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

  ‘Yes, the doublet,’ Riche says. ‘We will begin there, and return to the treasonous correspondence when Mr Wriothesley is more himself. In the cardinal’s day you owned, and were seen to wear, a doublet of purple satin.’

  He does not laugh, because he sees where this is tending.

  Norfolk demands, ‘What gave you the right to wear such a colour? It is the preserve of royal persons and high dignitaries of the church.’

  Riche says, ‘Was it perhaps violet? If violet, it can be excused.’

  Wriothesley says, ‘I saw it myself. It was purple. And moreover, you had sables.’

  He thinks, not like the beautiful sables I have bought since. ‘I feel the cold. Besides, they were a gift. From a foreign client who did not know our rules.’

  Riche’s brow furrows. This answer takes him in so many promising directions he hardly knows which to follow. ‘When you say a client, you mean a foreign prince?’

  ‘Princes did not send me gifts. Not at that date.’

  ‘Still,’ Gardiner says, ‘if your client did not know the rules, you knew them.’

  Norfolk sticks to his point: ‘It was above your rank and station, to dress as if you were an earl already.’

  ‘True,’ he says, ‘but why would your lordship object, if the king did not? He would not like to see his ministers go in homespun.’

  Norfolk says, ‘The doublet is only a single example, of your insensate ungodly pride. It’s not just your attire that offends. It’s the way you talk. The way you put yourself forward. Interrupt the king’s discourse. Interrupt me. Scorn ambassadors, the envoys of great princes. They come to your house, and you give out you’re not in, when you are in. Then they hear you in the garden playing bowls! They know when they are held in contempt.’

  ‘Speaking of ambassadors …’ Riche says.

  Gardiner snaps, ‘Not yet.’

  Norfolk says, ‘The king has entrusted you with high office. And you scant the procedures that are laid down. You reach across and put your signature to some scrap of paper, and thousands are paid out without a warrant. There is no part of the king’s business you do not meddle in. You override the council. You pull state policy out of your pocket. You read other men’s letters. You corrupt their households to your own service. You take their duties out of their hands.’

  ‘I act when they should act,’ he says. ‘Sometimes government must accelerate.’ He thinks, I cannot wait for the slow grindings of your brain. ‘We must move in anticipation of events.’

  ‘I do not see how,’ Riche says. ‘Unless you consult sorcerers.’

  The gentlemen glance at each other. He says, ‘Are you done about the doublet?’

  Messengers come in and whisper in Gardiner’s ear. A paper is given him, and shuffled surreptitiously to the duke, but not before he, Thomas Essex, catches a glimpse of the seal of the King of France. Norfolk seems pleased by what he reads – so pleased he cannot keep it to himself. ‘François congratulates our king on his initiative.’

  ‘Your putting down,’ Gardiner clarifies. ‘The French have much to tell us, regarding your ambitions. Not to mention your methods of discharging our sovereign’s trust.’

  It is then he grasps what has eluded him: the timing, the personnel. It must have been in early spring, when Norfolk was so keen to cross the sea, that François first hinted at an alliance and named his price. The price was me, and the king baulked at it: until now.

  He says, ‘The French like to deal with you, my lord Norfolk.’

  Norfolk looks as if he has been congratulated. By the living God, he thinks, I do not know which is greater: Norfolk’s vanity, or his stupidity. Of course the French prefer a minister who they can bewilder and trick and – if it comes to it – purchase.

  ‘I want to take us back …’ Riche says.

  ‘I am sure you do,’ he says. ‘You had better change the subject, because you are in danger of proving how bad a minister I have been for François.’

  Riche is leafing through an old letter-book. ‘You made a great deal of money in the cardinal’s day.’

  ‘Not so much from Wolsey. From my legal practice, yes.’

  ‘How did you do that?’

  ‘Long hours.’

  ‘Wolsey commonly enriched his servants,’ Wriothesley says.

  ‘He did – as Stephen here can testify. But one had expenses. The cardinal fell from grace before his debts could be paid. His enemies fell on his assets. He cost me money, in the end.’

  ‘When you say his enemies, you mean the king?’

  ‘Oh, give me some credit, Gardiner. Am I likely to gratify you by calling the king a thief?’

