Read Shadow of Night Online

Authors: Deborah Harkness

Tags: #Romance, #Fantasy, #Vampires, #Adult

Shadow of Night (40 page)

“The Aldgate gathering has grown too large, Susanna. It cannot govern its own affairs, never mind take on the education of a weaver. Besides, it is too far for me to travel, and the bad air by the city ditch worsens my rheumatism. We will train her in this parish, as the goddess intended.”

“I cannot—” Susanna began.

“I am your elder, Susanna. If you wish to protest further, you will need to seek a ruling from the Rede.” The air thickened uncomfortably.

“Very well, Goody. I will send my request to Queenhithe.” Susanna seemed startled by her own announcement.

“Who is Queen Hithe?” I asked Matthew, my voice low.

“Queenhithe is a place, not a person,” he murmured. “But what is this about a reed?”

“I have no idea,” I confessed.

“Stop whispering,” Goody Alsop said, shaking her head in annoyance. “With the charm on the windows and the doors, your muttering stirs the air and hurts my ears.”

Once the air quieted, Goody Alsop continued. “Susanna has challenged my authority in this matter. As I am the leader of the Garlickhythe gathering—and the Vintry’s ward elder as well—Mistress Norman must present her case to the other ward elders in London. They will decide on our course of action, as they do whenever there are disagreements between witches. There are twenty-six elders, and together we are known as the Rede.”

“So this is just politics?” I said.

“Politics and prudence. Without a way to settle our own disputes, Father Hubbard would have his
wearh
fingers in even more of our affairs,” said Goody Alsop. “I am sorry if I offend you, Master Roydon.”

“No offense taken, Goody Alsop. But if you take this matter to your elders, Diana’s identity will be known across London.” Matthew stood. “I can’t allow that.”

“Every witch in the city has already heard about your wife. News travels quickly here, no small thanks to your friend Christopher Marlowe,” Goody Alsop said, craning her neck to meet his eyes. “Sit down, Master Roydon. My old bones no longer bend that way.” To my surprise, Matthew sat.

“The witches of London still do not know you are a weaver, Diana, and that is the important thing,” Goody Alsop continued. “The Rede will have to be told, of course. When other witches hear that you’ve been called before the elders, they will assume you are being disciplined for your relationship with Master Roydon, or that you are being bound in some fashion to keep him from gaining access to your blood and power.”

“Whatever they decide, will you still be my teacher?” I was used to being the object of other witches’ scorn and knew better than to hope that the witches of London would approve of my relationship with Matthew. It mattered little to me whether Marjorie Cooper, Elizabeth Jackson, and Catherine Streeter (whoever they were) participated in Goody Alsop’s educational regimen. But Goody Alsop was different. This was one witch whose friendship and help I wanted to have.

“I am the last of our kind in London and one of only three known weavers in this part of the world. The Scottish weaver Agnes Sampson lies in a prison in Edinburgh. No one has seen or heard from the Irish weaver for years. The Rede has no choice but to let me guide you,” Goody Alsop assured me.

“When will the witches meet?” I asked.

“As soon as it can be arranged,” Goody Alsop promised.

“We will be ready for them,” Matthew assured her.

“There are some things that your wife must do for herself, Master Roydon. Carrying the babe and seeing the Rede are among them,” Goody Alsop replied. “Trust is not an easy business for a
wearh,
I know, but you must try for her sake.”

“I trust my wife. You felt what witches have done to her, so you will not be surprised that I don’t trust any of your kind with her,” Matthew said.

“You must try,” Goody Alsop repeated. “You cannot offend the Rede. If you do, Hubbard will have to intervene. The Rede will not suffer that additional insult and will insist on the Congregation’s involvement. No matter our other disagreements, no one in this room wants the Congregation’s attention focused on London, Master Roydon.”

Matthew took Goody Alsop’s measure. Finally he nodded. “Very well, Goody.”

I was a weaver.

Soon I would be a mother.

A child between, a witch apart,
whispered the ghostly voice of Bridget Bishop.

Matthew’s sharp inhalation told me that he had detected some change in my scent. “Diana is tired and needs to go home.”

“She is not tired but fearful. The time for that has passed, Diana. You must face who you truly are,” Goody Alsop said with mild regret.

But my anxiety continued to rise even after we were safely back in the Hart and Crown. Once there, Matthew took off his quilted jacket. He wrapped it around my shoulders, trying to ward off the chilly air. The fabric retained his smell of cloves and cinnamon, along with traces of smoke from Susanna’s fire and the damp air of London.

