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 thinks of his daughter Anne following him upstairs, her stocky little form wobbling, her fat hands reaching out. He says, ‘My daughters are dead.’

  ‘I am informed.’

  By Vaughan, of course. What more has he told her? And what less? He says, ‘How is this possible?’

  ‘Secrets can be kept.’

  ‘Evidently.’ In his experience, secrets do not keep. Perhaps that flat watery country is less leaky than this.

  She says, ‘It was my mother’s wish that after you left Antwerp you should not be troubled. When I would ask her, “Where is my father?” she would say, “Gone over the sea.” When I was a little child I thought you were one of those men who sails to the new-found lands, and brings back treasure.’

  He turns his back to give himself a moment to arrange his face. He looks at the tapestry as if he had never seen it before: as if he were taxed to unpick it and reweave it. It is usual to show Sheba gazing at Solomon. Hans, for instance, has made a picture in which the monarch wears the face and garments of our own king, and the onlooker sees the back of Sheba’s head. But Anselma looks you frankly in the face; she has turned away from the Israelite, as if behind her smile lies boredom.

  She says, ‘You are thinking, I am not much like my mother.’

  More like me, poor girl. ‘You are aware that until this moment I did not know you lived?’

  ‘I have shocked you. I am sorry.’

  ‘You must allow me time to understand it … Your mother bore you after I crossed the sea, and said not a word to me?’

  ‘That was her resolve.’

  ‘But why did she not write, when she knew her condition? Why bear it alone? Of course,’ he sighs, ‘you cannot answer that. Such matters are not discussed with children, are they? But I would have come back. I would have married her. Tell her –’

  ‘My mother is dead. A cold on her chest this winter.’

  In the pause he consults his heart: it registers nothing, except the trace of the pen that, in the Book of Life, lightly inks a fate. It is the fate of a woman he knew in another country. And she not young, either.

  His daughter says, ‘My mother always spoke well of you. Though she did not speak of you much. She said, Jenneke, I do not want him to regard you as a mistake he must pay for; he was a young man far from home, and I a widow, and both of us wanted company. But as you say, a child never hears the whole of these matters, and that is why I have come to find out for myself what manner of man you are. Are you glad to see me?’

  ‘I am amazed,’ he says. ‘How could I have a daughter and not know it? When she was carrying you, how did she hide you?’

  She shrugs. ‘As women do. She went away. She made a journey. I was born in another town.’

  ‘And she married the banker.’

  ‘Yes, it was a good chance for her. He was a kind man and made her no reproach, but he had sons from his first wife, he had no need of an Englishman’s daughter. I stayed with the nuns, who were good to me. Then my mother took me to Stephen Vaughan. Teach her English, she said, against the day.’

  Against the day when the secret comes out. ‘How could Stephen know and say nothing?’ Each word she speaks seems to deepen his bewilderment. Though he has heard, of course, of cases like this. Men like him, who have been travellers; men like him who are not celibate saints: one day they are going about their lawful occasions and there is a knock on the door, and ‘Guess who?’ It was a joke with the cardinal, who claimed he had spawned bastards everywhere: whenever some squat rascal heaved into view, he would say, ‘Look, Thomas, one of yours.’

  No joke now. He says, ‘You know Stephen Vaughan is here in London?’

  ‘He will scold me,’ she says. ‘He intended to pick his good time and tell you himself. He said, Cromwell rises in the world, he has the ear of the king; he defends the gospel, he protects our sisters and brothers, and we should not carry fuel to the flames. He said, no name is too bad for his enemies to smear him – and if they know about you, Jenneke, they will call him a whoremaster too.’

  ‘True,’ he says.

  ‘But then he said, you do not want to be a nun, Jenneke, nuns are finished; so it is time you were wed. And your husband will need to know who you are, or we can make but a poor bargain – you are a bastard, but you are not just any bastard. We must sound out my lord your father, we must prepare him. But then this trouble broke out. And I did not want to wait any longer.’

