Shadow of Night

by Deborah Harkness

  “For storms will rage and oceans roar

  When Gabriel stands on sea and shore.

  And as he blows his wondrous horn,

  Old worlds die, and new be born.”

  Not a breeze or a crackle of flame disturbed the room when Goody Alsop finished. She took a deep breath.

  “It is all one, you see. Death and birth. The tenth knot with no beginning and no ending, and the wearh’s snake. The full moon that shone earlier this week and the shadow Corra cast upon the Thames in a portent of your leaving. The old world and the new.” Goody Alsop’s smile wavered. “I was glad when you came to me, Diana Roydon. And when you go, as you must, my heart will be heavy.”

  “Usually Matthew tells me when he is leaving my city.” Andrew Hubbard’s white hands rested on the carved arms of his chair in the church crypt. High above us someone prepared for an upcoming church service. “What brings you here, Mistress Roydon?”

  “I came to talk to you about Annie and Jack.” Hubbard’s strange eyes studied me as I pulled a small leather purse from my pocket. It contained five years of wages for each of them.

  “I’m leaving London. I would like you to have this, for their care.” I thrust the money in Hubbard’s direction. He made no move to take it.

  “That isn’t necessary, mistress.”

  “Please. I would take them with me if I could. Since they cannot go, I need to know that someone will be watching out for them.”

  “And what will you give me in return?”

  “Why . . . the money, of course.” I held the pouch out once more.

  “I don’t want or need the money, Mistress Roydon.” Hubbard settled back in his chair, his eyes drifting closed.

  “What do you—” I stopped. “No.”

  “God does nothing in vain. There are no accidents in His plans. He wanted you to come here today, because He wants to be sure that no one of your blood will have anything to fear from me or mine.”

  “I have protectors enough,” I protested.

  “And can the same be said for your husband?” Hubbard glanced at my breast. “Your blood is stronger in his veins now than when you arrived. And there is the child to consider.”

  My heart stuttered. When I took my Matthew back to our present, Andrew Hubbard would be one of the few people who would know his future—and that there was a witch in it.

  “You wouldn’t use the knowledge of me against Matthew. Not after what he’s done—how he’s changed.”

  “Wouldn’t I?” Hubbard’s tight smile told me he would do whatever it took to protect his flock. “There is a great deal of bad blood between us.”

  “I’ll find another way to see them safe,” I said, deciding to go.

  “Annie is my child already. She is a witch, and part of my family. I will see to her welfare. Jack Blackfriars is another matter. He is not a creature and will have to fend for himself.”

  “He’s a child—a boy!”

  “But not my child. Nor are you. I do not owe either of you anything. Good day, Mistress Roydon.” Hubbard turned away.

  “And if I were one of your family, what then? Would you honor my request about Jack? Would you recognize Matthew as one of my blood and therefore under your protection?” It was the sixteenth-century Matthew that I was thinking of now. When we returned to the present, that other Matthew would still be here in the past.

  “If you offer me your blood, neither Matthew nor Jack nor your unborn child has anything to fear from me or mine.” Hubbard imparted the information dispassionately, but his glance was touched with the avarice I’d seen in Rudolf’s eyes.

  “And how much blood would you need?” Think. Stay alive.

  “Very little—no more than a drop.” Hubbard’s attention was unwavering.

  “I couldn’t let you take it directly from my body. Matthew would know—we are mates, after all,” I said. Hubbard’s eyes flickered to my breast.

  “I always take my tribute directly from my children’s neck.”

  “I’m sure you do, Father Hubbard. But you can understand why that isn’t possible—or even desirable—in this case.” I fell silent, hoping that Hubbard’s hunger—for power, for knowledge of Matthew and me, for something to hold over the de Clermonts if he ever needed it—would win. “I could use a cup.”

  “No,” Hubbard said with a shake of his head. “Your blood would be tainted. It must be pure.”

  “A silver cup, then,” I said, thinking of Chef’s lectures at Sept-Tours.