  ‘You adhered to Wolsey,’ Riche says, ‘even when he was a proven traitor.’

  ‘What you call “adherence” is what the king called loyalty.’

  ‘He does,’ Wriothesley says. He sounds almost tearful. ‘I have heard him.’

  He looks up at Call-Me. I don’t care how you cry. You’ve picked your side. He says, ‘The king regrets the cardinal. He misses him to this day.’

  Gardiner says, ‘Can we leave the cardinal out of this? It is a living traitor we seek.’

  Riche says testily, ‘I want to get on, I want to get on to Lady Mary, but I cannot do that without mentioning …’

  Gardiner sighs. ‘If you must.’

  Riche says, ‘You wore a ring, which Wolsey gave you. It was said to possess certain properties …’

  ‘You covet it, Ricardo? I can have it sent to you. It will save you from drowning.’

  ‘You see!’ Norfolk says. ‘It is a sorcerer’s ring. He admits it.’

  He smiles. ‘It preserves the wearer from wild beasts. It also secures the favour of princes. It doesn’t seem to be working, does it?’

  ‘It also …’ Riche is embarrassed. He rubs his upper lip. ‘It also, allegedly, makes princesses fall in love with you.’

  ‘I’m turning them away daily.’

  Wriothesley says, ‘You didn’t turn the Lady Mary away.’

  Riche says, ‘You presumed, and the king knows it, you presumed to practise upon her, to insinuate yourself with her, to ingratiate yourself, so that she referred to you as,’ he consults his notes, ‘my only friend.’

  ‘If we are speaking of the days after the death of Anne Boleyn, then I think it is true, I was her only friend. Mary would be dead now, if I had not persuaded her to obey her father.’

  ‘And why were you so interested in saving her life?’ Gardiner asks.

  ‘Perhaps because I am a Christian man.’

  ‘Perhaps because you hoped she would reward you.’

  ‘She was a powerless girl. How could she reward me?’

  Norfolk says, ‘It was your dreadful presumption, offensive to Almighty God, to attempt to marry her.’

  ‘For instance,’ Riche says, ‘upon a certain occasion, you were her Valentine and made her a gift.’

  He is impatient. ‘You know how that works. We draw lots.’

  ‘Yes,’ Wriothesley says, ‘but you rigged the ballot. You have boasted of your ways to manipulate elections of any sort. Even the draw at a tournament – I offer this, and my recollection is perfectly clear – the day your son made his debut in the field, you told him, never fear, I can get you on the king’s team, then you will not have to run against his Majesty.’

  ‘Gregory told you that?’

  ‘He told me that very day. You hurt his pride.’

  ‘He spoke in innocence. And to you, Call-Me, because he took you for his friend. But I suppose you must use what you have. Valentines? Sorcerers? Any jury would laugh you out of court.’

  But, he thinks, there will be no jury. There will be no trial. They will pass a bill to put an end to me. I cannot complain of the process. I have used it myself.

  Riche is frowning. ‘There was a ring,�
�� he says. ‘I think you offered Mary a ring, summer of 1536.’

  ‘It was not a lover’s ring. And in the end it was not a ring at all, it was a piece to wear at her girdle.’ He closes his eyes. ‘Because it was too heavy. There were too many words.’

  ‘What words?’ Norfolk says.

  ‘Words enjoining obedience.’

  Gardiner affects to be startled. ‘You thought she should obey you?’

  ‘I thought she should obey her father. And I showed the object to his Majesty. I thought it a wise precaution, against the kind of insinuation you make now. He liked it so well that he took it for himself, to give to her.’

  Wriothesley drops his eyes. ‘That’s true, my lord. I was there.’

  Riche gives his colleague a poisonous glance. ‘All the same, the volume of your correspondence with the lady, your manifest influence with her, the nature of the information she confides to you, information that concerns her bodily –’

  ‘You mean she told me she had toothache?’

  ‘She confided things proper for a physician to know. Not a stranger.’

  ‘I was hardly a stranger.’

  ‘Perhaps not,’ Riche says. ‘In fact, she sent you presents. She sent you a pair of gloves. That signifies, “hand-in-glove”. It signifies alliance. It signifies, matrimony.’

