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

  Gregory whispers, ‘Perhaps he has killed her?’

  Wriothesley says, ‘Majesty … would it be best if …?’

  ‘What?’ Henry releases the queen. He steps back as if to say, there now – you all saw I tried.

  Anna peels away from him. She seems unsteady. Her gaze flutters to Fitzwilliam, to Gregory, to the men she knows, and she moves stiffly towards them, a hand extended, limp as if the fingers were broken. Branded in her cheek is the imprint of the king’s gold chain.

  By the end of January Wyatt has obeyed the orders that come from London by every messenger, carried on every tide. He has put in the tip of his knife to prise open a gap between the Emperor and François.

  Wyatt has appeared before Charles, the occasion public and grand. Why, he asks the Emperor, do you not keep your promises? We have extradition treaties, and yet you allow English traitors free passage to join that monster, Pole. Are you so ungrateful for all my king has done for you?

  ‘Ungrateful? I?’ The first gentleman of Christendom flashes into rage. His councillors, in shock, pull back into a huddle and confer. One of them steps forward: ‘Perhaps we have misunderstood you, Monsieur Guiett? Or perhaps you misspoke? After all, French is not your first language.’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with my French,’ Wyatt says. ‘But I can repeat it in Latin if you like.’

  Charles leans forward. How dare your master use that word, ungrateful? How can a charge of ingratitude be levelled against an Emperor, by the envoy of some poor little island full of heretics and sheep? An inferior person, a king, cannot expect gratitude. The Holy Roman Emperor is set above mere kings. Their natural position is at his feet.

  Wyatt draws back. ‘All is said, sir.’ In seeking to insult Henry, the Emperor has insulted all princes, his French ally included.

  When Wyatt’s letter arrives Mr Wriothesley reads it out. ‘It is like a play!’ William Kingston says. A tentative smile spreads over the faces of the councillors. There are matters that lie between François and Charles – old quarrels – always ready to spark. Once the fire takes hold and burns their treaties, Englishmen can sleep safe.

  ‘Then, Cromwell,’ Norfolk says to him, ‘we will not need your German friends, will we? Your friend Wyatt works contrary to your purpose.’ The duke enjoys the thought. ‘Should he succeed, what a fool you will look.’

  At Valenciennes on the river Scheldt, Charles and François part company. The Emperor takes a power and moves east. ‘And Wyatt with him,’ he says to Henry. At his elbow to needle him.

  For a day or two they are without news. Then it becomes clear that Charles is heading towards his rebel city of Ghent. The citizens know what to expect. Charles has already executed one of their leaders, a man of seventy-five, by putting him on a rack and pulling his body apart: having shaved him first, trunk and poll, so that he was bald as a new-born babe.

  Henry says, ‘The Emperor loves warfare. When he leaves Ghent he will march on Guelders. And Duke Wilhelm will call on my aid, which I cannot well deny him. And if I were to be drawn into war, it would not be by my desire, my lord Cromwell, but – strangely – by yours.’

  Richard Riche comes to consult him about the pensions list for Westminster Abbey. The abbot says he is dying, but perhaps this is a ploy to get a better pension? The abbey is to be a cathedral now, and (if he lives) the abbot will be its dean. Henry will not demolish the sacred place where kings are crowned. Nor will he disturb his mother and father, who lie in bronze above ground, and below ground in lead; all day candles stout as pillars flicker around them, bathing them in a greenish perpetual light. The abbey’s relics will be moved, but images and statues survive. Doubting Thomas kneels to put his fingers into the bloody gash in his Saviour’s breast. St Christopher carries his God, who crouches on his shoulders like a favourite cat. On the walls of the chapter house, St John sails to Patmos, a forlorn exile blotting his eyes. The useful camel and the dromedary pace the desert sands, while the roebuck tramples verdure beneath delicate hooves, and the patriarchs and virgins stand shoulder to shoulder with the confessors and martyrs, their beady eyes alert. The monuments of dead monarchs draw together, as if their bones were counselling each other; and the prophetic pavements beneath them, those stones of onyx, porphyry, green serpentine and glass, advise us through their inscriptions how many years the world will last.

