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 has been watching Forrest for years. ‘The king would not trust his penitence. If you do not burn him I will hang him.’

  Cranmer says, ‘The council must witness his death. So that the ambassadors note it, so the smoke is smelled in Rome. You yourself must be there. And Bishop Stokesley.’

  ‘Oh, the Bishop of London will come,’ he says. ‘Never doubt him. He will close his eyes and breathe in the stench, and he will pretend it is you and me and Robert Barnes on the pyre. I do not trust him any more than I trust Stephen Gardiner.’

  Gardiner is coming home. He gives such offence to Frenchmen that we dare not keep him as our envoy. The quarrels of great men are copied on the Paris streets. Gardiner’s boys are taunted when they step out of doors: ‘Call yourself fighters? You are timid as mice. You came here with an army, and you let a girl throw you out.’

  ‘Yes,’ the English boys shout, ‘and we took your witch Joan and burned her, and all your victories did not save her from our fire.’

  Joan the Maid was consumed by flame in 1431. You would think they would find a fresher taunt. But even the market wives curse our ambassadors, and throw ordure on their best clothes.

  Stephen should learn to be immune to insults, he says. Look at me, I take them as compliments. Norfolk calls me vile blood. The north calls me a heretic and a thief. The eel boy in Putney used to say to me, ‘Yah, Thomas Cromwell, you miserable gibbet-bait, you toss-brain, you remnant, you crumb: your mother died rather than look at you longer.’

  As the Duke of Norfolk would say, the old insults are the best.

  ‘You Irish,’ the eel boy would say, ‘you flying smut from Satan’s forge; I’ll pillock you, I’ll fillet you, I’ll set your hair on fire.’

  And in reply he said naught. He never said, ‘I’ll spit you, I’ll stab you, I’ll carve out your bloody beating heart.’

  Till, of course, he did.

  The king is up-country when news comes of his collapse. He, Cromwell, takes an escort and rides at once.

  It crosses his mind, of course: make for the coast before they block the ports. If Henry dies, what friends have you? Whichever way you go you could be stopped on the road. By the Courtenays, if they can move fast, rallying troops for Mary. By Margaret Pole, by her son Montague. By Norfolk, his forces galloping cross-country.

  We have been here before, the king dead or near-dead: the tilt yard at Greenwich, January 1536, with Henry shelled of his armour: the roaring of his injured horse, the shouts and prayers, the clamour of denunciation and blame. He feels once again a needle-tip of panic, working under his breastbone.

  But at journey’s end only a single figure comes out to greet him: Butts, looking bone-weary: ‘Still alive,’ he says.

  ‘Lord Jesus.’ He falls from his saddle.

  Butts is drying his hands on a linen towel, its hem embroidered with a pattern of periwinkles. ‘His Majesty rose from the table, and then fell under it. We drew him out black in the face, breath short and rapid. He coughed up blood, and I think that saved him, for then he drew breath. You must not go in. He is too weak.’

  ‘Let me pass,’ he says.

  The silken lout Culpeper is hovering around the king, with a knot of physicians and chaplains. He recalls Henry asking once, ‘Why is it that whenever disaster strikes there is a Howard in the room?’

  The boy says slyly, ‘We needed you earlier, Lord Cromwell. I heard how at Greenwich the other year, you raised his Majesty from the dead.’

  ‘I had the honour,’ he says curtly.

  Around the king’s person there is a smell of liniment and incense. Henry is propped by a mound of pillows, his bandaged leg bulky beneath a damask cover. His cheeks are fallen in and his colour bad. He blinks: ‘Cromwell, there you are.’ His voice is weak. ‘In your absence, I fear we took a tumble.’

  The royal ‘we’. No other person was involved.

  ‘Have you any letters from Wyatt?’ Henry pushes the covers off. His leg is fatly bandaged. ‘I have nothing this week. And nothing from Hutton in Brussels either. Is someone stopping our messengers, or are they reporting straight to you these days? Who is the king, you or me?’

  Our sovereign lord is back, he thinks; for an hour speechless and choking, but now imperious: the mirror of all rulers, his flickering light scarcely visible against the sunlight of a May morning.

  Henry says, ‘Cromwell, I remember Greenwich. When I. When you.’ He cannot easily speak of his death. ‘I do not remember the fall. Only blackness. I thought myself extinct. My senses were stopped. I believe I saw angels.’

