Wolf Crawl #32: To the underworld

   'I will obey you,' Wyatt says, 'as my father said I should. I suppose you can err like other men, and God he knows, you may be heading for disaster. But for me all roads lead there. I reach the crossroads and I throw the dice, and whichever comes up, it is the same – it is the swamp, or the abyss, or the ice. So I shall follow you as the gosling its mother. Or as Dante followed Virgil. Even to the underworld.'

last week | home page | reading schedule
further resources: Hilary Mantel | Wolf Hall

Welcome to Week 32 of Wolf Crawl. I am your guide,

Simon Haisell

, and this is a year-long slow read of Hilary Mantel’s Cromwell trilogy: Wolf Hall, Bring Up the Bodies, and The Mirror & the Light.

Each week, I dive into the detail with summaries, background, footnotes and tangents to enrich your reading. I am joined on this journey by

Bea Stitches

, who delves into the archive on our behalf, and Matt Brown, who makes maps to help us find our way through Cromwell’s world.

You can find the reading schedule and plot summaries for the full cast of characters on my website, Footnotes and Tangents. There, you can join other slow reads, including Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, and Hilary Mantel’s A Place of Greater Safety.

I start each post with a summary of the week’s story, illustrated by a map by Matt Brown. This week, we read the second of three parts of Part One. Chapter II. Salvage. London, Summer 1536.

In the UK Fourth Estate edition, this section runs from pages 77 to 116. In the US Picador edition, it runs from pages 64 to 98. It begins, “In his room at the Tower, Thomas Wyatt is sitting at the table where he left him…” It ends, “…his burdened and oppressed flesh the place where all arguments come to rest.”

This summary is followed by a few footnotes of interest. This week, we head into the underworld with murderous minds, taking a look at Cromwell’s growing empire and the old families baying for blood.

Bea Stitches

brings up more documents from the archive, and in The Haunting of Wolf Hall, we consider that butcher’s dog, Cromwell, alias Satan.

And then it is over to you. In the comments, let us know what caught your eye and ask the group any questions you may have. And if you’ve tumbled down a rabbit hole or taken your reading off on a tangent, please share where you have been and what you have found.

To get these posts in your inbox or the Substack app, subscribe to Footnotes and Tangents and turn on notifications for ‘2025 Wolf Crawl’ in your subscription settings.