Shadow of Night

by Deborah Harkness

  “It is a pleasure to meet you. Are you new to the Blackfriars?” I wanted to make small talk for as long as possible, if only to stare at their familiaryet-strange faces.

  “No. We live by the hospital near Smithfield Market,” Rebecca explained.

  “I take in patients when their wards are full.” The woman hesitated. “I am Bridget White, and Rebecca is my daughter.”

  Even without the familiar names of Rebecca and Bridget, I recognized these two creatures in the marrow of my bones. Bridget Bishop had been born around 1632, and the first name in the Bishop grimoire was Bridget’s grandmother, Rebecca Davies. Would this ten-year-old girl one day marry and bear that name?

  Rebecca’s attention was caught by something at my neck. I reached up. Ysabeau’s earrings.

  I had used three objects to bring Matthew and me to the past: a manuscript copy of Doctor Faustus, a silver chess piece, and an earring hidden in Bridget Bishop’s poppet. This earring. I reached up and took the fine golden wire out of my ear. Knowing from my experience with Jack that it was wise to make direct eye contact with children if you wanted to leave a lasting impression, I crouched down until we were at an equal level.

  “I need someone to keep this safe for me.” I held out the earring. “One day I will have need of it. Would you guard it and keep it close?”

  Rebecca looked at me solemnly and nodded. I took her hand, feeling a current of awareness pass between us, and put the jeweled wires into her palm. She wrapped her fingers tightly around them. “Can I, Mama?” she whispered belatedly to Bridget.

  “I think that would be all right,” her mother replied warily. “Come, Rebecca. We must go.”

  “Thank you,” I said, rising and patting Rebecca on the shoulder while looking Bridget in the eye. “Thank you.”

  I felt a nudging glance. I waited until Rebecca and Bridget were out of sight before I turned to face Christopher Marlowe.

  “Mistress Roydon.” Kit’s voice was hoarse, and he looked like death. “Walter told me you were leaving tonight.”

  “I asked him to tell you.” I forced Kit to meet my eyes through an act of sheer will. This was another thing I could fix: I could make sure that Matthew said a proper good-bye to a man who had once been his closest friend.

  Kit looked down at his feet, hiding his face. “I should never have come.”

  “I forgive you, Kit.”

  Marlowe’s head swung up in surprise at my words. “Why?” he asked, dumbstruck.

  “Because as long as Matthew blames you for what happened to me, a part of him remains with you. Forever,” I said simply. “Come upstairs and say your farewells.”

  Matthew was waiting for us on the landing, having divined that I was bringing someone home. I kissed him softly on the mouth as I went past on the way to our bedroom.

  “Your father forgave you,” I murmured. “Give Kit the same gift in return.”

  Then I left them to patch up what they could in what little time remained.

  A few hours later, I handed Thomas Harriot a steel tube. “Here is your star glass, Tom.” “I fashioned it from a gun barrel—with adjustments, of course,” explained Monsieur Vallin, famous maker of mousetraps and clocks. “And it is engraved, as Mistress Roydon requested.”

  There on the side, set in a lovely little silver banner, was the legend n. vallin me fecit, t. harriot me invenit, 1591.

  “‘N. Vallin made me, T. Harriot invented me, 1591.’” I smiled warmly at Monsieur Vallin. “It’s perfect.”

  “Can we look at the moon now?” Jack cried, racing for the door. “It already looks bigger than St. Mildred’s clock!”

  And so Thomas Harriot, mathematician and linguist, made scientific history in the courtyard of the Hart and Crown while sitting in a battered wicker garden chair pulled down from our attics. He trained the long metal tube fitted with two spectacle lenses at the full moon and sighed with pleasure.

  “Look, Jack. It is just as Signor della Porta said.” Tom invited the boy into his lap and positioned one end of the tube at his enthusiastic assistant’s eye. “Two lenses, one convex and one concave, are indeed the solution if held at the right distance.”

  After Jack we all took a turn.

