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

  A bell is ringing. He can hear the nuns begin to stir, gathering to say their office. He says, ‘I should have gone up to Yorkshire with him. I should have been with him when he died. I should not have let the king get in my way.’

  ‘My lord,’ Riche says, his tone hushed, ‘the king is not in our way. He is our way.’

  He says, ‘I shall go back in to Dorothea. I shall explain it to her.’

  Christophe says, ‘You cannot undo what she has been believing for so long. Let it rest.’

  ‘Good advice, on the whole,’ Riche says. ‘My lord, that was the Vespers bell. We had best be on the road, unless we incline to spend a night here. I have parted on good terms with the abbess, I find her a reasonable woman and well-found in the law – these women surprise one. I have the figures. So for now I have done here – if you have.’

  ‘I have done,’ he says. ‘Allons.’

  He remembers the false prophetess, the nun Eliza Barton. She said she could find the dead for you, if you gave her enough money. She searched Heaven and Hell, she said, and never found Wolsey, till she found him at last in a place that was no place, seated among the unborn.

  In London, he twists the embroidered kerchief in his hand. Rafe comes; ‘You can give this back to Helen.’

  ‘I hear,’ Rafe says gently, ‘you were ill-received.’

  ‘You counselled me,’ he says, ‘you and my nephew – you said, you must let the cardinal go. Whether I would or no, he was prised away from me. But I did not know he would go as far as he has gone now.’ His hand describes the space of the room. ‘I am used to his visits. I see him in my mind. I ask his advice. He is dead but I make him work.’

  ‘He will come again, sir, when you need him.’

  He shakes his head. Dorothea has rewritten his story. She has made him strange to himself. ‘Who could have told her I betrayed her father – except her father himself?’

  Rafe says, ‘So much expenditure of time, of goods, of prayers … surely he knew your devotion?’

  We must hope so. You can persuade the quick to think again, but you cannot remake your reputation with the dead.

  ‘I see now I should have asked her more questions. Your master the duke, she said. By God, I’d rather work for Patch.’

  Rafe puts his finger to his lips. ‘You know what the cardinal used to say. Walls have eyes and ears.’

  As if he is not safe in his own house. But then, Sadler is a more cautious man than he will ever be.

  And Riche? Riche tells his story all around Lincoln’s Inn, and the courts of Westminster, and the guildsmen’s houses in the city: boasts of him, or so he hears. ‘Lord Cromwell had all the figures in his head. Stockfish, bay salt, I know not what. Even though he was stricken, at Wolsey’s girl insulting him. I fear he has been grievously slandered, and who knows who is at the root of it, when he has so many enemies? And yet he has a remarkable mind,’ Riche says reverently, ‘remarkable. I think if writing were rubbed out, and all the records of government erased, he would carry them in his head, with all the laws of England, precedent and clause. And I am a fortunate man, to stand his friend, and to have been able to work a little to soothe his temper. Yes, I am glad I was standing by. Praise God,’ says Richard Riche, ‘I learn from him every day.’

  Returned from Shaftesbury, body and mind, he opens letters from Gardiner in France, saying that the dauphin is dead: an unexplained fever, three days’ duration. Henry, who so recently lost a son of his own, offers his sympathies, and the court goes into black. No hardship for Lord Cromwell: black’s what he’s in. He appears at many gaudy occasions – as a courtier he cannot help it – but he would not want his brothers in the city to say, ‘These days Cromwell is wholly in crimson,’ or ‘He has taken to purple as if he were a bishop.’

  The news from France is soon corrected. Not that the dauphin is alive, rather that his death was in no way natural. But, he asks, why would anyone trouble to poison the boy? François has other sons.

  The French embassy maintains silence. Anthony walks through Austin Friars, ringing his new silver bells and crying, ‘God be thanked, one Frenchman less!’ The sound fades behind closed doors, up staircases, through distant galleries. ‘One less, who cares how?’

