Shadow of Night

by Deborah Harkness

  o’er / A shell for Neptune’s goblet.’”

  “You cannot use Keats!” I laughed. “He’s a Romantic poet—it’s three hundred years too soon.”

  “‘She did soar / So passionately bright, my dazzled soul / Commingling with her argent spheres did roll / Through clear and cloudy, even when she went / At last into a dark and vapoury tent,’” he exclaimed dramatically, pulling me into his arms.

  “And I suppose you’ll want me to find you a tent,” Gallowglass said, thundering down the stairs.

  “And some sheep. Or maybe an astrolabe. Endymion can be either a shepherd or an astronomer,” Matthew said, weighing his options.

  “Rudolf’s gamekeeper will never part with one of his strange sheep, so you’re going to have to be an astronomer.”

  “Matthew can use my compendium.” I looked around. It was supposed to be on the mantelpiece, out of Jack’s reach. “Where has it gone?”

  “Annie and Jack are showing it to Mop. They think it’s enchanted.”

  Until then I hadn’t noticed the threads running straight up the stairs from the fireplace—silver, gold, and gray. In my rush to reach the children and find out what was going on with the compendium, I stepped on the hem of my skirt. By the time I reached Annie and Jack, I’d managed to give the bottom a new, scalloped edge.

  Annie and Jack had the little brass-and-silver compendium opened up like a book, its inner wings folded out to their full extent. Rudolf’s desire had been to give me something to track the movements of the heavens, and Habermel had outdone himself. The compendium contained a sundial, a compass, a device to compute the length of the hours at different seasons of the year, an intricate lunar volvelle— whose gears could be set to tell the date, time, ruling sign of the zodiac, and phase of the moon—and a latitude chart that included (at my request) the cities of Roanoke, London, Lyon, Prague, and Jerusalem. One of the wings had a spine into which I could fit one of the hottest new technologies: the erasable tablet, which was made of specially treated paper that one could write on and then carefully wipe off to make fresh notes.

  “Look, Jack, it’s doing it again,” Annie said, peering down at the instrument. Mop (no one in the house called him Lobero anymore, except for Jack) started barking, wagging his tail with excitement as the lunar volvelle began to spin of its own accord.

  “I bet you a penny that the full moon will be in the window when the spinning stops,” Jack said, spitting in his hand and holding it out to Annie.

  “No betting,” I said automatically, crouching down next to Jack.

  “When did this start, Jack?” Matthew asked, fending off Mop.

  Jack shrugged.

  “It’s been happening since Herr Habermel sent it,” Annie confessed.

  “Does it spin like this all day or only at certain times?” I asked.

  “Only once or twice. And the compass just spins once.” Annie looked miserable. “I should have told you. I knew it was magical from the way it feels.”

  “It’s all right.” I smiled at her. “No harm done.” With that I put my finger in the center of the volvelle and commanded the thing to stop. It did. As soon as the revolutions ceased, the silver and gold threads around the compendium slowly dissolved, leaving only the gray thread behind. It was quickly lost among the many colorful strands that filled our house.

  “What does it mean?” Matthew asked later, when the house was quiet and I had my first opportunity to put the compendium out of the children’s reach. I’d decided to leave it atop the flat canopy over our bed. “By the way, everybody hides things on top of the tester. It will be the first place Jack searches for it.”

  “Somebody is looking for us.” I pulled the compendium back down and sought out a new place to conceal it.

  “In Prague?” Matthew held out his hand for the small instrument, and when I handed it to him, he slipped it into his doublet.

  “No. In time.”

  Matthew sat down on the bed with a thunk and swore.

  “It’s my fault.” I looked at him sheepishly. “I tried to weave a spell so that the compendium would warn me if somebody was thinking of stealing it. The spell was supposed to keep Jack out of trouble. I guess I need to go back to the drawing board.”

  “What makes you think it’s someone in another time?” Matthew asked.

  “Because the lunar volvelle is a perpetual calendar. The gears were spinning as though it were trying to input information beyond its technical specifications. It reminds me of the words racing around in Ashmole 782.”