  “You will open the vein in your wrist over my mouth and let the blood fall into it. We will not touch.” Hubbard scowled at me. “Otherwise I will doubt the sincerity of your offer.”

  “Very well, Father Hubbard. I accept your terms.” I loosened the tie at my right cuff and pushed up the sleeve. While I did so, I whispered a silent request to Corra. “Where do you wish to do this? From what I saw before, your children kneel before you, but that will not work if I’m to drip the blood into your mouth.”

  “It does not matter to God who kneels.” To my surprise, Hubbard dropped to the floor before me. He handed me a knife.

  “I don’t need that.” I flicked my finger at the blue traceries on my wrist and murmured a simple unbinding charm. A line of crimson appeared. The blood welled. “Are you ready?”

  Hubbard nodded and opened his mouth, his eyes on my face. He was waiting for me to renege, or cheat him somehow. But I would obey the letter of this agreement, though not its spirit. Thank you, Goody Alsop, I said, sending her a silent blessing for showing me how to handle the man.

  I held my wrist over his mouth and clenched my fist. A drop of blood rolled over the edge of my arm and began to fall. Hubbard’s eyes flickered closed, as if he wanted to concentrate on what my blood would tell him.

  “What is blood, if not fire and water?” I murmured. I called on the wind to slow the droplet’s fall. As the power of the air increased, it froze the falling bead of blood so that it was crystalline and sharp when it landed on Hubbard’s tongue. The vampire’s eyes shot open in confusion.

  “No more than a drop.” The wind had dried the remaining blood against my skin in a maze of red streaks over the blue veins. “You are a man of God, a man of your word, are you not, Father Hubbard?”

  Corra’s tail loosened from around my waist. She’d used it to block our baby from having any knowledge of this sordid transaction, but now she seemed to want to use it to beat Hubbard senseless.

  Slowly I withdrew my arm. Hubbard thought about grabbing it back to his mouth. I saw the idea cross his mind as clearly as I had seen Edward Kelley contemplate clubbing me with his walking stick. But he thought better of it. I whispered another simple spell to close the wound, and turned wordlessly to leave.

  “When you are next in London,” Hubbard said softly, “God will whisper it to me. And if He wills it, we shall meet again. But remember this. No matter where you go from now, even unto death, some small piece of you will live within me.”

  I stopped and looked back at him. His words were menacing, but the expression on his face was thoughtful, even sad. My pace quickened as I left the church crypt, wanting to put as much distance as I could between me and Andrew Hubbard.

  “Farewell, Diana Bishop,” he called after me.

  I was halfway across town before I realized that no matter how little that single drop of blood might have revealed, Father Hubbard now knew my real name.

  Walter and Matthew were shouting at each other when I returned to the Hart and Crown. Raleigh’s groom could hear them, too. He was in the courtyard, holding the reins of Walter’s black beast of a horse and listening to their argument through the open windows.

  “It will mean my death—and hers, too! No one must know she is with child!” Oddly enough, it was Walter speaking.

  “You cannot abandon the woman you love and your own child in an attempt to stay true to the queen, Walter. Elizabeth will find out that you have betrayed her, and Bess will be ruined forever.”

  “
What do you expect me to do? Marry her? If I do so without the queen’s permission, I’ll be arrested.”

  “You’ll survive no matter what happens,” Matthew said flatly. “If you leave Bess without your protection, she will not.”

  “How can you pretend concern for marital honesty after all the lies you’ve told about Diana? Some days you insisted you were married but made us swear to deny it should any strange witches or wearhs come sniffing around asking questions.” Walter’s voice dropped, but the ferocity remained. “Do you expect me to believe you’re going to return whence you came and acknowledge her as your wife?”

  I slipped into the room unnoticed.

  Matthew hesitated.

  “I thought not,” Walter said. He was pulling on his gloves.

  “Is this how you two want to say your farewells?” I asked.

  “Diana,” Walter said warily.

  “Hello, Walter. Your groom is downstairs with the horse.”