“I’m a weaver.” Perhaps if I kept saying it, this fact would begin to make sense. “But I don’t know what that means or who I am anymore.”

“You are Diana Bishop—a historian, a witch.” He took me by the shoulders. “No matter what else you have been before or might one day be, this is who you are. And you are my life.”

“Your wife,” I corrected him.

“My life,” he repeated. “You are not just my heart but its beating. Before I was only a shadow, like Goody Alsop’s fetch.” His accent was stronger, his voice rough with emotion.

“I should be relieved to have the truth at last,” I said through chattering teeth as I climbed into bed. The cold seemed to have taken root in the marrow of my bones. “All my life I wondered why I was different. Now I know, but it doesn’t help.”

“One day it will,” Matthew promised, joining me under the coverlet. He folded his arms around me. We twined our legs like the roots of a tree, each clinging to the other for support as we worked our bodies closer. Deep within me the chain that I had somehow forged out of love and longing for someone I had yet to meet flexed between us and became fluid. It was thick and unbreakable, filled with a life-giving sap that flowed continuously from witch to vampire and back to witch. Soon I no longer felt between but blissfully, completely centered. I took a deep breath, then another. When I tried to draw away, Matthew refused.

“I’m not ready to let you go yet,” he said, pulling me closer.

“You must have work to do—for the Congregation, Philippe, Elizabeth. I’m fine, Matthew,” I insisted, though I wanted to stay exactly where I was for as long as possible.

“Vampires reckon time differently than warmbloods do,” he said, still unwilling to release me.

“How long is a vampire minute, then?” I asked, snuggling under his chin.

“It’s hard to say,” Matthew murmured. “Some length of time between an ordinary minute and forever.”

Chapter Twenty Two

A
ssembling the twenty-six most powerful witches in London was no small feat. The Rede did not take place as I had imagined—in a single, courtroom-style meeting with witches arrayed in neat rows and me standing before them. Instead it unfolded over several days in shops, taverns, and parlors all over the city. There were no formal introductions, and no time was wasted on other social niceties. I saw so many unfamiliar witches that soon they all blurred together.

Some aspects of the experience stood out, however. For the first time I felt the unquestionable power of a firewitch. Goody Alsop hadn’t misled me—there was no mistaking the burning intensity of the redheaded witch’s gaze or touch. Though the flames in my blood leaped and danced when she was near, I was clearly no firewitch. This was confirmed when I met two more firewitches in a private room at the Mitre, a tavern in Bishopsgate.

“She’ll be a challenge,” one observed after she’d finished reading my skin.

“A time-spinning weaver with plenty of water and fire in her,” the other agreed. “Not a combination I thought to see in my lifetime.”

The Rede’s windwitches convened at Goody Alsop’s house, which was more spacious than its modest exterior suggested. Two ghosts wandered the rooms, as did Goody Alsop’s fetch, who met visitors at the door and glided about silently making sure that everyone was comfortable.

The windwitches were a less fearsome lot than the firewitches, their touches light and dry as they quietly assessed my strengths and shortcomings.

“A stormy one,” murmured a silver-haired witch of fifty or so. She was petite and lithe and moved with a speed that suggested gravity did not have the same hold on her as on the rest of us.

“Too much direction,” another said, frowning. “She needs to let matters take their own course, or every draft she makes is likely to become a fullblown gale.”

Goody Alsop accepted their comments with thanks, but when they all left, she seemed relieved.

“I will rest now, child,” she said weakly, rising from her chair and moving toward the rear of the house. Her fetch trailed after her like a shadow.

“Are there any men among the Rede, Goody Alsop?” I asked, taking her elbow.

“Only a handful remain. All the young wizards have gone off to university to study natural philosophy,” she said with a sigh. “These are strange times, Diana. Everyone is in such a rush for something new, and witches think books will teach them better than experience. I’ll take my leave of you now. My ears are ringing from all that talking.”

A solitary waterwitch came to the Hart and Crown on Thursday morning. I was lying down, exhausted from traipsing all over town the previous day. Tall and supple, the waterwitch did not so much step as flow into the house. She met a solid obstacle, however, in the wall of vampires in the entrance hall.

“It’s all right, Matthew,” I said from the door of our bedchamber, beckoning her forward.

When we were alone, the waterwitch surveyed me from head to toe. Her glance tingled like salt water on my skin, as bracing as a dip in the ocean on a summer day.

