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

  Now the Pope has us under his bale and ban. We need a source, we need a conduit, if our industries are not to collapse. We use alum in tanning, we use it in the manufacture of glass; doctors use it to heal wounds. The Spanish have a small supply. It is low-grade and anyway they will not sell it to heretics. But the ruler of Cleves, who has two sisters who want husbands, also has reserves of this treasure, which at its finest takes the form of crystals, huge clear crystals like jewels for a giant.

  Perhaps alum is not the foundation for a love match. But members of the king’s council agree: you have reason on your side, Lord Cromwell.

  So what about the young ladies themselves? They are of great lineage, descended from the royal line of France and from our own King Edward I. They are good girls, from whom their mother will be sorry to part. It is true that our visiting envoys have never been allowed to see them. They have been in their presence, but the virgins of Cleves are modest by custom; throughout the interview the sisters sit in silence under their veils.

  When he arrives in the privy chamber the doctors are on their way out, the foremost carrying a flask of urine. The man wears an expression of pious gratification, as if he’s found the Holy Grail.

  ‘Come in,’ the king says. ‘I am exhausted from my travels, my lord.’

  Over his embroidered nightshirt the king wears a jerkin lined with lambskins. His cap is pinned with a vast spinel, a purple stone with a glow soft as velvet. By his elbow stands a white basin containing his blood. The king’s eyes flit to the basin, then to his; he looks apologetic. Henry is a fastidious man and would probably not like to encounter a bowl of gore. But he, Cromwell, is as indifferent as a butcher.

  ‘Writs have gone out for the new Parliament, sir. I intend it will be a tractable one.’

  He takes papers out of his bag, and a package. Henry’s eyes light on it. ‘What have you brought me?’

  It is a work is called The Solace and Consolation of Princes, written by an adviser to the princes of Saxony. Henry turns it over in his hands. ‘A wife would be a consolation.’

  ‘If she brought us good allies, sir.’

  The king falls to reading the book. But he interrupts him. ‘My friends at the Fuggers’ bank tell me Charles is raising cash.’

  ‘For soldiers?’

  ‘Yes. But to send into Barbary. They say he will not leave Spain himself. The Empress is having a child and he is concerned about her. She is subject to fevers, as your Majesty knows.’

  The king is silent. No doubt his mind has slid elsewhere, to those worrying days of women’s confinements: to Katherine, to Anne, to Jane. At last he says, ‘Did you hear the Earl of Wiltshire is dead?’

  Thomas Boleyn. ‘God assoil him. I hear he made a good Christian end.’ He pauses. ‘Will your Majesty bestow his title elsewhere?’

  ‘Well, he leaves no son.’ Henry barks with laughter and shuts the book. ‘George Boleyn is forgot.’

  Not by me, he thinks. I sometimes dream of him, as I saw him last in the Martin Tower: his seeping tears, and his hands shaking, naked without their rings. He says, ‘Cleves agrees to send pictures of the young ladies. But their painter is sick, so there may be a delay. From what I hear, it is no wonder they keep the Lady Anna veiled. They say in beauty she excels the Duchess Christina as the golden sun excels the silver moon.’

  ‘Steady,’ the king says. He laughs.

  ‘I think if we send new envoys, the ladies will show their faces.’

  ‘I am sending Dr Carne. And Nicholas Wotton.’

  He is surprised. He did not know the king had planned so far. Neither man could be called a friend of his. Henry is watching him. ‘I am glad of it, sir. They will not be partial. We can all trust their reports.’

  He stops, because the young fellow Culpeper is oozing in, Howard ears pricked. ‘May it please your Majesty,’ Culpeper says, ‘the doctors have sent me. May I take the basin of blood?’

  Outside, Jane Rochford is waiting for him. ‘Any nearer to a queen?’ She has a bag with her. ‘This is for you. From my lord father.’

  ‘A book?’

  ‘Of course, a book. What does my father ever send, but a book?’

  ‘It might have been a venison pasty. The older I get, the more I hate Lent.’

  He glances at her face, as he takes out the present: her discontented mouth. She says, ‘We want to know which of the sisters he will choose. Unless he means to have them both?’

