Free Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel Page B

cardinal with twice as much as has been taken from him.
    The cardinal begins to cry. It’s starting to rain, and the wind blows the rain across their faces. The cardinal speaks to Norris fast, in a low voice, and then he takes a chain from around his neck and tries to hang it around Norris’s neck, and it gets tangled up in the fastenings of his riding cape and several people rush forward to help and fail, and Norris gets up and begins to brush himself down with one glove while clutching the chain in the other. “Wear it,” the cardinal begs him, “and when you look at it think of me, and commend me to the king.”
    Cavendish jolts up, riding knee-to-knee. “His reliquary!” George is upset, astonished. “To part with it like this! It is a piece of the true Cross!”
    â€œWe’ll get him another. I know a man in Pisa makes them ten for five florins and a round dozen for cash up front. And you get a certificate with St. Peter’s thumbprint, to say they’re genuine.”
    â€œFor shame!” Cavendish says, and twitches his horse away.
    Now Norris is backing away too, his message delivered, and they are trying to get the cardinal back on his mule. This time, four big men step forward, as if it were routine. The play has turned into some kind of low comic interlude; that, he thinks, is why Patch is here. He rides over and says, looking down from the saddle, “Norris, can we have all this in writing?”
    Norris smiles, says, “Hardly, Master Cromwell; it’s a confidential message to my lord cardinal. My master’s words were meant only for him.”
    â€œSo what about this recompense you mention?”
    Norris laughs—as he always does, to disarm hostility—and whispers, “I think it might be figurative.”
    â€œI think it might be, too.” Double the cardinal’s worth? Not on Henry’s income. “Give us back what’s been taken. We don’t ask double.”
    Norris’s hand goes to the chain, now slung about his neck. “But it all proceeds from the king. You can’t call it theft.”
    â€œI didn’t call it theft.”
    Norris nods, thoughtful. “No more did you.”
    â€œThey shouldn’t have taken the vestments. They belong to my lord as churchman. What will they have next? His benefices?”
    â€œEsher—which is where you are going, are you not?—is of course one of the houses which my lord cardinal holds as Bishop of Winchester.”
    â€œAnd?”
    â€œHe remains for the while in that estate and title, but . . . shall we say . . . it must come under the king’s consideration? You know my lord cardinal is indicted under the statutes of praemunire, for asserting a foreign jurisdiction in the land.”
    â€œDon’t teach me the law.”
    Norris inclines his head.
    He thinks, since last spring, when things began to go wrong, I should have persuaded my lord cardinal to let me manage his revenues, and put some money away abroad where they can’t get it; but then he would never admit that anything was wrong. Why did I let him rest so cheerful?
    Norris’s hand is on his horse’s bridle. “I was ever a person who admired your master,” he says, “and I hope that in his adversity he will remember that.”
    â€œI thought he wasn’t in adversity? According to you.”
    How simple it would be, if he were allowed to reach down and shake some straight answers out of Norris. But it’s not simple; this is what the world and the cardinal conspire to teach him. 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, but after all,