The Mirror and the Light: 2020’s highly anticipated conclusion to the best selling, award winning Wolf Hall series (The Wolf Hall Trilogy, Book 3)

by Hilary Mantel

  Fitz comprehends. He yields his grip. He yelps, a finger still caught, as the chain flies free. A shove in the chest: Fitz staggers backwards. The doors slam.

  He, Lord Cromwell, crosses the room and drops the chain on the table before the king. Clank.

  ‘No, that won’t do,’ Henry says. ‘Getting up a fight for my benefit, when I know you agree with him.’ His fingers reach out for the chain, the gold still warm from where it lay against a velvet chest. ‘Still, I applaud your effort, my lord. Fitz is no mean weight.’ He won’t look at his councillors. ‘Bring Lord Montague to see me. I wish to read him extracts from his brother’s letter. Fetch Bishop Judas – strangely enough, I find Sampson is one man on whom I can rely. Perhaps we should bring Gardiner back from France. He usually has ideas about what to do, and none of you seem to know. Remind Sir Nicholas Carew I forbid him to communicate with my daughter. Tell the Courtenay family I know their practices. Warn them of my extreme displeasure. Commit Francis Bryan to the Tower. I hear he has been hawking his opinions about the town, saying that Mary is ill-used and I am an unnatural father.’

  ‘Oh, you know Francis,’ Edward Seymour says. ‘He doesn’t mean it. He loves your Majesty.’

  ‘And Fitzwilliam?’ Audley is frowning. ‘Must we appoint a new Master Treasurer?’

  ‘Fitzwilliam,’ the king says gently, ‘is not greatly to be blamed. He is my old friend, and I think you commonly say, you councillors, that he understands me better than any man alive.’ Henry looks around the table, fearfully leisured; all their hours are his. ‘You see,’ he says, ‘I do know what you councillors say, and how you scheme to govern me, and talk of who I love and who not. If there is one being in this world a man should trust, it is his maiden daughter. She should have no will but his, and no thought but what comforts him; in return, he protects her, and works her advancement. But Master Treasurer has no children. God has so disposed it. Not being a father, he cannot feel what I feel, and he does not know what I have suffered these last weeks. For I have never varied: Mary knows what declaration I require of her, and has known since the oath was first framed. If she chose to believe my title and right was some whim of that woman lately dead, then she was much mistook, and much misled, and if she has entertained some notion that I will creep back to Rome, she is a greater fool than I thought her. But what you do not see, what none of you seems to understand, is that I love my daughter. I think of all my children dead in the cradle, or dead before they saw the light. If I lose Mary, what have I? Ask yourselves … what comfort have I in this breathing world but her?’

  The room is silent. I felt, Audley will say later, that I should cross and say ‘Amen.’ Not even the new councillor is crude enough to say, ‘In fact, Majesty, you have young Richmond,’ or remind him of the ginger pig Eliza, squalling somewhere up-country. But Edward Seymour is frowning: if the king has nothing, where does that leave sister Jane, where does that leave the family at Wolf Hall?

  ‘So, good Master Secretary,’ the king says. ‘Lord Cromwell – as you love me and love my service, you will bring this matter to a conclusion. We shall not come here to debate it again.’

  The king puts his palms on the table and levers himself to his feet. The councillors tumble from bench and stool, and kneel. They kneel till he is out of the room. Even when the doors are closed after him they do not speak. Till the Lord Chancellor says, ‘Conclusion? What does that mean?’

  ‘God knows,’ he says.

  Riche says, vehement, ‘I wish I were never a councillor! I wish I were in China.’

  Seymour mutters, ‘I wish you were in Utopia.’

  Mary’s letter, which is still in his pocket, tells him: Cromwell, I can go no further, I can concede no more. I will sign no articles that slander my mother the queen. I will never agree my father is or ought to be head of the church. Do not let them push me, do not let them entreat me, I have moved as far as my conscience will let me move. You are my chief friend and sustainer. My very trust is in you.

  ‘I think he wants you to kill her,’ Edward Seymour says.

