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

  ‘They came like an army. “Everything here belongs to the king.” They carried our money away from our strongroom. They broke the lock on our closet, where you alone have the key. I said to one, “Watch your feet, you beast of the field, if you walk mud on that carpet of silk flowers, the Lord Cromwell will personally shred the flesh from your bones.” But no, he walked on it. They went down in the cellars with torches. They came up and said, “Bones!”’

  Bones and relics, some nameless, some marked with their origin. He thinks, I will send a message: go down to the cellar and find Becket, then pull his label off. That will finish him.

  He asks, ‘Who led them?’

  ‘Who would it be, but Call-Me?’

  He looks up. ‘You were not surprised?’

  ‘No one was surprised. But we were all disgusted.’

  He thinks, when Gardiner approached Wriothesley, he did not put a reasonable proposition: which do you choose, Cromwell or me? His offer was: choose me or death.

  Christophe says, ‘They threw your papers in boxes to carry away. Call-Me directed where to go – look in this chest, open that. But he did not find all he expected, so then he shouted. Thomas Avery said, “I have suspected Call-Me for months – why did my master entertain him?”’

  ‘Christ entertained Judas. Not that I force the comparison.’

  ‘Then Richard Riche came. He also shouted. “Look in the yellow chest in the window.”’ Christophe grins. ‘The yellow chest is gone.’

  Gone with it are his letters from the Swiss divines: which would injure him. They may choose to say he is a heretic who denies that God is in the host. But they will have no evidence. And he has no difficulty in saying that God is everywhere.

  ‘All look for your restoration,’ Christophe says. ‘You will walk back in and all will be as it was. Meanwhile, I am here to serve you.’ He gazes up at the gilded ceiling. ‘I feared to find you in a dungeon.’

  ‘Have you not been here before?’

  He rebuilt these rooms himself, seven years back, for Anne Boleyn to lodge before her coronation. It was he who reglazed them, and ordered the goddesses on the walls; who had their eyes changed from brown to blue, when Jane Seymour came in. You enter through a great guard chamber. There is a presence chamber, where he now sits in a large light space; there is a dining room, a bedroom, and a small oratory. ‘It is not for my comfort,’ he says, ‘so much as for those who will come to put questions to me. I expect them soon.’

  For the king’s councillors were prepared for my arrest, if I was not. How did they work it? What backhand whispers, what lifts of the eyebrow, what nods, winks? And what conferences with the king, their informants greasing in as I went out? No wonder Henry turned his back on me when last we spoke. No wonder he addressed himself to the wall. He says, ‘Tell Thurston not to hang up his apron. I want him to send in my meals.’

  ‘When you get out,’ Christophe says, ‘we nail down Norferk, pull his head off and toss it to the dogs. Riche, I’m spiking him to the floor and rats can nibble him, he can die slow as he likes, I am cheering. Call-Me, I am cutting his legs off and watch him crawl around the courtyard till he bleeds to death.’

  He puts his head in his hands. He feels weakened by Christophe’s agenda.

  ‘It is to me entirely enjoyable,’ Christophe says. ‘I look forward. As for Henri, I shall kick him down Whitehall like a pig’s bladder. Once he is exploded, we shall see who is king. When he is a smear on the cobbles, we shall see who is the last man standing.’

  That first night, left alone, he tries to pray. Chapuys had asked him once, what will you do when one day Henry turns on you? He had said, arm myself with patience and leave the rest to God.

  There are books which say, contemplate your final hour: live every day as if, that night, you go not to your bed but to your bier. The divines recommend this not just for the prisoner or invalid, but for the man in his pride and pomp, prosperity and health: for the merchant on the Rialto, for the governor in the senate.

  But I am not ready, he thinks. Let me see the foe. And the king is mutable. Everybody knows that. We complain of it all the time.

  Yet is there an instance – he cannot think of one – where, having turned his face away, Henry turns it back? He left Katherine at Windsor and he never saw her again. He rode away from Anne Boleyn, gave directions to kill her, and left her to strangers.

