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

  When his tale is done he writes the superscription: To the king, my most gracious sovereign lord his royal Majesty.

  But he cannot think how to end it. It may be the last letter they will allow. So he writes I cry for mercy. He writes it again, in case Henry should be distracted: mercy. And once again, mercy, to get it into the royal skull, to pierce the royal heart.

  He has dated it: Wednesday, the last day of June. With heavy heart and trembling hand.

  This time it is true. It is trembling. He looks at it as if it is some other man’s hand. Of all the words he has written, will this plea endure? Rats have eaten the laws of ancient times. They relish fish-glue and vellum; anything that was once alive, they will eat it, and then out of habit, they will eat what is dead; from the margins they chew their way in, to the secret history of England. It is the glory of the men who have worked with Cromwell that instead of merely cursing the vermin they have patched, they have mended, they have stretched a point to replace a gnawed vowel; they have been ready to substitute a digested phrase with a clause that will help the crown. But what has it availed? He has lived by the laws he has made and must be content to die by them. But the law is not an instrument to find out truth. It is there to create a fiction that will help us move past atrocious acts and face our future. It seems there is no mercy in this world, but a kind of haphazard justice: men pay for crimes, but not necessarily their own.

  Rafe comes to take the letter. He has no seal, so he folds it, and before he gives it over he hesitates, trapping it under his palm. ‘I always told Henry, frightening people is cheap but it doesn’t get the best results. If you want a prisoner to yield you everything, offer him hope.’

  Rafe says, ‘I have read how the philosopher Canius, when Caligula’s hangmen came for him, they found him playing chess. He said to them, “Mark this, I am winning – count my pieces on the board.”’

  ‘I make no such bold reply,’ he says sadly. ‘Canius still had his queen.’ He pushes the letter across the table. ‘Here. Everything he wants is in that package. Will Cleves make war on us now?’

  Rafe says, ‘It appears the duke is content to leave his sister here in England. And if she does not oppose him in anything, the king will make her fair and honourable terms.’

  ‘Why would she oppose him? Poor lady.’ To make a winter journey, he thinks, and find herself unwanted at the end of it.

  Rafe says, ‘Duke Wilhelm is talking to the French. Word is they have offered him a princess, and an alliance.’

  ‘Ah, so he is not marrying Christina?’

  ‘No, he cannot make terms with the Emperor, or not at this time. They say the French princess is unwilling.’

  Unwilling. That will leave room for an annulment, when the Emperor offers something better. ‘Wilhelm has not done badly out of us,’ he says. ‘Better than Anna.’ He thinks, I doubt she will want to marry any other man, now Henry has mauled her.

  Rafe says, ‘The French swear they will carry their princess to the altar, if need be. She is only twelve years old, so she cannot weigh heavy.’ He sighs. ‘Helen, sir, begs to be commended to you. She prays night and morning for you. As do our little children, and all your friends.’

  Not a great number of prayers, then, to bowl at Heaven’s door. Though he can count on some from the Archbishop of Canterbury, and surely his requests roll in like thunder. And Robert Barnes is praying for me, and I for Robert Barnes. Neither of us has much to ask for now, but courage. As Wyatt writes, Lauda finem: praise the end.

  Edmund Walsingham, the Lieutenant of the Tower, comes next day. ‘Do not be alarmed, my lord. I bring no bad news. Only that you must move house.’

  So his interrogators are done with him. ‘Where am I going?’

  ‘The Bell Tower, sir, next my lodging.’

  ‘I am familiar with it,’ he says dryly. ‘Can I not go to the Beauchamp Tower?’

  ‘Occupied, my lord.’

  ‘Christophe,’ he says, ‘pack my books. Send to Austin Friars for warmer clothes for me, the walls are thick there.’ He says to the lieutenant, ‘When Thomas More was held in the Bell Tower, he was allowed to walk in your garden. Shall I have that liberty?’

  ‘No, my lord.’

  Walsingham is a tight-lipped Flodden veteran. He has been in his post fifteen years, and has no intention of making a slip-up now.

  ‘More was not locked in. Shall I be locked in?’

  ‘Yes, my lord.’

