The Mirror and the Light

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2020

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Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

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Part 5Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 5, Chapter 1 Summary: “Ascension Day. Spring-Summer 1539”

Machinations on the continent continue. The Empire and France have signed an agreement. Further, “they swear to make no agreement with England” (542). Few will do business with an excommunicated king, and so Henry makes fortifications to his military: “The message to the world is: we can withstand a sudden invasion, and we can sustain a long war” (543). The practical effect of this alliance is that Henry’s negotiations to marry Christina, the Emperor’s niece, have come to naught. There is talk of Henry marrying Anna of Cleves, a region in Germany wherein the duke, her brother, keeps his own religious views—not papist, but also not strictly Lutheran.

Meanwhile, Cromwell attends to other business. He speaks with Jane Rochford, one of the dead queen’s maids and widow of George Boleyn, about the impending marriage. The maids are eager to know who will be their master—and therefore their security. Rochford mentions that the Howards have sent a new young mistress to attend to the future queen; her name is Katherine. Cromwell suggests she be sent away until matters are settled.

Cromwell takes ill, and his fever is serious enough to cause him hallucinations. He dreams of his youth in Putney, recalling an incident where he may have killed another boy who teased him. His illness keeps him away from a court for a long while, and he finds that he has lost some of his advantage. In speaking with the king about marriage matters, Stephen Gardiner, his long-time rival, is allowed to stay. Cromwell discovers that Parliament—at Gardiner’s urging, alongside others—has passed six articles that track the English church back towards Rome, affirming the miracle of corpus Christi and forbidding priests to marry. The bishops fear speaking freely in their pulpits: “This is what the king calls concord: an enforced silence” (577). Still, Henry schedules a “Water Triumph” to prove he is not a papist. It is a great performance on the river to show a strong England defeating the Roman papists, enacted expressly for the new ambassador from the Holy Roman Empire (578).

Finally, the king arranges a dinner “to reconcile all parties” of his council (580). Shortly into the dinner, Gardiner raises the issue of who might have murdered the bishop that allowed Cardinal Wolsey to step into his post so long ago. He insinuates that the murderer is Cromwell. Norfolk implicitly backs him up, complaining that the Cardinal elevated “false knaves to positions of trust” (583), and Cromwell throttles him at the table. Later, Cromwell promises to bring Gardiner down. He worries that his memories of his youth in Putney have been stirred up by his fever; there are things he would rather forget.

Part 5, Chapter 2 Summary: “Twelfth Night. Autumn 1539”

The matter is settled: The king will marry Anna (to be renamed Anne) of Cleves. Arrangements are made for her travel and arrival in England. The two are to be wed on Twelfth Night, the date of the Epiphany, twelve days after Christmas. All other relevant parties—the Emperor, the French, and the Scots—are displeased with the match. Archbishop Cranmer worries that they have no common language: Anna only speaks German.

Cromwell and Norfolk have reconciled, at least for appearance’s sake. Gardiner has overstepped his bounds with the king—the “six articles that Parliament passed have made him over-confident” (594)—and he is kicked off the council. Still, he plots from afar. Cromwell must “mitigate the damage that Gardiner and his friends will do” (597). Cromwell comforts himself that the rebellion is over, and “the great abbeys died” with it (601).

In the interim, the new queen’s maids gather at court, including young and guileless Katherine Howard and other ladies of prominent families. The gift of a leopard has come to Cromwell, or perhaps the king, from some foreign statesman; the papers have been lost in the journey. The king returns his attention to Mary, now that his own marriage has been settled; she repeats that it is her wish to remain a virgin but that she will ultimately obey her father. Cromwell cautions the king not to believe what others might say about him; the king points out that Cromwell “has few friends” (614). The two reminisce about their fathers, and the king recalls the hard work he and Cromwell have done together over the last decade.

