Shadow of Night

27

“Where are my red hose?” Matthew clomped downstairs and scowled at the boxes scattered all over the ground floor. His mood had taken a decided turn for the worse halfway through our four-week journey when we parted ways with Pierre, the children, and our luggage in Hamburg. We’d lost ten additional days by virtue of traveling from England into a Catholic country that reckoned time by a different calendar. In Prague, it was now the eleventh of March and the children and Pierre had yet to arrive.

“I’ll never find them in this mess!” Matthew said, taking out his frustration on one of my petticoats.

After we’d lived out of saddlebags and a single shared trunk for weeks, our belongings had arrived three days after we did at the tall, narrow house perched on the steep avenue leading to Prague Castle known as Sporrengasse. Our German neighbors presumably dubbed it Spur Street because that was the only way you could persuade a horse to make the climb.

“I didn’t know you owned red hose,” I said, straightening up.

“I do.” Matthew started rooting around in a box that contained my linen.

“Well, they won’t be in there,” I said, pointing out the obvious.

The vampire ground his teeth. “I’ve looked everywhere else.”

“I’ll find them.” I eyed his perfectly respectable black leggings. “Why red?”

“Because I am trying to catch the Holy Roman Emperor’s attention!” Matthew dove into another pile of my clothes.

Bloodred stockings would do more than capture a wandering eye, given that the man who proposed to wear them was a six-foot-three vampire, and most of his height was leg. Matthew’s commitment to the plan was unwavering, however. I focused my mind, asked for the hose to show themselves, and followed the red threads. The ability to keep track of people and objects was an unforeseen fringe benefit of being a weaver, and one I’d had several opportunities to use on the trip.

“Has my father’s messenger arrived?” Matthew contributed another petticoat to the snowy mountain growing between us and resumed digging.

“Yes. It’s over by the door—whatever it is.” I fished through contents of an overlooked chest: chain- mail gauntlets, a shield with a double-headed eagle on it, and an elaborately chased cup-and-stick gizmo. Triumphant, I brandished the long red tubes. “Found them!”

Matthew had forgotten the hosiery crisis. His father’s package now held his complete attention. I looked to see what had him so amazed.

“Is that . . . a Bosch?” I knew Hieronymus Bosch’s work because of his bizarre use of alchemical equipment and symbolism. He covered his panels with flying fish, insects, enormous household implements, and eroticized fruit. Long before psychedelic was stylish, Bosch saw the world in bright colors and unsettling combinations.

Like Matthew’s Holbeins at the Old Lodge, however, this work was unfamiliar. It was a triptych, assembled from three hinged wooden panels. Designed to sit on an altar, triptychs were kept closed except for special religious celebrations. In modern museums the exteriors were seldom on display. I wondered what other stunning images I’d been missing.

The artist had covered the outside panels with a velvety black pigment. A wizened tree shimmering in the moonlight spanned the two front panels. A tiny wolf crouched in its roots, and an owl perched in the upper branches. Both animals gazed at the viewer knowingly. A dozen other eyes shone out from the dark ground around the tree, disembodied and staring. Behind the dead oak, a stand of deceptively normal trees with pale trunks and iridescent green branches shed more light on the scene. Only when I took a closer look did I see the ears growing out of them, as though they were listening to the sounds of the night.

“What does it mean?” I asked, staring at Bosch’s work in wonder.

Matthew’s fingers fiddled with the fastenings on his doublet. “It’s an old Flemish proverb: ‘The forest has eyes, and the woods have ears; therefore I will see, be silent, and hear.’” The words perfectly captured the secretive life Matthew led and reminded me of Elizabeth’s current choice of motto.

The triptych’s interior showed three interrelated scenes: an image of the fallen angels, painted against the same velvety black background. At first glance they looked more like dragonflies with their shimmering double wings, but they had human bodies, with heads and legs that twisted in torment as the angels fell through the heavens. On the opposite panel, the dead rose for the Last Judgment in a scene far more gruesome than the frescoes at Sept-Tours. The gaping jaws of fish and wolves provided entrances to hell, sucking in the damned and consigning them to an eternity of pain and agony.

The center, however, showed a very different image of death: the resurrected Lazarus calmly climbing out of his coffin. With his long legs, dark hair, and serious expression, he looked rather like Matthew. All around the borders of the center panel, lifeless vines produced strange fruits and flowers. Some dripped blood. Others gave birth to people and animals. And no Jesus was in sight.

“Lazarus resembles you. No wonder you don’t want Rudolf to have it.” I handed Matthew his hose. “Bosch must have known you were a vampire, too.”

“Jeroen—or Hieronymus as you know him—saw something he shouldn’t have,” Matthew said darkly. “I didn’t know that Jeroen had witnessed me feeding until I saw the sketches he made of me with a warmblood. From that day on, he believed all creatures had a dual nature, part human and part animal.”

“And sometimes part vegetable,” I said, studying a naked woman with a strawberry for a head and cherries for hands running away from a pitchfork-wielding devil wearing a stork as a hat. Matthew made a soft sound of amusement. “Does Rudolf know you’re a vampire, as Elizabeth does and Bosch did?” I was increasingly concerned by the number of people who were in on the secret.

“Yes. The emperor knows I’m a member of the Congregation, too.” He twisted his bright red hose into a knot. “Thank you for finding these.”

“Tell me now if you have a habit of losing your car keys, because I’m not putting up with this kind of panic every morning when you get ready for work.” I slid my arms around his waist and rested my cheek on his heart. That slow, steady beat always calmed me.

“What are you going to do, divorce me?” Matthew returned the embrace, resting his head on mine so that we fit together perfectly.

“You promised me vampires don’t do divorce.” I gave him a squeeze. “You’re going to look like a cartoon character if you put those red socks on. I’d stick to the black if I were you. You’ll stand out regardless.”

“Witch,” Matthew said, releasing me with a kiss.

He went up the hill to the castle, wearing sober black hose and carrying a long, convoluted message (partially in verse) offering Rudolf a marvelous book for his collections. He came back down four hours later empty-handed, having delivered the note to an imperial flunky. There had been no audience with the emperor. Instead Matthew had been kept waiting along with all the other ambassadors seeking audience.

“It was like being stuck in a cattle truck with all those warm bodies cooped up together. I tried to go somewhere with clear air to breathe, but the nearby rooms were full of witches.”

“Witches?” I climbed down from the table I was using to put Matthew’s sword safely on top of the linen cupboard in preparation for Jack’s arrival.

“Dozens of them,” Matthew said. “They were complaining about what’s happening in Germany. Where’s Gallowglass?”

“Your newphew is buying eggs and securing the services of a housekeeper and a cook.” Françoise had flatly refused to join our expedition to Central Europe, which she viewed as a godless land of Lutherans. She was now back at the Old Lodge, spoiling Charles. Gallowglass was serving as my page and general dogsbody until the others arrived. He had excellent German and Spanish, which made him indispensable when it came to provisioning our household. “Tell me more about the witches.”

“The city is a safe haven for every creature in Central Europe who fears for his safety—daemon, vampire, or witch. But the witches are especially welcome in Rudolf’s court, because he covets their knowledge. And their power.”

“Interesting,” I said. No sooner had I started wondering about their identities than a series of faces appeared to my third eye. “Who is the wizard with the red beard? And the witch with one blue and one green eye?”

“We aren’t going to be here long enough for their identities to matter,” Matthew said ominously on his way out the door. Having concluded the day’s business for Elizabeth, he was headed across the river to Prague’s Old Town on behalf of the Congregation. “I’ll see you before dark. Stay here until Gallowglass returns. I don’t want you getting lost.” More to the point, he didn’t want me stumbling upon any witches.

Gallowglass returned to Sporrengasse with two vampires and a pretzel. He handed the latter to me and introduced me to my new servants.

Karolína (the cook) and Tereza (the housekeeper) were members of a sprawling clan of Bohemian vampires dedicated to serving the aristocracy and important foreign visitors. Like the de Clermont retainers, they earned their reputation—and an unusually large salary—because of their preternatural longevity and wolfish loyalty. For the right price, we were also able to buy assurances of secrecy from the clan’s elder, who had removed the women from the household of the papal ambassador. The ambassador graciously consented out of deference to the de Clermonts. They had, after all, been instrumental in rigging the last papal election, and he knew who buttered his bread. I cared only that Karolína knew how to make omelets.

Our household established, Matthew loped up the hill each morning to the castle while I unpacked, met my neighbors in the neighborhood below the castle walls called Malá Strana, and watched for the absent members of the household. I missed Annie’s cheerfulness and wide-eyed approach to the world, as well as Jack’s unfailing ability to get himself into trouble. Our winding street was packed with children of all ages and nationalities, since most of the ambassadors lived there. It turned out that Matthew was not the only foreigner in Prague to be kept at arm’s length by the emperor. Every person I met regaled Gallowglass with tales of how Rudolf had snubbed some important personage only to spend hours with a bookish antiquarian from Italy or a humble miner from Saxony.

It was late afternoon on the first day of spring, and the house was filling with the homely scents of pork and dumplings when a scrappy eight-yearold tackled me.

“Mistress Roydon!” Jack crowed, his face buried in my bodice and his arms wrapped tightly around me. “Did you know that Prague is really four towns in one? London is only one town. And there is a castle, too, and a river. Pierre will show me the watermill tomorrow.”

