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

  ‘She is in my debt.’

  ‘True. You could have brought her family down two years ago. What a forbearing man you are. I suppose you hold back, in the hope of a greater destruction. Queen Katherine always said, “Cromwell keeps his promises, for good or ill.”’ She looks away. ‘I know you kept your promise about Mary. I was in the room at Kimbolton when you made it. All I will say, my lord – beware of gratitude.’

  I do not wonder, he thinks, that Wyatt cleaves to you. A jaundiced riddle sits as well on your lips as on his. ‘As for your condition, I leave to you what explanation you make. The Courtenays know what is owed to you. You helped Katherine in her last hour. It was you who wiped her death sweat. Now they boast of what they did for her, but they did nothing really. They will not press you for the man’s name. And if they do, and they don’t like it – they are still bound to you.’

  ‘They ought to like it,’ she says. ‘They are indebted to Wyatt and his testimony. Because it wrought this.’ She gestures around. ‘This land we live in now. England without Boleyn.’

  ‘Wyatt wrought nothing. His evidence was not needed.’

  ‘So you say. But then, you like to offer comfort, my lord. You pick your way over the battlefield with prayers for the wounded and water for the dying.’

  ‘It is true,’ he says simply. ‘I gave him the papers back so he could tear them up. He told me of the understanding between you, and I said I would find you a place of safety … I would offer you my own poor house, or any of my houses, but my counsellors – I mean those in my household who advise me, and have my interests at heart – have suggested to me –’

  She laughs. ‘No, Lord Cromwell, I cannot lodge with you. An unmarried female, estranged from her family – your enemies would suggest such knavery – and you being the king’s Vicegerent, you would look no better than any lustful bishop, or Roman cardinal.’

  He says, ‘The Courtenays do not know my part in this. Let us keep it so. Francis Bryan spoke to them for you. He has worked your salvation. He loves Tom Wyatt and admires him.’

  ‘I expect Francis is used to ridding himself of women,’ she says. ‘No, do not doubt me – I will take the chance, since you offer it. You have my gratitude during my life. You saved Tom Wyatt when he would not save himself.’

  ‘I unlocked the door,’ he says, ‘but it was you who made him walk out of his prison. If it were not for the child you carry, he did not care to live. Man or maid, this is a child of great power. It has already preserved its father from the axe.’

  ‘The child?’ she says. ‘It seems I was wrong about that.’

  ‘There is no child?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Never was?’

  ‘I cannot be sure.’

  ‘Does Wyatt know you have deceived him?’

  Fiercely she says, ‘He knows he’s still breathing.’

  A silence. She unfolds her sewing, its whiteness flowering out across her skirts. She finds the needle, and examines it between finger and thumb, as if daring it to draw blood. She says, ‘Considering the result, you will understand my deceit.’

  ‘I like your deceit,’ he says. ‘It makes me think highly of you.’

  ‘You are right I need a refuge. No one wants me except Wyatt and he cannot have me. I have made him promises in my heart’s blood, and I count myself as well married as any woman in England, except he has a wife living.’

  Amor mi mosse, he thinks: love moves me, love makes me speak.

  ‘Perhaps you want to stay here with Lady Salisbury.’

  ‘She can get another pair of eyes. And I think you are already provided with spies here. When I go to the Courtenays, what shall I do?’

  ‘You will live.’

  ‘But for you, Lord Cromwell – what shall I do for you?’

  ‘Write to me. Someone within the household will approach you. A servant. I will even send you the paper.’

  ‘And what shall I say?’

  ‘You will tell me who visits. If any of them plan to travel. Whether any of their ladies are breeding.’

  She says, ‘I have no money.’

  He has settled her gambling debts a time or two. The pious Katherine, even in her days of exile, played for high stakes, and she expected her household to pay out. ‘I will take care of that, if Wyatt cannot.’

  She says, ‘I will be the judge of what passes among the Courtenays, and I will protect what is private. I shall tell you what touches the public weal. I shall tell you whatever it is in your interest to know.’

  ‘Thank you.’ He gets to his feet. ‘Bear in mind my field of interest is very wide.’

  ‘Before you go, let me show you my sewing.’

  ‘That would be pleasant,’ he says.

