Free In the Shadow of Lions by Ginger Garrett

of sweats had alarmed him, she could tell. He swept his quill across a dry parchment, and she was established in an apartment. He saved her. She never saw her home again and remained indoors, waiting for him to return. She began to listen for the noises from the street, hearing her past through the filter of his money, which paid for these walls. It sounded so different to her. She was different. She was dead too.
    He had other wives. She could tell their strident perfumes apart from the beckoning aromas of the court: the lavender sprinkled over the rushes, the breads rising on stone slabs in the open kitchens. She wondered how they all lived, which one he loved. Not that it mattered.
    She rolled over with a sigh as he prattled. She was wedged tightly between the two worlds in London and wanted neither side as her own. The restlessness this fine and fancy man unburdened stayed with her, growing with every soft-spoken confession. She had given him no mercy, lying there in silence, making no move to invite his own sorrows to roost and tarry. But they had. The great crowing hunger pecked at her until she did what was once inconceivable.
    She went to church. London was the city of God, he had told her, and it was true. Bells rang out at Mass when the host was elevated, choral chants floated through the streets, monks and priests milled about everywhere. Rose had never entered this world. Before this time, it had belonged to others … not to her. And why would she choose to be anchored to anything in this world? From her first cry as a baby she had awakened to hunger. Nothing ever satisfied. Life was a continual torment.
    The cold cobbled path led her to two enormous wood doors overlaid with iron bars and creeping ivy that ate away at the wood and stone.
    The world inside took her breath away. The ceiling rose far above her. Towering beams of darkest timber lined the ceiling, making a high sharp vault, with so much air between her and the roof … air she couldn’t breathe. Jesus hung crucified above the altar, above it all, and she averted her eyes from His shameful nakedness. He was barely covered by a loose cloth, His frail body bleeding and pierced.
    He looked so weak. What right had she to lay her burdens on Him as well? He looked to be a man who needed mercy and salvation from men, not one who was their only hope. Why had no one in this place saved Him? How had they walked before Him every day, asking and pleading for little favours, while He hung there in agony? Would it be so hard to bring Him down and dress the wounds? His bleeding body disgusted her.
    She looked away and saw Him alive, calling to His disciples in a boat floating forever on a sea of cut glass. In another window she saw Him standing with a great book in His hand, the other hand extended to her. In yet another He offered a chalice to men gathered at a table—men eager to take anything He offered. To turn in any direction in this place was to see that His calling, His book, His cup, all pointed finally to this brutal death. The gold and the damask, the linens and silk were only a bright veneer that distracted from His low, bloody end.
    There was no glory in death. She knew it too intimately to be in awe of it: The weeping without comfort when all were asleep; the stains that drew the flies; the bitter stench and seeping ulcers that ridiculed the delight in young flesh, until one was heaped into a dark pit and forgotten. Every man met this fate, with or without God. She was here because she wanted something besides hunger and death.
    She turned away.
    A priest entered at that moment from a door at the back of the church and saw her dress, dirtied from wandering in the street, and her hands on the doors, ready to flee. He stood still. She saw his eyes move to her sleeves, and follow the curve of her frame, and she realized he understood her to be here for thieving, not mercy. If the authorities found her coin purse, it would be his word that sent her to a