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

  ‘The insensate greed of the Vatican, it beggars belief,’ he says. He would rather say something original, but he gives the king what he wants.

  ‘My father would send Islip wine,’ Henry says. ‘And the monks would send him back a marrowbone pudding. He used to eat them when he was young, I think, when he was a poor exile. It was a dish he liked above anything.’

  ‘My father too,’ he says: surprised to remember it.

  ‘You can get those puddings for a penny,’ Henry says. He smiles. ‘They must have been easy to please, our fathers.’

  ‘If God glanced down now, what would He see? Two ageing men in failing light, talking about their past because they have so much of it.’ He hardly likes to break the moment. But the candles will be coming in.

  Henry says, ‘Tom, it is a long time now since I first saw you.’

  ‘It is more than a decade,’ he says. ‘Since then I have had the privilege to come into your presence –’

  ‘Almost daily, isn’t it?’ Henry says. ‘Yes, almost every day. I remember – I knew you by sight, but I remember our first interview. Suffolk, he did not know what to make of you. I knew, though. I saw your sharp little eyes. You told me not to go to war. Never fight, you said, you can’t afford it. Skulk indoors like a sick child – it will be good for the treasury. And I thought … by St Loy, the man has some stomach. He has some gall.’

  ‘I trust I did not offend.’

  ‘You did. I overlooked it.’

  The king’s voice seems to be fading, like the light. ‘Islip was Wolsey’s friend,’ he says. ‘So I made him my councillor, but I never took to him myself. He had a nose for heresy though. Wolsey used to send him among your friends, the Hanse merchants. Down at the Steelyard.’

  The king passes a hand over his face, as if wiping away Islip, the abbey, the heretics, their house. ‘You offended, and I forgave. A ruler must do it. I am greatly altered these ten years. You, not so much. You do not surprise me as once you did. I do not think you will surprise me again, considering all that you have said and done – some of it miraculous, Tom, I will not deny. You work beyond the capacities of ten ordinary men. But still I miss the Cardinal of York.’

  When he goes out he can feel the pulse in his neck jumping. Wriothesley is there. ‘He is tired of me,’ he says cheerfully. ‘He told me so. I am bested by the cardinal’s ghost.’

  Call-Me says, ‘I wondered what was happening, in there in the dark. Was he giving the cardinal a chance to appear?’

  In his graveclothes. His shroud muffling his skull. The dead are more faithful than the living. For better or worse, they do not leave you. They last out the longest night.

  While the bridal party is held up in Calais by bad weather, they pass the time in jousting and visiting from house to house, devising masques and plays. A merchantman is reported wrecked off Boulogne, casting onshore a cargo of wool and Castile soap. He imagines the ocean foaming, bubbles on the crest of each wave. Please God fetch Anna soon: the king is anxious. Fitzwilliam sends him the tide tables. If the cardinal were here, he says sardonically, no doubt he could whistle the wind into the right quarter.

  Everyone who has seen her seems delighted with the new queen. Lady Lisle writes to her daughter Anne Bassett, one of the new maids of honour, and Anne takes the letter to the king, handing it with her deepest curtsey.

  The king reads out the letter. ‘Good and gentle to serve and please. So there you are,’ he says to the girl. ‘What news could be better? You will have a loving mistress, and I a loving mate.’

  Anne blushes. ‘Mate’ seems blunt. Possibly she doesn’t like to think of the king in bed. How times change. Ten years back she would have been in bed with him.

  In Calais Anna is lodged in the queen’s apartments at the Exchequer. Fitzwilliam writes that she has invited the English lords to supper. She is used to dining in public, and does not know it is no longer the custom of English kings. But she means well; she wants to see her new countrymen at table and learn their customs. Her manner was regal, Fitzwilliam reports. He and Gregory spend an hour with her teaching her card games that the king likes. It is her own idea, and a clever one.

  The wind changes. 27 December, Anna lands at Deal, in the rain and after dark. They row her ashore, a princess coming out of the sea. She will go from Deal to Dover, from Canterbury to Rochester, and by the first week of the new year she will be approaching London from the east. The king will meet her at Blackheath, conduct her to Greenwich palace, and marry her by Twelfth Night.

