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

by Hilary Mantel

‘Alors, perhaps better luck this time,’ the Frenchman says. ‘You must hope so. If I have to come back, I shall increase my fee.’

We all—well, most of us, not Brandon—regret that it had to come to this.

Perhaps the darkness falls away from her in flecks and sparks of light, the roofs and gables like shadows in water; and when she studies the net there is no net, only the spaces between.

‘Gregory,’ Richard says, ‘what we want from you is less theology and more swagger.

The king says, ‘The whole matter has been, as we all know, a difficult and delicate … and you have shown, Thomas, both expedition and firmness.’ He glances around the room. ‘Gentlemen—and ladies too, I may say—have prompted me: Majesty, is it not time Master Cromwell received his deserts? You know I have hesitated to promote you, only because your grip is wanted in the House of Commons. But,’ he smiles, ‘the House of Lords is equally unruly, and wants a master. So, to the Lords you shall go.’

‘I suppose he will be content with Madame Jane a month or two,’ Chapuys says, ‘till his eye lights on some other lady. Then it will be found that Jane has misled him—she was not free to marry after all, as she had some pre-contract with another gentlemen. Yes?’

She cannot believe that Margaret Douglas—the king’s niece, the Queen of Scotland’s daughter—is here to pick up after her.

‘No, not unkind.’ Jane glances up. ‘But my difficulty is, he wants me to do some very strange things. Things I never imagined a wife had to do.’

‘The point is,’ Edward says, ‘this … whatever, his desire, his command … does it conduce to getting a child?’ ‘I wouldn’t have thought so,’ Jane says.

In sum, Chapuys is asking him to destroy the work of four years. To take England back to Rome. To recognise Henry’s first marriage as valid, and the daughter of that marriage as his heir. To break off diplomacy with the German states. To forswear the gospel, embrace the Pope, and bow the knee to idols.

It is true what Wriothesley says: there was a bargain. 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.

The courtiers ask, is it possible, really, that the queen was bedding such a grinning pup as Weston? What can you do but shrug?

‘I know the arrangements,’ Henry says. ‘God knows, Charles, if my councillors did not take retainers and pensions, I would have to pay them myself, and Crumb here would have to find the money.’

If war breaks out, Howards are the people you send for.

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.

And I ask you—a woman, weak in body, weak in will—can she rule, with all the frailty of her sex?

There is only one way. We will have to bring young Richmond forward as my heir. So I put it to you—how will Parliament take it?’

Very ill, he thinks. ‘I believe they will urge your Majesty to trust in God and use your best endeavours to get a son of your marriage.

But then, you are like the cardinal, you can do the work of ten. I often wonder where you come from.’ ‘Putney, Majesty.’ ‘I know that. I mean, I don’t know what makes you as you are. God’s mystery, I suppose,’ Henry says, and leaves it at that.

The duke thrusts out his vast hand. ‘So—friends?’ Allies, he thinks. What will the Duke of Norfolk say?

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.

We shall not escape these weeks. They recapitulate, always varied and always fresh, always doing and never done. When Anne was arrested, every hour had brought him letters from Kingston, the Constable of the Tower. Rafe scrutinised them, marking some, filing others. ‘Sir William says the queen still talks of how the king will send her to a nunnery. Then in the next breath, of how she will go to Heaven, because of the good deeds she has done. He says she keeps laughing. She makes jokes. Says she will be known hereafter as Anne the Headless.’ ‘Poor woman,’ Wriothesley said. ‘I doubt she will be known at all.’

‘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?

He was not sure if he had spoken aloud. George did not seem to think so.

‘Be careful,’ Wyatt says. ‘You are on the brink of explaining yourself.’

Wyatt says, ‘It is a pretty story, how a cat brought my father food. I never believed it, even when I was a child. I thought, it is a tale for children who are simpler than me. But now I see what it is to be locked away. Prisoners believe all sorts of things. A cat will come and save us. Thomas Cromwell will come with the key.’

ice. So I shall follow you as the gosling its mother. Or as Dante followed Virgil. Even to the underworld.’