  “Well, that is not at all what I expected,” George Chapman said, disappointed. “Did you not think the moon would be more dramatic? I believe I prefer the poet’s mysterious moon to this one, Tom.”

  “Why, it is not perfect at all,” Henry Percy complained, rubbing his eyes and then peering through the tube again.

  “Of course it isn’t perfect. Nothing is,” Kit said. “You cannot believe everything philosophers tell you, Hal. It is a sure way to ruin. Look what philosophy has done for Tom.”

  I glanced at Matthew and grinned. It had been some time since we’d enjoyed the School of Night’s verbal ripostes.

  “At least Tom can feed himself, which is more than I can say for any of the playwrights of my acquaintance.” Walter peered through the tube and whistled. “I wish you had come up with this notion before we went to Virginia, Tom. It would have been useful for surveying the shore while we were safely aboard ship. Look through this, Gallowglass, and tell me I am wrong.”

  “You’re never wrong, Walter,” Gallowglass said with a wink at Jack. “Mind me well, young Jack. The one who pays your wages is correct in all things.”

  I’d invited Goody Alsop and Susanna to join us, too, and even they took a peek through Tom’s star glass. Neither woman seemed overly impressed with the invention, although they both made enthusiastic noises when prompted.

  “Why do men bother with these trifles?” Susanna whispered to me. “I could have told them the moon is not perfectly smooth, even without this new instrument. Do they not have eyes?”

  After the pleasure of viewing the heavens, only the painful farewells remained. We sent Annie off with Goody Alsop, using the excuse that Susanna needed another set of hands to help the old woman across town. My good-bye was brisk, and Annie looked at me uncertainly.

  “Are you all right, mistress? Shall I stay here instead?”

  “No, Annie. Go with your aunt and Goody Alsop.” I blinked back the tears. How did Matthew bear these repeated farewells?

  Kit, George, and Walter left next, with gruff good-byes and hands clamped on Matthew’s arm to wish him well.

  “Come, Jack. You and Tom will go home with me,” Henry Percy said. “The night is still young.”

  “I don’t want to go,” Jack said. He swung around to Matthew, eyes huge. The boy senses the impending change.

  Matthew knelt before him. “There’s nothing to be afraid of, Jack. You know Master Harriot and Lord Northumberland. They won’t let you come to harm.”

  “What if I have a nightmare?” Jack whispered.

  “Nightmares are like Master Harriot’s star glass. They are a trick of the light, one that makes something distant seem closer and larger than it really is.”

  “Oh.” Jack considered Matthew’s response. “So even if I see a monster in my dreams, it cannot reach me?”

  Matthew nodded. “But I will tell you a secret. A dream is a nightmare in reverse. If you dream of someone you love, that person will seem closer, even if far away.” He stood and put his hand on Jack’s head for a moment in a silent blessing.

  Once Jack and his guardians had departed, only Gallowglass remained. I took the cords from my spell box, leaving a few items within: a pebble, a white feather, a bit of the rowan tree, my jewelry, and the note my father had left.

  “I’ll take care of it,” he promised, taking the box from me. It looked oddly small in his huge hand. He wrapped me up in a bear hug.

  “Keep the other Matthew safe, so he can find me one day,” I whispered in his ear, my eyes scrunched tight.

  I released him and stepped aside. The two de Clermonts said their goodbyes as all de Clermonts did—briefly but with feeling.

  Pierre was waiting with the horses outside the Cardinal’s Hat. Matthew handed me up into the saddl
e and climbed into his own.

  “Farewell, madame,” Pierre said, letting go of the reins.

  “Thank you, friend,” I said, my eyes filling once more.

  Pierre handed Matthew a letter. I recognized Philippe’s seal. “Your father’s instructions, milord.”

  “If I don’t turn up in Edinburgh in two days, come looking for me.”

  “I will,” Pierre promised as Matthew clucked to his horse and we turned toward Oxford.

  We changed horses three times and were at the Old Lodge before sunrise. Françoise and Charles had been sent away. We were alone.