  III

  Magnificence

  January–June 1540

  The king’s new castle at Deal is a way station for Anna to wash her hands, take a fortifying glass of wine, and then pass on to Dover. She is escorted by Charles Brandon and by Richard Sampson, the Bishop of Chichester, that tight-lipped prelate so experienced in the making and breaking of the king’s unions.

  Brandon has his young wife with him. She is of a quick, warm nature; what could be better for an uncertain bride, than to be welcomed by a smiling young duchess who will divine what she needs? You can’t expect Charles to know, Bishop Sampson still less. But Charles cuts an impressive martial figure. And Sampson will take himself off to a corner and busy himself with paperwork.

  In Dover, God willing, Anna’s baggage will catch up with her. Next day she will set out – with her chaplains and her secretaries and her musicians and maids – to Canterbury, where she will meet the archbishop. She will want ready money, and so he, Cromwell, has arranged for a gold chalice to be presented, fifty sovereigns inside. As she passes through to Rochester, Norfolk will escort her with a large party of gentlemen. There are no plans for her to meet the Bishop of Winchester. That treat can be saved up. After all, Lord Cromwell’s boys say, we don’t want her to turn tail and start wading out to sea again.

  The weather en route is foul. But the bride was not seasick, and thinks nothing of travelling with the rain and hail in her face. The masters of ceremony are relieved, because they have planned a huge reception at Blackheath outside Greenwich palace, and if she does not keep on schedule they will incur heavy costs. He, Lord Cromwell, expects the countryside to turn out. He has had the streets at Greenwich cleaned and gravelled, and barriers erected so the crowds don’t push each other into the Thames.

  All winter at Austin Friars he has been laying in muscatel and malmsey with a view to celebration. In the bakehouse they are making Striezel to take to Anna and her ladies, and the smell of cloves and cinnamon and orange peel has crept through the house. When Lizzie was alive, Twelfth Night was their occasion to feast their neighbours. They would enact the Three Kings, their costumes patched with every gilded offcut, scraps too small for the greediest tailor. Every hand that could hold a needle would go to work, and Lizzie would make them cheer while they sewed. One year they made Anne Cromwell into a cat with a coney-skin tail, and Gregory into a fish with shining silver scales; the low winter light slid over him, and he glimmered in the dusk.

  He wonders how his daughter Jenneke is faring, and when he will see her again. He does not say to himself ‘if’, because he is always inclined to think the world will turn our way. It seems strange to him that Lizzie never saw her. She would have accepted the stranger; she knew when they married he was a man with a past.

  It is a long time now since the women of the house put his little daughters in their graveclothes. He has got used to a certain feeling of tightness that settles behind the breastbone, that comes around by the calendar: Easter, St John’s Day, Lammas, Michaelmas, All Souls and All Saints.

  The year 1539 is drawing to its close, and when he enters the king’s presence at Greenwich with a file of business in his hand, he is prepared to find the king playing the harp, or listing the New Year presents he hopes to receive, or merely making paper darts, but in any event unprepared for work. But there is a stir in the privy chamber, and young Culpeper comes out: ‘Y
ou will never guess, sir! He is going himself to Rochester, to meet the queen.’

  He pushes his files at Culpeper. ‘Wriothesley, come in with me.’

  Henry is bending down, peering into a trunk the Wardrobe has sent. He stands up, cheerful: ‘My lord, I have decided to make speed and meet the bride in my own person.’

  ‘Why, sir? It will only be a day or two before she arrives.’

  Henry says, ‘I want to nourish love.’

  ‘Majesty,’ Mr Wriothesley says, ‘with all respect, was this not aired in council? It was your councillors’ earnest prayer that your Majesty spare himself the journey, and greet the queen at Blackheath. And you were pleased to accede.’

  ‘Can I not change my mind, Wriothesley? At Blackheath there will be music and ordnance and processions and crowds and we shall not speak a dozen private words before we must ride back here to the palace, and then it will be hours before we have a chance to be alone. And I want to surprise her, and gladden her heart, and bid her a proper welcome.’

  ‘Sir, if you will be advised by me …’ he says.

  ‘But I will not. Admit it, Cromwell, you are no adept in courtship.’

