Shadow of Night (All Souls Trilogy, #2)(31)

“Perhaps, Mistress Roydon, but if you truly love him, it is pointless to insist upon it,” Marlowe said. “Matthew can no longer distinguish between what is true and what is not. This is why he is invaluable to Her Majesty.” “We’re here to find you a teacher,” Matthew insisted, his eyes locked on me. “The fact that I am both a member of the Congregation and the queen’s agent will keep you from harm. Nothing happens in the country without my being aware of it.”

“For someone who claims to know everything, you were blissfully unaware that I’ve thought for days that something was going on in this house. There is too much mail. And you and Walter have been arguing.” “You see what I want you to see. Nothing more.” Even though Matthew’s tendency toward imperiousness had grown exponentially since we

came to the Old Lodge, my jaw dropped at his tone.

“How dare you,” I said slowly. Matthew knew I’d spent my whole life surrounded by secrets. I’d paid a high price for it, too. I stood.

“Sit down,” he grated out. “Please.” He caught my hand.

Matthew’s best friend, Hamish Osborne, had warned me that he wouldn’t be the same man here. How could he be, when the world was such a different place? Women were expected to accept without question what a man told them. Among his friends it was all too easy for Matthew to slip back into old behaviors and patterns of thinking.

“Only if you answer me. I want the name of the person you report to and how you got embroiled in this business.” I glanced over at his nephew and his friends, worried that these were state secrets.

“They already know about Kit and me,” Matthew said, following my eyes. He struggled to find the words. “It all started with Francis Walsingham.

“I’d left England late in Henry’s reign. I spent time in Constantinople, went to Cyprus, wandered through Spain, fought at Lepanto—even set up

a printing business in Antwerp,” Matthew explained. “It’s the usual path for a wearh. We search for a tragedy, an opportunity to slip into someone else’s life. But nothing suited me, so I returned home. France was on the verge of religious and civil war. When you’ve lived as long as I have, you learn the signs. A Huguenot schoolmaster was happy to take my money and go to Geneva, where he could raise his daughters in safety. I took the identity of his long-dead cousin, moved into his house in Paris, and started over as Matthew de la Forêt.”

“‘Matthew of the Forest’?” My eyebrows lifted at the irony. “That was the schoolmaster’s name,” he said wryly. “Paris was dangerous, and Walsingham, as English ambassador, was a magnet for every disenchanted rebel in the country. Late in the summer of 1572, all the simmering anger in France came to a boil. I helped Walsingham escape, along with the English Protestants he was sheltering.”

“The massacre on St. Bartholomew’s Day.” I shivered, thinking of the blood-soaked wedding between a French Catholic princess and her Protestant husband.

“I became the queen’s agent later, when she sent Walsingham back to Paris. He was supposed to be brokering Her Majesty’s marriage to one of the Valois princes.” Matthew snorted. “It was clear the queen had no real interest in the match. It was during that visit that I learned of Walsingham’s network of intelligencers.”

My husband met my eyes briefly, then looked away. He was still keeping something from me. I reviewed the story, detected the fault lines in his account, and followed them to a single, inescapable conclusion: Matthew was French, Catholic, and he could not possibly have been aligned politically with Elizabeth Tudor in 1572—or in 1590. If he was working for the English Crown, it was for some larger purpose. But the Congregation had vowed to stay out of human politics. Philippe de Clermont and his Knights of Lazarus had not.

"You’re working for your father. And you’re not only a vampire but a Catholic in a Protestant country.”

The fact that Matthew was working for the Knights of Lazarus, not just Elizabeth, exponentially increased the danger. It wasn’t just witches who were hunted down and executed in Elizabethan England—so were traitors, creatures with unusual powers, and people of different faiths. “The Congregation is of no help if you get involved with human politics. How could your own family ask you to do something so risky?”

Hancock grinned. “That’s why there’s always a de Clermont on the Congregation—to make sure lofty ideals don’t get in the way of good business.”

“This isn’t the first time I’ve worked for Philippe, nor will it be the last. You’re good at uncovering secrets. I’m good at keeping them,” Matthew said simply.

Scientist. Vampire. Warrior. Spy. Another piece of Matthew fell into place, and with it I better understood his ingrained habit of never sharing anything—major or minor—unless he was forced to do so.

“I don’t care how much experience you have! Your safety depends on Walsingham—and you’re deceiving him.” His words had only made me angrier.

“Walsingham is dead. I report to William Cecil now.”

“The canniest man alive,” Gallowglass said quietly. “Except for Philippe, of course.”

“And Kit? Does he work for Cecil or for you?”

“Tell her nothing, Matthew,” Kit said. “The witch cannot be trusted.”