In the Shadow of Lions

by Ginger Garrett

  Anne caught George’s smile, an ear-to-ear grin from her childhood, his eyes twinkling. Anne ran her jeweled hand along her skirt for her brother to admire, a sly grin on her face too. He nodded just slightly, tilting his chin to her. Well done, it said.

  Anne burst into a laugh and the court around her applauded, which made her laugh harder. She held out her hands, allowing her brother and father to escort her to her dining seat. Well done, indeed, she thought. It had been a bumpy, harsh road, but she had arrived in splendour and the gates were thrown open to her.

  She would never again doubt God’s will, for her halting obedience in matters too great for her to comprehend had still brought her to the pinnacle of this empire. The heir within stirred, and Anne realized she hadn’t eaten in hours. She was famished.

  Anne counted the hours off with the church bells that sung every hour for seven hours as they feasted. The platters were in constant motion, courses being set and removed at great efficiency at every table, with every meat Anne had ever tasted in England served in every possible configuration, even little pastries shaped like swans.

  There was momentary confusion when Anne stood the first time. Everyone stopped eating, surely thinking she had some remark. Anne blanched at the silence and motioned for her Lady of the Chamber, shuffling away in her billowing skirts to use the chamber pot in privacy. As the hours, and the wine, wore on, Anne did this with such frequency that the diners did not look up anymore but simply set their knives down and continued talking until she returned.

  Only one seat remained empty.

  “Where is Sir Thomas More?” she asked.

  Archbishop Cranmer replied. “He declined to attend, my queen.”

  Anne’s head was drooping. Seven hours of sitting had made her sore, and seven hours of feasting had made her sleepy. A man and woman were brought in shackles to the table. A guard kicked the woman to make her bow when she hesitated, seeing Anne.

  “It’s the Mad Nun, and a merchant known as Bloody Christopher. He is unkind,” Cranmer told her. “My queen, it is your honour to release a prisoner as you wish.”

  “What are they accused of?” Anne asked.

  “The man beat another servant to death for stealing,” Cranmer replied. “The other is one they call the Mad Nun. She is accused of prophecy, my queen, proclaiming evil tidings of dark days ahead for the king and his queen. She claims great love for you but tells the people you will die with that crown upon your head.”

  “What say you? Does this man speak truth?” Anne asked her.

  “I speak only what I see, my queen,” the woman said. “I have naught but love in my heart for ye. God save me, God save us all!”

  “Well, God is not making this decision,” Anne replied. Her tongue was getting away from her. The wine was sitting heavy in her stomach, and the crown was heavy on her head.

  “I can offer proofs, my queen! Proofs of my affection! For I have been to the home of the Morus, the great fool, and I have heard his whispers. He has no love for you!”

  The Mad Nun turned her head to acknowledge those who giggled beneath their breath at her joke. She meant Sir Thomas, of course, but Morus was the proper name of fools, and it drew a laugh even now.

  But not from Anne. The nun had been in Sir Thomas’s home, as well as Anne’s own bedroom at her father’s home. The nun had heard secrets at both houses.

  “Interrogate this woman. See what she knows,” Anne said. “Release the merchant.”

  The nun cried out for mercy as Anne stood and emerged onto the street to a crowd wild with joy. She did not know if this was for her or the coins she began to scatter among them, but she believed it made no difference. She threw coins to everyone, many dressed in masks and mummery, all of them with dirty palms clutching the air for what she might cast to them.

  God’s triumph was complete. He had delivered her enemy, given her the crown and an heir, and now she dispensed this same mercy to the poor. She felt the power, and the glory, of being the hand of God in England.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Rose heard the heavy footsteps of marching men, the rhythmic beating of metal upon metal, the iron heart of war. And it was here. The men came through the gate, past the gatehouse where another heretic was suffering in the darkness. Sir Thomas was dressed and clean-shaven, ready to meet them. He had ordered the children to their studies and glared at them when they peeked through the windows, as if they spied on him in some private, shaming matter.

