Emma’s Reviews > The Mirror & the Light > Status Update

He eases himself down to die. He thinks, others can do it and so can I.

He has lived by the laws he has made and must be content to die by them. But the law is not an instrument to find out truth. It is there to create a fiction that will help us move past atrocious acts and face our future. It seems there is no mercy in the world, but a kind of haphazard justice: men pay for crimes, but not necessarily their own.

Henry glances back over his shoulder. No one has approached them. They are alone, as in a wasteland. Henry says, "Her breasts are slack and she has loose skin on her belly. When I felt it, it struck me to the heart. I had no appetite for the rest. I do not believe she is a maid."

my guy, have you looked in the mirror as of late?

Never underestimate Walter, his violence and cunning. The first blow came from nowhere and stunned him. There was blood in his eyes and after that Walter could do what he liked. He did it with his feet and he did it with his fists, till he, Thomas, was a bleeding jelly on the cobblestones, and his father stood over him and roared, 'So now get up!'

'But think, my lord. If you call a traitor everyone who has voiced a dislike of the king or his proceedings, who does that leave alive?'

'Me,' he says. Henry and Cromwell. Cromwell and Henry.

The rich man can slaughter as he pleases, if his pocket can bear the fines, but the poor man cannot afford one murder across his lifetime.

His dreams are oppressive: he finds himself at a landing stage, the opposite bank out of view. The river widening, nothing but the grey still water stretching away, polished pewter reflecting a silver sky: no bank in view because there is no bank, because the water has become eternity, because his flesh is dissolved in it; because his stories merge, all memories flatten to one.

You look back into your past and say, is this story mine; this land? Is that flitting figure mine, that shape easing through alleys, evader of the curfew, fugitive from the day?...is this my essence, twisting into a paper's flame, or have I slipped the limits of myself- slipped into eternity, like honey from a spoon?

These last few years you have carried a great burden, and carried it alone - [...] You are stooped, you are worn, you are bowed under the weight of your past, and you are only twenty years old. Now let go. Let others bear the burden, who are stronger, and appointed by God to carry the cares of state. Look up at the world, instead of down at your prayer book. Try smiling. You'll be surprised how much better you feel.

Mercy has now entered into her old age. She is the lady of the house, but she mostly keeps to her own part, a book open on her knees. She reminds him of an image of St. Barbara he saw once in Antwerp, a saint reading against the noise of a construction site, backed by scaffolding and raw brick.