Shadow of Night

by Deborah Harkness

  I stared at the door, willing my father to open it. I could see the threads leading from me, through the grain in the wood, to the wizard on the other side. One of the threads snapped and struck the back of my hand like a rubber band. I gasped. “Daddy!”

  “Get moving, Diana!” he shouted.

  Matthew and I wandered around town, watching the shops close early and noting the revelers already filling the pubs. More than one butcher was casually stacking bones by the front door. They were white and clean, as though they had been boiled.

  “What’s going on with the bones?” I asked Matthew after we saw the third such display.

  “They’re for the bone fires.”

  “Bonfires?”

  “No,” Matthew said, “the bone fires. Traditionally, people celebrate Midsummer Eve by lighting fires: bone fires, wood fires, and mixed fires. The mayor’s warnings to cease and desist all such superstitious celebrations go up every year, and people light them anyway.”

  Matthew treated me to dinner at the famous Belle Savage Inn just outside the Blackfriars on Ludgate Hill. More than a simple eatery, the Belle Savage was an entertainment complex where customers could see plays and fencing matches—not to mention Marocco, the famous horse who could pick virgins out of the crowd. It wasn’t roller-skating in Dorchester, but it was close.

  The city’s teenagers were out in force, shouting insults and innuendos at one another as they went from one watering hole to another. During the day most were hard at work as servants or apprentices. Even in the evenings their time was not their own, since their masters expected them to watch over the shops and houses, tend children, fetch food and water, and do the hundred other small chores that were required to keep an early-modern household going. Tonight London belonged to them, and they were making the most of it.

  We passed back through Ludgate and approached the entrance to the Blackfriars as the bells tolled nine o’clock. It was the time the members of the Watch started to make their rounds, and people were expected to head for home, but no one seemed to be enforcing the rules tonight. Though the sun had set an hour earlier, the moon was only one day away from full, and the city streets were still bright with moonlight.

  “Can we keep walking?” I asked. We were always going somewhere specific—to Baynard’s Castle to see Mary, to St. James Garlickhythe to visit with the gathering, to St. Paul’s Churchyard for books. Matthew and I had never taken a walk through the city without a destination in mind.

  “I don’t see why not, since we were ordered to stay out and have fun,” Matthew said. He dipped his head and stole a kiss.

  We walked around the western door of St. Paul’s, which was bustling in spite of the hour, and out of the churchyard to the north. This put us on Cheapside, London’s most spacious and prosperous street, where the goldsmiths plied their trade. We rounded the Cheapside Cross, which was being used as a paddling pool by a group of roaring boys, and headed east. Matthew traced the route of Anne Boleyn’s coronation procession for me and pointed out the house where Geoffrey Chaucer had lived as a child. Some merchants invited Matthew to join them in a game of bowls. They booed him out of the competition after his third strike in a row, however.

  “Happy now that you’ve proven you’re top dog?” I teased as he put his arm around me and pulled me close.

  “Very,” he said. He pointed to a fork in the road. “Look.”

  “The Royal Exchange.” I turned to him in excitement. “At night! You remembered.”

  “A gentleman never forgets,” he murmured with a low bow. “I’m not sure if any shops are still open, but the lamps will be lit. Will you join me in a promenade across the courtyard?”

  We entered through the wide arches next to the bell tower topped with a golden grasshopper. Inside, I turned around slowly to get the full experience of the four-storied building with its hundred shops selling everything from suits of armor to shoehorns. Statues of English monarchs looked down on the customers and merchants, and a further plague of grasshoppers ornamented the peak of each dormer window.

  “The grasshopper was Gresham’s emblem, and he wasn’t shy about selfpromotion,” Matthew said with a laugh, following my eyes.

  Some shops were indeed open, the lamps in the arcades around the central courtyard were lit, and we were not the only ones enjoying the evening.

  “Where is the music coming from?” I asked, looking around for the minstrels.

  “The tower,” Matthew said, pointing in the direction we had entered. “The merchants chip in and sponsor concerts in the warm weather. It’s good for business.”

  Matthew was good for business, too, based on the number of shopkeepers who greeted him by name. He joked with them and asked after their wives and children.

  “I’ll be right back,” he said, darting into a nearby store. Mystified, I stood listening to the music and watching an authoritative young woman organize an impromptu ball. People formed circles, holding hands and jumping up and down like popcorn in a hot skillet.

  When he came back, Matthew presented to me—with all due ceremony—

  “A mousetrap,” I said, giggling at the little wooden box with its sliding door.

  “That is a proper mousetrap,” he said, taking my hand. He started walking backward, pulling me into the center of the merriment. “Dance with me.”

  “I definitely don’t know that dance.” It was nothing like the sedate dances at Sept-Tours or at Rudolf’s court.

  “Well, I do,” Matthew said, not bothering to look at the whirling couples behind him. “It’s an old dance—the Black Nag—with easy steps.” He pulled me into place at one end of the line, plucking my mousetrap out of my hand and giving it into the safekeeping of an urchin. He promised the boy a penny if he returned it to us at the end of the song.

