In the Shadow of Lions Read online

  “The Tablets of Destiny,” he said. “It was last seen in the days of ancient Mesopotamia. It is referenced in the Bible, though never by its name.”

  My fingers were raised above the keypad but didn’t move.

  “Names have power,” he said. “The past has power. The two meet in this book. No one among you will be allowed to know its full contents until the Day.”

  My fingers were still immobile.

  “Two thousand years ago, on an island infested with fleas and thieves and the condemned,” he said, “a dying man was allowed to see the invisible world. He recorded this vision in the book that came to be called The Revelation. He saw that every church has an angel, every nation has an angel, and every child has an angel.”

  My fingers had begun to move.

  “But there was one class of angels he could not see. There are archangels, the strangest and fiercest of us who remain always near the women. Every bloodline of women has been followed by the same archangel since the beginning of the line. The angel of your line has watched you grow from a child into a woman, and he knows your past far beyond what is told to you by your mother and aunts. He knows who your women were, and who you can become.”

  He stroked the book lovingly and its hinges sprang open, the pages fluttering and turning, settling at last on a dark page. It looked brown from age or heat, its edges crumbling and flaking onto his leg. The ink was faded, almost to the color of the page, and I couldn’t make out the words or language, though it was ornately drawn.

  He sighed and touched the page. “These words die. They have not been spoken for so long.”

  “Long ago, in the kingdom you call England, under the reign of King Henry VIII, there lived two women. One loved God, one hated Him, and neither knew Him. Both women, however, heard tell of a book, a dangerous book. When it touched the world around them, it burned all to the ground. When it touched the women, it consumed everything they had built their lives around, until all that is left of them today is rumor and innuendo. For this reason you are brought to this story, for the women of your past have seen this book and its great power. They bought it for you with their lives and know that it is watching you, listening, waiting….”

  The ink of the words grew darker, and the page began to turn brighter. He smiled and stroked the words.

  I continued to type as he closed his eyes and began. His voice moved all around me and multiplied, changing. I began to see as he saw, the people and voices coming together as my fingers stayed on the keyboard, flying to keep up with the vision as it unfolded….

  Chapter Three

  The rain made the April air cold. Water ran in ripples down the path that led to the church with a crucifix hoisted above the door, Christ’s bleeding arms outstretched as thunder punctuated the voices of men digging with shovels. The despised Grimbald stood to their right, his candlebox giving them a palsied light as they worked. The rain had let up enough that the flame was in no danger.

  She saw they had kicked over the headstone, dragging it away and throwing the dirt over it as they worked. She heard the shovel strike wood and the men growl with pleasure. They dropped ropes to a boy, who shimmied through the mud to the coffin and worked to secure the ropes around each end.

  She crept closer to watch, careful to let the trees shield her in her shame. Blood had clotted on the underside of her dress, soaking through to the final outer layer of the skirt. The rain had dispensed with it well enough, but he would get no further remembrance of her body. She cursed her body, and the rain, for soiling the last thing on earth she had. The dress was blue silk, an illicit treasure she had found in an untended parcel outside a gentleman’s house. Silk was forbidden for her class to wear, so she found the courage to wear it only on her worst days. Some woman had a beautiful life; this dress was its proof. As she slid into a stranger’s dress, she willed that woman’s good fortune to befall her.

  One man wore the robes of a statesman: golden damask and linen, with an ermine collar around his cloak that she could smell from where she was. The rain was unkind to the rich and poor alike, for it made the poor cold and the rich stink.

  Another man wore scarlet robes of a thickly done fabric, with a gold chain looping at his neck and a cross swinging from his breast—a cardinal from the church. She recognized him, her knees going soft, sinking her into the buried memories. She remembered the last time she saw him as he proceeded down the London streets, boys carrying gilded silver crosses running ahead and children begging alms running behind. He would always stare straight ahead, oblivious to both cross and hunger. But she knew his secret.

  He commanded the men at their work, simple men from nearby, probably Southwark, who had no qualms about raising a man if it meant they drank well later. One man jammed an iron into the casket, prying it open. The cardinal peered into it, shoulder to shoulder with the statesman. They looked at each other and conversed.

  “Set a stake.”

  The boy ran to fetch the stake as the diggers pierced the earth, rending a deep hole to set the stake in, filling it back with dirt and rocks, testing the stake to see if it would hold the body. Grimbald hauled chains to the foot of the stake and waited while the men lifted the man from the coffin. She watched in horror as a priest, dead and limp, rose in front of her from the dark pit where death’s seal had been broken. His priestly robes were rotted, hanging in loose shreds, some staining making the holy inscriptions unreadable. His eye sockets were sunken and black, and his mouth hung open stiffly, as if he had one last word to preach.

  The statesman and cardinal motioned for them to stop, and approached.

  “The knife,” the statesman said, his palm extended to the cardinal.

  The cardinal hesitated, then produced a knife from his cloak and laid it across the open palm. “Sir Thomas,” he replied, looking as if the knife was as foul as the corpse.

