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

  At twilight they play Britannia unconquered. The queen sits up straight and looks alert, while one of the interpreters rehearses to her what will unfold: the repulse of the Romans, how the island stood firm and resisted tribute. He recognises the King of Britain as one of George Boleyn’s men.

  Henry will like the queen to see what manner of countrymen she has now: they refuse all slavery, detect all knavery. The monarch that was then, in Caesar’s time, armed the Thames itself, planting iron-tipped staves below the waterline to rip out the belly of the Roman ships. When the survivors hauled themselves to shore, the Britons butchered them.

  There were ninety-nine kings, the chroniclers tell us, before we came to our present monarch. He suspects them of snipping sections out of history, so Henry makes one hundred.

  ‘I don’t suppose you have anything like this at home,’ the king says to Anna.

  The remark is laboriously relayed to her.

  No, she says. More is the pity. She looks bewildered.

  The players take up their stance and menace each other with drawn blades. Solemnly, they perform the actions of fighting men, till those who are Romans fall to their knees and then judiciously, thoughtfully, checking the floor is clear, topple forward on their faces. The maids of honour nudge each other, laughing. The king glances over at them, and smiles, like a man reminiscing. He says to his wife, ‘Kings of Britain have conquered Rome.’

  He, Lord Cromwell, keeps finding reasons to get up and walk about, to speak to one and then another. He views the queen from different angles and in different lights. Some expressions need no translator; he sees she is resolute, whatever the evening may bring. Behind the rampaging battle there is a pavilion made in twenty-six sections, with windows like a house. It was sewn over with ‘H&K’ but that has been unpicked. The walls are purple and gold, and the lining is of green sarcenet – which lends a spring-like air. ‘Anybody could issue forth from that tent,’ he says. ‘King Arthur himself would be proud.’

  ‘Is there much more of this?’ the French ambassador enquires.

  The interlude comes, and everybody sits up. First a masque of lovers is played. Two gentlemen hold lyres, their expressions bereft, their garb sewn over with scallop shells: they are the heart’s pilgrims, they declare.

  ‘There are no other sorts of pilgrims now,’ Norfolk says. ‘Even Walsingham is down.’ He grimaces. ‘It seems to me this conceit is stale. The master of revels thinks to save a little money.’

  ‘I am all for that,’ he says.

  Presently two maidens come out of the tent, and are kind to the swains. They dance a little jig together. ‘That’s my niece, Katherine,’ Norfolk says. ‘Edmund’s girl.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘How do you like her?’

  He has no opinion. The lovers hop away, arm in arm, and in come Friar Flip-Flap and Friar Snip-Snap, trying to pickpocket the spectators, till one races in with a dog and chases them. The dog’s name is Grime. He yearns towards dainties held out to him, and his keeper hauls him back. Beneath the keeper’s hood, a familiar face. ‘Is that Sexton? I thought I had banished that churl for good and all.’

  The boy Culpeper says, ‘He must find some employment, I suppose. Nicholas Carew took him in but Carew is dead.’

  Sexton leaves Grime to tussle with the friars, ambles off and comes back in another guise, his belly thrust out, wearing purple and with great sleeves like a ship’s sails. He is Privy Seal, he says, a man low born, whose dam and sire he hides in his sleeves for shame.

  Anger washes through him like a wave, and out again. He says to Marillac, his neighbour, ‘It is an outworn jest, once made against the cardinal.’

  ‘Ah yes, your old master,’ Marillac says. ‘I was warned never to refer to him, but you use his name freely. Strange that people are still arguing over him. What is it, ten years?’

  He points to Sexton. ‘You should have seen that fellow, how he screamed when he was parted from the cardinal and conveyed into the king’s service – I say “conveyed”, because we had to bind him and throw him in a cart.’

  Sexton loops nooses around the necks of Snip-Snap and Flip-Flap. They stagger and protrude their tongues. He calls out, ‘Sexton! Beware! Perhaps I have a rope for you in my great sleeve.’

  Sexton looks straight at him. ‘Tyburn is no jest, Tom. For him it is a jest,’ he points to the king, ‘and for her, and for me, but not for thee, Tom, not for thee.’

  Grime is circling and about to crap. The king’s lips tighten. He makes a gesture: get dog and keeper out, remove friars too. Sexton runs, raising his knees high as if leaping over puddles.