  She is waiting. He turns over the leaves. It is Niccolò Machiavelli’s book, and inside is a note from Lord Morley, suggesting he shows it to the king; he has marked the most interesting passages, he says, by drawing a hand in the margin.

  ‘Well?’ she says.

  ‘I read it years ago, when it was still in manuscript. I shall write and thank your lord father, of course.’

  ‘Not “Well?” about the book,’ she says. ‘“Well?” about the princesses. Which one will he take? They say one has brown hair and one blonde.’

  ‘I hope I shall not be called on for the Judgement of Paris.’

  ‘Go for the blonde, is my advice.’

  He hands the book to Christophe. ‘His tastes may have changed.’

  She looks at him as if he is simple. ‘I do not think blondes go out of style. By the way, the Howards sent a little lass called Katherine, to see if we would have her among the new queen’s maids. Succulent and plump, and I doubt she has passed her fifteenth year.’

  ‘Send her away.’

  ‘As you wish. Though I think you could win her from Uncle Norfolk if you winked at her and gave her an apple. I never saw a simpler maid – a little rosebud mouth hanging open, like a suckling at the teat. What shall I say to the Howards?’

  ‘Put them off. Make sure she does not show her face till I have the marriage contracts signed.’

  ‘I hear the Duke of Cleves has asked for the Lady Mary’s portrait. It is time she made herself useful. And from what I hear, the most useful thing she could do is marry a German.’

  ‘We do not send pictures of our princesses abroad. It is not our custom.’

  She tilts her head. ‘You invent customs very readily.’

  He bows, as if she were complimenting him. It is the only thing to do, as he cannot well give her a slap. He says, ‘Duke Wilhelm’s envoys know Mary’s virtues and qualities. They have seen her.’

  ‘But not when she has toothache,’ Rochford says gaily.

  He tucks Lord Morley’s gift under his arm. The king has nothing to learn from Niccolò’s book. But it may pass an hour for him, when his leg is giving him pain.

  When Mary is asked whether she would like to marry into Cleves, she says she will do as her father tells her, but that given her choice, she would rather stay in the land of her birth and remain a virgin. It is a modest answer, which no one can fault.

  When he gets home Richard Riche is waiting. ‘Ricardo,’ he says, ‘I shall want your help preparing for the Parliament. We shall be working long hours.’

  ‘When do we not?’ Riche says, like a man rising to the challenge. ‘I hear Wriothesley is to sit for Hampshire?’

  ‘I think he deserves it, after his travails abroad. I look for his return every day.’

  ‘A pity he did not have better success, and bring back a bride. And Bishop Gardiner is the king’s man in Hampshire – it will offend him, to have a rival.’

  He nods: that’s the idea.

  ‘And young Gregory to sit – do you think he is ready? Forgive me, but your ill-wishers are bound to raise the point.’

  ‘The business is great. The hours are long. I do not see it as an occupation for old men.’

  Riche offers papers. ‘Would you cast an eye? It is the pension list for the surrender at Shaftesbury. You always said the abbess would fight till the last ditch. But we have found a sum to buy her off.’

  We should not begr
udge. It is a rich house. He runs a dry quill down the list. There is the name he is looking for: Dorothea Clancey. ‘Do you know if the ladies have decided their future?’

  ‘Not our business, sir.’ But then Riche softens. ‘I look back fondly on our ride to Shaftesbury. I always think it a pleasure to be in your company for a day, my lord – and a privilege too. I relish to see how your lordship transacts business among all sorts and conditions of people. I am the better instructed, and I profit by it.’

  Pleasure and profit. What could be more fitting for Richard Riche? The door is flung open. Christophe erupts into the room. ‘Look who!’

  ‘Call-Me!’ He opens his arms wide. The traveller, muddy from the Dover road, falls into them.

  ‘We lost sight of you!’ He hugs him. ‘Chapuys wrote to me from Calais – I think it was to say you were on the seas, but his words were all washed by salt water.’

  ‘As mine,’ Call-Me says. With his glove of red Spanish leather, he knocks a tear from his cheek; plucks off his hat, with its sweeping ostrich plume, and throws it down on the desk. ‘Sir, I cannot tell you how glad I am to see your face. Twice or thrice I made sure I was dead. I did not know what to wish for – that the king would fall in love with Chapuys and hold him till my escape, or that he would boot him into a boat, so I might start for home.’