  He obviously had no appetite for this work. But Sir Thomas did. He licked his lips and breathed on the knife, rubbing it on his robes so it flashed like lightning before it struck.

  “Ecclesia non novit sanguinem,” More said. He walked to the body, kneeling before it, stroking the face with the blade. “‘Now also is the axe laid unto the root of the trees: so that every tree which bringeth forth not good fruit, shall be hewn down, and cast into the fire.’”

  He plunged the knife parallel to the body and up, slicing the holy robes off, tossing them into a pile behind him. He grabbed the hat that had identified the man as a priest of God and jerked it away with such force that the head turned almost backward.

  The corpse’s open mouth faced her, as if his last words were for her. She narrowed her eyes and felt hate. She would not forgive a priest.

  He took the knife and lifted the head closer. Cradling the head in one of his arms as if the man were a fallen friend, he dragged the knife across the rotting flesh of the skull, scraping clean hair and bits of skin. He dropped the head, and it made a sucking thud as it hit the wet earth. Next he lifted the dead man’s fingers, scraping the knife against each one.

  “You have betrayed the anointing of your office, and it is removed.” Sir Thomas stood.

  She bowed her head. God’s punishment had found this man only in death. She feared her own would be slow in coming too. She wanted it now.

  “Come brothers, good men of God, and curse this heretic! Send him to hell that he may trouble us no more!”

  The men came round and mumbled uncertain words, until More shouted above them: “Poena Damni. You are sentenced to the eternal night, where their worm does not die and the fire does not go out.”

  All spit on the dead man, and the boy darted in to secure the body to the stake with the irons. They stacked bundles of wood and kindling against the base, building up until the wood touched the man’s breast.

  “The rain has stopped that we may finish the work,” More said. “God be praised.”

  Grimbald, the parish priest who had betrayed her, took the sinking candle from its box and set th
e wood on fire. It snapped from branch to branch, consuming the body with great speed, death having drained it of much fluid by this night.

  No one spoke as they watched the body sag into the flames and disappear.

  When the flames began to concentrate their efforts at the base of the stake, they knew the body was no more. More grabbed the iron and ran it into the fire, over and over, until it hit upon what he wanted. He withdrew it, the skull sticking to one end. He crushed it under his boot with a fierce strike, grinding it down, grunting as it resisted in places.

  “Boy.”

  The boy ran to him.

  “Scrape the shards into a bucket and dump them into the river. Do not wait for morning. The rain may grow heavy again.”

  “Sir Thomas?” the boy asked.

  More beckoned him closer and knelt to hear him. “You have done well tonight, my friend.” He touched the boy’s cheek. “You will make your father proud.” He slipped the boy a thick silver groat as payment.

  “But Sir Thomas,” the boy asked, “what was his crime?”

  More smiled. “Throwing pearls to pigs.”

  The boy ran off to complete his work. While the men moved to gather their supplies and disperse, the cardinal and More began discussing something quietly between them that she couldn’t hear from her hiding place. They were walking to their horses and mounting as a new slate of rain broke above them.

  His words displaced her cold repulsion with another grief, a slow, sinking guilt. His words forced themselves down her throat so that she gagged, grasped her neck, and fell to her knees. Guilt swarmed in her roiling stomach as a thousand accusations worked their way into her blood. She retched as she forced herself to her knees and to stand.

  She timed it just right, staggering onto the path in front of the men on horseback, who with a smart spur had forced the horses into a dead run to beat the returning rain. She wore her best gown for this moment. Bloodstained and broken, she lurched onto the path, lifting her arms to embrace the relief of her death, lifting her angry face to heaven as the horses bore down, their hooves lifting to strike the beautiful blow. She wanted to die here, where the bleeding Christ and His cardinal would both be witnesses, and see what their work had accomplished.

  Swift arms encircled her, lowering her to the ground as the hooves thundered all around her head. He lay upon her, absorbing the strikes on his back, his tears washing hers away….

  When she awoke she tasted her lips. They had the taste of another’s tears, and she could smell her son again.

  I stopped him there. He was ready to turn the page.

  “Wait!”

  He raised his metallic eyes and looked at me.

  “Whose arms? Did he die when the horses hit him? Why could she smell her son? Why did they burn a dead priest?”

  He began to turn the page again. “I tell this story as I choose.”

  “I’ll write it as I please! Haven’t you ever heard the law of Chekov’s Gun? ‘If you plant a gun in the first act, it better go off in the third.’ I’m telling you, readers will spend the rest of the story wondering who those arms were attached to, so you better tell them, or just leave that part out. I’m not going to write a sloppy book.”

  “You’re going to write the truth,” he replied. “Do you like fish?”

  Chapter Four

  At the next moment we were in the lobby, staring at an aquarium of gorgeous blue and yellow cichlids, devilishly fat fish that would eat us if they were any bigger. They zipped around the tank and darted away when we pressed our faces near.

  “What do they see?” he asked me.

  “A distortion,” I replied. “A distortion of the world beyond them.”

  He smiled, and the blood drained from my legs again. I wished he wouldn’t do that.

  “What do we see?” he asked.

