These are bitter days
WolfCrawl Week 26
On the table week 26
The Lute Player
Tommaso Portinari
‘He is hungry’
‘You can never mistake a boy who was brought up hungry.’1 Cromwell was such a boy. At the beginning of the trilogy we met a little boy who, on his way back home from his work as kitchen boy, devoured leftovers that he sometimes got from his uncle.
The hunger has never left him. ‘…first thing in the morning or last thing at night, bloody collop of meat would not disgust him and if you woke him in the small hours he is hungry too.’2 The Young Beggar by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo between 1645 and 1650
Till now. After the first interrogation of Mark Smeaton in the evening, he sends everyone else to supper. He himself can't eat, wouldn't be able to get anything down except bitter purslane, prepared into a simple salad. He ate it as a child to have something in his stomach.
Whatever it is that moves him that evening and that night, whether it's a mixture of conscience and longing for a comforting feeling from his childhood (the purslane didn't fill him up, but at least he had something to chew and something in his stomach, which must have been a comfort), it's over in the morning: ‘He is hungry. He could eat a cut of mutton, with samphire, if any has been sent up from Kent.’ Cromwell will now bring the ‘great matter’ to a close.
Samphire from Kent
Possibly from the Wyatts? In the first book it was mentioned that Thomas Wyatt once sent food to Cromwell from Kent.3 The Wyatts are at home in Kent, close to Hever, the seat of the Boleyns. I know this from Mark Smeaton4.
‘Besides, Tom Wyatt has had her, and everybody knows it, down in Kent,’ Smeaton told someone in 1529, while Cromwell was secretly eavesdropping at the time. It's probably lucky for Wyatt, in a way, that if Smeaton were to retell this now, he'd be telling it as a heavily suspected man himself, who has accused many others in his panic - from nobles to kitchen boys - and so his credibility on the matter could be easily challenged.
The last morning
Anne’s breakfast on this last day of knighthood consists of white bread and preserves of fruit. Later she is escorted from the Council Chamber to dine. When they come to fetch Anne, they have to wait until the table has been properly cleared and the tablecloth folded. It's strange that they have to wait for that. But then I thought to myself, maybe it's because Anne no longer plays a role. Everything has to go on as usual and be ready for the next Queen. That is more important. Anne no longer belongs there and will be put away right after the crockery. Detail from ‘Still Life with Cheese and Fruit’ by Pieter Claesz, around 1620
The Lute Player
‘Mark is very adept, and a pleasant boy - at York Place, he was one of my choristers.’5 Cardinal Wolsey
Going in again to Anne, he finds the boy Mark, crouched over his lute and picking at something doleful; he flicks a finger against his head as he breezes past, and says, ‘Cheer it up, can't you?’ Mark almost falls off his stool.6 Thomas Cromwell
‘Well, having staged such a coup, I must go…’he gestures to the lute-player in the corner, ‘and leave you with your google-eyed lover.’
Anne darts a look at the boy Mark. ‘He does google. True.’
‘Shall I send him off? The place is full of musicians.’
‘Leave him,’ Mary says. ‘He’s a sweet boy.’7 Thomas Cromwell, Anne Boleyn, Mary Boleyn
‘Mark, if you stand here there like a landed fish I shall have you filleted and fried.’ The boy flees.8 Thomas Cromwell
I find this portrait of a Lute Player so impressive, the expression on the boy's face, what is he seeing, what is he thinking? Something is scaring him. The Lute Player, maybe by Caravaggio (1573-1610)
Tommaso Portinari
‘…I had distinguished myself in the houses of the Portinari, the Frescobaldi'… The Portinari were an old Florentine family. I am quite excited about this showing up of the Portinari in the book as it is a connection- however loosely- to my second big read this year (and probably well into 2025): Dorothy Dunnett´s “House of Niccoló” (consisting of 8 volumes). Tommaso Portinari (*around 1424-died 1501), who worked for the branch of the Medici Bank in Bruges, is a secondary character in this series. Tommaso Portinari by Hans Memling, around 1470-1480
I don't know if there will be much culinary news to report in the next three weeks and if we won't have to spend a lot of time at the execution ground instead. So if you don't hear from me in a week, it's because no one is eating anything in the book (understandable in May 1536 anyway). In that case, I'll take refuge with Thurston in the kitchen and stand ready with sharpened knives and scrubbed pots to resume reporting as soon as there's food again!
Chapter Master of Phantoms page 294
Chapter The Black Book page 268, 269
Week 14: Baskets of cobnuts and filberts, bushels of Kentish apples
Wolf Hall, Chapter Three-card-trick, page 169
Wolf Hall, Chapter Three-card-trick, page 167
Wolf Hall, Chapter Arrange your face, page 305
Wolf Hall, Chapter ‘Alas, What Shall I Do For Love?’, page 345
Wolf Hall, Chapter The Map of Christendom, page 598
Good shout on Tommaso Portinari and Dorothy Dunnett! I love this slight overlap.
It is ugly stuff indeed, and so painstakingly imagined by Mantel. I remember waiting for the second volume, then supposed to be the last, and being intrigued when word came that she had decided that this period needed a volume of its own: and how right she was! Cromwell is doing so many things here. His public task is carrying out the king’s orders. He seizes the chance to at last avenge Wolsey (is this also a sop to his conscience?). He is making it clear to anyone who somehow had not yet noticed it that he is a dangerous man: do not mess. Perhaps it’s risky to draw attention to himself in this respect so blatantly—after all he is surrounded by dangerous men looking for an excuse for violence. And then there’s what I am inclined to think is his basic motive. It’s her or him…. Anne or Cremuel. He is fighting for his life. If he fails he is as dead as she will be if he succeeds: which was not clear at the start of his enquiries, when we see him hoping that Henry will be content merely to put Anne away somewhere. Anne was probably as hostile to that as Henry, but she probably didn’t think for a moment that he would kill her, not until it was too late. Cromwell, of course, was there before her, and had laid the traps. Poor Mark Smeaton.