Bring Up the Bodies

Anne Boleyn has been queen for seven years and yet, like Cromwell's  pet birds of prey, her enemies are circling - not least the king himself. She has not borne him a son, and he is disenchanted with her. Meanwhile the demure Jane Seymour in her sprigged white gown is being pressed forward by her powerful family as a possible replacement.

 

As in Wolf Hall, the story is told from the point of view of "he, Cromwell" - Mantel's reliance on the pronoun returns the reader's attention to Henry's servant again and again in a novel full of declaiming males. His brooding presence can never be forgotten even as courtiers flirt and deceive and dissemble about him.

 

It is a presence that grows ever more menacing as Henry gives him the task of ridding him of Anne, a wilful but ultimately powerless adversary: "He has always rated Anne highly as a strategist. He has never believed in her as a passionate, spontaneous woman." Cromwell muses. "Everything she does is calculated, like everything he does."

 

As Cromwell gathers the "evidence" against Anne, via treacherous ladies-in-waiting to besotted lovers (or possible lovers, her crimes are

never fully articulated), Mantel handles the pace as adroitly as a TV drama writer - although there is nothing soapy about her writing, rather dirt and blood and blade. 

 

It is a masterly and knowledgeable evocation of the era, from the intrigues of foreign courts down to the smells and sounds of Hampton Court. The novel is thick with Mantel's research - and there lies much of the fun - but she has also dared, convincingly, to conjure up meaningful characters from the history books. Henry himself is bombastic, brutal and blood-thirsty yet moons around his palaces writing love sonnets.

 

As in Wolf Hall, there is much to admire about Cromwell. He is efficient, witty, dry, eloquently multi-lingual, one step ahead of his enemies and ahead of the king. He has softnesses - grief for his dead wife and daughters, love for his son Gregory, and compassion for the low-down boys he employs.

 

Yet it is his very thoroughness that is so devastating. As the novel draws to a close, Cromwell brings about Anne's downfall (and that of his enemies) with merciless efficiency. But, as Mantel writes: "there are no endings". A great read, as dark and tumultuous and gripping as Wolf Hall. I cannot wait for the final chapter.