'If you cannot speak truth at a beheading, when can you speak it?' England, May 1536. Anne Boleyn is dead, decapitated in the space of a heartbeat by a hired French executioner. As her remains are bundled into oblivion, Thomas Cromwell breakfasts with the victors. The blacksmith's son from Putney emerges from the spring's bloodbath to continue his climb to power and wealth, while his formidable master, Henry VIII, settles to short-lived happiness with his third queen, Jane Seymour. Cromwell is a man with only his wits to rely on - he has no great family to back him, no private army. Despite rebellion at home, traitors plotting abroad and the threat of invasion testing Henry's regime to breaking point, Cromwell's robust imagination sees a new country in the mirror of the future. But can a nation, or a person, shed the past like a skin? Do the dead continually unbury themselves? What will you do, the Spanish ambassador asks Cromwell, when the king turns on you, as sooner or later he turns on everyone close to him? With The Mirror and the Light, Hilary Mantel brings to a triumphant close the trilogy she began with Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies. She traces the final years of Thomas Cromwell, the boy from nowhere who climbs to the heights of power, offering a defining portrait of predator and prey, of a ferocious contest between present and past, between royal will and a common man's vision - of a modern nation making itself through conflict, passion and courage.
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This eBook first published in Great Britain by 4th Estate 2020
Copyright © Tertius Enterprises Ltd 2020
Hilary Mantel asserts her moral right to be identified as the author of this work
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Source ISBN: 9780007480999
Ebook Edition © March 2020 ISBN: 9780007481095
Version: 2020-02-18
Dedication
Contents
Cast of Characters
Family Trees
PART ONE
I Wreckage (I). London, May 1536
II Salvage. London, Summer 1536
III Wreckage (II). London, Summer 1536
PART TWO
I Augmentation. London, Autumn 1536
II The Five Wounds. London, Autumn 1536
III Vile Blood. London, Autumn–Winter 1536
PART THREE
I The Bleach Fields. Spring 1537
II The Image of the King. Spring–Summer 1537
III Broken on the Body. London, Autumn 1537
PART FOUR
I Nonsuch. Winter 1537– Spring 1538
II Corpus Christi. June–December 1538
III Inheritance. December 1538
PART FIVE
I Ascension Day. Spring–Summer 1539
II Twelfth Night. Autumn 1539
III Magnificence. January–Hune 1540
PART SIX
I Mirror. June–July 1540
II Light. 28 July 1540
Author’s Note
Acknowledgements
Cast of Characters
The recently dead
Anne Boleyn, Queen of England.
Her supposed lovers:
George Boleyn, Viscount Rochford, her brother.
Henry Norris, chief of the king’s privy chamber.
Francis Weston and William Brereton, gentlemen in the king’s circle.
Mark Smeaton, musician.
The Cromwell household
Thomas Cromwell, later Lord Cromwell, Secretary to the king, Lord Privy Seal, and Vicegerent in Spirituals: that is, the king’s deputy in the English church.
Gregory, his son, only surviving child of his marriage to Elizabeth Wyks.
Mercy Prior, his mother-in-law.
Rafe Sadler, his chief clerk, brought up within the family: later in the king’s household.
Helen, Rafe’s wife.
Richard Cromwell, his nephew, married to Frances Murfyn.
Thomas Avery, household accountant.
Thurston, chief cook.
Dick Purser, keeper of the guard dogs.
Jenneke, Cromwell’s daughter. (Invented character)
Christophe, a servant. (Invented character)
Mathew, a servant, formerly of Wolf Hall. (Invented character)
Bastings, the bargemaster. (Invented character)
The king’s family and household
Henry VIII.
Jane Seymour, his third wife.
Edward, her infant son, born 1537: heir to the throne.
Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Richmond: Henry’s illegitimate son by Elizabeth Blount; married to Mary Howard, daughter of the Duke of Norfolk.
Mary, Henry’s daughter by Katherine of Aragon: excluded from the succession after her parents’ marriage is declared invalid.
Elizabeth, Henry’s infant daughter by Anne Boleyn: excluded from the succession after his second marriage is declared invalid.
Anna, sister of Duke Wilhelm of Cleves: Henry’s fourth wife.
Katherine Howard, maid of honour to Anna: Henry’s fifth wife.
Margaret Douglas, Henry’s niece: daughter of the king’s sister Margaret by her second husband, Archibald Douglas, Earl of Angus; brought up at Henry’s court.
William Butts, physician.
Walter Cromer, physician.
John Chambers, physician.
Hans Holbein, artist.
Sexton, known as ‘Patch’: a jester, formerly in Wolsey’s household.
The Seymour family
Edward Seymour, eldest son, married to Anne (Nan) Stanhope.
Lady Margery Seymour, his mother.
Thomas Seymour, his younger brother.
Elizabeth, his sister, widow of Sir Anthony Oughtred, later married to Gregory Cromwell.
Politicians and clergy
Thomas Wriothesley, known as Call-Me-Risley, Clerk of the Signet: former protégé of Gardiner, later attached to Cromwell.
Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, ambassador to France: formerly Cardinal Wolsey’s Secretary, later the Secretary to the king, displaced by Cromwell.
Richard Riche, Speaker of the House of Commons, Chancellor of the Court of Augmentations.
Thomas Audley, Lord Chancellor.
Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury.
Robert Barnes, a Lutheran cleric.
Hugh Latimer, reformist Bishop of Worcester.
Richard Sampson, Bishop of Chichester, a canon lawyer and conservative.