  The Britons come in again, to a spatter of applause, carrying the river Thames looped over their arms. Lord Morley sits forward on his stool: ‘Shall we have the war machines of the Emperor Claudius? Vespasian, and the Siege of Exeter?’

  ‘By my faith,’ Norfolk says, ‘it’s been a long day for us councillors, my lord. And the king will want to have the queen apart, will he not?’

  ‘There ought to be giants,’ Gregory says. ‘Gogmagog was twelve feet tall. He could rip up oak trees, no effort at all, it was like picking flowers. There was another giant, Retho by name, who made himself a great beard with the beards of men he had slain.’

  ‘Like Brandon, what?’ Norfolk says. He laughs with pure delight. It is once a decade he makes a joke.

  The Thames unrolls, a length of patchy blue. To aid the players, the maids seize the ends and ripple it. Lord Morley says, ‘I am afraid a great part of the story is missed. Britain had kings before Christ was incarnate. You will find it all in Geoffrey of Monmouth, his book.’

  He says, ‘My lord, I have read that not all those princes were lucky, and few of them were wise.’ There was the prince who drowned in the river Humber, which they named after him. There was Bladus, who flew over London on home-made wings: they had to scrape him off the pavements. Rivallo was a good king, or well-intentioned at least: but during his time it rained blood, and swarms of flies ate Englishmen alive. And if you go further back, the nation was founded on a murder: Trojan Brutus, father of us all, killed his own father. A hunting accident, they claimed, but perhaps there are no accidents. Those mis-aimed arrows, and the ones that bend in flight: they know their target.

  Gregory says, ‘Geoffrey of Monmouth, he was such a liar. I wager he wasn’t even born in Monmouth. I wager he was never there in his life.’

  The queen stands up, at some invisible signal or perhaps some inner prompting. Her ladies rise and flock about her. The Howard child has to be nudged; she is gaping at a lutenist with a well-turned leg. The evening is winding to its conclusion. The musicians will play the king to his own chamber and then put away their timpani and viols. Henry’s face shows nothing, except traces of fatigue. Mr Wriothesley bends and speaks into his ear: ‘Do you wish you could read his thoughts, sir?’

  ‘No.’

  The privy chamber gentlemen rise and follow the king. The clergy are assembling to go in procession and bless the bed. Every night the king’s sheets are sprinkled with holy water, but tonight he needs Heaven’s special regard: the attention of the angels and saints, fixed on his privy member. Culpeper says, in passing, ‘Now all he has to do is climb aboard and make a Duke of York.’

  The king has had a new bed made, very wonderfully carved. He, Lord Cromwell, cannot lie still in his old one, but must walk about. The palace is quiet. Fires are damped. He encounters no one but guards who salute him, and two giddy young lords, wearing red and yellow masquing bonnets, one dancing while the other claps. At the sight of him the dancer skids to a halt. The beat is missed, trapped between his friend’s palms.

  ‘Go to your cribs,’ he tells them. ‘If you are lucky, in the morning I shall have forgotten your names.’

  Abashed, they pass him their bonnets, as if they do not know what else to do with them. ‘They are hats for Tartars, my lord.’
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  They ought to have strings or ribbons, he remarks. You would think the wind would pluck them off, as they gallop the snowy wastes.

  The boys ramble away, arms linked. He calls after them, ‘Pray for me.’ He hears their laughter as they sway downstairs.

  He walks back to his rooms, closes his door. Give a man a Tartar hat and he will try it on, whether he has a mirror or no. But he is out of heart. He leaves the hat on Christophe’s pallet, so when he wakes he will think he is still dreaming. All night, in his broken sleep, his countrymen fight Caesar’s legions: slow, dogged, their movements enmired.

  He is up at dawn, sitting down in his chambers with Richard Riche to talk about the surrender of the abbey at Malvern. Riche is yawning. ‘I wonder …’ he says, and breaks off.

  ‘Shall we just keep our mind on the figures?’ Christophe comes in with pots of small beer. He is wearing the Tartar hat and Riche says, ‘Why is he …’ His sentences keep failing him, as if they are lost in mist.

  A messenger comes in, sent straight up in his boots, blue-nosed and splashed from the road. ‘Urgent, my lord. From York, for your hand.’