  Margaret had gone to the city for shopping. Sir Thomas had sent her with an exorbitant sum, and she was not expected to return today. Rose realized with grim admiration that Sir Thomas set everything in motion around her for this moment. He would have this just as he wanted. He was the only man she had ever met who could control the fates. The thought stabbed her heart. He had done nothing for her, save given her a letter to deliver. In the end, she despaired, that was all she was to him: a servant to be used. He cared nothing, really, of her fate.

  Rose went out in the garden and watched as the men read Sir Thomas the charges. She had seen men arrested, men who fought and wanted to die on the open street rather than see the inside of the Tower. More only pursed his lip and nodded when they finished. She could tell he was impatient with their long list of accusations.

  He called to her as they took hold of his arms on either side. “The letter, Rose! Do not tarry. It is my salvation.”

  “And mine,” she replied, repeating what he had earlier told her. It lingered in the air like a question between them.

  He stared at her, a tenderness in his eyes that shocked her. Sharp pains shot through her stomach, pains of fear, pains not so different from desire. She blushed to have such strange thoughts at this moment.

  He shook his head, answering some question she had not asked. “I am sorry,” he said as they pushed him away, forcing him to begin the walk to the gate.

  He turned at the gate, saying something to the guards, so that they allowed him this pause. He turned and surveyed his utopia. Rose saw him weep.

  The children were murmuring, and nothing could bring them to concentrate on their studies. Rose tried to steady their rising fears, and she was afraid that she sounded as patently bad as the pageant actors on the streets.

  “Everything will be all right,” she crooned.

  It set their teeth on edge.

  Her words were meaningless. She did not have answers.

  “I must go; I cannot stay,” she said to Candice. “If Margaret returns before me, tell her I have gone on an errand for her father. I will return.”

  Going by barge would be faster than horse, for the tide was in her favour at the moment. She could go on foot when she arrived in the city.

  She sat on the barge, the sole customer. The cold wind skimmed the top of the Thames, stinging her cheeks with little pecks of ice.

  She thought on everything that passed between her and More, and the strange vision on Christmas Eve that caused her to scream, the bell that rang from the kitchen, making everyone spring from their sleep, so that all complained later of the bell and no one made mention of having heard her scream. The others had stayed up late that night telling ghost stories. Could she have seen one herself? she wondered. But ghosts are vengeful spirits, and this one, though more terrifying than any tale told round the hearth, had saved her in her hour of rebuke.

  That misfortune was what she had deserved. She was not pure of heart, and perhaps she had tempted him beyond what he could bear, but the apparition saved her from it. How could the unseen judge her so differently? And how could this tale ever be told, for who would judge her worthy of such salvation? Who would believe More, the great purger of the church, the man who laboured to present the church as the faultless bride, the man who above all else wanted law to reign in the land, who would believe he would do such a thing? He was purging evil and error from the hearts of men. How could his own be so unclean?

  She thought of him scourging himself. He had done more to be pure
than anyone she had ever known. Who else tormented their flesh nightly so that he may live clean in the day? If this was not enough to purge himself of evil desires, there was no hope for purging the church. Not even Hutchins could do this. She had never heard of Hutchins scourging himself. If More, a master of learning and obedience, could not cleanse himself, there was no hope for the common man or the greater church.

  Perhaps Hutchins was a fool.

  Rose got out at the Wharf. A woman was busy picking lice from a blanket, sitting on the corner of a street, quite near the channel cut out to carry urine from the city. The sun was strongest in that spot, even if the odour was too. The woman did not mind.

  “What’s in the bag?” the woman snapped, looking up from her work with hatred as she took in Rose’s black and red dress, the white lace peeking out from her sleeves and the pomander at her waist. The woman snagged a louse that had given her particular trouble and pinched it with a grimacing smile between her fingernails.

  “I have not opened it,” Rose replied.

