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 does not move. ‘It would be charity in you, as you and my lord were so brotherly, to give employment to some in his household.’

  ‘I suppose you have taken your pick already? I should have thought your retinue was bloated enough. I see your livery everywhere about the town. You employ some stout ruffians, Cromwell. I have never seen such evil countenances, and such readiness to fight, as I see in your people.’

  It is true that he employs men who by reason of their dubious histories cannot find another master. He does not feel equal to explaining this to Surrey. He says, ‘I grant you, appearances are often against my boys. But I do not believe they will fight unless for good cause.’

  ‘Not even if provoked?’

  ‘Ah – in that case I could not say.’

  He thinks, I could snap you in two, boy. He runs a hand along the jennet’s gleaming hide; the beast stirs, and he finds the tender place between the ears, rubs it. Surrey is crying: he buries his face in the bright saddle-cloth emblazoned with the dead boy’s arms. ‘He was my friend,’ he says. ‘But you, Cromwell, you would not understand it – the friendship that is amongst men of ancient lineage and noble blood.’

  I understand, he thinks, your nose is running like any stable-lad’s. ‘Your father would not like to see you weep. Take this like a Christian man, sir. Richmond is gone where no harm can touch him, nor spoil the flower of his youth. He was a king’s son, but he will find a father in Heaven.’

  Surrey’s face is mottled: tears, rage. ‘Cromwell, I wish I were dead,’ he says. ‘No, I take it back. I wish you were dead.’

  He remembers the breakup of York Place: the rattle of treasure into the chests of other men, the scramble onto the river. He has many of Wolsey’s people among his own. The dukes took others. I wonder, he thinks, if Charles Brandon retains that clown who used to keep the hearth and chimneys at Esher? It gives him satisfaction, to think of Suffolk being smoked like a herring, from the year 1529 and every winter till now: and from now, unto the ending of the world.

  He answers a summons from Jane the queen: finds her with a book in her lap, a Book of Hours. He thinks, I know that volume. It belonged to the other one.

  Jane holds out the book. ‘This is hers, Anne Boleyn’s. She and the king passed it between them. The king has written an inscription, under the Man of Sorrows.’

  He takes the book from her. Christ is kneeling, his flesh gory from head to heels, each bleeding cut fine as a wire. The picture is set within a border of peapods and ripe strawberries: the king has written some lines in French. ‘Lady Rochford has kindly translated it for me,’ Jane says. ‘I am yours, Henry R, forever. And then she replied to him.’

  He cannot see the reply.

  ‘Look under the Annunciation,’ Jane says. ‘She had hope, of course, in those days. She thought she could bear a son.’

  He finds the picture. A coy virgin with lowered eyes is getting good news: the angel of the lord is right behind her.

  Jane recites, ‘By daily proof you shall me find/To be to you both loving and kind. Do you think she was kind to him?’

  ‘Not often.’

  Jane’s hand moves over the book’s binding, as if it were a living creature she is soothing. ‘Sometimes, when the king has, so to speak, visited me, then he falls asleep in my bed. But he soon wakes because he has bad dreams. Then he kneels by the bed. He cries out, mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. To that he appends Latin I do not follow. Then the gentlemen of the privy chamber come, and walk him back to his own chamber.’

  ‘And you, madam, I trust you then take your rest?’

  Jane nods to Mary Shelton, who stands at her elbow. Mary curtseys and goes out, giving him a weary smile.

  ‘You all like Shelton,’ Jane says. ‘The king likes her.’ She waits till the door is closed. ‘My ladies say that if a wife does not take pleasure in the act, she will not get a child. Is that true?’

  Jane waits. It seems that, humbly, she would wait all day: she knows she asks questions to which answers are not likely.

  He says, ‘Perhaps consult with your lady mother? Or one of the elder dames here at court might advise you – the Countess of Salisbury?’

  ‘They will have forgotten. They are old.’

  ‘Your lady sister, then. Because she has two fine infants, I hear.’

  ‘Bess puts heart into me. She tells me, say an Ave, Jane, and the king will soon spend. She tells me she did not have much joy in her own marriage bed. With Oughtred it was like a military manoeuvre. Brisk.’