  When he held out his hands to her, she had not risen to take them; she had kept her seat and kept her countenance, and he admires her for it. He searches for Anselma in her but can only find himself. He thinks, why did you not come early? Time was when I was a different sort of man. Time was, I would bound into my own house and run upstairs singing. Even last year I was different, before I met Wolsey’s daughter: before she cut me to the quick, and the wound healed and scarred.

  He asks, ‘Your mother had more children? With the banker?’

  ‘No. But she lacked nothing. Nor did I. The nuns taught me what a woman needs to know. Later, many of them who were wise women read the books of Erasmus, his New Testament, and became wiser still. Perhaps you knew him?’

  ‘No, not I. I only know his books. Though he came to London and stayed with Thomas More. Outstayed his welcome, Lady Alice said.’

  ‘More had a wife?’ She digests this. ‘I thought he was some kind of monk.’ She puts down her plate; she has eaten most of her apple, so now the platter shows the blue townscape beneath: campaniles, castellated towers, bridges over fast-flowing water. He has spoken of More without thinking – the name hovers at everyone’s lips these days, you would hardly think the man was dead; to hear the chit-chat about him, you would expect to meet him as you hurry down Cheap. ‘You are a Bible woman?’

  ‘I am instructed.’

  ‘And you know – forgive me, I do not know what Stephen has told you – but you know it is my cause, it is my chief endeavour –’

  ‘The English scripture. I am advised.’ She says, ‘Meester Vaughan tells me your father was a brewer, trading in wool also, having a sound business, and connected to a good family called Villems, who were towards the law.’

  ‘Williams,’ he says. ‘We say it so.’ He considers. ‘All that is true.’

  Enough said, perhaps? She doesn’t need to hear about Walter.

  ‘These people have helped you to your fortune? The family Williams?’

  She is a quick learner. Already she seems less foreign than when she entered the room. He says, ‘Wolsey helped me. But perhaps Stephen has not told you who Wolsey is?’

  ‘A worldly prelate. Dead.’

  ‘You see my coat of arms, painted there on the wall? Those black birds are called choughs. They were the cardinal’s emblem.’

  ‘Does it not anger his enemies to see them there?’

  ‘Yes. Oh, yes. But, you see, they have to grit their teeth and stifle their curses. They have to bow their heads and endure it and say, “I trust you are in health, Lord Cromwell?” They have to fetch up a smile for me. And bend the knee.’

  ‘You are proud.’ She gazes at him. ‘Your person is very fine, and I like very well your house. I was told, your father is the first citizen of London. I did not believe it but I believe it now. I have stood outside a day or two. I wanted to look at you and judge.’

  That seems reasonable. ‘I am encouraged that you decided to come in.’

  ‘Who would not be curious to see such a great household? Especially if your father is in it.’

  He feels he ought to make some statement, some apology – some lengthy explanation, why all is not as it seems – but already he hears footsteps and voices outside his door, his people will be thinking this young woman has taken enough of his time. He says, ‘When you work for Henry Tudor you have no choice in how you appear. You must be a courtier, you cannot look like a clerk. And the
common people, outside the gate, you must show them you have the king’s favour. They only understand what they see plain. If you put on no show, they take you for nothing.’

  He wants her to know, I was happy in my lawyer’s black. But is that true? He thinks, I used it for concealment. That does not mean I was content. Did I not have a doublet of purple satin, long before the cardinal came down?

  The door opens. It is Thomas Avery. He stares at the visitor. ‘Christ in Heaven, Jenneke, what are you doing here?’

  ‘Thomas Avery, this is my daughter.’

  The young man stands with a folio slapped to his chest, his eyes on Jenneke. ‘I know.’

  When Jenneke has gone he calls Avery in and bids him sit; he would give him an apple if he wanted one, and they are good Charterhouse apples too. ‘I am not angry,’ he says. ‘Come, Thomas Avery, you are a Putney boy, my people knew your people, we should deal straight with each other.’

  ‘None of that follows,’ Thomas Avery says warily. ‘Putney people are as crooked as anywhere. Worse.’

  ‘I mean, we should be at ease with each other.’

  Avery looks at him as if to say, do you have any idea how impossible that is?

