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

  ‘My lord Beauchamp, I felicitate all your family,’ the court says. Edward’s handsome face relaxes into smiles; he bows and passes on, as if in a radiant cloud, to send a message down to Wolf Hall and a message to his brother Tom, who is with the king’s fleet.

  Now the space around the queen becomes a blessed space. All displeasant airs and discordant sounds must be banished. The jelly creature within her flinches at harsh words or bright lights and Jane must be protected from them, as from strong sunlight or draughts. Only the finest cloth must touch her skin, and no scents assail her but the sweetness of summer grass and the light spice scent of petals. The paws of attending lapdogs must be wiped before they can impose on her person. No courtiers who sneeze or cough, or who know anyone who sneezes or coughs, must come in her vicinity. Only beautiful sights must meet her eyes: though, he says to her, ‘We cannot do anything about me, madam.’

  When the king meets his council the gentlemen pound the table in their glee. ‘A great day for our nation,’ they shout, and ‘This will astonish the Emperor,’ and ‘This will put France’s great nose out of joint.’

  Henry says, ‘There is no need the news should go out to the common sort.’ He sounds strained. ‘Not yet awhile.’

  ‘I think it is out,’ Fitzwilliam says, ‘and not a man or woman in England who does not wish your Majesty well and pray on his knees nightly that the queen will give you a sturdy boy.’

  Henry says, ‘I wish the cardinal were –’ He breaks off. He, Thomas Cromwell, looks down at the documents on the table. The council rises, the babble of congratulation still floating in the air. ‘Fitz, stay,’ Henry says. ‘Cromwell?’

  The noise recedes: laughter below; laughter above, perhaps, the cardinal applauding from somewhere beyond the primum mobile. The dead watch us, zealous in old causes.

  The king says, ‘Jane wants to make a pilgrimage to Becket’s shrine.’ He frowns. Canterbury does not hold good memories: it was where the prophetess Eliza Barton rose up, and gripped his arm and told him he would soon be dead.

  Yet Barton was hanged. And Henry flourishes. God confound all false prophets! ‘Of course we will go,’ Henry says. ‘The queen must go where she likes, while she can safely travel. Even so far as Wolf Hall, if she has a fantasy to it. But my lord – my lord Privy Seal?’

  He wants to put his hand on the king’s shoulder, as he sits sweating in a cold room; the lords of the council have taken the cheer and the warmth with them, and there is no power in the stray shafts of spring sun that trace a shivering line down the wall.

  The king says, ‘I am a man who … my hopes … after so long … and I want to be sure …’

  Fitz raises his eyebrows.

  ‘When I married the queen, that is, before I married her … I need not remind you of the circumstances, but rest assured that though I was hasty, yet I am constant in my affections –’

  ‘Spit it out, sir,’ Fitzwilliam says.

  ‘Are we truly married?’ Henry says. ‘When I entered into that compact, there was nothing to impede or frustrate it?’

  ‘You mean,’ he says, ‘nothing about the queen that you should have known?’

  Fitz sounds shocked. ‘I am sure you found no reason to question that gracious lady’s virginity.’

  Henry colours faintly. ‘Not at all. But are you certain you did all you should, as my councillors? The most diligent enquiries? You can be sure she was absolutely free to enter into matrimony?’

  ‘There was no pre-contract,’ Fitz says, ‘if that is what troubles your Majesty.’

  ‘But was she not once courted by William Dormer?’

  ‘It was something and nothing,’ Fitzwilliam says.

  He says, ‘It was nothing.’

  Fitz says, ‘To be blunt, sir, the Dormer family would not come to a settlement. They concluded the Seymours were not –’

  ‘Rich enough,’ he finishes.

  ‘So you think there was nothing between them?’ The king gets to his feet. ‘If you are sure. Because I need to be sure. Because I cannot start hoping again, it will kill me. I have lost Richmond. I never had a son born in wedlock, that lived. I must know that this time I am safe. That no one can question his birthright. I have been patient. Surely God will reward me now.’ There is a glitter of tears in his eyes. He, Cromwell, turns away, and Fitzwilliam turns, so they do not see them spill. But the king says, ‘I should know you by now, eh, Crumb? If ever a man was thorough, you are that man.’

