In the Shadow of Lions Page 3

  “You don’t want to die,” he said, still sitting in his chair. His shadow rose above him on the wall, growing larger, with wings spreading out, touching each of the walls surrounding me. “You want to run away. The afterlife is not a place for cowards.”

  Fear dripped from my heart to my stomach. “I don’t want to do this anymore. I just want to die.”

  “You don’t want to live,” he said. “They are not the same. Death is no escape.”

  “Let me die!” I screamed, throwing the computer on the floor. The screen went black. “What’s the use of writing a book if I’m going to die?”

  “Perhaps you never really loved words,” he replied.

  He waved his hands over the Tablets of Destiny and another story sprang to life. I got a flash of my book, sitting on top of a best-sellers list with people lined up to buy it. One face in the crowd saw me, too. I reached out to him, but the vision fled back into the pages, and the other story leapt into action again.

  “Wait! Fix it!” I screamed, pointing to the computer.

  He shrugged. “Call customer support.”

  I scrambled for the bedside table, finding a pen but no paper. I wrote what I saw next on my bedsheet. I would have to move on to the walls before he paused again.

  Within weeks Rose had established herself among the servants as a relentless worker, a woman who accepted work from the hand of her master without complaint. It saved her the grief of talking to anyone. She rose first in the servants’ quarters, washing her neck and face, pinning up her hair, and being away before the others woke.

  Sir Thomas moved her from laundry and feeding the animals to tending his children. It horrified her. Their high voices and quick little movements, like a pack of young rabbits who knew nothing of the world of blood and terror just beyond their door. Their innocence made her worry that at any moment she would be discovered and turned out. She wondered that they could not smell the past as she could, her sins that had decayed and piled up. She could no more be free of them than these children could perceive such a woman existed.

  Sir Thomas had built a world for them where suffering was light and food was fresh and no one was damned at birth. Children all over London were whipped for disobediences. Sir Thomas believed in whipping, he said, and produced a peacock’s feather to punish the children with. He was too casual about their innocence, and it made her nervous. He did not know how it could be shattered.

  Being utterly unnerved by the children, she unwittingly became a good mistress to them, watching them constantly so they would not stumble and touch her. She resolved their squabbles so there would be no need for tears and the hugs those required.

  Sir Thomas bragged about her often to those who came to the home. “This is Mistress Rose, a poor child plucked from the streets of London, fatherless, motherless, but with a heart of devotion to Christ. I have seen no other maid give such love and care to my children.”

  Sometimes his eyes rested not so much on the children but on Rose. She always averted her face. His gaze made her stomach leap. Sometimes she thought he would speak something more, something just for her, but he moved on each time, with his hands behind his back, returning with his guests to the parlor. It was a stupid thing, she knew, to have desire for a man, but she had not known her heart was still alive. She had forgotten its language.

  The gentlemen would nod and move on with him, and the muscles in her back would release, so that she slumped down and caught a full breath. He would never suspect he had left a fool in charge of his children. There could be nothing to fear from her past, either. Sir Thomas never brought men from filthy Southwark into his home. No one who knew her could ever cross that threshold, save for one, and his name had never been mentioned. Still, at the first blooming of the hawthorn in a few weeks, she would tie a bundle above the door to keep that evil out.

  She stiffened as one of the children grabbed her hand, leading her into the garden after breakfast. There were rows of fruit trees, entire plots of herbs and vegetables for the kitchen, ornaments and flowering bushes, whose blossoms the gardener clipped often to fill the house until it smelled of nothing but roses and kitchen stews, children and drying apples. The sun was not unkind as it burned, making the garden stretch and grow. There were grand trees, yew and beech, with drooping leaves that the children sought refuge under before dinner. She listened to them recite their psalters and poetry as the squirrels dashed past them, maniacally stripping the bark from the yew trees.

  “Aye, your father is a great believer in God,” she commented.