“Hello, Jack,” I said, stroking his hair. Even on the grueling, freezing journey to Prague, he had managed to shoot up in height. Pierre must have been shoveling food into him. I looked up and smiled at Annie and Pierre. “Matthew will be so glad that you’ve all arrived. He’s missed you.”

“We’ve missed him, too,” Jack said, tilting his head back to look at me. He had dark circles under his eyes, and in spite of his growth spurt he looked wan.

“Have you been ill?” I asked, feeling his forehead. Colds could turn deadly in this harsh climate, and there was talk of a nasty epidemic in the Old Town that Matthew thought was a strain of flu.

“He’s been having trouble sleeping,” Pierre said quietly. I could tell from his serious tone that there was more to the story, but it could wait.

“Well, you’ll sleep tonight. There is an enormous featherbed in your room. Go with Tereza, Jack. She’ll show you where your things are and get you washed up before supper.” In the interests of vampire propriety, the warmbloods would be sleeping with Matthew and me on the second floor, since the house’s narrow layout permitted only a keeping room and kitchen on the ground floor. That meant that the first floor was dedicated to formal rooms for receiving guests. The rest of the household’s vampires had staked their claim on the lofty third floor, with its expansive views and windows that could be flung open to the elements.

“Master Roydon!” Jack shrieked, hurling himself at the door and flinging it open before Tereza could stop him. How he detected Matthew was a mystery, given the growing darkness and Matthew’s head-to-toe adoption of slate-colored wool.

“Easy,” Matthew said, catching Jack before he hurt himself running into a pair of solid vampire legs. Gallowglass snatched at Jack’s cap as he went by, ruffling the boy’s hair.

“We almost froze. In the river. And the sled turned over once, but the dog was not hurt. I ate roasted boar. And Annie caught her skirt in the wagon wheel and almost tumbled out.” Jack couldn’t get the details of their journey out of his mouth fast enough. “I saw a blazing star. It was not very big, but Pierre told me I must share it with Master Harriot when we return home. I drew a picture of it for him.” Jack’s hand slid inside his grimy doublet and pulled out an equally grimy slip of paper. He presented this to Matthew with the reverence normally accorded to a holy relic.

“This is quite good,” Matthew said, studying the drawing with appropriate care. “I like how you’ve shown the curve of the tail. And you put the other stars around it. That was wise, Jack. Master Harriot will be pleased at your powers of observation.”

Jack flushed. “That was my last piece of paper. Do they sell paper in Prague?” Back in London, Matthew had taken to supplying Jack with a pocketful of paper scraps every morning. How Jack went through them was a matter of some speculation.

“The city is awash in the stuff,” Matthew said. “Pierre will take you to the shop in Malá Strana tomorrow.”

After that exciting promise, it was hard to get the children upstairs, but Tereza proved to possess the precise mix of gentleness and resolve to accomplish the task. That gave the four grown-ups a chance to talk freely.

“Has Jack been sick?” Matthew asked Pierre with a frown.

“No, milord. Since we left you, his sleep has been troubled.” Pierre hesitated. “I think the evils in his past haunt him.”

Matthew’s forehead smoothed out, but he still looked concerned. “And otherwise the journey was as you expected?” This was his cagey way of asking whether they had been set upon by bandits or plagued by supernatural or preternatural beings.

“It was long and cold,” Pierre said matter-of-factly, “and the children were always hungry.”

Gallowglass bellowed with laughter. “Well, that sounds about right.”

“And you, milord?” Pierre shot a veiled glance at Matthew. “Is Prague as you expected?”

“Rudolf hasn’t seen me. Rumor has it that Kelley is on the uppermost reaches of the Powder Tower blowing up alembics and God-knows-whatelse,” Matthew reported.

“And the Old Town?” Pierre asked delicately.

“It is much as it ever was.” Matthew’s tone was breezy and light—a dead giveaway that he was concerned about something.

“So long as you ignore the gossip coming from the Jewish quarter. One of their witches has made a creature from clay who prowls the streets at night.” Gallowglass turned innocent eyes on his uncle. “Saving that, it is practically unchanged from the last time we were here to help Emperor Ferdinand secure the city in 1547.”

“Thank you, Gallowglass,” Matthew said. His tone was as chilly as the wind off the river.

Surely it would require more than an ordinary spell to construct a creature from mud and set it in motion. Such a rumor could mean only one thing: Somewhere in Prague was a weaver like me, one who could move between the world of the living and the world of the dead. But I didn’t have to call Matthew on his secret. His nephew beat me to it.

“You didn’t think you could keep news of the clay creature from Auntie?” Gallowglass shook his head in amazement. “You don’t spend enough time at the market. The women of Malá Strana know everything, including what the emperor is having for breakfast and that he’s refused to see you.”

Matthew ran his fingers over the painted wooden surface of the triptych and sighed. “You’ll have to take this up to the palace, Pierre.”

“But that is the altarpiece from Sept-Tours,” Pierre protested. “The emperor is known for his caution. Surely it is only a matter of time before he admits you.”

“Time is the one commodity we lack—and the de Clermonts have altarpieces aplenty,” Matthew said ruefully. “Let me write a note to the emperor, and you can be on your way.”

Matthew dispatched Pierre and the painting shortly thereafter. His servant returned just as empty-handed as Matthew had, with no assurances of a future meeting.

All around me the threads that bound the worlds were tightening and shifting in a weaving whose pattern was too large for me to perceive or understand. But something was brewing in Prague. I could feel it.

That night I awoke to the sound of soft voices in the room adjoining our bedchamber. Matthew was not next to me, reading, as he had been when I’d dropped off to sleep. I padded to the door to see who was with him.

“Tell me what happens when I shade the side of the monster’s face.” Matthew’s hand moved swiftly over the large sheet of foolscap before him.

“It makes him seem farther away!” Jack whispered, awestruck by the transformation.

“You try it,” Matthew said, handing Jack his pen. Jack gripped the pen with great concentration, his tongue stuck slightly out. Matthew rubbed the boy’s back with his hand, relaxing the taut muscles wrapped around his rangy frame. Jack was not quite sitting on his knee but leaning into the vampire’s comforting bulk for support. “So many monsters,” Matthew murmured, meeting my eyes.

“Do you want to draw yours?” Jack inched the paper in Matthew’s direction. “Then you could sleep, too.”

“Your monsters have frightened mine away,” Matthew said, returning his attention to Jack, his face grave. My heart hurt for the boy and all he had endured in his brief, hard life.

Matthew met my eyes again and indicated with a slight shift of his head that he had everything under control. I blew him a kiss and returned to the warm, feathery nest of our bed.

The next day we received a note from the emperor. It was sealed with thick wax and ribbons.

“The painting worked, milord,” Pierre said apologetically.

“It figures. I loved that altarpiece. Now I’ll have a hell of a time getting my hands on it again,” Matthew said, sitting back in his chair. The wood creaked in protest. Matthew reached out for the letter. The penmanship was elaborate, with so many swirls and curlicues that the letters were practically unrecognizable.

“Why is the handwriting so ornate?” I wondered.

“The Hoefnagels have arrived from Vienna and have nothing to occupy their time. The fancier the handwriting, the better, as far as His Majesty is concerned,” Pierre replied cryptically.

“I’m to go to Rudolf this afternoon,” Matthew said with a satisfied smile, folding up the message. “My father will be pleased. He sent some money and jewels, too, but it would appear that the de Clermonts got off lightly this time.”

Pierre held out another, smaller letter, addressed in a plainer style. “The emperor added a postscript. In his own hand.”

I looked over Matthew’s shoulder as he read it.

“Bringen das Buch. Und die Hexe.” The emperor’s swirling signature, with its elaborate R, looping d and l, and double f’s, was at the bottom.

My German was rusty, but the message was clear: Bring the book. And the witch.

“I spoke too soon,” Matthew muttered.

“I told you to hook him with Titian’s great canvas of Venus that Grandfather took off King Philip’s hands when his wife objected to it,” Gallowglass observed. “Like his uncle, Rudolf has always been unduly fond of redheads. And saucy pictures.”

“And witches,” my husband said under his breath. He threw the letter on the table. “It wasn’t the painting that baited him, but Diana. Maybe I should refuse his invitation.”

“That was a command, Uncle.” Gallowglass’s brow lowered.

“And Rudolf has Ashmole 782,” I said. “It’s not going to simply appear in front of the Three Ravens on Sporrengasse. We’re going to have to find it.”

“Are you calling us ravens, Auntie?” Gallowglass said with mock offense.

“I’m talking about the sign on the house, you great oaf.” Like every other residence on the street, ours had a symbol over the door rather than a house number. After the neighborhood caught fire in the middle of the century, the emperor’s grandfather had insisted on having some way to tell houses apart besides the popular sgraffito decorations scratched into the plaster.

Gallowglass grinned. “I knew very well what you were talking about. But I do love seeing you go all shiny like that when your glaem’s raised.”

I pulled my disguising spell around me with a harrumph, dimming my shininess to more acceptable, human levels.

“Besides,” Gallowglass continued. “Among my people it’s a great compliment to be likened to a raven. I’ll be Muninn, and Matthew we’ll call Huginn. Your name will be Göndul, Auntie. You’ll make a fine Valkyrie.”