  Matthew left the letter from Philippe propped up on his desk, where the sixteenth-century Matthew could not fail to see it. It would send him to Scotland on urgent business. Once there, Matthew Roydon would stay at the court of King James for a time before disappearing to start a new life in Amsterdam.

  “The king of Scots will be pleased to have me back to my former self,” Matthew commented, touching the letter with his fingertip. “I won’t be making any more attempts to save witches, certainly.”

  “You made a difference here, Matthew,” I said, sliding my arm around his waist. “Now we need to sort things out in our present.”

  We stepped into the bedroom where we’d arrived all those months before.

  “You know I can’t be sure that we’ll slip through the centuries and land in exactly the right time and place,” I warned.

  “You’ve explained it to me, mon coeur. I have faith in you.” Matthew hooked his arm through mine, pressing it firmly against his side to anchor me. “Let’s go meet our future. Again.”

  “Good-bye, house.” I looked around our first home one last time. Even though I would see it again, it would not be the same as it was on this June morning.

  The blue and amber threads in the corners snapped and keened impatiently, filling the room with light and sound. I took a deep breath and knotted my brown cord, leaving the end hanging free. Apart from Matthew and the clothes on our backs, my weaver’s cords were the only objects we were taking back with us.

  “With knot of one, the spell’s begun,” I whispered. Time’s volume increased with every knot until the shrieking and keening was nearly deafening.

  As the ends of the ninth cord fused together, I clasped Matthew’s hand in mine. We picked up our feet and our surroundings slowly dissolved.

  Chapter Forty

  All the English papers had some variation of the same headline, but Ysabeau thought the one in the Times was the cleverest.

  English Man Wins Race to See into Space

  30 June 2010

  The world’s leading expert on early scientific instruments at Oxford University’s Museum of the History of Science, Anthony Carter, confirmed today that a refracting telescope bearing the names of Elizabethan mathematician and astronomer Thomas Harriot and Nicholas Vallin, a Huguenot clockmaker who fled France for religious reasons, is indeed genuine. In addition to the names, the telescope is engraved with the date 1591.

  The discovery has electrified the scientific and historical communities. For centuries, Italian mathematician Galileo Galilei had been credited with borrowing rudimentary telescope technology from the Dutch in order to view the moon in 1609.

  “The history books will have to be rewritten in light of this discovery,” said Carter. “Thomas Harriot had read Giambattista della Porta’s Natural Magic and become intrigued with how convex and concave lenses could be used to ‘see both things afar off, and things near hand, both greater and clearly.’”

  Thomas Harriot’s contributions to the field of astronomy were overlooked in part because he did not publish them, preferring to share his discoveries with a close group of friends some call “The School of Night.” Under the patronage of Walter Raleigh and Henry Percy, the “Wizard Earl” of Northumberland, Harriot was financially free to explore his interests.

  Mr I. P. Riddell discovered the telescope, along with a box of assorted mathematical papers in Thomas Harriot’s hand and an elaborate silver mousetrap also signed by Vallin. He was repairing the bells of St. Michael’s Church, near the Percy family’s seat in Alnwick, when a particularly strong gust of wind brought down a faded tapestry of St. Margaret slaying the dragon, revealing the box that had been secreted there.

  “It is rare for instruments of this period to have so many identifying marks,” Dr Carter explained to reporters, revealing the date mark stamped into the telescope, which confirms the item was made in 1591–92. “We owe a great debt to Nicholas Vallin, who knew that this was an important development in the history of scientific instrumentation and took unusual measures to record its genealogy and provenance.”

  “They refuse to sell it,” Marcus said, leaning against the doorframe. With his arms and legs crossed, he looked very much like Matthew. “I’ve spoken with everyone from the Alnwick church officials to the Duke of Northumberland to the Bishop of Newcastle. They’re not going to give up the telescope, not even for the small fortune you’ve offered. I think I’ve convinced them to let me buy the mousetrap, though.”

  “The whole world knows about it,” Ysabeau said. “Even Le Monde has reported the story.”