Part 5, Chapter 3 Summary: “Magnificence. January-June 1540”

The king decides, against the wishes of Cromwell and his other advisors, to surprise his new bride as she makes land in England. He goes in disguise as an ordinary gentleman, and when Anna finally recognizes who he is, her look is not welcome: “He fell back. Any man would have been stricken. She flinched from him. He could not miss it,” Cromwell’s son reports (623). Thus, the marriage begins inauspiciously, and the king cannot forget her disapproving look. He refuses to copulate with her, first suggesting that she is no maid—which would engender all manner of trouble in England’s relations with the Germans—then claiming that there are impediments to the marriage, a prior engagement she had been promised. Whatever the case, the disaster is clear: King Henry will not produce any heirs with this queen.

In addition, Cromwell’s ambassador Wyatt has been successful in nudging the Emperor and the king of France apart. While this is potentially good policy for England—it will not have to stand ready to engage in battle with two formidable foes—it is decidedly bad for Cromwell. He urged the union with Anna to cement bonds between Henry and the Germans. Now Anna and her compatriots are accused of secretly harboring Lutheran beliefs, which is as much a heresy as maintaining papist rituals. Henry urges the union between Lady Mary and the Duke of Bavaria, but he is told that Mary will not wed: Norfolk says, “Majesty, your daughter will never marry [...] Cromwell breaks every match proposed for her” (650). Thus, the king’s wishes are frustrated on every front.

Meanwhile, Norfolk’s niece, Katherine Howard, has caught the king’s eye. Cromwell “studies [her]. When a man’s eyes rest on her, which is very often, she ruffles her feathers like a plump little hen” (658). Though Wriothesley cautions Cromwell that Norfolk and Gardiner are plotting something, Cromwell asserts that Norfolk is well within his sights. Eventually, Cromwell takes his revenge, closing the priory where Norfolk’s father and other prided ancestors are buried.

The king requests that Cromwell and Gardiner dine together; he wishes them to reconcile. Norfolk is also present, and his ire sparks a confrontation between the two men. After he storms off, Gardiner cautions Cromwell to watch himself. In addition, the king continues to pressure Cromwell to find some way to dissolve the union between himself and Anna. This time, it is not so simple: There is nothing wrong with Anna or suspect about the legitimacy of the marriage; it is simply that Henry does not love her. It is also decidedly not in Cromwell’s best interest to divest Henry of this marriage. He would lose his allegiance with the Germans, with whom Cromwell mostly agrees on points of scripture. It would likely lead to the elevation of the Howards, as Norfolk would thrust his pretty niece upon the king, and the papists would be back in charge.

Still, the king finally makes Cromwell an earl; thus, he is now Lord Essex. The duties of Master Secretary are to be split between his two most trusted men, Wriothesley and Rafe Sadler. As rumors of the unconsummated marriage spread throughout Europe, there are also tales that Reginald Pole has an army gathered in Ireland to invade. Cromwell has Lord Lisle of Calais arrested for questioning. There are enemies still yet to be deflected.

Cromwell receives news that Gardiner has staged a masque, a form of courtly entertainment, titled “Magnificence,” attacking Cromwell. It is a morality play wherein the common upstart, with his pride and foolishness, harms the commonwealth and gets his comeuppance. The king defends Cromwell and asks him once more to aid him in dissolving his union with Anna. Cromwell replies, “I will do what I can, but if you repudiate the queen, I cannot avert evil consequences” (689). Four days later, he is assaulted by Norfolk and some of the other courtiers before he is arrested and taken to the Tower.

Part 5 Analysis

Allegiances shift, and allies become foes. Cromwell has been aware of this phenomenon throughout his entire career, though he has always been careful to sidestep the most egregious shifting of winds. Cromwell mirrors the king frequently. He begins to limp, feeling a pain in his leg, as if in sympathy with the king’s unhealed wound. The Emperor’s ambassador, Chapuys, also takes lame: He says, “You. Me. Your king [. . .] You would think it was a nation of cripples, Thomas. It's the climate” (550). When Cromwell pushes for the marriage to Anna of Cleves, he emphasizes the wealth of her nation’s natural resources, particularly alum, which is used in many industries of the time. Thus, natural resources forge reasonable allies; however, “[p]erhaps alum is not the foundation of a love match” (553). Foreshadowing the break that is to come, Cromwell emphasizes the king’s weaknesses—the bad leg, the lack of resources—rather than play to his strengths. It is also an ominous sign of the marriage to come.