“What is he talking about?” I asked Matthew blankly.

“Odin’s ravens. And his daughters.”

“Oh. Thank you, Gallowglass,” I said awkwardly. It couldn’t be a bad thing to be likened to a god’s daughter.

“Even if this book of Rudolf’s is Ashmole 782, we’re not sure it contains answers to our questions.” Our experience with the Voynich manuscript still worried Matthew.

“Historians never know if a text will provide answers. If it doesn’t, though, we’ll still have better questions as a result,” I replied.

“Point taken.” Matthew’s lips quirked. “As I can’t get in to see the emperor or his library without you, and you won’t leave Prague without the book, there is nothing for it. We’ll both go to the palace.”

“You’ve been hoist by your own petard, Uncle,” Gallowglass said cheerfully. He gave me a broad wink.

When compared to our visit to Richmond, the trip up the street to see the emperor seemed almost like popping next door to borrow a cup of sugar from a neighbor—though it required a more formal costume. The papal ambassador’s mistress was much my size, and her wardrobe had provided me with a suitably luxurious and circumspect garment for the wife of an English dignitary—or a de Clermont, she quickly added. I loved the style of clothing worn by well-heeled women in Prague: simple gowns with high necks, bell-shaped skirts, embroidered coats with hanging sleeves trimmed in fur. The small ruffs they wore served as another welcome barrier between the elements and me.

Matthew had happily abandoned his dreams of red hose in favor of his usual gray and black, accented with a deep green that was the most attractive color I had ever seen him wear. This afternoon it provided flashes of color peeking through the slashes on his bulbous britches and the lining peeking around the open collar of his jacket.

“You look splendid,” I said after inspecting him.

“And you look like a proper Bohemian aristocrat,” he replied, kissing me on the cheek.

“Can we go now?” Jack said, dancing with impatience. Someone had found him a suit of black-and-silver livery and put a cross and crescent moon on the sleeve.

“So we are going as de Clermonts, not as Roydons,” I said slowly.

“No. We are Matthew and Diana Roydon,” Matthew replied. “We’re just traveling with the de Clermont family servants.”

“That should confuse everybody,” I commented as we left the house.

“Exactly,” Matthew said with a smile.

Had we been going as ordinary citizens, we would have climbed the new palace steps, which clung to the ramparts and provided a safe way for pedestrians. Instead we wended our way up Sporrengasse on horseback as befitted a representative of the queen of England, which gave me a chance to fully take in the houses with their canted foundations, colorful sgraffito, and painted signs. We passed the house of the Red Lion, the Golden Star, the Swan, and the Two Suns. At the top of the hill, we took a sharp right into a neighborhood filled with the mansions of aristocrats and court appointees, called Hradčany.

It was not my first glimpse of the castle, for I’d seen it looming over its surroundings when we came into Prague and could look up to its ramparts from our windows. But this was the closest I’d yet been to it. The castle was even larger and more sprawling at close range than it had appeared at a distance, like an entirely separate city full of trade and industry. Ahead were the Gothic pinnacles of St. Vitus Cathedral, with round towers punctuating the walls. Though built for defense, the towers now housed workshops for the hundreds of artisans who made their home at Rudolf’s court.

The palace guard admitted us through the west gate and into an enclosed courtyard. After Pierre and Jack took charge of the horses, our armed escorts headed for a range of buildings tucked against the castle walls. They had been built relatively recently, and the stone was crisp-edged and gleaming. These looked like office buildings, but beyond them I could see high roofs and medieval stonework.

“What’s happened now?” I whispered to Matthew. “Why aren’t we going to the palace?”

“Because there’s nobody there of any importance,” said Gallowglass. He held the Voynich manuscript in his arms, safely wrapped in leather and bound with straps to keep the pages from warping in the cold weather.

“Rudolf found the old Royal Palace drafty and dark,” Matthew explained, helping me over the slick cobbles. “His new palace faces south and overlooks a private garden. Here he’s farther away from the cathedral—and the priests.”

The halls of the residence were busy, with people rushing to and fro shouting in German, Czech, Spanish, and Latin depending on which part of Rudolf’s empire they came from. The closer we got to the emperor, the more frenetic the activity became. We passed a room filled with people arguing over architectural drawings. Another room housed a lively debate about the merits of an elaborate gold-and-stone bowl fashioned to look like a seashell. Finally the guards left us in a comfortable salon with heavy chairs, a tiled stove that pumped out a significant amount of heat, and two men in deep conversation. They turned toward us.

“Good day, old friend,” a kindly man of around sixty said in English. He beamed at Matthew.

“Tadeáš.” Matthew gripped his arm warmly. “You are looking well.”

“And you are looking young.” The man’s eyes twinkled. His glance caused no tell-tale reaction on my skin. “And here is the woman everyone is talking about. I am Tadeáš Hájek.” The human bowed, and I curtsied in response.

A slender gentleman with an olive complexion and hair nearly as dark as Matthew’s strolled over to us. “Master Strada,” Matthew said with a bow. He was not as pleased to see this man as he was the first.

“Is she truly a witch?” Strada surveyed me with interest. “If so, my sister Katharina would like to meet her. She is with child, and the pregnancy troubles her.”

“Surely Tadeáš—the royal physician—is better suited to seeing after the birth of the emperor’s child,” Matthew said, “or have matters with your sister changed?”

“The emperor still treasures my sister,” Strada said frostily. “For that reason alone, her whims should be indulged.”

“Have you seen Joris? He has been talking about nothing but the triptych since His Majesty opened it,” Tadeáš asked, changing the subject.

“Not yet, no.” Matthew’s eyes went to the door. “Is the emperor in?”

“Yes. He is looking at a new painting by Master Spranger. It is very large and . . . ah, detailed.”

“Another picture of Venus,” Strada said with a sniff.

“This Venus looks rather like your sister, sir.” Hájek smiled.

“Ist das Matthäus höre ich?” said a nasal voice from the far end of the room. Everyone turned and swept into deep bows. I curtsied automatically. It was going to be a challenge to follow the conversation. I had expected Rudolf to speak Latin, not German. “Und Sie das Buch und die Hexe gebracht, ich verstehe. Und die norwegische Wolf.”

Rudolf was a small man with a disproportionately long chin and a pronounced underbite. The full, fleshy lips of the Hapsburg family exaggerated the prominence of the lower half of his face, although this was somewhat balanced by his pale, protruding eyes and thick, flattened nose. Years of good living and fine drink had given him a portly profile, but his legs remained thin and spindly. He tottered toward us on high-heeled red shoes ornamented with gold stamps.

“I brought my wife, Your Majesty, as you commanded,” Matthew said, placing a slight emphasis on the word “wife.” Gallowglass translated Matthew’s English into flawless German, as if my husband didn’t know the language—which I knew he did, after traveling with him from Hamburg to Wittenberg to Prague by sled.

“Y su talento para los juegos también,” Rudolf said, switching effortlessly into Spanish as though that might convince Matthew to converse with him directly. He studied me slowly, lingering over the curves of my body with a thoroughness that made me long for a shower. “Es una lástima que se casó en absoluto, pero aún más lamentable que ella está casada con usted.”

“Very regrettable, Majesty,” Matthew said sharply, sticking resolutely to English. “But I assure you we are thoroughly wed. My father insisted upon it. So did the lady.” This remark only made Rudolf scrutinize me with greater interest.

Gallowglass took mercy on me and thumped the book onto the table. “Das Buch.”

That got their attention. Strada unwrapped it while Hájek and Rudolf speculated on just how wonderful this new addition to the imperial library might prove to be. When it was exposed to view, however, the air in the room thickened with disappointment.

“What joke is this?” Rudolf snapped in German.

“I am not sure I take Your Majesty’s meaning,” Matthew replied. He waited for Gallowglass to translate.

“I mean that I already know this book,” Rudolf sputtered.

“That doesn’t surprise me, Your Majesty, since you gave it to John Dee—by mistake, I am told.” Matthew bowed.

“The emperor does not make mistakes!” Strada said, pushing the book away in disgust.

“We all make mistakes, Signor Strada,” Hájek said gently. “I am sure, though, that there is some other explanation as to why this book has been returned to the emperor. Perhaps Dr. Dee uncovered its secrets.”

“It is nothing but childish pictures,” retorted Strada.

“Is that why this picture book found its way into Dr. Dee’s baggage? Did you hope he would be able to understand what you could not?” Matthew’s words were having an adverse effect on Strada, who turned purple. “Perhaps you borrowed Dee’s book, Signor Strada, the one with alchemical pictures from Roger Bacon’s library, in hope that it would help you decipher this one. That is a far more pleasant prospect than imagining you would have tricked poor Dr. Dee out of his treasure. Of course his Majesty could not have known of such an evil business.” Matthew’s smile was chilling.

“And is this book that you say I have the only treasure of mine you wish to take back to England?” Rudolf asked sharply. “Or does your avarice extend to my laboratories?”

“If you mean Edward Kelley, the queen needs some assurance that he is here of his own free will. Nothing more,” Matthew lied. He then took the conversation in a less trying direction. “Do you like your new altarpiece, Your Majesty?”

