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He had been in the position of a husband who could, by a single command, solve the problem of eternal triangles by reference to the headsman’s block or to the stake.

Even her execution is a bizarre form of theater: the headsman skulking around the platform like a mustachioed villain, the audience gasping like groundlings at each ripple of stagecraft.

“And how will she welcome you, this just queen? A warm embrace, a girlish titter, a headsman’s axe?”

The plays, adapted by Mike Poulton from the novels “Wolf Hall” and “Bring Up the Bodies,” end before Cromwell’s date with the headsman, a scene Ms. Mantel will tackle in a third novel.

Stygg was hardly the most expert of headsmen, and Benfred had a neck thick as a boar's, heavy with muscle and fat.