  She holds up the work; she shows him how the Pole emblem, the pansy or viola, is worked in a border with the marigold. ‘They do it to encourage each other, and they give such work as tokens to their supporters. They are sewn into altar cloths, or made into cap badges. They gave one this last week to Ambassador Chapuys. The marigold stands for – well, I see you have arrived already – it stands for the Lady Mary, that exemplar of shining virtue. Look here,’ she indicates with the needle tip, ‘at how the flowers entwine. So may Reynold entwine himself about her body and heart.’

  ‘So was Lady Salisbury lying to me in toto this last hour or only in part?’

  She glances at the door. ‘It is true Reynold has written her a letter.’

  ‘But surely the family have concocted it between them. It is a device, to shift blame away from them.’

  ‘It appears she is struck to the heart.’

  ‘That is how the king feels. Stung, dismayed, betrayed. They are prodigious efforts, these letters of Reynold’s. I marvel he does not write to me.’ He touches her hand. ‘Thank you,’ he says.

  He can’t see Richard Riche framing a law against embroidery, but then he doesn’t need to. The laws are already capable of stretching to cover anything the Pole family have in mind – especially when you add in the new penalties against plotting to marry the king’s daughter. Nothing he has learned about the hopes of Lady Salisbury surprises him, but it’s useful to have the evidence stitched together. ‘I hope when that cloth is finished,’ he says, ‘the family will protect it from the light.’

  Like the treasures of Heaven, he thinks, where no moth nor rust consumes.

  She says, ‘I wonder where Anne Boleyn is now?’

  It is not a question for which he came prepared. He imagines her whipping down some draughty hall of the hereafter, where the walls are made of splintered glass.

  When he goes to see Jane the queen, he takes Mr Wriothesley with him. ‘Just in case there is another plot among the women. I shall trust only you from now on. If you see that anyone is married who should not be, point out the offender. Don’t try to be subtle. We’ve had enough of that.’

  It is mid-morning, a broad summer light. The ladies have come from their devotions. Bess Oughtred, the queen’s widowed sister, is at her side. On her other hand sits Edward Seymour’s wife, Nan: Nan Stanhope, as she was before her marriage. She is not, of course, the wife who sinned with Old Sir John. That one is dead, and never mentioned at Wolf Hall. No gap is visible, where the Scottish princess should be. The ladies are settling to the task which has absorbed them for weeks – erasing the initial ‘A’ from satins and damasks, and replacing it with Jane’s initial, so she can wear the clothes of the late queen. A sympathetic murmur from Mr Wriothesley: ‘Will that false lady never be gone?’

  ‘She had a lot of clothes,’ Bess Oughtred says. ‘I remember sewing this one in.’ Her tone is low and absorbed; seed pearls shower from her scissors, and Nan is catching them in a silk box.

  ‘Praise God for generous seams,’ Nan murmurs. ‘Her present Majesty is broader than the other one.’ She flips Jane’s sleeve. ‘And broader still soon –
God willing.’ Jane dips her head. Nan glances up, scissors poised: ‘We are glad to see handsome Mr Wriothesley.’

  Call-Me blushes. Jane says to her sister, ‘Mr Wriothesley is the … thing of the Signet. Clerk of the Signet, I should say. And of course you know Master Secretary. Though he is now Lord Privy Seal.’

  ‘Instead?’ Bess Oughtred says.

  He bows. ‘As well, my lady.’

  Jane explains, ‘It is he who does everything in England. I did not understand that, till one of the ambassadors told me. He marvelled that one man could have so many posts and titles. It is a thing never seen before. Lord Cromwell is the government, and the church as well. The ambassador said the king will flog him on to work till one day his legs go from under him, and he rolls in a ditch and dies.’

  Call-Me tries a change of tack. ‘My lady Oughtred, may we hope you will live at court now?’

  Bess shakes her head. ‘My husband’s family want me back in the north. They want to keep hold of little Henry, and bring him up a Yorkshireman. And much as I wish to see my sister in her pomp, I don’t want the little ones to forget me.’

  Jane is working on a private piece of sewing. The women have rules about these matters that men do not understand; perhaps it is unbecoming in a queen, to snip away her predecessor. She holds it up – a border of honeysuckles and acorns. ‘Nice for a country girl,’ she says.