  True. He’s only been married once. ‘She is hardly off the ship, sir. Think how shamed she will be, if she cannot appear at her best.’

  Mr Wriothesley adds, ‘And she may, of course, be overwhelmed by your Majesty’s presence.’

  ‘But that is why I must go! I will spare her anxiety. She will be working herself up towards great ceremonies.’ Henry smiles. ‘I shall go in disguise.’

  He closes his eyes.

  ‘It is what a king does,’ Henry tells him. ‘You cannot know, Cromwell, you are not a courtier born. When my sister Margaret went into Scotland, King James and his hunting party surprised her at the castle of Dalkeith, he in a jacket of crimson velvet, his lyre slung over his shoulder.’

  One has heard. The dashing youth with burning eyes, swift to bend the knee; the bride in the pretty confusion of thirteen summers, her cheek blushing, her body trembling.

  Mr Wriothesley says, ‘May I ask, what disguise does your Majesty mean to adopt?’

  They exchange a glance. When Katherine was queen she was repeatedly ambushed by Robin Hood, or Arcadian shepherds. When they threw off their disguise, lo and behold! It was the king and Charles Brandon; it was Charles Brandon and the king.

  ‘I have sables for her,’ Henry says. ‘Perhaps I should arrive as a Russian nobleman, in great fur boots?’

  Mr Wriothesley says, ‘Unless we send word ahead, I am afraid that your Majesty might alarm his own guard. It could lead to –’

  ‘A shepherd, then. Or one of the Magi. We can quickly get disguisings for the other two kings. Send to Charles –’

  ‘Or perhaps, sir,’ he says, ‘just go as a gentleman?’

  ‘A gentleman of England.’ Henry is thoughtful. ‘A gentleman with no name. Yes,’ he looks downcast, ‘very well, I shall be ruled by Lord Cromwell, as all the foreigners claim I am. I shall astonish her anyway.’ He pauses and says kindly, ‘My lord, I know it is not what we agreed. But a bridegroom must have his caprices, and disguising always gives pleasure. The dowager Katherine,’ he says to Wriothesley, ‘she would pretend not to know me. Of course, she did but play with me. Everybody knows the king.’

  Thomas Culpeper follows them out. ‘Your papers, gentlemen?’

  Wriothesley snatches them. He, Lord Cromwell, walks away. ‘Christ,’ he says.

  Culpeper says, ‘You did what you could.’

  He thinks, I spoke to him as a subject to a prince. What if I had taken courage and said: Henry, I am advising you, man to man, not to do it?

  Culpeper says, ‘Why are you apprehensive? Everybody praises her, don’t they? Are you afraid he will find her not as reported?’

  ‘Cease to hang on my sleeve, Culpeper.’

  Culpeper smiles. ‘I know she will find him not as reported. We appreciate you bend the facts, Lord Cromwell, to please foreigners – but you have not described him as a god, I hope? Is she expecting Apollo?’

  ‘She is expecting a proper court reception. It is what her people have prepared her for.’ He turns to Wriothesley. ‘I need someone to make speed to Rochester and warn her. The king will come on the river with a small train and Anna should be ready for him. No heralds, no ceremony – he will enter her chamber and she should be astonished.’

  ‘So you are going to spoil his surprise,’ Culpeper says. ‘She must not know him, then she must? She will be lucky to time it right.’

  ‘I wonder,’ he says to Wriothesley, ‘should I have insisted I go with him?’

  Call-Me says, ‘It could be worse, sir. At least he’s not going to wear his Turkish costume.’

  The king intends to join the queen in Rochester on New Year’s Day, and stay overnight; even if he sends a messenger back to say how he likes her, it will be hours before word arrives at Greenwich.

  So, he thinks, the news can come to Austin Friars almost as fast. He journeys home, to start 1540 under his own roof.

  He goes early to his desk. It is a day found, he tells himself. But he pushes away a bundle of letters from Carlisle, picks up a book. It is Rolewinck’s history, where all the dates before Christ are printed upside down. Jane Rochford’s father sent it, and he can never just leave you to read; he writes Mirabilia! beside events he particularly enjoys.

