“Exactly. See there, how time feels your absence and wants you back to weave yourself into your former life.” She beamed, clapping her hands together as though I’d made her a particularly fine crayon drawing of a house and she planned to display it on her refrigerator door. “Of course, time is not ready for you now. If it were, the blue would be much brighter.”
“You make it sound as though it’s possible to combine magic and the craft, but they’re separate,” I said, still confused. “Witchcraft uses spells, and magic is an inherited power over an element, like air or fire.”
“Who taught you such nonsense?” Goody Alsop snorted, and Susanna looked appalled. “Magic and witchcraft are but two paths that cross in the wood. A weaver is able to stand at the crossroads with one foot placed on each path. She can occupy the place between, where the powers are the greatest.”
Time protested this revelation with a loud cry.
“‘A child between, a witch apart,’” I murmured in wonder. The ghost of Bridget Bishop had warned me of the dangers associated with such a vulnerable position. “Before we came here, the ghost of one of my ancestors—Bridget Bishop—told me that was my fate. She must have known I was a weaver.”
“So did your parents,” Goody Alsop said. “I can see the last remaining threads of their binding. Your father was a weaver, too. He knew you would follow his path.”
“Her father?” Matthew asked.
“Weavers are seldom men, Goody Alsop,” Susanna cautioned.
“Diana’s father was a weaver of great talent but no training. His spell was pieced together rather than properly woven. Still, it was made with love and served its purpose for a time, rather like the chain that binds you to your wearh, Diana.” The chain was my secret weapon, providing the comforting sensation that I was anchored to Matthew in my darkest moments.
“Bridget told me something else that same night: ‘There is no path forward that does not have him in it.’ She must have known about Matthew, too,” I confessed.
“You never told me about this conversation, mon coeur,” Matthew said, sounding more curious than annoyed.
“Crossroads and paths and vague prophecies didn’t seem important then. With everything that happened afterward, I forgot.” I looked at Goody Alsop. “Besides, how could I have been making spells without knowing it?”
“Weavers are surrounded by mystery,” Goody Alsop told me. “We haven’t the time to seek answers to all your questions now but must focus instead on teaching you to manage the magic as it moves through you.”
“My powers have been misbehaving,” I admitted, thinking of the shriveled quinces and Mary’s ruined shoes. “I never know what’s going to happen next.”
“That’s not unusual for a weaver first coming into her power. But your brightness can be seen and felt, even by humans.” Goody Alsop sat back in her chair and studied me. “If witches see your glaem like young Annie did, they might use the knowledge for their own purposes. We will not let you or the child fall into Hubbard’s clutches. I trust you can manage the Congregation?” she said, looking at Matthew. Goody Alsop construed Matthew’s silence as consent.
“Very well, then. Come to me on Mondays and Thursdays, Diana. Mistress Norman will see to you on Tuesdays. I shall send for Marjorie Cooper on Wednesdays and Elizabeth Jackson and Catherine Streeter on Fridays. Diana will need their help to reconcile the fire and water in her blood, or she will never produce more than a vapor.”
“Perhaps it is not wise to make all those witches privy to this particular secret, Goody,” Matthew said.
“Master Roydon is right. There are already too many whispers about the witch. John Chandler has been spreading news of her to ingratiate himself with Father Hubbard. Surely we can teach her ourselves,” said Susanna.
“And when did you become a firewitch?” Goody Alsop retorted. “The child’s blood is full of flame. My talents are dominated by witchwind, and yours are grounded in the earth’s power. We are not sufficient to the task.”
“Our gathering will draw too much attention if we proceed with your plan. We are but thirteen witches, yet you propose to involve five of us in this business. Let some other gathering take on the problem of Mistress Roydon—the one in Moorgate, perhaps, or Aldgate.”
“The Aldgate gathering has grown too large, Susanna. It cannot govern its own affairs, never mind take on the education of a weaver. Besides, it is too far for me to travel, and the bad air by the city ditch worsens my rheumatism. We will train her in this parish, as the goddess intended.”