  Margaret piped up first, her earnest face already showing a woman’s frown lines above her brow. “God is everything to Father. There is nothing besides God, is there?”

  Rose swallowed so she could lie with a distracting smile. “No, indeed. You must always remember that. There is nothing besides God, and God is within these gates.”

  Gardeners worked around them, and she watched them saw and clip the errant branches, burning the refuse. She had never seen a garden, never watched as it was tended. She marveled that their violence produced such beauty, how order was established with the sweep of a blade, making all things more perfect. She had developed an eye for their work, seeing the stray branch that searched for its own light as a nuisance, marking it in her head to point out to the gardeners.

  Margaret came and sat beside her. “Father was going to be a priest.”

  Rose scooted away.

  “He was going to be a priest, but he fell in love with a beautiful girl. She was our mother. She died.”

  Rose stopped herself from the quick reply on her tongue. Perhaps the children knew a blush of life’s secrets, of the suffering that found them all. “I am sorry,” she said.

  Margaret moved closer. “Father remarried. A nasty woman named Dame Alice. You probably won’t meet her for ages. She’s always away, spending money. She has furious fits, saying she must escape this prison and go into the city for some shopping. She comes home with enormous packages and shrieks about cheating merchants and scandalous prices.”

  It made Rose laugh.

  Margaret looked up and laughed too. “Father says money never makes anyone happy.” She stood and ran back off to play.

  That surprised Rose. The chasm between the two worlds of London shrank.

  Her monthly bleeding had begun again, and she felt her past fading. The other servants treated her as an equal, and the children made no distinction between her and the others, except that they loved her more because she never spat on her sleeves to tend to their faces. Perhaps the past could be forgotten, she thought, like a dream that terrorizes but is swept away by light and time … so one only remembers the dread of it, and later, not even that. At night she listened as the other servants dreamed. There was Manny, the pastry cook, a fluffy little woman with doughy cheeks and long white hair that she swirled on top of her head like a meringue, who dreamed aloud of missing ingredients and mice in the larder. And Candice, the tutor, who had nightmares of wrestling with letters that would not stand straight, her vowels running away on the page into a wild life of their own.

  It was these murmurings, their nightmares, that finally broke open her heart to this place. If its terrors were no more than mice and ruined parchments, Rose would live here forever. She did not believe in God, or grace, but they were here, and she agreed to live among them. Rose knew pleasure for the first time, and the absence of shame. It was a wine that made her heart light, and it did not turn sour in the dark hours of the morning. With her baby saved, and her safely in Sir Thomas’s house, the past was a washed, clean thing that could trouble her no more.

  Margaret, the oldest child, was stealing glances at Rose while they ate. Rose tried to ignore it. Margaret whispered something to the server, who set an extra bowl of porridge before Rose.

  “Why do you give me this?”

  “Margaret seeks to elevate your status in the house.”

  “With porridge?”

  “By law, you may not
eat as many courses as the children, for they are children of Sir Thomas, a member of the king’s court,” he whispered, pushing to her the crockery filled with the porridge of oatmeal, beef, and thyme.

  They saw Margaret watching them intensely, and Rose shook her head, pointing to her full bowl of pottage as evidence of the girl’s machinations.

  Margaret giggled and went back to her own pottage.

  “It’s useless,” the server told her. “She’s a wild one. Besides, you look very much like Sir Thomas’s first wife, when she was in the bloom of health. Goodness mercy, but he loved her.”

  Just then the server’s face went white, and he hurried away from the table. Rose turned and saw that Sir Thomas was in the room. He cleared his throat, beginning to recite the morning psalters, but Margaret raised her hand.

  “Yes?”

  “Father, Rose needs a hornbook.”

  Sir Thomas did not reply.

  “She must learn her letters so she can read to us in the garden,” Margaret said, her voice getting higher. “She desires this greatly.”

