A Place of Greater Safety

by Hilary Mantel

Within a few weeks the dove was dead. They had left the cage outside, there had been a storm. He imagined the little bird dashing itself in panic against the bars, its wings broken, the thunder rolling overhead. When Charlotte told him, she hiccupped and sobbed with remorse; but in five minutes, he knew, she would run out into the sunshine and forget it. “We put the cage outside so he would feel free,” she sniffed. “He was not a free bird. He was a bird that needed looking after. I told you. I was right.” But his rightness gave him no pleasure. It left a bitter taste in his mouth.

Everything that happens now will happen in the light of history. It is not a midday luminary, but a corpse-candle to the intellect; at best, it is a secondhand lunar light, error-breeding, sand-blind and parched.