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

  ‘Whitehall?’ Henry says. ‘Never mind.’ It appears he only has to think of the Mirror to feel glorified. He always says, when the French ask for it back, ‘Tell François my claim to that country is stronger than his. One day I shall ask for more than jewels.’

  ‘We shall need the trumpeters.’ Henry’s voice is small in the great spaces of the chapel. ‘Rafe, are you lurking there? My duty and my love to the queen’s grace. If she pleases to wear the sleeves with my monogram that Ibgrave sent in June, I shall wear the matching doublet.’

  Far below them – in the mirror of time you can see them – the Garter knights weep in their stalls, their dead skulls rattling inside feathered helms. But the king straightens his shoulders, tilts up his chin. Later Rafe will say, ‘You have to admire how he took the news, when York fell. You would have thought someone had given him a thousand pounds, instead of a kick in the teeth.’

  By suppertime he is so harassed by messengers that he has to send Rafe to whisper in the king’s ear and beseech pardon for his absence. They say the mayor of York has got the treasure out of the city, but can he keep it safe? The Pilgrims will be able to finance their cause from what remains, fleecing the rich citizens. Within York’s walls are crammed forty parish churches, a dozen great houses of religion untouched by the Court of Augmentations. That the place seethes with papists, he has long known; but where would York be, or any of those great wool towns, if he did not work continually to patch up peace with the Emperor, to keep their ports open, and if he did not represent their cause, persistently, to the merchants of the Hanse? If he met Aske he would ask him, how is it in the interest of the north, to threaten those who can best prosper your people?

  He says to Rafe, ‘Lucky the King of Scots has gone to France. If he were at home, he might be mustering to come down on us.’

  The word from Paris is that James has not yet married a wife. Instead he is doing a lot of shopping.

  Rafe says, ‘James has left his council at home to govern. They have an eye to their opportunity, I suppose. I do not know if they would venture to declare war.’

  They don’t have to declare it. At calcio, nobody ever declared war. The result was wreckage, all the same: a field strewn with teeth, and (one had heard of it) gouged eyes. No one was actually stabbed but sometimes, inadvertently, players fell onto each other’s knives.

  Letters done. He sands his papers. Tonight I can no more. ‘I’m hungry, Call-Me. Perhaps it is not too late to join our master.’

  At the end of the great hall where servants sit and boast, he can see Christophe hard at work. Christophe tells people he has been to Constantinople, where he advised the Sultan. At his palace in the twisting lanes of that metropolis, perfumed fans would agitate the air, and plump women, in their skins as God made them, would lie about on divans, with nothing to do all day but work a curl around their forefinger and wait for Mustafa Cromwell to come home, and call for sherbet and virgins.

  But in Windsor the light is low outside, and grouped about the king in their furs, his senior councillors: Audley the Lord Chancellor, John de Vere Earl of Oxford; a bishop or two. At the queen’s right hand, Lady Mary is seated. Mary’s eyes pass over him. No signal, except a faint pursing of the lips. On the queen’s other hand is the Marchioness of Exeter, Gertrude Courtenay. It is her office to hold the queen’s fingerbowl, should she require it, while Lady Mary hands her napkin. Glancing down the hall to Gertrude’s entourage, he sees Bess Darrell, and Bess Darrell sees him.

  He approaches the king. About his neck, as deputy for the Mirror of Naples, Henry is wearing a rough-cut diamond the size of a large walnut. His doublet of crimson satin is sewn all over with gold and pearls, picking out the queen’s initial. Jane’s crimson sleeves are stiff with matching letters: H, H, H again.

  Without looking at him, Henry stretches out an arm for a bundle of dispatches. The king’s attention is fixed on some fantastical tale being trotted out by – blood of Christ, how did he come here? – Master Sexton the jester.

  ‘I thought you had forbidden him the court, sir?’

  Henry’s smile is wary. ‘True, I boxed his ears. But poor fellow, he has no other way to earn a living. Will Somer is sick. He has a colic. I have recommended oil of bitter almonds. An Italian remedy, I think?’

  Sexton skips across the floor, chanting:

  ‘Will is sick and ill at ease

  I am full sorry for Will’s disease.’

