The Cardinal, a Bachelor of Arts at fifteen, a Bachelor of Theology by his mid-twenties, is learned in the law but does not like its delays; he cannot quite accept that real property cannot be changed into money, with the same speed and ease with which he changes a wafer into the body of Christ. "You're sweeter to look at than the cardinal", he says. - "That's the smallest compliment a woman ever received." It is surprising how international is the language of old men, swapping tips on salves for aches, commiserating with petty wretchedness and discussing the whims and demands of their wives. "Tell us, Master Cromwell, you've been abroad. Are they particularly an ungrateful nation? It seems to me that they like change for the sake of it?" - "I don't think it's the English. I think it's just people. They always hope there may be something better." Christ, he thinks, by my age I ought to know. You don't get on by being original. You don't get on by being bright. You don't get on by being strong. You get on by being a subtle crook; somehow he thinks that's what Norris is, and he feels an irrational dislike taking root, and he tries to dismiss it, because he prefers his dislikes rational. show all 21 items) He thinks of their wedding night; her trailing taffeta gown, her little wary gesture of hugging her elbows. Next day she said, "That's all right then." And smiled. That's all she left him. Liz who never did say much. "Treaty of perpetual peace? Let's think, when was the last perpetual peace?" There cannot be new things in England. There can be old things freshly presented, or new things that pretend to be old. To be trusted, new men must forge themselves an ancient pedigree, like Walter's, or enter into the service of ancient families. Don't try to go it alone, or they'll think you're pirates. "My father always says, choosing a wife is like putting your hand into a bagful of writhing creatures, with one eel to six snakes." They can stumble through a Latin prayer, but when you say, "Go on, tell me what it means," they say, "Means, master?" as if they thought that words and their meanings were so loosely attached that the tether would snap at the first tug. "She has such good words. And she uses them all." "They made the rules; they cannot complain if I am the strictest enforcer." "Men say," Liz reaches for her scissors, "'I can't endure it when women cry' - just as people say, 'I can't endure this wet weather.' As if it were nothing to do with the men at all, the crying. Just one of those things that happen." They asked Henry to turn his attention to the chief Plantagenet claimant, the nephew of King Edward and wicked King Richard, whom he had held in the tower since he was a child of ten. 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. "If you have been in the street in Paris or Rouen, and seen a mother pull her child by the hand, and say, 'Stop that squalling, or I'll fetch an Englishman,' you are inclined to believe that any accord between the countries is formal and transient. The English will never be forgiven for the talent for destruction they have always displayed when they get off their own island." The cardinal always says that you can never get the king to write a letter himself. Even to another king. Even to the Pope. Even when it might make a difference. 'But I need a new husband. To stop them calling me names. Can the cardinal get husbands?' - 'The cardinal can do anything.' There are some men, possibly, who would be fascinated by a woman who had been a mistress to two kings, but he is not one of them. They are packing his gospels and taking them for the king's libraries. The texts are heavy to hold in the arms, and awkward as if they breathed; their pages are made of slunk vellum from stillborn calves, reveined by the illuminator in tints of lapis and leaf-green. Wolsey will burn books ... He did so at St Paul's Cross: a holocaust of the English language, and so much rag-rich paper consumed, and so much black printer's ink. The mellow brick frontage is smaller than he remembers ... These pages and gentlemen running out, these grooms to lead away the horses, the warmed wine that awaits them, the noise and the fuss, it is a different sort of arrival from those of long ago. The portage of wood and water, the firing up of the ranges ... he [had] worked alongside the men, grubby and hungry.... He stops at the foot of the great staircase. Never was he allowed to run up it; there was a back staircase for boys like him, carrying wood or coals.

He touches the stone, cold as a tomb: vine leaves intertwined with some nameless flower.... She has led him to a closed door. “Do they still call this the blue chamber?” ... It is a long room ... The blue tapestries have been taken down and the plaster walls are naked.