Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel Page B

frightened of the future, than think about his family and what he’s lost. “Tomorrow,” he says, “I’ll get my clerks down from London and we’ll try and make sense of what my lord still has by way of assets, which won’t be easy as they’ve taken all the paperwork. His creditors won’t be inclined to pay up when they know what’s happened. But the French king pays him a pension, and if I remember it’s always in arrears . . . Maybe he’d like to send a bag of gold, pending my lord’s return to favor. And you—you can go looting.”

    Cavendish is hollow-faced and hollow-eyed when he throws him onto a fresh horse at first light. “Call in some favors. There’s hardly a gentleman in the realm that doesn’t owe my lord cardinal something.”
    It’s late October, the sun a coin barely flipped above the horizon. “Keep him cheerful,” Cavendish says. “Keep him talking. Keep him talking about what Harry Norris said . . .”
    â€œOff you go. If you should see the coals on which St Lawrence was roasted, we could make good use of them here.”
    â€œOh, don’t,” Cavendish begs. He has come far since yesterday, and is able to make jokes about holy martyrs; but he drank too much last night, and it hurts him to laugh. But not to laugh is painful too. George’s head droops, the horse stirs beneath him, his eyes are full of bafflement. “How did it come to this?” he asks. “My lord cardinal kneeling in the dirt. How could it happen? How in the world could it?”
    He says, “Saffron. Raisins. Apples. And cats, get cats, huge starving ones. I don’t know, George, where do cats come from? Oh, wait! Do you think we can get partridges?”
    If we can get partridges we can slice the breasts, and braise them at the table. Whatever we can do that way, we will; and so, if we can help it, my lord won’t be poisoned.

II

An Occult History of Britain
    1521–1529
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    Once, in the days of time immemorial, there was a king of Greece who had thirty-three daughters. Each of these daughters rose up in revolt and murdered her husband. Perplexed as to how he had bred such rebels, but not wanting to kill his own flesh and blood, their princely father exiled them and set them adrift in a rudderless ship.
    Their ship was provisioned for six months. By the end of this period, the winds and tides had carried them to the edge of the known earth. They landed on an island shrouded in mist. As it had no name, the eldest of the killers gave it hers: Albina.
    When they hit shore, they were hungry and avid for male flesh. But there were no men to be found. The island was home only to demons.
    The thirty-three princesses mated with the demons and gave birth to a race of giants, who in turn mated with their mothers and produced more of their own kind. These giants spread over the whole landmass of Britain. There were no priests, no churches and no laws. There was also no way of telling the time.
    After eight centuries of rule, they were overthrown by Trojan Brutus.
    The great-grandson of Aeneas, Brutus was born in Italy; his mother died in giving birth to him, and his father, by accident, he killed with an arrow. He fled his birthplace and became leader of a band of men who had been slaves in Troy. Together they embarked on a voyage north, and the vagaries of wind and tide drove them to Albina’s coast, as the sisters had been driven before. When they landed they were forced to do battle with the giants, led by Gogmagog. The giants were defeated and their leader thrown into the sea.
    Whichever way you look at it, it all begins in slaughter. Trojan Brutus and his descendants ruled till the coming of the Romans. Before London was called Lud’s Town, it was called New Troy. And we were Trojans.
    Some say the Tudors transcend this history, bloody and demonic as it is: that they descend from Brutus through the line of