In the Shadow of Lions by Ginger Garrett Page A

beads. They were there, as always. She had rubbed them through her fingers so often these last weeks that she feared one day she would reach into her pocket and they would crumble beneath her touch. No prayer beads were meant to withstand this much use, she was sure. When she was alone, she sank to her knees and said her prayers aloud, and when she was attended, she kept the beads in her pocket and said them silently. Once she had fallen asleep in her bed, saying her prayers, and was awakened when the beads hit the floor. She had sat upright in bed and saw a sudden fluttering of the curtains drawn closed around her bed.

    “Leave us!” Henry bellowed, and the attendants fled back to their mounts.
    “Wolsey, you as well,” Henry said. Wolsey bowed and fell back.
    Henry grasped her hand and tried to lean against a trunk, but Anne’s head began to ache. She thought it was the strong sunlight so she moved deeper in the shadows, the woods that surrounded the palace grounds. She hoped Henry would notice her discomfort and not take this retreat into shadow as a sign of encouragement.
    The earth was so soft under her feet and, unsteady after a hard ride, she leaned into his grasp … then wished she hadn’t. Henry slipped his arm around her side, dropping her hand, glad to have reason to touch more of her. The birds still sang, and there were so many varieties here that their trilling overlapped and wove together a song unique to this place.
    “Everyone in the court observes the order I set,” Henry said. “How many dishes they may eat, and when, and where they may sit, where they may stand, and what clothes they may wear, what they may say and when.”
    Anne continued her walk. It was misery. She wanted a still bed and a dark room.
    “Only here do I know what it is to be a subject. How small I am against this king.” Perhaps he meant it to affect righteousness, but he sounded depressed, as if he would rule this world too if he could.
    Anne bit her lip and kept walking.
    “Anne,” he said, pulling against her, stopping her in the path.
    She turned to look at him, and his face was that of a boy, lit with desire for some great prize. She noticed her stomach had turned sour and didn’t know if her head or her sovereign was to blame.
    “Anne, I am your servant too.” He pulled a velvet drawstring from the pocket of his cloak and reached for her hand. She held it there stupidly, confused why this monarch would abase himself before her, when her sober judgment of him was so plainly spoken between them. But men had lost their lives for scorning his charity. She would at least not make their mistake.
    He loosened the sack and dropped a fat green emerald ring into his palm before lifting it to set it on her ring finger on the right hand. It was a square-cut emerald, as big as a walnut. It weighed her hand down.
    “Henry, I cannot accept this.” She took hold of the ring to pull it off. “This gift belongs to your wife, not me.”
    His shoulders fell and he looked away from her. Shaking his head, he walked off a few paces. “Is there no one at this court who believes in me?” he muttered. “Anne, you have read the papers I delivered?”
    “Of course,” she lied. These were endless technical papers drawn up by lawyers attesting that his marriage to Catherine was invalid.
    “There can be no greater danger than a monarch ruling in dishonour. When I die, civil war would break out, a hundred different nobles claiming the throne for themselves. And who would die, Anne? Is it not the poorest, who send their sons into service when the grain gets low?”
    “You have a daughter from Catherine to rule England when you’re gone,” Anne reminded him.
    “What woman could rule England?” Henry bellowed.
    “What does Queen Catherine say to the papers?”
    He shrugged, coming back to her and taking her hands. “She will not read the papers, but she knows my intention. She will woo me back, or turn everyone against me.”
    Anne