'He is tired of me,' he says cheerfully. 'He told me so. I am bested by the cardinal's ghost.' Call-Me says, 'I wondered what was happening, in there in the dark. Was he giving the cardinal a chance to appear?' In his graveclothes. His shroud muffling his skull. The dead are more faithful than the living. For better or worse, they do not leave you. They last out the longest night.
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further resources: Hilary Mantel | Wolf Hall
Welcome to Week 48 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 delve into the details, providing 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, Penelope Fitzgerald’s The Blue Flower and Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie.
I start each post with a summary of the week’s story, illustrated by a map by Matt Brown. This week, we are reading Part Five. Chapter II. Twelfth Night, Autumn 1539.
In the UK Fourth Estate edition, this section runs from pages 683 to 718. In the US Picador edition, it runs from pages 587 to 617. It begins, “In August Hans rolls up the bride, brings her home, and slaps her on a panel for the king’s inspection.” It ends, “The king will meet her at Blackheath, conduct her to Greenwich palace, and marry her by Twelfth Night.”
This summary is followed by a few footnotes of interest. This week, Cromwell is the bean king as his master marries a painting. We unearth the dead at Hinchingbrooke and try to make a new England. In the archives, Bea Stitches gets us up to speed with Cromwell’s intray.
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.
