Wolf Hall - pg. 68

'Look now, my lord,' he says, his voice playing up and down the diplomat's scales: he is frank, a man of the world, and his smile says, now Wolsey, now Wolsey, you're a man of the world too. 'They're young.' He makes a gesture, designed to impersonate frankness.

(recursive metaphor)

Wolf Hall - pg. 62

'No. Thomas More.'

'But, a layman and a commoner? And when he's so opposed in the matter of the king's marriage suit.'

He nodes, yes, yes, it will be More. The king is known for putting out his conscience to high bidders. Perhaps he hopes to be saved from himself.

Wolf Hall - pg. 55

He closes his eyes. The river shifts beneath them, dim figures in an allegory of Fortune. Decayed Magnificence sits in the centre. Cavendish, leaning at his right like a Virtuous Councillor, mutters words of superfluous and belated advice, to which the sorry magnate inclines his head; he, like a Tempter, is seated on the left, and the cardinal's great hand, with its knuckles of garnet and tourmaline, grips his own hand painfully.

Wolf Room - pg. 51

Various noises: mainly, from the back of the room, a sort of stifled cheer. It's hard to escape the feeling that this is a play, and the cardinal is in it: the Cardinal and his Attendants. And that it is a tragedy.

Amulet - Closing

And although the song that I heard was about war, about the heroic deeds of a whole generation of young Latin Americans led to sacrifice, I knew that above and beyond all, it was about courage and mirrors, desire and pleasure.

And that song is our amulet.

Amulet - pg. 105

Why ask for more? Why go on fooling myself? The everyday in like a frozen transparency that lasts only a few seconds. So I came back and saw it and let it envelop me. I am the mother, I told it, and honestly I don't think I'm cut out for horror movies.

Amulet - pg. 101

I remember Ernesto San Epifanio and Arturo Belano laughing in the taxi, laughing their way back to reality or what they liked to think of as reality, and I remember the air as we stood on the sidewalk in front of the hotel and then inside the taxi, a cactus air, bristling with every one of Mexico's countless species of cactus, and I remember saying, It's hard to breathe, and, Give me back my knife, and, It's hard to talk, and, Where are we going.

Amulet - pg. 77

His best friends were no longer the young poets of Mexico, who were all older than him in any case; he started hanging out with adolescent poets, all younger than he was: sixteen-, seventeen-, eighteen-year-old kids, who seemed to have graduated from the great orphanage of Mexico City's subway rather than from the Faculty of Philosophy and Literature. Sometimes I'd see them peering through the windows of the cafes and bars on Bucareli, and the mere sight made me shudder, as if they weren't creatures of flesh and blood but a generation sprung from the open wound of Tleteloco, like ants or cicadas or pus, although they couldn't have been there or taken part in the demonstrations of '68; these were kids who, in September '68, when I was shut up in the bathroom, were still in junior high school. And they were Arturito's friends.

Amulet - pg. 75

Perhaps Arturito is already dead, I thought, perhaps that lonely valley is an emblem of death, because death is the staff of Latin America and Latin America cannot walk without its staff. But then Arturo's mother took me by the arm (I was in a kind of daze) and we marched on together shouting El pueblo unido jamas sera vencido, ah, it makes me cry to think of it now.

Amulet - pg. 63

And then I kept quiet while they went on badmouthing the poets of Mexico, the ones they were going to blow out of the water, and I thought about the dead poets, like Dario and Huidobro, and about all the encounters that never occurred. The truth is that our history is full of encounters that never occurred. We didn't have our Pound or our Yeats; we had Huidobro and Dario instead. We had what we had.

Wolf Hall - pg. 44

Rafe comes in: 'First back to my lord cardinal?' Where else, he says. He gathers his papers for the day. Pats his wife, kisses his dog. Goes out. The morning is drizzly but brightening, and before they reach York Place it is clear the cardinal has been as good as his word. A wash of sunlight lies over the river, pale as the flesh of a lemon.

Amulet - pg. 58

And I opened my mouth, half dead or half asleep, and said, Chido , Elena quite characteristically using that awful Mexican slang word for great. Chido, chido, chido. How awful. There’s something masochistic about Mexican slang. Or sadomasochistic, sometimes.

Amulet - pg. 54

Nothing good ever comes of love. What comes of love is always something better. But better can sometimes mean worse, if you’re a woman, if you live on this continent, hit upon unhappily by the Spaniards, inopportunely populated by Asians gone astray.

Amulet - pg. 50

It was the first time I’d been to a place like that, such an expensive place, I mean, and I must admit a ravenous hunger possessed me all of a sudden, because although I’m as thin as a rake, put food In front of me and I’m liable to fall upon it like the Unrepentant Glutton of the Southern Cone, or the Emily Dickinson of Bulimia especially if it’s an assortment of cheeses to beggar belief and a variety of wines to set your head spinning.