  “Maybe the whirring of the compass indicates that whoever is looking for us is in a different place, too. Like the lunar volvelle, the compass can’t find true north because it’s being asked to compute two sets of directions: one for us in Prague and one for someone else.”

  “Do you think it’s Ysabeau or Sarah, and they need our help?” It was Ysabeau who had sent Matthew the copy of Doctor Faustus to help us reach 1590.

  “No,” Matthew said, his voice sure. “They wouldn’t give us away. It’s someone else.” His gray-green eyes settled on me. The restless, regretful look was back.

  “You’re looking at me as though I’ve betrayed you somehow.” I sat next to him on the bed. “If you don’t want me to do the masque, I won’t.”

  “It’s not that.” Matthew got up and walked away. “You’re still keeping something from me.”

  “We all keep things to ourselves, Matthew,” I said. “Little things that don’t matter. Sometimes big things, say, like being on the Congregation.” His accusations rankled, given all that I still did not know about him.

  Matthew’s hands were suddenly on my shoulders, lifting me up. “You will never forgive me for that.” His eyes looked black, and his fingers dug into my arms.

  “You promised me you would tolerate my secrets,” I said. “Rabbi Loew is right. Tolerance isn’t enough.”

  Matthew released me with a curse. I heard Gallowglass on the steps, Jack’s sleepy murmurs down the hall.

  “I’m taking Jack and Annie to Baldwin’s house,” Gallowglass said from the door. “Tereza and Karolína have already gone. Pierre will come with me, and so will the dog.” His voice dropped. “You frighten the boy when you argue, and he’s known enough fear in his short life. Sort yourselves out or I’ll take them back to London and leave the two of you here to shift for yourselves.” Gallowglass’s blue eyes were fierce.

  Matthew sat silently by the fire, a cup of wine in his hands and a dark expression on his face as he stared into the flames. As soon as the group departed, he was on his feet and headed to the door.

  Without thinking or planning, I released my firedrake. Stop him, I commanded. She covered him in a gray mist as she flew over and around him, took solid form by the door, and dug the spiked edges of her wings onto either side of its frame. When Matthew got too close, a tongue of fire shot out of her mouth in warning.

  “You’re not going anywhere,” I said. It took enormous effort to keep my voice from rising. Matthew might be able to overpower me, but I doubted he could successfully wrestle with my familiar. “My firedrake is a bit like Šárka: small but scrappy. I wouldn’t piss her off.”

  Matthew turned, his eyes cold.

  “If you’re angry with me, say it. If I’ve done something you don’t like, tell me. If you want to end this marriage, have the courage to end it cleanly so that I might—might—be able to recover from it. Because if you keep looking at me as though you wish we weren’t married, you’re going to destroy me.”

  “I have no desire to end this marriage,” he said tightly.

  “Then be my husband.” I advanced on him. “Do you know what I thought watching those beautiful birds fly today? ‘That’s what Matthew would look like, if only he were free to be himself.’ And when I saw you put on Šárka’s hood, blinding her so that she couldn’t hunt and kill as her instincts tell her to do, I saw the same look of regret in her eyes that I have seen in yours every day since I lost the baby.”


  “This isn’t about the baby.” His eyes held a warning now.

  “No. It’s about me. And you. And something so terrifying you can’t acknowledge it: that in spite of your so-called powers over life and death, you don’t control everything and can’t keep me, or anyone else you love, from harm.”

  “And you think it’s losing the baby that brought that fact home?”

  “What else could it be? Your guilt over Blanca and Lucas nearly destroyed you.”

  “You’re wrong.” Matthew’s hands were wrapped in my hair, pulling down the knot of braids and releasing the scent of chamomile and mint from the soap I used. His pupils looked inky and huge. He drank in the scent of me, and some of the green returned.

  “Tell me what it is, then.”

  “This.” He reached for the edge of my bodice and rent it in two. Then he loosened the cord that kept the wide neckline of my smock from sliding off my shoulders so that it exposed the tops of my breasts. His finger traced the blue vein that surfaced there and continued beneath the folds of linen.

