Shadow of Night: A Novel Read online

  “She sounds rather like the ladies of Malá Strana,” I said drily. “And what did Šárka do with her intelligence?” Before Matthew could answer, an unfamiliar young woman spoke.

  “Šárka took down a troop of soldiers,” she explained in fluid Latin with a heavy Czech accent. A white-bearded man I took to be her father looked at her approvingly, and she blushed.

  “Really?” I said, interested. “How?”

  “By pretending she needed rescuing and then inviting the soldiers to celebrate her freedom with too much wine.” Another woman, this one elderly with a beak of a nose to rival Augusta’s, snorted in disgust. “Men fall for that every time.”

  I burst out laughing. To her evident surprise, so did the beaky, aristocratic old lady.

  “I fear, Emperor, that the ladies will not have their heroine blamed for the faults of others.” Matthew reached into his pocket for the hood and gently set it over the crown of Šárka’s proud head. He leaned in and tightened the cord with his teeth. The gamekeeper took the merlin to a smattering of approving applause.

  We adjourned to a red-and-white-roofed Italianate house set at the edge of the palace grounds for wine and refreshments, though I would have preferred to linger in the gardens where the emperor’s narcissi and tulips were blooming. Other members of the court joined us, including the sour-faced Strada, Master Hoefnagel, and the instrument maker Erasmus Habermel, whom I thanked for my compendium.

  “What we need to lift our boredom is a spring feast now that Lent is almost over,” said one young male courtier in a loud voice. “Don’t you think so, Your Majesty?”

  “A masque?” Rudolf took a sip of his wine and stared at me. “If so, the theme should be Diana and Actaeon.”

  “That theme is so common, Your Majesty, and rather English,” Matthew said sadly. Rudolf flushed. “Perhaps we might do Demeter and Persephone instead. It is more fitting for the season.”

  “Or the story of Odysseus,” Strada suggested, shooting me a nasty look. “Frau Roydon could play Circe and turn us into piglets.”

  “Interesting, Ottavio,” Rudolf said, tapping his full lower lip with his index finger. “I might enjoy playing Odysseus.”

  Not on your life, I thought. Not with the requisite bedroom scene and Odysseus making Circe promise not to forcibly take his manhood.

  “If I might offer a suggestion,” I said, eager to stave off disaster.

  “Of course, of course,” Rudolf said earnestly, taking my hand and giving it a solicitous pat.

  “The story I have in mind requires someone to take the role of Zeus, the king of the gods,” I told the emperor, drawing my hand gently away.

  “I would be a convincing Zeus,” he said eagerly, a smile lighting his face. “And you will play Callisto?” Absolutely not. I was not going to let Rudolf pretend to ravage and impregnate me.

  “No, Your Majesty. If you insist that I take part in the entertainment, I will play the goddess of the moon.” I slid my hand into the bend of Matthew’s arm. “And to atone for his earlier remark, Matthew will play Endymion.”

  “Endymion?” Rudolf’s smile wavered.

  “Poor Rudolf. Outfoxed again,” Matthew murmured for only me to hear. “Endymion, Your Majesty,” he said, this time in a voice pitched to carry, “the beautiful youth who is cast into enchanted sleep so as to preserve his immortality and Diana’s chastity.”

  “I know the legend, Herr Roydon!” Rudolf warned.

  “Apologies, Your Majesty,” Matthew said with a graceful, albeit shallow, bow. “Diana will look splendid, arriving in her chariot so that she can gaze wistfully upon the man she loves.”

  Rudolf was imperial purple by this point. We were waved out of the royal presence and left the palace to make the brief, downhill trip to the Three Ravens.

  “I have only one request,” Matthew said as we entered our front door. “I may be a vampire, but April is a cold month in Prague. In deference to the temperature, the costumes you design for Diana and Endymion should be more substantial than a lunar crescent for your hair and a dishcloth to drape around my hips.”

  “I’ve only just cast you in this role and you’re already making artistic demands!” I flung up one hand in mock indignation. “Actors!”