Matthew had provided the emperor just enough room to regroup—and save face. “The Bosch is exceptional. My uncle will be most aggrieved to learn that I have acquired it.” Rudolf looked around. “Alas, this room is not suitable for its display. I wanted to show it to the Spanish ambassador, but here you cannot get far enough from the painting to view it properly. It is a work that you must come upon slowly, allowing the details to emerge naturally. Come. See where I have put it.”

Matthew and Gallowglass arranged themselves so that Rudolf couldn’t get too close to me as we trooped through the door and into a room that looked like the storeroom for an overstuffed and understaffed museum. Shelves and cabinets held so many shells, books, and fossils that they threatened to topple over. Huge canvases—including the new painting of Venus, which was not simply detailed but openly erotic—were propped up against bronze statues. This must be Rudolf’s famed curiosity cabinet, his room of wonders and marvels.

“Your Majesty needs more space—or fewer specimens,” Matthew commented, grabbing a piece of porcelain to keep it from smashing to the floor.

“I will always find a place for new treasures.” The emperor’s gaze settled on me once more. “I am building four new rooms to hold them all. You can see them working.” He pointed out the window to two towers and the long building that was beginning to connect them to the emperor’s apartments and another new piece of construction opposite. “Until then Ottavio and Tadeáš are cataloging my collection and instructing the architects on what I require. I do not want to move everything into the new Kunstkammer only to outgrow it again.”

Rudolf led us through a warren of additional storerooms until we finally arrived at a long gallery with windows on both sides. It was full of light, and after the gloom and dust of the preceding chambers, entering it felt like taking in a lungful of clean air.

The sight in the center of the room brought me up short. Matthew’s altarpiece sat open on a long table covered with thick green felt. The emperor was right: You couldn’t fully appreciate the colors when you stood close to the work.

“It is beautiful, Dona Diana.” Rudolf took advantage of my surprise to grasp my hand. “Notice how what you perceive changes with each step. Only vulgar objects can be seen at once, for they have no mysteries to reveal.”

Strada looked at me with open animosity, Hájek with pity. Matthew was not looking at me at all, but at the emperor.

“Speaking of which, Majesty, might I see Dee’s book?” Matthew’s expression was guileless, but no one in the room was fooled for an instant. The wolf was on the prowl.

“Who knows where it is?” Rudolf had to drop my hand in order to wave vaguely at the rooms we had just left.

“Signor Strada must be neglecting his duties, if such a precious manuscript cannot be found when the emperor requires it,” Matthew said softly.

“Ottavio is very busy at present, with matters of importance!” Rudolf glared at Matthew. “And I do not trust Dr. Dee. Your queen should beware his false promises.”

“But you trust Kelley. Perhaps he knows its whereabouts?”

At this the emperor looked distinctly uneasy. “I do not want Edward disturbed. He is at a very delicate stage in the alchemical work.”

“Prague has many charms, and Diana has been commissioned to purchase some alchemical glassware for the Countess of Pembroke. We will occupy ourselves with that task until Sir Edward is able to receive visitors. Perhaps Signor Strada will be able to find your missing book by then.”

“This Countess of Pembroke is the sister of the queen’s hero, Sir Philip Sidney?” Rudolf asked, his interest caught. When Matthew opened his mouth to answer, Rudolf stopped him with a raised hand. “It is Dona Diana’s business. We will let her answer.”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” I responded in Spanish. My pronunciation was atrocious. I hoped that would diminish his interest.

“Charming,” Rudolf murmured. Damn. “Very well then, Dona Diana must visit my workshops. I enjoy fulfilling a lady’s wishes.”

It was not clear which lady he meant.

“As for Kelley and the book, we shall see. We shall see.” Rudolf turned back to the triptych. “‘I will see, be silent, and hear.’ Isn’t that the proverb?”

28

“Did you see the werewolf, Frau Roydon? He is the emperor’s gamekeeper, and my neighbor Frau Habermel has heard him howling at night. They say he feeds on the imperial deer running in the Stag Moat.” Frau Huber picked up a cabbage in her gloved hand and gave it a suspicious sniff. Herr Huber had been a merchant at London’s Steelyard, and though she bore no love for the city, she spoke English fluently.

“Pah. There is no werewolf,” Signorina Rossi said, turning her long neck and tutting over the price of the onions. “My Stefano tells me there are many daemons in the palace, however. The bishops at the cathedral wish to exorcise them, but the emperor refuses.” Like Frau Huber, Rossi had spent time in London. Then she had been mistress to an Italian artist who wanted to bring mannerism to the English. Now she was mistress to another Italian artist who wanted to introduce the art of glass cutting to Prague.

“I saw no werewolves or daemons,” I confessed. The women’s faces fell. “But I did see one of the emperor’s new paintings.” I dropped my voice. “It showed Venus. Rising from her bath.” I gave them both significant looks.

In the absence of otherworldly gossip, the perversions of royalty would suffice. Frau Huber drew herself straight.

“Emperor Rudolf needs a wife. A good Austrian woman, who will cook for him.” She condescended to buy a cabbage from the grateful vegetable seller, who had been putting up with her criticisms of his produce for nearly thirty minutes. “Tell us again about the unicorn’s horn. It is supposed to have miraculous curative powers.”

It was the fourth time in two days I’d been asked to account for the marvels among the emperor’s curiosities. News of our admittance to Rudolf’s private apartments preceded our return to the Three Ravens, and the ladies of Malá Strana were lying in wait the next morning, eager for my impressions.

Since then the appearance of imperial messengers at the house, as well as the liveried servants of dozens of Bohemian aristocrats and foreign dignitaries, had roused their curiosity further. Now that Matthew had been received at court, his star was sufficiently secure in the imperial heavens that his old friends were willing to acknowledge his arrival—and ask for his help. Pierre pulled out the ledgers, and soon the Prague branch of the de Clermont bank was open for business, though I saw precious little moneys received and a steady stream of funds flow out to settle overdue accounts with the merchants of Prague’s Old Town.

“You received a package from the emperor,” Matthew told me when I returned from the market. He pointed with his quill at a lumpy sack. “If you open it, Rudolf will expect you to express your thanks personally.”

“What could it be?” I felt the outlines of the object inside. It wasn’t a book.

“Something we’ll regret receiving, I warrant.” Matthew jammed the quill in the inkpot, causing a minor eruption of thick black liquid onto the surface of the desk. “Rudolf is a collector, Diana. And he’s not simply interested in narwhal horns and bezoar stones. He covets people as well as objects and is just as unlikely to part with them once they’re in his possession.”

“Like Kelley,” I said, loosening the parcel’s strings. “But I’m not for sale.”

“We are all for sale.” Matthew’s eyes widened. “Good Christ.”

A two-foot-tall, gold-and-silver statue of the goddess Diana sat between us, naked except for her quiver, riding sidesaddle on the back of a stag with her ankles demurely crossed. A pair of hunting dogs sat at her feet.

Gallowglass whistled. “Well, I’d say the emperor has made his desires known in this case.”

But I was too busy studying the statue to pay much attention. A small key was embedded in the base. I gave it a turn, and the stag took off across the floor. “Look, Matthew. Did you see that?”

“You’re in no danger of losing Uncle’s attention,” Gallowglass assured me.

It was true: Matthew was staring angrily at the statue.

“Whoa, young Jack.” Gallowglass caught Jack by the collar as the boy sped into the room. But Jack was a professional thief, and such delaying tactics were of little use when he smelled something of value. He slid to the floor in a boneless heap, leaving Gallowglass holding the jacket, and sprang after the deer.

“Is it a toy? Is it for me? Why is that lady not wearing any clothes? Isn’t she cold?” The questions poured out of Jack in an unbroken torrent. Tereza, who was as interested in spectacle as any of the other women in Malá Strana, came to see what the fuss was about. She gasped at the naked woman in her employer’s office and clapped her hand over Jack’s eyes.

Gallowglass peered at the statue’s breasts. “Aye, Jack. I’d say she’s cold.” This earned him a cuff on the head from Tereza, who still retained a firm grip on the squirming child.

“It’s an automaton, Jack,” Matthew said, picking the thing up. When he did, the stag’s head sprang open, revealing the hollow chamber within. “This one is meant to run down the emperor’s dinner table. When it stops, the person closest must drink from the stag’s neck. Why don’t you go show Annie what it does?” He snapped the head back in place and handed the priceless object to Gallowglass. Then he gave me a serious look. “We need to talk.”

Gallowglass propelled Jack and Tereza out of the room with promises of pretzels and skating.

“You’re in dangerous territory, my love.” Matthew ran his fingers through his hair, which never failed to make him look more handsome. “I’ve told the Congregation that your status as my wife is a convenient fiction to protect you from charges of witchcraft and to keep the Berwick witch-hunts confined to Scotland.”

“But our friends and your fellow vampires know it’s more than that,” I said. A vampire’s sense of smell didn’t lie, and Matthew’s unique scent covered me. “And the witches know there’s something more to our relationship than meets even their third eye.”

“Perhaps, but Rudolf is neither a vampire nor a witch. The emperor will have been assured by his own contacts within the Congregation that there is no relationship between us. Therefore there is nothing to preclude his chasing after you.” Matthew’s fingers found my cheek. “I don’t share, Diana. And if Rudolf were to go too far . . .”

“You’d keep your temper in check.” I covered his hand with mine. “You know that I’m not going to let the Holy Roman Emperor—or anybody else, for that matter—seduce me. We need Ashmole 782. Who cares if Rudolf stares at my breasts?”

