In the Shadow of Lions (25 page)

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.”

“No, Henry!” Anne protested. “Stay but a minute more! What news? Tell me a tale and keep me company.”

Henry looked uneasy but returned to her bedside. He did not want to upset her, this was plain enough to her, but the baby kicked so wildly in her womb, knocking about between her ribs, that Anne had no fear its life was too delicate for his amusements.

Henry looked at his folded hands, pursing his lips.

Anne burst out laughing. She reached over and took his hands in hers. “It’s all right, Henry, really it is. Give me news.”

“I have done more to assure your place,” he answered.

“Yes?”

“Three more acts have I passed. The Act of Succession, so that the throne will pass through your son, not the girl Catherine gave me.”

Anne was uneasy at the way he spat the word
girl
.

“The Act of Supremacy,” he continued, “to be assured that I retain the power to govern in my own country, and not some puppet Pope in another realm.” He paused. “And lastly …”

Anne squeezed his hand.

“Lastly, the Act of Treason. To be assured of loyalties.”

“And all have been sent out? All have been signed?” she asked.

“All have seen the future and will follow,” Henry said. “The people, I am told, the people are relieved to be free of unjust clergy stealing bread from their mouths. They see me as their great defender.”

“It is a title the Pope gave you.”

Henry was the only man she had ever known who could look so utterly alone in a room crowded with people clamouring for his attention, ready to spring up and do his will. Anne saw the realm in his face—the cries for relief, the bitter scrambles for position and power, the burdens that Henry would let no one else carry. It was arrogance to her, once. She began praying under her breath, asking for wisdom for Henry, for comfort and aid. He was alone in this battle, alone on a front where the soldiers behind him could be a danger as much as the enemies in front of him. All she had ever had to offer him was herself, and now this comfort too was denied. All she could do was pray.

He stood, knocking her bedside table. The Hutchins book hit the floor with a great whump. Henry bent to pick it up, studying it before he replaced it and left.

The pains began as a dull ache in her midsection. She had her girls remove her bodice and skirts. Her midwife began rubbing a stinking ointment on her belly to ease the pain.

The baby was still not delivered in twenty contractions. Midwives sent the alarm downstairs, but Anne ignored it. She would not fail in this. Yet she knew that, all below her in the palace, doors were being thrown open, cabinets propped open, every lock released, every knot pried free and loose. The palace was working desperate magic below her to assure her body would open and release the child. If she failed, next they would have soldiers from here to the Tower shooting arrows in the air.

She pushed again, bearing down, mad with pain, not caring about crown or reputation. Nothing mattered, nothing existed, except these awful contractions and the animal urge to push.

“I see the head!” the midwife yelled. “Push harder!”

Anne heard the midwife christening the baby as the head emerged. It was a secret gesture between the women in this sacred chamber, so that the child would be baptized before birth. In this way, no child would be born unbaptized and risk purgatory.

“In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, I christen thee Henry, Prince of England.” The assurance was all Anne needed for strength, and she gave one last mighty push.

The immediate crowd at her feet told her the baby was delivered. Anne screamed in relief and collapsed back into the arms of another girl. The air of the room was thick, and she thought she saw the air shimmer.

There was much whispering, and Anne watched, dumb from exhaustion, as the midwife, cradling the heir in her arms, tied off the cord and cut it with her scissors. The babe was washed with wine, and a little salt rubbed on its tongue. Anne had heard that some midwives recommended washing the tongue in hot water, to make for smooth speech later in life, but Anne had forbidden this. It was too harsh.

The midwives wrapped the baby snugly in strips of clean linen and carried him to Anne, nestling the tiny bundle in her arms. Anne beheld the face of her future and wept. The baby was beautiful, exceeding any miracle the church had ever proclaimed, any relic they had ever offered the people for viewing. She caught her Yeoman stealing a glance in, smiling.

“Who will bring him to Henry?” Anne whispered, not taking her eyes from the beautiful face.

“Anne,” her midwife began, “there is something we must tell you. We rejoice in a safe birth, we rejoice in a healthy baby.”

“What is it?” Anne interrupted her.

The midwife was crying.

Anne could hear Henry’s scream, and she winced.

When he entered the room, he was carrying the baby. His courtiers trailed closely behind him, their eyes down, but he turned, glaring at them, glaring at the women in the chamber. Everyone fled from the room, leaving him with Anne alone. He laid the baby in the cradle, tucked in the darkest corner of the chamber. He stayed in the darkness.

“She is beautiful,” he said finally.

“We should call her Elizabeth. It would have made your mother happy,” Anne said. She didn’t have the strength to get out of the bed and walk to him, to try to persuade him to comfort or happiness. She could only lie there, exhausted. Her best offering had been in his arms, and it was not enough. It defined her relationship to him.

“Why, Anne?” he whispered.

She could not answer.

He came out of the shadows and laid his head on her empty womb. “Why? Why was it a girl?”

He was crying. He was shaking under Anne’s hands.

She cursed herself under her breath … a stupid little fool, she said. Where had she gone wrong? She felt naked, her faults all exposed in this tiny bundled baby.

“I have done all this for you!” he screamed at her. “I dismantled the Church! Two cardinals are dead because of you, Anne, and many men are in the Tower tonight, suffering, because you promised me an heir!”

“No, Henry,” she tried to say. “I tried. I did everything you asked.”

“Where is my son?” he screamed.

“I don’t know!” she screamed back. “I obeyed God in everything! I never prompted you to do those things! I only said love God and honour His Word!”

“But do you, Anne? Jane tells me you flirt with the Hutchins book but have never read it, not all the way through. You are not who you seem.”

“What does Jane know?” Anne said.

“She knows how to please a king, I tell you. Her body is ripe with heirs. I knew it every time I caressed her in my chamber, while you were in here gulping down dainties, cataloguing my treasures, instead of doing your duty as my wife!”

Anne felt her chin trembling. She was terrified to break in front of him. She didn’t trust him now, as a husband or a king. “I alone am loyal to you. It is God who has betrayed us!”

“You do not even know Him,” he said with disgust.

The baby cried, breaking their locked stares.

Henry grunted and left.

Anne called for a nursemaid. “Nurse her, and leave her here with me to sleep. She must never be left alone. Perhaps she will not be king, but she will be loved.”

Jane did not attend her again. She was moved to private chambers, a pleasant little apartment where she was kept under guard, with fresh flowers brought to her bedside. She could spend the time in warm, sweet walks with Henry through the sleeping winter garden. This was what Anne learned from the servants still attending her, though it took days to pry each piece from them.

Anne devoted herself to being ready for her churching. All of Henry’s accusations would be upturned in a single day. Except perhaps for the reading of the entire book Hutchins had sent; it was a thick book with so many words. She could not simply choke through it in one afternoon. She would set this task aside for another month in which she had more leisure. This was a time for alarm and strategy, she reasoned, not leisurely reading.