  “Every day of my life is a battle for control. I fight my anger and the sickness that follows in its wake. I struggle with hunger and thirst, because I don’t believe it is right for me to take blood from other creatures—not even the animals, though I can bear that better than taking it from someone I might see again on the street.” His eyes rose to mine. “And I am at war with myself over this unspeakable urge to possess you body and soul in ways that no warmblood can fathom.”

  “You want my blood,” I whispered in sudden understanding. “You lied to me.”

  “I lied to myself.”

  “I told you—repeatedly—that you can have it,” I said. I grabbed at the smock and tore it further, bending my head to the side and exposing my jugular. “Take it. I don’t care. I just want you back.” I bit back a sob.

  “You’re my mate. I would never voluntarily take blood from your neck.” Matthew’s fingers were cool on my flesh as he drew the smock back into place. “When I did so in Madison, it was because I was too weak to stop myself.”

  “What’s wrong with my neck?” I said, confused.

  “Vampires only bite strangers and subordinates on the neck. Not lovers. Certainly not mates.”

  “Dominance,” I said, thinking back to our previous conversations about vampires, blood, and sex, “and feeding. So it’s mostly humans who get bitten there. There’s the kernel of truth in that vampire legend.”

  “Vampires bite their mates here,” Matthew said, “near the heart.” His lips pressed against the bare flesh above the edge of my smock. It was where he had kissed me on our wedding night, when his emotions had overwhelmed him.

  “I thought your wanting to kiss me there was just ordinary lust,” I said.

  “There is nothing ordinary about a vampire’s desire to take blood from this vein.” He moved his mouth a centimeter lower along the blue line and pressed his lips again.

  “But if it’s not about feeding or dominance, what is it about?”

  “Honesty.” When Matthew met my eyes, they were still more black than green. “Vampires keep too many secrets to ever be completely honest. We could never share them all verbally, and most are too complex to make sense, even when you try. And there are prohibitions against sharing secrets in my world.”

  “‘It’s not your tale to tell,’” I said. “I’ve heard that a few times.”

  “To drink from your lover is to know that nothing is hidden.” Matthew stared down at my breast, touched the vein again with his fingertip. “We call this the heart vein. The blood tastes sweeter here. There is a sense of complete possession and belonging—but it requires complete control, too, not to be swept up in the strong emotions that result.” His voice was sad.

  “And you don’t trust your control because of the blood rage.”

  “You’ve seen me in its grip. It’s sparked by protectiveness. And who poses a greater danger to you than I do?”

  I shrugged the smock off my shoulders, pulling my arms out of the sleeves until I was bare from the waist up. I felt for the lacings on my skirt and yanked them free.

  “Don’t.” Matthew’s eyes had blackened further. “There is no one here in case—”

  “You drain me?” I stepped out of my skirt. “If you couldn’t trust yourself to do this when Philippe was within earshot, you’re not likely to do it with Gallowglass and Pierre standing by to help.”

  “This isn’t a matter for jokes.”

  “No.” I took his hands in mine. “It’s a matter for husbands and wives. It’s a matter of honesty and trust. I have nothing to hide from you. If taking blood from my vein is going to put an end to your incessant need to hunt down what you imagine to be my secrets, then that is what you’re going to do.”

  “It isn’t something a vampire does just once,” Matthew warned, trying to pull away.

  “I didn’t think it was.” I threaded my fingers into the hair at the nape of his neck. “Take my blood. Take my secrets. Do what your instincts are screaming for you to do. There are no hoods or jesses here. In my arms you should be free, even if nowhere else.”

  I drew his mouth to mine. He responded tentatively at first, his fingers wrapped around my wrists as if he hoped to break away at the earliest opportunity. But his instincts were strong and his yearning palpable. The threads that bound the world shifted and adjusted around me as if to make room for such powerful feelings. I drew gently away, my breasts lifting with each breath.

  He looked so frightened that it hurt my heart. But there was desire, too. Fear and desire. No wonder they’d featured in his All Souls essay back when he’d won his fellowship. Who could understand the war between them better than a vampire?