  ‘You saw her, did you not, at Stephen’s house, when I sent you over to learn his trade? You came back and talked about her. Jenneke, you said. The name so often on your lips, I thought you were in love with her.’

  Avery says nothing. His hands lie still, unoccupied.

  ‘I thought, we will make this work for Avery – even if she is an orphan with no money, Stephen and I will manage it between us. But then you ceased to speak of the girl and I thought – God help me – I thought perhaps she had died, and so I did not speak of her either. I waited for news. And now …’

  He feels he is reaching for the truth but failing to grasp it. A dead thing has proved quick: it is as if Anselma is one of those statues monks keep, that moves its eyes, jerking them in their orbits; or reaches out a wooden hand, and adjusts its cerulean robe.

  Avery says, ‘Sir, I came home from Antwerp with Jenneke’s picture in my mind as clear as if she stood before me, and in this very room I took your measure, I studied your features, I crossed the sea again and studied hers. You can see she resembles you, and I could not miss it. I put the question to Mr Vaughan. He said, Avery, you have it right, but be very secret. I saw I had trespassed in private business. Vaughan said, I will not ask you to take an oath, for that should not be done except in the gravest cases, and I suppose it will come out one day – but let it not be through you.’

  ‘And you kept my secret. That I did not know myself.’ He considers Avery. ‘Well, if you can keep one secret, you can keep another.’ The boy stirs, reaching for paper, but he raises a palm: ‘Sit still and listen. I am going to tell you where my money is.’

  Avery is surprised. ‘Well, sir, I talk to your receivers and your surveyors. Your officers are all confidential with me. If they were hiding anything, I would know.’

  ‘I applaud your diligence. But there are other funds.’

  ‘Ah.’ Avery thinks about it. ‘Abroad?’

  He inclines his head.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Against the day.’

  ‘But has not the king said – you will pardon me, sir, but the whole city talks of it – “I will not part from my Lord Privy Seal, not for no man on earth”?’

  ‘That is what he has said.’

  Avery looks down at his feet. ‘We know the love his Majesty bears you. We see the fruits of it daily. But we fear the country will rise again, and who knows how the world will turn? Not that we doubt our sovereign, his word – but who was in greater favour than my lord cardinal in his day?’

  ‘His example is before me.’ Though not his ghostly person: not since Shaftesbury. ‘So if one day the Duke of Suffolk and the Duke of Norfolk storm in here, breaking my locks and splintering my chests, and wrecking like the devils at the sack of Rome, I want you, Thomas Avery, halfway down the street, and not so much as “What do you?” Do not even stop to curse them, just run. As soon as you can get a letter abroad, send to those names I shall tell you. Then if Henry lays hands on what is mine, he will think he has the whole, but he will be – let us not say he will be deceived, for I would not deceive my king – let us say he will be less than fully informed.’ He watches Avery. ‘You can do it? Or the task lies too heavy?’

  The boy nods.

  ‘Good.’ Because Richard is of too hot a temper for such a post-mortem task. And Rafe is assumed to know all my business, he thinks, and I should not like his loyalty divided, as he is the king’s servant now and must answer to him. He says, ‘Gregory is still young. He would need help. And now it seems I have a young woman to provide for as well.’

  ‘Where has she gone, sir?’

  ‘To seek Vaughan. I wonder what she will tell him.’

  He would be glad to have Avery in his family. But he is no longer free – he is pledged to the daughter of Thacker, the steward. They keep close, the Austin Friars boys: perhaps there will be one of them spare for his daughter to wed. Though something in Jenneke’s manner tells him that she has not come to stay. She came to satisfy her curiosity and set eyes on the father who is a great man. Perhaps as a child she watched for his ship coming up the Scheldt. But those days are long gone and childhood is over.

  Aske’s safe-conduct is good till Twelfth Night. At Greenwich during the Christmas season, the king has asked the rebel leader to write an account of the outrages in the north – from the first hint of trouble in the autumn, to his winter journey under flag of truce.