“I cannot—” Susanna began.
“I am your elder, Susanna. If you wish to protest further, you will need to seek a ruling from the Rede.” The air thickened uncomfortably.
“Very well, Goody. I will send my request to Queenhithe.” Susanna seemed startled by her own announcement.
“Who is Queen Hithe?” I asked Matthew, my voice low.
“Queenhithe is a place, not a person,” he murmured. “But what is this about a reed?”
“I have no idea,” I confessed.
“Stop whispering,” Goody Alsop said, shaking her head in annoyance. “With the charm on the windows and the doors, your muttering stirs the air and hurts my ears.”
Once the air quieted, Goody Alsop continued. “Susanna has challenged my authority in this matter. As I am the leader of the Garlickhythe gathering—and the Vintry’s ward elder as well—Mistress Norman must present her case to the other ward elders in London. They will decide on our course of action, as they do whenever there are disagreements between witches. There are twenty-six elders, and together we are known as the Rede.”
“So this is just politics?” I said.
“Politics and prudence. Without a way to settle our own disputes, Father Hubbard would have his wearh fingers in even more of our affairs,” said Goody Alsop. “I am sorry if I offend you, Master Roydon.”
“No offense taken, Goody Alsop. But if you take this matter to your elders, Diana’s identity will be known across London.” Matthew stood. “I can’t allow that.”
“Every witch in the city has already heard about your wife. News travels quickly here, no small thanks to your friend Christopher Marlowe,” Goody Alsop said, craning her neck to meet his eyes. “Sit down, Master Roydon. My old bones no longer bend that way.” To my surprise, Matthew sat.
“The witches of London still do not know you are a weaver, Diana, and that is the important thing,” Goody Alsop continued. “The Rede will have to be told, of course. When other witches hear that you’ve been called before the elders, they will assume you are being disciplined for your relationship with Master Roydon, or that you are being bound in some fashion to keep him from gaining access to your blood and power.”
“Whatever they decide, will you still be my teacher?” I was used to being the object of other witches’ scorn and knew better than to hope that the witches of London would approve of my relationship with Matthew. It mattered little to me whether Marjorie Cooper, Elizabeth Jackson, and Catherine Streeter (whoever they were) participated in Goody Alsop’s educational regimen. But Goody Alsop was different. This was one witch whose friendship and help I wanted to have.
“I am the last of our kind in London and one of only three known weavers in this part of the world. The Scottish weaver Agnes Sampson lies in a prison in Edinburgh. No one has seen or heard from the Irish weaver for years. The Rede has no choice but to let me guide you,” Goody Alsop assured me.
“When will the witches meet?” I asked.
“As soon as it can be arranged,” Goody Alsop promised.
“We will be ready for them,” Matthew assured her.
“There are some things that your wife must do for herself, Master Roydon. Carrying the babe and seeing the Rede are among them,” Goody Alsop replied. “Trust is not an easy business for a wearh, I know, but you must try for her sake.”
“I trust my wife. You felt what witches have done to her, so you will not be surprised that I don’
t trust any of your kind with her,” Matthew said.
“You must try,” Goody Alsop repeated. “You cannot offend the Rede. If you do, Hubbard will have to intervene. The Rede will not suffer that additional insult and will insist on the Congregation’s involvement. No matter our other disagreements, no one in this room wants the Congregation’s attention focused on London, Master Roydon.”
Matthew took Goody Alsop’s measure. Finally he nodded. “Very well, Goody.”
I was a weaver.
Soon I would be a mother.
A child between, a witch apart, whispered the ghostly voice of Bridget Bishop.
Matthew’s sharp inhalation told me that he had detected some change in my scent. “Diana is tired and needs to go home.”
“She is not tired but fearful. The time for that has passed, Diana. You must face who you truly are,” Goody Alsop said with mild regret.
