In the Shadow of Lions Read online

  Within minutes, Anne was outside for the first time in eight days. She touched every new green leaf, ran her hands over every plant and along the rivers of bark running up and down the yew trees.

  Henry watched her but said nothing, keeping a few paces away as she wandered through the garden, testing and inhaling the fragrances and turning her face up to the sun.

  Bees swarmed the tall purple blossoms that edged the beds, and Anne could almost taste the honey that would be on the table in a few weeks. This was a spring thrown out into the world with abandon, every plant and creature catching its fever.

  “Catherine’s ladies say you are a witch,” Henry said.

  “They’re fools and liars. No good Christian should listen to them,” Anne retorted.

  “You’re a good Christian?” Henry asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Yet you’ve listened to fools and liars about me, haven’t you?”

  “I’ve only listened to my sister. How do you classify her?”

  Henry stopped to smell a bloom just beginning to split the green seams of its bud. He didn’t answer.

  “You’ve already taken what you wanted from my family,” Anne finished. “Why must you ruin me, too? You should keep your word and send me away. Today.”

  “That night in the garden, what did you see?” he asked.

  “If you’re worried that I’ll tell, I won’t. Whatever troubled you can remain your secret.”

  “Why were my knees bloodied and my robe wet from tears, Anne? It was because I seek His will above my own. It is a lesson you could learn.”

  Anne frowned and took several steps ahead of him. The guards still kept their posts, following behind and lingering ahead on the path. Her Yeoman was there, and she was ashamed. She did not like being courted by a married king in front of him.

  “You do not know me, Anne, and I suspect you do not know God, either. Have you wept with me as my sons have died in my arms, one after the other? I held each one and knew behind every wall in this miserable place was a man who rejoiced that I had no heir.”

  Anne did not want to hear of his sons. She would never soften her heart to him.

  “Have you ever even prayed for me, good Christian that you are?” he asked, stopping beside her, facing her. “One day I thought, If I am the cause for this suffering, I must amend it. Six of my children have died, Anne.”

  “And? Many lose their children,” Anne replied. “They do not repay God by committing grievous sins.”

  Henry stopped. “The Tower is overflowing with those who speak too freely.”

  Anne blanched and looked away.

  “England will not be secure until I have an heir. Good people, Anne, good people would suffer if I died without an heir and civil war broke out for the throne. How many children would die, leaving their parents to suffer as I have? It is unbearable.”

  He began to walk again. Anne followed.

  “I was determined to find a remedy. I read for days, taking no food or comfort until I had read every work or record pertaining to the matter. I went to the cross on my knees, bleeding and weeping for Christ’s revelation.”

  “My king, I am sorry….”

  “Anne, good Christian that you are, have you read Leviticus?”

  “I know my prayers.”

  “Leviticus states that no man must take his brother’s wife for his own, or they will die childless. It is a prophecy as sure as stone. The Pope granted a special dispensation for me to marry Catherine after her first husband, my brother, died. By doing so, the Pope has violated God’s law and called down a curse on my throne. I must be free of my marriage; it has violated God’s law. If I do not obey, God’s wrath will break out, and England’s sons will lie dead on a battlefield.”

  “Yet,” Anne countered, “it is not a matter between us.”

  “It is a very great matter between us. You met me on my pilgrimage, washed my wounds, and spoke words of comfort. You were an angel sent to comfort me in that time of great distress. You were my unexpected answer, a promise to me if I will obey.”

  Anne knew her temper was flushing her cheeks. “I will not speak of that night, nor will I speak of the future. I will speak only on what I know today. I have not read this book of Leviticus, but I know my prayers. You have a wife. I will never consent to be a mistress.”

  “Perhaps you should pray about it,” Henry replied, pulling out his dagger to cut a rose. He handed it to her without looking at her. “There is your family to think about.”

  “It is my family I think about. I will not partner with you to ruin our good name.”

  “I can save your name,” Henry said, his voice soft and delicate with the words. “Your family has secrets. Your brother … he does not have a taste for the ladies, does he?”

  Anne froze, cursing her sister silently for being so free with her body and words, letting this wolf through their door.

  There were two groups who suffered vile, violent deaths under Henry: heretics and unnatural men. It was great entertainment for the people to see such an offender hung until almost dead, then revived and tortured to death. Fear made a marvelous housekeeper for Henry, sweeping secrets neatly away and keeping a pristine order.

  “My brother is not your concern, my sovereign,” Anne replied steadily. “Let Your Grace consider only your servant Anne.”

  “Henry’s getting what he wants,” the Scribe said to me. “How does that make you feel?”

  “You already know,” I replied.

  “Oh, but I want you to write it down. It means so much more.”

  “I’m angry. Jealous. I didn’t get what I wanted, and I played just as dirty as he did.”

  “You got what you asked for. You stole David’s book.”

  “It wasn’t good enough,” I said.

  “It was his best.”

  “No! He could have done better.”

  “But he didn’t,” the Scribe answered. “He was working on a love story for you. It can never be written now.”

  I closed my pen and sat back in bed. The walls, the sheets, and even bits of my chart were scribbled over with ink.

