In the Shadow of Lions: A Novel of Anne Boleyn (Chronicles of the Scribe #1)(2)

“Wait!” I screamed.

I didn’t want to live. I hadn’t known that was going to be an option. I deserved to be damned. To return to my life was too much to ask of me. I was finished.

“You’ll still be dead by morning,” he reassured me. His voice was deep and clean, no telltale dialect or inflection. Taking off his glasses, I saw he had enormous gold eyes, with a black pinhole in the center that stayed round and cold. There was no white in them at all, and they were rimmed all the way around the outside with black. I stared at them, trying to remember where I had seen eyes like this. It had been years ago, this much I remembered.

I had to shake myself back to the present moment. Clearly, morphine was not setting well with me tonight. I wanted to die in peace. That’s what I paid these extravagant sums for. My hand moved to the nurses’ call button. Mariskka was just down the hall, waiting for her moment to steal my watch. I knew she’d come running.

He grabbed my hand, and the shock seared like a hot iron. Crying out, I shook him off and clutched my hand between my breasts, doing my best to sit up with my atrophied stomach muscles and tangled IV.

He leaned in. “I have something for you.”

“What?”

He leaned in closer. “A second chance.”

Second chances were not my forte. As the most celebrated editor in New York City, I had made a killing. I loved the words that trembling writers slid across my desk, those little black flecks that could destroy their life’s dream or launch a career. I bled red ink over every page, slashing words, cutting lines. No one understood how beautiful words were to me, why I tormented the best writers, always pushing them to bring me more. The crueler I was to the best of them, the more they loved me, like flagellants worshipping me as the master of their order. Only at the end, lying here facing my own death, did I understand why. They embraced the pain, thinking it birthed something greater than themselves. I saw how pitifully wrong they were. There was only pain. This is why I was ready to die. When you finish the last chapter and close the book, there is nothing but pain. It would have been better never to have written. Words betrayed me. And for that, I betrayed the best writer of them all.

“Burn any manuscripts that arrive for me,” I had ordered my nurse, Marisska. “Tell them I’m already dead. Tell them anything.”

“I’ll let you write the truth,” the man whispered. I focused on him again.

“I’m not a writer,” I replied. My fear tumbled down into the dark place of my secrets.

“No, you’re not,” he answered. “But you coveted those best sellers, didn’t you? You knew you could do better. This is your second chance.”

It caught my attention. “How?”

“I will dictate my story to you,” he said. “Then you’ll die.”

Taking dictation? My mouth fell open. “I’m in hell, aren’t I?”

He tilted his head. “Not yet.”

I pushed away from the pillows and grabbed him. Blisters sprang up on my palms and in between my fingers, but I gritted my teeth and spat out my words. “Who are you?”

“The first writer, the Scribe. My books lie open before the Throne and someday will be the only witness of your people and their time in this world. The stories are forgotten here, and the Day draws close. I will tell you one of my stories. You will record it.”

“Why me?”

“I like your work.”

I started laughing, the first time I had laughed since I had been brought to this wing of the hospice, where the dying are readied for death, their papers ordered and discreet pamphlets on “end-of-life options” left by quiet-soled salesmen. I laughed until I was winded. He rested his hand on my chest, and I caught my breath as he spoke.

“Let’s go find Marisska.”





Chapter Two

I grabbed the IV pole and stood, careful to conceal that awful opening in the back of my gown. I expected to find my leg muscles as sturdy as pudding, but his life had found its way into them, too.

He saw my undignified writhing to get the gown’s gaps in order but made no move to assist. “A desk job hasn’t been kind to you, has it?”

I followed him down the hall, glaring at his back, the size of a billboard, and shaking my wrist. The Rolex still stayed frozen at a few minutes before 1 a.m.

A nurse pushing a half-awake Crazy Betty wheeled past us. I flattened myself to the wall, bracing for the screams when the two women saw this man.

The nurse didn’t see us.

Crazy Betty did. She began yelling at him, shaking her fingers in fury. “Go back where you belong and leave us alone! Always sneaking around, in and out of rooms whenever you like, always scribbling in your little book!”

I froze.

The Scribe kept walking, pressing a finger to his lips to urge her to be quiet.

The nurse rolled her eyes and shushed Betty. “We’ll get you some tea and get you back in bed,” she comforted her.

Betty was hearing none of it. As she was wheeled away, she turned and screamed at him, “What are you writing, anyway?”

The Scribe kept walking.

“What was all that?” I asked.

He shrugged and kept walking. “Not everyone is happy to see us.”

“She could see you? She’s not crazy?”