The resolution here is beautifully unfolded. A ban from court and quiet retirement for an obdurate Catholic daughter – a rallying point for the King’s religious and political enemies – does not appear to be on offer. Mary, staunchly Catholic, has been refusing to do so. Cromwell has promised the King that Mary will sign a document acknowledging Henry as the head of the Church of England. It is in this way that we become aware of the main engine of the narrative in the first part of the novel: Cromwell’s need to deal with Lady Mary, Henry’s first child, by Katherine of Aragon, now illegitimate with the annulment of that marriage. Mantel is exceptionally skilled at letting plot arcs emerge gradually, as from the shadows of a palace chamber away from the fire. The reader moves along with him, sees all in the way he sees it and thinks about it. He not only knows everything about everything and everyone, he is also the quickest in the room to react and hold Henry upright when the King takes ill: “He moves so fast that he is able to grip the King by his upper arms and steadies him as he sways.” He’s described at another point as ambling along, but still arriving before everyone else. Mantel’s Cromwell is still rather perfect, as he was in the earlier books. Mantel is not a writer with a marketer’s focus she is one with immense intelligence and an attention to (and memory for) detail in a hugely crowded canvas – and those are, indeed, the principal strengths of Cromwell as she has created him. Indeed, seldom have the virtues of a work so closely mirrored those of its protagonist. How could there not be with an author of ambition?
There have been, in other words, agendas in these books. In addition, Cromwell, in his rise from a commoner’s obscurity by way of his wits and ambition and shrewd grasp of a changing world, is her prototype of a “new man,” marking the beginnings of a shift from a late medieval world toward a modern one. Mantel, it is safe to say, is not fond of More. She has shaped her trilogy as an antidote to the vilification of him that mirrored the veneration – then and into our own time – of Thomas More, his great rival. Mantel’s Cromwell serves two thematic functions for his creator (he serves many roles for his king). Once again, we see everything through the eyes of Henry’s principal secretary, Cromwell. In a popular culture of pace and action, Mantel instead offers depth and texture, nuance and immersion. Read more: Author Hilary Mantel on Brexit, the monarchy and why Thomas Cromwell will always haunt her
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