  He has read a library of those volumes called Mirrors for Princes, which state the wise councillor must always prepare for his fall. He should embrace death as a privilege; does not St Paul say, I covet to be dissolved with Christ? But he covets nothing more than to be in his garden on this soft evening, now fading unused beyond the window: where a strong guard stands, in case Cromwell decides on a breath of air.

  He puts his hand to his heart. He feels something alien inside his chest – as if the organ has been forced out of shape, stretched at one point and squeezed at another. How many days left? My enemies will try to rush Henry. In case they cannot keep him in this destructive frame of mind, they will want me killed this week. But if the king wants to be free of Anna, he should keep me alive to help him, and perhaps it will not be a simple matter or short. If I can survive two months, by then Henry will have quarrelled with Gardiner, and when he turns to Norfolk what will he find, but obstinacy and incapacity and spleen? So who will govern for him? Fitzwilliam? Tunstall? Audley? They are good enough men – good enough to be a chief minister’s assistant. Three months, and his affairs will be in such disarray that he will be beseeching me to come back.

  And I shall say, ‘Not me, sir: I’ve had enough of you, I’m going to Launde.’

  But next moment, within a heartbeat, I would snatch the seals from his hands: now, Majesty, where shall I begin?

  He thinks of Thomas More, in ward for fifteen months. Continually he scribbled, till his pen and paper were taken away. Although, More could have freed himself at any moment. All he had to do was say some magic words.

  When the Giant kills Jack, the Giant himself begins to fail. He is worn down and diminished with loneliness and regret. But it takes the Giant seven years to die.

  Next morning Kingston comes in at eight o’clock. ‘How do you?’

  ‘I do very ill,’ he says.

  There are mirrors in the queen’s lodging, as you would expect. He has seen himself, paper-faced, unshaven, unsteady.

  ‘I have seen this before,’ Kingston says. ‘It afflicts not a few prisoners, in their early days. Especially if their downfall is sudden.’

  ‘What remedy?’

  Perhaps no one has ever asked Kingston this before. But he is not a man to hesitate. ‘Accept it. Settle your mind. Make your reckoning with yourself, my lord.’

  ‘I am still “my lord”?’

  Kingston says, ‘You came in here as Earl of Essex, and you are Essex unless I am told otherwise.’

  So Gardiner was wrong: wrong on big things and wrong on little things. He is not sure if his earldom is a little thing. In the sight of God, perhaps it is. But he had felt it, this last two months, as protection, a wall the king had built around him.

  ‘Also,’ Kingston says, ‘the king has sent money for your support while you are here. He wishes you to be kept as befits your rank.’

  He wants to say, my support for how long? Kingston answers without being asked: ‘The king will fund what is needed. No term is set.’

  Till yesterday, he had money of his own. Now he is the king’s beggar. Kingston says, as if it were a matter of indifference, ‘Your boy is here.’

  An uprush of anguish: ‘Gregory?’

  ‘I mean young Sadler. Or rather, Master Secretary, Sir Rafe, one forgets these recent promotions. No, bless you, he is not in ward, I mean he is without, he is waiting for you. Call for anything you need.’

  In his black clothes Rafe looks overheated. ‘Morning, sir. That wind has dropped.
It’s as warm as August out there. They say this will go on all summer. We can’t be suited, can we? Warm, cold, we’re always complaining.’ His glance flits up and down the room, because he cannot look at his master. He takes off his cap and crushes it, his fingers bruising the velvet.

  ‘Rafe,’ he says, ‘come here.’ He embraces him. ‘Kingston frightened me, I thought they had arrested you.’

  Tentatively, Rafe touches his sleeve, as if to test if he is still solid. ‘I think they would have, except the king does not want the disruption to his business. I hardly know where I am. Early this morning I sent Helen and the little ones out of London.’

  ‘They will be watching you.’ He sits down again. ‘I am ill, Rafe. My breath comes short. I feel crushed, here. Kingston tells me I have to get used to it.’

  ‘It is shock, sir. I did not know myself what was happening, or I would have got a warning to you somehow. As we were going into council, they had someone call me back for some footling piece of business – and next thing, as I was hastening in your direction, I saw a crowd streaming away. Audley said to me, “Your master is arrested, and I am going to the Parliament house to announce it.” He was prepared. He had the paper in his pocket. He was just waiting for word from the guard.’

