21. "Wolf Hall," by Hilary Mantel, pp. 343-359

Part V, I, "Anna Regina," 1533, through "...a child in the womb is not an heir in the cradle."

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Cromwell adds a young woman, Helen Barre, with two small children to his household. She has been deserted by her husband, who beat her. He has also added Christophe, a boy who worked at the tavern where he met he three old men who represented Maître Camillo.

Henry and Anne renew their Calais vows on January 25, 1533, in a chapel at Whitehall, with "a huddle of witnesses," including William Brereton, who threatens, "Keep away from my family's affairs. Or you'll come off worse, Master Cromwell, than you can imagine." The priest is Rowland Lee, a friend of Cromwell's. As the wedding party leaves, Mary Boleyn gives him a sign that Anne is pregnant: "She had always said, I will be the first to know. It will be me who lets out her bodices." He concludes that the king probably doesn't know yet. And he tells Brereton "you have made a mistake in threatening me."

Cromwell meets with the designated Archbishop of Canterbury, who still has to be approved by the Pope, Thomas Cranmer. He tells Cranmer that Anne is pregnant, and Cranmer observes that "officially" he's not supposed to know even that Henry and Anne are married. "As I am to be judge in the matter of the king's old marriage, it would not be proper for me to hear that his new one has already taken place."

Anne summons him to tell him that she wants her sister to be married off. She thinks of Richard Cromwell, his nephew, because he's related to the Tudors.

In the Tower, he meets with John Frith, who was imprisoned by More while Cromwell was in Calais. He notes that Frith is married. "The one thing the king cannot abide -- no, many things he cannot abide -- but he hates married priests. And he hates Luther, and you have translated Luther into English." So Cromwell fears he can't help keep Frith from being burned at the stake for heresy. Frith is unrepentant about his beliefs.

In discussing the prospect of Richard's marrying Mary, Rafe observes that "all our lives and fortunes depend now on" Anne Boleyn, "and as well as being mutable she is mortal."

16. "Wolf Hall," by Hilary Mantel, pp. 264-276

Part IV, I, "Arrange Your Face," 1531, concluded, from "October: Monsieur Chapuys, the Emperor's ambassador, comes to Austin Friars...."

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Dining at Austin Friars, "Chapuys praises the food, the music, the furnishings. One can see his brain turning, hear the little clicks, like the gins of an elaborate lock, as he encodes his opinions for his dispatches to his master the Emperor."

Sir Henry Wyatt visits them in November and tells stories of his imprisonment by Richard III and how his son, the courtier-poet Thomas Wyatt, was nearly killed by a lion they thought they had tamed. Cromwell thinks, "Tom Wyatt. He can tame lions." Rumor has it that Anne Boleyn "has done Thomas Wyatt all the favors a man might reasonably ask, even in a brothel." Henry Wyatt asks Cromwell to keep an eye on Thomas.

Cromwell visits Anne: "She has made pets of the king's friends, the gentlemen of his privy chamber: Henry Norris, William Brereton, those people, and her brother, of course, Lord Rochford. ... A bigger set of fools you would go far to seek." Norris observes that Cromwell doesn't understand why the king is so infatuated with Anne, and asks whom Cromwell would choose for the king. He replies, "A woman I could love, would be a woman in whom the king has no interest at all." Norris says, "If that is a piece of advice, tell it to your friend Wyatt's son." He says that Francis Weston is jealous of everyone Anne sees, including "a boy she brings in to sing for us some nights." (A reference to Mark Smeaton?) And "Every time she looks at you, he keeps count, he says, there, there, do you see, she is looking at that fat butcher, she looked at him fifteen times in two hours." Cromwell says, "It was the cardinal who was the fat butcher." Norris replies, "To Francis, one tradesman's the same as the next." This provokes Cromwell to thoughts that other trades are worthless without the skill of the blacksmith and to memories of his father.

On New Year's Day he's awakened by Gregory with the news that Thomas Wyatt has been arrested for disturbing the peace. He engineers his release along with the others, including Francis Weston and Francis Bryan.

13. "Wolf Hall," by Hilary Mantel, pp. 223-231

Part III, III, "The Dead Complain of Their Burial," Christmastide 1530

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The household at Austin Friars is awakened after midnight by William Brereton and "an armed escort." Cromwell has been summoned by the king, who is at Greenwich. Accompanied by Rafe Sadler, Richard Cromwell and Gregory Cromwell, he goes to see Henry, who has had a bad dream about his brother, Arthur, and has gathered people, including Cranmer, to help him interpret it. "The king says, 'During the twelve days, between Christmas Day and Epiphany, God permits the dead to walk. This is well known.'" Henry thinks that Arthur's spirit is restless because his body had to be transported from Ludlow to Worcester in an oxcart. Cranmer opines, "The dead do not come back to complain of their burial. It is the living who are exercised about these matters." But the king wants to know why Arthur has chosen to come back now, twenty years after his death. Cromwell takes the lead:

He bites back the temptation to say, because you are forty and he is telling you to grow up.... "Because this is the vital time," he says. "Because now is the time to become the ruler you should be, and to be sole and supreme head of your kingdom. Ask Lady Anne. She will tell you. She will say the same."

