The Mirror & the Light (Thomas Cromwell, #3)

by Hilary Mantel

Once the queen’s head is severed, he walks away. A sharp pang of appetite reminds him that it is time for a second breakfast, or perhaps an early dinner.

‘Your English is improving, Christophe.’ ‘Your French is where it was.’

‘King Henry should withdraw his delegates to the Lutheran princes. We know you are holding talks. We want you to break them off.’

In Carew’s version: we, friends of the Princess Mary, will help you remove Anne Boleyn, and afterwards, if you grovel to us and serve us, we will refrain from ruining you. Master Secretary’s version is different. You help me remove Anne, and … and nothing.

Henry says: ‘Did I do right?’ Right? The magnitude of the question checks him, like a hand on his arm. Was I just? No. Was I prudent? No. Did I do the best thing for my country? Yes. ‘It’s done,’ he says.

You will see Henry, profound in deception, take an ambassador’s arm and charm him. Lying gives him a deep and subtle pleasure, so deep and subtle he does not know he is lying; he thinks he is the most truthful of princes.

It is his councillors, as mean a crew as ever walked, who carry his sins for him: who agree to be worse people, so Henry can be better.

I should have eschewed all vanities, and laid aside ambition.’ ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘but we never do it. None of us. We have all read the sermons. We could write them ourselves. But we are vain and ambitious all the same, and we never do live quiet, because we rise in the morning and we feel the blood coursing in our veins and we think, by the Holy Trinity, whose head can I stamp on today? What worlds are at hand, for me to conquer? Or at the least we think, if God made me a crewman on his ship of fools, how can I murder the drunken captain, and steer it to port and not be wrecked?’

‘No, but it’s not your best idea either.’ He thinks, that was Anne Boleyn’s mistake. She took Henry for a man like other men. Instead of what he is, and what all princes are: half god, half beast.

Henry likes to utter his sin and be forgiven. He is sincerely sorry, he will not do it again. And in this case perhaps he will not. The temptation to cut off your wife’s head does not arise every year.

‘Another man, from the place where you come from, would get himself to a quiet spot and count his takings. Not Cromwell. He will have all to rule. If Seymour’s girl makes the king a son, who will oversee his princely education, but Cromwell? If Fitzroy is named heir, Cromwell is in his graces. If Mary survives to reign, she will always know that Cromwell saved her life.’

Once Henry says, ‘This is my wish,’ it becomes so dear and familiar a wish that he thinks he has always had it. He names his need, and he wants it supplied.

The king lays down his quill. He rubs together the tips of his fingers; right, done, deo gratias. Rafe whisks the paperwork away. Each stroke of the pen will translate into a stroke of the axe. Like the eel boy, they will understand that if Thomas Cromwell says, ‘You did it,’ you did it. No use arguing. It only prolongs the pain.

‘Eustache, I cannot tell you about the king’s state of mind. I am employed to make laws and mind the treasury. For the rest he has the archbishop.’ ‘That dubious fellow.’ He looks at him sharply to see what he knows. ‘Heretic,’ Chapuys says. Oh, only that, he thinks. He is relieved.

It used to be that, if you and your kind stuck doggedly to the wheel of fortune, you would rise as far as you had fallen. But then comes a fellow like me, and knocks you clean off the wheel. Be advised, I can do it.’ ‘There is a proverb,’ she said, ‘the truth of which is hallowed by time. “He who climbs higher than he should, falls lower than he would.”

Do not join battle with the noble families of England. You have lost before you ride out. Who are you? You are one man. Who follows you? Only carrion crows, bone-pickers. Do not stop moving, or they will eat you alive.’

‘You swore to us, you would step out of here and wed the first woman you met, to clear yourself of any charge you mean to match with Lady Mary. So did you? Have you? Who was she?’ ‘Oh, I remember,’ he says. ‘It was William Parr’s niece, Kate. Lady Latimer, as she is now. Unfortunately.’

Wife#6

Surrey pretends to favour the gospel himself, but it is only to provoke his father. My lord Norfolk curses the day laymen began to read the scriptures. “Blessed are the meek!” he says. “With all respect to our Saviour, you don’t want that notion to get around an army camp.”

Seven Wise Men, he tells Gregory: here are their sayings. Moderation in all things, nothing to excess (those two are the same, wisdom can be repetitious). Know yourself. Know your opportunity. Look ahead. Don’t try for the impossible. And Bias of Priene: pleistoi anthropoi kakoi, most men are bad.