  ‘Jesus spare us,’ Riche says. ‘Don’t tell me the countryside is up again?’

  ‘Too early in the year, I think.’ The seal is already broken; he wonders why. He reads: York’s treasurer says he will have to shut down his office if he does not get two thousand pounds by the week’s end and as much again to follow: the bills have come in for the harbour at Bridlington, and the northern lords are clamouring for the pay-out of their yearly grants and pensions.

  Norfolk stamps in. ‘Cromwell? You see that from Tristram Teshe?’

  He glares at Norfolk; then at the messenger, who avoids his eye. ‘By Our Lady,’ Norfolk says, ‘Teshe should take those barons by their napes and shake the living Jesus out of them. If it were me, I would make them wait for their money till Lady Day.’

  Fitzwilliam is on Norfolk’s heels, sour and not yet shaven. ‘If he tries to hold them off, my lord, some of them may ride over to the Scots. Or exact payment by plundering it.’

  Mr Wriothesley comes in. ‘From Wyatt, sir.’ He has opened the letter already. François and Charles are still together, prolonging the season of goodwill. ‘Wyatt says the Emperor looks like thunder whenever our realm is mentioned.’

  ‘Not surprising,’ he says. ‘Our king well-married, and no thanks to him.’

  He strides out towards the king’s presence chamber and his arms fill with petitions from courtiers, with letters and bills. He hands them back to Wriothesley, to Rafe. A pity that neither Rafe nor Richard Cromwell was on the privy chamber rota last night; then he would have been sure of good information. Perhaps he should have arranged that? He says to himself, I cannot think of everything. He hears the king’s voice saying, why not?

  The Cleves delegation is there before him. They are spry and hopeful, and declare they have heard Mass already. ‘And,’ they say, ‘we have a present for you, Lord Cromwell, to mark this auspicious day.’

  The Duke of Saxony, Wilhelm’s brother-in-law, has sent him a clock. Taking it, he murmurs his appreciation. It is the neatest he has seen, perhaps the smallest – a drum-shaped object you can hold in your palm. The English gentlemen are playing with it, passing it from hand to hand, when the king comes in. ‘Sir, present it to him,’ Rafe whispers.

  The Germans nod regretfully; they understand this sort of sacrifice. Henry takes the clock from his hand without looking at it. He goes on talking to one of his privy chamber gentlemen: ‘… fetch back Edmund Bonner, as I have promised, and send my brother of France an envoy more agreeable and modest.’ He breaks off. Turns to the Cleves ambassadors: ‘Gentlemen, you will be pleased to know …’

  ‘Yes, Majesty?’ They are eager.

  ‘… I have sent the queen her morgengabe, as I think you call it, a gift in accordance with the custom of your country. We will let you have written details of the value.’

  They are hoping to hear more. But the king has closed his lips. He does not even mention the clock. Normally he would be delighted by such a novelty – would examine its workings and ask for another one, this time with his portrait in the lid. But instead he looks down at it with a sigh, a mechanical smile, and hands it on to one of his suite. ‘Thank you, my lord Cromwell, you always have something new. Though sometimes not as new as one would wish.’

  There is a heartbeat’s pause. Henry nods to him: ‘Come apart.’

  He stares at the king. Disassemble? Disperse? Then he recovers himself. ‘Yes. Of course.’ He follows.

  Sometimes with the king it is best to be brisk and show yourself a good fellow. As if you were elbow to elbow at the Well with Two Buckets, sharing a pint of Spanish wine. He thinks, I’d knock it back if I had some. Or Rhenish. Aqua Vitae. Walter’s beer. ‘How liked you the queen?’

  The king says, ‘I liked her not well before, but now I like her much worse.’

  Henry glances back over his shoulder. No one has approached them. They are alone, as in a wasteland.

  Henry says, ‘Her breasts are slack and she has loose skin on her belly. When I felt it, it struck me to the heart. I had no appetite for the rest. I do not believe she is a maid.’

  What the king is saying is preposterous. ‘Majesty, she has never strayed from her mother’s side …’

  He steps back. He wants to walk away: for his own protection. He sees from the corner of his eye that Dr Chambers and Dr Butts have come in, with their modest caps, their long gowns. The king says, ‘I will speak with those gentlemen. No word of this should escape.’