  He thinks, at the time you said not.

  Inside a tent the king was stretched out his full length, pale as paper. Henry Norris was intoning the prayers for the dead. The Duke of Suffolk was bawling like a teething babe. Outside the Boleyns were shouting their own names, and Uncle Norfolk was bellowing that he was in charge now: ‘Me, me, me.’

  ‘Yesterday,’ the king says, ‘you were far away, and I thought I should die alone.’

  He recalls the howling surge of servants and lords, his bellowing for quiet; his palm on the king’s chest, the pounding of his own heart. Then beneath the horsehair padding of the king’s jacket, a fibrillation, like a scamper of shrews’ paws. After a second, Henry gasped; he groaned; he coughed violently, and uttered, ‘Thomas Cromwell.’ The shocked lords wailed, ‘Lie down, lie down!’ but Henry levered himself upright; his eyes turned, and took in the scene. Alive again, he looked at England. He saw her dark valleys and green fields, her broad silver waters, her nightingale woods. He saw her just laws, her free people, he heard their prayers.

  Dr Butts is back, a urine flask in hand. ‘Majesty, you must not think of transacting business today.’

  ‘No?’ Henry says. ‘Then who will rule, Dr Butts?’

  It sounds like a civil enquiry. But it makes the doctor step back.

  ‘We are talking of my fall at Greenwich,’ Henry says. ‘Reminiscing.’ He spits the word out.

  Butts says, ‘God protect your Majesty.’

  ‘He did,’ Henry says. ‘I heard every man in that tent believed I was dead, except Cromwell. He stood over me and felt the beating of my heart, when others had given me up.’

  He thinks, I could not allow you to be dead. Who had we for sovereign? Mary, a papist, who would have killed all your ministers? Eliza, still in the cradle? The unborn child in Anne’s womb? And how is it better now? I still have no plan, I have no route out, I have no affinity, I have no backers, I have no troops, no right, no claim. He thinks, Henry should give me the regency, give it me now. Set it down and seal it: multiple copies.

  The king says, ‘I suppose now the embassies will be spreading it to the world that I am dead again.’

  ‘If you will spare me, I will go back to Westminster. I will visit the ambassadors in person and assure them I have seen you alive with my own eyes.’

  ‘Oh, and they’ll believe you,’ the king says. A fit of coughing shakes him. Butts says, ‘My lord Privy Seal, enough for now.’

  ‘The poisoned vapours from the wound rose right up to my brain,’ Henry says. ‘But tell them – I don’t know – tell them I had a megrim. A fall. A fright. Tell them I will be back in the saddle within days.’

  Henry raises a hand to dismiss him. Versions multiply as soon as a tale is told. He knows his own story: at Greenwich the royal heart fluttering, faint as a god’s breath in a glass bubble. He recalls himself praying, but others recall him doubling his fist and pounding the king’s chest hard enough to split his ribcage. And Christophe, who was at his side all that wretched hour, claims he bounced the king’s person up and down by the shoulders; that he seized him by the ears and bellowed into his face: ‘Breathe, you fucker, breathe!’

  May comes, and the king is planning a dynasty. ‘If I could get Madame de Longueville, I am sure she would give me a house full of sons, which would be a great comf
ort to England, if anything but good came to Edward. Our first son together would be Duke of York. The next would be Duke of Gloucester. Our third, I think, Duke of Somerset.’

  Fitzwilliam says, ‘Have you forgotten she is pledged to Scotland?’

  Henry never forgets anything. But sometimes he believes a king’s caprice can alter reality.

  The King of France, it is said, is proceeding to Nice, where he will meet the Emperor. It seems the only way to break their amity is for Henry to choose a bride from one party, thereby insulting the other.

  His councillors caution, ‘No haste, Majesty. As soon as you choose, you forfeit advantage. You can marry only once.’

  ‘Can he?’ Fitzwilliam mutters. ‘This is Henry we’re talking about.’

  Henry says, ‘Cromwell, I want you to entertain Ambassador Castillon. You were too brisk, threatening to knock him down. Now you must mend the damage. I want you to use emollient words. Feast him. If you want anything from my larder or pantry, just say the word.’