  ‘Why do they need to know?’ he asks Richard Riche. ‘It’s a wonder to me any of the monks could live past thirty.’ As their rule forbids them to consume flesh in their refectory, they keep a second dining room, where they can satisfy their appetites for roast and boiled meats. At the solemn feasts of the church, they make a dish they call Principal Pudding. They use six pounds of currants, three hundred eggs, and great bricks of suet. They showed it him once as it was getting ready, as if they were giving him a treat: a fatty, oozing mass, a welling bolster speckled black as if with flies. ‘It is worth suppressing the abbey,’ he says, ‘to suppress the pudding.’

  He, Thomas Cromwell, stands looking up at the fan vaulting of the new chapel. ‘I swear the pendants are shifting. When I was first here they looked true.’

  ‘It is only the building settling,’ the monks say. ‘It happens, my lord.’

  There is an indulgence granted to those who attend a Mass here, which all of us will need one day: it is called the Stairway to Heaven. St Bernard in a vision saw souls ascending, rung by rung into eternity; angels give them a hand to balance, as they hop off the last rung into bliss. It is easy to climb. Harder to know what to do when you get to the top. As we labour upwards, the Fiend shakes the foot; and treads can snap, or the whole structure sink in boggy ground. He says to Riche, ‘Ricardo, do you think there is a flaw in the nature of ladders, or a flaw in the nature of climbers?’ But it is not the sort of question to which the Master of Augmentations likes to apply his mind.

  At the end of the month Edward Seymour goes to Calais, Rafe Sadler to Scotland. If King James wants a favour, he tells Rafe, he should cultivate his uncle Henry, rather than embroil himself with François, who will use Scotland as a vassal state. And if Rafe can detect any rift between James and the Pope, he should widen it. The King of Scots should be shown the advantages of taking control of his own church, and alerted to the resources of his monasteries: every ruler wants money, and here it is for the taking.

  Rafe’s journey is slowed because he has to take a string of geldings, which the king wishes to present to his nephew.

  ‘Write to me,’ he says, ‘at every opportunity.’

  The loss of the boy is like a cold wind on his neck.

  When the court moves to Westminster, they go by river, accompanied by merchant ships, musicians aboard. A salute is fired from the Tower. The citizens line the trembling banks and cheer.

  At Westminster the king continues to visit the queen every second night. The Germans ask, ‘Majesty, when will the coronation be?’ He, Cromwell, reminds the council it was planned for Candlemas; but Candlemas is past. Norfolk says, ‘We know why you want her crowned. You think once the king’s laid out the money, he won’t send her back.’

  ‘Send her back?’ He has to simulate outrage.

  From the queen’s side of the palace, silence. The women brush by him frowning: there is always somewhere they have to be. There’s a question he ought to be asking Anna, but he doesn’t know what it is; or perhaps an answer that she needs from him. In stories, when you are in the forest you meet a lady, veiled and shrouded, and she asks you a riddle. If you get it right her clothes fall off at a glance. Her body glides into your arms, and her light merges with yours. But if you get it wrong she withers into a hag. She puts her hand on your member and it shrinks to the size of a bean.

  He brings Charles Brandon to Austin Friars. He shows him the leopard, with which Charles is well pleased, and then takes him into his confidence: the king now affirms that as he will never love the queen he cannot do the act. ‘
Cannot, will not – to the state, it is all one.’

  Suffolk looks grave. ‘Given up completely, has he? I didn’t know that. Does Thomas Howard know? Do the bishops know? Any other man, you could suggest …’

  He cannot imagine what Charles is going to say.

  ‘You could suggest, try thinking about another woman. But if Harry thought of another woman, he’d want to marry her. Then where would you be?’

  At court he studies Norfolk’s niece. When a man’s eyes rest on her, which is very often, she ruffles her feathers like a plump little hen.

  Thomas Howard is to go to France, the king says. He wants to penetrate the mind of François and thinks a great nobleman might succeed. ‘It needs someone of my lord Norfolk’s stature,’ he says.

  Young Surrey says to his hangers-on, ‘It is only by Heaven’s providence that the king has a nobleman left to send. Cromwell would extinguish us all, if he had his way.’

