Shadow of Night: A Novel

by Deborah Harkness

  Françoise was making me a cloak to keep the chill away, and a warm suit of clothes for the wintry weather ahead. She had been in the attics all morning, sorting through Louisa de Clermont’s abandoned wardrobe. Matthew’s sister’s gowns were sixty years out of date, with their square necklines and bell-shaped sleeves, but Françoise was altering them to better fit what Walter and George insisted was the current style as well as my less statuesque frame. She wasn’t pleased to be ripping apart the seams of one particularly splendid black-and-silver garment, but Matthew had insisted. With the School of Night in residence, I needed formal clothes as well as more practical outfits.

  “But Lady Louisa was wed in that gown, my lord,” Françoise protested.

  “Yes, to an eighty-five-year-old with no living offspring, a bad heart, and numerous profitable estates. I believe the thing has more than repaid the family’s investment in it,” Matthew replied. “It will do for Diana until you can make her something better.”

  My book couldn’t refer to that conversation, of course. Instead I’d chosen all my words carefully so that they would mean nothing to anyone else even though they conjured vivid images of particular people, sounds, and conversations for me. If this book survived, a future reader would find these tiny snippets of my life sterile and dry. Historians pored over documents like this, hoping in vain to see the rich, complex life hidden behind the simple lines of text.

  Matthew swore under his breath. I was not the only one in this house hiding something.

  My husband received many letters today and gave me this booke to keep my memories.

  As I lifted my pen to replenish its ink, Henry and Tom entered the room looking for Matthew. My third eye blinked open, surprising me with sudden awareness. Since we had arrived, my other nascent powers—witchfire, witchwater, and witchwind—had been oddly absent. With the unexpected extra perception offered by my witch’s third eye, I could discern not only the black-red intensity of the atmosphere around Matthew but also Tom’s silvery light and Henry’s barely perceptible green-black shimmer, each as individual as a fingerprint.

  Thinking back on the threads of blue and amber that I’d seen in the corner of the Old Lodge, I wondered what the disappearance of some powers and the emergence of others might signify. There had been the episode this morning, too. . . .

  Something in the corner had caught my eye, another glimmer of amber shot through with hints of blue. There was an echo, something so quiet it was more felt than heard. When I’d turned my head to locate its source, the sensation faded. Strands pulsed in my peripheral vision, as if time were beckoning me to return home.

  Ever since my first timewalk in Madison, when I’d traveled a brief span of minutes, I’d thought of time as a substance made of threads of light and color. With enough concentration you could focus on a single thread and follow it to its source. Now, after walking through several centuries, I knew that apparent simplicity masked the knots of possibility that tied an unimaginable number of pasts to a million presents and untold potential futures. Isaac Newton had believed that time was an essential force of nature that couldn’t be controlled. After fighting our way back to 1590, I was prepared to agree with him.

  “Diana? Are you all right?” Matthew’s insistent voice broke through my reveries. His friends looked at me with concern.

  “Fine,” I said automatically.

  “You’re not fine.” He tossed the quill onto the table. “Your scent has changed. I think your magic might be changing, too. Kit is right. We must find you a witch as quickly as possible.”

  “It’s too soon to bring in a witch,” I protested. “It’s important that I be able to look and sound as if I belong.”

  “Another witch will know you’re a timewalker,” he said dismissively. “She’ll make allowances. Or is there something else?”

  I shook my head, unwilling to meet his eyes.

  Matthew hadn’t needed to see time unwinding in the corner to sense that something was out of joint. If he already suspected that there was more going on with my magic than I was willing to reveal, there would be no way for me to conceal my secrets from any witch who might soon come to call.