  He turns the pages to look at the pictures: Antioch, Jerusalem, Temple of Solomon and Tower of Babel. Rolewinck starts his story in the year 6615 (upside down). He is reading about the coronation of Pope Innocent – which occurred, more or less, the year that he himself was born – when his spaniel Bella runs yapping to the door. From below he can hear, ‘Happy New Year, Mr Gregory!’

  Bella runs in excited circles. He calls down: ‘Gregory? Why are you here?’

  Gregory bangs in. He does not pause for a greeting. ‘Why did you let this happen? Why did you not stop him?’

  ‘Stop him?’ he says. ‘How? He said it was to nourish love.’

  ‘You should have prevented it, sir. You are his councillor.’

  ‘Gregory, drink off a cup of this, and get warm. I thought you were staying with the queen?’

  ‘I came to warn you. Henry passed the night, but now he is on his way back.’

  One of Thurston’s boys comes in with a platter of pastries, and whisks off the cloth. ‘Venison and currant jelly. Pike and horseradish. Plum and raisin.’

  ‘You see,’ he says, ‘this is why I’ve come home. At court your food has to walk half a mile, you get it cold.’

  Another boy brings a bowl of hot water and a napkin, and Gregory is forced to silence till they are alone. Bella capers on her hind legs as if to divert them. He thinks of the scenes he used to stage with George Cavendish, the cardinal’s man. He would say, ‘Show me how it was, George – who sat where, who spoke first.’ And Cavendish would jump up and play the king.

  He can lay out this stage in his mind, where bride and groom meet: the old hall at Rochester, the great fireplace with its carved emblems: a fern, a heart, a Welsh dragon holding an orb. He can follow the king with his train of merry men; they hold their masks loosely, playfully, because they expect to be recognised in seconds. And indeed, as they pass, the new queen’s servants kneel.

  ‘Anna was warned?’ he asks. ‘She was ready?’

  ‘She was warned, but she was not ready. The king billowed in, but she was looking out of the window – they were baiting a bull in the courtyard. She cast a glance over her shoulder, then she turned away to the sport.’

  He can see what Gregory saw: the bulky shape of the king blacking out the light. And the foggy outline of the queen, with the window behind her: the blank oval of her face, a swift glance from her dark eyes, and then the back of her head.

  ‘I suppose she did not believe a prince would come in secre
t. Maybe Duke Wilhelm goes everywhere with trumpeters and drums.’

  Even to nourish love, he thinks. There is talk that the Emperor has offered Anna’s brother the Duchess Christina as his bride, if he will hand back Guelders without a fight. He thinks, if I were the Duke of Cleves, I would not give my sea coast for her dimples.

  ‘The king bowed low.’ Gregory takes a gulp of his wine. ‘And addressed her, but she did not turn. I think she took him for – I do not know what – some Jolly Jankin dressed up for the festival. And so he stood, his hat in his hand – then her people swarmed in, and someone called out, “Madam,” and a phrase to alert her …’ Gregory falters. ‘And then she turned. And she knew who he was. And as Christ is my Saviour, Father, the look in her eye! I will never forget it.’ Gregory sits down, as if at the end of his strength. ‘Nor will the king.’

  He picks Bella up, and begins to feed her a pastry, crumb by crumb. ‘Why should she be astonished? I made no false representation.’

  ‘You did not tell her he was old.’

  ‘Am I old? Is that what you would first think of, if you described Cromwell? Oh, he is old?’

  ‘No,’ Gregory says unwillingly.

  ‘She knew his date of birth. She knew he was stout. Surely, enough gentlemen from her court have passed to and fro? And Hans – Hans could have described him. Who better?’

  ‘But Hans will never get himself in trouble.’

  That much is true. ‘What did the king do?’

  ‘He fell back. Any man would have been stricken. She flinched from him. He could not miss it.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Then she recovered herself. She dissimulated marvellous well. And so did he. She said in English, “My lord and my king, welcome.”’

  It was for him to say, welcome. ‘Go on.’

  ‘She made a smooth curtsey, very low, as if nothing had occurred. And the king smiled and uplifted her. He said, “Welcome, sweetheart.”’ What it is to be royal, he thinks. Gregory adds, ‘His hand was trembling.’