“I will say that misery acquaints every man with strange bedfellows, Your Majesty.”
Elizabeth made a soft sound of amusement. “That is doubly true for women,” she said drily. “Very well. We are agreed. You will go to Prague and get Kelley. Mistress Roydon may attend upon me, here at court, to ensure your speedy return.”
“My wife is not part of our bargain, and there is no need to send me to Bohemia in January. You are determined to have Kelley back. I will see to it that he is delivered.”
“You are not king here!” Elizabeth jabbed at his chest with her finger. “You go where I send you, Master Roydon. If you do not, I will have you and your witch of a wife in the Tower for treason. And worse,” she said, her eyes sparking.
Someone scratched at the door.
“Enter!” Elizabeth bellowed.
“The Countess of Pembroke requests an audience, Your Majesty,” a guard said apologetically.
“God’s teeth,” the queen swore. “Am I never to know a moment’s peace? Show her in.”
Mary Sidney sailed into the room, her veils and ruffs billowing as she moved from the chilly antechamber to the overheated room the queen occupied. She dropped a graceful curtsy midway, floated further into the room, and dropped another perfect curtsy. “Your Majesty,” she said, head bowed.
“What brings you to court, Lady Pembroke?”
“You once granted me a boon, Your Majesty—a guard against future need.”
“Yes, yes,” Elizabeth said testily. “What has your husband done now?”
“Nothing at all.” Mary got to her feet. “I have come to ask for permission to send Mistress Roydon on an important errand.”
“I cannot imagine why,” Elizabeth retorted. “She seems neither useful nor resourceful.”
“I have need of special glasses for my experiments that can only be acquired from Emperor Rudolf’s workshops. My brother’s wife—forgive me, for since Philip’s death she is now remarried and the Countess of Essex— tells me that Master Roydon is being sent to Prague. Mistress Roydon will go with him, with your blessing, and fetch what I require.”
“That vain, foolish boy! The Earl of Essex cannot resist sharing every scrap of intelligence he has with the world.” Elizabeth whirled away in a flurry of silver and gold. “I’ll have the popinjay’s head for this!”
“You did promise me, Your Majesty, when my brother died defending your kingdom, that you would grant me a favor one day.” Mary smiled serenely at Matthew and me.
“And you want to waste such a precious gift on these two?” Elizabeth looked skeptical.
“Once Matthew saved Philip’s life. He is like a brother to me.” Mary blinked at the queen with owlish innocence.
“You can be as smooth as ivory, Lady Pembroke. I wish we saw more of you at court.” Elizabeth threw up her hands. “Very well. I will keep my word. But I want Edward Kelley in my presence by midsummer—and I don’t want this bungled, or for all of Europe to know my business. Do you understand me, Master Roydon?”
“Yes, Your Majesty,” Matthew said through gritted teeth.
“Get yourself to Prague, then. And take your wife with you, to please Lady Pembroke.”
“Thank you, Majesty.” Matthew looked rather alarmingly as if he wished to rip Elizabeth Tudor’s bewigged head from her body.
“Out of my sight, all of you, before I change my mind.” Elizabeth returned to her chair and slumped against its carved back.
Lord Burghley indicated with a jerk of his head that we were to follow the queen’s instructions. But Matthew couldn’t leave matters where they stood.
“A word of caution, Your Majesty. Do not place your trust in the Earl of Essex.”
“You do not like him, Master Roydon. Nor does William or Walter. But he makes me feel young again.” Elizabeth turned her black eyes on him. “Once you performed that service for me and reminded me of happier times. Now you have found another and I am abandoned.”
“‘My care is like my shadow in the sun / Follows me flying, flies when I pursue it, / Stands and lies by me, doth what I have done,’” Matthew said softly. “I am your Shadow, Majesty, and have no choice but to go where you lead.”
“And I am tired,” Elizabeth said, turning her head away, “and have no stomach for poetry. Leave me.” “We’re not going to Prague,” Matthew said once we were back in Henry’s barge and headed toward London. “We must go home.”
“The queen will not leave you in peace just because you flee to Woodstock, Matthew,” Mary said reasonably, burrowing into a fur blanket.
“He doesn’t mean Woodstock, Mary,” I explained. “Matthew means somewhere . . . farther.”
“Ah.” Mary’s brow furrowed. “Oh.” Her face went carefully blank.
“But we’re so close to getting what we wanted,” I said. “We know where the manuscript is, and it may answer all our questions.”
“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.
Chapter Twenty Six
Verin de Clermont sat in her Berlin home and stared down at the newspaper in disbelief.
The Independent
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 C
ambridge 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.”
“Part of me hoped he was raving,” Verin confessed, remembering the night when she and Gallowglass had sat by Philippe’s bed and listened to his ramblings.
