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.

5. "Wolf Hall," by Hilary Mantel, pp. 54-77

Part II, II, "An Occult History of Britain," 1521-1529, through "Or, with any good effect, to the woman they say he loves."

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So we go back a bit to bring things up to date. The chapter begins with a true occult history of Britain, about its founding by a Greek king's murderous 33 daughters who were exiled by him to the far-off island they called Albina, where they mated with demons and gave birth to giants that were overthrown by Brutus, the great-grandson of Aeneas, whose descendants ruled until the Romans came. And the Tudors were descended from Brutus through Constantine who was King Arthur's grandfather. And his descendant Prince Arthur was born in 1486, but died at 15, so his brother Henry (who would have been Archbishop of Canterbury if Arthur had lived) married his widow, Katherine of Aragon.

The true part is the troublesome part, especially after the appearance at court in 1521 of the 20-year-old daughter of Thomas Boleyn. Wolsey wanted her to marry into the Irish court, but she caught the eye of Harry Percy, heir to the Earl of Northumberland. Wolsey's plan is for Percy to marry Mary Talbot -- the Boleyns are comparative upstarts. Cromwell is in the shadows, taking notes, as Wolsey and Boleyn lock horns. Boleyn claims that Percy and Anne have already "pledged themselves before witnesses," and Wolsey orders him, "Marry the girl into Ireland before the Butlers hear any rumor that she's spoiled good. Not that I'd mention it. But the court does talk." And he adds, "notwithstanding your remarkable good fortune in marrying a Howard, the Boleyns were in trade once, were they not?" Boleyn stalks out, muttering "Butcher's boy" and, at Cromwell, "Butcher's dog."

But Cromwell knows something Wolsey doesn't, thanks to the gossip his wife has heard: "'The women judge from orders to the silk merchants that the king has a new--' He breaks off and says, 'My lord, what do you call a whore when she is a knight's daughter?'"  He means Mary Boleyn, Anne's sister, "a kind little blonde, who is said to have been passed all around the French court before coming home to this one, scattering goodwill, her frowning little sister trotting always at her heels." He also heard that Henry had lost his virginity to Boleyn's wife, which surprises Wolsey. And they mention the king's son by "John Blount's daughter," known as Henry Fitzroy, a ten-year-old whom the king has made Duke of Somerset and Duke of Richmond.

As Cromwell leaves Wolsey, "The trouble with England, he thinks, is that it's so poor in gesture. We shall have to develop a hand signal for 'Back off, our prince is fucking this man's daughter.' He is surprised that the Italians have not done it. Though perhaps they have, and he just never caught on."

We jump ahead to 1529 and to Cromwell and Cavendish in conversation at the cardinal sleeps. They recall how when she was parted from Harry Percy, who has married Mary Talbot, Anne Boleyn "said that if she could work my lord cardinal any displeasure, she would do it." And we review the rise of Anne and the efforts of Henry and Katherine to conceive that resulted only in a series of miscarriages and infant deaths with the exception of their "small but vigorous" daughter, Mary, born in 1516. The queen is now 42. "Under her gowns she wears the habit of a Franciscan nun. Try always, Wolsey says, to find out what people wear under their clothes." Cromwell compares Mary to his own daughter, Anne, who is two or three years younger than the princess: "Anne Cromwell is a tough little girl.... Mary Tudor is a pale, clever doll with fox-colored hair, who speaks with more gravity than the average bishop."

Wolsey has also advised Cromwell about serving the king: "If your chance comes to serve, you will have to take him as he is, a pleasure-loving prince. And he will have to take you as you are, which is rather like one of those square-shaped fighting dogs that low men tow about on ropes. Not that you are without a fitful charm, Tom."

The efforts to get Pope Clement to annul the marriage of Henry and Katherine was complicated by the pope's capture during the sack of Rome. Thomas More claims that the imperial troops in charge of the pope were "roasting live babies on spits," which elicits Cromwell's derision: "Listen, soldiers don't do that. They're too busy carrying away everything they can turn into ready money." It's a reaction that speaks of the difference between More, the protomartyr, and Cromwell, the practical man of business. And a paragraph follows that further elaborates on the difference between the medieval More and the modern Cromwell:

Under his clothes, it is well known, More wears a jerkin of horsehair. He beats himself with a small scourge, of the type used by some religious orders. What lodges in his mind, Thomas Cromwell's, is that somebody makes these instruments of daily torture.... Are simple villagers paid -- how, by the dozen? -- for making flails with waxed knots? Does it keep farmworkers busy during the slow winter months? When the money for their honest labor is put into their hands, do the makers think of the hands that will pick up the product? ... He thinks, also, that people ought to be found better jobs.