  The cardinal, in his day, used to laugh about the time when the young Henry thrust a leg forth from his gown and invited the French ambassador to admire his calf. ‘Has your king a leg like that?’ he asked. ‘Tell me, has he? King Francis is a tall man, I know, but is he broad in the shoulder like me?’

  Now the same prince, dragging away from the council chamber, wraps his gown about himself, the fine calf visibly bandaged, his face puffy and pale. Henry is the site, his body the locus, the blood and bile and phlegm; his burdened and oppressed flesh the place where all arguments come to rest.

  At the Tower, Francis Bryan says, ‘Was this where you kept Tom Wyatt?’

  ‘Airy,’ he says, ‘isn’t it? I always get good lodgings for my friends.’

  ‘One in, one out.’ Francis slides low in his chair, and looks around him; one eye patched, the other bleared. ‘I take it house arrest would not have been enough?’

  ‘You’re safer here. That’s what I told Wyatt.’

  ‘I hear you are Privy Seal. You climb so fast, my lord, the kingdom has not ladders enough.’

  ‘Ladders? I have wings.’

  ‘Then flit into the dusk,’ Francis says, ‘before they melt.’

  ‘The king thinks Mary would not defy him unless a man were behind her. In chief he suspects your brother-in-law Carew.’

  ‘Old Carve-Away.’ Francis laughs. ‘He paints a picture of himself, the loyal chevalier in black armour. He gives Mary to understand he will make her queen.’

  There is no note-taker. Only Lord Cromwell’s own folder of papers, on the table where the book of Petrarch’s verse lay: the putti, the sea monster, the binding soft as skin. His hand does not move. Time enough to write. ‘Carew, then. Who else?’

  ‘Lord Exeter’s tribe. And snivelling little Montague.’

  ‘If the king fetches them in, will you give testimony?’

  ‘Yes. If it’s me or them. Why should I be better than Tom Wyatt?’

  ‘No one ever thought you were.’

  ‘But you don’t want to bring them in, do you? You’d rather cut deals.’

  ‘It is my merciful nature prevents me –’

  Francis snorts. ‘Nothing prevents you. But you cannot destroy Mary’s people unless you destroy her, and you don’t want to lose her, and you don’t think you can control Henry, if he keeps killing close to home.’

  He remembers Francis standing beside the scaffold, sweating in his leather jerkin, waiting to sprint to the Seymours with the news that Anne’s head was off. If you want speed, choose Francis Bryan. Your impulses ripple beneath his skin, ready for action. If you want someone bribed, if you want someone charmed, if you want some secret and dirty dealing, you know where to go. If you want the unspeakable thing spoken, then give Francis the nod. ‘I know you, Cromwell,’ he says. ‘You think yourself a cautious politic man. But you are a gambler, like me.’

  ‘Not like you. You would crawl to the card table if you were poisoned. When you go blind you will sniff out the cups and wands. Your fingertips will feel out the spots on the dice.’

  Francis says, ‘Another man, from the place where you come from, would get himself to a quiet spot and count his takings. Not Cromwell. He will have all to rule. If Seymour’s girl makes the king a son, who will oversee his princely education, but Cromwell? If Fitzroy is named heir, Cromwell is in his graces. If Mary survives to reign, she will always know that Cromwell saved her life.’

  ‘Believe me, Francis,’ he says, smiling, ‘I have no expectations. All I want is to get through the week.’

  ‘You won’t stop till you’re a duke. Or king.’ Francis pushes up his eye-patch. He rubs the scar tissue beneath. ‘Not that you would be a bad king, by the way.’

  His glance flicks away from the wreckage of Bryan’s face. Its owner laughs. ‘You’ve seen worse.’<
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  He goes to the door. ‘Martin? Fetch me a proper chair. How is this miserable stool still here? Didn’t I kick it out?’

  Martin appears. ‘It must have trundled back by itself. I’ll toss the little bugger downstairs.’

  ‘Chop it up for firewood,’ Francis says. ‘Show it who’s master.’

  ‘And fetch claret,’ he says to Martin. ‘Put it on my tally.’

  ‘You keep an account?’ Francis says. ‘St Agnes bless me.’