  He puts his coat on. ‘Allons.’ He says his goodbyes to the goddesses; a last flitting glance over his shoulder. No trace of Anne Boleyn. He remembers her saying – was it in this very room? – ‘Be good to me.’ He thinks, if I see her again, perhaps this time I will.

  Out into the open air. He looks about him. All he can see is armed men. The lieutenant says, ‘I trust the guard will not disturb you.’

  A breath of the river air. A dance of green leaves. He feels the sun on his shoulder. A workman sitting on scaffolding, whistling, his shirt off; ‘The Jolly Forester’ … He feels netted by the past, suspended in some high blue instant, strung up in air. By noon the forester will be scorched.

  I have been a foster long and many day,

  My locks ben hore.

  I shall hang up my horn by the greenwood spray:

  Foster will I be no more.

  The walk is too brief. ‘Shall I go to the lower chamber or the upper?’

  When he had arrived at the Tower, they had fired the cannon: it is the custom, when a personage is brought in. The ground quakes, the river boils, and inside the accused, as he steps onto the wharf, his marrow wobbles, his spleen protests, the chambers of his skull rattle. On the threshold of the Bell Tower, on the ascending stair, he feels again this deep agitation. It is a weakness, but he will not show it to the lieutenant: just steadies himself with a brush of his fingertips against the wall.

  All the while that my bow I bend,

  Shall I wed no wife:

  I shall build me a bower at the greenwood’s end

  Thereto lead my life.

  The doors are opened into the lower room. It is a stony, vaulted and spacious chamber. The fireplace is empty and swept clean. The walls here are twelve feet thick, and light falls from windows set high above the head. There is a figure sitting at the table. Silently he asks, ‘Is it you?’ Thomas More rises from his place, crosses the room and melts into the wall.

  ‘Martin, is it you? You look well. How’s my god-daughter?’

  The turnkey takes off his cap. He’d been about to say, sorry to see you here, sir: the usual empty formula; best pre-empt that. ‘Five now, sir, and a good little soul, bless you for asking. No harm in her.’

  No harm? What strange things people say. ‘Is she learning her letters?’

  ‘A girl, sir? Only gets them into trouble.’

  ‘You don’t want her to read the gospel?’

  ‘She can marry a man who will read it for her. Can I fetch you anything?’

  ‘Is Lord Lisle still here?’

  ‘I couldn’t say.’

  ‘The old lady? Margaret Pole?’

  It has occurred to him that Henry might execute Margaret, now he is not standing by to stay his hand. ‘Very well,’ he says to Martin. ‘You have orders not to talk, I understand that. Do you think I could have a fire lit?’

  ‘I’ll see to it,’ Martin says. ‘You always did feel the cold. I remember when you used to come in and sit with Thomas More. You’d say to him, “We should have a fire.” He’d say, “I can’t afford it, Thomas.” You’d say, “Christ save us, I’ll pay for the fire – will you stop trying to wring my bloody heart? You may be a papist but you’re not a pauper.”’

  ‘Did I?’ He is amazed. ‘Did I say that? My bloody heart?’

  ‘More, he would get you all of a wamble,’ Martin says. ‘When they rang the curfew, he’d come in from the garden and h
e’d sit down and write all night. He’d sit at that very table, wrapped in a sheet. It was like a winding sheet – the sight would turn me cold. Myself, I never saw hair of him, not since that day he was led away. But some claim they have. And as I am alive and a Christian man, you will hear the old fellow overhead, Fisher. You hear him dragging himself across the floor.’

  ‘You shouldn’t believe in ghosts,’ he says uncertainly.

  ‘I don’t,’ Martin says. ‘But who are they to care, if I believe in them or not? You listen out tonight. You can hear old Fisher shuffle across, and then the chair scrape, where he rests his weight on the back of it.’

  ‘There was no weight to rest,’ he says. The bishop was so thin that you couldn’t use him to stop a draught. What can you do with a man who, when he sat down to dine, would set a skull on the table, where other people would have the salt pot?

  ‘Your boy can sleep in here on a pallet,’ Martin says, ‘if you don’t like to sit up on your own.’