  He thinks, it is as Norfolk says, I will soon be so expert I will be able to ply the needle myself. ‘Majesty, I have a request, and perhaps you will not like it. I must meet with those ladies who served the late queen. We must invite them back to court.’ He feels, suddenly, very tired. ‘I need to ask them questions. It may be that misunderstandings have occurred. We must revisit certain matters that I wish were forgot.’

  ‘I pity Meg Douglas,’ Bess Oughtred says. ‘The king should have found a husband for her long ago. Leave any sweet thing unattended, and the Howards settle on it like flies.’

  ‘Who do you need?’ Nan asks him.

  ‘Who do you suggest?’

  ‘Mistress Mary Shelton.’

  Shelton was clerk of the poetry book; it was she who decided which rhymes were saved and which suppressed, and knew how they were encoded.

  ‘And,’ Nan says, ‘George Boleyn’s wife.’

  ‘Lady Rochford is a very busy active lady,’ Mr Wriothesley says. ‘She remembers everything she sees.’

  An image swims into his mind, clouded, as if from distance: Jane Seymour, padding softly through the apartments of the late Anne, her arms laden with folded sheets. Anne was not queen then; but she lived in expectation, and she was served like a queen. He remembers the white folds. He remembers the soft perfume of lavender. He remembers Jane, whose name he hardly knew, her dipped glance casting a lavender shade against the white.

  Nan says, ‘I think it was Rochford who was witness to Meg’s marriage. She is not averse to seeing another woman ruined.’

  Bess Oughtred is puzzled. ‘But she did not ruin her. She did not speak out.’

  That is true. But as the other Bess – Bess Darrell – has recently pointed out, a proper, comprehensive wreckage takes work and deliberation. Meg’s disgrace, if it had come out earlier, would have been a mere coda to that of the late queen: wasted.

  Nan says, ‘Meg and Shelton and Mary Fitzroy, they were always scurrying and hushing and spying. Of course we thought it was all …’ She bites her lip.

  Bess says, ‘We thought it was Boleyn’s secrets they were keeping.’ She looks sobered. ‘De mortuis nil nisi bonum.’

  He is astonished. ‘You know Latin, my lady?’

  ‘My sister didn’t listen in the schoolroom, but I did. Much good it brought me. Jane is raised high, and I am a poor widow.’

  The queen only smiles. She says, ‘I don’t mind if Mary Shelton comes back to court. She is not envious or mean.’

  And, he thinks, the king’s already had her, so that’s one less thing for you to worry about.

  ‘But Jane,’ Bess says, ‘you do not want Lady Rochford near you, surely? She joined with the Boleyns in mocking you. And she is a traitor’s wife.’

  ‘She cannot help that,’ Mr Wriothesley says.

  ‘But still.’ Bess is indignant. ‘I wonder the king asks such a thing of Jane.’

  ‘He doesn’t,’ the queen says. ‘The king never does an unpleasant thing. Lord Cromwell does it for him.’ Jane turns her head: her pale gaze, like a splash of cold water. ‘I am sure Rochford would like to have her place back. Lord Cromwell is in debt to her for certain advice, which she gave freely when he needed it.’

  Nan says, ‘If Rochford comes back to court, she will never go again. We will never be rid.’

  ‘But never mind,’ Jane says. ‘You will be a match for her.’

  Is it a compliment? Nan does not know. Bess says sharply, ‘Sister, do not be so humble. You forget you are Queen of England.’

  ‘I assure you, no,’ Jane murmurs. ‘But I am not crowned yet, so no one notices.’

  ‘All the realm notices,’ he says. ‘All the world.’

  ‘They know you even in Constantinople, madam,’ Mr Wriothesley says. ‘The Venetians have sent their envoys with the news.’

  ‘Why would they care?’ Jane says.

  ‘Princes like to hear of the household affairs of other princes.’

  ‘But Turkish princes have a dozen of wives each,’ Jane says. ‘If the king had been of their sect, he could have been married to the late queen, God rest her, and Katherine, God rest her, and at the same time to me, if he liked. For that matter, he could have been married to Mary Boleyn, and to Mary Shelton, and to Fitzroy’s mother. And the Pope could not have troubled him about it.’

