Shadow of Night (All Souls Trilogy, #2)(232)

What a crew, Shakespeare thought. Traitors, atheists, and criminals, the lot of them. His pen hesitated over the page. After writing another word, this one decisively thick and black, Shakespeare sat back and studied his new verses.





Black is the badge of hell,

The hue of dungeons

and the school of night.





It was no longer recognizable as Marlowe’s work. Through the alchemy of his talent, Shakespeare had transformed a dead man’s ideas into something suitable for ordinary Londoners rather than dangerous men like Roydon. And it had taken him only a few moments.

Shakespeare felt not a single pang of regret as he altered the past, thereby changing the future. Marlowe’s turn on the world’s stage had ended, but Shakespeare’s was just beginning. Memories were short and history unkind. It was the way of the world.

Pleased, Shakespeare put the bit of paper into a stack of similar scraps weighted down with a dog’s skull on the corner of his desk. He’d find a use for the snippet of verse one day. Then he had second thoughts.

Perhaps he’d been too hasty to dismiss “true love lost.” There was potential there—unrealized, waiting for someone to unlock it. Shakespeare reached for a scrap he’d cut off a partially filled sheet of paper in a halfhearted attempt at economy after Annie had shown him the last butcher’s bill.

“Love’s Labour’s Lost,” he wrote in large letters.



Yes, Shakespeare mused, he’d definitely use that one day.





Libri Person?: The People of the Book


Those noted thus * acknowledged by historians.





Part I: Woodstock: The Old Lodge

Diana Bishop, a witch



Matthew de Clermont, known as *Roydon, a vampire



* Christopher Marlowe, a daemon and maker of plays

Fran?oise and, Pierre, both vampires and servants

* George Chapman, a writer of some reputation and little patronage

* Thomas Harriot, a daemon and astronomer

* Henry Percy, the Earl of Northumberland

* Sir Walter Raleigh, an adventurer

Joseph Bidwell, senior and junior, shoemakers

Master Somers, a glover

Widow Beaton, a cunning woman

Mister Danforth, a clergyman

Master Iffley, another glover

Gallowglass, a vampire and soldier of fortune

* Davy Gams, known as Hancock, a vampire, his Welsh companion





Part II: Sept-Tours and the Village of Saint-Lucien

* Cardinal Joyeuse, a visitor to Mont-St-Michel

Alain, a vampire and servant to the sieur de Clermont Philippe de Clermont, a vampire and lord of Sept-Tours Chef, a cook

Catrine, Jehanne, Thomas, and Etienne, servants Marie, who makes gowns

André Champier, a wizard of Lyon





Part III: London: The Blackfriars

* Robert Hawley, a shoemaker



* Margaret Hawley, his wife

* Mary Sidney, the Countess of Pembroke Joan, her maid

* Nicholas Hilliard, a limner

Master Prior, a maker of pies

* Richard Field, a printer

* Jacqueline Vautrollier Field, his wife

* John Chandler, an apothecary near the Barbican Cross

Amen Corner and Leonard Shoreditch, vampires

Father Hubbard, the vampire king of London

Annie Undercroft, a young witch with some skill and little power

* Susanna Norman, a midwife and witch

* John and Jeffrey Norman, her sons

Goody Alsop, a windwitch of St. James Garlickhythe Catherine Streeter, a firewitch

Elizabeth Jackson, a waterwitch

Marjorie Cooper, an earthwitch

Jack Blackfriars, a nimble orphan

* Doctor John Dee, a learned man with a library

* Jane Dee, his disgruntled wife

* William Cecil, Lord Burghley, the Lord High Treasurer of England

* Robert Devereux, the Earl of Essex

* Elizabeth I, Queen of England

* Elizabeth (Bess) Throckmorton, maid of honor to the queen





Part IV: The Empire: Prague



Karolína andTereza, vampires and servants

* Tadeá? Hájek, physician to His Majesty

* Ottavio Strada, Imperial librarian and historian

* Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Bohemia

Frau Huber, an Austrian, and Signorina Rossi, an Italian, women of Malá Strana

* Joris Hoefnagel, the artist

* Erasmus Habermel, maker of mathematical instruments

* Signor Miseroni, who carves in precious stones

* Signor Passetti, his majesty’s dancing master

* Joanna Kelley, a woman far from home

* Edward Kelley, a daemon and alchemist

* Rabbi Judah Loew, a wise man

Abraham ben Elijah of Chelm, a wizard with a problem

* David Gans, an astronomer

Herr Fuchs, a vampire

* Melchior Maisel, a prosperous merchant of the Jewish Town

Lobero, a Hungarian dog sometimes mistaken for a mop, probably just a Komondor

* Johannes Pistorius, a wizard and theologian





Part V: London: The Blackfriars





* Vilem Slavata, a very young ambassador