  Wriothesley pursues him: ‘Sir, you see Norfolk is eager to begin his mission? When before, sent abroad, he always dragged his feet? And I fear his French is not adequate.’

  ‘Perhaps he will stay quiet and get a name for wisdom.’

  Richard Riche says, ‘You might try that sometime, Call-Me.’

  Norfolk will have the support of Sir John Wallop, now appointed resident ambassador. Valloppe, the French call him. He is an experienced diplomat, but he would not have been the Cromwell choice: too friendly with Lisle, for one thing. He has his boy Mathew in Calais now, so he knows what goes on in the Lord Deputy’s house. He is waiting for one incriminating letter to turn up on his lordship’s desk, or perhaps in her ladyship’s sewing box – a letter to, or from, Reginald Pole.

  In the days before he embarks, Norfolk is seen at Gardiner’s house in Southwark. ‘It is natural my lord should take advice,’ he says equably, when reports are brought to him. ‘Because Gardiner was our ambassador in France for so long.’

  ‘It is not that,’ Wriothesley says. ‘They are working something together.’

  ‘Yes. Well. I am working something myself.’

  When Norfolk sees the surprise I have for him, he will never stir from his hearth again.

  The Lenten fast of 1540 is kept in the strict old manner, under the eye of Gardiner and his friends. It is as well to let them have their way in small things, where they are vigilant. Thurston gets them through on saffron bread, onion tarts with raisins, baked rice with almond milk, and a new sauce for salt fish made with garlic and walnuts.

  On Valentine’s Day, preaching wars break out. Gardiner against Barnes, Barnes against Gardiner. They are both bitter men, but Gardiner has nothing to lose, while Barnes stands in peril of his life. Barnes will break, as he once did before Wolsey. It’s not his faith, but his temperament that will fail. He is not Luther. Here he stands: till Gardiner knocks him across the room.

  The Londoners, crouching under makeshift shelters, jostling beneath oiled canvases, listen to their sermons with their eyes screwed up against the rain, their hair plastered and their ears a-swill. Yet old wives say we shall have a hot summer. For now, as the poet says, no fresh green leaves, no apple trees, but thorns. Iron winter has a grip, the day he goes to Henry to ask for mercy.

  ‘Is this about Robert Barnes?’ Henry says. ‘It appears I was much deceived in him. Gardiner says he is a rank heretic. And to think I entrusted him with England’s business abroad! You are close enough to the man, you were derelict in not knowing his opinions and laying them bare. I suppose you did not know them?’

  ‘I am not here to speak for Barnes.’ In his mind he goes out of the room and comes in again. ‘I am here about Gertrude Courtenay, sir. We might release her. Keep the evidence on file. Her fault is credulity, which women cannot help; and loyalty to those passed away, a thing your Majesty understands.’

  ‘Katherine is never truly dead, is she?’ Henry sounds exhausted. ‘And there are some who will never accept she was not my wife.’

  ‘Lady Exeter will need means to live, so if your mercy further permits, I will arrange an annuity out of her husband’s lands.’

  ‘God curse him,’ Henry says. ‘Very well, release the woman, keep Exeter’s child in ward; I want no traitor whelp running free through the realm.’

  He makes a note. Henry says, ‘Cromwell, could you have a child?’

  He is startled. ‘I think you could,’ Henry says. ‘You are of common stock. Common men have vigour.’

  The king does not know they wear out. At forty a labourer is broken and gnarled. His wife is worn to the bone at thirty-five.

  ‘I thought I would get another son from this marriage,’ the king says, ‘but there is no sign God intends it.’ He sinks into his chair, turns over a few leaves of paper. ‘We might write to Cleves this moment. You could write at my dictation, as we used to.’

  He says, ‘My eyes are not what they were.’

  So much for common stock. ‘But you still write letters,’ Henry says, ‘I am familiar with your hand. I want you to ask Wilhelm himself where those papers are, that show if his sister was married, because –’ He leans his elbows on the table, his head in his hands. ‘Cromwell, can we not pay her off?’

  ‘We could offer her a settlement, yes. I do not know how much we would have to find to placate her brother. And I do not know how to salvage your Majesty’s reputation, if you renounce a lawful match. It would be hard to hold up your head before your fellow princes. Or come by another wife.’

