In the Shadow of Lions: A Novel of Anne Boleyn (Chronicles of the Scribe #1)(37)

Rose pulled her horse alongside and said nothing. Margaret stared straight ahead.

“Did you think the wine would guarantee my sleep?” Rose asked. “Did you think you could slip away from under my watch?”

Margaret set her mouth and did not look at her.

“Since I am here,” Rose continued, “you can tell me where we’re going.”

“Since you are here,” Margaret spat back, “you can think for yourself. I’ll not say another word to you.”

Margaret slowed her horse at the edge of the woods. Tying him to a tree, she walked into the forest.

The trees towered like dark sentinels; something stirred the branches. Rose searched the darkness with her eyes but saw nothing. Whatever it was had moved out of her sight. Rose took a deep breath and followed Margaret farther in.

There was no path, so she was careful to mark Margaret’s steps and place her own feet in the same places. She could hear animals scurrying away in the underbrush and tried not to think about what they were, or how big. She had lived a rough life before Sir Thomas’s house, but it had still been a city life. It had taken her years to understand its dangers, and here was a whole new world with its own set of rules. Rose pulled her skirts up and closer in to her body, praying nothing touched her and she took no stupid steps.

A clearing was ahead. Rose saw a gathering of women, one with a small torch that sputtered and burped fat little sputums of glowing wax, hissing as it worked. The women were all in plain nightclothes, some with a shawl thrown over their shifts, some with wraps. Rose could not tell who these women were, for they had none of their day clothes on, the clothes that told of rank and family by their colour and cut. Underneath their robes, every woman wore a linen shift. Tonight, every woman, young and old, looked alike. There was no rank or class among them. Hair hung loosely at their shoulders. Their faces were plain, not pinched or made up. Rose thought she would like to see them painted; their plain beauty would surpass that of the European masterpieces.

“Come on! We must begin!” The woman with the torch was impatient for Rose to finish navigating the steps behind Margaret, who had already joined the group.

“Who is she?” someone demanded.

“She’s mine. A maidservant,” Margaret replied.

“She can be trusted?” someone else asked.

Margaret dismissed the question with a nod. “By my troth.”

The woman with the torch whispered something to a short little woman on her left, whose pale face was luminous in the torchlight. She removed a dagger from a satchel at her feet and walked to meet Rose. Rose let her hand be taken, and the woman held a dagger over it.

“You will never regret this, sister,” she whispered, and with a delicate, graceful stroke, pierced Rose’s skin with a slash down her palm. The blood bubbled up, little beads that joined together in a red river. Rose clenched her teeth, trying not to scream, watching the women’s eager faces as the blood glistened in the moonlight.

“Take the oath,” the woman said. “By my blood I pledge my silence.”

Rose repeated the words. “… and may the words of our Father be my light, the faithfulness of my sisters be my assurance.”

The woman with the torch passed it to another and opened a book. It was not much bigger than Rose’s hornbook for learning letters, but it had a wide roped spine, and Rose could see it had a thousand letters all running into one long page, page after page being nothing but these letters.

“We continue. My friends, we have read all the way from the history of the Master unto this, His apostle who carried the message far beyond the Master’s home. We will read for an hour, then we have business to attend to before breaking.”

She began to read, and Rose was utterly lost.

“Because therefore that we are justified by faith, we are at peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ: by whom we have a way in through faith unto this grace wherein we stand and rejoice in hope of the praise that shall be given of God. Neither do we so only: but also we rejoice in tribulation. For we know that tribulation bringeth patience, patience bringeth experience, experience bringeth hope. And hope maketh not ashamed, for the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts, by the holy ghost, which is given to us. For when we were yet weak, according to the time: Christ died for us which were ungodly. Yet scarce will any man die for a righteous man. Peradventure for a good man durst a man die. But God setteth out his love that he hath to us, seeing that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more than now (seeing we are justified in his blood) shall we be saved from wrath, through him. For if when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his son: much more, seeing we are reconciled, we shall be preserved by his life.”

Her reading went on, but Rose could not bear the words. Her mind was seeing the bleeding Christ hung above the altar, the awful sight she had turned away from in the church. She had condemned the Church for letting Him hang, exposed and brutalized. He chose to die, she realized. He refused to come down. His blood would run until there were no more sinners.

The thoughts broke open in Rose’s heart as she stared at the leaping, dancing flames. The world, the word, was suddenly alive to her, and she did not move as a great shadow rose from behind her, spreading itself out over the fire. It was the shape of a towering creature with wings, and his arms held a bowl, which he lifted above his head, tipping it out over her.