“Did you imagine it was contagious and that I was raving, too?” Gallowglass snorted. He sounded very much like Philippe these days, Verin noticed.
“I hoped that was the case, as a matter of fact.” It had been easier to believe than the alternative: that her father’s impossible tale of a timespinning witch was true.
“Will you be keeping your promise anyway?” Gallowglass said softly.
Verin hesitated. It was only a moment, but Ernst saw it. Verin always kept her promises. When he’d been a terrified, cowering boy, Verin had promised him that he would grow to be a man. Ernst had clung to that assurance when he was six, just as he clung to the promises Verin had made since.
“You haven’t seen Matthew with her. Once you do—”
“I’ll think my stepbrother is even more of a problem? Not possible.”
“Give her a chance, Verin. She’s Philippe’s daughter, too. And he had excellent taste in women.”
“The witch isn’t his real daughter,” Verin said quickly.
On a road somewhere near Warrnambool, Gallowglass pressed his lips together and refused to reply. Verin might know more about Diana and Matthew than anyone else in the family, but she didn’t know as much as he did. There would be endless opportunities to discuss vampires and children once the couple was back. There was no need to argue about it now.
“Besides, Matthew isn’t here,” Verin said, looking at the paper. “I called the number. Someone else answered, and it wasn’t Baldwin.” That’s why she had disconnected so quickly. If Matthew wasn’t leading the brotherhood, the telephone number should have been passed on to Philippe’s only surviving full-blooded son. “The number” had been generated in the earliest years of the telephone. Philippe had picked it: 917, for Ysabeau’s birthday in September. With each new technology and every successive change in the national and international telephone system, the number referred seamlessly on to another, more modern iteration.
“You reached Marcus.” Gallowglass had called the number, too.
“Marcus?” Verin was aghast. “The future of the de Clermonts depends upon Marcus?”
“Give him a chance, too, Auntie Verin. He’s a good lad.” Gallowglass paused. “As for the family’s future, that depends on all of us. Philippe knew that, or he wouldn’t have made us promise to return to Sept-Tours.”
Philippe de Clermont had been very specific with his daughter and grandson. They were to watch for signs: stories of a young American witch with great power, the name Bishop, alchemy, and then a rash of anomalous historical discoveries.
Then, and only then, were Gallowglass and Verin to return to the de Clermont family seat. Philippe hadn’t been willing to divulge why it was so important that the family come together, but Gallowglass knew.
For decades Gallowglass had waited. Then he heard stories of a witch from Massachusetts named Rebecca, one of the last descendants of Salem’s Bridget Bishop. Reports of her power spread far and wide, as did news of her tragic death. Gallowglass tracked her surviving daughter to upstate New York. He’d checked on the girl periodically, watching as Diana Bishop played on the monkey bars at the playground, went to birthday parties, and graduated from college. Gallowglass had been as proud as any parent to see her pass her Oxford viva. And he often stood beneath the carillon in Harkness Tower at Yale, the power of the bells’ sound reverberating through his body, while the young prof
essor walked across campus. Her clothing was different, but there was no mistaking Diana’s determined gait or the set of her shoulders, whether she was wearing a farthingale and ruff or a pair of trousers and an unflattering man’s jacket.
Gallowglass tried to keep his distance, but sometimes he had to interfere—like the day her energy drew a daemon to her side and the creature began to follow her. Still, Gallowglass prided himself on the hundreds of other times he’d refrained from rushing down the stairs of Yale’s bell tower, throwing his arms around Professor Bishop, and telling her how glad he was to see her after so many years.
When Gallowglass learned that Baldwin had been called to Sept-Tours at Ysabeau’s behest for some unspecified emergency involving Matthew, the Norseman knew it was only a matter of time before the historical anomalies appeared. Gallowglass had seen the announcement about the discovery of a pair of previously unknown Elizabethan miniatures. By the time he’d managed to reach Sotheby’s, they had already been purchased. Gallowglass had panicked, thinking they might have fallen into the wrong hands. But he’d underestimated Ysabeau. When he talked to Marcus this morning, Matthew’s son confirmed that they were sitting safely on Ysabeau’s desk at Sept-Tours. It had been more than four hundred years since Gallowglass had secreted the pictures away in a house in Shropshire. It would be good to see them—and the two creatures they depicted—once more.
Meanwhile he was preparing for the gathering storm as he always did: by traveling as far and fast as he could. Once it had been the seas and then the rails, but now Gallowglass took to the roads, motorcycling around as many hairpin turns and mountainsides as he could. With the wind streaming through his shaggy hair and his leather jacket fastened tight around his neck to hide the fact that his skin never showed any hint of tan, Gallowglass readied himself for the call of duty to fulfill the promise he’d made so long ago to defend the de Clermonts no matter what the cost.
“Gallowglass? Are you still there?” Verin’s voice crackled through the phone, pulling her nephew from his reveries.