“You were watching me?” My eyes filled, and I blinked back the tears.
“I promised Granddad I’d keep you safe. For Matthew’s sake.” Gallowglass’s blue eyes softened. “And it’s a good thing, too. You were a right hellion: climbing trees, running after bicycles in the street, and heading into the forest without a hint as to where you were going. How your parents managed is beyond me.”
“Did Daddy know?” I had to ask. My father had met the big Gael in Elizabethan London, when he’d unexpectedly run into Matthew and me on one of his regular timewalks. Even in modern-day Massachusetts, my father would have recognized Gallowglass on sight. The man was unmistakable.
“I did my best not to show myself.”
“That’s not what I asked, Gallowglass.” I was getting better at ferreting out a vampire’s half-truths. “Did my father know you were watching over me?”
“I made sure Stephen saw me just before he and your mother left for Africa that last time,” Gallowglass confessed, his voice little more than a whisper. “I thought it might help him to know, when the end came, that I was nearby. You were still such a wee thing. Stephen must have been beside himself with worry thinking about how long it would be before you were with Matthew.”
Unbeknownst to Matthew or me, the Bishops and the de Clermonts had been working for years, even centuries, to bring us safely together: Philippe, Gallowglass, my father, Emily, my mother.
“Thank you, Gallowglass,” Matthew said hoarsely. Like me, he was surprised by the morning’s revelations.
“No need, Uncle. I did it gladly.” Gallowglass cleared the emotion from his throat and departed.
An awkward silence fell.
“Christ.” Matthew raked his fingers through his hair. It was the usual sign he’d been driven to the end of his patience.
“What are we going to do?” I said, still trying to regain my equilibrium after Baldwin’s sudden appearance.
A gentle cough announced a new presence in the room and kept Matthew from responding.
“I am sorry to interrupt, milord.” Alain Le Merle, Philippe de Clermont’s onetime squire, stood in the doorway to the library. He was holding an ancient coffer with the initials P.C. picked out on the top in silver studs and a small ledger bound in green buckram. His salt-and-pepper hair and kind expression were the same as when I’d first met him in 1590. Like Matthew and Gallowglass, he was a fixed star in my universe of change.
“What is it, Alain?” Matthew asked.
“I have business with Madame de Clermont,” Alain replied.
“Business?” Matthew frowned. “Can it wait?”
“I’m afraid not,” Alain said apologetically. “This is a difficult time I know, milord, but Sieur Philippe was adamant that Madame de Clermont be given her things as soon as possible.”
Alain ushered us back up to our tower. What I saw on Matthew’s desk drove the events of the past hour completely from my mind and left me breathless.
A small book bound in brown leather.
An embroidered sleeve, threadbare with age.
Priceless jewels—pearls and diamonds and sapphires.
A golden arrowhead on a long chain.
A pair of miniatures, their bright surfaces as fresh as the day they were painted.
Letters, tied with a faded carnation ribbon.
A silver rat trap, tarnish clinging to the fine engraving.
A gilded astronomical instrument fit for an emperor.
A wooden box carved by a wizard out of a branch from a rowan tree.
The collection of objects didn’t look like much, but they held enormous significance, for they represented the past eight months of our lives.
I picked up the small book with a trembling hand and flipped it open. Matthew had given it to me soon after we’d arrived at his mansion in Woodstock. In the autumn of 1590, the book’s binding had been fresh and the pages creamy. Today the leather was speckled and the paper yellowed with age. In the past I’d tucked the book away on a high shelf in the Old Lodge, but a bookplate inside told me that it was now the property of a library in Seville. The call mark, “Manuscrito Gonçalves 4890,” was inked onto the flyleaf. Someone—Gallowglass, no doubt—had removed the first page. Once it had been covered with my tentative attempts to record my name. The blots from that missing leaf had seeped through to the page below, but the list I’d made of the Elizabethan coins in circulation in 1590 was still legible.
I flipped through the rest of the pages, remembering the headache cure I’d attempted to master in a futile attempt to appear a proper Elizabethan housewife. My diary of daily happenings brought back bittersweet memories of our time with the School of Night. I’d dedicated a handful of pages to an overview of the twelve signs of the zodiac, copied down a few more recipes, and scribbled a packing list for our journey to Sept-Tours in the back. I heard the gentle chime as past and present rubbed against each other, and I spotted the blue and amber threads that were barely visible in the corners of the fireplace.
“How did you get this?” I said, focusing on the here and now.
“Master Gallowglass gave it to Dom Fernando long ago. When he arrived at Sept-Tours in May, Dom Fernando asked me to return it to you,” Alain explained.
“It’s a miracle anything survived. How did you manage to keep all this hidden from me for so many years?” Matthew picked up the silver rat trap. He had teased me when I’d commissioned one of London’s most expensive clockmakers to make the mechanism to catch the rats prowling our attics in the Blackfriars. Monsieur Vallin had designed it to resemble a cat, with ears set on the crossbars and a little mouse perched on the fierce feline’s nose. Matthew deliberately sprang the mechanism, and the cat’s sharp teeth dug into the flesh of his finger.
“We did as we must, milord. We waited. We kept silent. We never lost faith that time would bring Madame de Clermont back to us.” A sad smile played at the corners of Alain’s mouth. “If only Sieur Philippe could have lived to see this day.”
At the thought of Philippe, my heart skittered. He must have known how badly his children would react to having me as a sister. Why had he put me in such an impossible situation?
“All right, Diana?” Matthew gently laid his hand over mine.
“Yes. Just a bit overwhelmed.” I took up the portraits of Matthew and me wearing fine Elizabethan clothing. Nicholas Hilliard had painted them at the Countess of Pembroke’s request. She and the Earl of Northumberland had given the tiny likenesses to us as wedding gifts. The two of them had been Matthew’s friends at first—along with the other members of the School of Night: Walter Raleigh, George Chapman, Thomas Harriot, and Christopher Marlowe. In time most of them became my friends, too.