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

  He could swear Chapuys pales. His hand goes to it: a marigold, a petal tipped with a pearl. But he is not a seasoned diplomat for nothing. He removes his cap, and begins to unpin the jewel. ‘Mon cher, it’s yours.’

  He almost laughs. ‘You are gracious.’ The traitorous emblem rolls into his palm. He puts it in his pocket. ‘I shall fix it on later,’ he says. ‘Before a mirror.’

  At home Rafe is waiting for him. ‘It is a sorry tale against Chapuys. After our amity in my garden.’

  ‘Oh, Chapuys is not our friend.’ He thinks, should I show him the cap badge? But does not.

  ‘And now?’ Rafe says.

  ‘Now let us visit the French ambassador and see what he knows.’

  ‘Monseigneur is from home,’ says the usher. Then, as if he might not understand, he says in English, ‘He is out.’

  ‘Really?’ He removes his hat. ‘Not just playing at being out? He didn’t spy me from the window? If I were to lift the lid of that chest, I would not find him crouching there with his knees under his chin?’

  The ambassador in residence is Antoine de Castelnau, Bishop of Tarbes; and at the thought of a bishop crammed into this ridiculous posture, the usher cannot help but smile. Or perhaps it is because Cremuel rewards well, that he is so affable? ‘But milord, another friend of yours is within. Come …’

  Jean de Dinteville is sitting by a good fire. Outside the birds hang listless on the bough, and lawns are baking to straw. ‘You!’ he says.

  ‘Alas, Thomas: your manners. “Welcome back, ambassador,” is the usual greeting.’

  ‘We shall have the pleasure of a long visit?’

  ‘Not if I can help it.’

  ‘But what brings you?’ You are on the scent of disaster, he thinks. Nothing else would fetch you. ‘Have you heard of my forthcoming nuptials?’

  The ambassador does not smile. ‘My king said, get over there, Jeannot, bring Cremuel our felicitations in person. It will mean all the more, he said, coming from an old friend.’

  He snorts. ‘He wants me dead, not wed.’

  ‘He lives in hope.’

  ‘If these ludicrous rumours take hold in France, I trust our own ambassador to pour scorn on them.’

  ‘Well, certainly, Bishop Gardineur does not see you as a fit spouse for a princess. He sees you more as – how does he put it? – fit to shoe horses.’ Dinteville turns his sad dark eyes on him. ‘You seem disconcerted, Thomas? You were not prepared for treachery? What do you expect, of Chapuys?’

  He, Cromwell, edges away from the hearth. ‘Are you really cold? You can’t be cold,’ he says. ‘I don’t know what I expected. Not this.’

  The ambassador stirs crossly inside his furs. ‘You think the Emperor and his people will be grateful to you, because you kept a promise to Catalina. I assure you, Cremuel, they think it is some trick you worked, at the bedside of a dying queen. They hold you a man of no honour nor compunction. But then, they think the same of Henry, so they would not be surprised at anything he did. Nor are we surprised.’

  ‘I don’t know what else I can do,’ he says. ‘I dealt fairly with the girl. Henry would have killed her. I saved him from a great crime.’

  ‘I don’t doubt. And now you must save him from another. I mean the Queen of Scotland’s daughter. What will you do there? If they say you preserved Mary for your own usage, they will say the same again. I have seen the Scottish princess. She is a sweeter morsel than the king’s daughter, is she not?’

  He sees himself, coughing, labouring through the smoke. I’ve got you, girl! Carrying the maiden from the inferno. Bang! The house has gone up. He sprawls beneath the debris.

  ‘You know,’ he says, ‘if you walked about, ever? Get some air? Stir your blood? When Parliament rises, come out to the country with me.’

  ‘I assure you,’ the Frenchman says, ‘diplomacy excites me enough.’ He waves his hand at a blowfly that has taken his furs for some carcass; in the heat of midsummer a smell of must creeps through the room. ‘Take heart. I think my master King François may make you offers. I have told him, you should have regard to Cremuel and put greater sums in his pocket. My king understands that you do nothing except for money. And he sees that although you may be a heretic, you keep Henry from war. If it were not for you, he might be still indulging his belief that he is ruler of France.’

  ‘What does your king want?’