  ‘I could come by one tomorrow,’ Henry says harshly.

  The door opens, cautiously. It is the boys with lights. ‘Bring candles here,’ he says. But the king seems to have forgotten the letter. Henry waits till they are alone again, but even then he does not speak; till the warm light diffuses through the room and he says, ‘You remember, my lord, the day we rode down to the Weald? To see the ironmasters, and find out new ways of casting cannon?’

  An icy vapour breathes on the windowpanes. Henry’s diamonds, as he moves, look like steel beads, or those seeds that fall on stony ground. He waits, the quill beneath his fingertips. ‘Those were brighter days,’ the king says. ‘Jane could not travel, being great with my heir. She did not like me to leave her, but she knew we had long planned the excursion, and your lordship’s press of business being what it is, and the duties of a king being what they are, she would not ask me to forbear. I remember rising early and, it being about St John’s Day, it was light before the permitted hour for Mass; Jane said, will you tarry till your chaplain comes? And I tarried, because the fears of a woman in that condition, they must be heeded. It will be only two nights or three, I said, though we shall take it at an easy pace. We shall listen to the birdsong and ride, like knights of Camelot, through the woods. We shall enjoy the sunshine.’ Henry pauses: ‘The sunshine, where did that go?’

  ‘God made February, sir, as well as June.’

  ‘Spoken like a bishop.’ Henry looks up. ‘I want you and Gardiner to be reconciled.’

  We tried that, he thinks.

  ‘At Easter, sit down together.’

  ‘On my honour, I will attempt it.’

  Silence. He thinks, perhaps what I said was not good enough? ‘I will make peace if I can.’

  The boys have not closed the shutters. He rises to do it. Henry says, ‘Leave those, I want what light there is.’ Beyond the glass gulls swing by, as if they have mistaken the towers of Westminster for a sea cliff.

  Henry is watching him. His vast hands have fallen onto his gown, limp and empty. He says, ‘But when I think about it, Cromwell … I recall we never made that journey.’

  ‘Into Kent? No, but it was projected –’

  ‘Projected, yes. But always some reason we could not go.’

  He sits down again, facing the king. ‘Let us say we did, sir. It is no harm to imagine it.’ England’s green heart: distant church bells, the shade of the trees fro
m the heat. ‘Let us say the ironmasters gave us their best welcome, and opened their minds to us, and showed us all their secrets.’

  ‘They must,’ Henry says. ‘No one could keep secrets from me. It is no use to try.’

  He goes out: one hand against the wall, he utters a prayer. The Book Called Henry has no advice for him.

  The king has moved from his native ground: as if he has entered another realm where cause does not link to effect; nor does he care how he opens his heart. Think of the days when the Boleyns came down. The king had written a play, about Boleyn’s monstrous adulteries. He kept it in a little book in his bosom, and tried to show it to people.

  In January he said, Cromwell, you are not to blame. Now you can hear him thinking: one thing, one thing I wanted him to do for me, and he would not.

  He thinks, it would be hard to free him but not impossible. It would be a victory to Norfolk and his ilk, it would be encouragement to the papists and an end to the new Europe. How often do you get the chance to reconfigure the map? Perhaps once in two or three generations: and now the chance is slipping away. Wyatt and the operation of time will break France and the Emperor apart, and we will be back to the old, worn-out games that have lasted my lifetime.

  Then Harry will want a new wife, and God knows who. A song drifts into his head, it must be one Walter sang:

  I kissed her sweet, and she kissed me;

  I danced the darling on my knee.

  Next he will choose some papist, and I will wish I were far away. If I had stayed in Italy I could have had a house in the hills, with white walls and a red-tiled roof. A colonnade shading its entrance, shuttered balconies against the heat; orchards, flowery walks, fountains and a vineyard; a library with frescoes depicting animals and birds, like the paintings in the chapter house at the abbey.

  At the Frescobaldi villa the girl came every morning with her basket of herbs. You struck the jars of oil as you passed, and the note told you how full they were. After the kitchen boys stopped picking fights with him, he taught them English catches and rhymes. Under blue Italian skies, they sang of misty mornings, of ash and oak, of sudden loss of maidenheads in the month of May.