  The king squeezes his shoulder. There is a new magic in the royal touch. It transmits a vision, a vision of what England could be. You imagine the city of London in the days when prophets walk its streets, when angels cluster on gable ends; you look up as you leave your house, hearing their strong wingbeats in the air.

  At his first session with Hans, the king can hardly walk for the weight of ornamentation. ‘How best to do this, Master Holbein?’ His face is solemn, attentive.

  Hans waves his hand towards the privy chamber gentlemen, the pages, the hangers-on: it is a motion of erasure.

  The room empties. Space clears around the king. ‘Can I stay?’ he asks.

  Henry says, ‘You may sit with me, my lord Cromwell, but I don’t require conversation.’

  He smiles. ‘I’ll stay if your Majesty will grant me five minutes when Hans is done.’

  Henry does not reply. He has fixed his gaze on nothingness and he looks as if he is thinking about God. He, Master Secretary, clears himself off to the window, sits on a stool and looks through his papers. His spaniel flops down at his feet. There is no sound in the room but her gentle snoring, except with the king’s every respiration, his garments shift and sigh: as if, a fraction after the king breathes, his clothes breathe too. Behind the silence, he begins to hear other sounds: footsteps above, a scuffling outside the door, a soughing wind that tests the window’s glass in its frame. Every so often he glances up at Henry, in case he wants anything. After a time the king grows tired of God, and starts watching his minister instead. ‘I wonder you can see to read.’

  ‘I am fortunate.’

  ‘Mm,’ the king says. ‘You should bathe your eyes with a decoction of rue.’

  As he works at his drawing Hans purses his lips and sucks his teeth. He bites down on his lower lip. He hums. As he stands back and lets out his breath there is a sibilance, very nearly a whistle.

  The king says, ‘We should have music, perhaps.’

  ‘Master Hans is doing his best to supply it,’ he says.

  Henry says, ‘What did you want with me, my lord Privy Seal?’

  ‘To talk about the King of Scots, by your leave. You know he is still in France, he has not set forth with his bride. Her father is apprehensive at the thought of her putting to sea. They say she is so frail you can see through her.’

  Henry snorts. ‘It is Scotland who is apprehensive. He is quaking. He has been boasting to François he will kick my throne from under me, and now he must reckon with the consequences. He is afraid one of my ships will take him as soon as he is out of port.’

  ‘Indeed, but now he appeals to your Majesty as a gentleman – he wants to shorten the voyage, land with his bride at Dover and have safe conduct to the border.’

  Henry says, ‘What, have his train eat up everything in their path, and sow sedition as they march? Parade in their strength through the north country, showing their banners? Does he think I’m a fool?’

  Hans breaks off humming. He coughs.

  Ah well. It is a chance lost, of a meeting between two monarchs, uncle and nephew, who have long avoided each other.

  The king’s hand rests on the pommel of his dagger: ‘Like this?’ he says to Hans.

  Hans says, ‘Perfect.’

  Henry eases his shoulders, flexes his knees. Portrait-taking freezes muscle, makes feet hard to manage, makes elbows feel as if they belong to someone else. The harde
r he tries to hold still, the more the king fidgets. He says, ‘I have messages from Ireland. They want you to go over for a season, my lord Cromwell. They think you could bring order. I do suppose you could.’

  ‘So am I to go?’

  ‘No. They might murder you.’

  Hans hums.

  The king shifts his stance. ‘When are the bishops going to utter?’

  Since early in the year the bishops have been working on their profession of faith. It is only last July that the ten articles were issued, and gave birth to months of debate. The king hopes a new statement will consolidate opinion. But every time the bishops send Henry some text, he writes over it and makes nonsense of their propositions. Then the papers go back to Thomas Cranmer: who emends the king’s emendations, and corrects his syntax while he is about it.

  Hans says, ‘Would your Majesty be so gracious as to turn his face? Not to Lord Cromwell, to me?’

  Henry obeys. He stares at the painter and speaks to his minister: ‘Has Lisle’s man been here? I marvel Lady Lisle has not taken to her chamber. She must be near her time.’

  ‘Your Majesty will be the first to know.’