  ‘Calais.’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘Give it on your terms, or one day soon we will take it on ours. As you will concede, Henry has enough to do, to keep his own little kingdom. His foot should shrink from French soil. If he keeps within his own walls, perhaps we will not molest him. But then again, perhaps we will.’

  At the envoy’s door, Christophe is entertaining a crowd of his compatriots. He breaks away from them, shouting, waving a fist in farewell. ‘I have been telling them,’ he says cheerfully, ‘that you have the vigour of a bull, and very fit to get offspring on the Lady Mary. But they say, that is why the king chooses Cremuel – on purpose to dishonour the granddaughter of Spain. They say that if you have children, Henry will make them scrub his floors. They will scour out privies for a living and haul shit in carts by the light of the moon.’

  18 July, Parliament rises. Tom Truth is attainted. All he has – not much – is forfeit to the king, and he is entitled to nothing but a traitor’s death. Each dawn he will wake listening for footsteps. First comes Kingston or his deputy, always before nine. After him the priests.

  ‘Is his date to be deferred?’ he asks the king.

  Henry says, ‘Yes. He can wait.’

  ‘And Lady Margaret? You know, sir, she was much misled. An innocent maid, sick at heart, and hopeful of your Majesty’s forgiveness.’

  ‘I shall allow her – I shall allow them both – an interval to think on their follies and crimes, before they receive their deserts.’

  As the king and queen begin their progress to Dover, French ships are seen haunting the coast. In London, after their months of argument, the bishops make a statement of faith, which comprises ten articles. Rumour comes from Basle that Erasmus is dead. Hans, who has people there, says it is true.

  In one of his last acts before departing Whitehall, the king has confirmed and augmented his state as Vicegerent of the church, and knighted him, so he is Sir Thomas as well as Lord Cromwell. If the king believes he has tried to entice, lure or seduce his daughter Mary, he gives no sign: amiably, he lays plans to see him, when business should spare him from the capital. Richmond is still confined to the sickroom, but the king says, if we linger the whole court may fall ill. ‘Be sure and send me Gregory,’ he says, waving a farewell.

  His son is in demand. From Somerset to Kent, from the midlands to the northern fells, castles and manors compete to entertain him: a pleasant youth of competent good looks, never over-familiar but at ease with great men, discreet with servants and gentle with the poorer sort; able to play upon the virginals and lute, to sing his part, converse in French, and to take his hand at any game of skill or chance, indoors or out. On the hunting field he is tireless and without fear. He practises daily in the butts, giving example thereby – only modesty prevents his being as sharp as his father with the longbow. He, Lord Cromwell, thanks God daily for his accurate view of the middle distance. For close work now he needs spectacles. They are clumsy things, but Stephen Vaughan sends him good lenses from Antwerp. Sometimes his clerks read out letters to him. They mean to save him strain. He says, ‘Every word, mind. Not the gist of it. Not your version. Every word.’ If they cough or hesitate he makes them start again.

  At Austin Friars, he asks Mathew to bring him The Book Called Henry. He hopes, though he lacks time, to record everything he has learned since Anne Boleyn was taken to the Tower. He means to set down the sum of advice he gives to the king’s councillors, especially those recently sworn. Their part is to animate and q
uicken virtue in their prince. If Henry can think himself good, he will do good. But if you cast a shadow on his soul, comparing him to princes who are morally perfect and lucky as well, do not be surprised if he furnishes you with reason for complaint.

  Sometimes he reads a little in the book, to restore his faith in himself. He has hopes for the volume. It need not be long, but it must be very wise.

  The day after the king’s departure he is at the Rolls House on Chancery Lane. Richard Cromwell comes in and lays papers before him. ‘Verses come up from Kent.’

  He holds the papers to his face, imagining they smell of apples. It is Wyatt’s hand but as he reads he asks, ‘Is this his verse?’

  ‘It came from his desk, sir.’

  ‘So we are spying on Wyatt, are we?’ He is amused.

  What he sees written are the names of dead men. Rochford. Norris. Weston. In mourning wise since daily I increase … ‘He increases,’ he says. ‘Why does he?’ He reads. Brereton, farewell. ‘Brereton, good riddance,’ he says.

