Shadow of Night (All Souls Trilogy, #2)(224)

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. Fran?oise 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.

The blue and amber threads in the corners snapped and keened impatiently, filling the room with light and sound. I took a deep breath and knotted my brown cord, leaving the end hanging free. Apart from Matthew and the clothes on our backs, my weaver’s cords were the only objects we were taking back with us.

“With knot of one, the spell’s begun,” I whispered. Time’s volume increased with every knot until the shrieking and keening was nearly deafening.

As the ends of the ninth cord fused together, I clasped Matthew’s hand in mine. We picked up our feet and our surroundings slowly dissolved.





Chapter Forty




All the English papers had some variation of the same headline, but Ysabeau thought the one in the Times was the cleverest.





English Man Wins Race to See into Space

30 June 2010

The world’s leading expert on early scientific instruments at Oxford University’s Museum of the History of Science, Anthony Carter, confirmed today that a refracting telescope bearing the names of Elizabethan mathematician and astronomer Thomas Harriot and Nicholas Vallin, a Huguenot clockmaker who fled France for religious reasons, is indeed genuine. In addition to the names, the telescope is engraved with the date 1591.