Deborah Harkness - Shadow of Night

“A walk. You’ll take a walk.” My father paused. “You mean that literally, don’t you?”

He pushed away from the table. “No wonder creatures are going the way of the dodo. Go out. Both of you. Now. And I’m ordering you to have fun.” He ushered us toward the door.

“How?” I asked, utterly mystified.

“That is not a question a daughter should ask her father. It’s Midsummer Eve. Go out and ask the first person you meet what you should do. Better yet, follow someone else’s example. Howl at the moon. Make magic. Make out, at the very least. Surely even Sir Lancelot makes out.” He waggled his eyebrows. “Get the picture, Miss Bishop?”

“I think so.” My tone reflected my doubts about my father’s notion of fun.

“Good. I won’t be back until sunrise, so don’t wait up. Better yet, stay out all night yourselves. Jack is with Tommy Harriot. Annie is with her aunt. Pierre is— I don’t know where Pierre is, but he doesn’t need a babysitter. I’ll see you at breakfast.”

“When did you start calling Thomas Harriot ‘Tommy’?” I asked. My father pretended not to hear me.

“Give me a hug before you go. And don’t forget to have fun, okay?” He enveloped me in his arms. “Catch you on the flip side, baby.”

Stephen pushed us out the door and shut it in our faces. I extended my hand to the latch and found it taken into a vampire’s cool grip.

“He’ll be leaving in a few hours, Matthew.” I reached for the door with the other hand. Matthew took that one, too.

“I know. So does he,” Matthew explained.

“Then he should understand that I want to spend more time with him.” I stared at the door, willing my father to open it. I could see the threads leading from me, through the grain in the wood, to the wizard on the other side. One of the threads snapped and struck the back of my hand like a rubber band. I gasped. “Daddy!”

“Get moving, Diana!” he shouted.

Matthew and I wandered around town, watching the shops close early and noting the revelers already filling the pubs. More than one butcher was casually stacking bones by the front door. They were white and clean, as though they had been boiled.

“What’s going on with the bones?” I asked Matthew after we saw the third such display.

“They’re for the bone fires.”

“Bonfires?”

“No,” Matthew said, “the bone fires. Traditionally, people celebrate Midsummer Eve by lighting fires: bone fires, wood fires, and mixed fires. The mayor’s warnings to cease and desist all such superstitious celebrations go up every year, and people light them anyway.”

Matthew treated me to dinner at the famous Belle Savage Inn just outside the Blackfriars on Ludgate Hill. More than a simple eatery, the Belle Savage was an entertainment complex where customers could see plays and fencing matches—not to mention Marocco, the famous horse who could pick virgins out of the crowd. It wasn’t roller-skating in Dorchester, but it was close.

The city’s teenagers were out in force, shouting insults and innuendos at one another as they went from one watering hole to another. During the day most were hard at work as servants or apprentices. Even in the evenings their time was not their own, since their masters expected them to watch over the shops and houses, tend children, fetch food and water, and do the hundred other small chores that were required to keep an early-modern household going. Tonight London belonged to them, and they were making the most of it.

We passed back through Ludgate and approached the entrance to the Blackfriars as the bells tolled nine o’clock. It was the time the members of the Watch started to make their rounds, and people were expected to head for home, but no one seemed to be enforcing the rules tonight. Though the sun had set an hour earlier, the moon was only one day away from full, and the city streets were still bright with moonlight.

“Can we keep walking?” I asked. We were always going somewhere specific—to Baynard’s Castle to see Mary, to St. James Garlickhythe to visit with the gathering, to St. Paul’s Churchyard for books. Matthew and I had never taken a walk through the city without a destination in mind.

“I don’t see why not, since we were ordered to stay out and have fun,” Matthew said. He dipped his head and stole a kiss.

We walked around the western door of St. Paul’s, which was bustling in spite of the hour, and out of the churchyard to the north. This put us on Cheapside, London’s most spacious and prosperous street, where the goldsmiths plied their trade. We rounded the Cheapside Cross, which was being used as a paddling pool by a group of roaring boys, and headed east. Matthew traced the route of Anne Boleyn’s coronation procession for me and pointed out the house where Geoffrey Chaucer had lived as a child. Some merchants invited Matthew to join them in a game of bowls. They booed him out of the competition after his third strike in a row, however.

“Happy now that you’ve proven you’re top dog?” I teased as he put his arm around me and pulled me close.

“Very,” he said. He pointed to a fork in the road. “Look.”

“The Royal Exchange.” I turned to him in excitement. “At night! You remembered.”

“A gentleman never forgets,” he murmured with a low bow. “I’m not sure if any shops are still open, but the lamps will be lit. Will you join me in a promenade across the courtyard?”

We entered through the wide arches next to the bell tower topped with a golden grasshopper. Inside, I turned around slowly to get the full experience of the four-storied building with its hundred shops selling everything from suits of armor to shoehorns. Statues of English monarchs looked down on the customers and merchants, and a further plague of grasshoppers ornamented the peak of each dormer window.

“The grasshopper was Gresham’s emblem, and he wasn’t shy about selfpromotion,” Matthew said with a laugh, following my eyes.

Some shops were indeed open, the lamps in the arcades around the central courtyard were lit, and we were not the only ones enjoying the evening.

“Where is the music coming from?” I asked, looking around for the minstrels.

“The tower,” Matthew said, pointing in the direction we had entered. “The merchants chip in and sponsor concerts in the warm weather. It’s good for business.”

Matthew was good for business, too, based on the number of shopkeepers who greeted him by name. He joked with them and asked after their wives and children.

“I’ll be right back,” he said, darting into a nearby store. Mystified, I stood listening to the music and watching an authoritative young woman organize an impromptu ball. People formed circles, holding hands and jumping up and down like popcorn in a hot skillet.

When he came back, Matthew presented to me—with all due ceremony—

“A mousetrap,” I said, giggling at the little wooden box with its sliding door.

“ That is a proper mousetrap,” he said, taking my hand. He started walking backward, pulling me into the center of the merriment. “Dance with me.”

“I definitely don’t know that dance.” It was nothing like the sedate dances at Sept-Tours or at Rudolf’s court.

“Well, I do,” Matthew said, not bothering to look at the whirling couples behind him. “It’s an old dance—the Black Nag—with easy steps.” He pulled me into place at one end of the line, plucking my mousetrap out of my hand and giving it into the safekeeping of an urchin. He promised the boy a penny if he returned it to us at the end of the song.

Matthew took my hand, stepped into the line of dancers, and when the others moved, we followed. Three steps and a little kick forward, three steps and a little dip back. After a few repetitions, we came to the more intricate steps when the line of twelve dancers divided into two lines of six and started changing places, crossing in diagonal paths from one line to the other, weaving back and forth.