In the Shadow of Lions: A Novel of Anne Boleyn (Chronicles of the Scribe #1)(5)
“You have betrayed the anointing of your office, and it is removed.” Sir Thomas stood.
She bowed her head. God’s punishment had found this man only in death. She feared her own would be slow in coming too. She wanted it now.
“Come brothers, good men of God, and curse this heretic! Send him to hell that he may trouble us no more!”
The men came round and mumbled uncertain words, until More shouted above them: “Poena Damni. You are sentenced to the eternal night, where their worm does not die and the fire does not go out.”
All spit on the dead man, and the boy darted in to secure the body to the stake with the irons. They stacked bundles of wood and kindling against the base, building up until the wood touched the man’s breast.
“The rain has stopped that we may finish the work,” More said. “God be praised.”
Grimbald, the parish priest who had betrayed her, took the sinking candle from its box and set the wood on fire. It snapped from branch to branch, consuming the body with great speed, death having drained it of much fluid by this night.
No one spoke as they watched the body sag into the flames and disappear.
When the flames began to concentrate their efforts at the base of the stake, they knew the body was no more. More grabbed the iron and ran it into the fire, over and over, until it hit upon what he wanted. He withdrew it, the skull sticking to one end. He crushed it under his boot with a fierce strike, grinding it down, grunting as it resisted in places.
“Boy.”
The boy ran to him.
“Scrape the shards into a bucket and dump them into the river. Do not wait for morning. The rain may grow heavy again.”
“Sir Thomas?” the boy asked.
More beckoned him closer and knelt to hear him. “You have done well tonight, my friend.” He touched the boy’s cheek. “You will make your father proud.” He slipped the boy a thick silver groat as payment.
“But Sir Thomas,” the boy asked, “what was his crime?”
More smiled. “Throwing pearls to pigs.”
The boy ran off to complete his work. While the men moved to gather their supplies and disperse, the cardinal and More began discussing something quietly between them that she couldn’t hear from her hiding place. They were walking to their horses and mounting as a new slate of rain broke above them.
His words displaced her cold repulsion with another grief, a slow, sinking guilt. His words forced themselves down her throat so that she gagged, grasped her neck, and fell to her knees. Guilt swarmed in her roiling stomach as a thousand accusations worked their way into her blood. She retched as she forced herself to her knees and to stand.
She timed it just right, staggering onto the path in front of the men on horseback, who with a smart spur had forced the horses into a dead run to beat the returning rain. She wore her best gown for this moment. Bloodstained and broken, she lurched onto the path, lifting her arms to embrace the relief of her death, lifting her angry face to heaven as the horses bore down, their hooves lifting to strike the beautiful blow. She wanted to die here, where the bleeding Christ and His cardinal would both be witnesses, and see what their work had accomplished.
Swift arms encircled her, lowering her to the ground as the hooves thundered all around her head. He lay upon her, absorbing the strikes on his back, his tears washing hers away….
When she awoke she tasted her lips. They had the taste of another’s tears, and she could smell her son again.
I stopped him there. He was ready to turn the page.
“Wait!”
He raised his metallic eyes and looked at me.
“Whose arms? Did he die when the horses hit him? Why could she smell her son? Why did they burn a dead priest?”
He began to turn the page again. “I tell this story as I choose.”
“I’ll write it as I please! Haven’t you ever heard the law of Chekov’s Gun? ‘If you plant a gun in the first act, it better go off in the third.’ I’m telling you, readers will spend the rest of the story wondering who those arms were attached to, so you better tell them, or just leave that part out. I’m not going to write a sloppy book.”
“You’re going to write the truth,” he replied. “Do you like fish?”
Chapter Four
At the next moment we were in the lobby, staring at an aquarium of gorgeous blue and yellow cichlids, devilishly fat fish that would eat us if they were any bigger. They zipped around the tank and darted away when we pressed our faces near.
“What do they see?” he asked me.
“A distortion,” I replied. “A distortion of the world beyond them.”
He smiled, and the blood drained from my legs again. I wished he wouldn’t do that.
“What do we see?” he asked.
“We see everything. And we control the lighting, the food, the temperature, their tankmates. We scare them when they see us, but they don’t see us clearly. They don’t understand who we are.”
“So they don’t know the truth?” he asked.
“Their truth is not the truth,” I said.
We walked back to my room, though how I had arrived at the tank I couldn’t remember. We passed Crazy Betty’s room, and he walked in as I grimaced. Mercifully, Betty was sleeping deeply, a marvel of pharmaceutical intervention. Mariskka told me that Betty’s blood type was B positive, because she usually came in positive for barbiturates. She had been scheduled for surgery last May and was put on a diet of nothing but clear liquids the day before as they prepped her. Mariskka found her in the courtyard drinking pilfered vodka a few hours later. She had protested that it was clear.