  The sound echoes: who-who, an owl’s cry: how-how, the hound’s call. Austin Friars is augmented, growing into a palace. Builders bang and hammer from dawn. Richard Cromwell walks in with a roll of drawings in his hand. ‘Our neighbour Stow is bad-mouthing you all over London. You know he has a summerhouse? Our boys have put it on rollers and run it twenty feet back on his own side. He says we’re stealing his land. I sent a message, compliments to Master Stow and may we have sight of his plans?’

  He looks up. ‘I know where my boundaries are. He lays a serious charge and I take it ill.’

  ‘So go fuck himself,’ Christophe suggests.

  They scarcely knew Christophe was in the room. But there he squats in the corner, like a gargoyle fallen off a church. He remembers the boy saying, that day when they rode up to Kimbolton, ‘I will kill a Pole for you. I will kill a Pole when you require it.’

  He thinks, if Christophe can be in my room undetected, I am sure he could weasel in to Reginald’s household. He says to Richard, ‘It is time I saw about him. Having him stopped.’

  ‘Stow?’ Richard is surprised. ‘A stiff letter will do it.’

  ‘Pole. Reynold. As you suggested, it may take a knife.’

  But then, he would be sorry if Christophe should end his days screaming in some hell-hole, probed and burned by Italian tortures. The French also are devoted to pain; they say you never get the truth without it. The rumour is that they have arrested a man for poisoning their prince, but they are coaxing him for the while, because they believe he will confess to some master-plot. Subtle methods have their place. But any interrogator would look at Christophe and see subtlety as wasted. ‘Christophe,’ he says, ‘if ever –’ He shakes his head. ‘No, never mind.’

  If I do employ him, he vows, I will tell him to bawl out, ‘Thomas Cromwell’s man,’ before they can burn or stretch him. Why not? I will take the blame. My list of sins is so extensive that the recording angel has run out of tablets, and sits in the corner with his quill blunted, wailing and ripping out his curls.

  ‘Come on,’ he says. ‘Get your coat, Richard. We’re going outside to tramp up and down our line and put down markers for a stone wall as high as two men. And our friend Stow can sit behind it and howl.’

  In Lincolnshire, in the east of England, the rumour has been spreading these three weeks that the king is dead. Drinkers gathering at alehouses claim that the councillors are keeping it a secret, so they can continue to levy taxes in the king’s name, and spend the proceeds on their pleasures. Rafe says, ‘Has anyone told Henry he’s dead? I think he ought to know, and I think it should come from someone more senior than me.’

  Rafe yawns. He has been with the king at Windsor all week and he has never been in bed before midnight. Henry lingers over paperwork, accepting it from his hand in the morning but calling him in after supper to confer, keeping him standing while he frowns over the dispatches. There are rumours of unrest up in Westmorland; anything that happens near the border, Henry says, you can depend upon the Scots to make it worse. The King of Scots has taken ship, sailed away to France to find a bride, but the winds have driven him back on his own shore. Meanwhile the Emperor offers Henry a joint enterprise against France. Charles is fitting out a fleet of warships. As proof of our commitment, he would like cash on the table.

  He says to Chapuys, ‘No wonder your master comes cap-in-hand. Why does he never have ready money? And he pays out such huge sums in interest.’

  ‘He ought to have you managing his cash,’ Chapuys says. ‘Come on now, Thomas – show willing. My master pays you a pension. We do not fee you for nothing.’

  ‘That is what the French say too. How can I please y
ou both?’

  Chapuys waves a hand. ‘I too would take their bounty. Now you are a lord, you have heavy expenses. But we all know that you are the Emperor’s man in your heart. Think of the advantages to your merchants that would be forfeit, if my master was provoked against them. Be mindful of the losses, if my master were to close his ports to Englishmen.’

  He smiles. Chapuys is always threatening him with blockades and bankruptcy. ‘The difficulty is that my prince no longer trusts yours. Time was when your master promised to kick out King François and give my king half his territory. And Henry, good soul, believed him. But then, while we were polishing up our French so we could address our new subjects, Charles was talking to them behind our back and patching up a treaty. We are not fools twice. This time, we would need some great assurances, before we laid out a penny.’

  ‘Make a marriage with us,’ Chapuys coaxes. ‘Lady Mary says she is not inclined to matrimony, but she would be glad, I believe, to be reunited with her own bloodline. My master will offer his own nephew, the Portuguese prince. Dom Luis is a fine young man, she could do no better.’