But my anxiety continued to rise even after we were safely back in the Hart and Crown. Once there, Matthew took off his quilted jacket. He wrapped it around my shoulders, trying to ward off the chilly air. The fabric retained his smell of cloves and cinnamon, along with traces of smoke from Susanna’s fire and the damp air of London.
“I’m a weaver.” Perhaps if I kept saying it, this fact would begin to make sense. “But I don’t know what that means or who I am anymore.”
“You are Diana Bishop—a historian, a witch.” He took me by the shoulders. “No matter what else you have been before or might one day be, this is who you are. And you are my life.”
“Your wife,” I corrected him.
“My life,” he repeated. “You are not just my heart but its beating. Before I was only a shadow, like Goody Alsop’s fetch.” His accent was stronger, his voice rough with emotion.
“I should be relieved to have the truth at last,” I said through chattering teeth as I climbed into bed. The cold seemed to have taken root in the marrow of my bones. “All my life I wondered why I was different. Now I know, but it doesn’t help.”
“One day it will,” Matthew promised, joining me under the coverlet. He folded his arms around me. We twined our legs like the roots of a tree, each clinging to the other for support as we worked our bodies closer. Deep within me the chain that I had somehow forged out of love and longing for someone I had yet to meet flexed between us and became fluid. It was thick and unbreakable, filled with a life-giving sap that flowed continuously from witch to vampire and back to witch. Soon I no longer felt between but blissfully, completely centered. I took a deep breath, then another. When I tried to draw away, Matthew refused.
“I’m not ready to let you go yet,” he said, pulling me closer.
“You must have work to do—for the Congregation, Philippe, Elizabeth. I’m fine, Matthew,” I insisted, though I wanted to stay exactly where I was for as long as possible.
“Vampires reckon time differently than warmbloods do,” he said, still unwilling to release me.
“How long is a vampire minute, then?” I asked, snuggling under his chin.
“It’s hard to say,” Matthew murmured. “Some length of time between an ordinary minute and forever.”
22
Assembling the twenty-six most powerful witches in London was no small feat. The Rede did not take place as I had imagined—in a single, courtroom-style meeting with witches arrayed in neat rows and me standing before them. Instead it unfolded over several days in shops, taverns, and parlors all over the city. There were no formal introductions, and no time was wasted on other social niceties. I saw so many unfamiliar witches that soon they all blurred together.
Some aspects of the experience stood out, however. For the first time I felt the unquestionable power of a firewitch. Goody Alsop hadn’t misled me—there was no mistaking the burning intensity of the redheaded witch’s gaze or touch. Though the flames in my blood leaped and danced when she was near, I was clearly no firewitch. This was confirmed when I met two more firewitches in a private room at the Mitre, a tavern in Bishopsgate.
“She’ll be a challenge,” one observed after she’d finished reading my skin.
“A time-spinning weaver with plenty of water and fire in her,” the other agreed. “Not a combination I thought to see in my lifetime.”
The Rede’s windwitches convened at Goody Alsop’s house, which was more spacious than its modest exterior suggested. Two ghosts wandered the rooms, as did Goody Alsop’s fetch, who met visitors at the door and glided about silently making sure that everyone was comfortable.
The windwitches were a less fearsome lot than the firewitches, their touches light and dry as they quietly assessed my strengths and shortcomings.
“A stormy one,” murmured a silver-haired witch of fifty or so. She was petite and lithe and moved with a speed that suggested gravity did not have the same hold on her as on the rest of us.
“Too much direction,” another said, frowning. “She needs to let matters take their own course, or every draft she makes is likely to become a full-blown gale.”
Goody Alsop accepted their comments with thanks, but when they all left, she seemed relieved.
“I will rest now, child,” she said weakly, rising from her chair and moving toward the rear of the house. Her fetch trailed after her like a shadow.
“Are there any men among the Rede, Goody Alsop?” I asked, taking her elbow.