  Aske is two or three days about his task, sustained by prime beef, claret and banked fires. The product is conveyed to my lord Privy Seal. He is spending his holiday dealing with letters from Calais, where the population has been swelled by an influx from beyond the Pale of men and their families pressing to become English denizens. Grain is short this winter and herring go four for a penny, therefore some plan will have to be made to feed the town. No use waiting for the governor to do it. Lisle can’t boil an egg.

  My lord Privy Seal lays aside his letters to read Aske’s tale of the Pilgrims. ‘What a marvellous little book,’ he says at last. ‘I wonder that a lawyer should be so free with the ink.’ Aske talks about himself like a man in a storybook. ‘The said Aske’, he calls himself. He says what he did in the rebellion, but he doesn’t say why.

  ‘Aske has seen the king,’ says my lord Privy Seal. ‘The king has seen Aske. He has served his purpose. Now get him back to Yorkshire.’

  Aske must be conveyed promptly, with the king’s offer of a general pardon, in order to quash rumours that on the one hand he has been hanged, and on the other hand promoted to high office. No loyal subject could turn down Christmas with his king. But the visit has compromised him: it will be easy for the Yorkshiremen to say the court has bought him. In any event, it is futile to believe Aske alone can command the towns and shires. The banner of the Five Wounds has even been seen in Cornwall, where they say it was brought back by some real pilgrims, who had walked right across the country to the shrine at Walsingham in Norfolk.

  Does this not show the nature of the pilgrim trade? In my lord Privy Seal’s view, nothing comes of trailing from shire to shire to pray. You can pray at home. It costs you less, you don’t get robbed on the road, and you don’t spread diseases or carry them back to your native country. Besides, Walsingham is useless, the king says. ‘I went there to pray for my son I had with Katherine, but he only lived two months. Still, Jane wanted to go. Women are fanciful and set store by shrines. She prayed for her womb to quicken but … There you are,’ the king says. ‘Nothing’s happened yet.’

  As part of his peace offer, the king has committed himself to a progress through the north. At Whitsuntide in York he will open a parliament and crown Jane: or Michaelmas, at the latest. Convocation will sit in York too, so the n
orthern church can have its say in how we worship God, instead of being quashed by Canterbury and told what to think and how to pray. Ahead of the king’s coming, the Duke of Norfolk will arrive to guarantee order, and deal out justice to anyone who breaches the newly-established peace. Norfolk will have the title of the King’s Lieutenant, and he will not come with an army, but only his ducal train. Meanwhile those gentlemen who have taken part with the rabble, voluntarily or not, are required to get themselves into the king’s presence to make their explanations and receive their pardons man to man.

  But when the north empties of its chief leaders, every tanner and butcher pushes to the fore, inscribing rebel proclamations and nailing them to church doors. The Earl of Cumberland writes it is dangerous for a messenger to be taken with a letter addressed to Cromwell – whatever the content, he will be murdered. The wars are bitter, in pulpit and in print, in guildhall and market square: name-calling, placarding, brawling. Royal couriers and even the heralds are attacked on the roads, their office not respected. Since they meet the Pilgrims’ immediate demands, the king’s offers are enough to buy a truce. But with regard to their request to turn time backwards, nothing is done and nothing can be done.

  The crown is anxious about its income this year; he, the Lord Privy Seal, meets with the treasury to plumb the depths of the deficit from the north, where taxes due last September are still unpaid. Rafe Sadler leaves mid-January on a mission to Scotland – he is meeting our king’s sister Margaret, who is seeking to annul her third marriage. On the road he sees how uneasy is the king’s peace. At Darlington, forty men with clubs come and stand outside his inn, with no good intent. ‘So Rafe is having a dangerous time after all,’ says my lord Privy Seal. ‘He thought his life was too quiet.’

  Rafe talks down the Darlington men, addressing them from the window of his inn, shivering as the wind slices: out of sight below the sill he grips a dagger. Lucky they don’t know Rafe is like a son to Cromwell, or they would haul him out and make short work of him. Worse is ahead, he fears, from the Scots. Besides, experience assists him: forty armed Yorkshiremen do not equal Henry on a bad day.