  Matthew took my hand, stepped into the line of dancers, and when the others moved, we followed. Three steps and a little kick forward, three steps and a little dip back. After a few repetitions, we came to the more intricate steps when the line of twelve dancers divided into two lines of six and started changing places, crossing in diagonal paths from one line to the other, weaving back and forth.

  When the dance finished, there were calls for more music and requests for specific tunes, but we left the Royal Exchange before the dances became any more energetic. Matthew retrieved my mousetrap and, instead of taking me straight home, wended his way south toward the river. We turned down so many alleys and cut across so many churchyards that I was hopelessly disoriented by the time we reached All Hallows the Great, with its tall, square tower and abandoned cloister where the monks had once walked. Like most of London’s churches, All Hallows was on its way to becoming a ruin, its medieval stonework crumbling.

  “Are you up for a climb?” Matthew asked, ducking into the cloister and through a low wooden door.

  I nodded, and we began our ascent. We passed by the bells, which were happily not clanging at the moment, and Matthew pushed open a trapdoor in the roof. He scampered through the hole, then reached down and lifted me up to join him. Suddenly we were standing behind the tower’s crenellations, with all of London spread at our feet.

  The bonfires on the hills outside the city already burned bright, and lanterns bobbed up and down on the bows of boats and barges crossing the Thames. At this distance, with the darkness of the river as a backdrop, they looked like fireflies. I heard laughter, music, all the ordinary sounds of life I’d grown so accustomed to during the months we’d been here.

  “So you’ve met the queen, seen the Royal Exchange at night, and actually been in a play instead of just watching one,” Matthew said, ticking items off on his fingers.

  “We found Ashmole 782, too. And I discovered I’m a weaver and that magic isn’t as disciplined as I’d hoped.” I surveyed the city, remembering when we’d first arrived and Matthew had to point out the landmarks for fear I’d get lost. Now I could name them myself. “There’s Bridewell.” I pointed. “And St. Paul’s. And the bearbaiti
ng arenas.” I turned toward the quiet vampire standing beside me. “Thank you for tonight, Matthew. We’ve never been on a date-date—out in public like this. It was magical.”

  “I didn’t do a very good job courting you, did I? We should have had more nights like this one, with dancing and looking at the stars.” He tilted his face up, and the moon glanced off his pale skin.

  “You’re practically glowing,” I said softly, reaching up to touch his chin.

  “So are you.” Matthew’s hands slid to my waist, his gesture bringing the baby into our embrace. “That reminds me. Your father gave us a list, too.”

  “We’ve had fun. You made magic by taking me to the exchange and then surprising me with this view.”

  “That leaves only two more items. Lady’s choice: I can howl at the moon or we can make out.”

  I smiled and looked away, strangely shy. Matthew tilted his head up to the moon again, readying himself.

  “No howling. You’ll bring out the Watch,” I protested with a laugh.

  “Kissing it is,” he said softly, fitting his mouth to mine.

  * * *

  The next morning the entire household was yawning its way through breakfast after staying out until the early hours. Tom and Jack had just risen and were wolfing down bowls of porridge when Gallowglass came in and whispered something to Matthew. My mouth went dry at Matthew’s sad look.

  “Where’s my dad?” I shot to my feet.

  “He’s gone home,” Gallowglass said gruffly.

  “Why didn’t you stop him?” I asked Gallowglass, tears threatening.

  “He can’t be gone. I just needed a few more hours with him.”

  “All the time in the world wouldn’t have been enough, Auntie,” Gallowglass said sadly.

  “But he didn’t say good-bye,” I whispered numbly.

  “A parent should never have to say a final good-bye to his child,” Matthew said.

  “Stephen asked me to give you this,” Gallowglass said. It was a piece of paper, folded up into an origami sailboat.

  “Daddy sucked at swans,” I said, wiping my eyes, “but he was really good at making boats.” Carefully, I unfolded the note.

  Diana: You are everything we dreamed you would one day become. Life is the strong warp of time. Death is only the weft. It will be because of your children, and your children’s

  children, that I will live forever. Dad

  P.S. Every time you read “something is rotten in the state of Denmark” in Hamlet, think of me..

  “You tell me that magic is just desire made real. Maybe spells are nothing more than words that you believe with all your heart,” Matthew said, coming to rest his hands on my shoulders. “He loves you. Forever. So do I.”

  His words wove through the threads that connected us, witch and vampire. They carried the conviction of his feelings with them: tenderness, reverence, constancy, hope.

  “I love you, too,” I whispered, reinforcing his spell with mine.

  Chapter Thirty Nine

  My father had left London without saying a proper good-bye. I was determined to take my own leave differently. As a result my final days in the city were a complex weaving of words and desires, spells and magic.

  Goody Alsop’s fetch was waiting sadly for me at the end of the lane. She trailed listlessly behind me as I climbed the stairs to the witch’s rooms.

  “So you are leaving us,” Goody Alsop said from her chair by the fire. She was wearing wool and a shawl, and a fire was blazing as well.

  “We must.” I bent down and kissed her papery cheek. “How are you today?”