“Staring I can handle.” Matthew kissed me. “There’s something else you should know before you go off to thank the emperor. The Congregation has fed Rudolf’s appetites for women and curiosities for some time as a way to win his cooperation. If the emperor wishes to have you and takes the matter to the other eight members, their judgment won’t be in our favor. The Congregation will turn you over to him because they cannot afford to have Prague fall into the hands of men like the archbishop of Trier and his Jesuit friends. And they don’t want Rudolf to become another King James, out for creatures’ blood. Prague may appear to be an oasis for the otherworldly. But like all oases, its refuge is a mirage.”

“I understand,” I said. Why did everything touching Matthew have to be so snarled? Our lives reminded me of the knotted cords in my spell box. No matter how many times I picked them apart, they soon tangled again.

Matthew released me. “When you go to the palace, take Gallowglass with you.”

“You’re not coming?” Given his concerns, I was shocked that Matthew was going to let me out of his sight.

“No. The more Rudolf sees us together, the more active his imagination and his acquisitiveness will become. And Gallowglass just may be able to wheedle his way in to Kelley’s laboratory. My nephew is far more charming than I am.” Matthew grinned, but the expression did nothing to alleviate the darkness in his eyes.

Gallowglass insisted he had a plan, one that would keep me from having to speak to Rudolf privately yet would display my gratitude publicly. It wasn’t until I heard the bells ringing the hour of three that I caught my first glimmer of what his plan might entail. The crush of people trying to enter St. Vitus Cathedral through the pointed arches of the side entrance confirmed it.

“There goes Sigismund,” Gallowglass said, bending close to my ear. The noise from the bells was deafening, and I could barely hear him. When I looked at him in confusion, he pointed up, to a golden grille on the adjacent steeple. “Sigismund. The big bell. That’s how you know you’re in Prague.”

St. Vitus Cathedral was textbook Gothic with its flying buttresses and needlelike pinnacles. On a dark winter afternoon, it was even more so. The candles inside were blazing, but in the vast expanse of the cathedral they provided nothing more than pinpricks of yellow in the gloom. Outside, the light had faded so much that the colorful stained glass and vivid frescoes were of minimal help in lifting the oppressively heavy atmosphere. Gallowglass carefully stationed us under a brace of torches.

“Give your disguising spell a good shake,” he suggested. “It’s so dark in here that Rudolf might miss you.”

“Are you telling me to get shiny?” I gave him my most repressive schoolmarm expression. His only reply was a grin.

We waited for Mass to begin with an interesting assortment of humble palace staff, royal officials, and aristocrats. Some of the artisans still bore the stains and singes associated with their work, and most of them looked exhausted. Once I’d surveyed the crowd, I looked up to take in the size and style of the cathedral.

“That’s a whole lot of vaulting,” I murmured. The ribbing was far more complicated than in most Gothic churches in England.

“That’s what happens when Matthew gets an idea in his head,” Gallowglass commented.

“Matthew?” I gaped.

“Hee was passing through Prague long ago, and Peter Parler, the new architect, was too green for such an important commission. The first outbreak of the plague had killed most of the master masons, however, so Parler was left in charge. Matthew took him under his wing, and the two of them went a bit mad. Can’t say I ever understood what he and young Peter were trying to accomplish, but it’s eye-catching. Wait until you see what they did to the Great Hall.”

I had my mouth open to ask another question when a hush fell over the assembled crowd. Rudolf had arrived. I craned my neck in an effort to see.

“There he is,” Gallowglass murmured, jerking his head up and to the right. Rudolf had entered St. Vitus on the second floor, from the enclosed walkway that I’d spotted spanning the courtyard between the palace and the cathedral. He was standing on a balcony decorated with colorful heraldic shields celebrating his many titles and honors. Like the ceiling, the balcony was held up by unusually ornate vaulting, though in this case it resembled the gnarled branches of a tree. Based on the breathtaking purity of the cathedral’s other architectural supports, I didn’t think this was Matthew’s work.

Rudolf took his seat overlooking the central nave while the crowd bowed and curtsied in the direction of the royal box. For his part, Rudolf looked uncomfortable at having been noticed. In his private chambers, he was at ease with his courtiers, but here he seemed shy and reserved. He turned to listen to a whispering attendant and caught sight of me. He inclined his head graciously and smiled. The crowd swung around to see whom the emperor had singled out for his benediction.

“Curtsy,” Gallowglass hissed. I dropped down again.

We managed to get through the actual Mass without incident. I was relieved to find that no one, not even the emperor, was expected to take the sacrament, and the whole ceremony was over quickly. At some point Rudolf quietly slipped away to his private apartments, no doubt to pore over his treasures.

With the emperor and priests gone, the nave turned into a cheerful gathering place as friends exchanged news and gossip. I spotted Ottavio Strada in the distance, deep in conversation with a florid gentleman in expensive woolen robes. Dr. Hájek was here, too, laughing and talking to a young couple who were obviously in love. I smiled at him, and he made a small bow in my direction. Strada I could do without, but I liked the emperor’s physician.

“Gallowglass? Shouldn’t you be hibernating, like the rest of the bears?” A slight man with deep-set eyes approached, his mouth twisted into a wry smile. He was wearing simple, expensive clothes, and the gold ring on his fingers spoke of his prosperity.

“We should all be hibernating in this weather. It is good to see you in such health, Joris.” Gallowglass clasped his hand and struck him on the back. The man’s eyes popped at the force of the blow.

“I would say the same about you, but since you are always healthy, I will spare us both the empty courtesy.” The man turned to me. “And here is La Diosa.”

“Diana,” I said, bobbing a greeting.

“That is not your name here. Rudolf calls you ‘La Diosa de la Caza.’ It is Spanish for the goddess of the chase. The emperor has commanded poor Master Spranger to abandon his latest sketches of Venus in her bath in favor of a new subject: Diana interrupted at her toilette. We all wait eagerly to see if Spranger is capable of making such an enormous change on such short notice.” The man bowed. “Joris Hoefnagel.”

“The calligrapher,” I said, thinking back to Pierre’s remark about the ornate penmanship on Matthew’s official summons to Rudolf ’s court. But that name was familiar. . . .

“The artist,” Gallowglass corrected gently.

“La Diosa.” A gaunt man swept his hat off with scarred hands. “I am Erasmus Habermel. Would you be so kind as to visit my workshop as soon as you are able? His Majesty would like you to have an astronomical compendium so as to better note the changes in the fickle moon, but it must be exactly to your liking.”

Habermel was a familiar name, too. . . .

“She is coming to me tomorrow.” A portly man in his thirties pushed his way through the growing crowd. His accent was distinctly Italian. “La Diosa is to sit for a portrait. His Majesty wishes to have her likeness engraved in stone as a symbol of her permanence in his affections.” Perspiration broke out on his upper lip.

“Signor Miseroni!” Another Italian said, clasping his hands melodramatically to his heaving chest. “I thought we understood each other. La Diosa must practice her dance if she is to take part in the entertainment next week as the emperor wishes.” He bowed in my direction. “I am Alfonso Pasetti, La Diosa, His Majesty’s dancing master.”

“But my wife does not like to dance,” said a cool voice behind me. A long arm snaked around and took my hand, which was fiddling with the edge of my bodice. “Do you, mon coeur?” This last endearment was accompanied by a kiss on the knuckles and a warning nip of teeth.

“Matthew is right on cue, as always,” Joris said with a hearty laugh. “How are you?”

“Disappointed not to find Diana at home,” Matthew said in a slightly aggrieved tone. “But even a devoted husband must yield to God in his wife’s affections.”

Hoefnagel watched Matthew closely, gauging every change of expression. I suddenly realized who this was: the great artist who was such an acute observer of nature that his illustrations of flora and fauna seemed as though they, like the creatures on Mary’s shoes, could come to life.

“Well, God is done with her for today. I think you are free to take your wife home,” Hoefnagel said mildly. “You promise to enliven what would otherwise be a very dull spring, La Diosa. For that we are all grateful.”

The men dispersed after getting assurances from Gallowglass that he would keep track of my varied, conflicting appointments. Hoefnagel was the last to leave.

“I will keep an eye out for your wife, Schaduw. Perhaps you should, too.”

“My attention is always on my wife, where it belongs. How else did I know to be here?”

“Of course. Forgive my meddling. The forest has ears, and the fields have eyes.” Hoefnagel bowed. “I will see you at court, La Diosa.”

“Her name is Diana,” Matthew said tightly. “Madame de Clermont will also serve.”

“And here I was led to understand it was Roydon. My mistake.” Hoefnagel took a few steps backward. “Good evening, Matthew.” His footsteps echoed on the stone floors and faded into silence.

“Schaduw?” I asked. “Does that mean what it sounds like?”

“It’s Dutch for ‘Shadow.’ Elizabeth isn’t the only person to call me by that name.” Matthew looked to Gallowglass. “What is this entertainment Signor Pasetti mentioned?”

“Oh, nothing out of the ordinary. It will no doubt be mythological in theme, with terrible music and even worse dancing. Having had too much to drink, the courtiers will all stumble into the wrong bedchambers at the end of the night. Nine months later there will be a flock of noble babes of uncertain parentage. The usual.”