  He thinks, I had scarcely a foot in the boat, and they were rowing me across the Styx. ‘And how did Parliament take it?’

  ‘In silence, sir.’

  He nods. Both Lords and Commons might have been astonished, that a man made an earl in April is by June kicked out like a dog who’s stolen the beef. But then, Parliament men do not expect to understand the king’s mind. He does not answer for himself downwards, to his subjects – only upwards, to the Almighty; and perhaps, these days, not even that. To hear Henry talk, you would think God ought to be grateful, for all Henry has done for him in England these last ten years: the way he’s set him up, got his big book translated, made him the common talk.

  Rafe says, ‘Edward Seymour went at once to the king, to speak for Gregory.’

  ‘Did he speak for me?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Did anyone speak for me?’

  ‘Yes. But I was not heard.’

  ‘Not Cranmer?’

  ‘Cranmer is writing the king a letter.’

  ‘Try and get me its content.’ He lowers his head. ‘When I think of Call-Me … I wonder what inducement … I suppose I expected it of Riche. Though I have been good to them both.’

  Rafe would be justified in saying, I told you at the first not to trust Call-Me. Instead he says, ‘All the years we have known him, I think he has been trying to show us his own unhappy nature. How fretful he is, how ill-at-ease, how envy eats away at him. He was trying to warn us about himself.’

  ‘It is my vanity, really. I did not suppose anyone would prefer Gardiner’s service to mine.’

  ‘Gardiner has threatened him. But you know that. As for Purse, he runs to the day’s winner.’

  ‘Tell Gregory,’ he says, ‘to be as humble as he finds it necessary. He will be questioned, and he should say what they want to hear. Richard too.’

  ‘Richard is enraged. He wanted to go straight to the king and break in on him.’

  ‘Tell him to do no such thing. He should rest quiet, and keep away from Gregory, and both should keep away from you. Do nothing that could be called conspiracy. I know how Henry’s mind works.’

  Even as he says it, he thinks, that can’t be true, or I wouldn’t be here. Separation from his friends will not save my son. Money abroad will not save him. All he can do is to comply with Henry exactly, till his killing fit passes. ‘How did he take it, Gregory?’ He pictures his boy inconsolable, crying like a child.

  ‘He is pensive, sir.’

  Pensive? But then, if they had come to him when he was a boy to say, ‘They’re hanging your old dad tomorrow,’ he wouldn’t have been pensive. He’d have said, ‘I’ll be there early! Are they selling pies?’

  He asks, ‘Has the king let fall a word about what charges to expect? Or Audley has, perhaps?’

  Rafe looks away. ‘It appears to be about Mary as much as anything. The stories of how you meant to marry her. The king has decided to hear them at last. He has written to François about it – in his own hand, I am told. He has sent for Marillac, to explain your arrest to him. Though I think it is Marillac who will explain it to the king, because the French were active in those rumours.’

  ‘Chapuys started them.’

  ‘Perhaps. Who knows where it began? Perhaps in Mary’s head. I would not be surprised. She is a very strange woman.’

  ‘No,’ he says, ‘she is innocent in this, I swear.’

  ‘You have always thought better of her than she deserves. I doubt she will stir for you, sir, though we all know you saved her life. Henry believes – but I do not know how he can believe it – that you meant to wed her and then thrust him aside and become king yourself.’

  ‘That is ludicrous. How could he think that? How could I? How could I even imagine it? Where is my army?’

  Rafe shrugs. ‘He is frightened of you, sir. You have outgrown him. You have gone beyond what any servant or subject should be.’

  It is the cardinal over again, he thinks. Wolsey was broken not for his failures, but for his successes; not for any error, but for grievances stored up, about how great he had become.

  He asks, ‘Did they take my books?’

  ‘Tell me what you want and I will get it.’

  ‘Will you find my Hebrew grammar? Nicolas Clendardus of Leuven. I have it at Stepney. I have wanted to study it. I lacked leisure.’