  “That’s what you deserve for working with amateurs,” Matthew said with a smile. “I know just how the masque should begin: ‘And lo! from opening clouds, I saw emerge / The loveliest moon, that ever silver’d o’er / A shell for Neptune’s goblet.’”

  “You cannot use Keats!” I laughed. “He’s a Romantic poet—it’s three hundred years too soon.”

  “‘She did soar / So passionately bright, my dazzled soul / Commingling with her argent spheres did roll / Through clear and cloudy, even when she went / At last into a dark and vapoury tent,’” he exclaimed dramatically, pulling me into his arms.

  “And I suppose you’ll want me to find you a tent,” Gallowglass said, thundering down the stairs.

  “And some sheep. Or maybe an astrolabe. Endymion can be either a shepherd or an astronomer,” Matthew said, weighing his options.

  “Rudolf’s gamekeeper will never part with one of his strange sheep,” Gallowglass said dourly.

  “Matthew is welcome to use my compendium.” I looked around. It was supposed to be on the mantelpiece, out of Jack’s reach. “Where has it gone?”

  “Annie and Jack are showing it to Mop. They think it’s enchanted.”

  Until then I hadn’t noticed the threads running straight up the stairs from the fireplace—silver, gold, and gray. In my rush to reach the children and find out what was going on with the compendium, I stepped on the hem of my skirt. By the time I reached Annie and Jack, I’d managed to give the bottom a new, scalloped edge.

  Annie and Jack had the little brass-and-silver compendium opened up like a book, its inner wings folded out to their full extent. Rudolf’s desire had been to give me something to track the movements of the heavens, and Habermel had outdone himself. The compendium contained a sundial, a compass, a device to compute the length of the hours at different seasons of the year, an intricate lunar volvelle—whose gears could be set to tell the date, time, ruling sign of the zodiac, and phase of the moon—and a latitude chart that included (at my request) the cities of Roanoke, London, Lyon, Prague, and Jerusalem. One of the wings had a spine into which I could fit one of the hottest new technologies: the erasable tablet, which was made of specially treated paper that one could write on and then carefully wipe off to make fresh notes.

  “Look, Jack, it’s doing it again,” Annie said, peering down at the instrument. Mop (no one in the house called him Lobero anymore, except for Jack) started barking, wagging his tail with excitement as the lunar volvelle began to spin of its own accord.

  “I bet you a penny that the full moon will be in the window when the spinning stops,” Jack said, spitting in his hand and holding it out to Annie.

  “No betting,” I said automatically, crouching down next to Jack.

  “When did this start, Jack?” Matthew asked, fending off Mop.

  Jack shrugged.

  “It’s been happening since Herr Habermel sent it,” Annie confessed.

  “Does it spin like this all day or only at certain times?” I asked.

  “Only once or twice. And the compass just spins once.” Annie looked miserable. “I should have told you. I knew it was magical from the way it feels.”

  “It’s all right.” I smiled at her. “No harm done.” With that I put my finger in the center of the volvelle and commanded the thing to stop. It did. As soon as the revolutions ceased, the silver and gold threads around the compendium slowly dissolved, leaving only the gray thread behind. It was quickly lost among the many colorful strands that filled our house.

  “What does it mean?” Matthew asked later, when the house was quiet and I had my first opportunity to put the compendium out of the children’s reach. I’d decided to leave it atop the flat canopy over our bed. “By the way, everybody hides thing
s on top of the tester. It will be the first place Jack searches for it.”

  “Somebody is looking for us.” I pulled the compendium back down and sought out a new place to conceal it.

  “In Prague?” Matthew held out his hand for the small instrument, and when I handed it to him, he slipped it into his doublet.

  “No. In time.”

  Matthew sat down on the bed with a thunk and swore.

  “It’s my fault.” I looked at him sheepishly. “I tried to weave a spell so that the compendium would warn me if somebody was thinking of stealing it. The spell was supposed to keep Jack out of trouble. I guess I need to go back to the drawing board.”

  “What makes you think it’s someone in another time?” Matthew asked.

  “Because the lunar volvelle is a perpetual calendar. The gears were spinning as though it were trying to input information beyond its technical specifications. It reminds me of the words racing around in Ashmole 782.”