  The king says, ‘Have you not had your supper? Take your places.’

  ‘Has he washed his hands?’ Sexton bawls. ‘Go lower, Tom. Which is the table for shearsmen? Which is the table for the blacksmith’s lad? Go lower. Keep walking. Trot on till you get to Putney.’

  ‘Master Wriothesley,’ the king says, ‘my scribe. Take your seat …’

  ‘What, Wriothesley?’ Sexton bawls. ‘My ink-horn, my splot, my blotch? Frig him, ladies, and he spurts ink. Tell me, Blotch, where’s your friend Riche? What do they call him, Sir Purse?’

  Call-Me turns pink. He takes his place. It can only be moments before the king checks Sexton from such bawdy talk, which is never to his taste, let alone that of his wife and his maiden daughter. The ladies will not understand his crudities, of course. Gregory used to call Riche ‘Purse’, but Gregory was young then – he didn’t know it means a cunt. Unless, of course, he did.

  Sexton lurches towards them. ‘What, Purse is among the Pilgrims? We may never see him again, which would not make you cry, would it, Master Blot? No, Blot brooks no rival – he would be glad if the rebels cooked and ate Purse, and spat out what they could not stomach. All know how he betrayed Thomas More. I wonder any gentleman speaks to him.’ He rolls his eyes around the company. ‘I wonder even Cromwell speaks to him.’

  There is some incautious sniggering. The king frowns. But Master Sexton bowls on. ‘The commons cry for bread, Majesty. Why not give them Crumb?’

  The queen moves a hand to cover her mouth. Her embroidered sleeves flash initials: H, H, H. Lady Mary is looking at the table linen with some attention, as if it needed darning. Henry says, ‘The fellow is impertinent, but you must take it in good part, my lord.’

  ‘The Pilgrims will crumb you,’ Sexton shouts. ‘They will crumb you till you are crumbed back to flour.’

  The king says, ‘Do not answer, it will goad him.’

  ‘If the Emperor comes you will be crumbed and fried. You will be sizzled like the heretic Tyndale.’

  He should heed the king’s word, yet he must speak: ‘We do not know for certain that Tyndale is burned.’

  Sexton says, ‘I could smell him from here.’

  Bess Darrell is a flitting presence by candlelight, a wraith. He cannot help but belly out her gown with the shape of the child that never was.

  ‘My lord Privy Seal.’ She considers him. ‘Creeping about the apartments of the ladies, by night.’

  ‘See me as Master Secretary. In that capacity I get everywhere.’

  She laughs. ‘So your friend is at court.’ Mary, she means. ‘She is a dangerous friend to have.’

  ‘How is that?’ He is playing stupid: feeling out the rumours.

  ‘She thinks you have offered to make her queen one day. She thinks you have an understanding. Tacit, of course.’

  Hardly an offer, he says, indifferent, but she says, ‘Do not disdain the rumour. It may buy you a little credit with the Poles or the Courtenays, and you may need it one day.’

  ‘Why, do they think the Tudors will go down? Do they say so?’

  ‘Never in my hearing. But my mistress Gertrude hopes the king will take advice and put the government into the hands of honest men. If abusing Lord Cromwell were treason, you could hang her tomorrow.’

  ‘I could hang half the peerage. I am glad your marchioness is at court, under our eye. Though I can think of people I would rather look at.’

  ‘Can you?’ She is teasing him.
‘Meg Douglas?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ he says. ‘I like her so well I keep her under lock and key. But tell me, does Mary confide in your mistress?’

  ‘Mary says nothing to anybody. She bides her time.’

  Bess’s face raised to his: a sweetly encouraging face, her eyes warm. Does she think he will speak out for Mary’s rights and damn himself? He would not put it past this young woman to hold a double hand in the game. He turns away: ‘Are the Courtenays good to you? They have not reproached you about Wyatt?’

  She lays a flat hand on her person. ‘There is no sign Wyatt was ever here. The Courtenays do not mention his name.’

  He thinks, they are persons of limited capacity and Wyatt is too hard for them to fathom. Bess says, ‘Verses are written to damn him. They circulate here at court. Because in the spring he stood with you, and not with the Boleyns.