  “I love you,” I whispered, dropping my hands so that they hung by my sides. He had to do this himself. I couldn’t play any role in bringing his mouth to my vein.

  The wait was excruciating, but at last he lowered his head. My heart was beating fast, and I heard him draw in a deep, long breath.

  “Honey. You always smell like honey,” he murmured in amazement, just before his sharp teeth broke the skin.

  When he’d taken my blood before, Matthew had been careful to anesthetize the site with a touch of his own blood so that I felt no pain. Not so this time, but soon the skin went numb from the pressure of Matthew’s mouth on my flesh. His hands cradled me as he angled me back toward the surface of the bed. I hung in midair waiting for him to be satisfied that there was nothing between us but love.

  About thirty seconds after he started, Matthew stopped. He looked up at me in surprise, as if he’d discovered something unexpected. His eyes went full black, and for one fleeting moment I though that the blood rage was surfacing.

  “It’s all right, my love,” I whispered.

  Matthew lowered his head, drinking in more of my blood and thoughts until he discovered what he needed. It took little more than a minute. He kissed the place over my heart with the same expression of gentle reverence he had worn on our wedding night at Sept-Tours and looked up at me shyly.

  “And what did you find?” I asked.

  “You. Only you,” Matthew murmured.

  His shyness quickly turned to hunger as he kissed me, and before long we were twined together. Except for our brief encounter standing against the wall, we had not made love for weeks, and our rhythm was awkward at first as we remembered how to move together. My body coiled tighter and tighter. Another fast glide, a deep kiss, was all it would take to set me flying.

  Matthew slowed instead. Our eyes met and locked. I had never seen him look the way he did at that moment—vulnerable, hopeful, beautiful, free. There were no secrets between us now, no emotions guarded in case disaster struck and we were swept along into the dark places where hope couldn’t survive.

  “Can you feel me?” Matthew was now a point of stillness at my core. I nodded again. He smiled and moved with deliberate care. “I’m inside you, Diana, giving you life.”

  I’d sai
d the same words to him as he drank my blood and pulled himself from the edge of death back into the world. I didn’t think he’d been aware of them at the time.

  He moved within me again, repeating the words like an incantation. It was the simplest, purest form of magic in the world. Matthew was already woven into my soul. He was now woven into my body, just as I was woven into his. My heart, which had broken and broken again in the past months with every sad touch and regretful look, began to knit together once more.

  When the sun crept over the horizon, I reached up and touched him between the eyes.

  “I wonder if I could read your thoughts, too.”

  “You already have,” Matthew said, lowering my fingers and kissing their tips. “Back in Oxford, when you received the picture of your parents. You weren’t conscious of what you were doing. But you kept answering questions I wasn’t able to ask aloud.”

  “Can I try again?” I asked, half expecting him to say no.

  “Of course. If you were a vampire I would already have offered my blood.” He lay back on the pillow.

  I hesitated for a moment, stilled my thoughts, and focused on a simple question. How can I know Matthew’s mind?

  A single silver thread shimmered between my heart and the spot on his forehead where his third eye would be if he were a witch. The thread shortened, drawing me closer until my lips pressed against his skin.

  An explosion of sights and sounds burst in my head like fireworks. I saw Jack and Annie, Philippe and Ysabeau. I saw Gallowglass and men I didn’t recognize who occupied important places in Matthew’s heart. I saw Eleanor and Lucas. There was a feeling of triumph as he conquered some scientific mystery, a shout of joy as he rode out in the forest to hunt and kill as he was made to do. I saw myself, smiling up at him.

  Then I saw the face of Herr Fuchs, the vampire I’d met in the Jewish town, and heard quite distinctly the words My son, Benjamin.

  I sat back on my heels abruptly, my fingers touching my trembling lips.

  “What is it?” Matthew said, sitting up and frowning.

  “Herr Fuchs!” I looked at him in horror, afraid he had thought the worst. “I didn’t realize he was your son, that he was Benjamin.” There hadn’t been a hint of blood rage about him.

  “It”s not your fault. You’re not a vampire, and Benjamin only reveals what he chooses.” Matthew’s voice was soothing. “I must have sensed his