  ‘I think of setting up my own cook, with a few spit boys and a cold room for pastry. I keep spare shirts here, and my lambskin coat. I keep clerks.’

  ‘No clerks,’ Francis says. ‘Or I fall silent.’

  ‘If you will give me the testimony you promise, I will put it away till such time as I can use it. I will write down what you say myself, and no one need ever know it comes from you. But if any of us are to live to see next week, Carve-Away must write to Mary, and admit she can look for no practical help from him or his friends, and that if she does not do exactly as I tell her, she will be lost. And I will speak to Henry for you and’ – he rubs his own eyes – ‘as soon as we are to the other side of this, you will be free. It will not be long. Mary must choose now: her father or the Pope.’

  ‘Her father or her mother,’ Francis says. ‘You cannot fight the dead. You may have to cede her to them. God knows why you think she is your future. Even if you save her now, she will die on you; she is always ailing. And if the king turns on you, it will not be like when old Henry Guildford quit and went off to the country to prune his fruit trees and enjoy the birdsong. Remember how Wolsey fell. Bungle this, and Henry will put you where I am now. Or in a worse place, where you would be glad of the three-legged stool.’

  ‘You sound as if you care,’ he says. ‘Giving me good advice.’

  Francis says, ‘What is this commonwealth without you? I would like to see you thrive. After all, I may have to borrow money from you.’

  Martin comes in, bumping a chair before him. He thinks, this will need patience: even if I get sure proofs of treason, can I afford to use them? Bryan is right. It is no small matter to bring down two great families and their affinities, when you have scarcely buried the Boleyns; and to do it without damage to the young woman whose cause they claim they promote. Henry cannot be ready before I am ready: I must restrain my cannibal king.

  ‘One more thing, Francis. When Carew has written his letter, your sister Eliza must take it to Hunsdon herself, and confer with your lady mother. Lady Bryan has brought up Mary from her infancy. I trust her to have her interests at heart.’

  ‘And,’ Francis says, ‘my lady mother is not the dottypoll she seems.’

  ‘They must go to Mary, mother and daughter, and be earnest with her, and use any persuasion. I am trusting your whole family to serve me in this.’

  ‘Well,’ Francis says with distaste, ‘if you must pull the women into it.’

  ‘The women are already in it. It’s all about women. What else is it about?’

  Francis looks into his cup. He swills the contents about, as if he were divining and trying to change the fate in the lees. ‘People say, Henry will not make away with his daughter. Others say, we did not think he would make away with his wife. But I – I always knew he would kill Anne Boleyn. Or if not, then some other man would do it for him.’

  The warm weather is here. The long days in which, if rumour is true, the Lady Mary does not eat: the short, light nights, in which she paces sleepless, her face swollen, her eyes red-rimmed; in which she swims in her salt tears as in a drowning pool. Tears are good for young women, especially those in whom the menstrual flow is stopped, or those who want a man in their bed but are obliged to do without. If Mary stopped crying, she might be even sicker than she is now. So when she sobs and retches, no one stirs to comfort her. When she cries, ‘Jesus pity me,’ it appears He does not.

  The jurists whom the king consults suggest that the oath should be put to Mary again, so there can be no doubt that she knows what is required. Of course she knows, the king says. She is in no doubt. But he adds, as he did last month in the matter of Anne Boleyn, ‘Cromwell, I wish to stand right with the law in every particular.’

  ‘Send for Chapuys,’ he tells Richard: he, Lord Cromwell. ‘He must take supper with me. He will plead he has no appetite. But he can watch me eat.’

  Richard says, ‘You could have resolved this two weeks ago. You have put us in peril day after day. Why do you not go to Mary yourself?’

  ‘Because I can only do this at a distance,’ he says.

  He remembers the castle at Windsor, a day of baking heat; the year of our salvation, 1531. In the great courts, the king’s baggage wagons stood ready, the household departing for a summer of hunting, dancing and other sport. He himself, compelled to melt into shadow, up staircases and through shuttered rooms empty of contents; through the queen’s suite of rooms to find Katherine sitting alone, abandoned, obdurate, knowing but not consenting to know that Henry had gone without a word of goodbye; the child Mary, fragile as straw, leaning on the back of her chair. Madam, he said, your daughter is ill, she should sit. A spasm of pain shook the girl and caused her to droop, and clench her hand on the gilding. Katherine spoke to her in Castilian: ‘You are a daughter of Spain. Stand up.’