  ‘It was the time between that we feared.’ Rafe is standing in the doorway. ‘When you were dissolved – neither here, nor there, nor in Heaven nor on earth.’ He crosses the room, and kisses the hero’s cheek. ‘Welcome home, Call-Me.’

  Riche is looking at them puzzled: as if they were a tribe of Indians, at some feast of theirs.

  ‘Oh, and the knave Phillips!’ Call-Me exclaims: as if he must get it over. ‘Sir, you could not reproach me more than I reproach myself.’

  ‘Be at ease,’ he says. ‘A man like Phillips is an affront to God and reason. If I had been on embassy at your age, I am sure I should have been deceived, if only out of zeal for my country’s good.’

  Riche says peevishly, ‘My lord would rather have Wyatt safe home than you. Wyatt has things to tell him.’

  ‘Oh?’ Wriothesley says.

  ‘Schemes for how we might set Italy in a roar,’ Riche says. ‘In Toledo he has the envoys of all nations in and out of his lodging and he spins them like a whipping top. Venice goes out of the back door, Ferrara comes in the front, while Mantua hides under the table and a Florentine up the chimney. He hears so many intrigues he says his skull is splitting. But he will not spill the facts except in secret to my lord.’

  ‘Oh,’ Wriothesley says. Richard Cromwell comes bounding in, hallooing like a houndmaster, and pounds him with his fist. Call-Me pounds him back, till Rafe says, ‘Wriothesley, go home to your wife!’

  ‘I should.’ Call-Me blushes. He glows. He picks up the ostrich-feather hat and sweeps the air, and catches a candle in its arc.

  It is Richard Riche who steps forward and pinches out the damage. ‘Digits of iron,’ he says diffidently.

  The papers from Shaftesbury lie unattended. When the boys have gone, he stands over them, moving his forefinger over the name of the cardinal’s daughter. The air smells of burning plumes. He picks up his pen and signs her off.

  Within a week he hears that Mr Wriothesley has bribed or frightened one of the cipher clerks, and got the key to Wyatt’s letters. It is Rafe who tells him: sheepish, ashamed of what Call-Me has done. He himself is more amused than angry. Good luck to him, if he can disentangle the Italian schemes. Wyatt says, start fires in the Pope’s backyard. Use your money and your expertise to fan the sparks of conflict between states, then keep Rome busy quenching the blaze. It might work, he thinks. It might just as easily blow back in our faces.

  He says to Rafe, ‘In the cardinal’s day, when I was his man of business and Stephen Gardiner was his secretary, I would have opened Stephen’s letters if I could.’

  And where I could, I did. And I would still. And I do.

  He calls in Hans: ‘Paint the Lady Mary. I need to send her likeness to the Duke of Cleves.’

  ‘You want this match?’ Hans says.

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘Listen, I do not flatter.’

  ‘Not in my case, certainly. But you made Thomas More look congenial.’

  ‘I do not flatter because I dare not. The king relies on me. But if I paint our little shrew faithfully, Wilhelm will take fright. Therefore I cannot see the advantage for me in this commission, or how it could end well.’

  ‘You would not refuse to paint the king’s daughter, surely? You will find a way, Hans.’

  ‘People say, when all offers for Mary have failed, she will turn to Cromwell.’

  ‘That is nonsense.’ He thinks, she hates me: can Hans not see this? ‘You speak as if she is an ancient lady. She is, what, twenty-two, twenty-three?’

  ‘She looks more. Her prospects oppress her.’ Hans laughs.

  It is true it would not be easy for a stranger to guess Mary’s age. Sometimes she looks like a pallid child, sometimes like an old woman. There will be a sweet moment, he thinks, half an hour on some ordinary afternoon, when she looks like herself.

  At Greenwich this Easter he watches Mary; he knows the court is watching him, watching her. She has recently bought a hundred pearls, and has spent three hundred pounds on clothes for the feast. In yellow damask and purple taffeta, she plays with the little prince. She takes a hand at cards, plays the virginals, gossips with her ladies, and rides out into the fresh air as the winter relaxes its grip.