‘I doubt I’ll be going further than the south coast this summer. Perhaps down to the Isle of Wight.’

‘I mean, one of these days,’ Gregory says. ‘It’s no treason to say all men are mortal.’ ‘No, but it’s not your best idea either.’

Worse was done, than was ever admitted. I would have punished her more straitly.’ How? he wonders. What would you have done, sir? Hacked her head off with a rusty kitchen knife? Burned her with green wood?

For six or seven years, male children live with the women. Then without choice or discussion, one day they are plucked away, their hair cropped so their ears are always cold, and thrust into the sullen world where everyone finds fault and visits punishment, and until you are married there is no kindness unless you pay for it.

There is not a man in the nation who will lift a finger for her claim.’ He nods; this much is true.

Richmond says, ‘If my lord cardinal were still alive, he would have made me king. He advised that I should be King of Ireland, did he not? In this pass, he would have wanted me to be King of England too.’

He writes, and he thinks no one reads; but friends of Lucifer look into his book.

if she has entertained some notion that I will creep back to Rome, she is a greater fool than I thought her.

what you do not see, what none of you seems to understand, is that I love my daughter. I think of all my children dead in the cradle, or dead before they saw the light. If I lose Mary, what have I? Ask yourselves … what comfort have I in this breathing world but her?’

‘I think he wants you to kill her,’ Edward Seymour says.

Henry is the site, his body the locus, the blood and bile and phlegm; his burdened and oppressed flesh the place where all arguments come to rest.

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.’

When the wings of Icarus melted, he fell soundless through the air and into the water; he went in with a whisper, and feathers floated on the surface, on the flat and oily sea. Why do we blame Daedalus for the fall, and only remember his failures? He invented the saw, the hatchet and the plumbline. He built the Cretan labyrinth.

He punches a pillow away, as if it were interfering with his rights.

My fellow physicians have shown me where, in the writings of the ancients, such cases are described—young girls who are fervent, studious, given to fantasies, and prone to starving themselves if forced into any course that does not suit. They are virgins, and there lies their disease—if their single state is prolonged, they will see ghosts, and attempt to hang and drown themselves.’ ‘Oh, I should say we are clear from that.’

‘Love conquers all?’ Poor gentle creature, she bends her head. ‘With respect, my lord, love couldn’t conquer a gosling. It couldn’t knock a cripple down. It couldn’t beat an egg.’

‘But did he know how he would be laughed at?’ Lady Rochford asks. ‘His clothes, his verses, his manhood? He must live with his shame now, and you must live with him. You will have to build him up again, as you can. You and the Seymours.’ ‘Build him up? He is King of England.’ ‘But is he a man?’ She laughs.

The cardinal, in his days as master of the realm, had spoken of God as if He were a distant policy adviser from whom he heard quarterly: gnomic in his pronouncements, sometimes forgetful, but worth a retainer on account of his experience.

There must be slates chalked, and ink set to page, and money made and bargains struck, and we must give the poor the means to work and eat. I bear in mind that there are cities abroad where the magistrates have done much good, with setting up hospitals, relieving the indigent, helping young tradesmen with loans to get a wife and a workshop. I know Luther turns his face from what ameliorates our sad condition. But citizens do not miss monks and their charity, if the city looks after them. And I believe, I do believe, that a man who serves the commonweal and does his duty gets a blessing for it, and I do not believe—’

He thinks, if wishes were death, I would be superfluous to the state.

Can God be baked into bread? When we consume the host, why do we not hear the cracking of his bones? Is he still God, when he churns in our guts? And what if a dog eats him, is he still God then?

For the comfort of the poor and sick, Henry will need to refound the hospitals that the monks used to run, and he will need ten thousand marks to get that under way. Then he plans to ask for five thousand marks for employing men without work to mend the highways.

He keeps a waxen Henry in the corner of his imagination, painted in bright colours and fitted with gilt shoes. He lives with it but he doesn’t talk to it. He is afraid it will answer back.