  ‘To counterfeit a merry mood

  In mourning mind I think it best.

  But once in rain I wore a hood

  Well were they wet that barehead stood.

  ‘Blood,’ she says. ‘The precipitation of our age. They think he walked away and left his friends to die. I wonder where those five gentlemen are now? For that matter, I wonder where Wyatt is.’

  ‘With the king’s army. I cannot be more exact, we are all like planets driven out of our courses. But I hear he does great deeds with his Kentish men. Does he not write to you?’

  ‘Of course. But you know Wyatt. He would not put a date or place, he would not like to be pinned to it. He does not say anything usual, like “Commend me to my friends,” or “My heart is your home for ever.”’

  ‘I am sure it is. Who would not grant you the freehold?’ She darts a smile over her shoulder and melts into the darkness, as fleetly as she came. He rubs his fingers together, as if he had tried to catch at her linen and caught a spider’s web instead.

  He has almost gained his own door when another woman steps into his path, a candle in her hand. Jane Rochford is as precise and fresh as if she were going to Matins. ‘Cromwell? Where have you been? She wants to see you.’

  ‘The queen? At this hour?’

  ‘The Lady Mary.’ Rochford laughs. ‘She is her father’s daughter. She does not sleep, so why should anyone else?’

  Mary wears a furred nightgown of stiff crimson brocade. ‘I hope they are keeping you warm,’ he says. ‘And well-provisioned?’

  He had told the household officers, block out the draughts, build up her fires, send in extra fuel: bread, wine and boiled meats to go to her chamber each day at dawn.

  She says, ‘The great breakfast is needless now. If you remember, it was so that I did not have to dine in the hall in company, and sit lower than little Eliza. In those days when my title was degraded, and Eliza was styled princess.’

  She does not ask him to sit. He would not, anyway. He says, ‘We have worked so much between us that I forget some of our ploys. I must ask you, my lady – you have not been approached?’

  ‘The rebels may use my name, but they have no permission from me.’

  Which is to say, yes, I have been approached. And as he moves towards her – he, Lord Cromwell – she does not move, except that with a little hitch she draws her nightgown together, hiding the white of her linen; and at once lets it go, as if she knew the gesture to be ridiculous. He is close enough to touch the cloth of her gown, but of course he does not. ‘You favour that crimson, I perceive, you and the queen both – may I ask, is it from Genoa?’

  ‘I believe so. The queen sent her brother Edward to Hunsdon, to see what apparel I needed. I said, my father’s favour is clothing enough, but he begged me to ask for whatever I wished. Edward Seymour is a fine gentleman. It is a pity he is a heretic.’

  ‘Edward is guided by the king, as are we all.’

  God forgive me, he thinks, but she is exhausting. And starved of touch, her rank forbids it.

  She says, ‘I hear the council is discussing a marriage for me. With the young Duke of Orléans.’

  ‘The French are discussing it. I’m not sure we are.’

  The French will not take her unless Henry makes her his heir. This, of course, he will not do; but could some compromise be reached, a French marriage would detach her once and for all from the Emperor and the Spanish. Therefore, we are talking.

  He says, ‘You see yourself with a Spanish husband, very likely.’

  She hesitates. ‘The king is such a good father that he would not marry me against my own wishes.’

  Answer the question, he thinks. She turns her back on him, as if incidentally. ‘And your own care of me has been so tender that it is like that of a father.’

  He can see her face in a glass, only she does not know that. Someone has made her aware that we are linked, if only by rumour. She is warning me off. Well, he thinks, I am warning her. ‘Would you not like to marry an Englishman?’

  ‘Who?’ The question jumps out at him.

  She stares at him through the mirror. Her heart is in her mouth. Let’s leave it there.

  A restless supper: a worse grace. He can hear the rain on the leads, its trickle and swirl. Well were they wet that barehead stood … His meal lies heavy, and as he goes to his desk – the last messages have come in from Yorkshire – he finds himself thinking of his spectacular bed: the king has given him a set of covers and bed hangings, purple woven with silver tissue, emblazoned with the royal arms. You are mine asleep or awake, Henry is saying: like a lover. You could keep a troop of horse in the field on what the gift has cost him, but Henry must feel he is worth the expense. He lights another candle, and calls in Christophe to build up the fire. He has used up his court allocation of coals and wood but he says, hang the expense, say it’s for me, and if anybody queries it, just knock them down, will you?