"She does," the king admits. "She says we should no longer bow to Rome."

"And should your father appear to you in a dream, take it just as you take this one. That he has come to strengthen your hand. No father wishes to see his son less powerful than himself."

Afterward, Cranmer congratulates Cromwell on the way he handled the situation: "A deft touch, 'and should your father appear to you...' I take it you don't like to be roused often in the small hours." He also noticed that Cromwell had seized the king's arm. "And Henry, he felt it.... You are a person of great force of will."

Later that day, Cromwell returns to Greenwich where he takes the oath as a councillor to the king. Warham, the Archbishop of Canterbury, administers the oath in the presence of Thomas Boleyn and Thomas More. The latter is crying because his father has just died. Boleyn notices that Cromwell is wearing the turquoise ring left him by Wolsey. More gives him some advice: "Now you are a member of the council, I hope you will tell the king what he ought to do, not merely what he can do. If the lion knew his own strength, it would be hard to rule him."

12. "Wolf Hall," by Hilary Mantel, pp. 202-222

Part III, II, "Entirely Beloved Cromwell," Spring-December 1530, concluded, from "When Cranmer comes to the house, he feeds him..."

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Cranmer visits Cromwell and they spend some time getting to know each other, although Cromwell thinks, "at some level of his being this man will always believe I am a heathen." Cranmer has been visiting universities, talking to theologians, most of whom, he says, believe "the king is right." But as Cromwell notes, the pope "isn't open to persuasion now. Only to pressure. And I don't mean moral pressure." Cranmer replies that the king must also persuade "all of Europe. All Christian men." To which Cromwell replies, "I'm afraid the Christian women may be harder still." Cranmer and Cromwell do see eye to eye on the difficulty of clerical celibacy -- Cranmer having to resign from the priesthood when he got a woman, whom he married, pregnant. He returned to the priesthood after she died in childbirth. Cromwell: "There are some strange cold people in this world. It is priests, I think. Saving your presence. Training themselves out of natural feeling." Cromwell "has Alice, and Johane and the child Jo, and in the corner of his eye, at the periphery of his vision, the little pale girl who spies on the Boleyns. He has hawks in his mews who move toward the sound of his voice. What has this man?"

He goes to see the king, who is restless because he can't hunt, so he talks with him while shooting arrows into a target. "He says, Nan threatens to leave me. She says that there are other men and she is wasting her youth."

Norfolk is obsessing on the problem of succession: "The old king bred, and by the help of Heaven he bred sons. But when Arthur died, there were swords sharpened in France, and they were sharpened to carve up the kingdom. Henry that is now, he was a child, nine years old. If the old king had not staggered on a few more years, the wars would have been to fight all over again. A child cannot hold England." When Cromwell mentions that there is Mary, Norfolk scoffs at the idea of a woman ruling England. Stephen Gardiner asks if Cromwell thinks she can rule, and he replies, "It depends who advises her. It depends who she marries." Norfolk and Suffolk both treat Cromwell as an outsider, a man of low birth.

Meanwhile, at Austin Friars, he discovers that Jo and Alice are having theological arguments about Purgatory. "Dear God, what is going on under this roof? These children believe the Pope can go down to the underworld with a bunch of keys." He reflects, "The Austin Friars is like the world in little."

In November, Wolsey is arrested by Harry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, and on the 29th he dies. "What was England before Wolsey? A little offshore island, poor and cold." From Cavendish, Cromwell learns that people "'asked God to send vengeance on Harry Percy.' God need not trouble, he thinks: I shall take it in hand." Cavendish also reports that Wolsey had not eaten for a week, and "he cried your name, God forgive me, I said you were on the road. He said, the ways are treacherous. I said, you know Cromwell, the devil does not delay him -- if he says he is on the road he will be here." Cavendish vows that he will tell no one at court about what Wolsey said in his last days.

At Hampton Court, Cromwell witnesses a vicious lampoon of Wolsey being dragged off to hell by devils. When Norfolk mocks the cardinal, "Someone calls, 'Shame on you, Thomas Howard, you'd have sold your own soul to see Wolsey down.'" No one knows who said this, but Cromwell thinks it was Thomas Wyatt. Backstage, he discovers that the devils were played by George Boleyn, Henry Norris, Francis Weston, and William Brereton, and that the cardinal was Sexton, who used to be the cardinal's fool.