  4

  The School of Night had been eager to help Matthew find the creature. Their suggestions illuminated a collective disregard for women, witches, and everyone who lacked a university education. Henry thought London might provide the most fertile ground for the search, but Walter assured him that it would be impossible to conceal me from superstitious neighbors in the crowded city. George wondered if the scholars of Oxford might be persuaded to lend their expertise, since they at least had proper intellectual credentials. Tom and Matthew gave a brutal critique of the strengths and weaknesses of the natural philosophers in residence, and that idea was cast aside, too. Kit didn’t believe it was wise to trust any woman with the task and drew up a list of local gentlemen who might be willing to establish a training regimen for me. It included the parson of St. Mary’s, who was alert to apocalyptic signs in the heavens, a nearby landowner named Smythson, who dabbled in alchemy and had been looking for a witch or daemon to assist him, and a student at Christ Church College who paid his overdue book bills by casting horoscopes.

  Matthew vetoed all these suggestions and called on Widow Beaton, Woodstock’s cunning woman and midwife. She was poor and female—precisely the sort of creature the School of Night scorned—but this, Matthew argued, would better ensure her cooperation. Besides, Widow Beaton was the only creature for miles with purported magical talents. All others had long since fled, he admitted, rather than live near a wearh.

  “Summoning Widow Beaton may not be a good idea,” I said later when we were getting ready for bed.

  “So you’ve mentioned,” Matthew replied with barely concealed impatience. “But if Widow Beaton can’t help us, she’ll be able to recommend someone who can.”

  “The late sixteenth century really isn’t a good time to openly ask around for a witch, Matthew.” I’d been able to do little more than hint at the prospect of witch-hunts when we were with the School of Night, but Matthew knew the horrors to come. Once again he dismissed my concern.

  “The Chelmsford witch trials are only memories now, and it will be another twenty years before the Lancashire hunts begin. I wouldn’t have brought you here if a witch-hunt were about to break out in England.” Matthew picked through a few letters that Pierre had left for him on the table.

  “With reasoning like that, it’s a good thing you’re a scientist and not a historian,” I said bluntly. “Chelmsford and Lancashire were extreme outbursts of far more widespread concerns.”

  “You think a historian can understand the tenor of the present moment better than the men living through it?” Matthew’s eyebrow cocked up in open skepticism.

  “Yes,” I said, bristling. “We often do.”

  “That’s not what you said this morning when you couldn’t figure out why there weren’t any forks in the house,” he observed. It was true that I’d searched high and low for twenty minutes before Pierre gently broke it to me that the utensils were not yet common in England.

  “Surely you aren’t one of those people who believe that historians do nothing but memorize dates and learn obscure facts,” I said. “My job is to understand why things happened in the past. When something occurs right in front of you, it’s hard to see the reasons for it, but hindsight provides a clearer perspective.”

  “Then you can relax, because I have both experience and hindsight,” Matthew said. “I understand your reservations, Diana, but calling on Widow Beaton is the right decision.” Case closed, his tone made clear.

  “In the 1590s there are food shortages, and people are worried about the future,” I said, ticking the items off on my fingers. “That means people are looking for scapegoats to take the blame for the bad times. Already, human cunning women and midwives fear being accused of witchcraft, though your male friends may not be aware of it.”

  “I am the most powerful m
an in Woodstock,” Matthew said, taking me by the shoulders. “No one will accuse you of anything.” I was amazed at his hubris.

  “I’m a stranger, and Widow Beaton owes me nothing. If I draw curious eyes, I pose a serious threat to her safety,” I retorted. “At the very least, I need to pass as an upper-class Elizabethan woman before we ask her for help. Give me a few more weeks.”

  “This can’t wait, Diana,” he said brusquely.

  “I’m not asking you to be patient so I can learn how to embroider samplers and make jam. There are good reasons for it.” I looked at him sourly. “Call in your cunning woman. But don’t be surprised when this goes badly.”

  “Trust me.” Matthew lowered his lips toward mine. His eyes were smoky, and his instincts to pursue his prey and push it into submission were sharp. Not only did the sixteenth-century husband want to prevail over his wife, but the vampire wanted to capture the witch.

  “I don’t find arguments the slightest bit arousing,” I said, turning my head. Matthew clearly did, however. I moved a few inches away from him.

  “I’m not arguing,” Matthew said softly, his mouth close to my ear. “You are. And if you think I would ever touch you in anger, wife, you are very much mistaken.” After pinning me to the bedpost with frosty eyes, he turned and snatched up his breeches. “I’m going downstairs. Someone will still be awake to keep me company.” He stalked toward the door. Once he’d reached it, he paused.