  He bursts out laughing. Sometimes you forget she is a queen. ‘He did not beat a drum, I hope?’

  ‘No, but she always knew when he was on his way. Bess says, she wouldn’t mind a bouncing new husband. A willing young one whom she could teach. But the infants come when they will, she says, pleasure or not, and never mind what the physicians say.’ She holds out her hands for the book. ‘Forget this. I should not have asked you. You can go to the king now. Today he is not dressed as a Turk.’

  In the king’s privy chamber he is surprised to meet Rafe. ‘You are on the rota, Master Sadler?’

  An esquire says, waspish, ‘Master Sadler has his own rota. He is always here.’

  ‘He talks about my lord of Norfolk,’ Rafe says. ‘He is angry with him. And he has sent for Richmond’s inventories.’

  ‘Meg Douglas, does he say …?’

  ‘Not inclined to mercy.’

  ‘Right,’ he says.

  A Genoese tailor is draping the king in black velvet. He greets the man, motioning him out. Henry says, ‘You practise still that Italian tongue.’

  And its variants. The king knows enough Italian to sing an amorous ballad, but not enough to talk about money.

  The tailor retreats, bowing, folds of night draped across his arms. ‘I am amazed,’ the king says, ‘that the Duke of Norfolk should so far forget himself as to ignore my wishes. I said a closed cart. I said, discretion. Now I hear that black riders went before.’

  ‘He did not want to dishonour a king’s son.’

  ‘He defied my intentions.’

  ‘He did not perfectly understand what they were.’

  Henry stares at him: that’s no excuse. ‘Tell him I shall send him to the Tower.’

  ‘I durst not take that message.’ He surprises himself – because, as he delivers this useful lie, he smiles.

  Henry is disarmed – like someone who discovers a child’s fear, and sees an easy means to dispel it. ‘If you fear Thomas Howard, then of course I shall relieve you of your task. I did not think you feared anyone. You should not, my lord. You have my authority.’

  ‘The Tower is filling up,’ he says. ‘Your lady sister has written from Scotland, begging that her daughter’s life be spared.’

  ‘I own Scotland,’ Henry says. ‘After Flodden I should have taken it back.’

  He thinks, you did not have the men or the money. You did not have me. ‘The cardinal used to say, marriages work better than wars. If you want a kingdom, write a poem, pick some flowers, put on your bonnet and go wooing.’

  ‘Good advice,’ Henry says, ‘for any prince whose heart is his own. Or one who has the disposal of other hearts. But if princesses dispose of themselves to men of no fortune, only because they like their verses, then I do not know what world we live in any more.’

  ‘I move you to mercy,’ he says.

  ‘My niece is a shame and a disgrace. She gave herself to the first man who asked her. She gave what was mine to give.’

  He thinks, I wish Cranmer were here. It is the bishop’s task to show how sins can be forgiven or redefined: to prove how adultery is not adultery, and killing no murder. It is he who holds the key to the walled garden of the king’s mind; he knows its shady walks, its allées, its rank corners where sunbeams never creep. ‘It seems to me,’ he says, ‘if a word is given lightly, in haste,
by a young person, without the advice of sober friends, under the intoxication of love, without knowledge of where it will lead … I ask myself, sir, does God in His wisdom not wink at such a promise?’

  ‘God is not mocked,’ Henry says. ‘As St Paul is pleased to tell us, men reap what they sow, and women too. To take an oath and not to mean it, that is blasphemy. And if words are no more than breath, if words are air … if they are not bonds, if they are not honour …’

  ‘I speak of lovers. Not princes.’

  The king turns his face away. ‘True, there is a difference.’ A pause. ‘There are great lords and rash young women who have cause to be grateful to you, my lord Cromwell.’

  He inclines his head. He thinks, Wriothesley will be amazed, that once again I have let Norfolk wriggle away, when I have him on the hook. He imagines himself shouting through to Thomas Avery, who does his accounts: invoice him for my fee, mercy is not gratis.