  “Somewhat better, thanks to Susanna’s remedies.” Goody Alsop coughed, and the force of it bent her frail frame in two. When she was recovered, she studied me with bright eyes and nodded. “This time the babe has taken root.”

  “It has,” I said with a smile. “I have the sickness to prove it. Would you like me to tell the others?” I didn’t want Goody Alsop to shoulder any extra burdens, emotional or physical. Susanna was worried about her frailty, and Elizabeth Jackson was already taking on some of the duties usually performed by the gathering’s elder.

  “No need. Catherine was the one to tell me. She said Corra was flying about a few days ago, chortling and chattering as she does when she has a secret.”

  We had come to an agreement, my firedrake and I, that she would limit her open-air flying to once a week, and only at night. I’d reluctantly agreed to a second night out during the dark of the moon, when the risk of anyone’s seeing her and mistaking her for a fiery portent of doom was at its lowest.

  “So that’s where she went,” I said with a laugh. Corra found the firewitch’s company soothing, and Catherine enjoyed challenging her to firebreathing contests.

  “We are all glad that Corra has found something to do with herself besides clinging to the chimneypieces and shrieking at the ghosts.” Goody Alsop pointed to the chair opposite. “Will you not sit with me? The goddess may not afford us another chance.”

  “Did you hear the news from Scotland?” I asked as I took my seat.

  “I have heard nothing since you told me that pleading her belly did not save Euphemia MacLean from the pyre.” Goody Alsop’s decline began the night I’d told her that a young witch from Berwick had been burned, in spite of Matthew’s efforts.

  “Matthew finally convinced the rest of the Congregation that the spiral of accusations and executions had to stop. Two of the accused witches have overturned their testimony and said their confessions were the result of torture.”

  “It must have given the Congregation pause to have a wearh speak out on behalf of a witch.” Goody Alsop looked at me sharply. “He would give himself away if you were to stay. Matthew Roydon lives in a dangerous world of half-truths, but no one can avoid detection forever. Because of the babe, you must take greater care.”

  “We will,” I assured her. “Meanwhile I’m still not absolutely sure my eighth knot is strong enough for the timewalking. Not with Matthew and the baby.”

  “Let me see it,” Goody Alsop said, stretching out her hand. I leaned forward and put the cords into her palm. I would use all nine cords when we timewalked and make a total of nine different knots. No spell used more.

  With practiced hands Goody Alsop made eight crossings in the red cord and then bound the ends together so that the knot was unbreakable. “That is how I do it.” It was beautifully simple, with open loops and swirls like the stone traceries in a cathedral window.

  “Mine did not look like that.” My laugh was rueful. “It wiggled and squiggled around.”

  “Every weaving is as unique as the weaver who makes it. The goddess does not want us to imitate some ideal of perfection, but to be our true selves.”

  “Well, I must be all wiggle, then.” I reached for the cords to study the design.

  “There is another knot I would show you,” Goody Alsop said.

  “Another?” I frowned.

  “A tenth knot. It is impossible for me to make it, though it should be the simplest.” Goody Alsop smiled, but her chin trembled. “My own teacher could not make the knot either, but still we passed it on, in hope that a weaver such as you might come along.”

  Goody Alsop released the just-tied knot with a flick of her gnarled index finger. I handed the red silk back to her, and she made a simple loop. For a moment the cord fused in an unbroken ring. As soon as she took her fingers from it, however, the loop released.

  “But you drew the ends together just a minute ago, and with a far more complicated weaving,” I said, confused

  “As long as there is a crossing in the cord, I can bind the ends and complete the spell. But only a weaver who stands between worlds can make the tenth knot,” she replied. “Try it. Use the silver silk.”

  Mystified, I joined the ends of the cord into a circlet. The fibers snapped together to form a loop with no beginning and no ending. I lifted my fingers from the silk, but the circle held.

  “A fine weaving,” Goody
Alsop said with satisfaction. “The tenth knot captures the power of eternity, a weaving of life and death. It is rather like your husband’s snake, or the way Corra carries her tail in her mouth sometimes when it gets in her way.” She held up the tenth knot. It was another ouroboros. The sense of the uncanny built in the room, lifting the hairs on my arm. “Creation and destruction are the simplest magics, and the most powerful, just as the simplest knot is the most difficult to make.”

  “I don’t want to use magic to destroy anything,” I said. The Bishops had a strong tradition of not doing harm. My Aunt Sarah believed that any witch who strayed away from this fundamental tenet would find the evil coming back to her in the end.

  “No one wants to use the goddess’s gifts as a weapon, but sometimes it is necessary. Your wearh knows that. After what happened here and in Scotland, you know it, too.”

  “Perhaps. But my world is different,” I said. “There’s less call for magical weapons.”

  “Worlds change, Diana.” Goody Alsop fixed her attention on some distant memory. “My teacher, Mother Ursula, was a great weaver. I was reminded of one of her prophecies on All Hallows’ Eve, when the terrible events in Scotland began—and when you came to change our world.”

  Her voice took on the singsong quality of an incantation.