“‘Sic transit gloria mundi,’” Matthew murmured. He bowed to me. “Shall we go home, La Diosa?” The nickname made me uncomfortable when strangers used it, but when it came out of Matthew’s mouth, it was almost unbearable. “Jack tells me that tonight’s stew is particularly appetizing.”

Matthew was distant all evening, watching me with heavy eyes as I heard about the children’s day and Pierre brought him up to date on various happenings in Prague. The names were unfamiliar and the narrative so confusing that I gave up trying to follow it and went to bed.

Jack’s cries woke me, and I rushed to him only to discover that Matthew had already reached the boy. He was wild, thrashing and crying out for help.

“My bones are flying apart!” he kept saying. “It hurts! It hurts!”

Matthew bundled him up tight against his chest so that he couldn’t move. “Shh. I’ve got you now.” He continued to hold Jack until only faint tremors radiated through the child’s slender limbs.

“All the monsters looked like ordinary men tonight, Master Roydon,” Jack told him, snuggling deeper into my husband’s arms. He sounded exhausted, and there were blue smudges under his eyes that made him look far older than his years.

“They often do, Jack,” Matthew said. “They often do.”

The next few weeks were a whirlwind of appointments—with the emperor’s jeweler, the emperor’s instrument maker, and the emperor’s dancing master. Each encounter took me deeper into the heart of the huddle of buildings that composed the imperial palace, to workshops and residences that were reserved for Rudolf’s prize artists and intellectuals.

Between engagements Gallowglass took me to parts of the palace that I had not yet seen. To the menagerie, where Rudolf kept his leopards and lions much as he kept his limners and musicians on the narrow streets east of the cathedral. To the Stag Moat, which had been altered so that Rudolf could enjoy better sport. To the sgraffito-covered games hall, where courtiers could take their exercise. To the new greenhouses built to protect the emperor’s precious fig trees from the harsh Bohemian winter.

But there was one place where not even Gallowglass could gain admission: the Powder Tower, where Edward Kelley worked over his alembics and crucibles in an attempt to make the philosopher’s stone. We stood outside it and tried to talk our way past the guards stationed at the entrance. Gallowglass even resorted to bellowing a hearty greeting. It brought the neighbors running to see if there was a fire but didn’t elicit a reaction from Dr. Dee’s erstwhile assistant.

“It’s as if he’s a prisoner,” I told Matthew after the supper dishes were cleared and Jack and Annie were safely tucked into their beds. They’d enjoyed another exhausting round of skating, sledding, and pretzels. We’d given up the pretense that they were our servants. I hoped the opportunity to behave like a normal eight-year-old boy would help to end Jack’s nightmares. But the palace was no place for them. I was terrified they might wander off and get lost forever, unable to speak the language or tell people to whom they belonged. “Kelley is a prisoner,” Matthew said, toying with the stem of his goblet.

It was heavy silver and glinted in the firelight.

“They say he goes home occasionally, usually in the middle of the night when there is no one around to see. At least he gets some relief from the emperor’s constant demands.”

“You haven’t met Mistress Kelley,” Matthew said drily.

I hadn’t, which struck me as odd the more I considered it. Perhaps I was taking the wrong route to meet the alchemist. I’d allowed myself to be swept into court life with the hope of knocking on Kelley’s laboratory door and walking straight in to demand Ashmole 782. But given my new familiarity with courtly life, such a direct approach was unlikely to succeed. The next morning I made it a point to go with Tereza to do the shopping.

It was absolutely frigid outside, and the wind was fierce, but we trudged to the market nonetheless.

“Do you know my countrywoman Mistress Kelley?” I asked Frau Huber as we waited for the baker to wrap our purchases. The housewives of Malá Strana collected the bizarre and unusual as avidly as Rudolf did. “Her husband is one of the emperor’s servants.”

“One of the emperor’s caged alchemists, you mean,” Frau Huber said with a snort. “There are always odd things happening in that household. And it was worse when the Dees were here. Herr Kelley was always looking at Frau Dee with lust.”

“And Mistress Kelley?” I prompted her.

“She does not go out much. Her cook does the shopping.” Frau Huber did not approve of this delegation of housewifely responsibility. It opened the door to all sorts of disorder, including (she contended) Anabaptism and a thriving black market in purloined kitchen staples. She had made her feelings on this point clear at our first meeting, and it was one of the chief reasons I went out in all weathers to buy cabbage.

“Are we discussing the alchemist’s wife?” Signorina Rossi said, tripping across the frozen stones and narrowly avoiding a wheelbarrow full of coal.

“She is English and therefore very strange. And her wine bills are much larger than they should be.”

“How do you two know so much?” I asked when I’d finished laughing. “We share the same laundress,” Frau Huber said, surprised. “None of us have any secrets from our laundresses,” Signorina Rossi agreed. “She did the washing for the Dees, too. Until Signora Dee fired her for charging so much to clean the napkins.”

“A difficult woman, Jane Dee, but you could not fault her thrift,” Frau Huber admitted with a sigh.

“Why do you need to see Mistress Kelley?” Signorina Rossi inquired, stowing a braided loaf of bread in her basket.

“I want to meet her husband. I am interested in alchemy and have some questions.”

“Will you pay?” Frau Huber asked, rubbing her fingers together in a universal and apparently timeless gesture.

“For what?” I said, confused.

“His answers, of course.”

“Yes,” I agreed, wondering what devious plan she was concocting.

“Leave it to me,” Frau Huber said. “I am hungry for schnitzel, and the Austrian who owns the tavern near your house, Frau Roydon, knows what schnitzel should be.”

The Austrian schnitzel wizard’s teenage daughter, it turned out, shared a tutor with Kelley’s ten-year-old stepdaughter, Elisabeth. And his cook was married to the laundress’s aunt, whose sister-in-law helped out around the Kelleys’ house.

It was thanks to this occult chain of relationships forged by women, and not Gallowglass’s court connections, that Matthew and I found ourselves in the Kelleys’ second-floor parlor at midnight, waiting for the great man to arrive.

“He should be here at any moment,” Joanna Kelley assured us. Her eyes were red-rimmed and bleary, though whether this resulted from too much wine or from the cold that seemed to afflict the entire household was not clear.

“Do not trouble yourself on our account, Mistress Kelley. We keep late hours,” Matthew said smoothly, giving her a dazzling smile. “And how do you like your new house?”

After much espionage and investigation among the Austrian and Italian communities, we discovered that the Kelleys had recently purchased a house around the corner from the Three Ravens in a complex known for its inventive street sign. Someone had taken a few leftover wooden figures from a nativity scene, sawed them in half, and arranged them on a board. They had, in the process, removed the infant Jesus from his crèche and replaced it with the head of Mary’s donkey.

“The Donkey and Cradle meets our needs at present, Master Roydon.”

Mistress Kelley issued forth an awe-inspiring sneeze and took a swig of wine. “We had thought the emperor would set aside a house for us in the palace itself, given Edward’s work, but this will do.” A regular thumping sounded on the winding stairs. “Here is Edward.”

A walking staff appeared first, then a stained hand, followed by an equally stained sleeve. The rest of Edward Kelley looked just as disreputable. His long beard was unkempt and stuck out from a dark skullcap that hid his ears. If he’d had a hat, it was gone now. And he was fond of his dinners, gauging by his Falstaffian proportions. Kelley limped into the room whistling, then froze at the sight of Matthew.

“Edward.” Matthew rewarded the man with another of those dazzling smiles, but Kelley didn’t seem nearly as pleased to receive it as his wife had.

“Imagine us meeting again so far from home.”

“How did you . . . ?” Edward said hoarsely. He looked around the room, and his eyes fell on me with a nudging glance that was as insidious as any I’d felt from a daemon. But there was more: disturbances in the threads that surrounded him, irregularities in the weaving that suggested he was not just daemonic—he was unstable. His lips curled. “The witch.”

“The emperor has elevated her rank, just as he did yours. She is La Diosa—the goddess—now,” Matthew said. “Do sit down and rest your leg. It troubles you in the cold, as I remember.”

“What business do you have with me, Roydon?” Edward Kelley gripped his staff tighter.

“He is here on behalf of the queen, Edward. I was in my bed,” Joanna said plaintively. “I get so little rest. And because of this dreadful ague, I have not yet met our neighbors. You did not tell me there were English people living so close. Why, I can see Mistress Roydon’s house from the tower window. You are at the castle. I am alone, longing to speak my native tongue, and yet—”

“Go back to bed, my dear,” Kelley said, dismissing Joanna. “Take your wine with you.”

Mrs. Kelley sniffled off obligingly, her expression miserable. To be an Englishwoman in Prague without friends or family was difficult, but to have your husband welcomed in places where you were forbidden to go must make it doubly so. When she was gone, Kelley clumped over to the table and sat down in his wife’s chair. With a grimace he lifted his leg into place. Then he pinned his dark, hostile eyes on Matthew.

“Tell me what I must do to get rid of you,” he said bluntly. Kelley might have Kit’s cunning, but he had none of his charm.

“The queen wants you,” Matthew said, equally blunt. “We want Dee’s book.”

“Which book?” Edward’s reply was quick—too quick.

“For a charlatan you are an abominable liar, Kelley. How do you manage to take them all in?” Matthew swung his long, booted legs onto the table. Kelley cringed when the heels struck the surface.

