's book, but Cavendish reaches out for it. ‘Ah, you are praying.’ He looks amazed.

Cavendish cannot see his daughter's fingers touching the page, or his wife's hands holding the book. George simply looks at the pictures, upside down. He takes a deep breath and says, ‘Thomas …?’

‘I am crying for myself,’ he says. ‘I am going to lose everything, everything I have worked for, all my life, because I will go down with the cardinal – no, George, don't interrupt me – because I have done what he asked me to do, and been his friend, and the man at his right hand. If I had stuck to my work in the city, instead of hurtling about the countryside making enemies, I'd be a rich man – and you, George, I'd be inviting you out to my new country house, and asking your advice on furniture and flower beds. But look at me! I'm finished.’