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

  Many things have occurred, that we pretend have not occurred. This must be another. ‘We’ll talk to Meg first,’ he says. He pictures her running towards him, hair loose and streaking behind her, like Atalanta in the footrace: her mouth open, emitting a steady wail.

  First comes her shock, indignation, denial: how dare he enquire into her life? I am informed … he says, and she says, ‘How? How are you informed?’

  ‘By your own people,’ he says. He sees how hard she takes that, bursting into hot angry tears the size of apple pips.

  Her friend Mary Fitzroy, Norfolk’s daughter, stands behind her chair. ‘And what have the servants told your lordship?’ She makes their words contaminated, even before they are aired.

  ‘I am informed that Lady Margaret has resorted to the company of a gentleman.’

  Mary Fitzroy presses a hand on Meg’s shoulder: say nothing. But Meg flashes out: ‘Whatever you think, you are wrong. So don’t look at me like that!’

  ‘Like how, my lady?’

  ‘As if I were a harlot.’

  ‘God strike me if I ever thought so.’

  ‘Because I tell you, Thomas Howard and I are married. We have given our promise and it holds good. You cannot part us now. We are every way married. So you are too late, it is all done.’

  ‘It may not be too late, at that,’ he says. ‘Let us hope not. But when you say “every way married”, I cannot guess at what you mean. Look at Mr Wriothesley here – he cannot guess either.’

  On the table before them are the sketches for the Lady Mary’s ring. Mr Wriothesley fingertips the sheets together, solemn, like an altarboy. His glance rests on the papers, where lines lace and intersect: ‘Excuse me, sir,’ he murmurs, and plants a book on the sheets to secure them.

  Good. We don’t want Meg picking one up and blowing her nose on it. He asks Mary Fitzroy, ‘Will you not sit?’

  ‘I do well on my feet, Lord Cromwell.’

  ‘Let’s set the facts down.’ Mr Wriothesley pulls up a stool, expectant eyes on Meg. When her handkerchief is sodden she balls it up and drops it on the floor, and Mary Fitzroy passes her another: it is sewn over with Howard devices, so Meg dabs her cheeks with the blue-tongued lion of the Fitzalans. ‘Cromwell, you have no right to cast doubt on my word. Take me to see my uncle the king.’

  ‘Better off with me, my lady, in the first instance. Certainly I can broach it with the king, but first we must think how to present your case. Naturally you wish to keep your good name. We understand that. But it is of no help to you or to me to insist you are married, since you and Lord Thomas have pledged yourself without the king’s permission or knowledge.’

  ‘And,’ Wriothesley says, ‘we will not lie for you.’ He picks up a pen. ‘The date of your pledge was …?’

  A fresh flood of tears, another handkerchief. He thinks, what is Mary Fitzroy to do? She cannot own many more. She will have to pick up her skirts and start ripping up her underlinen. Meg says, ‘What does the date matter? I have loved Lord Thomas a year and more. So you cannot say, and my uncle cannot say, that we do not know our minds. You cannot part us, when we are joined by God. My lady Richmond here beside me will bear out what I say. She knows all, and if it were not for her help, we should never have enjoyed our bliss.’

  He raises his eyes. ‘You kept watch for them, my lady?’

  Mary Fitzroy shrinks into herself. She is very young, and to be dragged into this debacle … ‘You gave the signal,’ Wriothesley suggests to her, ‘when your seniors were gone? You encouraged them to meet? And you witnessed their pledge?’

  ‘No,’ she says.

  He turns to Meg: ‘So no one was present when these words were spoken – I say “words”, I will not dignify them as “pledge” or “promise” –’

  Deny it, he tells Meg under his breath: deny the whole and deny every part, then persist in denial. No words. No witnesses. No marriage.

  Meg flushes. ‘But I have a witness. Mary Shelton stood outside the door.’

  ‘Outside?’ He shakes his head. ‘You can’t call that a witness, can you, Mr Wriothesley?’

  Wriothesley looks at him fiercely. It is he who has found out the plot, and he doesn’t want it talked away. ‘Lady Margaret, have you and your lover exchanged gifts?’

  ‘I have given Lord Thomas my portrait, set with a diamond.’ Proudly, she adds, ‘And he has given me a ring.’