  When the Courtenays and Poles were arrested, the king had his daughter’s household questioned. She was asked to hand over her letters from Chapuys, and was able to supply a bundle, empty in content; the ambassador had written them specially, at a hint from him, and lent them various dates. If Mary had claimed to have received no letters, the king would have suspected she had burned them. Which he is quite sure she has.

  Mary can play such a game as this, needing no explanations. But the week of the beheadings, the king had to send her Dr Butts, who found her so faint she could hardly stand.

  She will miss Chapuys, no doubt. But it is spring, and at court her father makes a fuss of her. He, Lord Cromwell, escorts her to watch the tennis play. He says, looking sideways at her, ‘I hear Duke Wilhelm is very handsome.’

  ‘That does not weigh,’ she says equably.

  ‘No, but better than the other thing. By the way, do not let people tell you he is a Lutheran.’

  The balls whistle across the court. ‘My lord Cromwell,’ she says, ‘I don’t let anybody tell me anything.’

  The king’s Easter pieties are as fervent as any papist could wish. Good Friday saw him shuffling to the crucifix on his knees. The German envoys are aghast. If this is what he does at Easter, what will he do on Ascension Day? As Christ rises bodily to Heaven, will your king have himself hoisted on a rope and pulley? Will he bask among the goddesses on his ceiling, till at Whitsuntide he descends in the form of a dove?

  He, Lord Cromwell, is planning his own Ascension Day. He has devised a new order of precedence for the realm, to be enacted by Parliament. From now on, it is not your noble and ancient blood that will place you in the hierarchy. It is what job you do for the king. The king’s Vicegerent – that’s him – outranks the bench of bishops. The king’s Secretary, once created a baron, outranks all barons. If the Lord Privy Seal was born a commoner, he can still sit higher than a duke. Christophe says, ‘If all your offices were counted, you should have a ladder on a chair, and a ladder on that, and a throne perched up in the clouds, to look down on Norferk and the foes, and spit on them.’

  Thomas Howard does not lose under the new scheme, but he can still grumble about the elevation of others. ‘As for Gardineur,’ Christophe says, ‘who is only a little bishop, he will gnash his teeth right out of his head.’

  Under a painted ceil
ing, under a hard marbled sky, he sits putting together his programme for Parliament. The last of the monasteries will go down and the king will begin to found colleges and cathedrals in their stead. There will be devices for poor relief and the defence of the realm, and a device for unity in religion: what form it will take, he hardly knows, but the king wants it.

  His daughter writes at last from Antwerp. Things are difficult here, I might come to England if you will receive me? He writes to her, trust to Stephen Vaughan for help. Though our ambassadors have come home, Vaughan stays in Antwerp as head of the English merchants. He will arrange your passage.

  If she comes she will be in danger, and a source of danger too. The king has made it clear that certain sectaries must avoid his realm. He can ask for her discretion. Can he ask her to dissimulate? He has asked it of others. He says to himself, if Cranmer can hide a wife, surely I can hide a daughter. He has many houses, and is always getting more. When you look at him these days you think of Jupiter, planet of increase.

  One morning after Easter he wakes with a heavy, aching head, his neck stiff. He cannot eat, goes out on an empty stomach to the council meeting. The king will not preside today. Henry is at his manor house at Oatlands, which he is planning to rebuild. Then perhaps he will go on to Nonsuch, to see what progress Rafe is making.

  The council is waiting. He drops his papers at his place. ‘Couldn’t you get on without me?’

  Fitzwilliam says, ‘It is more that we dare not.’

  ‘You are out of humour, my lord Southampton. Is your guest tormenting you? Lady Salisbury cannot be easy. I promise I will take her away to the Tower.’

  ‘I have been asking you to do that since Christmas. And you need not guess at the cause of my humour. I am not a woman. Ask me and I will tell you.’

  Perhaps Fitz is jealous of his new offices? Captain of the Isle of Wight. Constable of Leeds Castle. Or perhaps someone has dropped a word of poison in his ear: Lord Cromwell doubts your commitment to the gospel.