Wolf Hall Read Free Page A

as hard as ever she did when she was a child, he can see how she might like it, that Morgan would exhort her to sit down and be a lady.
    â€œI’ll pay you back,” he says. “I might go and be a soldier. I could send you a fraction of my pay and I might get loot.”
    Morgan says, “But there isn’t a war.”
    â€œThere’ll be one somewhere,” Kat says.
    â€œOr I could be a ship’s boy. But, you know, Bella—do you think I should go back for her? She was screaming. He had her shut up.”
    â€œSo she wouldn’t nip his toes?” Morgan says. He’s satirical about Bella.
    â€œI’d like her to come away with me.”
    â€œI’ve heard of a ship’s cat. Not of a ship’s dog.”
    â€œShe’s very small.”
    â€œShe’ll not pass for a cat.” Morgan laughs. “Anyway, you’re too big all round for a ship’s boy. They have to run up the rigging like little monkeys—have you ever seen a monkey, Tom? Soldier is more like it. Be honest, like father like son—you weren’t last in line when God gave out fists.”
    â€œRight,” Kat said. “Shall we see if we understand this? One day my brother Tom goes out fighting. As punishment, his father creeps up behind and hits him with a whatever, but heavy, and probably sharp, and then, when he falls down, almost takes out his eye, exerts himself to kick in his ribs, beats him with a plank of wood that stands ready to hand, knocks in his face so that if I were not his own sister I’d barely recognize him: and my husband says, the answer to this, Thomas, is go for a soldier, go and find somebody you don’t know, take out his eye and kick in his ribs, actually kill him, I suppose, and get paid for it.”
    â€œMay as well,” Morgan says, “as go fighting by the river, without profit to anybody. Look at him—if it were up to me, I’d have a war just to employ him.”
    Morgan takes out his purse. He puts down coins: chink, chink, chink, with enticing slowness.
    He touches his cheekbone. It is bruised, intact: but so cold.
    â€œListen,” Kat says, “we grew up here, there’s probably people that would help Tom out—”
    Morgan gives her a look: which says, eloquently, do you mean there are a lot of people would like to be on the wrong side of Walter Cromwell? Have him breaking their doors down? And she says, as if hearing his thought out loud, “No. Maybe. Maybe, Tom, it would be for the best, do you think?”
    He stands up. She says, “Morgan, look at him, he shouldn’t go tonight.”
    â€œI should. An hour from now he’ll have had a skinful and he’ll be back. He’d set the place on fire if he thought I were in it.”
    Morgan says, “Have you got what you need for the road?”
    He wants to turn to Kat and say, no.
    But she’s turned her face away and she’s crying. She’s not crying for him, because nobody, he thinks, will ever cry for him, God didn’t cut him out that way. She’s crying for her idea of what life should be like: Sunday after church, all the sisters, sisters-in-law, wives kissing and patting, swatting at each other’s children and at the same time loving them and rubbing their little round heads, women comparing and swapping babies, and all the men gathering and talking business, wool, yarn, lengths, shipping, bloody Flemings, fishing rights, brewing, annual turnover, nice timely information, favor-for-favor, little sweeteners, little retainers, my attorney says . . . That’s what it should be like, married to Morgan Williams, with the Williamses being a big family in Putney . . . But somehow it’s not been like that. Walter has spoiled it all.
    Carefully, stiffly, he straightens up. Every part of him hurts now. Not as badly as it will hurt tomorrow; on the third day the bruises come out and you have to start answering