In the Shadow of Lions (21 page)

The estate was abandoned; only a dog ran out to greet the carriage. A few leaves, early fallen, swirled around the wood door framed by a white stone archway. Margaret and Rose alighted and pushed open the door.

Inside the main room was a bed, with candles burning on a night table and sun-bleached linens piled high around a shrunken figure. A servant, saying her beads over the bed, was startled by Rose and Margaret’s arrival. The figure in bed turned her head and looked at the women.

“Praise be to God,” she said, her voice high and thin.

“My queen,” Margaret said, not moving.

Rose breathed through her fear, the secret horror of seeing death eating away at a woman. She would not let Margaret run from this.
This
was the end of life, of passion and first kisses. She grabbed Margaret’s hand and forced her to the bed.

“What happened?” Margaret asked.

Rose winced at the girl’s cold fingers digging into her own for courage.

Catherine smiled. Her face was nothing but hollows and caverns, deep etchings of sorrow. Tiny popped veins were evident around her nose and eyes, from tears that had not ceased. Every bone on her face could be plainly made out.

“I am dying, child. It started when I was at court. I knew the signs, but Henry would not permit me treatment. He wanted a son.”

Margaret nodded as if she understood.

“But young girls do not go visiting without their fathers. These are remarkable times.” The queen exhaled and started to close her eyes. “I know why you’re here.” Her eyes snapped open. “Has the Hutchins book called you, Margaret?”

Margaret went red as Catherine’s eyes narrowed.

“It has. Margaret, mark my dying frame. Look what has become of me! I refused it, and it swept me from my home.” She turned as if to look out the window, but her face fell back against the pillow, eyes closed.

The servant stood to escort them from the room but Margaret came alive.

“My queen!” she said loudly.

Catherine opened her eyes.

Margaret reached into her robes and set a leather purse on the table before she leaned in and said something to Catherine. A shadow passed over the queen’s face.

“Your father approves?” Catherine asked.

“This is what he wants,” she answered.

Margaret laid her head on the queen’s chest, but Catherine had already slipped under, into one last dream.

“You didn’t save her.”

The Scribe shook his head. “I don’t save. What writer ever could?”

“Why are you telling me this story?”

“You could have sent me away. You wanted to write these words. I wanted to tell them.”

“But that’s it? I’m going to write the story down and die. I don’t get a second chance?”

“Second chances aren’t your forte, are they?”

“I have unfinished business!”

“More than you know.”

“What was David talking about? Why didn’t I get into the research study?”

“I do not have permission to tell you this story.”

“But there is a story.”

“Yes.”

“Is there anyone else who would tell it to me?”

I hated myself for asking, fearing another angel would appear. I suspected none of them would look like the imaginary angels I saw in gift shops, skinny women with flowing hair and harps. Real angels would terrify.

Crazy Betty started screaming—it was time for her vitals check. She always screamed when the nurses woke her in the dead of night. Sometimes Mariskka screamed back.

The Scribe nodded and I understood.

Chapter Twenty-one

In winter, London was a feast for the senses: the smoky fragrances of burning coals, roasting hazelnuts, and the last of the young venison, the ringing of horses with bells on their harnesses, the sight of the vendors’ stalls lined with hanging birds of every variety for the cooks—woodcocks, thrushes, robins, hens, wrens, quail, hawks, pheasant, partridge—though the palace cooks insisted that from now until Lent, hens were the only proper bird to be eaten. The rag dealers would be doing a fine business, selling the castoffs from the shearers and weavers.

Anne spied a group of heretics being led and kicked down a side street. A small crowd followed them, mainly children who were glad to be entertained by a suffering worse than their own. The poor souls looked ill used, and Anne had no doubt they had been tortured, either for information or pleasure. Henry had never liked the reformists; their kind had caused such unrest in Germany that they threatened to unseat the authorities. And he had once loved the Church. Now he set about destroying it, breaking her back until she swayed easily in his embrace.

Many more people had read the Hutchins book and the blame fell partly to Anne. They thought they were safe, that she had much influence, that the crown was becoming fond of their secret passion. She did not want to suffer; how could she have led these people to it?

Anne fingered the dress that sat next to her. It had looked lovely when Goodie Grisham had presented it to her, but the woman had been so tight-lipped that Anne decided against trying it on for one last fitting. She would make do with it. She touched the design at the neck.

La Plus Heureuse,
it said in a thousand delicate stitches. “
The most happy.”

Anne burst into tears.

Henry was at his prayers when she arrived at Hampton Court. He had gone there upon learning of Wolsey’s death. Wolsey had built Hampton Court for himself. Every sign of submission to Henry’s throne came across as an afterthought, a thin scrape of plaster over the heart of stone and wood.

The chapel was a fortress of oiled wood and strong sunshine. The stained-glass windows running on each side cast a rainbow of light across the dark pews, and above the altar were angels. It was the only chapel she had been in that had these angels, fat children reaching to each other above the repentant. These angels seemed no more than God’s children, and He could not get them to sit still during church either.

She sighed and waited for some sign that Henry would be through soon. He was bent over, alone, kneeling in prayer before an empty altar.