  ‘Sit up? I’ll sleep. I always sleep. Martin, if my son Gregory were brought here as prisoner, or Sir Richard Cromwell, you would tell me?’

  Martin scrapes his foot along the floor. ‘Aye, I would. I would try to get you word.’

  There are old rush mats underfoot. He thinks, I will get something better sent from home: if anything is left.

  It is a chamber for a favoured prisoner, but there is no mistaking it for an ordinary room. Still, the night passes without incident. He listens out for Fisher but the old bishop is nodding. He wakes once and thinks, kings may repent, there are examples. For a while his mind goes round and round, seeking one. The chroniclers tell us that in the reign of the third Henry, the king punished his servant Hubert de Burgh, Earl of Kent, starving him out of sanctuary and throwing him into a deep dungeon. Hubert lived two years in irons, before he escaped and got his earldom back.

  With the morning Rafe comes. ‘So, my letter, how did he receive it?’

  Rafe’s movements are slow; he looks as though he has been at work through the night. He wants to call for a cup of ale for him, but Rafe says, no, no, I must tell you what passed. ‘The king turned out his councillors. And then he caused me to read your letter out loud.’

  ‘That must have taken you some time.’

  ‘When I had done he said, “Read it again, Sadler.” I said, “The whole, sir?” He hesitated and said, “No, you may omit the story of the marriage. Read where he makes his pleas.”

  ‘The second time I read it, he seemed much moved. I did not want to break his train of thought, but then I dared to say, “It takes but one word, sir.” He looked at me: “One word to do what?” He took my meaning, of course and I dared not venture further. Then he said, “Yes, I could free Cromwell, could I not? I could restore him tomorrow.”

  ‘I said, “The French would be amazed, sir” – thinking to prompt him, because you always counselled him, do what your enemy likes least.’

  ‘But I think the French are not the enemy,’ he says. ‘Since about last week.’

  ‘But then the king said, “You know, he has never forgiven me for Wolsey, and I have long wondered, to what extremity will sorrow lead him? Even when my son Richmond lay dying, he was pestering the physicians with his enquiries. Bishop Gardiner says, the cardinal himself might forgive, but the cardinal’s man never will.”

  ‘I said, “Sir, I swear it, the earl is reconciled. He has let the cardinal go.” But he cut me off. He said, “Here in my writing box I have his earlier letter.” He turned the key and took it out and gave it to me in my hand. He said, “Read this one. Read where it says he would make me live ever young.” I did so. The king said, “He cannot, can he?” I would swear, sir, that tears stood in his eyes. My heart beat fast, I thought, he will utter now: “Let Essex go.” But he got up and walked to the window. He said, “Thank you for your patience, Master Secretary.” I said, “I was well-trained, sir, by a patient man.” He said, “Now you can leave me.”’

  ‘You did well, Rafe. You did more than I had any right to expect.’

  Rafe says, ‘When I was a little child you brought me on a journey. You set me by the fire and said, this is where you live now, we will be good to you, never fear. I had left my mother that day and I did not know where I was, and I had never seen London, still less your house, but I never cried, did I?’

  He cries now, like an angry baby, in the ungraceful way that red-haired people do: his skin flushing, his body trembling. ‘Where in the name of God is Cranmer?’ he says. ‘Where is Wyatt? Where is Edward Seymour? They will be ashamed for the term of their lives.’

  ‘Cranmer will live past this,’ he says. ‘I do not say he will sleep well at night, but he will survive. And Wyatt will write a verse about me. And Seymour must live to guide the little prince, when he, when Henry –’ He will not say it. The thought has entered his mind before now: what if a fever rises this very night, what if he coughs and strains to breathe, what if his lungs fill with water again and the poison from his leg kills him? Then the state will hold its breath. The executive arm will suspend its action, even though the knife is raised. The prince will need me. The council will need me. Edward Seymour will turn the key and let me go.

  When Rafe goes out, he tells Christophe, ‘Get a pack of cards.’ He shows him the painted queen, shuffles and lays out three. ‘Now, where is she?’

  Christophe’s stubby finger descends.