  ‘A ring is not a pledge,’ he says reassuringly. His eye falls on the drawings. ‘For example, look at these – I am having a ring made for the Lady Mary. A pleasant token that indicates friendship, nothing more.’

  Mary Fitzroy interrupts. ‘It was only a cramp ring, such as acquaintances exchange. It was of little worth.’

  Wriothesley says, ‘And next you will tell me it was a very small diamond.’

  ‘So small,’ Mary Fitzroy says, ‘that I for one never noticed it.’

  He wants to applaud. She is not afraid of Call-Me; though sometimes, he thinks, I am.

  ‘There’s nothing on paper, is there?’ he says to Meg. ‘I mean, other than …?’

  The rhymes, he thinks.

  The girl says, ‘I will not give you my letters. I will not part with them.’

  He looks at Mary Fitzroy. ‘Did the late queen know of these dealings?’

  ‘Of course.’ She sounds contemptuous; but whether of him, or the question, or of Anne Boleyn, he cannot say.

  ‘And your father Norfolk? Did he know?’

  But Meg cuts in: ‘My husband –’ she relishes the word – ‘my husband said, let us be secret. He said, if my brother Norfolk hears of this, he will shake me till my teeth fall out, so let us not tell him till we must. But then –’ Meg closes her eyes. ‘I don’t know. Perhaps he did tell him.’

  He remembers the day at Whitehall – he in conversation with Norfolk, Tom Truth trotting up with a message – when he had said, ‘The ladies show your verses around,’ the poet had panicked. He grabbed his kinsman’s arm and as he, Cromwell, walked away, the two Thomas Howards fell into furious whispering. When he thinks back, he reads an irate, confused expression on the duke’s face: what, you’ve done what, boy? It all fits. It would not be like Norfolk to make a plot ab origine, with so many fissile elements, but he can believe Tom Truth has appealed to him for protection and that the duke, after blasting and damning him, has worked out how he can turn this folly to his family’s advantage.

  He leans across the table towards Meg. If she were not a royal lady – and she is at pains to point out she is – he might pat her hand. ‘Dry your tears. Let us think afresh. You say that Lord Thomas has visited you in the queen’s chambers. All come there, I do suppose, for purposes of pastime. They come to sing and make merry. There need be no sinister intent. So over the months – in that very busy place – you have been drawn into some conversation, and Lord Thomas admires you, as is natural, and he has said, “My lady, if you were not far above me –”’

  ‘He is a Howard,’ Wriothesley says. ‘He does not think anybody above him.’

  He holds up a hand. His scene is too gorgeous to be interrupted. ‘“If you were not far above me, and intended by the king for some great prince, I swear I would beg your hand in marriage.”’

  ‘Yes,’ Mary Fitzroy says, ‘that is exactly how it was, Lord Cromwell.’

  ‘And you of course said, “Lord Thomas, I am forbidden to you. I see your pain, but I cannot assuage it.”’

  ‘No,’ Meg says. She begins to shake. ‘No. You are wrong. We are pledged. You will not part us.’

  ‘And being a man and ardent, and you so lovely and a great prize, he did not desist – he presented you with verses – he – well, and so on. But you stood firm and permitted him not so much as a nibble of your nether lip.’

  He thinks, I shouldn’t have said that. I should have made do with ‘kiss’.

  Meg stands up.
Her handkerchief is bunched in her fist – this one is scattered with the Howards’ silver crosslets, light as summer snow. ‘I will unfold this matter to the king alone. Even despite this dignity to which you are raised, he will not permit you to hold me and question me and make such imputations, that I am not married when I say I am.’

  Mr Wriothesley says, ‘My lady, can you not grasp the point? It would be better for you to be seduced and slandered, and to have ballads sung in the streets, than to promise yourself in marriage without the king’s knowledge.’

  Mary Fitzroy says, ‘For the love of Christ, sit down, Meg, and try to comprehend what my lord is telling you. He is trying his best.’

  ‘He cannot part what God has joined!’

  Mary Fitzroy raises her eyes to his. ‘I am sure Lord Cromwell has been told that before.’

  He smiles. ‘We must ask ourselves, Lady Margaret, what marriage is. It is not just vows, it is bedwork. If there were promises, and witnesses, and then bed, you are fast married, your contract is good. You would be Mistress Truth, and you would have to live with the king’s extreme displeasure. And I cannot say what form that would take.’