  Hans says, ‘If she has a boy Lord Lisle will shoot off cannon, so if it is a still day they will hear it in Dover and put a rider on the road. I hope the walls of Calais do not fall down.’

  ‘Master,’ he whispers, ‘you forget yourself. Apply to your trade.’

  Sometimes, sitting beside the king – it is late, they are tired, he has been working since first light – he allows his body to confuse with that of Henry, so that their arms, lying contiguous, lose their form and become cloudy like thaw water. He imagines their fingertips graze, his mind meets the royal will: ink dribbles onto the paper. Sometimes the king nods into sleep. He sits by him scarcely breathing, careful as a nursemaid with a fractious brat. Then Henry starts, wakes, yawns; he says, as if he were to blame, ‘It is midnight, master!’ The past peels away: the king forgets he is ‘my lord’; he forgets what he has made him. At dawn, and twilight, when the light is an oyster shell, and again at midnight, bodies change their shape and size, like cats who slide from dormer to gable and vanish into the murk.

  But today it is not ten o’clock: a morning in early spring, the light a primrose blur. ‘Is it not dinnertime?’ the king says, and then, ‘What do you hear from Norfolk?’

  ‘That he has a chill. A lax. Each day a flux.’

  The king laughs. ‘So delicate a soul. Like the Princess Madeleine.’

  Hans tuts. ‘A solemn countenance, if it sorts with your Majesty? And eyes to me? If my lord Cromwell does anything worth turning around for, I shall let your Majesty know.’

  The silence returns. In Florence, he thinks, an artist would make a whole man in a mould. You strip him naked and rub him with grease and close him in a case up to his chin. You pour in plaster and let it set, and when you are ready you take a chisel and open the case like a nut. You draw out the man, his skin rose-red all over, and wash him, then you promise to model his head another day: but you have his form you can use ever after, to make satyrs or saints or gods from Mount Olympus.

  Down below in the privy kitchen they are roasting dottrels for dinner. His spaniel starts awake, and runs in excited circles as the savour drifts up. The king’s eye follows her; Hans scoops her up and gives her to a menial, saying severely, ‘Collect her later, my lord.’

  As the hour passes, more and more noise crowds into it: the ring of horseshoes on cobbles, bursts of shouting from distant courtyards, trumpeters clattering past to practice: till finally it seems as if the whole of the court is in there with them. Meanwhile the king’s expression changes slowly, as if the moon waxes; so by the time Hans signals that he is done, Henry seems to glow from within. He gathers himself, rearranges his robes. He says, ‘I think the queen should be in my picture.’

  Hans groans.

  The king says, ‘Come to me later, Cromwell.’

  ‘How much later, sir?’

  No reply: Henry sweeps away. A boy belonging to Hans gathers in the drawings. The king’s heads are turned this way and that; his brow is furrowed or clear, his eyes are blank or hostile, but the mouth is always the same, small and set.

  ‘Enough time, Hans?’

  ‘I suppose. I only wanted his head.’

  ‘We should have a lute player next time.’

  ‘With you in the room? You’re dangerous to them.’

  Mark Smeaton resists oblivion. It is not yet a year, after all. He says, ‘I tell you again, I did not hurt Mark.’

  ‘I hear when he left your house his eyeballs hung out on his cheeks.’

  Hans does not sound indignant: more curious, as if he imagines making an anatomical drawing.

  ‘Witnesses saw him on the scaffold,’ he says, ‘uninjured. Do not try my patience. And do not try the king’s.’

  Hans says, ‘Henry is easy. He never shows he would like to be elsewhere. He takes it as his duty to be painted. Do you not see? His face shines with the wonder of himself.’

  Towards the end of May the queen’s child quickens. The Te Deums of Trinity Sunday celebrate not only the hope in her womb but the close of the campaigning season. The parish churches ring their bells, cannon are fired at the Tower, and butts of free wine trundle over the cobbles so even the beggars can join in crying, ‘God bless our good Queen Jane.’ Banners drop from windows, streamers fly from housetops, thrushes sing, salmon leap, and the dead in London’s churchyards jiggle thighbone and knee.

  Jane has objected to the taking of her portrait, saying, ‘Master Hans will look at me.’