  ‘The King of France once sent me a pair of gloves. He didn’t want to marry me.’

  ‘It disgusts me,’ Norfolk says. ‘That a woman of noble blood should lower herself.’

  ‘Do not blame the lady,’ Gardiner says sharply. ‘Cromwell made her believe only his own person stood between herself and death.’

  ‘There you have it,’ he says. ‘My person. It was my purple doublet she could not resist.’

  ‘I remember well,’ Norfolk says, ‘though by the Mass I cannot swear to the date –’

  He, Thomas Essex, rolls his eyes. ‘Let no scruple impede you, my lord …’

  ‘– but there were others standing by,’ Norfolk says, ‘so I dare say –’

  ‘Out with it,’ Gardiner says.

  ‘– I remember a certain conversation – could a woman rule, was the topic, could Mary rule – and you, bursting in, as is your habit, on the discourse of gentlemen, said, “It depends who she marries.”’

  Gardiner smiles. ‘It was the autumn of 1530. I was present.’

  ‘And since that time,’ Riche says, ‘you have ensured that Lady Mary never makes a marriage. All her suitors are sent away.’

  ‘And I remember,’ Norfolk says, ‘when the king took his fall at the joust –’

  ‘24 January, 1536,’ Gardiner says.

  ‘– when the king was carried to a tent and lay on a bier either dead or dying, all your concern was, “Where is Mary?”’

  ‘I thought to secure her person. To protect her.’

  ‘From?’

  ‘From you, my lord Norfolk. And your niece, Anne the queen.’

  ‘And if you had laid hands on her,’ Gardiner says, ‘what would you have done?’

  ‘You tell me,’ he says. ‘What makes the best story? Do I seduce her, or enforce her?’ He throws out his hands. ‘Oh, come on, Stephen – I no more meant to marry her than you did.’

  Gardiner is cold. ‘Kindly address me as what I am.’

  He grins. ‘It never seemed likely to me you should be a bishop. But I beg your pardon.’

  ‘Leave aside marriage,’ Gardiner says. ‘There are other means of control. The king believes you meant to place Mary on the throne and rule through her. And to this end you cultivated your friendship with Chapuys, the Emperor’s man.’

  ‘He dined with you twice in the week,’ Call-Me says.

  ‘You would know. You were at the table.’

  ‘He was your friend. Your confidant.’

  ‘I have no confidants, and few friends. Though till yesterday, I put you among them.’

  ‘I was present at your house at Canonbury,’ Wriothesley says, ‘when you conferred with Chapuys in the garden tower. You made him certain promises. About Mary, her future estate.’

  ‘I made no promises.’

  ‘She thought you did. And Chapuys thought you did.’

  He remembers the ambassador’s folio, on the grass among the daisies. The marble table, the envoy’s suspicion of the strawberries. The gradual clouding of the day, so that Christophe said that in Islington they feared thunder. Then Call-Me, at the foot of the tower in the twilight, a sheaf of peonies in his hand.

  Gardiner promises, ‘Another day we will come to the bribes the Emperor gave you. For now let us pursue the matter of your marriage. The Lady Mary was not your only prospect. You took care that Lady Margaret Douglas was preserved, though guilty of wilful disobedience to the king.’

  Wriothesley bursts out, ‘I uncovered that whole affair! And you talked it away, as if it were nothing.’

  ‘Not nothing,’ he says. ‘Her sweetheart died.’ He says to Norfolk, ‘I am sorry I could not save them both.’

  Norfolk makes a sound of disgust. He has many brothers, he hardly misses Tom Truth. ‘You put her under a debt of gratitude,’ he says. ‘The king’s niece. What was she to you, but another path to the throne? “If I were king” is a phrase often in your mouth.’

  Gardiner leans forward. ‘We have all heard you say it.’

  He nods. It is a habit he should have checked. Once he said, ‘If I were the king, I’d spend more time in Woking. In Woking it never snows.’

  ‘You smile?’ Gardiner is shocked. ‘You, a manifest traitor, who offered to meet the king in battle?’

  ‘What?’ He is blank: still thinking of Woking.

