Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel Page A

take him to a sermon if you don’t take him to a brothel.”
    Mercy, he suspects, comes from a family where John Wycliffe’s writings are preserved and quoted, where the scriptures in English have always been known; scraps of writing hoarded, forbidden verses locked in the head. These things come down the generations, as eyes and noses come down, as meekness or the capacity for passion, as muscle power or the need to take a risk. If you must take risks these days, better the preacher than the whore; eschew Monsieur Breakbone, known in Florence as the Neapolitan Fever, and in Naples, no doubt, as Florence Rot. Good sense enforces abstinence—in any part of Europe, these islands included. Our lives are limited in this way, as the lives of our forefathers were not.
    On the boat, he listened to the usual grievances from fellow passengers: these bastard pilots, lanes not marked, English monopolies. The merchants of the Hanse would rather their own men brought the ships up to Gravesend: Germans are a pack of thieves, but they know how to bring a boat upstream. Old Wykys was queasy when they put out to sea. He stayed on deck, making himself useful; you must have been a ship’s boy, master, one of the crew said. Once in Antwerp, they made their way to the sign of the Holy Ghost. The servant opening the door shouted, “It’s Thomas come back to us,” as if he’d risen from the dead. When the three old men came out, the three brothers from the boat, they clucked, “Thomas, our poor foundling, our runaway, our little beaten-up friend. Welcome, come in and get warm!”
    Nowhere else but here is he still a runaway, still a little, beaten boy.
    Their wives, their daughters, their dogs covered him in kisses. He left old Wykys by the fireside—it is surprising how international is the language of old men, swapping tips on salves for aches, commiserating with petty wretchednesses and discussing the whims and demands of their wives. The youngest brother would translate, as usual: straight-faced, even when the terms became anatomical.
    He had gone out drinking with the three brothers’ three sons.
“Wat will je?”
they teased him. “The old man’s business? His wife when he dies?”
    â€œNo,” he said, surprising himself. “I think I want his daughter.”
    â€œYoung?”
    â€œA widow. Young enough.”
    When he got back to London he knew he could turn the business around. Still, he needed to think of the day-to-day. “I’ve seen your stock,” he said to Wykys. “I’ve seen your accounts. Now show me your clerks.”
    That was the key, of course, the key that would unlock profit. People are always the key, and if you can look them in the face you can be pretty sure if they’re honest and up to the job. He tossed out the dubious chief clerk—saying, you go, or we go to law—and replaced him with a stammering junior, a boy he’d been told was stupid. Timid, was all he was; he looked over his work each night, mildly and wordlessly indicating each error and omission, and in four weeks the boy was both competent and keen, and had taken to following him about like a puppy. Four weeks invested, and a few days down at the docks, checking who was on the take: by the year end, Wykys was back in profit.
    Wykys stumped away after he showed him the figures. “Lizzie?” he yelled. “Lizzie? Come downstairs.”
    She came down.
    â€œYou want a new husband. Will he do?”
    She stood and looked him up and down. “Well, Father. You didn’t pick him for his looks.” To him, her eyebrows raised, she said, “Do you
want
a wife?”
    â€œShould I leave you to talk it over?” old Wykys said. He seemed baffled: seemed to think they should sit down and write a contract there and then.
    Almost, they did. Lizzie wanted children; he wanted a wife with city contacts and some money behind her. They were