  “Maybe the whirring of the compass indicates that whoever is looking for us is in a different place, too. Like the lunar volvelle, the compass can’t find true north because it’s being asked to compute two sets of directions: one for us in Prague and one for someone else.”

  “Do you think it’s Ysabeau or Sarah, and they need our help?” It was Ysabeau who had sent Matthew the copy of Doctor Faustus to help us reach 1590. She knew where we were headed.

  “No,” Matthew said, his voice sure. “They wouldn’t give us away. It’s someone else.” His gray-green eyes settled on me. The restless, regretful look was back.

  “You’re looking at me as though I’ve betrayed you somehow.” I sat next to him on the bed. “If you don’t want me to do the masque, I won’t.”

  “It’s not that.” Matthew got up and walked away. “You’re still keeping something from me.”

  “We all keep things to ourselves, Matthew,” I said. “Little things that don’t matter. Sometimes big things, say, like being on the Congregation.” His accusations rankled, given all that I still did not know about him.

  Matthew’s hands were suddenly on my shoulders, lifting me up. “You will never forgive me for that.” His eyes looked black, and his fingers dug into my arms.

  “You promised me you would tolerate my secrets,” I said. “Rabbi Loew is right. Tolerance isn’t enough.”

  Matthew released me with a curse. I heard Gallowglass on the steps, Jack’s sleepy murmurs down the hall.

  “I’m taking Jack and Annie to Baldwin’s house,” Gallowglass said from the door. “Tereza and Karolína have already gone. Pierre will come with me, and so will the dog.” His voice dropped. “You frighten the boy when you argue, and he’s known enough fear in his short life. Sort yourselves out or I’ll take them back to London and leave the two of you here to shift for yourselves.” Gallowglass’s blue eyes were fierce.

  Matthew sat silently by the fire, a cup of wine in his hands and a dark expression on his face as he stared into the flames. As soon as the group departed, he was on his feet and headed to the door.

  Without thinking or planning, I released my firedrake. Stop him, I commanded. She covered him in a gray mist as she flew over and around him, took solid form by the door, and dug the spiked edges of her wings onto either side of its frame. When Matthew got too close, a tongue of fire shot out of her mouth in warning.

  “You’re not going anywhere,” I said. It took enormous effort to keep my voice from rising. Matthew might be able to overpower me, but I doubted he could successfully wrestle with my familiar. “My firedrake is a bit like Šárka: small but scrappy. I wouldn’t piss her off.”

  Matthew turned, his eyes cold.

  “If you’re angry with me, say it. If I’ve done something you don’t like, tell me. If you want to end this marriage, have the courage to end it cleanly so that I might—might—be able to recover from it. Because if you keep looking at me as though you wish we weren’t married, you’re going to destroy me.”

  “I have no desire to end this marriage,” he said tightly.

  “Then be my husband.” I advanced on him. “Do you know what I thought watching those beautiful birds fly today? ‘That’s what Matthew would look like, if only he were free to be himself.’ And when I saw you put on Šárka’s hood, blinding her so that she couldn’t hunt as her instincts tell her to do, I saw the same look of regret in her eyes that I have seen in yours every day since I lost the baby.”

  “This isn’t about the baby.” His eyes held a warning now.

  “No. It’s about me. And you. And something so terrifying you can’t acknowledge it: that in spite of your so-called powers over life and death, you don’t control everything and can’t keep me, or anyone else you love, from harm.”

  “And you think it’s losing the baby that brought that fact home?”

  “What else could it be? Your guilt over Blanca and Lucas nearly destroyed you.”

  “You’re wrong.” Matthew’s hands were wrapped in my hair, pulling down the knot of braids and releasing the scent of chamomile and mint from the soap I used. His pupils looked inky and huge. He drank in the scent of me, and some of the green returned.

  “Tell me what it is, then.”

  “This.” He reached for the edge of my bodice and rent it in two. Then he loosened the cord that kept the wide neckline of my smock from sliding off my shoulders so that it exposed the tops of my breasts. His finger traced the blue vein that surfaced there and continued beneath the folds of linen.