Amulet - pg. 24

Then I washed my hands, looked at myself in the mirror, saw a tall thin figure with a face that was already showing a few wrinkles, too many, a female Don Quixote as Pedro Garfias called me, and then I went out into the corridor, and there I realized right away that something was going on: the corridor was empty, nothing but faded shades of cream, and up the stairwell came a sound of shouting, a petrifying, history-making sound.

Wolf Hall - Opening

'There are three kinds of scenes, one called the tragic, second the comic, third the satyric. Their decorations are different and unalike each other in scheme. Tragic scenes are delineated with columns, pediments, statues and other objects suited to kings; comic scenes exhibit private dwellings, with balconies and views representing rows of windows, after the manner of ordinary dwellings; satyric scenes are decorated with trees, caverns, mountains and other rustic objects delineated in landscape style.'

VITRUVIUS, De Architectura, on the theatre, c. 27 BC

To my singular friend

Mary Robertson this be given.

PART I

Putney, 1500

'So now get up.'

Felled, dazed, silent, he has fallen; knocked full length on the cobbles of the yard. His head turns sideways; his eyes are turned towards the gate, as if someone might arrive to help him out. One blow, properly placed, could kill him now.

First published in Great Britain in 2009 by

Fourth Estate

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

77-85 Fulham Palace Road

London W6 8Jb

www.4thestate.co.uk

Copyright Hilary Mantel 2009

The right of Hilary Mantel to be identified as the author

of this works has been asserted by her in accordance

with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be

reproduced, transmitted, or stored in a retrieval system,

in any form or by any means, without permission

in writing from Fourth Estate.

Typeset in Stempel Garamond by

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Printed in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc

Amulet - Opening

ONE

This is going to be a horror story. A story of murder, detection and horror. But it won't appear to be, for the simple reason that I am the teller. Told by me, it won't seem like that. Although, in fact, it's the story of a terrible crime.

I am a friend to all Mexicans. I could say I am the mother of Mexican poetry, but I better not. I know all the poets and all the poets know me. So I could say it.

For Mario Santiago Papasquiaro

(Mexico City, 1953-1998)

In our misery we wanted to scream for help,

but there was no one there to come to our aid.

--Petronius

Copyright 1999 by the Heirs of Roberto Bolaño

Translation copyright 2006 by Chris Andrews

Originally published as Amuleto by Editorial Anagrama Spain; published

in agreement with Agencia Literaria

Carmen Balcells, Editorial

Anagrama, and the Heirs of Roberto Bolaño

All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in a newspaper, magazine,

radio, or television review, no part of this book may be reproduced

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying

and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in

writing permission in writing from the Publisher.

Manufactured in the United States of America.

New Directions Books are printed on acid-free paper.

First published as a New Directions Book in 2006.

Published simultaneously by Penguin Books Canada Limited.

New Directions Books are published for James Laughlin

by New Directions Publishing Corporation,

80 Eighth Avenue, New York 10011

Iliad - pg. 18

And Zeus, the master of cloud and storm:

"You witch! Your intuitions are always right.

But what does it get you? Nothing, except that

I like you less than ever. And so you're be worse off.

If it's as you think it is, it's my business not yours.

So sit down and shut up and do as I say.

You see these hands? All the gods on Olympus

Won't be able to help you if I ever lay them on you."

Iliad - pg. 12

Heard his beloved priest's prayer.

He hit the Greeks hard, and the troops

Were falling over dead, the god's arrows

Raining down all through the Greek camp.

A prophet told us the Arch-Destroyer's will,

And I demanded the fos be appeased.

Agamemnon for angry, stood up

And threatened me, and made good his threat.

Iliad - pg. 11

"Mother, since you bore me for a short life only,

Olympian Zeus was supposed to grant me honr.

Well, he hasn't given me any at all. Agamemnon

Has taken away my prize and dishonored me."

Iliad - pg. 6

Who will honor me, not least of all Zeus the Counsellor.

To me, you're the most hateful king under heaven,

A born troublemaker. You actually like fighting and war.

If you're all that strong, it's just a gift from some god.

Iliad - pg. 3

"Achilles, beloved of Zeus, you want me to tell you

About the rage of Lord Apollo, the Arch-Destroyer.

And I will tell you. But you have to promise me and swear

You will support me and protect me in word and deed.

I have a feeling I might offend a person of some authority

Among the Greeks, and you know how it is when a king

Is angry with an underling. He might swallow his temper

For a day, but he hold it in his heart until later

And it all comes out. Will you guarantee my security?"

Book Sequence - October

• Spinoza Ethics
• Descartes Meditations
• Iliad
• Amulet
• Plato
• Eugene Onegin
• Nabokov Pale Fire