  “I can’t do this,” I said. “I can’t write this book by wrenching my heart out for your amusement.”

  “You are becoming a writer.”

  He handed me back the computer, and the words lifted and peeled away neatly from around the room, filing into the computer and appearing again on my screen.

  I hated his smile.

  Chapter Eight

  Sir Thomas pushed back the double doors with the heavy iron hinges that guarded his private library. Rose followed, lifting each leg and setting it down with great effort, her body dead even as her stomach danced and her heart battered her ribs. Sir Thomas moved to one side to allow Rose to enter, and she saw him.

  Rose began running the fingers of one hand along the walls. She had to touch the walls and know that this place had been real, that she had not dreamt this remission of suffering. She would lose it all.

  Cardinal Wolsey stood, the parchment in his lap landing on the floor. He made no move to grasp it, staring at her.

  “Rose, you have the extreme privilege of meeting Cardinal Wolsey. He is the highest official in all of England, whether in matters of court or church.”

  She couldn’t move her arms. They were hanging, useless, at her sides.

  “Rose.” Sir Thomas prompted her.

  Rose curtsied, staring too long at the little fibers in the rug, seeing flecks of the rushes Sir Thomas had carried in on his shoes and curling brown leaves from the garden. She took one last breath and lifted.

  Sir Thomas was pleased; she could see it in his face.

  “Cardinal Wolsey was telling me such stories that I could not believe,” Sir Thomas said. “He says that the heretics have grown in numbers and fervour, infecting even the common parishes with their contagion. I myself thought these men to be more select—those rare scholars who crumple under the weight of rigorous studies, easy enough to
extinguish one by one, their madness so plain that it would draw none to it. Wolsey needs my help to act.”

  Rose jerked her stare from the cardinal to Sir Thomas and tried to smile. She was afraid it was telling, so she stopped and cleared her throat. “How can I please you, Sir Thomas?”

  “Well, tell the cardinal what you saw in church,” he said and turned to Wolsey. “Rose has a heart of devotion unmatched by any noblewoman I’ve met. She gave everything to the church, even to the point of despairing of her life when she could not make a pilgrimage.”

  “Truly?” Wolsey replied.

  “Go on, Rose. Did anyone ever read from the book of Hutchins? Tell us of the church you attended and if any of these madmen were about.”

  Rose’s mind began the journey back to this story, but her mouth did not move. Her eyes remained on the floor as she saw the great spreading stain blurring her vision, turning even this peaceful refuge an angry red.

  Long ago, he had lain there, troubling Rose with much talk. There was no place in his world for her class, and she resented him always drawing her in, prattering on every time about delicate troubles she would never be graced with. She wanted to stab him on mornings like this, when he arrived dejected, annoyed to be left alone for the day, annoyed that his name was always second on everyone’s tongues, annoyed that the king’s salt was moved out of his reach. He was like a child who needed constant kisses and plucky encouragements. Despite herself, she gave them both. She did not mind that the words rang false. They were, but he paid better when he was happy.

  Her own troubles, what could she say of them? When her two little brothers took ill with the sweats, she begged his help, and he gave it. He arranged for them to be declared orphans and put into the king’s charity hospital. They died before the week was out. She only knew they were dead when she saw another boy wearing their clothes. Her mother had been such a poor weaver that her work stood out, even among the pitiful. Her grief was like a mouth full of pebbles. She was dry and brittle from the choking dust of lost hope, and she had no tears. His petulant stories became a distraction, and his body a refuge.

  “You can’t live on the streets. You’ll lose your looks within a year.” The outbreak of sweats had alarmed him, she could tell. He swept his quill across a dry parchment, and she was established in an apartment. He saved her. She never saw her home again and remained indoors, waiting for him to return. She began to listen for the noises from the street, hearing her past through the filter of his money, which paid for these walls. It sounded so different to her. She was different. She was dead too.

  He had other wives. She could tell their strident perfumes apart from the beckoning aromas of the court: the lavender sprinkled over the rushes, the breads rising on stone slabs in the open kitchens. She wondered how they all lived, which one he loved. Not that it mattered.

  She rolled over with a sigh as he prattled. She was wedged tightly between the two worlds in London and wanted neither side as her own. The restlessness this fine and fancy man unburdened stayed with her, growing with every soft-spoken confession. She had given him no mercy, lying there in silence, making no move to invite his own sorrows to roost and tarry. But they had. The great crowing hunger pecked at her until she did what was once inconceivable.

  She went to church. London was the city of God, he had told her, and it was true. Bells rang out at Mass when the host was elevated, choral chants floated through the streets, monks and priests milled about everywhere. Rose had never entered this world. Before this time, it had belonged to others … not to her. And why would she choose to be anchored to anything in this world? From her first cry as a baby she had awakened to hunger. Nothing ever satisfied. Life was a continual torment.

  The cold cobbled path led her to two enormous wood doors overlaid with iron bars and creeping ivy that ate away at the wood and stone.

