80 ILLUSTRATION BY AARON MARINIn the first two novels of her trilogy about Thomas
Cromwell, Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, Hilary
Mantel sings, as it were, the poem of his rise. This
is Cromwell as epic hero. The son of a blacksmith
and brewer from the hamlet of Putney, Cromwell
has become both chief minister to King Henry VIII
and the most powerful man in England aside from
the king; some say he is more powerful than the
king. Mantel’s Cromwell is omniscient—he has spies
everywhere— and omnicompetent. He excels at iron-
work, the culinary arts, the cloth trade, finance, civil
engineering, legislation, and diplomacy. His wit is
quick and endearing, except when it’s cutting. Above
all, he plays Henry’s court with consummate dexterity,
always several moves ahead of potential opponents.
In The Mirror & the Light, which closes the tril-
ogy, we witness Cromwell’s fall. This is not a spoiler.
You can Google his fate in eight seconds. Mantel’s
job is to make the inevitable suspenseful, which she
does by turning her protagonist into a tragic hero. In
tragedy, the hero is blind to how he brings about his
own doom, either because of hubris or because the
gods have willed his ignorance, or both. Cromwell
has become almost cocky. He has taken risks before,
but he always exhibited near-perfect self-mastery. His
profession requires dealing with “grandees who, if they
could, would destroy him with one vindictive swipe,”
Mantel writes in the middle novel. “Knowing this, he
is distinguished by his courtesy [and] calmness.” Now
he allows himself treasonous thoughts: “It is I who tell
[the king] who he can marry and unmarry and who
he can marry next, and who and how to kill.” And he
records too-candid observations in a volume of advice
for his protégés, “The Book Called Henry.” Mantel
makes us wonder: Does Cromwell have himself fully
in hand? If not, why not? What strange forces drive
him; does he understand them; and, most important,
can he control them in time?
When we leave Cromwell at the end of Bring
Up the Bodies, he has just destroyed a queen, doing
maximal damage in the process. The king, having
tired of his second wife, Anne Boleyn, and fallen in
love with Jane Seymour, told Cromwell to deal with
the situation. Cromwell did—he always does—but
his methods were extreme. He choreographed the
trials and convictions of Anne and her alleged lovers
on either trumped-up or wildly exaggerated charges
of adultery and incest. The public was treated to
scenes of what can only be characterized as royal
pornography, all of which turned on the theme of
the king’s sexual inadequacy. Five men, including
Anne’s brother, were beheaded. Cromwell plucked
four of them out of the swirl of court gossip not
because he thought they were guilty but to avenge
his beloved late master, Cardinal Wolsey, who fellHilary Mantel Takes
Thomas Cromwell Down
As the author’s remarkable trilogy ends,
her epic hero’s self-mastery is newly in doubt.By Judith ShulevitzBOOKSCulture & Critics