Just as Anna’s ascension to the throne will be thwarted, so will Cromwell’s continued rise. On Ascension Day—which celebrates the literal ascension of Christ’s body to heaven—Cromwell plans his own take: “He has devised a new order of precedence for the realm, to be enacted by Parliament. From now on, it is not your noble and ancient blood that will place you in the hierarchy. It is what job you do for the king” (559). Cromwell seeks to put himself ever closer to the king, and he turns the religious celebration into a secular opportunity. His subsequent illness and loss of advantage seems timed to punish him for the sin of pride. In his delirium with fever, Cromwell denounces the king’s demands: “This is what Henry does. He uses people up. He takes all they give him and more. When he is finished with them he is noisier and fatter and they are husks or corpses” (563). The king is augmented by the diminishment of others—financially and literally—like Dorian Grey using Cromwell as his unfortunate picture.

While Cromwell worries that “[e]very absent day he loses his advantage” (574), he remembers how, as a soldier in Italy, he let a snake bite him on a bet: “I took the poison and I never died” (575). Yet the serpentine wiles of Gardiner and Norfolk close in around him, as when Gardiner accuses him of murder. He is metaphorically poisoned by venomous associations. Later, he warns the king not to trust what others may say about him, because “they want me displaced, so you may be the worse advised. That is why they try to poison your mind against me” (614). While Cromwell has survived the literal snake bite, he is unable to defend against the malicious sting of gossip.

Arguably, the seeds of Cromwell’s destruction are sown into the foundation of his very existence: being a commoner among courtiers. There are many, like Norfolk, who constantly resent Cromwell’s presence and influence with the king. “Inheritance,” as Cromwell acknowledges, “is a strange thing. No one knows what traces our fathers leave” (609). Cromwell cannot escape the brutal blows of his father Walter, nor can he evade the facts of where he comes from. He often takes pride in it, and there is a common saying about pride: It goeth before the fall. “The higher you rise in the king’s service,” Wriothesley points out, “the more you mention the low place you come from” (609). That the king and Cromwell reminisce about their respective fathers—despite the very different inheritance they received from said men—is ironic. Later, at Westminster Abbey, Cromwell thinks about the Stairway to Heaven: “St. Bernard in a vision saw souls ascending, rung by rung into eternity. [...] It is easy to climb. Harder to know what to do once you’ve got to the top” (657). This is an apt metaphor for the predicament in which Cromwell finds himself; he is at the pinnacle of the ladder, reminded constantly of the fact that he belongs on the lowest rungs.

It is unsurprising that Cromwell notices “the season changing” (670). Cromwell has earlier compared the king to the greatest, purest light in the world—a common trope for kings. There are “sun kings” found across the globe, from France to Egypt to the Americas. The “splintering sunlight” represents the light of the king’s brilliance shifting in different directions (670). Shortly thereafter, Cromwell thinks, “the season changes” (672). Just as Anna must become Anne—“Now she is landlocked as plain Anne, as if the king and all his treasury has not a syllable to spare” (634)—the Earl of Essex reverts back to Cromwell, their fates and fortunes bound together. The masque Magnificence represents the perspective of enemies like Norfolk: “When carters become courtiers, is the burden of it: how the upstart vaunts, how he sins, how the commonwealth is abused. [...] at length Magnificence is brought low, he is beaten and shamed, spoiled of all he has and plunged into poverty” (686). This is what has come to pass for Cromwell: assaulted by the council and stripped of his titles, thrown—as he has thrown so many other traitors—into the Tower.