  “Margaret!” Rose’s voice was too sharp. Everyone was staring at her, and she had to say more. “It is time to devote ourselves to prayer, not speak of earthly desires.”

  Sir Thomas stroked his chin and did not draw his customary deep breath before beginning the prayers. “Margaret, I have stirred many nests by daring to educate my girls. I see you have inherited my bent for revolution.” Margaret grinned at him. “Rose will have a hornbook, and you yourself may tutor her.”

  Rose tapped her foot and stuffed a spoonful of porridge into her mouth. She had never seen a real book until coming here and regarded them with a bit of suspicion. Only the wealthiest knew how to read, and their books were done in Latin. One book could cost four year’s wages for a common man, and there were no common men who could read.

  Christ had held a book too. It beckoned them all to a cross. Why Sir Thomas brought books to his children she did not know. They smelled of leather cords binding down the washed linen, stretched tight across a wood frame to receive the dark ink. To her, it was the stench of death.

  “Rose, you may kiss me in gratitude, but only once.”

  Margaret beamed at her, a flicker of mischief in her eyes. Rose looked around the room, and everyone was staring at her.

  “Come, hurry, let’s not miss our psalters,” Margaret said.

  Rose pushed back from the table, feeling the air tingling on her arms, goosebumps rising on her skin. She walked between the tables of servants and children, and leaning down to Margaret, kissed her on the cheek. She clenched her jaw and returned to her seat.

  Sir Thomas, pleased, was already beginning the psalters. Rose was too angry to listen, though she loved the way Latin sounded even if she couldn’t understand a word of it. She decided to give Margaret her most punishing of looks, a promise of a bitter scolding to come. Then she saw Margaret wipe a tear from her cheek and, embarrassed, stuff her hands back into her skirts. Rose shot the scowl down to her own shoes instead. She would not cause more tears. Children were indeed a mystery, she thought, but those maturing into adults were simply unfathomable.

  So it was that Rose began to love, growing less afraid of them all. They cared nothing of her past; they were too busy weaving her into their futures. The affection she gave them meant nothing to her, though its magic worked within her. Her heart softened and coaxed her arms to hang more loosely at her sides, instead of folded at her chest, so she would receive a hug without bristling. She learned how to give one, too: The proper technique for hugging a child involved sitting on her haunches as the children wrapped thin, tender arms around her neck, pressing their soft cheeks against hers. She learned to wrap her arms around their waists and give a little squeeze back. It was almost always over in a moment, which helped.

  One afternoon she settled the children around the table at dinner and retreated to another table at the end of the room to eat her own meal. She lowered herself into the chair, its wood creaking a bit. She had filled out since coming here, discovering little rolls of fat around her waist. Her thighs had lost their harsh definition. She loved the changes, believing them to be proof that she could become a different woman with the regularity of honest work and frequent meals, two things she had never known. Leaning over the children’s books, seeing sketches by the artists of Europe, the fine ladies they drew with round faces and generous bodies, Rose began to believe that she would become one someday herself.

  Her face was still warm from the sun, and she was glad to have a moment’s rest. She tucked her hornbook into her skirts, and Margaret made eyes at her. Rose sighed and took it out, setting it beside her bowl. Though she had worked all morning and could read simple sentences, Margaret was not satisfied.

  Sir Thomas entered the room and everyone cried out for his attention. The youngest ones giggled and sprang from their chair, forgetting all the lessons of decorum. Their hungry affection for him left no room for pride, and he scolded them only gently as he scooted them back to their chairs. Rose noticed he did not embrace them or return their hugs.

  “Come to my study, Rose. I have a special guest who would ask a question of you.”

  She swallowed her soup and followed, her thoughts swirling through muddy fear. Sir Thomas opened the door to his study, and she knew. Her stain was discovered.

  I was aggravated as I waited for the Scribe to turn the page. It did not turn as a normal book would but had to be coaxed. He spoke a language not of words, but of notes, I suppose, and the pages began to slowly curl, revealing the story word by word.

