Wolf Hall Read Free Page B

people’s questions about why you’ve got them. By then he will be far from here, and presumably no one will hold him to account, because no one will know him or care. They’ll think it’s usual for him to have his face beaten in.
    He picks up the money. He says, “
Hwyl
, Morgan Williams.
Diolch am yr arian
.” Thank you for the money.
“Gofalwch am Katheryn. Gofalwch am eich busnes. Wela i chi eto rhywbryd. Poblwc.”
    Look after my sister. Look after your business. See you again sometime.
    Morgan Williams stares.
    He almost grins; would do, if it wouldn’t split his face open. All those days he’d spent hanging around the Williamses’ households: did they think he’d just come for his dinner?
    â€œPoblwc,”
Morgan says slowly. Good luck.
    He says, “If I follow the river, is that as good as anything?”
    â€œWhere are you trying to get?”
    â€œTo the sea.”
    For a moment, Morgan Williams looks sorry it has come to this. He says, “You’ll be all right, Tom? I tell you, if Bella comes looking for you, I won’t send her home hungry. Kat will give her a pie.”

    He has to make the money last. He could work his way downriver; but he is afraid that if he is seen, Walter will catch him, through his contacts and his friends, those kinds of men who will do anything for a drink. What he thinks of, first, is slipping on to one of the smugglers’ ships that go out of Barking, Tilbury. But then he thinks, France is where they have wars. A few people he talks to—he talks to strangers very easily—are of the same belief. Dover then. He gets on the road.
    If you help load a cart you get a ride in it, as often as not. It gives him to think, how bad people are at loading carts. Men trying to walk straight ahead through a narrow gateway with a wide wooden chest. A simple rotation of the object solves a great many problems. And then horses, he’s always been around horses, frightened horses too, because when in the morning Walter wasn’t sleeping off the effects of the strong brew he kept for himself and his friends, he would turn to his second trade, farrier and blacksmith; and whether it was his sour breath, or his loud voice, or his general way of going on, even horses that were good to shoe would start to shake their heads and back away from the heat. Their hooves gripped in Walter’s hands, they’d tremble; it was his job to hold their heads and talk to them, rubbing the velvet space between their ears, telling them how their mothers love them and talk about them still, and how Walter will soon be over.

    He doesn’t eat for a day or so; it hurts too much. But by the time he reaches Dover the big gash on his scalp has closed, and the tender parts inside, he trusts, have mended themselves: kidneys, lungs and heart.
    He knows by the way people look at him that his face is still bruised. Morgan Williams had done an inventory of him before he left: teeth (miraculously) still in his head, and two eyes, miraculously seeing. Two arms, two legs: what more do you want?
    He walks around the docks saying to people, do you know where there’s a war just now?
    Each man he asks stares at his face, steps back and says, “You tell me!”
    They are so pleased with this, they laugh at their own wit so much, that he continues asking, just to give people pleasure.
    Surprisingly, he finds he will leave Dover richer than he arrived. He’d watched a man doing the three-card trick, and when he learned it he set up for himself. Because he’s a boy, people stop to have a go. It’s their loss.
    He adds up what he’s got and what he’s spent. Deduct a small sum for a brief grapple with a lady of the night. Not the sort of thing you could do in Putney, Wimbledon or Mortlake. Not without the Williams family getting to know, and talking about you in Welsh.
    He sees three elderly Lowlanders struggling with their bundles