  “Every day of my life is a battle for control. I fight my anger and the sickness that follows in its wake. I struggle with hunger and thirst, because I don’t believe it is right for me to take blood from other creatures—not even the animals, though I can bear that better than taking it from someone I might see again on the street.” His eyes rose to mine. “And I am at war with myself over this unspeakable urge to possess you body and soul in ways that no warmblood can fathom.”

  “You want my blood,” I whispered in sudden understanding. “You lied to me.”

  “I lied to myself.”

  “I told you—repeatedly—that you can have it,” I said. I grabbed at the smock and tore it further, bending my head to the side and exposing my jugular. “Take it. I don’t care. I just want you back.” I bit back a sob.

  “You’re my mate. I would never voluntarily take blood from your neck.” Matthew’s fingers were cool on my flesh as he drew the smock back into place. “When I did so in Madison, it was because I was too weak to stop myself.”

  “What’s wrong with my neck?” I said, confused.

  “Vampires only bite strangers and subordinates on the neck. Not lovers. Certainly not mates.”

  “Dominance,” I said, thinking back to our previous conversations about vampires, blood, and sex, “and feeding. So it’s mostly humans who get bitten there. There’s the kernel of truth in that vampire legend.”

  “Vampires bite their mates here,” Matthew said, “near the heart.” His lips pressed against the bare flesh above the edge of my smock. It was where he had kissed me on our wedding night, when his emotions had overwhelmed him.

  “I thought your wanting to kiss me there was just ordinary lust,” I said.

  “There is nothing ordinary about a vampire’s desire to take blood from this vein.” He moved his mouth a centimeter lower along the blue line and pressed his lips again.

  “But if it’s not about feeding or dominance, what is it about?”

  “Honesty.” When Matthew met my eyes, they were still more black than green. “Vampires keep too many secrets to ever be completely honest. We could never share them all verbally, and most are too complex to make sense, even when you try. And there are prohibitions against sharing secrets in my world.”

  “‘It’s not your tale to tell,’” I said. “I’ve heard that a few times.”

  “To drink from your lover is to know that nothing is hidden.” Matthew stared down at my breast, touched the vein again with his fingertip. “We call
this the heart vein. The blood tastes sweeter here. There is a sense of complete possession and belonging—but it requires complete control, too, not to be swept up in the strong emotions that result.” His voice was sad.

  “And you don’t trust your control because of the blood rage.”

  “You’ve seen me in its grip. It’s sparked by protectiveness. And who poses a greater danger to you than I do?”

  I shrugged the smock off my shoulders, pulling my arms out of the sleeves until I was bare from the waist up. I felt for the lacings on my skirt and yanked them free.

  “Don’t.” Matthew’s eyes had blackened further. “There is no one here in case—”

  “You drain me?” I stepped out of my skirt. “If you couldn’t trust yourself to do this when Philippe was within earshot, you’re not likely to do it with Gallowglass and Pierre standing by to help.”

  “This isn’t a matter for jokes.”

  “No.” I took his hands in mine. “It’s a matter for husbands and wives. It’s a matter of honesty and trust. I have nothing to hide from you. If taking blood from my vein is going to put an end to your incessant need to hunt down what you imagine to be my secrets, then that is what you’re going to do.”

  “It isn’t something a vampire does just once,” Matthew warned, trying to pull away.

  “I didn’t think it was.” I threaded my fingers into the hair at the nape of his neck. “Take my blood. Take my secrets. Do what your instincts are screaming for you to do. There are no hoods or jesses here. In my arms you should be free, even if nowhere else.”

  I drew his mouth to mine. He responded tentatively at first, his fingers wrapped around my wrists as if he hoped to break away at the earliest opportunity. But his instincts were strong and his yearning palpable. The threads that bound the world shifted and adjusted around me as if to make room for such powerful feelings. I drew gently away, my breasts lifting with each breath.

  He looked so frightened that it hurt my heart. But there was desire, too. Fear and desire. No wonder they’d featured in his All Souls essay back when he’d won his fellowship. Who could understand the war between them better than a vampire?