  “We should have tried harder to squash it. This could give Knox and his allies vital information,” Marcus said. The growing number of people living inside the walls of Sept-Tours had been worrying for weeks about what Knox might do if the exact whereabouts of Diana and Matthew were discovered.

  “What does Phoebe think?” Ysabeau asked. She had taken an instant liking to the observant young human with her firm chin and gentle ways.

  Marcus’s face softened. It made him look as he had before Matthew left, when he was carefree and joyful. “She thinks it’s too soon to tell what damage has been done by the telescope’s discovery.”

  “Smart girl,” Ysabeau said with a smile.

  “I don’t know what I’d do—” Marcus began. His expression turned fierce. “I love her, Grand-mère.”

  “Of course you do. And she loves you, too.” After the events of May, Marcus had wanted her with the rest of the family and had brought her to Sept-Tours to stay. The two of them were inseparable. And Phoebe had shown remarkable savoir faire as she met the assembly of daemons, witches, and vampires currently in residence. If she had been surprised to learn there were other creatures sharing the world with humans, she had not revealed it.

  Membership in Marcus’s Conventicle had swelled considerably over the past months. Matthew’s assistant, Miriam, was now a permanent resident at the château, as were Philippe’s daughter Verin and her husband Ernst. Gallowglass, Ysabeau’s restless grandson, had shocked them all by staying put there for six whole weeks. Even now he showed no signs of leaving. Sophie Norman and Nathaniel Wilson welcomed their new baby, Margaret, into the world under Ysabeau’s roof, and now the baby’s authority in the château was second only to Ysabeau’s. With her grandchild living at Sept-Tours, Nathaniel’s mother Agatha appeared and reappeared without warning, as did Matthew’s best friend, Hamish. Even Baldwin flitted through occasionally.

  Never in her long life had Ysabeau expected to be chatelaine of such a household.

  “Where is Sarah?” Marcus asked, tuning in to the hum of activity all around. “I don’t hear her.”

  “In the Round Tower.” Ysabeau ran her sharp nail around the edge of the newspaper story and neatly lifted the clipped columns from their printed surround. “Sophie and Margaret sat with her for a while. Sophie says Sarah is keeping watch.”

  “For what? What’s happened now?” Marcus said, snatching at the newspaper. He’d read them all that morning, tracking the subtle shifts in money and influence that Nathaniel had found a way to analyze and isolate so that they could be better prepared for the Congregation’s next move. A world without Phoebe was inconceivable, but Nathaniel had become nearly as indispensable. “That damn telescope is going to be a problem. I just know it. All Knox needs is a timewalking witch and this story and he’ll have everything he ne
eds to go back into the past and find my father.”

  “Your father won’t be there for much longer, if he’s still there at all.”

  “Really, Grand-mère,” Marcus said with a note of exasperation, his attention still glued to the text surrounding the hole that Ysabeau had left in the Times. “How can you possibly know that?”

  “First there were the miniatures, then the laboratory records, and now this telescope. I know my daughter-in-law. This telescope is exactly the kind of gesture Diana would make if she had nothing left to lose.” Ysabeau brushed past her grandson. “Diana and Matthew are coming home.”

  Marcus’s expression was unreadable.

  “I expected you to be happier about your father’s return,” Ysabeau said quietly, stopping by the door.

  “It’s been a difficult few months,” Marcus said somberly. “The Congregation made it clear they want the book and Nathaniel’s daughter. Once Diana is here . . .”

  “They will stop at nothing.” Ysabeau took in a slow breath. “At least we will no longer have to worry about something happening to Diana and Matthew in the past. We will be together, at Sept-Tours, fighting side by side.” Dying side by side.

  “So much has changed since last November.” Marcus stared into the shining surface of the table as though he were a witch and it might show him the future.

  “In their lives, too, I suspect. But your father’s love for you is a constant. Sarah needs Diana now. You need Matthew, too.”

  Ysabeau took her clipping and headed for the Round Tower, leaving