What does St. Paul mean when he says Jesus was made a little lower than the angels?
We say, how did it happen? We ask ourselves. The duke sniffs. We ask ourselves, but by the steaming blood of Christ we have no bloody answer. The steaming blood of Christ. It’s an oath worthy of Thoma...
The order goes to the Tower, ‘Bring up the bodies.’ Deliver, that is, the accused men, by name Weston, Brereton, Smeaton and Norris, to Westminster Hall for trial. Kingston fetches them by barge; it i...
The king takes a deep ragged breath. He's been shouting. Now – and it's a narrow thing – he decides to laugh. ‘You advocate prudence. Prudence is a virtue. But there are other virtues that belong to p...
The king is good to those who think him good.
Sometimes,’ he says, ‘I think it would save time and work if all the interested parties came to the council, including foreign ambassadors. The proceedings leak out anyway, and to save them mishearing...
Se o leão conhecesse a sua própria força, seria difícil dominá-lo.
Right, Thomas Cromwell, she said. Make a note of this. No strange Dutch drinks. No women. No banned preachers in cellars. I know what you do.I don't know if I can stay out of cellars.Here's a bargain....
On March 8 Danton mounted the tribune of the Convention. The patriots never forgot the shock of his sudden appearance, nor his face, harrowed by sleepless nights and the exhaustion of traveling, palli...
Jesus Maria,’ the boy says. ‘The star that guides us to Bethlehem. I thought it was an engine for torture.
It’s not easy to speak of nonexistence, even if you’ve already commissioned your tomb.
It is wise to conceal the past even if there is nothing to conceal. A man’s power is in the half-light, in the half-seen movements of his hand and the unguessed-at expression of his face. It is the ab...
It is magnificent. At the moment of impact, the king's eyes are open, his body braced for the ; he takes the blow perfectly, its force absorbed by a body securely armoured, moving in the right directi...
It doesn’t matter what the terms are, just that there are terms. It’s the goodwill that matters. When that runs out, the treaty is broken, whatever the terms say.
In the Convention tomorrow I shall put him up to confront Saint-Just. Imagine it. Our man the picture of starched rectitude, and looking as if he has just devoured a beefsteak; and Camille making a jo...
If he's not watering his ale, he's running illegal beasts on the common, if he's not despoiling the common he's assaulting an officer of the peace, if he's not drunk he's dead drunk, and if he's not d...
I wonder, he says, how it can be that, though all these people think they know the king’s pleasure, the king finds himself at every turn impeded. At every turn, thwarted: maddened and baffled.
I wonder what I’ve married into, Morgan Williams says. But really, this is just something Morgan says; some men have a habitual sniffle, some women have a headache, and Morgan has this wonder.
I felt, he said, irritated. It seemed a waste, I suppose. To come so far. To cross the sea. To die for . . . He shrugs. God knows why.
He never lives in a single reality, but in a shifting shadow-mesh of diplomatic possibilities.