So even after Henry dies, he thinks, our work is safe. After a generation, the name of Pope itself will be blotted out of memory, and no one will ever believe we bowed to stocks of wood and prayed to plaster.

If I say Cromwell is a lord, he is a lord. And if I say Cromwell’s heirs are to follow me and rule England, by God they will do it, or I shall come out of my grave and want to know why.’

Jane says, ‘Your people want the Pope of Rome. They want the statues they have known all their lives, and blessed candles, and holy days.’

He saw a man’s eyes put out of their sockets, because he had witnessed what he should not: Jesu, he’d said, would it not have made more sense to slit his tongue?

‘Listen, son, this is what I know: right is what you can get away with, and wrong is what they whip you for.

The harder you try to bind him by your deeds, the more he will detest you. I pity you, for there is no way forward for you. He will hate you for your successes as much as your failures.’

The king wishes to appear magnanimous at the least expense to himself.

A stray voice pipes, ‘Cromwell, king of London!’ His stomach lurches. His head turns. ‘Friend, if you love me, sing some other tune.’

‘Mr Call-Me is much in your confidence.’ ‘Yes, he is growing into consideration.’ ‘He opens your letters.’ ‘Someone must. There are too many for one man.’ ‘He was Gardiner’s man,’ Chapuys says.

The Cornish people petition to have their saints back—those downgraded in recent rulings. Without their regular feasts, the faithful are unstrung from the calendar, awash in a sea of days that are all the same.

‘Cromwell, you plan to murder all noblemen. One by one you will cut off our heads till only vile blood is left in England, and then you will have all to rule.’

‘And you work too hard,’ Henry says: as if he were not the cause of the work. ‘If I die before my time, Crumb, you must…’ Do it, he thinks. Draw up a paper. Make me regent.

I pray you to be here early to comfort our good master, for as for our mistress there is no likelihood of her life, the more pity

The boy Edward lives but Jane does not.

‘What do you hear from Cleves?’ ‘No great praise, neither of the lady’s face nor person. Though I am not discouraged. No one has had much opportunity of seeing her, these people keep their women very close. She sounds amiable. The age is right. And the Cleves councillors are keen, I hear.’

Wife number four and Cromwell’s downfall.

‘And is the king to be advised on marriage by a wife-beater?’ Sweat springs from Norfolk’s brow. This is what they have come to, for all the friendship they swore last autumn—standing outside the king’s privy chamber bawling insults.

Your Majesty is the only prince. The mirror and the light of other kings.’

And in reply he said naught. He never said, ‘I’ll spit you, I’ll stab you, I’ll carve out your bloody beating heart.’ Till, of course, he did.

I still have no plan, I have no route out, I have no affinity, I have no backers, I have no troops, no right, no claim. He thinks, Henry should give me the regency, give it me now. Set it down and seal it: multiple copies.

There is no record that the four knights cut off Becket’s head. His admirers did that, later.

In fantasy, he takes off his coat again. He rolls up his sleeves, and punches Stephen on the nose. It is dismaying to him, that Stephen has been gone three years, and his urge to knock him down is as strong as ever.

If Henry is the mirror, he is the pale actor who sheds no lustre of his own, but spins in a reflected light. If the light moves he is gone.

From what I hear, it is no wonder they keep the Lady Anna veiled. They say in beauty she excels the Duchess Christina as the golden sun excels the silver moon.’

By the way, the Howards sent a little lass called Katherine, to see if we would have her among the new queen’s maids.

Wife 5

Is Walter Irish? He denies it, but you wouldn’t put it past him.

‘I tried to be a tender father to you. I never once struck you.’ ‘You were too busy to strike me.’ ‘Well,’ he says, ‘I suppose I could have delegated it. Come in. The wind is getting up.’

Thousands of acres of England are now released, and the men who lived on them dispersed to the parishes, or to the universities if they are learned: if not, to whatever trade they can find. For their abbots and priors it mostly ends with an annuity, but if necessary with a noose.

‘You know, I think you have never forgiven me. For parting with Wolsey.’ Parting with him? Christ in Heaven. ‘I think you blame me for his death.’

The dead are more faithful than the living. For better or worse, they do not leave you. They last out the longest night.

Henry smiles. ‘I shall go in disguise.’ He closes his eyes.

The subsequent misunderstanding leads to Cromwell’s downfall.

‘He fell back. Any man would have been stricken. She flinched from him. He could not miss it.’

The Howard child has to be nudged; she is gaping at a lutenist with a well-turned leg.