  “We see everything. And we control the lighting, the food, the temperature, their tankmates. We scare them when they see us, but they don’t see us clearly. They don’t understand who we are.”

  “So they don’t know the truth?” he asked.

  “Their truth is not the truth,” I said.

  We walked back to my room, though how I had arrived at the tank I couldn’t remember. We passed Crazy Betty’s room, and he walked in as I grimaced. Mercifully, Betty was sleeping deeply, a marvel of pharmaceutical intervention. Mariskka told me that Betty’s blood type was B positive, because she usually came in positive for barbiturates. She had been scheduled for surgery last May and was put on a diet of nothing but clear liquids the day before as they prepped her. Mariskka found her in the courtyard drinking pilfered vodka a few hours later. She had protested that it was clear.

  He adjusted her covers that had begun to slip down and looked around the room. Seeing the blanket across the chair, he motioned for me to grab it. I handed it to him, and he draped it over her.

  “It’s too cold in here,” he said. “She has bad dreams when she’s cold. Mariskka blames the drugs and never checks the thermostat.”

  We walked back to my room, where he continued the story.

  “The one on the path with her was Aryeh, the guardian of her line. He is more lion than angel, but these things are hard to explain in your words. She smelled her son because Aryeh had held him.”

  “An angel held her son? So is he dead?”

  “Let the story continue,” he replied.

  “How can I be her heir if her son died?”

  The words glowed like burning coals, and I heard a noise like a broken bow being dragged across violin strings. The words strained against the page. I could see them rising up. I swallowed and sat back, my fingers returning to the keyboard.

  She came to in a large bed with an embroidered coverlet, in a room of tapestries and tables laid with pitchers of wine and a bowl of dried apple rings. She could hear the soft warblings of a lute being strangled, its player having not much skill, and children’s laughter.

  An elderly man, possibly a doctor because of his thick spectacles and a faint odour of vinegar, pulled the coverlet up around her shoulders and patted her cheek, having a few whispered words at the door with a younger man. She could remember nothing but images: her son, a great horse bearing down on her, his cold snorting breath clouding her vision of his rider, and … something else. A warmth, a cocooning sleep in which she felt nothing but peace.

  The younger man approached her, his hands behind his back, his face fleshy and soft, with rough whiskers all around his cheeks. He had a peasant’s broad nose and whip-thin lips. He eyes were wide and brown, much like the eyes of a boy, with thick lashes … eyes that lingered innocently, revealing no fear or desire.

  “What is your name?” he asked.

  “Rose.”

  “Rose, I am Sir Thomas More, and this is my home. Do you know how you arrived here?”

  The name disturbed her, but she could not think why. She could only remember those last moments. “I threw myself in front of your horse, and you saved me.”

  “No,” he said, frowning. “I quite trampled you. In my horror, I could not turn the horse fast enough, my reflexes being frozen. But you survived, though you have lost much blood. To my poor mind, it is a miracle, God’s work.”

  Rose turned her face to the wall. Little images strung themselves together—beads of thought and memory making an unbroken line at last, and she groaned. The blood was not from the horse.

  “Why did you want to die?” he asked.

  “Because I could not afford a pilgrimage,” she replied, thankful to be facing the wall so the sarcasm would show itself only in the turn of her mouth. “And I was wearied of my sin.”

  “My child.”

  The words carried such tenderness that she turned to him. He was so kind. Had she witnessed the burning, or was that a dream? The man she saw was too tender and soft to commit such strange violence.

  “Do you have a home?” he asked.

  “I am an orphan.”

  “You are not married or betrothed?�
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  “No. I have never known a man’s love,” Rose lied. It was true.

  He was silent for a moment. “You will stay on with us as a house servant. If your great passion for God is matched in obedience to men, you will find this day to be the happiest moment of fortune to befall you.” He smiled at her. “I am a gentle master. You will have no harsh treatment and the best of provision. This is a home of great peace.”

  She hardened her eyes and watched him. He was a man, despite all his words. And men didn’t keep promises to helpless women. Not without some enticement. She waited for the flicker of his eyes as she lay there, the upturning of a corner of his mouth.

  She could see nothing, and it made her want to vomit. He was treating her as he would a proper woman, a clean one.

  “I cannot accept this grace,” she whispered. “You must send me from here.”

  He moved as if to touch and reassure her, but she saw his muscles twitch and reverse, a set coming to his mouth as his hands returned behind his back. “You must rest.”

  He left and she turned back to the wall. These waking moments were as strange and terrible to her as the dreamed ones. The memory of something pressed against her as the horses thundering overhead returned.

  “Let me die,” she whispered. No one answered.

  With her eyes closing, stray golden hairs on her gown caught her attention but did not hold it as she sank into her dreams. Once in the night she awoke and sat up. She sensed someone’s eyes upon her, but the room was dark and the candle extinguished. She was not afraid.

  “You’re showing this story to me because I want to die too?” I yelled at him. “You think I’ll root for her to live, and remember everything good I have left to live for, that I’ll skip out of here and head straight to some It’s a Wonderful Life matinee?”