His refusal to respond to their barbs fools them into thinking he’s a servile conniver with no pride. The class animus that gave “Wolf Hall” much of its bite is even more pronounced here: The nobility frequently and openly insult Cromwell with sneering references to his low birth, poor education and unseemly ambitions.
Their pragmatic alliance with the Master Secretary implies no real amity. Tho se “new friends” are England’s old aristocratic families, who disdain the Boleyns (and Cromwell) as plebeian upstarts. “Your new friends will make short work of you once she is gone,” warns Anne’s brother. Though perhaps not guilty as charged.” Cromwell knows the risks he runs in bending the law to the king’s desires. With ruthless efficiency, Master Secretary Cromwell facilitates this judicial murder, as well as the concomitant deaths of four men who made the mistake of crossing him. There will be plenty of fresh corpses by the time Hilary Mantel’s narrative completes its mordant course through the nine months required to send Anne Boleyn to the scaffold and clear the way for Henry’s new love, Jane Seymour. More’s bitter aphorisms resurface to remind Cromwell of the dangerous path he has chosen in serving Henry’s capricious royal will.
Deceased enemies also linger in his thoughts: He’s forced to reconsider his hatred for his brutal father, and he can’t seem to dismiss Thomas More, whom he maneuvered to execution in 1535. He keeps them with him, giving the names of his beloved wife and daughters to the falcons he flies with his king, Henry VIII, and nursing memories of his disgraced mentor, Cardinal Wolsey, whose persecutors will soon suffer Cromwell’s vengeance. The dead cluster around Thomas Cromwell in this darkly magnificent sequel to “ Wolf Hall.”
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