  Christophe grins. I fetch Rafe to talk to you? Or someone to sing? But he says, no, no, I must get to this, it won’t wait; but then he rests his head on his hand and perhaps dozes, and he is now here, now there: now lit by the tentative flicker from the hearth, now by the sunlight on the water of the Thames at Lambeth, forty-odd years back: but what is forty years, in the life of a river?

  I kept this back for you, Uncle John says. Got to eat it when it’s just warm. Too hot or too cold and you don’t get the beauty of it. A cook has to learn. It can’t always be leftovers.

  It is an aromatic custard in a white dish. He saw the gooseberries earlier, tiny bubbles of green glass, sour as a friar on a fast day. For this dish you need fresh hens’ eggs and a pitcher of cream; you need to be a prince of the church to afford the sugar.

  His uncle stands over him. The custard quakes in waves of sweetness and spice.

  ‘Nutmeg,’ he says. ‘Mace. Cumin.’

  ‘Now taste it.’

  ‘And rosewater.’

  John’s smile is a benediction. ‘Nothing is so green as a summer in England, Thomas. Those who have voyaged yearn for it. They dream of a bowl such as this.’

  On the silk road; in the heat of the plains where neither rill nor brook trickles in three days’ march; in the fortified towns of barbarians, where you can cook an egg by cracking it on the stones; in the places at the edge of the map, where the lines blur and the paper frays: by Mother Mary, says the traveller, by the maidenhead of St Agatha, I wish I were in Lambeth and had a dish of gooseberries and a spoon.

  He shakes his head. This dish lacks some final flourish … He pictures himself, forty years on, standing where John stands now. He is the master-cook, he wears velvet: he never goes near a flour bag, nor flying hot oil: papers in hand, he issues his orders, and at his behest a boy who looks very like himself tosses slivers of almonds in a latten pan; then he spoons them into the cream, freckling it.

  And then he might, if he had made an elderflower cordial, venture to add a drop or two.

  The boy he can see has his own curly head, his skinned kn
uckles, his feet cold on the stone-flagged floor. He wears a patched jerkin of sad colour. Beneath his clothes are the prints of his father’s fingers: bruises reversing nature, turning from the autumn black-purple of the elderberry to the pale yellow-white of the flowers.

  All his flesh is dappled with these shadows. Walter can’t help it, John says, he lashes out. Our own father may God acquit him was the same.

  If you go out on a morning in late June, after the dew has burned off, you can pick the finest elderberries from the top of the bushes, employing a hooked stick or giant to help you. When you have carried them home, you spill them by handfuls onto a scrubbed tabletop. Breathing in their honeyed scent, you sift them for the best-formed blossoms, your fingertips gentle; then you paint each petal with white of egg. If you dip them in sugar, which as the servant of a rich man you can afford to do, you can keep them a year. On a cheerless November day, when the idea of summer has dropped out of the world, you can lay the crystallised petals on the surface of a cake, each one a five-pointed star: to enchant the eye of a lady, or to tempt the jaded palate of a king.

  19 October, the city of Hull capitulates to the rebels. In Doncaster, mayor and chief citizens are compelled to take the Pilgrim oath. In the chapel at Windsor, the dead knights in their Garter stalls bow over their shame in an agony of colic that no oil of almonds will ease: inside their helms they moan, earls of Lancaster and earls of March, Bohuns and Beauchamps, Mowbrays and Veres, Nevilles and Percys, Cliffords and Talbots and Fitzalans and Howards, and that great servant of the state, Reginald Bray himself. There are more dead than living; why can they not fight?

  When evening comes a blue light fades in the north windows, and the river is sucked into the darkness, as if into a universal sea. The south windows are shuttered, the courts below fall quiet, and the watch is changed at the foot of the king’s privy stair. The tapers are brought in, and mirrored sconces redirect a shivering light; the king’s private rooms, painted and gilded, shine like a jewel box.