Deborah Harkness - Shadow of Night

Dinner was comfortable and cozy, though Matthew seemed a bit preoccupied. Soon after I’d finished my pie, footsteps sounded on the wooden stairs. Not Kit , I thought, crossing my fingers, not tonight .

When Françoise opened the door, two men in familiar charcoal livery were waiting. Matthew frowned and stood. “Is the countess unwell? Or one of the boys?”

“All are well, sir.” One of them held out a carefully folded piece of paper. On top was an irregular blob of red wax bearing the impression of an arrowhead. “From the Countess of Pembroke,” he explained with a bow, “for Mistress Roydon.”

It was strange to see the formal address on the reverse: “Mistress Diana Roydon, at the sign of the Hart and Crown, the Blackfriars .” My wandering fingers easily summoned up an image of Mary Sidney’s intelligent face. I carried the letter over to the fire, slid my finger under the seal, and sat down to read. The paper was thick and crackled as I spread it out. A smaller slip of paper fluttered onto my lap.

“What does Mary say?” Matthew asked after dismissing the messengers. He stood behind me and rested his hands on my shoulders.

“She wants me to come to Baynard’s Castle on Thursday. Mary has an alchemical experiment under way that she thinks might interest me.” I couldn’t keep the incredulity out of my voice.

“That’s Mary for you. She’s cautious but loyal,” Matthew said, dropping a kiss on my head. “And she always did have amazing recuperative powers. What’s on the other paper?”

I picked it up and read aloud the first lines of the enclosed verses.

“Yea, when all me so misdeemed, I to most a monster seemed, Yet in thee my hope was strong .”

“Well, well, well,” Matthew interrupted with a chuckle. “My wife has arrived.” I looked at him in confusion. “Mary’s most treasured project is not alchemical but a new rendition of the Psalms for English Protestants. Her brother Philip began it and died before it was complete. Mary’s twice the poet he was. Sometimes she suspects as much, though she’ll never admit it. That’s the beginning of Psalm Seventy-one. She sent it to you to show the world that you’re part of her circle—a trusted confidante and friend.” His voice dropped to a mischievous whisper. “Even if you did ruin her shoes.” With a final chuckle, Matthew withdrew to his study, dogged by Pierre.

I’d taken over one end of the heavy-legged table in the parlor for a desk. Like every work surface I’d ever occupied, it was now littered with both trash and treasures. I rooted around and found my last sheets of blank paper, selected a fresh quill, and swept a spot clear.

It took five minutes to write a brief response to the countess. There were two embarrassing blotches on it, but my Italic hand was reasonably good, and I’d remembered to spell some of the words phonetically so that they wouldn’t look too modern. When in doubt I doubled a consonant or added a final e . I shook sand on the sheet and waited until it absorbed the excess ink before blowing it into the rushes. Once the letter was folded, I realized that I had no wax or signet to close it. That will have to be fixed .

I set my note aside for Pierre and returned to the slip of paper. Mary had sent me all three stanzas of Psalm 71. I took up a new blank book that Matthew had bought for me and opened it to the first page. After dipping the quill into the nearby pot of ink, I moved the sharp point carefully across the sheet.

They by whom my life is hated With their spies have now debated Of their talk, and, lo, the sum: God, they say, hath him forsaken. Now pursue, he must be taken; None will to his rescue come .

When the ink was dry, I closed my book and slid it underneath Philip Sidney’s Arcadia .

There was more to this gift from Mary than a simple offer of friendship, of that I was certain. While the lines I’d read aloud to Matthew were an acknowledgment of his service to her family and a declaration that she would not turn away from him now, the final lines held a message for me: We were being watched. Someone suspected that all was not as it seemed on Water Lane, and Matthew’s enemies were betting that even his allies would turn against him once they discovered the truth.

Matthew, a vampire as well as the queen’s servant and a member of the Congregation, couldn’t be involved with finding a witch to serve as my magical tutor. And with a baby on the way, finding one quickly had taken on a new significance. I pulled a sheet of paper toward me and began to make a list. Sealing Waxe

A Signet

London was a big city. And I was going to do some shopping.

“I’m going out.”

Françoise looked up from her sewing. Thirty seconds later Pierre was climbing the stairs. Had Matthew been at home, he would no doubt have appeared as well, but he was out conducting some mysterious business in the city. I’d woken to the sight of his damp suit still drying by the fireplace. He’d been called away in the night and returned, only to leave once more.

“Indeed?” Françoise’s eyes narrowed. She had suspected I was up to no good ever since I’d gotten dressed. Instead of grumbling about the number of petticoats she pulled over my head, today I’d added another made out of warm gray flannel. Then we argued about which gown I should wear. I preferred the comfortable clothes I’d brought from France over Louisa de Clermont’s more splendid garments. Matthew’s sister, with her dark hair and porcelain skin, could pull off a gown of vivid turquoise velvet (“Verdigris,” Françoise had corrected me) or a sickly gray-green taffeta (appropriately called “Dying Spaniard”), but they looked ghastly with my faint freckles and reddish-blond curls, and they were too grand to wear around town.

“Perhaps madame should wait until Master Roydon returns,” Pierre suggested. He shifted nervously from one foot to the other.

“No, I think not. I’ve made a list of things I need, and I want to go shopping for them myself.” I scooped up the leather bag of coins given to me by Philippe. “Is it all right to carry a bag, or am I supposed to stick the money into my bodice and fish the coins out when necessary?” This aspect of historical fiction had always fascinated me—women stuffing things into their dresses—and I was looking forward to discovering whether the items were as easy to remove in public as the novelists suggested. Sex was certainly not as easy to arrange in the sixteenth century as it was made out to be in some romances. There were too many clothes in the way, for a start.

“ Madame will not carry money at all!” Françoise pointed to Pierre, who loosened the strings of a bag tied around his waist. It was apparently bottomless and held a considerable stash of pointy implements, including pins, needles, something that looked like a set of picklocks, and a dagger. Once my leather bag was included, it jingled at his slightest movement.

Out on Water Lane, I strode with as much determination as my pattens (those helpful wooden wedges that slipped over my shoes and kept me from the muck) would allow in the direction of St. Paul’s. The fur-lined cloak billowed around my feet, its thick fabric a barrier to the clinging fog. We were enjoying a temporary reprieve from the recent downpours, but the weather was by no means dry.

Our first stop was at Master Prior’s bakery for some buns studded with currants and candied fruit. I was often hungry in the late afternoons and would want something sweet. My next visit was near the alley that linked the Blackfriars to the rest of London, at a busy printing shop marked with the sign of an anchor.

“Good morning, Mistress Roydon,” the proprietor said the moment I crossed the threshold. Apparently my neighbors knew me without introduction. “You are here to pick up your husband’s book?”