  ‘Let me remind you,’ Riche says. ‘At the church of St Peter le Poor, near your own gate at Austin Friars, on or around …’ Riche has lost the date, but no matter, ‘… you were heard to pronounce certain treasonable words: that you would maintain your own opinion in religion, that you would never allow the king to return to Rome, and – these are the words alleged – if he would turn, yet I would not turn; and I would take the field against him, my sword in my hand. And you accompanied these words with certain belligerent gestures –’

  ‘Is this likely?’ he says. ‘Even if I had such thoughts, is it likely I would speak them out? In a public place? Surrounded by witnesses?’

  ‘One utters in a rage sometimes,’ Norfolk says.

  ‘Speak for yourself, my lord.’

  ‘You also stated,’ Riche says, ‘that you would bring new doctrine into England, and that – and here I quote your own words – If I live one year or two, it shall not lie in the king’s power to resist.’

  ‘What though you are a cautious man?’ Gardiner says. ‘I have seen you moved to mockery, and to wrath.’

  ‘I have seen you moved to tears,’ Riche says.

  ‘I could weep now,’ he says. He is thinking, yet I would not turn. Perhaps I may have spoken those words. Not in public. But in private. To Bess Darrell. I am not too old to take my sword in my hand. I will fight for Henry, I meant to say. But the god of contraries made me say the opposite. And I could have bitten out my tongue.

  Riche has recovered a date. ‘Peter le Poor – last day of January –’

  ‘This year?’

  ‘Last.’

  ‘Last year? Where have the witnesses been since? Were they not culpable, in concealing treason? I look forward to seeing them in chains.’

  He can see Riche thinking, look, now he is wrathful, now he is provoked. He might say anything.

  ‘You admit it is treason?’ Norfolk says.

  ‘Yes, my lord,’ he says patiently, ‘but I do not admit to saying it. How would I make good such threats? How could I overthrow the king?’

  ‘Perhaps with the help of your Imperial friends,’ Norfolk says. ‘Chapuys is not in the realm, but you have contact
with him, do you not? He congratulated you, on your earldom. I hear he plans to return.’

  ‘He’ll have to go somewhere else for his dinner,’ he says.

  ‘Why do we trouble ourselves over Chapuys?’ Riche says. ‘It is much worse than that, as all will attest, who were in Sadler’s garden at Hackney, the night the king met his daughter.’

  The apostle cups, he thinks. The great bowl buried in the earth to keep our wine cool. Riche says, ‘You had secret dealings with Katherine. And that night you confessed as much.’

  ‘You have known a long while, Riche. What kept you from speaking out?’

  No answer. ‘I will tell you,’ he says. ‘Your own advantage kept you mute. Till advantage was greater on the other side. What promise have I made to you, that I have not kept? And what promises have you made to me?’

  ‘You should not speak of promises,’ Norfolk says. ‘The king hates a man who breaks his word. You said you would kill Reginald Pole.’

  ‘Not a drop of his blood is shed,’ Gardiner observes.

  He thinks, now we come to it. This is why Henry faults me. And so he should. This is where I have failed.

  Riche says, ‘There was much big talk in your household, how you would trap Reginald. One week, you would set on him murderers you knew in Italy. Another week, it was your nephew Richard who would kill him. Then it was Francis Byran, then it was Thomas Wyatt.’

  Wriothesley says, ‘And on that subject – one wonders, when Wyatt was ambassador lately, for what reason he held back certain letters from the Lady Mary, that the Emperor was meant to see. Was he not acting for you, as your agent?’

  ‘My agent? For what purpose?’

  ‘Some dishonesty,’ Riche says. ‘We have not yet penetrated it.’

  ‘But no doubt we shall,’ Gardiner says. ‘Mr Wriothesley has overheard so much loose and treasonous talk, merely in the course of daily business. He heard you say recently that you would do the King of France a favour, if he would do one for you. One wonders what ensued.’

  ‘Nothing ensued,’ he said. ‘He has not done me any favours, has he? It is my lord Norfolk who is in his graces.’

  ‘Then why say it?’ Riche presses.

  ‘Big talk. You said it yourself. My household’s full of it.’