  Clendardus advises, grasp the basic rules before you advance to detail. They say with his help you can learn the rudiments in three months. I might not live that long, he thinks, but I can make a start.

  12 June, first interrogation: ‘We might begin with the purple satin doublet,’ Richard Riche says.

  Riche sits at one end of the long table, with Gardiner and Norfolk established in the places of honour; and Master Secretary Wriothesley, restless and unhappy, at the other end. ‘You know,’ he says, as Norfolk and Gardiner take their seats, ‘I never knew you as such great comrades, till lately. More likely to abuse each other roundly, than sit together as friends.’

  ‘We have not always seen eye to eye,’ Norfolk says. ‘But one thing we have in common, Winchester and I – when we scent the truth, we stick on the trail. So beware, Cromwell. Whatever we suspect, we will have out of you, one way or the other.’

  It is as crude a threat as ever made. He says, ‘I will tell you the truth, as I know and believe it. There is nothing for you beyond that.’

  Gardiner sharpens his pen. ‘They say Truth is the daughter of time. I wish time bred like rabbits. We would arrive at a reckoning sooner.’

  A clerk comes in. He greets him in Welsh. ‘Give you good morning, Gwyn. Nice sunny weather.’

  ‘None of that,’ Norfolk growls. ‘Get this fellow out and send another scribe.’

  Gwyn gathers his gear and exits. It takes time to locate a clerk that suits Thomas Howard, and one Thomas Cromwell does not know. At length they are settled. Wriothesley says, ‘Will you go on, Riche? The doublet?’

  Riche lays a hand on his papers, like one putting it on the gospels. ‘You understand, sir, that it is my duty to put these questions to you, and that I bear you no ill-will in the doing of it.’

  He recognises a disclaimer. Riche thinks Henry might recall him. He says, ‘Can I see the king?’

  ‘No, by God,’ Norfolk says.

  Wriothesley says, ‘That is the last thing –’

  Riche says, ‘Whatever gave your lordship that idea?’

  He takes his ruby ring from his finger. ‘The King of France gave me this.’

  ‘Did he?’ Norfolk cries out to the clerk. ‘Make a note, you!’

  ‘And
when he did so, I took it to our king. Who in time was pleased to return it to me, saying it would be a token between us, and that if I were to send it him, even if I did not have my seal, even if I were not able to write, he would know it came from me. So I send it him now.’

  ‘But what is the point?’ Gardiner says.

  ‘A good question,’ Riche says. ‘The king knows where you are. He knows who and what you are.’

  ‘It will remind him how I have served him, to the best of my capacities and to the utmost of my strength. As I hope to do for many years yet.’

  ‘That is what we are here to determine,’ Riche says. ‘Whether you have served him or no. Whether you have abused his confidence, as he believes, and whether you plotted against his throne.’

  Riche must somehow be assured, he thinks, and Wriothesley too, that if Henry frees me I will not revenge: or they will kill me in a panic. ‘How, plotted?’ He asks civilly, as if it were a matter of passing interest.

  ‘Letters have been discovered at Austin Friars,’ Gardiner says. ‘Highly prejudicial to your claims to be a loyal and quiet subject.’

  ‘Clear proof of treason,’ Norfolk says.

  ‘I am waiting for you to tell me what they are. I cannot guess what you might forge, can I?’

  ‘They are Lutheran letters,’ Riche says. ‘Letters from Martin himself and his heretic brethren.’

  ‘Melanchthon?’ he asks. ‘The king writes to him.’

  Gardiner glares. ‘And also from German princes, urging on you a course most injurious to king and commonwealth.’

  ‘There are no such letters,’ he says, ‘they never existed, and even if they did –’

  ‘Lawyer’s logic,’ Norfolk says.

  ‘– and even if they did, and if they contained seditious matter, would I keep them in my house for you to find? Ask Wriothesley what he thinks.’

  Gardiner looks at Call-Me. ‘What I think …’ he hesitates, ‘what I truly …’ He stops.

  ‘Pass on,’ he says. ‘Or are you waiting for me to set the agenda and run the meeting? I think you wanted to know about my wardrobe.’