“Goody Alsop was right,” she said in a low, musical voice. “There is too much water in your blood. We cannot meet with you in groups for fear of causing a deluge. You must see us one at a time. It will take all day, I’m afraid.”

So instead of my going to the waterwitches, the waterwitches came to me. They trickled in and out of the house, driving Matthew and Françoise mad. But there was no denying my affinity with them, or the undertow that I felt in a waterwitch’s presence.

“The water did not lie,” one waterwitch murmured after sliding her fingertips over my forehead and shoulders. She turned my hands over to examine the palms. She was scarcely older than me, with striking coloring: white skin, black hair, and eyes the color of the Caribbean.

“What water?” I asked as she traced the tributaries leading away from my lifeline.

“Every waterwitch in London collected rainwater from midsummer to Mabon, then poured it into the Rede’s scrying bowl. It revealed that the long-awaited weaver would have water in her veins.” The waterwitch let out a sigh of relief and released my hands. “We are in need of new spells after helping turn back the Spanish fleet. Goody Alsop has been able to replenish the windwitches’ supply, but the Scottish weaver was gifted with earth, so she could not help us—even if she had wished to. You are a true daughter of the moon, though, and will serve us well.”

On Friday morning a messenger came to the house with an address on Bread Street and instructions for me to go there at eleven o’clock to meet the last remaining members of the Rede: the two earthwitches. Most witches had some degree of earth magic within them. It was the foundation for the craft, and in modern covens earthwitches had no special distinction. I was curious to see if the Elizabethan earthwitches were any different.

Matthew and Annie went with me, as Pierre was occupied on an errand for Matthew and Françoise was out shopping. We were just clearing St. Paul’s Churchyard when Matthew turned on an urchin with a filthy face and painfully thin legs. Matthew’s blade was at the child’s ear in a flash. “Move that finger so much as a hair, lad, and I’ll take your ear off,” he said softly.

I looked down with surprise to see the child’s fingers brushing against the bag I wore at my waist.

There was always a hint of potential violence about Matthew, even in my own time, but in Elizabeth’s London it was much closer to the surface. Still, there was no need for him to turn his venom on one so small.

“Matthew,” I warned, noting the terror on the child’s face, “stop it.”

“Another man would have your ear or have you before the bailiffs.” Matthew narrowed his eyes, and the child blanched further.

“Enough,” I said shortly. I touched the child’s shoulder, and he flinched. In a flash my witch’s eye saw a man’s heavy hand striking the child and driving him into a wall. Beneath my fingers, concealed by a rough shirt that was all the boy had to keep out the cold, blood suffused his skin in an ugly bruise. “What’s your name?”

“Jack, my lady,” the boy whispered. Matthew’s knife was still pressed to his ear, and we were beginning to attract attention.

“Put the dagger away, Matthew. This child is no danger to either of us.”

Matthew withdrew his knife with a hiss.

“Where are your parents?”

Jack shrugged. “Haven’t any, my lady.”

“Take the boy home, Annie, and have Françoise get him some food and clothes. Introduce him to warm water, if you can, and put him in Pierre’s bed. He looks tired.”

“You cannot adopt every stray in London, Diana.” Matthew drove his dagger into its sheath for emphasis.

“Françoise could use someone to run errands for her.” I smoothed the boy’s hair back from his forehead. “Will you work for me, Jack?”

“Aye, mistress.” Jack’s stomach gave an audible gurgle, and his wary eyes held a trace of hope. My witch’s third eye opened wide, seeing into his cavernous stomach and hollow, trembling legs. I drew a few coins from my purse.

“Buy him a slice of pie from Master Prior on the way, Annie. He’s ready to drop from hunger, but that should hold him until Françoise can make him a proper meal.”

“Yes, Mistress,” Annie said. She gripped Jack around the arm and towed him in the direction of the Blackfriars.

Matthew frowned at their departing backs and then at me. “You’re doing that child no favors. This Jack—if that’s his real name, which I sincerely doubt—won’t live out the year if he continues to steal.”

“The child won’t live out the week unless an adult takes responsibility for him. What is that you said? Love, a grown-up to care for them, and a soft place to land?”

“Don’t turn my words against me, Diana. That was about our child, not some homeless waif.” Matthew, who had met more witches in the past few days than most vampires did in a lifetime, was spoiling for a fight.

“I was a homeless waif once.”

My husband drew back as if I’d slapped him.