  The king indicates a bundle of papers – inventories, as Rafe had said. He leafs through. ‘See Lady Mary gets the silver plate from Richmond’s household. The gold plate to me, of course.’ He turns the pages. ‘These sables and the lambskins, they should be sent to my officers of the Wardrobe. The tapestries … Moses found in the bulrushes … the plagues of Egypt … Moses leading his people through the deserts of Sinai … Make sure my son’s household stuff does not leak away to his mother’s people. I have done a great deal for Bessie – Lady Clinton, I should say – and am not inclined to do more. And beware of Norfolk’s daughter too – I want her goods listed, so we are sure they are not suddenly augmented by what should come to me.’

  ‘She will be due a settlement, sir. She is my lord of Richmond’s widow, even if she is still a maid.’

  Henry snorts. ‘You wonder if she could be a maid, when she has embroiled herself in this affair of my niece, and filthied her own name. What should a virgin know of assignations, of back stairs and greased locks?’

  So this is how it will be. He will use Mary Fitzroy’s misjudgement to cheat her of her dues and enrich the treasury. There could be worse punishments.

  ‘Let her father take her back to his own country,’ Henry says, ‘and see she lives chaste. A convent would be best.’ He glances down at the lists. Satin coats fringed with silver; habits of green velvet, to ride in spring through the woodlands when blossom smothers the bough. An image of St Dorothea with a basket and garland; Margaret of Antioch stamping on a dragon; George stamping on a dragon also, with his sword, spear and shield, an ostrich feather on his head. Spoons, chalices, bowls, censers, pyxes, holy water stoups; gold chains with enamelled white roses, red roses with ruby hearts. It is the king’s pleasure to read out the inventories, as if he is reading them to his dead son: I gave you life, and I gave you all this.

  ‘A small salt carved of beryl.’ Henry frowns. ‘The cover set with a ruby, its foot garnished with pearls and stones. They do not say what stones. And I do not recall it.’

  ‘A new year’s gift from my lord cardinal. The year escapes me.’

  The king looks up. ‘How unlike you. I understand Surrey took the black jennet.’

  ‘And its tack.’

  ‘Tell Giles Foster I want the bay and the sorrel.’

  ‘Sir.’ He bows his head.

  ‘Mary Fitzroy may have geldings, to take her wherever she is going.’ A sour smile. ‘You think me heartless? Giving and receiving, when my son is bundled off to lie among strangers? But as the psalmist bids me, placebo Domino in regione vivorum. I will please our Lord in the land of the living, since it is only in the land of the living that we can do anything at all.’ Henry looks into the distance. ‘I hear my cousin Reginald Pole has been called to Rome. The Pope has charged him to lead a crusade against me. He is to visit the French court and stir them into action.’

  ‘I wonder how?’ The French armies have just marched into the land of Savoy. Their king has broken two treaties, so the Emperor is after his blood. François has more to do than attend on Reynold when he rolls up, lugging his volumes of canon law and bleating about his ancient lineage.

  He says, ‘The French will do nothing for him. And the Pope has not given him ships, nor money, nor men.’

  ‘But he has fortified him with spiritual power.’ Henry’s mouth twists. ‘He is to take to the road.’

  Henry fed this ingrate, Pole. But now he feels the poisoned lash of the Plantagenet tail, he feels the bite of the back-fanged snake. Henry leans forward. He seems to choke. You can almost feel his heart galloping – his face is as pink as Easter veal. With one flat hand he slaps the arm of his chair. ‘Traitor,’ he says. ‘Traitor. I want him dead.’

  He waits for the fit to pass. Says, ‘The wars your father fought are not over yet. But I assure you, sir – means may be found in Italy, to rid a traitorous subject. Wherever Pole moves, my people will follow.’

  Henry looks away. ‘Do what you must. I have told you before this, how Pole’s family laid a curse, after young Warwick was beheaded. My brother Arthur died at fifteen. My son Richmond, at seventeen.’

  The king used to explain his lack of heirs by saying he had married his wife unlawfully. Now it seems the Poles are to blame. It is the more useful explanation, as things stand; there is no juice left in the other one.

