In the Shadow of Lions: A Novel of Anne Boleyn (Chronicles of the Scribe #1)(42)

“When you stole into my library I knew why you were pursuing the king and seducing him at every turn. At least, this is what I tell the cardinals in Rome and those loyal to the church. You are either a treacherous reformer or a seducing witch, but your punishment will come regardless, and swiftly.”

“Why do you poison my name?” Anne asked. “Nothing you say is true!”

“Ah, but this is: I have prepared a bedchamber at an estate where Catherine has been sent to recover from her exertion in court today. I have instructed her maids to care for her most gently and lavish all care on her that she may be pleasing to a man in every way. Henry should be arriving there. I have arranged for them to dine in her bedchamber, and Henry will make every effort to calm her outrage. Perhaps we need not involve the Pope in the king’s great matter. Henry knows how to persuade a woman, does he not?”

Anne’s stomach went sour, her throat closing around tears. “Henry will have the annulment because it is the law of God,” she said, trying to speak without letting a tear escape. “As cardinal, this is your concern, yes? The law of God?”

“My concern as Chancellor of the Realm is Henry, and Henry needs an heir.” Wolsey leaned in closer. There was rank decay on his breath as he whispered his next words. “I know you will not sleep with him, Anne, because you are not yet his wife. As long as Catherine still wears the title, why not give her one more chance to provide what you will not?”



I saw David bent over his work. There was a glass of whiskey on the table: I could smell it, the musky sweetness of grain and the sting of alcohol. I found I could move in this vision, as if I were in the room too. The Scribe stood behind me, his back to the door, so that it would not open. I didn’t know if he was holding me in or something else out.

I craned over David’s shoulders to see the papers scattered all over his desk. They were letters. I craned my neck to read one. They were all addressed to me.

Dear Bridget,

All I ever wanted was to make you smile. I failed you, and when you were diagnosed, I tried to save you. I bribed every doctor I ever met at your cocktail parties until one of them came through. I got you into the best research study going for ovarian cancer. But it fell through because you can’t stop making enemies of everyone you meet.

But I never stopped loving you.

And if there’s an afterlife, I never will.

Yours, David

I gasped and David sat up, flicking something off his shoulders. Frowning, he looked around the room, looking through me. He must have felt my breath over his shoulder.

He reached into a desk drawer and pulled out a gun.

“Stop him!” I screamed to the Scribe.

“No,” he replied.

I saw it, the most unlikely of books in the most unlikely of places. It was the Hutchins book and I knew it at once. It sat on his desk, a great thick black leather edition. He must have grabbed it for solace when he prepared for this moment. I shoved against it with all my might, trying to push it into his lap, startle him, stop him, but I couldn’t move it.

“Please!” I begged the Scribe.

David was checking the chamber one last time, snapping it back into place as he released the safety.

The Scribe nodded, and the book scooted to the edge of the desk. It tumbled to the floor with a resounding thud. The noise frightened David, who screamed just as he pulled the trigger.





Chapter Sixteen

Rose stared at the coat of arms, rising red above her, the great lion and the unicorn frozen forever in flight around a Tudor rose. There were dragons on the fence posts, and inside farther down the lane she could see busts of famous healers from centuries past. This, at least, was whom she assumed the lifeless cold heads to be. She had only heard praise of them from the other desperate women who had brought their dying here. All of them fled before morning, so the boys would be presumed abandoned to the king’s mercy.

Rose strained her head to see inside one of the windows, which were all firmly shut to prevent foul humours from the street to enter the hospital. The patients inside were sick enough without the dread diseases of her world being carried in on some chance breeze.

When she wondered which room her brothers had died in, drops on her eyelashes escaped down her cheeks. But they were disguised by the morning rain and Margaret’s grabbing of her hand in fear. Rose’s secret was kept another day.

Wolsey stood on the platform set in the field before St. Bartholomew’s. A crowd pressed in on them from all sides. The vulgar cheers and jostling made the morning unpleasant. But Rose knew the late August sun would reveal itself soon enough from behind the clouds and they would all suffer. The mood would turn. She hoped the prisoners died before that happened. Margaret was trembling like one about to die herself, and Rose lifted her own clammy hand to place it over Margaret’s. She held Margaret’s jerking hand sandwiched between both of hers and took a deep breath.

It had been so long since Rose had experienced the spirits of the street, the meanness that lived here, the desperation. From the carriages and litters, the early morning London streets were beautiful, the grey stones wrapped round with white fog, the spires rising far above them into the heavens, the dragons and unicorns that appointed every post from a child’s happy dream. But when humanity stirred and awoke, the fog became suffering and the dream was far away.

Sir Thomas sat to Wolsey’s left, looking regal in his chancellor’s robes and fur, watching his daughter and her servant with pleasure. Rose knew he expected this to be a great lesson for them. Seeing sin purged violently from another was the surest defence against allowing it to creep into one’s own life. The public burnings, he said, were not only good for the condemned’s soul but for the soul of England herself. Much mischief would be cut short here today.