  He started toward the door, stopped. “Be sensible, Matthew. I cannot lose all credit at court. Bess understands the dangers of the queen’s anger better than anyone. At the court of Elizabeth, fortune is fleeting, but disgrace endures forever.”

  Matthew watched his friend thud down the stairs. “God forgive me. The first time I heard this plan, I told him it was wise. Poor Bess.”

  “What will happen to her when we are gone?” I asked.

  “Come autumn, Bess’s pregnancy will begin to show. They will marry in secret. When the queen questions their relationship, Walter will deny it. Repeatedly. Bess’s reputation will be ruined, her husband will be found out to be a liar, and they will both be arrested.”

  “And the child?” I whispered.

  “Will be born in March and dead the following autumn.” Matthew sat down at the table, his head in his hands. “I will write to my father and make sure that Bess receives his protection. Perhaps Susanna Norman will see to her during the pregnancy.”

  “Neither your father nor Susanna can shield her from the blow of Raleigh’s denial.” I, too, had felt the stabs of doubt months before. “And will you deny that we are married when we return?”

  “It’s not that simple,” Matthew said, looking at me with haunted eyes.

  “That’s what Walter said. You told him he was wrong.” I remembered Goody Alsop’s prophecy. “‘Old worlds die, and new be born.’ The time is coming when you will have to choose between the safety of the past and the promise of the future, Matthew.”

  “And the past cannot be cured, no matter how hard I try,” he said. “It’s something I’m always telling the queen when she agonizes over a bad decision. Hoist by my own petard again, as Gallowglass would be quick to point out.”

  “You beat me to it, Uncle.” Gallowglass had soundlessly entered the room and was unloading parcels. “I’ve got your paper. And your pens. And some tonic for Jack’s throat.”

  “That’s what he gets for spending all his time up towers with Tom, talking about the stars.” Matthew rubbed his face. “We will have to make sure Tom is provided for, Gallowglass. Walter won’t be able to keep him in service much longer. Henry Percy will need to step into the breach—again— but I should contribute something to his upkeep, too.”

  “Speaking of Tom, have you seen his plans for a single-eyed spectacle to view the heavens? He and Jack are calling it a star glass.”

  My scalp tingled as the threads of the room snapped with energy. Time sounded a low protest in the corners.

  “A star glass.” I kept my voice even. “What does it look like, Gallowglass?”

  “Ask them yourself,” Gallowglass said, turning his head toward the stairs. Jack and Mop careened into the room. Tom followed absently behind, a pair of broken spectacles in his hand.

  “You will certainly leave a mark on the future if you meddle with this, Diana,” Matthew warned.

  “Look, look, look.” Jack brandished a thick piece of wood. Mop followed its movements and snapped his jaws at the stick as it went by. “Master Harriot said if we hollowed this out and put a spectacle lens in the end, it would make faraway things seem near. Do you know how to carve, Master Roydon? If not, do you think the joiner in St. Dunstan’s might teach me? Are there any more buns? Master Harriot’s stomach has been growling all afternoon.”

  “Let me see that,” I said, holding out my hand for the wooden tube. “The buns are in the cupboard on the landing, Jack, where they always are. Give one to Master Harriot, and take one for yourself. And no,” I said, cutting the child off when he opened his mouth, “Mop doesn’t get to share yours.”

  “Good day, Mistress Roydon,” Tom said dreamily. “If such a simple pair of spectacles can make a man see God’s words in the Bible, surely they could be made more complex to help him see God’s works in the Book of Nature. Thank you, Jack.” Tom absently bit into the bun.

  “And how would you make them more complex?” I wondered aloud, hardly daring to breathe.

  “I would combine convex and concave lenses, as the Neapolitan gentleman Signor della Porta suggested in a book I read last year. The human arm is not long enough to hold them apart at the proper distance. So we are trying to extend our arm’s reach with that piece of wood.”

  With those words Thomas Harriot changed the history of science. And I didn’t have to meddle with the past—I only had to see to it that the past was not forgotten.

  “But these are just idle imaginings. I will put these ideas down on paper and think about them later.” Tom sighed.