  ‘My uncle will not punish me. He loves me as he loves his own daughter.’

  She falters there. From her own mouth, she hears it, and now she understands: how does the king love his daughter? Two weeks past, Mary stood on thin ice. It was cracking under her feet. Only Thomas Cromwell would walk on it to retrieve her.

  Call-Me rises, as if Meg might faint. But the princess sits down neatly enough. ‘The king will say I have been foolish.’

  ‘Or treacherous.’ Mr Wriothesley stands over her: he looks almost tender now.

  Meg says, ‘My marriage is not a crime, is it?’

  ‘Not yet,’ he says. ‘But I am sure it will be. We can get a bill through before Parliament rises.’

  Mary Fitzroy says, ‘You are making a law against Meg Douglas?’

  ‘You can see the sense of it, my lady Richmond. Ladies do not always know their own interests. Sometimes they do not know how to protect themselves. So the law must do it. Otherwise, any poet can try to carry them off as a prize, and if he succeeds he makes his fortune, and if he fails he suffers nothing but a blow to his pride. That cannot be right.’

  ‘You do not write verse yourself?’ Mary Fitzroy asks.

  ‘Why enter a crowded field?’ he says. ‘Mr Wriothesley, would you take a note for me?’

  Call-Me resumes his seat and dips a quill. He dictates: ‘An Act against those who, without the king’s permission, marry, or attempt to marry, the king’s niece, sister, daughter –’

  ‘Better throw in aunt,’ Call-Me says.

  He laughs. ‘Throw in aunt. The offence will be treason.’

  Mary Fitzroy is incredulous. ‘Marrying will be treason, even though the woman consents?’

  ‘Especially if she consents.’

  ‘Tra-la,’ Call-Me says, scribbling. ‘Trolley lolly … hey ho … hey derry down, penalties the usual. I’ll get Riche on the wording.’

  ‘Luckily,’ he says, ‘in this case there is no issue of consent. It is doubtful Lady Meg really made a marriage, because it lacks consummation, as Master Wriothesley says.’

  ‘I do?’ Call-Me raises his sandy eyebrows, and blots the paper.

  Mary Fitzroy says, ‘Meg, nothing of an unchaste nature occurred between you and Lord Thomas. You will say that and you will stick to it.’

  ‘Lady Margaret, you have a good counsellor in your friend.’ He turns to Mary Fitzroy. ‘You should be with your husband. I will give you an escort to St James’s.’

  Mary says, ‘Fitzroy doesn’t need me. He doesn’t even like me. He doesn’t count me as his wife. My brother Surrey takes him whoring.’

  Blunt as her father. ‘My lady,’ he says, ‘you bear much blame for this intrigue. As we have not yet defined the scope of the new law, we do not know what penalties you might face. But I doubt the king will pursue you, if you are watching at his son’s sickbed. Do not fret over Lady Margaret, she will be well-attended at the Tower. But unless you want to go with her, I advise you to get to St James’s and stay there.’

  Meg is on her feet, bursting into tears again; she clings to the back of her chair. Mr Wriothesley rises and takes charge. He is firm and cool. ‘Lady Margaret, you will not be put in a dungeon. No doubt Lord Cromwell will arrange for you to have the late queen’s apartments.’

  He gathers his papers. ‘Come, my lady,’ Mary Fitzroy pleads, ‘do this as befits your royal dignity. Do not make these men have to carry you. And thank Lord Cromwell – my trust is in him, he will divert the king’s anger if any man can.’

  He thinks, it will be diverted to Tom Truth: Henry will hate his proceedings. He stands by the wall till the women are gone, sweeping by him without a word. But the Princess of Scotland is still protesting: ‘What harm can I take by telling the truth?’

  Her voice rings in the stairwell, then she is gone. Call-Me says, ‘I thought she would never grasp your saving hand.’

  ‘She’s not by nature stupid. She’s in love.’

  ‘It’s lucky it doesn’t make men stupid. I mean, look at Sadler.’

  Yes, look at Sadler. Besotted with his wife, and no blunting of his wits at all.

  Mr Wriothesley’s mood has softened. With Meg in the Tower, he knows he will have another chance to bring her down. ‘Were you ever in love, sir?’