  ‘You saw Margaret Pole at L’Erber,’ Henry says. ‘Or so I am informed. Keep going there. I should not doubt the whole family, I suppose. Yet I do.’

  The king makes a signal. He bows himself out. Henry calls after him, ‘Dieu vous garde.’

  He is glad Henry did not tax him on his visit to Margaret Pole. He does not want to say he went there to see Bess Darrell. He does not want to raise Wyatt’s name. The king says a man is forgiven, but that does not mean a man’s offence is forgot: and a woman can be pulled down, and stifle in his wreckage. The countess had left him alone with Bess, and her sewing. But then, as he was leaving, a servant intercepted him: My lady countess will see you.

  The servant had led him to a panelled closet, the countess’s private oratory. Here, you were shut away from the noises of the city – hooves on the cobbles, shouts of draymen, clattering and hammering from the workshops beside the walls. A table was set up for Mass, draped with rich brocade; the altarpiece was of silver, shining indistinct figures going about pious lives. It reminded him of one Anselma had, in Antwerp years ago. Though as Lady Salisbury is one of the richest dames in England, it is likely hers is of greater value.

  Margaret Pole had turned to him. ‘I hope you have not left Mistress Darrell in tears?’

  ‘Why would I?’

  She had unlocked her writing box. ‘Here.’

  ‘Is this your son’s own hand?’

  ‘He has those about him who do the office of secretary. Italians, perhaps. I do not know their names.’

  No, he thinks, but I do.

  ‘Believe me, Master Cromwell, I am no traitor. Why would I be? Henry has done everything for me. It has been a slow and painful path, from that low place I occupied when my father Clarence was attainted, to the honour I now enjoy.’

  ‘Surely you cannot remember your father. You cannot have been five years old.’

  ‘Even a child knows when one goes to prison and never comes out. My father did not die by the axe, he – God knows how he died, but I trust he was shrived, he did not lack a priest or die in his sin. I learned early, what treason was, and what follows it. I have seen four reigns – my uncle King Edward, my uncle the usurper, then the first Henry Tudor, and now his present Majesty, whose name I have reason to bless.’

  He is reading Pole’s letter. It is bitter, as she says.

  ‘I scarcely knew my poor brother Warwick. He was a child when Henry Tudor shut him away.’

  ‘To keep the peace,’ he says.

  ‘To secure the throne. Our blood being so near it, and so much nearer, in truth, than his.’

  ‘But the Tud
or won the battle. God favoured his army. He won England in the field.’

  ‘And none of us,’ she said sharply, ‘ever contested his victory. When my brother was led to the scaffold, I was quick with child, but I would have come to court to petition for him. I would have begged to wear mourning for him, and observe the proper rites, in which I would have found some solace, I dare say – but one does not pray for a traitor’s soul, nor wear black for him. At a traitor’s demise, one must smile.’

  ‘I do not think the old king would have required that.’

  ‘You did not know him. In those days no one was safe. When the Henry that is now came to the throne – well, then we thought we had come to the promised land. To right all wrongs, was his express desire: to make restitution, to see justice done. I had been widowed then for years. When my husband died I had to borrow money to bury him. But Henry restored me – in fortune, in title. He and Katherine bestowed on me the inestimable favour of making me governor to their daughter, their only child, trusting in me to fit her either for the office of consort to some great prince, or to rule as a prince in her own right. Henry favoured and promoted my sons –’

  ‘And they all married rich heiresses,’ he said. ‘Except Reynold, who as we know has his eye on a greater prize.’

  She had positioned herself with her back to him, staring down into the courtyard. Whatever was going on there, she found it of interest. ‘I do not understand my son. I concede he has behaved with foolish ingratitude. But he is innocent of any greater design. He is drawn to chastity, to a celibate life. He would not wish to marry.’

  ‘Not even a king’s daughter?’

  ‘You must not judge others by yourself, Cromwell.’

  She turned her head, to see that blow hit home.

  ‘All these years,’ he said, ‘you have learned to dissimulate. You say it yourself – you smile when you wish to weep. It must work the other way – weep when you would like to smile? So though you appear abashed by what Reynold has done, how can the king know you are sincere?’