  ‘The King of France has sons.’

  ‘Mary will not take a Frenchman,’ Chapuys says.

  ‘That is not what she says to me.’

  The king is still keeping his newly-beloved daughter at arm’s length. It is understood that when Jane the queen is crowned, that will be the time for her to come to court, making a great entrance. Meanwhile Mary seems tranquil, ordering new clothes and trotting through the leafy days on Pomegranate and other mounts her friend Lord Cromwell has supplied. She has plenty money for her privy purse – thanks again to her friend – and seems content to encounter her royal father by pre-arrangement, for a day here and there: for supper, and a turn in the gardens when the sun is not too high for a virgin’s complexion. Henry has begged her, ‘Tell me the truth, daughter. When you acknowledged me as what I am, head of the church, did someone prompt you, or constrain you, or urge you to say one thing and mean another? Or did you do it of your own free will?’

  He would like to divert the king from this line of questioning. It drives Mary deeper into evasion. Chapuys has told her to send to Rome for the Pope’s pardon, for statements she made in favour of her father. She made them, she argues, under duress.

  But in Rome they argue, reasonably enough, that Mary’s declarations were public, and any retraction would need to be public too. She would have to tell Henry, to his face, that she has changed her mind.

  Then where would she be? Dead.

  Mr Wriothesley says, my lord, you should challenge her. You know where her loyalty lies: to Rome, and to her dead mother. If the ignorant populace are in thrall to an Italian warlord who sets himself up as God’s deputy, surely a king’s daughter should know better? Surely by now, the world and all she has seen has knocked off the shackles of her upbringing, and allowed her to walk a straight path towards reason?

  But he does not dispute with Mary. He simply repeats to her, madam, obedience is your refuge. Be consistent in it. With consistency comes peace of mind, and peace of mind is what you need.

  Amen to that, she says. She looks grave. Just make my father’s wishes known to me, Lord Cromwell. I will perform them.

  ‘Mary says,’ he tells Chapuys, ‘that she will marry a Portuguese prince, or a French prince, any prince her father selects. But please note, Eustache, she does not say at any point, “But if I had my choice, I would take for my bridegroom the Lord Privy Seal.”’

  The ambassador chuckles – a rusty little sound, like a key grating in a lock – and holds out his hands as if to say, guilty.

  Luckily for Chapuys, gossip is not a capital crime.

  When the first reports of trouble come in, he is at Windsor with the king. The days are still fine and it is warm in the sun. It is Michaelmas, and through the realm there are processions, with the banners of Our Lady and the angels and saints. All summer, a ban on sermons has been in force, to keep the peace. The ban is lifted for the feast. From the town of Louth in Lincolnshire – a shire of no great fame – there are reports of crowds gathering after Mass. They do not disperse even at dusk.

  You know those nights, in market towns. A little money jangling in the pocket, and old companions stumbling through the streets, arms entwined. Youths carolling under a sailing moon, daring each other to leap a ditch or break into an empty house. If it rained they’d go in. But the weather holds. Darkness falls and the marketplace is still packed. Leather flasks are passed hand to hand. Stale grudges are let out for air. Wiping of mouths, spitting at feet. Any quarrel will do, for apprentices looking for a brawl. The clubs and knives come out.

  Nine o’clock, a chill in the air. A few masters pick up staves and trot shoulder to shoulder to face down the boys. ‘Sore heads tomorrow, lads! Come on now, get home while your legs will carry you.’

  Shog off, say the apprentices. We will break your pates.

  Their masters say, almost sorrowful, do you not think we were young once? All right, stay out and starve. See if we care.

  Through the hours of darkness the townsfolk hear hallooing from the marketplace – some fool tootling on a trumpet, another bashing a drum. The sun rises on cobbles plastered with puke. The marauders stretch, piss against a wall and go looking for pies. They ransack a baker’s stall, and by ten o’clock they have broached a cask of wine, making cups of their hollow palms.

