Shadow of Night (All Souls Trilogy, #2)(3)
Before I could worry further, Fran?oise returned with something that looked like a darning needle, her mouth bristling with pins. An ambulatory mound of velvet, wool, and linen accompanied her. The slender brown legs emerging from the bottom of the pile suggested that Pierre was buried somewhere inside.
“What are they for?” I asked suspiciously, pointing at the pins.
“For getting madame into this, of course.” Fran?oise plucked a dull brown garment that looked like a flour sack from the top of the pile of clothes. It didn’t seem an obvious choice for entertaining, but with little knowledge of Elizabethan fashion I was at her mercy.
“Go downstairs where you belong, Kit,” Matthew told his friend. “We will join you presently. And hold your tongue. This is my tale to tell, not yours.”
“As you wish, Matthew.” Marlowe pulled at the hem of his mulberry doublet, his nonchalant gesture belied by the trembling of his hands, and made a small, mocking bow. The compact move managed to both acknowledge Matthew’s command and undermine it.
With the daemon gone, Fran?oise draped the sack over a nearby bench and circled me, studying my figure to determine the most favorable line of attack. With an exasperated sigh, she began to dress me. Matthew moved to the table, his attention drawn by the piles of paper strewn over its surface. He opened a neatly folded rectangular packet sealed with a blob of pinkish wax, eyes darting across the tiny handwriting.
“Dieu. I forgot about that. Pierre!”
“Milord?” A muffled voice issued from the depths of the fabric.
“Put that down and tell me about Lady Cromwell’s latest complaint.” Matthew treated Pierre and Fran?oise with a blend of familiarity and authority. If this was how one treated servants, it would take me some time to master the art.
The two muttered by the fire while I was draped, pinned, and trussed into something presentable. Fran?oise clucked over my single earring, the twisted golden wires hung with jewels that had originally belonged to Ysabeau. Like Matthew’s copy of Doctor Faustus and the small silver figure of Diana, the earring was one of the items that had helped us return to this particular past. Fran?oise rummaged in a nearby chest and found its match easily. My jewelry sorted out, she snaked thick stockings over my knees and secured them with scarlet ribbons.
“I think I’m ready,” I said, eager to get downstairs and begin our visit to the sixteenth century. Reading books about the past wasn’t the same as experiencing it, as my brief interaction with Fran?oise and my crash course in the clothing of the period proved.
Matthew surveyed my appearance. “That will do—for now.”
“She’ll more than do, for she looks modest and forgettable,” Fran?oise said, “which is exactly how a witch should look in this household.”
Matthew ignored Fran?oise’s pronouncement and turned to me. “Before we go down, Diana, remember to guard your words. Kit is a daemon, and George knows that I’m a vampire, but even the most open-minded of creatures are leery of someone new and different.”
Down in the great hall, I wished George, Matthew’s penniless and patronless friend, a formal and, I thought, properly Elizabethan good evening.
“Is that woman speaking English?” George gaped, raising a pair of round spectacles that magnified his blue eyes to froglike proportions. His other hand was on his hip in a pose I’d last seen in a painted miniature at the Victoria and Albert Museum.
“She’s been living in Chester,” Matthew said quickly. George looked skeptical. Apparently not even the wilds of northern England could account for my odd speech patterns. Matthew’s accent was softening into something that better matched the cadence and timbre of the time, but mine remained resolutely modern and American.
“She’s a witch,” corrected Kit, taking a sip of wine.
“Indeed?” George studied me with renewed interest. There were no nudges to indicate that this man was a daemon, no witchy tingles, nor the frosty aftereffects of a vampire’s glance. George was just an ordinary, warmblooded human—one who appeared middle-aged and tired, as though life had already worn him out. “But you do not like witches any more than Kit does, Matthew. You have always discouraged me from attending to the subject. When I set out to write a poem about Hecate, you told me to—”
“I like this one. So much so, I married her,” Matthew interrupted, bestowing a firm kiss on my lips to help convince him.
“Married her!” George’s eyes shifted to Kit. He cleared his throat. “So there are two unexpected joys to celebrate: You were not delayed on business as Pierre thought, and you have returned to us with a wife. My felicitations.” His portentous tone reminded me of a commencement address, and I stifled a smile. George beamed at me in return and bowed. “I am George Chapman, Mistress Roydon.”
His name was familiar. I picked through the disorganized knowledge stored in my historian’s brain. Chapman was not an alchemist—that was my research specialty, and I did not find his name in the spaces devoted to that arcane subject. He was another writer, like Marlowe, but I couldn’t recall any of the titles.
Once we’d dispensed with introductions, Matthew agreed to sit before the fire for a few moments with his guests. There the men talked politics and George made an effort to include me in the conversation by asking about the state of the roads and the weather. I said as little as possible and tried to observe the little tricks of gesture and word choice that would help me pass for an Elizabethan. George was delighted with my attentiveness and rewarded it with a long dissertation on his latest literary efforts. Kit, who didn’t enjoy being relegated to a supporting role, brought George’s lecture to a halt by offering to read aloud from his latest version of Doctor Faustus.