  He slaps the paper flat on the desk and runs his finger down the page. ‘Mark is not forgot.’ He pictures the boy’s whey-face. A time thou had’st, above thy poor degree … Addled, desperate, banging on a door in the middle of the night; shut in the dark he believed a phantom had caressed him, with feathers for fingers and holes for eyes.

  He thinks, these lines lack form and force. Some of them are more Tom Truth than Tom Wyatt. And yet they present to him those corpses, promiscuous, heaped upon a cart: their pale English limbs intermingled, their heads in sodden bags. And thus farewell each one in heartiwise. The axe is home … He says to Richard, ‘You see that the writer does not plead their case. He says they are dead, he does not say they should be otherwise. He calls George Boleyn to account for pride … and here he says he scarce knows Brereton. So why mourn?’

  ‘Because grief spreads as a contagion, sir. It grows day by day.’

  ‘Up to a point.’ He knows about grief. He reads out loud. ‘Ah, Norris, Norris, my tears begin to run, to think what hap did thee so lead or guile, whereby thou hast both thee and thine undone …’ He breaks off. Is that ‘guile’? Or ‘guide’? ‘You note, he does not say anyone else has undone Norris. He does not say someone led him. He says chance led him, or circumstance.’

  Richard says, ‘He believes Norris was guilty. It is plain enough.’

  ‘Well, well,’ he says. ‘And I thought I arranged his fate. But perhaps he did it all himself.’ He holds the paper up to the light. There are no scores or corrections. The watermark is a unicorn.

  Richard says, ‘I do not know if these are Wyatt’s own verses, but whoever made them, he knows what passed. You see there is no mention of the lady.’

  None is needed, he thinks. Anne is always in the room.

  Richard says, ‘Perhaps Wyatt wrote it after all. With his left hand.’

  Or his double heart. ‘It changes nothing,’ he says. The axe is home, your heads be in the street. It is only one man’s opinion. But it is one more blow to our faith in our judgement. We did thus, and thus: we might have done less, and let guilty tongues speak for themselves.

  He watches as Richard draws the papers together. Pray for the souls of those be dead and gone. ‘I’m going to Mortlake,’ he says. ‘To my new house.’

  On his first night he cannot sleep. He walks in the garden till dusk, deciding what needs to be done first: some old rotten stumps to haul out, and fresh planting. He walks the rooms of the house, replanning them, extending them: hall, great chamber and gallery, chapel and library, and the kitchens, sculleries, pantries; the wood store and coal store, wet larder, dry larder, bakehouse. This chamber could be for Call-Me, he thinks, when he stays, and Richard could have this corner room next door – new windows, perhaps? There is still material left over from the king’s rebuilding of Hampton Court, he can order it sent by barge. The principal chambers are served by a privy stair; he will need to set a guard there.

  He knew this place in the time of his sister Kat and her husband Morgan Williams. The Williams family had a house on the river, almost under the manor’s wall. They were substantial people, good at laying plans: Thomas, they would say, you’ve not a bad head on your shoulders and if you got away from Walter you could make something of yourself. They imagined he might go as clerk to some cronies of theirs, or be kitchen steward for some dotard, work his way up to book-keeper for a great man. He pictured himself going to Morgan Williams’s tailor and getting a good town coat like his: wearing that coat when, at thirty or thirty-five, he dipped his children in old Bouchier’s font in the parish church. The manor house had always belonged to the archbishops. His uncle had worked in the kitchen one time, and half the lads he knew had picked up pennies for carting wood, for unloading at the wharf, cleaning the fishponds. It did not seem possible he would enter those gates as anything other than a labourer: that he would walk in one day with building plans in his hands, with a new owner’s appraising eye. After all, he never aimed to be an archbishop.

  If you marvel at your good fortune, you should marvel in secret: never let people see you. When you are Lord Privy Seal you must walk abroad with solemn countenance, looking chosen by Jesus, like More did when he was chancellor. Once he had shrugged off his early life – the Williamses and their plans, as well as Walter, his slaps and kicks – he did not think he would ever come back to those streets. But we yearn for our origins; we yearn for an innocent terrain. Ship Lane has always been there, running downhill to the wharves. The town he knew had been a territory of back alleys and rat-runs, robbers’ dens with broken doors, keel-up boats rotting, frayed rope dissolved into vegetable matter, riverine mud and riverine gravel. His birthplace squatted there, around the bend in the river.