  But she has yielded to the king’s pleasure, requesting only that Lord Cromwell be present: she seems afraid that the artist will shout at her in a foreign tongue. He makes the introductions and then retreats, so he is out of the painter’s eyeline.

  ‘Here?’ Jane says.

  The queen takes up her stance. Her sister Lady Oughtred, now in attendance, stoops to arrange her skirts. Jane is as stiff as a woman on a catafalque. She stands with her hands clasped over her child, as if keeping it in order. ‘It is very correct to breathe,’ Hans reminds her. ‘And certainly your Highness may sit if she pleases.’

  Jane’s gaze rests on the middle distance. Her expression is remote and pure. Hans says, ‘If your Highness could lift her chin?’ He sighs; he shuffles, he walks around the queen, and hums. He is dissatisfied; her face is puffy; he cannot find the bones in it.

  Jane speaks only once: ‘Is Lady Lisle delivered yet?’

  ‘It cannot be long, madam,’ he says, from his seat in the window.

  ‘God send her a good hour,’ Lady Oughtred says.

  His mind shifts, wanders: he takes a prayer book out of his pocket and thumbs through it, but an image of water, of daylight on water, begins to flicker and flow between his eyes and the page. He thinks of a woman sitting upright in a tangle of linen sheets, her breasts bare, sunlight sliding over her arms. He thinks of himself at nightfall, on the slippery paving beside the German House in Venice, his friend Heinrich asking as they step out of their boat: ‘You want to see our goddesses on the wall? You, guard, hold up your torch.’

  Almost imperceptibly, Jane’s chin has dropped again. Hans approaches him. It does not matter, he whispers, whether she sits, stands, kneels, anything she has a fantasy to do; her hands, her posture, I can fix it later, and we can put her in another gown if she likes, or paint on different sleeves, we can push her hood back a little, and as for her jewellery I will give her pieces of my own design, which will be a good advertisement of my skill, Thomas, do you not think so? But I must have her face, just for this one hour. So implore her – spare me a glance.

  ‘The king will want her as she is,’ he warns. ‘No flattery.’

  ‘It is not my habit.’

  ‘I warrant when he married her,’ her sister says, ‘she did not look so m
uch like a mushroom.’

  The queen’s happy condition is now known all over Europe, and the Seymour name exalted. It is time he, Cromwell, opened talks with Edward.

  ‘Your lady sister,’ he says. ‘Oughtred’s widow.’

  ‘Yes,’ Edward says.

  ‘Her hand in marriage.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I believe you’re talking to the Earl of Oxford? You know he’s older than I am?’

  ‘Is he?’ Edward frowns. ‘Yes, I dare say.’

  ‘So would Bess not prefer a young lad?’

  Edward looks as if something improper has been hinted. ‘She knows her duty.’

  ‘I see it is promotion for you, to marry into the Vere family. Yet the Seymours are as old a house, I would have thought, old and just as good, if less rewarded till now. The Veres have more power, but not more estimation.’

  ‘So what are you saying?’ Edward is cautious.

  ‘You don’t need Oxford to make your fortune. It is already made. And I suggest that a bride could be happier elsewhere.’

  ‘This is a surprise,’ Edward says. ‘Would you then …?’ He closes his eyes as if in prayer. ‘That is, are you willing …’

  ‘We are willing,’ he says.

  ‘And ready? To talk about money?’

  ‘It is my favourite subject,’ he says.

  We rough Cromwells, eh? Edward tries to smile.

  ‘But Edward, this could be a great thing,’ he says. ‘We can make an alliance in blood, as well as in the council chamber. Have no qualms. All the grace and goodwill lie on your side, and the rude substance will come from mine. I will build Bess a new house. While she is waiting she will not be short of a roof over her head – Mortlake is much enlarged, and there is Stepney which is a very pleasant house at any season, and there is Austin Friars of course – all my property is at her disposal, and if there is some house of the king’s she has a fancy to, I feel sure that of his kindness he will lend it us. She will have whatever I can give to make her happy.’

  Edward says, ‘I have heard gentlemen venture – saving your lordship – that Thomas Cromwell is not base-born after all. That you are the natural son of some nobleman.’