Fludd. Hilary Mantel
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Fludd
Hilary Mantel
Fourth Estate
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
This edition published by Fourth Estate 2010
FIRST EDITION
First published by Viking 1989
Published in paperback by Harper Perennial 2005
Copyright © Hilary Mantel 1989
PS section copyright © Sarah O’Reilly 2010
PS™ is a trademark of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
Hilary Mantel asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
This novel is a work of fiction.
The characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination.
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Source ISBN: 9780007172894
Ebook Edition © APRIL 2010 ISBN 9780007354931 Version: 2018-07-31
For Anne Ostrowska
The Church in this story bears some but not much resemblance to the Roman Catholic Church in the real world, c. 1956. The village of Fetherhoughton is not to be found on a map.
The real Fludd (1574–1637) was a physician, scholar and alchemist. In alchemy, everything has a literal and factual description, and in addition a description that is symbolic and fantastical.
You are familiar, no doubt, with Sebastiano del Piombo’s huge painting The Raising of Lazarus, which hangs in the National Gallery in London, having been purchased in the last century from the Angerstein collection. Against a background of water, arched bridges and a hot blue sky, a crowd of people – presumably the neighbours – cluster about the risen man. Lazarus has turned rather yellow in death, but he is a muscular, well-set-up type. His grave-clothes are draped like a towel over his head, and people lean towards him solicitously, and seem to confer; what he most resembles is a boxer in his corner. The expressions of those around are puzzled, mildly censorious. Here – in the very act of extricating his right leg from a knot of the shroud – one feels his troubles are about to begin again. A woman – Mary, or maybe Martha – is whispering behind her hand. Christ points to the revenant, and holds up his other hand, fingers outstretched: so many rounds down, five to go.
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