  Last night they stole the watchman’s rattle, and knocked the watchman down. Now they go rattling through the streets, proclaiming the ballad of Worse-was-it-Never. There was a former age, it seems, when wives were chaste and pedlars honest, when roses bloomed at Christmas and every pot bubbled with fat self-renewing capons. If these times are not those times, who is to blame? Londoners, probably. Members of Parliament. Reforming bishops. People who use English to talk to God.

  Word spreads. On the farms around, labourers see the chance of a holiday. Faces blackened, some wearing women’s attire, they set off to town, picking up any edged tool that could act as a weapon. From the marketplace you can see them coming, kicking up a cloud of dust.

  Old men anywhere in England will tell you about the drunken exploits of harvests past. Rebel ballads sung by our grandfathers need small adaptation now. We are taxed till we cry, we must live till we die, we be looted and swindled and cheated and dwindled … O, Worse was it Never!

  Farmers bolt their grain stores. The magistrates are alert. Burgers withdraw indoors, securing their warehouses. In the square some rascal sways on top of a husting, viewing the rural troops as they roll in. ‘Pledge yourselves to me – Captain Poverty is my name.’ The bell-ringers, elbowed and threatened, tumble into the parish church and ring the bells backward. At this signal, the world turns upside down.

  Morning brings Richard Riche riding from London to Windsor with rumours of assault on officials of the Court of Augmentations. ‘Our men are in Louth, sir – gone in to value the treasures at St James’s church, which you know is a very rich one.’

  He pictures the spire rising three hundred feet, holding up the Lincolnshire sky, clouds draped about it like wet washing. It takes two days to ride from here to Lincolnshire, sparing nor horse nor man. Even as Riche is talking, new messengers are bellowing below: rural gawpers, clay on their boots. How did such folk get here, within the castle walls? They call up, ‘Is it true the king is dead?’

  He comes down the stair towards them. ‘Who says so?’

  ‘All the east believes it. He died at midsummer. A puppet lies in his bed and wears his crown.’

  ‘So who rules?’

  ‘Cromwell, sir. He means to pull down all the parish churches. He will melt the crucifixes for cannon, to fire on the poor folk of England. Taxes will be tenpence in every shilling, and no man shall have a fowl in his pot but he pay a levy on it. There will be no bread next winter but made of pease flour and beans, and the commons shall be poisoned
by it and lie in the fields like blown sheep, with no priest to confess them.’

  ‘Wipe your feet,’ he tells them. ‘I shall bring you to a dead king, and you may kneel and beg his pardon.’

  The messenger is cowed. ‘We do but report what we have heard.’

  ‘That’s how wars start.’ Somewhere out of sight a man is singing, voice echoing around the stones:

  ‘Now God defend and make an end

  Their crimes to mend:

  From Crum and Cram and Cramuel

  St Luke deliver such to Hell.

  God send me well!’

  He thinks, I believe that’s Sexton. I thought the pest was crushed. ‘Who is Cromwell?’ he asks the messengers. ‘What manner of man do you take him to be?’

  Sir, they say, do you not know him? He is the devil in guise of a knave. He wears a hat and under it his horns.

  As the trouble spreads from the town of Louth throughout the shire, the king demands, without result, the immediate attendance of Sir Thump and Lord Mump, Lord Stumble and Sheriff Bumble. It is still the hunting season, and they cannot be got to his side for three, four days. First, messengers must go and tell them of the disturbances to the peace. Then they must say, ‘Lincolnshire up? What the devil do you mean, up?’ Then they must instruct their stewards, they must kiss their wives, they must make their general adieux …

  ‘Come in, cousin Richard,’ the king calls. ‘I need my family. No one else rallies to me in my need.’

  At this point he, Thomas Cromwell, could say ‘I told you so.’ Last year he had argued, if we are closing houses of religion, let us deal with them case by case: no need to frighten the people with a bill in Parliament. But Riche had insisted, no, no, no, we should have the clarity of statute. Lord Audley had said, ‘Cromwell, you cannot do everything as you did it in the cardinal’s time. Would not such a programme take us the rest of our lives?’

  He had closed his eyes: ‘My lord, I suggested dealing with the houses individually. I did not suggest “one at a time”. That is different.’