  “It’s coins. Ye got one f’me?” The woman’s voice had a strangled sound to it.

  “No, I—”

  “Be gone!” the crone shouted.

  “I need to find the sheriff!”

  “Ye’ll be robbed soon enough on this street. Then he’ll find you!” She laughed out loud, throwing her head back, and Rose saw layers of dirt in the lines of her throat, like the rings of a tree trunk. The woman’s great mouth yawned open as she guffawed, and Rose witnessed her complete lack of teeth.

  A man approached her and did not make her afraid. He kept his eyes down but pointed her to a door.

  Knocking, she waited for an answer. She turned back to thank the man, but he had vanished.

  “Go away!” a voice scraped from inside.

  “I am sent by Sir Thomas More!” Rose called, pressing her face close enough to the wood to get a splinter in her nose.

  The door swung open so fast that Rose stumbled inside. A man grabbed her and dragged her across the threshold before slamming the door.

  “Why did you yell that name? Do you want to die today?”

  His face was badly pocked. Rose wondered how sick he had been; he was lucky to have survived, but no one with these scars ever seemed grateful. His hair was longer than most men’s and a dirty orange colour. It clung to his damp neck even though winter braced the house on all sides. His eyes looked hung, not set, in his face, with watery bags drooping below. She handed him the bag and waited.

  His home was not well lit, she noticed, with a few tallow rushlights out and a fire that made the room thick with smoke. The room she was in merely had a table and a simple hearth. A short flight of stairs was on her left, to a visible larger room above, and above that, an even larger dwelling. It was an odd feeling to be at the small center below the home. Above must be where he and his family slept. No one was stirring.

  On the wall next to the table, hanging, were the implements of his job: a heavy club, shackles, and one good pair of boots. On the table covered with green bazik cloth was a heavy book, laid open so that as she sat, she could see it contained names and sums—probably a tax record. The sheriff always collected these, which was why he often got into scrapes and took folks off to the jails. He was in charge of law and order, and the law of the land was gold.

  He had opened the bag and removed the letter, breaking the seal with a long thumbnail.

  “There’s a lot of money in here,” he said at last.

  Rose nodded, not sure what to say. His words were an accusation.

  “Do you know what this says?” he asked, waving the letter at her.

  “No.”

  He grunted. “Go home before night falls. The heretics and fools of the new learning have unleashed hell here. A fine thing like you will not last a minute on the street.”

  I raced down the hall, the darkness of night real and alive, peering in at me through the windows. An overhead bulb popped and burned out, letting the shadows in, stealing closer to me as I ran. I tried to outrun them, but bulbs were popping and burning out, little showers of sparks chasing me down the hall. The shadows closed in from behind, cold and pulsing, pushed by a wind that growled with pleasure. I could hear Mariskka cursing and calling out for a night guard to bring her a flashlight so she could check on the patients.

  Crazy Betty was sleeping when I burst through her door. She grunted and rolled over as I ran to her side, shaking her awake.

  She sat up and slapped me. Fluffing her pillow, she tried to return to her sleep.

  “Cr—, Betty,” I stammered, “I need your help.”

  “Do I know you?” she asked, smushing her face into the pillow.

  “Not exactly. I’m Bridget, from the hospice wing.”

  She lifted her head a bit to look at me. “You’re dying?”

  “Yes,” I answered.

  “Bad day for you,” she said. “I can’t sell you crazy and that’s all I got, honey.”

  “No, Betty, I was going to get into a research study, but I didn’t, and a man said you knew the story.”

  She bolted up. “What did this man look like?”

  “Uh, big, a black man, wears an earring in his ear, and sunglasses, even inside.”

  “Looks like you’re already ate up with crazy. I never seen the guy.”

  “Betty!” I gave her a look to scald her awake.

  “All right, I’ll tell, on one condition. I want to be free of pills and booze. I never want to crave them again. Never want to have even the slightest need for them. You do that for me, and I’ll tell what I saw.”

