Free A Convergence Of Birds by Jonathon Safran Foer Page B

them by guesswork. Will it always be thus? No, she knows, it is going to be much worse. The poursuivants, having found two, want to have two more, yelping and scattering, heedless of a house routine destroyed. Brave Mary Habington has refused to leave, but she finds their presence vile in the extreme, and all she can do is maintain a cool austere demeanor while her husband orates incessantly about an Englishman’s home being his castle. Was he the originator of that saw? Well, castle no more, my loves, the rabble has entered its final playground and will not be contained by any code of decent manners. Sir Henry is already at odds with himself, she notes, for having not interrogated Owen and Ashley himself; whatever they said would be gold.
    “The trouble is, my lady,” Sir Henry is saying to her, “the moiety of this rabble we have here has not enough proper English to get someone to draw down their trews for the jakes, if you will pardon the reference. I am among apes.”
    “We are both, all, among apes, sir.”
    “Hence the high degree of choler among us.”
    He needs no spoken agreement, she can see that; he is accustomed to silent assent while he roams in hit-or-miss meditation, hoping for a coup that will raise him even higher in Cecil’s esteem. In truth he finds Worcester a bore and would love to move to London, at an advantage of course. In Worcester jail at this very moment, to save his life or at least delay his execution, Humphrey Littleton is telling all: He will tell who the Jesuits were who talked him into becoming a plotter. Why, Father Hall (Oldcorne, he explains) is almost certainly hidden away in Hindlip, “at this present,” and easily flushed out. Hall’s, Oldcorne’s, servant happens to be in Worcester jail, and he will know all. Show him the rack. The manacles. Littleton is getting carried away with vicarious cruelty. “After all,” he adds, “Oldcorne said the plot was a good thing and long overdue. Commendable was his word.” The Sheriff of Worcester at once stays his execution to see what else this tap of a man might yield up. After the top layer, there are many others, with truth at the bottom, tiny and glistening: a corm of fact.
    In fact, Oldcorne had compared the plot to a pilgrimage made by Louis XI of France, in the course of which the plague erupted twice, wiping out most of his retainers the first time and killing Louis himself the next. His enemies came through unscathed. So much, Oldcorne said, for excursions organized by St. Bernard of Clairvaux. Someone flinched at the second syllable in Clairvaux, but no one spoke. “The principal thing,” Father Oldcorne had said, “was what the expedition was for and how it was conducted. Many failures are honorable, and can only be judged by the moral good they bring about.” Father Oldcorne still does not know what Catesby was trying to do. “It is between him and his God. Of course, I am against all reckless violence, sir.” How easily, though, his words could be twisted into treason and treachery; between the inability to reveal what was said in confession and a general ignorance of the plot’s aims, all priests were both unable to defend themselves and guilty to begin with.
    To swell the general clamor, Mary Habington has her servants begin cleaning the household silver, tons of it, all dun and gray from disuse, and suddenly Sir Henry feels at home in the presence of a familiar ritual, as if in readiness for some social event, a banquet, say, and his mind saunters away from his reasons for being here and starts to dream of banquets, balls, near-orgies he himself has sponsored (they watch one another talk and listen to one another eat). The acrid tang of silver polish rises upstairs to the nostrils of Father Garnet, gagging and trying not to cough. He has been here since January 21. It is now Monday, January 27; it feels like years since Monteagle revealed the plot. He thinks he is going to faint as someone outside begins to