  “And if you really want to behave like an Elizabethan woman, stop questioning me,” he said roughly as he departed.

  ***

  The next day one vampire, two daemons, and three humans examined my appearance in silence across the wide floorboards. The bells of St. Mary’s Church sounded the hour, faint echoes of their music lingering long after the peals ceased. Quince, rosemary, and lavender scented the air. I was perched on an uncomfortable wooden chair in a confining array of smocks, petticoats, sleeves, skirts, and a tightly laced bodice. My career-oriented, twenty-first-century life faded further with each restricted breath. I stared out into the murky daylight, where cold rain pinged against the panes of glass in the leaded windows.

  “Elle est ici,” Pierre announced, his glance flicking in my direction. “The witch is here to see madame.”

  “At last,” Matthew said. The severe lines of his doublet made him look even broader through the shoulders, while the acorns and oak leaves stitched in black around the edges of his white collar accentuated the paleness of his skin. He angled his dark head to gain a fresh perspective on whether I passed muster as a respectable Elizabethan wife.

  “Well?” he demanded. “Will that do?”

  George lowered his spectacles. “Yes. The russet of this gown suits her far better than the last one did and gives a pleasant cast to her hair.”

  “Mistress Roydon looks the part, George, it is true. But we cannot explain away her unusual speech simply by saying that she comes from the c-c-country,” Henry said in his toneless bass. He stepped forward to twitch the folds of my brocade skirt into place. “And her height. There is no disguising that. She is taller even than the queen.”

  “Are you sure we can’t pass her off as French, Walt, or Dutch?” Tom lifted a clove-studded orange to his nose with ink-stained fingers. “Perhaps Mistress Roydon could survive in London after all. Daemons cannot fail to notice her, of course, but ordinary men may not give her a second glance.”

  Walter snorted with amusement and unspooled from a low settle. “Mistress Roydon is finely shaped as well as uncommon tall. Ordinary men between the ages of thirteen and sixty will find reason enough to study her. No, Tom, she’s better off here, with Widow Beaton.”

  “Perhaps I could meet Widow Beaton later, in the village, alone?” I suggested, hoping that one of them might see sense and persuade Matthew to let me do this my way.

  “No!” cried out six horrified male voices.

  Françoise appeared bearing two pieces of starched linen and lace, her bosom swelling like that of an indignant hen facing down a pugnacious rooster. She was as annoyed by Matthew’s constant interference as I was.

  “Diana’s not going to court. That ruff is unnecessary,” said Matthew with an impatient gesture. “Besides, it’s her hair that’s the problem.”

  “You have no idea what’s necessary,” Françoise retorted. Though she was a vampire and I was a witch, we had reached unexpected common ground when it came to the idiocy of men. “Which would Madame de Clermont prefer?” She extended a pleated nest of gauzy fabric and something crescent-shaped that resembled snowflakes joined together with invisible stitches.

  The snowflakes looked more comfortable. I pointed to them.

  While Françoise affixed the collar to the edge of my bodice, Matthew reached up in another attempt to put my hair in a more pleasing arrangement. Françoise slapped his hand away. “Don’t touch.”

  “I’ll touch my wife when I like. And stop calling Diana ‘Madame de Clermont,’” Matthew rumbled, moving his hands to my shoulders. “I keep expecting my mother to walk through the door.” He drew the edges of the collar apart, pulling loose the black velvet cord that hid Françoise’s pins.

  “Madame is a married woman. Her bosom should be covered. There is enough gossip about the new mistress,” Françoise protested.

  “Gossip? What kind of gossip?” I asked with a frown.

  “You were not in church yesterday, so there is talk that you are with child, or afflicted by smallpox. That heretic priest believes you are Catholic. Others say you are Spanish.”

  “Spanish?”

  “Oui, madame. Someone heard you in the stables yesterday afternoon.”

  “But I was practicing my French!” I was a fair mimic and thought that imitating Ysabeau’s imperious accent might lend credence to my elaborate cover story.