  Mr Wriothesley says feebly, ‘I do not think the king will turn Turk.’

  ‘That’s all you know,’ Jane says. ‘If you are going to him now, you will see he is wearing his special costume. He does not feel he wore it enough at the wedding. Try to be surprised.’

  Nan says, ‘Surely Lord Cromwell cannot be surprised.’

  Jane turns to her. ‘One time or other, before he had so much to do, Lord Cromwell used to bring us cakes. Orange tarts in baskets. When she was displeased with him, the queen threw them on the floor.’

  ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘And there were worse things she did. But nil nisi …’ He meets Bess Oughtred’s eye, and smiles.

  As they leave the queen’s rooms he says, ‘Nan is wrong. I am not beyond astonishment. At Oughtred’s widow and her Latin, for one thing.’

  He calls her ‘Oughtred’s widow’, in a distant way, as if he never thought of her. He pictures Sir Anthony, that veteran of the wars; he pictures his own dead wife. He thinks, the dead are crowding us out. Rather than not speak ill of them, how if we don’t speak of them at all? We don’t speak of them, we don’t think of them, we give their clothes to beggars and we burn their letters and their books? After they had left Tom Truth and descended the stair at the Bell Tower, Christophe had slapped the wall, thwack, thwack with his palm, as if to roust out any shades who were attempting to rest in peace. It’s two years since Bishop Fisher tottered down that stair, led to his execution. He was old, spent, frail; his body lay on the scaffold like a piece of dried seaweed.

  A crush of petitioners, waiting outside the queen’s rooms, surges after him. ‘Lord Cromwell, a word!’ ‘Over here, sir!’ ‘My lord Privy Seal, something you should see.’ Papers are thrust at him, and the Thing of the Signet gathers them into his arms. He sees a man in young Richmond’s livery, and hails him. ‘How is my lord today?’

  ‘He is worse. We do not want to tell the king.’

  ‘I’ll tell him.’

  ‘The king should go,’ the man says. ‘He should go and see his son.’

  The king is very tall in his turban. Since the triple wedding he has embellished it with a jewel and extra plume
s. At his side is a curved dagger, its sheath inlaid not with the crescent moon, but with the Tudor rose.

  He, Lord Cromwell, kneels before the king, with Call-Me beside him. They do not remark on his costume. There is a limit to how much awe a man can feign. ‘I was hoping to astonish you,’ Henry says, petulant. ‘But I hear the queen has prepared you.’

  How fast a word travels, in a palace. ‘She did not mean to spoil it,’ he says.

  Irritated, the king motions them to their feet. ‘You don’t think I have married a fool? She seems not to comprehend even ordinary things.’

  He hesitates. ‘She is of that chastened spirit, sir, that never presumes to understand her betters. Your Majesty has ruled for many years, for which we thank God daily: whereas the queen lacks experience in worldly affairs.’

  The king eases his silver belt. ‘I believe the ambassadors think she is plain.’

  ‘But why are they looking?’ He is impatient. ‘Chapuys is no judge of women.’

  ‘And the French envoys,’ Wriothesley says, ‘they are mostly in holy orders – they should be ashamed to state an opinion.’

  Henry seems mollified. A mirror is half-hidden by a curtain; he takes a sidelong glance at himself and likes what he sees. ‘So,’ he says, ‘why have I sent for you?’

  He takes a silk bag out of his pocket. ‘I wanted to ask your Majesty’s permission to give this to the Lady Mary.’

  Henry empties the present from the bag. He turns it over and over and squints at the workmanship. In case the engraving is too delicate to decipher, Mr Wriothesley quotes the inscription.

  ‘In praise of obedience,’ Henry says. ‘Very apt. And you think my daughter will take the point?’ Without waiting for an answer, he says, ‘Am I working you too hard, Thomas? You should hunt with me this summer. And I shall keep my son by my side. I hope by the time I am ready to leave London he will be strong enough to ride.’

  The king likes saying that: my son. He says, ‘Majesty, the duke’s household suggest you might go to St James’s.’

  ‘Is that what you advise?’