  Lately he has been tormenting Thurston with a design for a spit driven by a system of gears and pulleys, which uses the fire’s draught to turn the meat at a steady speed. ‘Voilà,’ he says, impaling a chicken. But Thurston turns down his mouth: there are plenty of boys, so wherefore a machine?

  Boys produce burnt bits, he says. Or some parts cooked, some raw. This way, you have a regulated action. Stoke up the fire, and the faster it goes, the faster the spit turns. Bank down the fire, and –

  Try again, master, Thurston says. The machinery is so much bigger than yon pitiful pullet.

  When Castillon and the king’s councillors arrive, they sit down to turbot, baked guinea fowl, and a cress salad dressed with vinegar and oil. The salmon is roasted with orange zest, and young fowl deboned and baked into what the English call Lombard pasties, though he never met a Lombard who knew aught of them.

  Once they are alone, the ambassador drops his napkin, like someone discarding a flag of truce. ‘The leg will not heal, you know. Next time he will not be so lucky, nor will you.’

  He does not answer. It seems his silence leads to a certain overconfidence on Castillon’s part. When next in the king’s presence he comports himself like a tavern companion, recommending Madame Louise, the sister of Madame de Longueville. ‘Take her, Majesty, she is better-looking than her sister. Besides, the elder is a widow, the younger a maid. You will be the first to go there. You can shape the passage to your measure.’

  Henry guffaws. He slaps the ambassador on the back. He swings away, his back to the Frenchman, the smile wiped from his face. ‘I cannot abide bawdy talk,’ he whispers. He calls over his shoulder, ‘Excuse me, ambassador, if I leave you. My chaplains attend me to Mass.’

  A day or two later the king is away again with a hunting party. Rafe is with him, and Richard Cromwell rides between, back and forth with letters and messages better not trusted to paper. When Richard arrives at Waltham, he is told the French ambassador is there before him, and that he must wait; then that various councillors have been summoned to see the king; then that he must stay overnight.

  Rafe, covered in apologies, takes Richard’s letters in, saying he will put them in the king’s hand himself. Richard says, ‘Don’t apologise for him, Rafe. It is no fault of yours. What does he think he is about?’

  Richard is incredulous. It is without precedent, for Cromwell business to be deferred.

  Next day Richard rides back with his letters answered. ‘But I don’t like it, sir,’ he says. ‘Norfolk was there by the king’s side, strutting like a player king; for two pins I would have wrung his neck. Surrey with him, the pricklet. Both of them giving out how the king was displeased with you, finding you favour the Emperor. Norfolk was linking arms with the Frenchman. They only wanted a fiddler and they could have danced.’

  What’s Henry up to? I may belittle you, he said. I may reprove you. But do not be misled. My trust is in you.

  He takes out The Book Called Henry. (He keeps it under lock and key.) He wonders if he has any advice for himself. But all he sees is how much white space there is, blank pages uninscribed.

  At Father Forrest’s burning are present, besides himself and Thomas Cranmer, the Lord Mayor of London; Audley the Lord Chancellor; Charles Brandon Duke of Suffolk; Thomas Howard Duke of Norfolk; Edward Seymour, in his dignity as Earl of Hertford; Bishop Stokesley, of course. They are at Smithfield for eight in the morning. Forrest is brought from Newgate, drawn on a hurdle, wearing his Franciscan habit. He is set on a platform to hear Hugh Latimer’s sermon.

  Hugh talks for an hour but he might as well be pissing in the wind. Forrest has the strength to cast his words back at him, saying he has been a monk since he was seventeen years old, and a Catholic since he was baptised, and that he, Latimer, is no Catholic, for only those who obey the Pope are members of God’s universal family: at which the crowd groan. The rest of what he says cannot well be heard, but at a signal the officers pull him from the platform and carry him to the stake, his feet off the ground. He hangs limp, mouthing prayers.

  Now there is a flourish of trumpets, a beating of drums, and into the arena comes the Welsh idol Derfel. Eight men bear him, which is needless, but it makes a show; and in mockery of his pretensions to strength, the idol is bound with ropes. The crowd laugh and sing. It is said Derfel can burn a forest; let’s see if he will. At a word of command, he is set down, upright. At another word, his limbs jerk, his eyes wink, his wooden arms rise imploringly to Heaven. ‘To the devil with him!’ the crowd call. The officers dismember Derfel, take up their hatchets and begin to reduce him to firewood.

