He never sees More – a star in another firmament, who acknowledges him with a grim nod – without wanting to ask him, what’s wrong with you? Or what’s wrong with me? (Location 689)
Is it any wonder, John says, when you are into any mischief going, prone to giving back answers and always reliably to be found where you shouldn’t be? (Location 1821)
Note: See the what he says to Rafe about not being found where he shouldnt be the day Liz dies
He says, ‘Make marzipan lions – the cardinal wants them.’ (Location 1894)
Ashes, dry bread. England was always, the cardinal says, a miserable country, home to an outcast and abandoned people, who are working slowly towards their deliverance, and who are visited by God with special tribulations. (Location 1996)
When they have listened to all this, and they come out into the air, he feels strangely cold. He puts a hand to his face, touches his cheekbone. (Location 2331)
Note: The accumulation of repeated detail. This the cold cheekbone after he was kicked by Walter. Like crime and detection these motifs must be hidden like clues, via misdirection.
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. (Location 2440)
Note: Exceptional writing - purgatory has just been introduced and wells up again, like an insistent chord.
Once, in Thessaly, there was a poet called Simonides. (Location 2493)
Note: This section is how you incorpofate research or reading the roof falling in is the point, as it seems to cromwell, not the art of memory.
Then Gregory says, his voice small as if he had receded into the past, ‘Do you remember that Christmas, when there was the giant in the pageant?’ ‘Here in the parish? I remember.’ ‘He said, “I am a giant, my name is Marlinspike.” They said he was as tall as the Cornhill maypole. What’s the Cornhill maypole?’ ‘They took it down. The year of the riots. Evil May Day, they called it. You were only a baby then.’ (Location 2698)
He understands what Henry has learned from his cardinal: his floating diplomacy, his science of ambiguity. (Location 2925)
of the long-handled irons must be well greased and hot. When you press the plates together there is an animal shriek as they meet, and steam hisses into the air. If you panic and release the pressure you will have a claggy mess to scrape away. (Location 5289)
Anne says, ‘I am Jezebel. You, Thomas Cromwell, are the priests of Baal.’ Her eyes are alight. ‘As I am a woman, I am the means by which sin enters this world. I am the devil’s gateway, the cursed ingress. I am the means by which Satan attacks the man, whom he was not bold enough to attack, except through me. Well, that is their view of the situation. My view is that there are too many priests with scant learning and smaller occupation. And I wish the Pope and the Emperor and all Spaniards were in the sea and drowned. And if anyone is to be thrown out of a palace window … (Location 5602)
‘Wolsey always said that the making of a treaty is the treaty. It doesn’t matter what the terms are, just that there are terms. It’s the goodwill that matters. When that runs out, the treaty is broken, whatever the terms say. (Location 6066)
He is not a man like you, who just packs up his sins in his saddlebags and carries them from country to country, and when they grow too heavy whistles up a mule or two, and soon commands a train of them and a troop of muleteers. Henry may err, but he needs to be forgiven. (Location 7023)