  ‘No.’ He turns the card up. ‘Now, watch me, I am teaching you this trick. So if you are ever without money or food, the lady will provide.’ He says softly, ‘It is only if the worst should befall. You will go to Gregory. Or Master Richard will take you in. Tell them I say to get you a wife, to save you from sin.’

  He is working on how to save his household staff. Some will go to Gregory, others to Richard – presuming the king does not strip the Cromwells of all they have. Wyatt will take his pick, now he is moneyed and has several properties to staff. He thinks, Brandon will want my huntsmen, my dog-keepers. Some merchant in the city, who knew his father, will take Dick Purser. The Italian merchants will covet my cooks. Young Mathew can go back to Wolf Hall, though his French will be wasted in Wiltshire. Back in April, when he had thought he would fall any moment, he had called together the singing children from his chapel; he had thanked them for their services, wished them good luck in their lives, and sent them home to their parents, each with a present of twenty pounds. Once he was made earl he thought, shall I recall them? Now he is glad he did not.

  In Italy, when he was working for the bankers, he learned the art of memory, and has practised it through his life since. You make an image for each memory and leave them in the churches you frequent, in the streets you walk, on the banks of the river you sail. You leave them in ditches, between the furrows of a field, and hanging from trees: crossbows and skillets, dragons and stars. When you run out of real places you dream up more; you design islands, like Utopia.

  Now, sensing he has less than a week to live, he must pick up his images from where he has left them, walking his own inner terrain. He must traverse his whole life, waking and sleeping: you cannot leave your memories alone in this world, for other men to own.

  In the dusk the cardinal returns, as a disturbance in his vision. ‘Where have you been?’ he asks him.

  ‘I don’t know, Thomas.’ The old man sounds forlorn. ‘I’d tell you if I could.’

  Offered a chair, he looks at it, averse. ‘I won’t sit where Thomas More sat. For what that ingrate did to me, I will never pass the time of day with him. If I smell him these days, I go the other way.’

  He says, ‘Sir, you know I did not betray you? Despite what your daughter thinks?’

  Wolsey paces, dragging his scarlet. At last he says, ‘Well, Thomas … I dare say … women get things wrong.’

  His great fatigue, which had lifted when he was facing Gardiner or Norfolk every day, now returns. The feeling
around his heart – that it is crushed, forced out of shape – he now understands as a deformity caused by grief. He feels he is dragging corpses, shovelling them up: Robert Aske, Tom Truth, Harry Norris and Will Brereton, little Francis Weston and Mark Smeaton with his lute. And even those in whose death no one can say he took a hand: Jane the queen, Harry Percy, Thomas Boleyn.

  His mind turns over the questions that have been put to him, as if the interrogations were still going on. He thinks about Richard Riche: ‘In June 1535, the prisoner said to me, “Richard, when the reign of King Cromwell dawns, you shall be a duke.”’

  And Audley saying, faintly, ‘Riche, we cannot put that in the record. I think my lord was making a joke.’

  He recalls Wriothesley, his outburst one afternoon: ‘He thought he was king already. He acted like a king. I remember when French merchants came to Greenwich, the year of the ice. They had goods they pressed on his Majesty, and his Majesty put them off, saying he had spent all his money fighting the Pilgrims. But then, seeing their distress and their journey wasted, he graciously agreed to purchases. But my lord Privy Seal forced them out of the king’s chambers and compounded a bargain with them, making them sell him at a lower price those goods that were intended for the king.’

  He recalls that day: the ice-light in the chamber, the enticements laid before Henry: a velvet dog collar, a pair of strawberry sleeves and, for him, Lord Cromwell, the murrey-colour silk. Call-Me said, ‘Be careful sir.’ He remembers the strain on Call-Me’s face. He didn’t think he meant, be careful of me.

  Edmund Walsingham comes in every day or so, and stays only long enough to witness his prisoner is still sound in mind and limb: it is as if he fears conversation will contaminate him. Kingston has his duties as councillor, and is at the Tower only on days of portent. So he has no one to talk to, except Christophe and his turnkey and the dead; and with daylight the ghosts melt away. You can hear a sigh, a soufflation, as they disperse themselves. They become a whistling draught, a hinge that wants oil; they subside into natural things, a vagrant mist, a coil of smoke from a dying fire.