  On his journey today from London, he felt he brought guests: Norris and George Boleyn, young Weston, Mark, and William Brereton. As he stepped out of his barge they stepped out too; they stood on the banks of the Styx, waiting to cross. They died within minutes of each other, but that does not mean they are together now. The dead wander the lanes of the next life like strangers lost in Venice. Even if they met, what would they have to talk about? When they stood before their judges they edged away from each other, as if fearing contamination. Each man had made a case against the other, hoping he might save his own life.

  Get out, he tells them. Don’t think you can move in here. Pay the ferryman, and away you go. His spaniel turns in his arms as they walk in the twilight, her muzzle raised, her tasselled ears pricked; though she is small of her kind, her nose is as sharp as a hunter’s. There is always a current of disturbance, till a house settles about you: till your dog finds its way to the hearth and the sheets to the beds, the beef to the table. There is a scent in the air that reminds him of something from the past – it is yeast, perhaps, hops – though when he was a boy, they had no hops but what came in on the boat; the hometown brewers still used burdock root or marigold. Hops poison dogs, they said, when foreigners boasted about why their ale kept better.

  He remembers standing behind the king, at his shoulder, as he signed the death warrants in May: Rafe Sadler, silent, at the king’s other hand: the windows open to admit soft air, and the king an unwilling scholar, truculent as some infant set down for the first time with a slate. It is hard labour for Henry, it is irksome toil, signing lives away. And the king’s hand rests, it seems, for long moments together, to allow him to view the half-made strokes – as if they might form by themselves and relieve him of the task.

  Henry Norris, yes. He wills the royal arm to move. William Brereton, yes: he can feel, as if he himself were the king, the concentrated power of Rafe Sadler’s gaze on the nape of his neck. The lutenist Smeaton, yes, that is easily done, ink slips like oil onto the paper, into the vital space: resolving easily, a day or so from now, into the boy’s liquid death. As a man of no birth or breeding, Smeaton should have been strangled in a noose and, before he died, his guts
pulled out before the crowd. But he had said to Henry, ‘Be merciful because …’

  The king had said, ‘Why would I? Why would I show mercy, to a man who has debauched a queen of England?’

  ‘Mark is very young and fearful. No creature in terror can make a good death. And he must be sensible of his sins at the last, and able to frame a prayer.’

  ‘Do you think that a man meeting the headsman is composed?’

  ‘I have seen examples.’

  Henry had closed his eyes. ‘Very well.’

  And there Henry had paused. One saw again a child, bowed under the heavy grief of infancy: the schoolmaster’s mauvais sujet twisting in his seat, kicking his stool, watching out of the window as a blithe day draws to its close. I could be out there, the child thinks, in the last of the sun. Wherefore must I engrave these letters, does my tutor hate me that he keeps me to this task? And from the table before him, with a sigh, the king had picked up his little knife (smooth ivory handle) to mend his pen. ‘Weston,’ he said. ‘You know … he’s very young.’

  Over the king’s head, his eyes had met Rafe’s. It must be all of them: no doubts, no exceptions. All are guilty.

  Rafe reaches out, takes the knife and the quill, sharpens it for the king. Henry receives it with a murmur of thanks: always gracious. He takes a breath and, neck bent, patient as an ox yoked to his future, he reapplies himself to his task: Francis Weston, yes. He, Cromwell, thinks, I have done this before, surely? Some other time, some similar form of coercion?

  Henry’s arm, his jewelled and heavy sleeve, trails across the table; an ink blot forms by Weston’s name, and blooms there; it unfolds, a solitary black flower, and forty years glide into ink-dark. His face does not change, he can trust it for that, but he is a child now, and standing, arms folded, feet planted apart in the posture of a man. He stands in a diffuse glow; it is afternoon sun, and it kindles in a curve of burnished copper. He sees the low rippling gleam of pewter plates, the sharp mirror flash from the blades of kitchen tools, from paring knife, boning blade, cleaver. It is Lambeth Palace, the cook’s domain: the echo of raised voices, among them his Uncle John’s.