  The world inside took her breath away. The ceiling rose far above her. Towering beams of darkest timber lined the ceiling, making a high sharp vault, with so much air between her and the roof … air she couldn’t breathe. Jesus hung crucified above the altar, above it all, and she averted her eyes from His shameful nakedness. He was barely covered by a loose cloth, His frail body bleeding and pierced.

  He looked so weak. What right had she to lay her burdens on Him as well? He looked to be a man who needed mercy and salvation from men, not one who was their only hope. Why had no one in this place saved Him? How had they walked before Him every day, asking and pleading for little favours, while He hung there in agony? Would it be so hard to bring Him down and dress the wounds? His bleeding body disgusted her.

  She looked away and saw Him alive, calling to His disciples in a boat floating forever on a sea of cut glass. In another window she saw Him standing with a great book in His hand, the other hand extended to her. In yet another He offered a chalice to men gathered at a table—men eager to take anything He offered. To turn in any direction in this place was to see that His calling, His book, His cup, all pointed finally to this brutal death. The gold and the damask, the linens and silk were only a bright veneer that distracted from His low, bloody end.

  There was no glory in death. She knew it too intimately to be in awe of it: The weeping without comfort when all were asleep; the stains that drew the flies; the bitter stench and seeping ulcers that ridiculed the delight in young flesh, until one was heaped into a dark pit and forgotten. Every man met this fate, with or without God. She was here because she wanted something besides hunger and death.

  She turned away.

  A priest entered at that moment from a door at the back of the church and saw her dress, dirtied from wandering in the street, and her hands on the doors, ready to flee. He stood still. She saw his eyes move to her sleeves, and follow the curve of her frame, and she realized he understood her to be here for thieving, not mercy. If the authorities found her coin purse, it would be his word that sent her to a prison where she would die slowly, in ways that would make her wish for the briefer agony of a crucifixion.

  From the corner of her eye she knew Christ held the chalice to her, too, and she sank to her knees in fear.

  “I come to receive the Lord!” she cried out.

  He attended to the candles burning at the altar, trimming the wicks as darkness fell outside.

  “I am Father Grimbald,” he said and gestured for her to retreat into the curtained box along the far wall on her right.

  When he slid into the booth, pulling back the scalloped partition, she could not stop the flow of words that rushed out. It began as fear that he would not believe her and would still call the sheriff, but it swept through to the truth before she had her second gulp of air. She had thought the guilt was buried deep within, but it was at the surface … like a grime she skimmed from her heart, working faster and faster. He had listened in silence, but it was not the silence she had known and used herself. It encouraged her to go on, to root out every wicked, soiled thing, until she was purged.

  There were many paths to this redemption she sought, he told her, but she did not have the money for a great pilgrimage, or for prayers to be said on her behalf. This was understandable. Perhaps she had only to show kindness to His servants and refrain from selling herself again, and the guilt would not return. She was a beautiful girl, he said, and she did not have to live this life in such misery.

  When she stepped out, she wiped the last of the tears from her face and wept again. She was determined. She could sell scraps of wool that fell from the wagons, or find employ as a dyer of wool, or even a shearer.

  Grimbald emerged from the confessional, touching her shoulder from behind. He turned her gently, and she saw his face in the candlelight. He was older than she, but not by many years. His mouth was full and his eyebrows dark and heavy, so that his small eyes were almost lost. Yet he was not unpleasant to look on, though she had spent her life turning her face away from the men who held her.

  “You brought no coins to offer for the confession?” he asked. />
  “No,” she lied. She needed every coin in her purse to eat and sleep safely off the streets tonight. If it turned cold again and froze, those coins could well keep her alive.

  “I cannot let you go without payment. It is law.” He reached to her hip and patted it before she could swat his hand away. He had heard the noise her pocket made. “You have stolen from the church, receiving confession with no payment.”

  “I cannot give you any coins,” she said.

  He dropped his hands and took a step back, his face setting into hard lines as he turned on a heel to walk. She knew where he would go. She reached for his hand and stopped him, then drew it slowly to her face, kissing it.

  “What have I that pleases you? Take that,” she said.

  What roosted next in her heart was a grief so unbearable it had no name.

  Later, when she hesitated to die on a rain-soaked, twisted path, she watched him hound to hell one good man already long dead. She knew then she had no hope for peace, even in death. She was of those who are forever cursed. The hope of redemption was gone and she ran to meet her death. The searing iron strength of the grace that saved her gave her hope for her son.

  She remembered her newborn child, his breath shallow, his chest moving in and out in flurries of raspy gulps. He would not live to see his first sunrise. She had little money, only what the local women had helped her earn by sending her out on errands for merchants. Wolsey had thrown her into the street when he had discovered her secret. He had other wives to comfort him in his tribulations at court; he did not want one who brought her own troubles. He took vengeance on Grimbald as well; the man was driven from his parish with blows and scourges.

  She held her head straight ahead as she walked in the street and still wore a ribbon in her hair, even when she hadn’t eaten for days. But she was terrified. A seamstress admired her blue silk dress, mistaking her for a woman of quality, and had allowed her to sleep on the floor of her shop, but the miserable work piecing pearls on gowns could not feed two mouths, nor drive away the wet, fevered coughs that claimed so many children here.