Deborah Harkness - Shadow of Night

“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 saddle 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.