  “The groom’s son did not recognize it as such.” Françoise’s tone suggested that the boy’s confusion was warranted. She studied with me with satisfaction. “Yes, you look like a respectable woman.”

  “Fallaces sunt rerum species,” said Kit with a touch of acid that brought the scowl back to Matthew’s face. “‘Appearances can be deceiving.’ No one will be taken in by her performance.”

  “It’s far too early in the day for Seneca.” Walter gave Marlowe a warning look.

  “It is never too early for stoicism,” Kit replied severely. “You should thank me that it’s not Homer. All we’ve heard lately is inept paraphrases of the Iliad. Leave the Greek to someone who understands it, George—someone like Matt.”

  “My translation of Homer’s work is not yet finished!” George retorted, bristling.

  His response released a flood of Latin quotations from Walter. One of them made Matthew chuckle, and he said something in what I suspected was Greek. The witch waiting downstairs completely forgotten, the men enthusiastically engaged in their favorite pastime: verbal one-upmanship. I sank back into my chair.

  “When they are in a fine humor like this, they are a wonder,” Henry whispered. “These are the keenest wits in the kingdom, Mistress Roydon.”

  Raleigh and Marlowe were now shouting at each other about the merits—or lack thereof—of Her Majesty’s policies on colonization and exploration.

  “One might as well take fistfuls of gold and dump them into the Thames as give them to an adventurer like you, Walter,” Kit chortled.

  “Adventurer! You can’t step out of your own door in daylight for fear of your creditors.” Raleigh’s voice shook. “You can be such a fool, Kit.”

  Matthew had been following the volleys with increasing amusement. “Who are you in trouble with now?” he asked Marlowe, reaching for his wine. “And how much is it going to cost to get you out of it?”

  “My tailor.” Kit waved a hand over his expensive suit. “The printer for Tamburlaine.” He hesitated, prioritizing the outstanding sums. “Hopkins, that bastard who calls himself my landlord. But I do have this.” Kit held up the tiny figure of Diana that he’d won from Matthew wh
en they played chess on Sunday night. Still anxious about letting the statue out of my sight, I inched forward.

  “You can’t be so hard up as to pawn that bauble for pennies.” Matthew’s eyes flickered to me, and a small movement of his hand had me sinking back again. “I’ll take care of it.”

  Marlowe bounded to his feet with a grin, pocketing the silver goddess. “You can always be counted on, Matt. I’ll pay you back, of course.”

  “Of course,” Matthew, Walter, and George murmured doubtfully.

  “Keep enough money to buy yourself a beard, though.” Kit stroked his own with satisfaction. “You look dreadful.”

  “Buy a beard?” I couldn’t possibly have understood correctly. Marlowe must be using slang again, even though Matthew had asked him to stop on my account.

  “There’s a barber in Oxford who is a wizard. Your husband’s hair grows slowly, as with all of his kind, and he’s clean shaven.” When I still looked blank, Kit continued with exaggerated patience. “Matt will be noticed, looking as he does. He needs a beard. Apparently you are not witch enough to provide him with one, so we will have to find someone else to do it.”

  My eyes strayed to the empty jug on the elm table. Françoise had filled it with clippings from the garden—sprigs of holly oak, branches from a medlar with their brown fruit resembling rose hips, and a few white roses—to bring some color and scent into the room. A few hours ago, I had laced my fingers through the branches to tug the roses and medlars to the forefront of the vase, wondering about the garden all the while. I was pleased with the results for about fifteen seconds, until the flowers and fruit withered before my eyes. The desiccation spread from my fingertips in all directions, and my hands tingled with an influx of information from the plants: the feel of sunlight, the quenching sensation of rain, the strength in the roots that came from resisting the pull of the wind, the taste of the soil.

  Matthew was right. Now that we were in 1590, my magic was changing. Gone were the eruptions of witchfire, witchwater, and witchwind that I had experienced after meeting Matthew. Instead I was seeing the bright threads of time and the colorful auras that surrounded living creatures. A white stag stared at me from the shadows under the oaks whenever I walked in the gardens. Now I was making things wither.