“If Dr. Dee is accusing me of theft,” Kelley blustered, “then I must insist on discussing this matter in the emperor’s presence. He would not want me treated thus, my honor impugned in my own house.”

“Where is it, Kelley? In your laboratory? In Rudolf’s bedchamber? I will find it with or without your help. But if you were to tell me your secret, I might be inclined to let the other matter rest.” Matthew picked at a speck on his britches. “The Congregation is not pleased with your recent behavior.”

Kelley’s staff clattered to the floor. Matthew obligingly picked it up. He touched the worn end to Kelley’s neck. “Is this where you touched the tapster at the inn, when you threatened his life? That was careless, Edward. All this pomp and privilege has gone to your head.” The staff dropped down to Kelley’s considerable belly and rested there.

“I cannot help you.” Kelley winced as Matthew increased the pressure on the stick. “It is the truth! The emperor took the book from me when . . .”

Kelley trailed off, rubbing his hand across his face as if to erase the vampire sitting across from him.

“When what?” I said, leaning forward. When I touched Ashmole 782 in the Bodleian, I’d immediately known it was different.

“You must know more about this book than I do,” Kelley spit at me, his eyes blazing. “You witches were not surprised to hear of its existence, though it took a daemon to recognize it!”

“I am losing my patience, Edward.” The wooden staff cracked in Matthew’s hands. “My wife asked you a question. Answer it.”

Kelley gave Matthew a slow, triumphant look and pushed at the end of the staff, dislodging it from his abdomen. “You hate witches—or so everyone believes. But I see now that you share Gerbert’s weakness for the creatures. You are in love with this one, just as I told Rudolf.”

“Gerbert.” Matthew’s tone was flat.

Kelley nodded. “He came when Dee was still in Prague, asking questions about the book and nosing about in my business. Rudolf let him enjoy one of the witches from the Old Town—a seventeen-year-old girl and very pretty, with rosy hair and blue eyes just like your wife. No one has seen her since. But there was a very fine fire that Walpurgis Night. Gerbert was given the honor of lighting it.” Kelley shifted his eyes to me. “I wonder if we will have a fire again this year?”

The mention of the ancient tradition of burning a witch to celebrate spring was the final straw for Matthew. He had Kelley half out the window by the time I realized what was happening.

“Look down, Edward. It is not a steep fall. You would survive it, I fear, though you might break a bone or two. I would collect you and take you up to your bedchamber. That has a window, too, no doubt. Eventually I will find a place that is high enough to snap your sorry carcass in two. By then every bone in your body will be in pieces and you will have told me what I want to know.”

Matthew turned black eyes on me when I rose.

“Sit. Down.” He took a deep breath. “Please.”

I did.

“Dee’s book shimmered with power. I could smell it the moment he pulled it off the shelf at Mortlake. He was oblivious to its significance, but I knew.” Kelley couldn’t talk fast enough now. When he paused to take a breath, Matthew shook him. “The witch Roger Bacon owned it and valued it for a great treasure. His name is on the title page, along with the inscription ‘Verum Secretum Secretorum.’”

“But it’s nothing like the Secretum,” I said, thinking of the popular medieval work. “That’s an encyclopedia. This has alchemical illustrations.”

“The illustrations are nothing but a screen against the truth,” Kelley said, wheezing. “That is why Bacon called it The True Secret of Secrets.”

“What does it say?” I asked, rising with excitement. This time Matthew didn’t warn me off. He also dragged Kelley back inside. “Were you able to read the words?”

“Perhaps,” Kelley said, straightening his robe.”

“He couldn’t read the book either.” Matthew released Kelley with disgust. “I can smell the duplicity through his fear.”

“It’s written in a foreign tongue. Not even Rabbi Loew could decipher it.”

“The Maharal has seen the book?” Matthew had that still, alert look that he got just before he pounced.

“Apparently you didn’t ask Rabbi Loew about it when you were in the Jewish Town to seek out the witch who made this clay creature they call the golem. Nor could you find the culprit and his creation.” Kelley looked contemptuous. “So much for your famous power and influence. You couldn’t even frighten the Jews.”

“I don’t think the letters are Hebrew,” I said, remembering the fastmoving symbols I’d glimpsed in the palimpsest.

“They aren’t. The emperor had Rabbi Loew come to the palace just to be sure.” Kelley had revealed more than he’d intended. His eyes shifted to his staff, and the threads around him warped and twisted. An image came to me of Kelley lifting his staff to strike someone. What was he up to? Then I realized: He was planning on striking me. An unintelligible sound broke free from my mouth, and when I held out my hand, Kelley’s staff flew straight into it. My arm transformed into a branch for a moment before returning to its normal outlines. I prayed that it had all happened too fast for Kelley to perceive the change. The look on his face told me my hopes were in vain.

“Don’t let the emperor see you do that,” Kelley smirked, “or he’ll have you locked away, yet another curiosity for him to savor. I’ve told you what you wanted to know, Roydon. Call off the Congregation’s dogs.”

“I don’t think I can,” Matthew said, taking the staff from me. “You are not harmless, no matter what Gerbert thinks. But I’ll leave you alone—for now. Don’t do anything more to warrant my attention and you just may see the summer.” He tossed the staff into the corner.

“Good night, Master Kelley.” I gathered up my cloak, wanting to be as far away from the daemon as fast as possible.

“Enjoy your moment in the sun, witch. They pass quickly in Prague.”

Kelley remained where he was while Matthew and I started to descend the stairs.

I could still feel his nudging glances in the street. And when I looked back toward the Donkey and Cradle, the crooked and broken threads that bound Kelley to the world shimmered with malevolence.

29

After days of careful negotiation, Matthew was able to arrange a visit to Rabbi Judah Loew. To make room for it, Gallowglass had to cancel my upcoming appointments at court, citing illness.

Unfortunately, this announcement caught the emperor’s attention, and the house was flooded with medicines: terra sigillata, the clay with marvelous healing properties; bezoar stones harvested from the gallbladders of goats to ward off poison; a cup made of unicorn horn with one of the emperor’s family recipes for an electuary. The latter involved roasting an egg with saffron before beating it into a powder with mustard seed, angelica, juniper berries, camphor, and several other mysterious substances, then turning it into a paste with treacle and lemon syrup. Rudolf sent Dr. Hájek along to administer it. But I had no intention of swallowing this unappetizing concoction, as I informed the imperial physician.

“I will assure the emperor that you will recover,” he said drily. “Happily, His Majesty is too concerned with his own health to risk traveling down Sporrengasse to confirm my prognosis.”

We thanked him profusely for his discretion and sent him home with one of the roasted chickens that had been delivered from the royal kitchens to tempt my appetite. I threw the note that accompanied it into the fire— “Ich verspreche Sie werden nicht hungern. Ich halte euch zufrieden. Rudolff”—after Matthew explained that the wording left some doubt as to whether Rudolf was referring to the chicken when he promised to satisfy my hunger.

On our way across the Moldau River to Prague’s Old Town, I had my first opportunity to experience the hustle and bustle of the city center. There, affluent merchants conducted business in arcades nestled beneath the three- and four-story houses that lined the twisting streets. When we turned north, the city’s character changed: The houses were smaller, the residents more shabbily dressed, the businesses less prosperous. Then we crossed over a wide street and passed through a gate into the Jewish Town. More than five thousand Jews lived in this small enclave smashed between the industrial riverbank, the Old Town’s main square, and a convent. The Jewish quarter was crowded—inconceivably so, even by London standards—with houses that were not so much constructed as grown, each structure evolving organically from the walls of another like the chambers in a snail’s shell.

We found Rabbi Loew via a serpentine route that made me long for a bag of bread crumbs to be sure we could find our way back. The residents slid cautious glances in our direction, but few dared to greet us. Those who did called Matthew “Gabriel.” It was one of his many names, and the use of it here signaled that I’d slipped down one of Matthew’s rabbit holes and was about to meet another of his past selves.

When I stood before the kindly gentleman known as the Maharal, I understood why Matthew spoke of him in hushed tones. Rabbi Loew radiated the same quiet sense of power that I’d seen in Philippe. His dignity made Rudolf’s grandiose gestures and Elizabeth’s petulance seem laughable in comparison. And it was all the more striking in this age, when brute force was the usual method of imposing one’s will on others. The Maharal’s reputation was based on scholarship and learning, not physical prowess.

“The Maharal is one of the finest men who has ever lived,” Matthew said simply when I asked him to tell me more about Judah Loew. Considering how long Matthew had roamed the earth, this was a considerable accolade.

“I did think, Gabriel, that we had concluded our business,” Rabbi Loew said sternly in Latin. He looked and sounded very much like a headmaster. “I would not share the name of the witch who made the golem before, and I will not do so now.” Rabbi Loew turned to me. “I am sorry, Frau Roydon. My impatience with your husband made me forget my manners. It is a pleasure to meet you.”

“I haven’t come about the golem,” Matthew replied. “My business today is private. It concerns a book.”

“What book is that?” Though the Maharal did not blink, a disturbance in the air around me suggested some subtle reaction on his part. Since meeting Kelley, I realized that my magic had been tingling as though plugged into an invisible current. My firedrake was stirring. And the threads surrounding me kept bursting into color, highlighting an object, a person, a path through the streets as if trying to tell me something.