Meanwhile, Cromwell's own legal business thrives, "and he is able to lend money at interest, and arrange bigger loans, on the international market, taking a broker's fee." And this elicits a gibe from More: "Still serving your Hebrew God, I see.... I mean, your idol Usury." But Cromwell thinks himself lucky, with his thriving family.

But this, remember, is a scene from the past. When, as has been noted earlier, the plague has arrived. And, as noted still earlier, in the last chapter, when they arrived with the fallen cardinal at the grim house of exile, Cromwell reflected, somewhat surprisingly: "He doesn't need to think of going home; there's no home to go to, he's got no family left." So obviously the novel is about to tell us that something horrible has happened to the Cromwells.

4. "Wolf Hall," by Hilary Mantel, pp. 39-53

Part II, I: "Visitation," 1529

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Cardinal Wolsey has been dismissed as Lord Chancellor and Cromwell and others are helping him move from York Place, which the king has taken over for Anne Boleyn, to an empty and unprepared house at Esher.

The ousting of Wolsey from York Place is overseen by the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, although Cromwell is able to delay it with a few legal technicalities. When Suffolk, Charles Brandon, protests, Cromwell observes, "That's like Suffolk; to think the letter of the law is some kind of luxury." Wolsey hugs Cromwell, "his face gleeful," when he succeeds in putting off the move for a day, but "it is the last of their victories and they know it."

Also participating in the move are Sir William Gascoigne, the cardinal's treasurer, and George Cavendish, the cardinal's gentleman usher. For Cromwell, "This is an indecent spectacle: the man who has ruled England, reduced." Wolsey puts on a brave face: "Everything I have, I have from the king. The king gave it to me, and if it pleases him to take York Place fully furnished, I am sure we own other houses, we have other roofs to shelter under." Gascoigne, however, comes in with the rumor that Wolsey is to be taken to the Tower of London. Cromwell puts Gascoigne in his place, however, and announces that they're going to Esher. But he observes, "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."

As they get in the boat to go upriver, "and not downstream to the Tower," the "hooting and booing" crowd that is watching Wolsey's disgrace protests. "It is then that the cardinal collapses, falling into his seat.... 'The multitude,' Cavendish says, 'is always desirous of a change. They never see a great man set up but they must pull him down -- for the novelty of the thing.'" But when Cavendish speaks disrespectfully of the king, Wolsey calls him "The gentlest, wisest prince in Christendom" and says he "will not hear a word against him from any man."

The cardinal is so fat that he has trouble mounting the mule he has always ridden, inspiring some jokes from his fool Patch, or Master Sexton, whom Cromwell dislikes. A rider approaches. It is Sir Henry Norris, one of the king's friends, who brings the cardinal a ring from the king. The cardinal falls to the ground and kisses the ring, then begins to cry. Cavendish is scandalized when the cardinal takes the chain from his neck and puts it around Norris's neck because it's a reliquary, "a piece of the true Cross," but Cromwell says he knows someone in Pisa who makes them: "a round dozen for cash up front," further scandalizing Cavendish.

Cromwell feels "an irrational dislike" for Norris, "and he tries to dismiss it, because he prefers his dislikes rational." But he's distressed by seeing the cardinal on the ground in the mud, by "Wolsey's unraveling, in a great unweaving of scarlet thread that might lead you back into a secret labyrinth, with a dying monster at its heart." And then there's a scene in which Patch protests because the cardinal decides to send him to the king as a gift.

They arrive at the cardinal's palace at Esher to find it in utter disrepair. And after they get the cardinal into a "bed worthy of the name," Cavendish and Cromwell talk about who will succeed Wolsey as Lord Chancellor. Wareham, the Archbishop of Canterbury, is too old. And Cromwell decides it won't be the Duke of Suffolk -- "in his view Charles Brandon is no brighter than Christopher the mule, though better at fighting and fashion and generally showing off" -- because "the Duke of Norfolk won't have him." He decides it will be Thomas More, despite his opposition to the king's divorce: "The king is known for putting out his conscience to high bidders. Perhaps he hopes to be saved from himself."