“Only a handful remain. All the young wizards have gone off to university to study natural philosophy,” she said with a sigh. “These are strange times, Diana. Everyone is in such a rush for something new, and witches think books will teach them better than experience. I’ll take my leave of you now. My ears are ringing from all that talking.”
A solitary waterwitch came to the Hart and Crown on Thursday morning. I was lying down, exhausted from traipsing all over town the previous day. Tall and supple, the waterwitch did not so much step as flow into the house. She met a solid obstacle, however, in the wall of vampires in the entrance hall.
“It’s all right, Matthew,” I said from the door of our bedchamber, beckoning her forward.
When we were alone, the waterwitch surveyed me from head to toe. Her glance tingled like salt water on my skin, as bracing as a dip in the ocean on a summer day.
“Goody Alsop was right,” she said in a low, musical voice. “There is too much water in your blood. We cannot meet with you in groups for fear of causing a deluge. You must see us one at a time. It will take all day, I’m afraid.”
So instead of my going to the waterwitches, the waterwitches came to me. They trickled in and out of the house, driving Matthew and Françoise mad. But there was no denying my affinity with them, or the undertow that I felt in a waterwitch’s presence.
“The water did not lie,” one waterwitch murmured after sliding her fingertips over my forehead and shoulders. She turned my hands over to examine the palms. She was scarcely older than me, with striking coloring: white skin, black hair, and eyes the color of the Caribbean.
“What water?” I asked as she traced the tributaries leading away from my lifeline.
“Every waterwitch in London collected rainwater from midsummer to Mabon, then poured it into the Rede’s scrying bowl. It revealed that the long-awaited weaver would have water in her veins.” The waterwitch let out a sigh of relief and released my hands. “We are in need of new spells after helping turn back the Spanish fleet. Goody Alsop has been able to replenish the windwitches’ supply, but the Scottish weaver was gifted with earth, so she could not help us—even if she had wished to. You are a true daughter of the moon, though, and will serve us well.”
On Friday morning a messenger came to the house with an address on Bread Street and instructions for me to go there at eleven o’clock to meet the last remaining members of the Rede: the two earthwitches. Most witches had some degree of earth magic within them. It was the foundation for the craft, and in modern covens earthwitches had no special distinction. I was curious to see if the Elizabethan earthwitches were any different.
Matthew and Annie went with me, as Pierre was occupied on an errand for Matthew and Françoise was out shopping. We were just clearing St. Paul’s Churchyard when Matthew turned on an urchin with a filthy face and painfully thin legs. Matthew’s blade was at the child’s ear in a flash.
“Move that finger so much as a hair, lad, and I’ll take your ear off,” he said softly.
I looked down with surprise to see the child’s fingers brushing against the bag I wore at my waist.
There was always a hint of potential violence about Matthew, even in my own time, but in Elizabeth’s London it was much closer to the surface. Still, there was no need for him to turn his venom on one so small.
“Matthew,” I warned, noting the terror on the child’s face, “stop it.”
“Another man would have your ear or haul you before the bailiffs.” Matthew narrowed his eyes, and the child blanched further.
“Enough,” I said shortly. I touched the child’s shoulder, and he flinched. In a flash my witch’s eye saw a man’s heavy hand striking the child and driving him into a wall. Beneath my fingers, concealed by a rough shirt that was all the boy had to keep out the cold, blood suffused his skin in an ugly bruise. “What’s your name?”
“Jack, my lady,” the boy whispered. Matthew’s knife was still pressed to his ear, and we were beginning to attract attention.
“Put the dagger away, Matthew. This child is no danger to either of us.”
Matthew withdrew his knife with a hiss.
“Where are your parents?”
Jack shrugged. “Haven’t any, my lady.”
“Take the boy home, Annie, and have Françoise get him some food and clothes. Introduce him to warm water, if you can, and put him in Pierre’s bed. He looks tired.”
“You cannot adopt every stray in London, Diana.” Matthew drove his dagger into its sheath for emphasis.
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