Brilliant execution
Hilary Mantel ends her trilogy of Tudor novels centred on Thomas Cromwell in stunning fashion.
London, 1536, and Thomas Cromwell, common-born adviser to Henry VIII, has cemented his place as the king’s right hand with the trial and execution of Anne Boleyn. Now in the fullness of his pomp as Lord Privy Seal – which, if anything, only intensifies the blatant disdain of the nobles surrounding him – Cromwell has hopes of keeping his monarch and country on an upward path.
But he’s increasingly conscious that his political and religious achievements are fragile, that the burden of Tudor succession rests heavily upon the mild Jane Seymour, and that royalty is not a force to be trifled with. As he records in his private Book of Henry: “Do not turn your back on the king. This is not just a matter of protocol.” Momentarily he pauses, then adds: “Try and keep cheerful.”
The definitively final appearance for this particular reincarnation of Cromwell, The Mirror and the Light, is in every way a capstone to Hilary Mantel’s unprecedented double-Booker-Prize-winning Tudor saga: ornate and literally massive, beating even trilogy opener Wolf Hall for sheer heft at nearly 900 pages. It’s what initiates have waited eight years for, the luxury of one last total immersion in the unique atmosphere of Mantel’s Tudor England – as much a state of mind as a moment in time, bringing together ferocious realpolitik, religion and reformation, and the elaborate, almost alien mental universe of the common folk from whence Cromwell sprang.
Elevated though he might be, “my lord Cromwell” remains a political streetfighter and ruthless éminence grise, prompting an inward cheer from the reader with every presumptuous toff he lays low. But his mind is increasingly on building his legacy and settling accounts with his past. The Mirror and the Light flashes back frequently to his service with Cardinal Wolsey
(first recounted in Wolf Hall), his harsh upbringing as a blacksmith’s son and his wanderings through the battlefields and trading houses of Europe. Where the last two novels saw Cromwell energetically steering England towards his vision of the future, the effort is now telling on him. He’s ageing, widowed, short of allies, marked deeply by his bloody triumph in orchestrating Boleyn’s downfall and about to face a supreme challenge to his skills as a statesman and instincts as a political survivor.
There’s some risk of spoiling the conclusion of Cromwell’s story in New Zealand, rather than in Mantel’s home country, where the finer details of Henry VIII’s reign are better known – but in any case, the lasting wonder of The Mirror and the Light and its predecessors comes from unpicking the path of history and reweaving it precisely in place, so it occurs sentence by sentence, as if the situation is about to turn before the reader’s eyes.
Whatever knowledge you might bring with you of what happened is carried away by the overwhelming sensation of now. Sometimes this is a story about succession, religion and power plays; sometimes it’s the story of a painting or rumours of folkloric giants marching on London; but it’s all continually moving, seemingly rippling with life as each line of near-hypnotic prose falls into place.
Is this a rave? It’s hard to be less than astonished in the face of what Mantel has achieved. Anyone who has hung on with bated breath since the release of Bring Up the Bodies will find the promise of the previous two instalments made good. The Mirror and the Light successfully caps off a series for which expectations couldn’t have been higher and fully earns its magisterial length and intricate drawing together of the trilogy’s recurring themes and the threads of Cromwell’s life. There’s nothing more you could wish for, except, impossibly, for this not to be the end.
Cromwell prompts an inward cheer from the reader with every presumptuous toff he lays low.