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

by Hilary Mantel

‘Majesty, your daughter will never marry,’ Norfolk says. ‘Cromwell breaks every match proposed for her.’

‘If the king cannot manage it with the new queen, Cromwell will do it for him. Why not? He does everything else.’ His friend laughs. What alarms him is not their mockery. It is that they take no care to keep their voices low.

‘We know in your heart you wish a more perfect reformation. You believe what we believe.’ He indicates the king, standing at a distance: ‘I believe what he believes.’

Before Norfolk arrives home from France, he has invaded the duke’s own country. He has closed Thetford Priory, where the duke’s forebears lie.

‘No, by the saints,’ Norfolk says, ‘it is you who burdened and chained him. And I tell you, he wants to be free. Have you not seen him looking at my niece? He cast a fantasy to Katherine the first time ever he did see her.’

‘Sir, they will all expect some increase in their wages.’ ‘That is fitting, as they will be serving an earl.’

The last rung up the ladder before the fall.

In the noble city of Ghent, the Emperor sits in a hall draped in black, dealing out fates. He strips the guilds of their privileges, levies a fine, impounds weapons and knocks down part of the walls as well as the principal abbey, announcing that he will build a fortress garrisoned with Spanish troops.

‘Well, it is you who gets it,’ Henry snaps. ‘I know letters come to you, that should come to me. I am obliged to send to your house, and be a suitor for knowledge of my own affairs.

The last conversation with the king.

‘My lord? You must come with these guards.’ He speaks like a man with perfect faith. ‘You will walk with me advisedly. I will hold fast by your side and lead you through the crowd.’

In the doorway, Gardiner says, ‘Adieu, Cromwell.’ He stops. ‘Give me my title.’ ‘You have no title. It’s gone, Cromwell. You are no more than God made you. May He take you to his mercy.’

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.’

‘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.’

‘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.’

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.

‘I am not content with you, Richard Riche. You speak as if I have been a traitor all the years you have known me. Where has your evidence been till now? Did it fall out through a hole in your pocket?’

Before he has been a week in prison, Rafe brings him word of how the Emperor received the news. Charles seemed dumbfounded, dispatches say. ‘What?’ he asked. ‘Cremuel? Are you sure? In the Tower? And by the king’s command?’

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.

“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.

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.’

You think the king ever loved you? No. To him you were an instrument. As I am. A device. You and me, my son Surrey, we are no more to him than a trebuchet, a catapult, or any other engine of war. Or a dog. A dog who has served him through the hunting season. What do you do with a dog, when the season ends? You hang it.’

When they met as grown men, More had not remembered him at all.

Kingston says, ‘Sir, the king grants you mercy as to the manner of your death. It is to be the axe, and may I say that I rejoice to hear it—

‘The Duke of Norfolk has asked that your lordship be informed—the king marries Katherine Howard tomorrow.’

He sends Christophe out to bask in the sunshine: to drink his health, and sit, drowsy, on a wall, among other servants, talking no doubt of the uncertainty of their fortune, with such masters.

Walter kicked his way into the house and shouted for victuals. He was pale and sweating, the witnesses said, but still he fell on a dish of cold meat, all the time vituperating. Next he complained about his dinner, rubbing his chest and saying it had given him a pain; five minutes later he fell face-down on the table.

I mean, do they do good for any dead person? God is watching us all our lives. Surely, if you live as long as Walter, God has formed a view. Unless He always knows.’ ‘That sounds like heresy to me,’ the priest said. ‘Of course it does. It hits your pocket. If God knows his mind, what becomes of your chantries and your rosaries and your fees for a thousand years of Masses?’

I fought other men’s wars, for money, till at last I had the sense to earn it in easier ways: Cremuello at your service, your shadow in a glass.

All your life you tramp the empty road with the wind at your back. You are hungry and your spirit is perturbed as you journey on into the gloom. But when you get to your destination the doorkeeper knows you. A torch goes before you as you cross the court. Inside there is a fire and a flask of wine, there is a candle and beside the candle your book. You pick it up and find your place is marked. You sit down by the fire, open it, and begin your story. You read on, into the night.

It occurs to him that when he is dead, other people will be getting on with their day;

He can imagine Walter beside him, ‘Christ alive, who sold you this axe? They saw you coming! Here, give it to my boy Tom. He’ll put an edge on it.’ He thinks of picking up the axe and felling the headsman, but this is what life does for you in the end; it arranges a fight you can’t win.

He feels for an opening, blinded, looking for a door: tracking the light along the wall. ‘For you perhaps, if as I hope and wish you will live long after me, there will follow a better age. When the darkness is dispelled, our descendants will be able to walk back, into the pure radiance of the past.’ PETRARCH: A

Henry lived for seven years after Cromwell; he was ill, disabled and dangerous. He went to war with France and devalued the currency.

Once Henry had had time to regret Cromwell’s death, he re-granted Gregory a baron’s title. Gregory sometimes appeared at court, but lived quietly at Launde Abbey. He died young, and his wife Elizabeth put up a fine monument which can still be seen in the chapel.

Rafe Sadler stayed in royal service almost to his death, at which point he was around eighty years of age. When he died in 1587, he was said to be the richest commoner in England.

Mary Tudor did eventually marry—her husband was Philip of Spain, the Emperor’s son. Philip spent as little time as possible in England, and Mary died, unhappy, childless and largely unlamented, in 1558. She was succeeded by Elizabeth, the daughter of Anne Boleyn. The dynasty which began its rule on the battlefield at Bosworth in 1485 ended in 1603; Elizabeth was the last of the Tudor line.