  He battled that day for the sick, narrow body, and he won. At his feet, a stool: on the stool, a cushion embroidered with a mermaid. He picked up the stool in one hand, the mermaid in the other. He held the gaze of the Spanish queen, and slammed the stool down on the flags. The sun streamed through coloured glass; squares of light, pale green and vermilion, fluttered like standards against pale stone.

  Katherine had closed her eyes. As if she herself were suffering, she made the barest concession to a nod. Then she opened her eyes and shifted her gaze to the middle distance. He saw the princess sway; he moved and caught her, arm outstretched. He steadied her: he remembers her tiny bones, her weightless body quivering, her forehead sheened with sweat. She sank to the stool. He passed her the cushion, studying her face. She hugged the mermaid against her belly, wrapping her arms across herself, bending double to ease her pain. After a moment, she let out her breath with a grunt. Then her head jerked up, and she took him in, astonished and grateful. In an instant she had wiped the expression away. It was a transaction so swift that you could barely say it occurred. But until the interview was concluded and he bowed himself out of the room, her eyes followed him everywhere he moved.

  After supper, as a hush falls and the long midsummer day folds itself and disposes to dusk, he and the ambassador climb one of the garden towers. London lurks below them in the blue haze. Before them is a dish of strawberries they must finish before the moon rises. The ambassador has left his papers at the foot of the tower. His folio of white leather, stamped with the Emperor’s double eagle, rests on a bank of turf starred with daisies.

  ‘What irks me,’ he tells Chapuys, ‘is that no prince in Europe has a place to stand and look down at Henry. They have broken their parliaments, such as they were, racked their people with taxes, raided the church coffers, killed their councillors – but if they crook their knee to the Vatican, all is well, they are moral fellows and the Pope sends them a blessing and tells them what glorious monarchs they are. Which of them would have endured a barren wife, year after year? They would have poisoned her. Which of them would bear with a disobedient child? If Mary were the daughter of some other prince, she would be walled up and forgotten, or she would meet with an accident.’

  ‘Yes,’ Chapuys says. ‘But that is not what you are going to recommend.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter what I recommend. This affair has broken me. I am a dead man.’

  ‘You said that before. When the concubine was plaguing you.’

  ‘I said it and I meant it. I have gone so far in this matter there is no way back – I assured the king that Mary would comply.
He hates a promise-breaker.’

  Chapuys is pensive, tracing with a finger the faint, feathery pattern on the marble tabletop. ‘How did you get this up here?’

  ‘Winched it through the window. Did you think I prayed to the holy bones of Bishop Fisher, and he made it fly?’

  He has leased this house from the canons at Smithfield, at St Bartholomew’s. Their prior Will Bolton was the king’s builder, a man with a good head for planning big works and seeing them through; bless me, Bolton, he sometimes says, when he arrives here and takes a breath, his horse walked to the stable, his bags hauled in by Christophe. The prior used to come out here to hunt in summer and recreate himself, and his rebus – a barrel or tun shot through with a crossbow bolt – is set into the garden walls. It is a small house with one good square chamber on each floor, and fruit trees and arbours all around, and garden towers so placed that they catch the summer breezes, and look down over the treetops to the city.

  ‘Prior Bolton was lame the last five years of his life,’ he says. ‘He can never have made it up here to get the view. Though one could not expect it, he was eighty-two at his decease.’

  ‘You are going to live for ever, of course,’ Chapuys says. ‘Always climbing.’

  ‘When we go in I will show you the enamelled tiles in the parlour. They are a pure lapis blue. He must have got them from Italy.’

  The low murmur of their voices, the settling, preening doves in their cote: like a flake of summer snow, a stray feather floats past, and his eyes follow it into the dusk. Chapuys says, ‘Of course, I do not wonder everyone in this country has contempt for the Vatican. Rome let Katherine down, vacillating year after year.’