  This was the problem with early-modern scientists: They didn’t understand the necessity of publishing. In the case of Thomas Harriot, his ideas had definitely perished for want of a publisher.

  “I think you’re right, Tom. But this wooden tube is not long enough.” I smiled at him brightly. “As for the joiner in St. Dunstan’s, Monsieur Vallin might be of more help if a long, hollow tube is what you need. Shall we go and see him?”

  “Yes!” Jack shouted, jumping into the air. “Monsieur Vallin has all sorts of gears and springs, Master Harriot. He gave me one, and it is in my treasure box. Mine is not as big as Mistress Roydon’s, but it holds enough. Can we go now?”

  “What is Auntie up to?” Gallowglass asked Matthew, both mystified and wary.

  “I think she’s getting back at Walter for not paying sufficient attention to the future,” Matthew said mildly.

  “Oh. That’s all right, then. And here I thought I smelled trouble.”

  “There’s always trouble,” Matthew said. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing, ma lionne?”

  So much had happened that I could not fix. I couldn’t bring my child back or save the witches in Scotland. We’d brought Ashmole 782 all the way from Prague, only to discover that it could not be taken safely into the future. We had said good-bye to our fathers and were about to leave our friends. And most of these experiences would vanish without a trace. But I knew exactly how to ensure that Tom’s telescope survived.

  I nodded. “The past has changed us, Matthew. Why should we not change it, too?”

  Matthew caught my hand in his and kissed it. “Go to Monsieur Vallin, then. Have him send me the bill.”

  “Thank you.” I bent and whispered in his ear. “Don’t worry. I’ll take Annie with me. She’ll wear him down on the price. Besides, who knows what to charge for a telescope in 1591?”

  And so a witch, a daemon, two children, and a dog paid a short visit to Monsieur Vallin that afternoon. That evening I sent out invitations to our friends to join us the next night. It would be the last time we saw them. While I dealt with telescopes and supper plans, Matthew delivered Roger Bacon’s Verum Secretum Secretorum to Mortlake. I did not want to see Ashmole 782 pass toDr. Dee. I knew it had to go back into the alchemist’s enormous library so that Elias Ashmole could acquire it in the seventeenth century. But it was not easy to give the book into someone else’s keeping, any more than it had been to surrender the small figurine of the goddess Diana to Kit when we arrived. The pr
actical details surrounding our departure we left to Gallowglass and Pierre. They packed trunks, emptied coffers, redistributed funds, and sent personal belongings to the Old Lodge with a practiced efficiency that showed how many times they had done this before.

  Our departure was only hours away. I was returning from Monsieur Vallin’s with an awkward package wrapped in soft leather when I was brought up short by the sight of a ten-year-old girl standing on the street outside the pie shop, staring with fascination at the wares in the window. She looked just as I had at that age, from the unruly straw-blond hair to the arms that were too long for the rest of her frame. The girl stiffened as if she knew she was being watched. When our eyes met, I knew why: She was a witch.

  “Rebecca!” a woman called as she came from inside the shop. My heart leaped at the sight, for she looked like a combination of my mother and Sarah.

  Rebecca said nothing but continued to stare at me as though she had seen a ghost. Her mother looked to see what had captured the girl’s attention and gasped. Her glance tingled over my skin as she took in my face and form. She was a witch, too.

  I forced my feet toward the pie shop. Every step took me closer to the two witches. The mother gathered the child to her skirts, and Rebecca squirmed in protest.

  “She looks like Grand-dame,” Rebecca whispered, trying to get a closer look at me.

  “Hush,” her mother told her. She looked at me apologetically. “You know that your grand-dame is dead, Rebecca.”

  “I am Diana Roydon.” I nodded to the sign over their shoulders. “I live here at the Hart and Crown.”

  “But then you are—” The woman’s eyes widened as she drew Rebecca closer.

  “I am Rebecca White,” the girl said, unconcerned with her mother’s reaction. She bobbed a shallow, teetering curtsy. That looked familiar, too.