In the Shadow of Lions Read Online Free Page B

watching them constantly so they would not stumble and touch her. She resolved their squabbles so there would be no need for tears and the hugs those required.
    Sir Thomas bragged about her often to those who came to the home. “This is Mistress Rose, a poor child plucked from the streets of London, fatherless, motherless, but with a heart of devotion to Christ. I have seen no other maid give such love and care to my children.”
    Sometimes his eyes rested not so much on the children but on Rose. She always averted her face. His gaze made her stomach leap. Sometimes she thought he would speak something more, something just for her, but he moved on each time, with his hands behind his back, returning with his guests to the parlor. It was a stupid thing, she knew, to have desire for a man, but she had not known her heart was still alive. She had forgotten its language.
    The gentlemen would nod and move on with him, and the muscles in her back would release, so that she slumped down and caught a full breath. He would never suspect he had left a fool in charge of his children. There could be nothing to fear from her past, either. Sir Thomas never brought men from filthy Southwark into his home. No one who knew her could ever cross that threshold, save for one, and his name had never been mentioned. Still, at the first blooming of the hawthorn in a few weeks, she would tie a bundle above the door to keep that evil out.
    She stiffened as one of the children grabbed her hand, leading her into the garden after breakfast. There were rows of fruit trees, entire plots of herbs and vegetables for the kitchen, ornaments and flowering bushes, whose blossoms the gardener clipped often to fill the house until it smelled of nothing but roses and kitchen stews, children and drying apples. The sun was not unkind as it burned, making the garden stretch and grow. There were grand trees, yew and beech, with drooping leaves that the children sought refuge under before dinner. She listened to them recite their psalters and poetry as the squirrels dashed past them, maniacally stripping the bark from the yew trees.
    “Aye, your father is a great believer in God,” she commented.
    Margaret piped up first, her earnest face already showing a woman’s frown lines above her brow. “God is everything to Father. There is nothing besides God, is there?”
    Rose swallowed so she could lie with a distracting smile. “No, indeed. You must always remember that. There is nothing besides God, and God is within these gates.”
    Gardeners worked around them, and she watched them saw and clip the errant branches, burning the refuse. She had never seen a garden, never watched as it was tended. She marveled that their violence produced such beauty, how order was established with the sweep of a blade, making all things more perfect. She had developed an eye for their work, seeing the stray branch that searched for its own light as a nuisance, marking it in her head to point out to the gardeners.
    Margaret came and sat beside her. “Father was going to be a priest.”
    Rose scooted away.
    “He was going to be a priest, but he fell in love with a beautiful girl. She was our mother. She died.”
    Rose stopped herself from the quick reply on her tongue. Perhaps the children knew a blush of life’s secrets, of the suffering that found them all. “I am sorry,” she said.
    Margaret moved closer. “Father remarried. A nasty woman named Dame Alice. You probably won’t meet her for ages. She’s always away, spending money. She has furious fits, saying she must escape this prison and go into the city for some shopping. She comes home with enormous packages and shrieks about cheating merchants and scandalous prices.”
    It made Rose laugh.
    Margaret looked up and laughed too. “Father says money never makes anyone happy.” She stood and ran back off to play.
    That surprised Rose. The chasm between the two worlds of London shrank.

    Her monthly bleeding had begun