Master of Phantoms (Part 2/5)
Wolf Crawl Week 26: Monday 24 June – Sunday 30 June
NOTE: Occasionally, life gets in the way, and this week, we’ve been hit by a perfect storm of sickness and reduced childcare. So, unfortunately, this post is bare bones with no audio. I will circle back later to fill out my notes for this week. It’s a good week, and it pains me to leave it unfinished! Thank you for your patience and understanding. Simon
To get these updates in your inbox, subscribe to Footnotes and Tangents and turn on notifications for the Cromwell Trilogy.
Welcome to week 26 of Wolf Crawl
This week, we are reading the second of five parts of ‘Master of Phantoms, London, April–May 1536’. This section runs from page 323 to 361 of the Fourth Estate paperback edition. It starts with the line, ‘Mark at Stepney’ and ends: ‘We shall have no trouble with her now.’
You will find everything you need for this read-along on the main Cromwell trilogy page of my website, including:
Weekly updates, like this one
Online resources about Mantel’s writing and Thomas Cromwell
These posts are free for all, thanks to the generosity of paying subscribers who support my writing and this slow book group. Supporters can read my series of posts on The Haunting of Wolf Hall, and start their own discussion threads in the chat area. By upgrading to paid or making a one-off donation, you allow me to keep making these posts.
Thank you so much for all your support.
This is a long post and may get clipped by your email provider. It is best viewed online here.
Last week’s post:
This week’s story
Mark Smeaton comes to Cromwell’s house at Stepney. He brings his lute, but he does not play. ‘Five rash minutes of boasting’ is all it takes to undo him. He admits to sleeping with the queen. He, Master Secretary, wants a written confession and a list of names. When Smeaton falters, he threatens him with five minutes with Christophe, and more besides.
Christophe locks Mark in with Christmas, so the star in its sleeves can torture him. Grace’s angel wings can frighten him. He, Cromwell, does not sleep that night. And in the morning, names tumble from the musician: Norris, Weston, Brereton, Wyatt. ‘No, not Wyatt,’ Cromwell says. Call-Me queries why he protects Wyatt. He thinks Wriothesley would not understand.
‘1 May 1536: this surely, is the last day of knighthood.’ Smeaton to the Tower, Richard Cromwell to the jousts to whisper in the king’s ear. By night, Norris is in custody and the King of England is alone, with his demons and his doubts, and with Thomas Cromwell.
Now, they come for Anne. She is charged with adultery in the council chamber and arrested in her own rooms. The king’s councillors escort her by the river to the Tower. Her uncle Norfolk comes along to gloat and to taunt. He looks ready to drown his niece for a witch.
Outside the Tower, Anne collapses. He helps her up, but when she hears she will be lodged in her coronation chambers, she cries, ‘It is too good for me.’ He recognises this not as a confession of guilt but of failure. She has lost the king, and ‘is dead to herself. We shall have no trouble with her now.’
This week’s characters
Click on each link for more details and plot summaries for each character:
Thomas Cromwell • Mark Smeaton • Richard Cromwell • Thomas Wriothesley • Christophe • Henry VIII • Henry Norris • George Boleyn • Anne Boleyn • William Fitzwilliam • Thomas Audley • Uncle Norfolk • William Kingston • Richard Riche
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6949017b-a09f-49e3-b077-2c48c8df13cb_2443x2674.jpeg)
Footnotes
As I mentioned up top, personal circumstances mean I can’t bring you a full post this week. This is a great shame because there is lots to talk about:
My notes include discussion of the separation of Cromwell’s private and public worlds. More said it could be done, Crumb believes it impossible. And Mark Smeaton being ‘tortured’ by Grace’s peacock angel wings is the embodiment of that impossibility. What is a rebec, and what does it sound like? On trusting and not trusting the mind of Thomas Wriothesley. ‘Do you know you can learn from pain?’ Mantel, Cromwell and living with pain. Pulsane: leaves to ward off evil. Henry’s book: A Glass of Truth. (Truth Serum?) Anne Boleyn on the cobbles (one blow will kill her now), Cromwell helps her up: ‘So now get up.’
Quote of the week: The last day of knighthood
1 May 1536: this, surely, is the last day of knighthood. What happens after this – will be no more than a dead parade with banners, a contest of corpses. The king will leave the field. The day will end, broken off, snapped like a shinbone, spat out like smashed teeth. George Boleyn, brother to the queen, will enter the silken pavilion to disarm, laying aside the favours and tokens, the scraps of ribbon the ladies have given him to carry. When he lifts off his helmet he will hand it to his squire, and see the world with misted eyes, falcons emblazoned, leopards couchant, claws, talons, teeth: he will feel his head on his shoulders wobbling as soft as jelly.
Next week
Thank you for reading and joining me on this slow read of the Cromwell trilogy. Next week, we read the third of five parts of ‘Master of Phantoms, London, April–May 1536’. The third part runs from page 361 to page 406 of the Fourth Estate paperback edition, ending with the line: ‘They have brought knives to the table, carved themselves, and picked their bones clean.’
Before I go, a quick reminder that this book group is entirely funded by its readers. So, if you have enjoyed this post and found it helpful, please consider a paid subscription to access the bonus posts on The Haunting of Wolf Hall and start your own discussion threads in the chat area. You can also donate to my tip jar on Stripe. Thank you so much for all your support.
Until next week, I am your guide,
Master Simon Haisell
This section about Mark Smeaton is downright masterful. According to the Spanish Cronicle he was tortured, according to Mantel he took a turn with Christmas. The truth is long buried, both these versions are only tales, and one of Mantel’s greatest achievements is how firmly she is in control of Cromwell’s unreliable narration. He spins his story and violence leaks from his carefully chosen words: he did merely speak to his victim, so he says, and “in a thicket of words [Mark] is stuck fast, and the more he fights the deeper the thorn rip his flesh.” They lock him with Christmas, which is such a Scooby-Doo shenanigan, so silly and out of place in this bloody book, and all night Cromwell doesn’t sleep, his boys don’t sleep, Mark screams, and he thinks of the armory before the joust, “the beating, the shaping, the wielding, the polishing in the polishing mill”, such clever, deliberate language, a new meaning the deeper you dig, and he “never had this problem before, the problem of having frightened someone so much.” Mark is a broken man, the joust has ended, and this “surely is the last day of knighthood.”
Because no matter what you believe: maybe Cromwell didn’t touch Mark, maybe he just didn’t look and let the boys do their worst, maybe he himself was the butcher. Even if it was just psychological torture, it was torture nonetheless and something in Cromwell’s soul is irremediably lost. “Do not make sinners of us all,” he tells Mark. He isn’t a sinner, he tells himself, just a lawyer, and a lawyer’s truth is different from God’s truth. Will God greet him as a lawyer, or as a bully? A torturer, a murderer? Moore had men “dragged to his house in Chelsea, so he could persecute them conveniently in the bosom of his family,” the cognitive dissonance! Not he, Cromwell, the public figure. And Wolsey is still looming, and all the people who wronged the cardinal, who wronged him, Cromwell, are falling one by one. Next is Anne Boleyn, the cannon at the tower booms and he is shaking. The toll is too much already.
You mention Hilary and pain.
I’m mostly listening to the audio version so forgive me I’m not sure which section I heard this in but it was a mention of a woman’s unused womb migrating around her body and my first thought was Hilary and her endometriosis.