Deborah Harkness - Shadow of Night

“And it may be nonsense, just like the manuscript at Dr. Dee’s house,” Matthew said impatiently. “We’ll get it another way.”

But later Walter persuaded Matthew that the queen was serious and would have us both in the Tower if we refused her. When I told Goody Alsop, she was as opposed to Prague as Matthew was.

“You should be going to your own time, not traveling to far-off Prague. Even if you were to stay here, it will take weeks to ready a spell that might get you home. Magic has guiding rules and principles that you have yet to master, Diana. All you have now is a wayward firedrake, a glaem that is near to blinding, and a tendency to ask questions that have mischievous answers. You do not have enough knowledge of the craft to succeed with your plan.”

“I will continue to study in Prague, I promise.” I took her hands in mine. “Matthew made a bargain with the queen that might protect dozens of witches. We cannot be separated. It’s too dangerous. I won’t let him go to the emperor’s court without me.”

“No,” she said with a sad smile. “Not while there is breath in your body. Very well. Go with your wearh . But know this, Diana Roydon: You are setting a new course. And I cannot foresee where it might lead.”

“The ghost of Bridget Bishop told me ‘There is no path forward that does not have him in it .’ When I feel our lives spinning into the unknown, I take comfort from those words,” I said, trying to comfort her. “So long as Matthew and I are together, Goody Alsop, our direction does not matter.”

Three days later on the feast of St. Brigid, we set sail on our long journey to see the Holy Roman Emperor, find a treacherous English daemon, and, at long last, catch a glimpse of Ashmole 782.

Verin de Clermont sat in her Berlin home and stared down at the newspaper in disbelief.

1 February 2010

A Surrey woman has discovered a manuscript belonging to Mary Sidney, famed Elizabethan poetess and sister to Sir Philip Sidney.

“It was in my mother’s airing cupboard at the top of the stairs,” Henrietta Barber, 62, told the Independent. Mrs. Barber was clearing out her mother’s belongings before she went into care. “It looked like a tatty old bunch of paper to me.”

The manuscript, experts believe, represents a working alchemical notebook kept by the Countess of Pembroke during the winter of 1590/91. The countess’s scientific papers were thought to have been destroyed in a fire at Wilton House in the seventeenth century. It is not clear how the item came to be in the possession of the Barber family.

“We remember Mary Sidney primarily as a poet,” commented a representative of Sotheby’s Auction House, who will put the item up for bid in May, “but in her own time she was known as a great practitioner of alchemy.”

The manuscript is of particular interest as it shows that the countess was assisted in her laboratory. In one experiment, labeled “the making of the arbor Dianæ,” she identifies her assistant by the initials DR. “We might never be able to identify the man who helped the Countess of Pembroke,” explained historian Nigel Warminster of Cambridge University, “but this manuscript will nevertheless tell us an enormous amount about the growth of experimentation in the Scientific Revolution.”

“What is it, Schatz ?” Ernst Neumann put a glass of wine in front of his wife. She looked far too serious for a Tuesday night. This was Verin’s Friday face.

“Nothing,” she murmured, her eyes still fixed on the lines of print before her. “A piece of unfinished family business.”

“Is Baldwin involved? Did he lose a million euros today?” His brotherin-law was an acquired taste, and Ernst didn’t entirely trust him. Baldwin had trained him in the intricacies of international commerce when Ernst was still a young man. Ernst was nearly sixty now, and the envy of his friends with his young wife. Their wedding photos, which showed Verin looking exactly as she did today and a twenty-five-year-old version of himself, were safely hidden from view.

“Baldwin’s never lost a million of anything in his life.” Verin hadn’t actually answered his question, Ernst noticed.

He pulled the English newspaper toward him and read what was printed there. “Why are you interested in an old book?”

“Let me make a phone call first,” she replied cagily. Her hands were steady on the phone, but Ernst recognized the expression in her unusual silver eyes. She was angry, and frightened, and thinking of the past. He’d seen that same look moments before Verin saved his life, wrenching him away from her stepmother.

“Are you calling Mélisande?”

“Ysabeau,” Verin said automatically, punching in numbers.

“Ysabeau, yes,” Ernst said. Understandably, he found it hard to think of Verin’s stepmother by any other name than the one used by the de Clermont family matriarch when she’d killed Ernst’s father after the war.

Verin’s call took an inordinately long time to connect. Ernst could hear strange clicks, almost as though the call were being forwarded again and again. Finally it went through. The phone rang.

“Who is this?” a young voice asked. He sounded American—or English, maybe, but with his accent nearly gone.

Verin hung up immediately. She dropped the phone to the table and buried her face in her hands. “Oh, God. It’s really happening, just as my father said it would.”

“You’re frightening me, Schatz ,” Ernst said. He’d seen many horrors in his life, but none so vivid as those that tormented Verin on those rare occasions when she actually slept. The nightmares about Philippe were enough to unravel his normally composed wife. “Who was that on the phone?”

“It wasn’t who it was supposed to be,” Verin replied, her voice muffled. Gray eyes rose to meet his. “Matthew should have answered, but he can’t. Because he’s not here. He’s there.” She looked at the paper.

“Verin, you are not making any sense,” Ernst said sternly. He’d never met this troublesome stepbrother, the family intellectual and black sheep.

But she was already dialing the phone again. This time the call went straight through.

“You’ve read today’s papers, Auntie Verin. I’ve been expecting your call for hours.”

“Where are you, Gallowglass?” Her nephew was a drifter. In the past he’d sent postcards with nothing but a phone number on them from whatever stretch of road he was traveling at the moment: the autobahn in Germany, Route 66 in the States, Trollstigen in Norway, the Guoliang Tunnel Road in China. She’d received fewer of these terse announcements since the age of international cell phones. With GPS and the Internet, she could locate Gallowglass anywhere. Verin rather missed the postcards, though.

“Somewhere outside Warrnambool,” Gallowglass said vaguely.

“Where the hell is Warrnambool?” Verin demanded.

“Australia,” Ernst and Gallowglass said at the same moment.

“Is that a German accent I hear? Have you found a new boyfriend?” Gallowglass teased.

“Watch yourself, pup,” Verin snapped. “You may be family, but I can still rip your throat out. That’s my husband, Ernst.”

Ernst sat forward in his chair and shook his head in warning. He didn’t like it when his wife took on a male vampire—even though she was stronger than most. Verin waved off his concern.

Gallowglass chuckled, and Ernst decided that this unfamiliar vampire might be all right. “There’s my scary Auntie Verin. It’s good to hear your voice after all these years. And don’t pretend you’re any more surprised to see that story than I was to get your call.”