  Father Forrest has now let slip every chance the king and Cranmer and Hugh Latimer have offered. He has chosen his dreadful end and must endure. Thomas More used to say that it hardly made a man brave to agree to burn, once he was bound to the stake. He, the Lord Privy Seal, calls out, ‘Forrest! Ask pardon of the king!’

  For this is what Forrest has omitted to do. This is what every offender does, though he feels himself to be guiltless, in order to mitigate the wrath that may fall on those who he leaves behind: so that the king will heed their pleas, and not strip them of all they have.

  But Forrest is a celibate. He has no sons and daughters, or none that he knows. And as he is a friar, and they do not own property, he has nothing for the king to take. All he owns is his habit, now tattered, and his skin, muscles, fat and bone.

  ‘Beg pardon of your king!’ he calls out: he, Cromwell. He does not know if Forrest can hear him.

  He thinks, it is too late to stop it now. A martyr may burn fast or slow. The faggots may be dry and stacked high, so he is hidden from the crowd and the flames take him in minutes and he dies in a roar of heat. But since Forrest has refused even a word of contrition, this will be a slow burning. The friar is hoisted by a chain around his waist, and the fire is set below him, at his feet.

  Dry-eyed he watches, and watches everything. He does not steal one glance at the faces of his fellow councillors. He thinks, there must have been some point at which we could have bargained with Forrest. There must have been something we could have offered, to make him yield a point and save himself this agony. It is against his nature to think that no bargain can be struck. Everybody wants something, if only for the pain to stop.

  When the heat reaches him Forrest draws up his blistered bare feet. He contorts himself, screaming, but is obliged to let down his legs into the fire. He draws them up again, he twists in his chain, he roars, and Derfel crackles merrily; and this stage seems to last for a long time, the flames reaching ever upward, and the man’s efforts to escape them ever more feeble, until at last he hangs and does not resist, and his upper body begins to burn. The friar raises his arms, which have been left free, as if he is clawing towards Heaven. The fibres of his body are shortened and shrivelling, his limbs contorting whether he will or no, so that what seems like an act of adoration to his papist God is onl
y a sign that he is in extremis: and at a signal, the executioners step forward and with long iron poles reach into the flames, hook the roasting torso from its chain, and pitch it into the fire below. It goes with a scream from the spectators, a rush and spurt of flame; then we hear no more from Father Forrest. No more from warrior Derfel, the great idol of Wales: he is ash. Cranmer says, close to his ear, ‘It is over, I believe.’

  Edward Seymour looks as if he will spew. ‘You have not seen this before?’ he asks him. ‘I have seen it too often.’

  The official party begins to disperse. What does one do for the rest of the day? Work, of course. ‘A cruel death,’ one of the guildsmen says. He says, ‘A cruel life, brother.’

  The day he saw a woman burned, he was – what – eight years old? He was run away, or so he told himself: he had travelled from his home in Putney by foot and by cart, spending one night in a hedge. Next day he begged some bread and milk at a back door, and got a ride on a boat that put him down by the wharves under the Tower. He meant to go on a ship and be a sailor, but seeing the crowds surging in their gaiety he forgot his purpose. He said, ‘Is it Bartholomew Fair?’

  A man laughed at him. But a woman said, ‘He’s only little, Will.’ She looked down at him. ‘Holy Mary, your face could do with a wash.’

  He did not like to say he had wakened in a hedge. Will said, ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Harry.’ He offered his hand. ‘I’m a blacksmith by trade. You, Will?’

  The man grasped his hand and squeezed it. Too late, he realised Will meant to torture him; it was his idea of a jest. He thought his bones would crack, but on his face he retained an expression of polite indifference. Will dropped his hand as if in disgust. Tough lad, he said.

  The woman said, ‘Come with us, young Master Harry, stick by me.’

  Clinging to the woman’s apron, he stood fast in the heave of the crowd. She patted his shoulder and then let her hand rest there – as if she were his godmother, or somebody who wished him well. ‘Here comes the city!’ a man yelled. A trumpet announced a procession: men of dignity bearing staves of office, wearing gold chains. He had never seen such men, except in a dream. He saw the swing of good wool and the sheen on velvet coats, and a bishop arrayed like a sunburst, a gold cross carried before him. ‘You’ll have seen a hanging?’ Will said.