  I was aware of nothing but my breathing. My fingers crushed around a pen, ready to drill out the next chapter. Thomas More, of course, was one of history’s darlings, and every teenager in America was still forced to read his Utopia in English class. At least this story had appeal to history buffs, so I would die writing something that might even turn a profit. My executor would be thrilled.

  “He’s a hero everyone loves,” I said, waiting for the stubborn page to unveil the next chapter. It snapped closed over the words like a blanket yanked up in a cold room in winter.

  “I just meant that your readers will know who he is, if they stayed awake in English class.” The Scribe glared at me, his immobile face making me feel like a child, or an idiot, or both.

  “What you call history is written by another scribe, one who sets each generation upon the next, like dominoes.”

  He shook his head. “Real history is a dangerous, unfinished story.” He heard something and his face turned to the door. I jerked and looked, but there was nothing.

  He stared at the door, his eyes narrowing, one hand lifting, pointing to it. He spoke to me, still watching the door, as he nodded and began to lower his arm. “A selasal, a roach, is at the door. He desired entrance, but your guardian has removed him. Hurry. They know the Tablets of Destiny has been opened. You are not safe.”

  The irony was not lost on me.

  “You’ve got to keep me safe until I die?” I asked.

  He turned to me. “No one dies alone. Before the night is done, you must choose who will carry you over that threshold.” He spoke to the book and its page turned. “Though Rose is in trouble, I must begin a new story.”

  Chapter Five

  The pages of the book fluttered in the midnight breeze. The noise, like the snapping of a flag in the wind, startled her from her dreams of her wedding night soon to come, imagining Percy’s face as her shift fell away from her shoulders, imagining his child growing within her and the pleased expression Percy would wear every day among the men of law. Never again would she spend her days flattering strangers; she would at last have an honest life. It would be the end of her secrets.

  The other ladies-in-waiting were sleeping heavily in the dark room. Some of them snored, and Anne often wished for a light to know who it was. But this was not what had awakened her. From her dream, she had heard the words spoken.

  Sitting up, she saw the book was
open and near her feet on the bed. She reached down and shut it but heard them whispered again. It was a language she had never known, except perhaps in childhood, when she could read the moods of the sun and hear the dialect of rain. Those were the days she could laugh with George and play wicked pranks on their father, and they had nothing to fear in the world but scoldings and early bedtimes.

  She remembered nothing of the whispered words, but their effect remained. Her heart pounded with an urgency that made her thoughts race. Anne fled from the chamber, something drawing her away from the sleeping court into the gardens below.

  The garden was alive and rejoicing in its dark seclusion. Dew fed the roses and hawthorn, each with great tight buds ready to burst open. Crickets sang the same note, over and over, like a needle and thread bobbing in and out of the dark blanket of the night sky. She had worn no wooden pattens on her soft shoes, which she regretted immediately once her feet set upon the garden path. Thousands of small stones were unkind to her soles. She walked down the path, weaving between clusters of sleeping buds and cool vines, moving farther and farther from the palace, watching her linen shift float about her, lit only by stars. Something was drawing her.

  Anne saw there was a small chapel at the end of the path she had followed. Despite the hour, a lamp burned within. The chapel was made of stone, with plain windows instead of elaborate scenes of glass. There would be only enough room in such a place for a handful of people and its altar. This chapel was for earnest prayer, surely, and not ceremony. This thought comforted her and pulled her farther in, until she was about to step out from the path and open the door. She would wait here for the voice to return.

  She heard a noise that made her throat seize even as her arms jerked. It was a scraping, a thick scraping of stone against something soft, with a gutted moan upon that.

  “Deus meus, ex toto corde pænitet me ómnium meórum peccatórum, éaque detéstor, quia peccándo, non solum pœnas a te iuste statútas proméritus sum, sed præsértim quia offéndi te, summum bonum, ac dignum qui super ómnia diligáris!”