  No words escape from him, as he draws back from the king’s path. And no one addresses him, but clears his way, as he walks the length of the presence chamber and through the guard chamber and passes from view.

  The two physicians are the first to seek him out. He is reading Wyatt’s letter, and lays it aside with the scenes it conjures, distant but clear. Wyatt is a presence even when he is absent, especially when he is absent. His letters are close narratives of diplomatic encounters. Yet, however tight you pin your attention to the page, you feel that something is escaping you, slipping into the air; then some other reader comes along, and reads it different.

  Butts clears his throat. ‘My lord Cromwell, like you we are forbidden by the king to speak.’

  ‘What is there to say? We would speculate about the queen’s maidenhead. Such talk belongs to chaplains in confession, if it belongs anywhere at all.’

  ‘Very well,’ Butts says. ‘Now you know, and I know, and the king knows, that in such unmentionable matters he has been wrong before. He took the dowager Katherine to be untouched, though she had been wed to his brother. Later, he thought the contrary.’

  Chambers says, ‘He thought Boleyn was a virgin, then he found she was unchaste since her French days.’

  Butts says, ‘He knows the breasts and belly are evidence of naught. But just this morning he is ashamed and out of heart. When next he tries her it may be a different result.’

  Chambers frowns: ‘You think so, brother?’

  ‘All men do sometimes fail,’ Butts says. ‘You need not look as though that is news to you, Lord Cromwell.’

  ‘My concern,’ he says, ‘is that he does not make this accusation again, that she is no maid. Because if he does I have to act upon it. However, if he says he mislikes her, has a distaste for her person –’

  ‘He does.’

  ‘– if he admits he has failed with her –’

  ‘– then perhaps you have a different sort of problem,’ Butts says.

  ‘I do not believe he has spoken to anyone,’ Chambers says, ‘except us. One or two of the privy chamber, possibly. His chaplain.’

  ‘But we fear the news will soon spread,’ Butts says. ‘Look at his face. Would anyone take him for a happy bridegroom?’

  Also, he wonders, has Anna confided in
anyone? He says, ‘I had better try and cheer him.’ Nagging at his attention is the treasure he needs to dispatch to York. He thinks, I do not want to be with Henry but I cannot risk his being with anyone else. I will have to dog his footsteps like the devil. He says, ‘What shall I tell the ambassadors of Cleves?’

  ‘Need you tell them anything? Let the queen speak for herself.’

  Chambers says, ‘I do not think she will make any complaint. She is too well-bred. And innocent, perhaps.’

  ‘Or,’ Butts says, ‘perhaps of sufficient sense to see that that a bad beginning may be recouped. I have advised the king to keep to his own chamber tonight. By abstinence, appetite may increase.’

  ‘Time was when they used to display the bedsheets,’ Chambers says. ‘It is lucky those days have passed.’

  But the king’s looks tell the tale. Thinks of all the people who crowded into the room at Rochester, to see him nourish love. At the first moment he saw Anna, he saw himself in the mirror of her eyes. From that instant it was written that there would never be love or affection between them. From that time he had no curiosity as to what he would find under her clothes: just teats and her slot, pouches of skin and hair.

  He seeks out Jane Rochford. ‘Our opinion is, nothing happened,’ she says.

  ‘What does Anna say?’

  ‘Anna says nothing. Did you think we would fetch the men in this morning, to interpret?’

  ‘There are women who can do it.’ There are: because he has found some.

  Jane says, ‘I think it is better if she keeps her own counsel and we keep ours, yes? If he has failed, no one wants to know that, surely? What can you do with the information?’

  ‘You are right,’ he says. ‘It is of no value. Therefore, take heed, it should have no currency.’

  Rochford turns back to him, as if relenting. She says, ‘He lay on her, is our view. I think he put his fingers in her. C’est tout.’

  The council meets. No messages have come from the queen. Her own people, both ladies and gentlemen, have visited her and come away looking unperturbed. It is clear that we are living in a dual reality, such as experienced courtiers can maintain. For many years now, more years than we can count, the King of England has been a fair youth. So often, he has been married, and then unmarried; and the dead have been in Purgatory, and plaster saints have moved their eyes. Now the councillors shoulder their double burden: their knowledge of the king’s failure, and their pretence that he has never in all his days met with anything but success.