Anne wanted to pray, too, but all her prayers were memorized as a girl, and none worked for this moment. She considered the Lord’s Prayer and decided it was close enough. She bowed her head and repeated it to herself. “Thine is the kingdom,” she whispered at the end, “and the glory, and the power, forever and ever. Amen.” The final words were like bread in her mouth. There was a sweet, satisfying taste of peace, an easement of fear, and she let the words sink deeper, nourishing her weak heart. Yes, she repeated the prayer, wanting more strength, wanting the peace to linger, afraid that if she moved it would fly away again.

Henry’s shoulders heaved up and back. He was crying. Anne made her way to him and knelt at his side.

Then Anne saw he was laughing. He had trails of tears on his face. Rising, he took her by the hand and kissed her full on the mouth. With the brush of his lips and the tickle of his beard, she felt the warmth of his body and for a moment—just a fleeting, shy moment—she liked the warmth. Confused, she cursed herself under her breath.

Henry led her from the room, past guards who would not meet her eye, men whose rumours and insinuations would work their way through the court until they ruined her name even as she slept alone night after night. There was no one to comfort her, no one to see her long, lonely vigil. She was the faithful virgin, waiting with a full lamp of oil for the bridegroom to invite her into the feast, but the nights had grown so long with no stirring at her door. She held out in obedience, and honour still fled from her. She saw the stone angels overhead, closing her eyes as she took the step from their world into the court of bitter tongues. She had waited for God to save her, as a sign of His favour for her faithful deeds. She stepped out into the world of the court and opened her eyes.

Anne could hear the low rush of breath, in and out, like small waves breaking on a shore far away. Her servants were asleep. They had plaited her hair into a long braid to keep it out of her face as she slept and set a new piece of fur on her pillow. The lice she had collected at court would find her smooth skin unpalatable and seek this fur out while she slept. The servants would discard it in the morning, and so had fallen asleep, their work done.

She swung her legs off the bed, landing them gently on the floor, holding her shift bunched up in both fists so it wouldn’t swing out and tickle anyone in their sleep on their trundles on the floor. She raised one hand, still trying to grasp her shift, and pulled open the door.

Her Yeoman was there, wide awake, standing and staring. She let out a cry as he turned to her, his face changing in the shadows, a rippling as he came into the light. Her stomach knotted up in fear. No one stirred inside her chamber. He moved to block her path. She saw he had been staring at the tapestry of Sarah and Abraham, and a tear wet his cheek.

He had always had a gentle way about him, escorting her as though his position was not a way of earning bread but of saving her. She had walked behind him all her days since that early May morning when she had been thrust into this new world, watching his broad muscular back, seeing courtiers step aside as he moved confidently through the dimly lit passages, escorting her past every petty dowager, every seducing virgin intent on winning Henry away. He never left her side, never accused, never grasped.

Perhaps she had imagined his goodness. She did not deserve it. Not when she was about to destroy everything precious to her. If God had made His plan clear to her, perhaps she would not be doing this. Time was so short. She could wait no more.

He stood in her path and did not move. Anne looked back at her chamber, the peaceful quiet calling her to return. Her Yeoman shifted his weight on his feet, and the torchlight sent a reflection into the room. She caught sight of the book on her bedside table.

“I will wait for His blessing no more,” she said, gritting her teeth and pushing past her Yeoman.

The hallways were quiet, the flickering yellow torches against the stone walls giving only enough light but no heat. The floors were so cold under her feet that she wished she had slipped on her shoes, but her servants had taken those after they put her to bed. Her skin raised in little gooseflesh bumps, the cold air biting her through the thin shift, drafts of winter finding her again and again. She paused before the great twin doors, the carving of the Tudor rose on them. His guards bristled and shook themselves awake, though both were standing, not expecting to receive a visitor at this hour. Anne thought she saw a smirk on one’s face as he peered at her before settling back into the darkness against the wall. She turned and looked at her Yeoman. He had walked behind her. He did not lead, not down this path.

“Do not wait for me,” she whispered, and with one last breath for strength, pushed against the doors.

There was a flickering candle on a little stand near the doors, and then the great ocean of night. She could hear no one stirring, indeed no one breathing, so her entrance had not disturbed the chamber as she feared. She reached for the candle and held it before her with both hands. It was slick and heavy, and she walked slowly to keep the flame high. She saw a wooden leg of the bed and searched to find the other one. It was a distance away, at least ten or eleven feet, and Anne did not know which end she had found first. She could see bed linens, and she strained to see beyond the shadow into the bed, but could see nothing. She reached out with one hand, touching the edge, and followed it round the leg to the other side. The other leg was just as far away, a good ten feet and some. She crept along the edge, disoriented, her heart beating faster, not expecting to be confused by such a simple thing.

She had waited for this moment since she was a girl, but never had she imagined she’d be groping blindly in the dark for her bridegroom. Never had she imagined she would have neither Church nor husband when it came.

She saw him sleeping. She set the candle on a stand next to him, and he stirred, blinking in the new light. His eyes met hers, and he watched without speaking as she untied the ribbon at her neck, loosening her shift, letting it fall at her feet. His face was impassive. He did not move as she lifted the linens and lay at his side, her hands shaking so hard that the linens made little waves around him.

“Why now?” he asked.

A servant built the fire up in the room. Anne gagged at the pinching smoke of burning wood, her stomach swimming as she woke up. Jane had brought some dry bread, salted twice to settle her stomach, and set it on the table next to the bed. She sat quietly while Anne tried to wake up without getting sick again.

“What must I do today?” Anne asked.