  ‘It’s eluded me.’ He remembers asking Rafe, what is it like? Although Wyatt has alerted him to the signs. The burning sighs, the frozen heart. Or is it the other way around?

  He thinks, I must make shift to help Bess Darrell. I am caught up in this fresh Howard knavery, while Wyatt’s child is growing inside her. ‘I want Francis Bryan. Is he at home or abroad?’

  ‘Favours to call in?’ But Call-Me is restless, excited; he does not pursue it. ‘Who’s going to break it to the king that Meg is married?’

  He sighs. ‘I am.’

  ‘I would not like to be in Norfolk’s shoes. His niece disgraces him in spring, and his half-brother in summer. You can easy pull him down now.’ Call-Me flits a glance at him. ‘If you want to.’

  He thinks, I don’t know that I do. Whether the duke planned this misalliance, or just concealed it, it is a grave matter. But no graver than crimes in the past, for which I appear to have forgiven him. ‘Suppose the Scots come over the border? If not Norfolk, who would go up against them?’

  ‘Suffolk,’ Wriothesley says.

  ‘And if the French come in by the other door?’

  ‘You were a soldier, sir.’

  ‘A long time ago.’ I carried a pike. Or I was the boy to the man who did; one fights as a unit. I was a child. Now I am fifty. I could perhaps win a brawl in the street, though I would rather stop one. ‘I have aged into accommodation, Call-Me. As you have noticed, this hour past. It would be a meagre triumph to have saved the king’s daughter, if he now turns and executes his niece.’

  ‘But why,’ Call-Me says, ‘would they let a year pass – in love, as she says – and only then take a vow? I think he was not so passionate, till the date Eliza was declared a bastard, and Meg stepped nearer the throne.’

  ‘Unless he was weary of making rhymes without result. Surely they took the vow so he could bed her?’

  ‘Surely. And what if inconvenience should ensue?’

  He shrugs. Meg must trust to luck. And sometimes a woman gets a child, but loses it before anyone knows it but herself. It’s only afterwards they tell you about such things: twenty years on, sometimes. Call-Me says, ‘The king will want her pressed on the date and the witnesses.’

  ‘Then we’ll press Tom Truth. He already thinks I know more than I do.’

  ‘Most people think that,’ Mr Wriothesley says.

  ‘He fears everybody knows where his cock has been just by reading his rhy
mes. But Norfolk’s daughter has a stout heart. She should be on the king’s council. You recall how she tried to bar the door to me, on the day Anne was crowned?’

  Wriothesley doesn’t know, why would he? What Call-Me witnessed was the public show, the seething crowds, trumpet blasts, banners, snorting horses, trampling hooves. Anne, fragile, heavy with child in the humid heat, must sustain three days of ceremony under the hostile eyes of the people. The flower of England’s nobility, under protest, carried her train. At the altar, the weight of the crown bent her neck. If her face shone, that was not sweat – it was a sense of destiny. Her hand, itching for so long, took a sure grip on the sceptre. Archbishop Cranmer smudged her forehead with holy oil.

  Then after the ceremony she withdrew, away from the gaze of the city and its gods, to a chamber where she could lay aside her robes. He followed. He had seen the look of glazed fatigue on her face. But now he must get her up and out, to the feast in Westminster Hall; if he could not, short of carrying her, then he must speak urgently to the king, because rumour spreads like a blaze in thatch; if Anne was too exhausted to be propped up in public view, they would say she was taken ill, they would say she was losing the child.

  At the chamber door he met Norfolk’s daughter, an obdurate fourteen-year-old shocked to her marrow: ‘The queen is undressed!’ Anne’s voice, fractious, called out to him, and setting the little girl aside, he stepped in. On a high bed the queen lay on her back like a corpse, her thin shift draping the mound of her belly. Her narrow hand rested on her person, as if she were calming the prince within; her hair was loose and fell around her like black feathers. He had looked at her in pity and in wonder and a kind of appetite, imagining that he himself had a woman heavy with child. She turned her head. A ripple of hair slid away, spilled over the side of the bed. In an impulse of – what, of tidiness? – he had lifted the strand, held it for a moment between finger and thumb, then smoothed it with the rest.

  Mary Norfolk had yelped, ‘No! Don’t touch the queen.’

  The dead woman spoke: ‘Let him. He has earned it.’