“Not so easy to turn him away now, is it?” I didn’t wait for him to respond. “If Jack doesn’t come with us, we might as well take him straight to Andrew Hubbard. There he’ll either be fitted for a coffin or had for supper. Either way he’ll be looked after better than he would be out here on the streets.”

“We have servants enough,” Matthew said coolly.

“And you have money to spare. If you can’t afford it, I’ll pay his wages out of my own funds.”

“You’d better come up with a fairy tale to tuck him into bed with while you’re at it.” Matthew gripped my elbow. “Do you think he won’t notice he’s living with three
wearhs
and two witches? Human children always see more clearly into the world of creatures than adults do.”

“Do you think Jack will care what we are if he has a roof over his head, food in his belly, and a bed where he can sleep the night in safety?” A woman stared at us in confusion from across the street. A vampire and a witch shouldn’t be having such a heated discussion in public. I pulled the hood closer around my face.

“The more creatures we let into our lives here, the trickier this all becomes,” Matthew said. He noticed the woman watching us and released my arm. “And that goes double for the humans.”

After visiting the two solid, grave earthwitches, Matthew and I retreated to opposite ends of the Hart and Crown until our tempers cooled. Matthew attacked his mail, bellowing for Pierre and letting out a voluble stream of curses against Her Majesty’s government, his father’s whims, and the folly of King James of Scotland. I spent the time talking to Jack about his duties. While the boy had a fine skill set when it came to picking locks, pockets, and country bumpkins who could be fleeced of all their possessions in confidence games, he could not read, write, cook, sew, or do anything else that might assist Françoise and Annie. Pierre, however, took a serious interest in the boy, especially after he recovered his lucky charm from the inner pocket of the boy’s secondhand doublet.

“Come with me, Jack,” Pierre said, holding open the door and jerking his head toward the stairs. He was on his way out to collect the latest missives from Matthew’s informants, and he clearly planned on taking advantage of our young charge’s familiarity with London’s underworld.

“Yes, sir,” Jack said, his voice eager. He already looked better after just one meal.

“Nothing dangerous,” I warned Pierre.

“Of course not,
madame,
” the vampire said innocently.

“I mean it,” I retorted. “And have him back before dark.”

I was sorting through papers on my desk when Matthew came out from his study. Françoise and Annie had gone to Smithfield to see the butchers for meat and blood, and we had the house to ourselves.

“I’m sorry,
mon coeur,
” Matthew said, sliding his hands around my waist from behind. He dropped a kiss on my neck. “Between the Rede and the queen, it’s been a long week.”

“I’m sorry, too. I understand why you don’t want Jack here, Matthew, but I couldn’t ignore him. He was hurt and hungry.”

“I know,” Matthew said, drawing me in tightly so that my back fit against his chest.

“Would your reaction have been different if we’d found the boy in modern Oxford?” I asked, staring into the fire rather than meeting his eyes. Ever since the incident with Jack, I had been preoccupied with the question of whether Matthew’s behavior was rooted in vampire genetics or Elizabethan morals.

“Probably not. It’s not easy for vampires to live among warmbloods, Diana. Without an emotional bond, warmbloods are nothing more than a source of nourishment. No vampire, however civilized and well mannered, can remain in close proximity to one without feeling the urge to feed on them.” His breath was cool against my neck, tickling the sensitive spot where Miriam had used her blood to heal the wound Matthew had made there.

“You don’t seem to want to feed on me.” There had been no indication that Matthew wrestled with such an urge, and he had flatly refused his father’s suggestions that he take my blood.

“I can manage my cravings far better than when we first met. Now my desire for your blood is not so much about nourishment as control. To feed from you would primarily be an assertion of dominance now that we’re mated.”

“And we have sex for that,” I said matter-of-factly. Matthew was a generous and creative lover, but he definitely considered the bedroom his domain.

“Excuse me?” he said, his eyebrows drawn into a scowl.

“Sex and dominance. It’s what modern humans think vampire relationships are all about,” I said. “Their stories are full of crazed alpha-male vampires throwing women over their shoulders before dragging them off for dinner and a date.”

“Dinner and a date?” Matthew was aghast. “Do you mean . . . ?”

“Uh-huh. You should see what Sarah’s friends in the Madison coven read. Vampire meets girl, vampire bites girl, girl is shocked to find out there really are vampires. The sex, blood, and overprotective behavior all come quickly thereafter. Some of it is pretty explicit.” I paused. “There’s no time for bundling, that’s for sure. I don’t remember much poetry or dancing either.”

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