  “How could I promise that? I can’t fix you.”

  “I already knowed that. I wasn’t even talking to you.” She rolled her eyes at an empty corner of the room. “You had a boyfriend. He knew you couldn’t help being what you are, any more than I can help what I am. He enrolled you in a study, and they were having real good success curing your kind of cancer. But someone stopped him from taking you outta here. Someone who craves, like us. You were so proud of who you were, and what you had, that you couldn’t smell your own greed anymore, and when it rolled off her breath, you couldn’t smell hers, either. So Mariskka made sure you was gonna die. And she’s gonna get really rich. But it won’t stop the craving.”

  She slapped me again. “Mariskka still had a chance for a better life! You poisoned her good now.”

  I took a breath, trying to process what she was saying, but she cut me off.

  “Don’t forget: we have a bargain.”

  Mariskka’s flashlight swept the room. Betty’s window was larger, and there was enough light from the lamps outside that we could see her face contort with anger to see us together.

  “Back to bed, ladies. We need our beauty rest.”

  Chapter Twenty-five

  England slept, the white fugue of winter descending on the wisteria gardens and narrow paths. London’s own streets were drunk with fog and mist. At night a halo could be seen around the moon. The rains gathered for each new morning, unleashing such torrents that none were in the streets but the army of raindrops, stealing away into cracks and crannies and uneven doorways. The rains washed away the previous year, scouring the smells off and out, rinsing clean debris and stains of memory.

  Anne took to her lying in, claiming a chamber inside Greenwich palace—the same one, Henry said with pride, that his mother had used. Swept clean and laid with fresh plaited rushes, dried mint, roses, and vervain, he had ordered it decorated with the finest white silk fabrics embroidered with gold and pearls. Artisans had been commissioned to create special dishware for her, because she would take all her meals in bed. Every dish, done in a wonderfully heavy crockery that did not spill, featured a secret—an underside painted with good omens like healthy male infants and happy fathers. Anne of course had to finish each meal before she could safely turn over the crock to see her good wish for the moment. It was one more little amusement that kept her full and happy.

  Gifts had
been arriving with regularity. Anne’s favourite was a hanging from her brother, George. It was the colour that made Anne grin. It was green, the colour of spring leaves. In France, where she had spent so many hours longing for home and writing George letters of her dreams, dreams of a quiet life away from court, green was the colour reserved for royal births. Anne watched it hung near her white bed, and saw the contrast displayed so well between her dreams and her future.

  There were clothes for the boy, a dress for her churching from Henry, too, elaborate as usual—and, Anne thought, too small through the waist. But Henry was impossibly optimistic. There was also the birth announcement, done in advance and sent for her approval. Everyone in England would celebrate when they heard the guns being fired again from the Tower.

  Henry visited in the afternoon before he went out hunting. He supplied himself with a special stock of stags and deer and blessed the quiet that had stolen over the country. With so much rain keeping everyone inside, there was less mischief and less law to write.

  Today Henry brought her a mass of yellow primroses, which were in winter bloom, along with Candlemas bells. He rested his head against her belly and listened. Anne reached down and stroked his hair, noticing that Jane blushed and turned away.

  Anne made a note to speak with her. Jane had been in service to her for too long to still be nervous when the king entered the room. Anne gave her an encouraging smile so she would not be afraid.

  Henry lifted his head and leaned to Anne, kissing her lips and her forehead. “How precious you are to me.”

  “I am sorry,” Anne whispered, trying to keep him close as she said it. “I know it cannot be easy.”

  “What?” Henry asked.

  “Waiting like this. Waiting for the birth … waiting until I can be back in your bed,” Anne replied.

  Henry stammered something, backing away. “There are too many in here,” Henry said, looking at the number of people attending Anne and his own servants following him. A fire kept at a constant crackling height caught his attention too, but it would be needed for warm water when the birth occurred. “The room grows too hot for the mother. I must go.”