“It is a volume my wife found at a university far away from here,” Matthew said. I was surprised that he was being this truthful. So was Rabbi Loew.

“Ah. I see we are to be honest with each other this afternoon. We should do so where it is quiet enough for me to enjoy the experience. Come into my study.”

He led us into one of the small rooms tucked into the warren of a ground floor. It was comfortingly familiar, with its scarred desk and piles of books. I recognized the smell of ink and something that reminded me of the rosin box in my childhood dance studio. An iron pot by the door held what looked like small brown apples, bobbing up and down in an equally brown liquid. Its appearance was witchworthy, conjuring up concerns about what else might be lurking in the cauldron’s unsavory depths.

“Is this batch of ink more satisfactory?” Matthew said, poking at one of the floating balls.

“It is. You have done me a service by telling me to add those nails to the pot. It does not require so much soot to make it black, and the consistency is better.” Rabbi Loew gestured toward a chair. “Please sit.” He waited until I was settled and then took the only other seat: a three-legged stool. “Gabriel will stand. He is not young, but his legs are strong.”

“I’m young enough to sit at your feet like one of your pupils, Maharal.” Matthew grinned and folded himself gracefully into a cross-legged position.

“My students have better sense than to take to the floor in this weather.” Rabbi Loew studied me. “Now. To business. Why has the wife of Gabriel ben Ariel come so far to look for a book?” I had a disconcerting sense that he wasn’t talking about my trip across the river, or even across Europe. How could he possibly know that I wasn’t from this time?

As soon as my mind formed the question, a man’s face swam in the air over Rabbi Loew’s shoulder. The face, though young, already showed worry creases around deep-set gray eyes, and the dark brown beard was graying in the center of his chin.

“Another witch told you about me,” I said softly.

Rabbi Loew nodded. “Prague is a wonderful city for news. Alas, half of what is said is untrue.” He waited for a moment. “The book?” Rabbi Loew reminded me.

“We think it might tell us about how creatures like Matthew and me came to be,” I explained.

“This is not a mystery. God made you, just as he made me and Emperor Rudolf,” the Maharal replied, settling more deeply into his chair. It was a typical posture for a teacher, one that developed naturally after years spent giving students the space to wrestle with new ideas. I felt a familiar sense of anticipation and dread as I prepared my response. I didn’t want to disappoint Rabbi Loew.

“Perhaps, but God has given some of us additional talents. You cannot make the dead live again, Rabbi Loew,” I said, responding to him as if he were a tutor at Oxford. “Nor do strange faces appear before you when you pose a simple question.”

“True. But you do not rule Bohemia, and your husband’s German is better than mine even though I have conversed in the language since a child. Each of us is uniquely gifted, Frau Roydon. In the world’s apparent chaos, there is still evidence of God’s plan.”

“You speak of God’s plan with such confidence because you know your origins from the Torah,” I replied. “Bereishit—‘In the beginning’—is what you call the book the Christians know as Genesis. Isn’t that right, Rabbi Loew?”

“It seems I have been discussing theology with the wrong member of Ariel’s family,” Rabbi Loew said drily, though his eyes twinkled with mischief.

“Who is Ariel?” I asked.

“My father is known as Ariel among Rabbi Loew’s people,” Matthew explained.

“The angel of wrath?” I frowned. That didn’t sound like the Philippe I knew.

“The lord with dominion over the earth. Some call him the Lion of Jerusalem. Recently my people have had reason to be grateful to the Lion, though the Jews have not—and will never—forget his many past wrongs. But Ariel makes an effort to atone. And judgment belongs to God.” Rabbi Loew considered his options and came to a decision. “The emperor did show me such a book. Alas, his Majesty did not give me much time to study it.”

“Anything you could tell us about it would be useful,” Matthew said, his excitement visible. He leaned forward and hugged his knees to his chest, just as Jack did when he was listening intently to one of Pierre’s stories. For a few moments, I was able to see my husband as he must have looked as a child learning the carpenter’s craft.

“Emperor Rudolf called me to his palace in hope that I would be able to read the text. The alchemist, the one they call Meshuggener Edward, had it from the library of his master, the Englishman John Dee.” Rabbi Loew sighed and shook his head. “It is difficult to understand why God chose to make Dee learned but foolish and Edward ignorant yet cunning.

“Meshuggener Edward told the emperor that this ancient book contained the secrets of immortality,” Loew continued. “To live forever is every powerful man’s dream. But the text was written in a language no one understood, except for the alchemist.”

“Rudolf called upon you, thinking it was an ancient form of Hebrew,” I said, nodding.

“It may well be ancient, but it is not Hebrew. There were pictures, too. I did not understand the meaning, but Edward said they were alchemical in nature. Perhaps the words explain those images.”

“When you saw it, Rabbi Loew, were the words moving?” I asked, thinking back to the lines I’d seen lurking under the alchemical illustrations.

“How could they be moving?” Loew frowned. “They were just symbols, written in ink on the page.”

“Then it isn’t broken—not yet,” I said, relieved. “Someone removed several pages from it before I saw it in Oxford. It was impossible to figure out the text’s meaning because the words were racing around looking for their lost brothers and sisters.”

“You make it sound as though this book is alive,” Rabbi Loew said.

“I think it is,” I confessed. Matthew looked surprised. “It sounds unbelievable, I know. But when I think back to that night, and what happened when I touched the book, that’s the only way to describe it. The book recognized me. It was . . . hurting somehow, as though it had lost something essential.”

“There are stories among my people of books written in living flame, with words that move and twist so that only those chosen by God can read them.” Rabbi Loew was testing me again. I recognized the signs of a teacher quizzing his students.

“I’ve heard those stories,” I replied slowly. “And the stories about other lost books, too—the tablets Moses destroyed, Adam’s book in which he recorded the true names of every part of creation.”

“If your book is as significant as they are, perhaps it is God’s will that it remain hidden.” Rabbi Loew sat back once more and waited.

“But it’s not hidden,” I said. “Rudolf knows where it is, even if he cannot read it. Who would you rather had the custody of such a powerful object: Matthew or the emperor?”

“I know many wise men who would say that to choose between Gabriel ben Ariel and His Majesty would only determine the lesser of two evils.” Rabbi Loew’s attention shifted to Matthew. “Happily, I do not count myself among them. Still, I cannot help you further. I have seen this book— but I do not know its present location.”

“The book is in Rudolf’s possession—or at least it was. Until you confirmed that, we only had Dr. Dee’s suspicions and the assurances of the aptly named Crazy Edward,” Matthew said grimly.

“Madmen can be dangerous,” observed Rabbi Loew. “You should be more careful who you hang out of windows, Gabriel.”

“You heard about that?” Matthew looked sheepish.

“The town is buzzing with reports that Meshuggener Edward was flying around Malá Strana with the devil. Naturally, I assumed you were involved.” This time Rabbi Loew’s tone held a note of gentle reproof. “Gabriel, Gabriel. What will your father say?”

“That I should have dropped him, no doubt. My father has little patience with creatures like Edward Kelley.”

“You mean madmen.”

“I meant what I said, Maharal,” Matthew said evenly.

“The man you talk so easily about killing is, alas, the only person who can help you find your wife’s book.” Rabbi Loew stopped, considered his words. “But do you truly want to know its secrets? Life and death are great responsibilities.”

“Given what I am, you will not be surprised that I am familiar with their particular burdens.” Matthew’s smile was humorless.

“Perhaps. But can your wife also carry them? You may not always be with her, Gabriel. Some who would share their knowledge with a witch will not do so with you.”

“So there is a maker of spells in the Jewish Town,” I said. “I wondered when I heard about the golem.”

“He has been waiting for you to seek him out. Alas, he will see only a fellow witch. My friend fears Gabriel’s Congregation, and with good reason,” Rabbi Loew explained.

“I would like to meet him, Rabbi Loew.” There were precious few weavers in the world. I couldn’t miss the opportunity to meet this one.

Matthew stirred, a protest rising to his lips.

“This is important, Matthew.” I rested my hand on his arm. “I promised Goody Alsop not to ignore this part of me while we are here.”

“One should find wholeness in marriage, Gabriel, but it should not be a prison for either party,” said Rabbi Loew.

“This isn’t about our marriage or the fact that you’re a witch.” Matthew rose, his large frame filling the room. “It can be dangerous for a Christian woman to be seen with a Jewish man.” When I opened my mouth to protest, Matthew shook his head. “Not for you. For him. You must do what Rabbi Loew tells you to do. I don’t want him or anyone else in the Jewish Town to come to harm—not on our account.”

“I won’t do anything to bring attention to myself—or to Rabbi Loew,” I promised.

“Then go and see this weaver. I’ll be in the Ungelt, waiting.” Matthew brushed his lips against my cheek and was gone before he could have second thoughts. Rabbi Loew blinked.

“Gabriel is remarkably quick for one so large,” the rabbi said, getting to his feet. “He reminds me of the emperor’s tiger.”

“Cats do recognize Matthew as one of their kind,” I said, thinking of Sarah’s cat, Tabitha.

“The notion that you have married an animal does not distress you. Gabriel is fortunate in his choice of wife.” Rabbi Loew picked up a dark robe and called to his servant that we were leaving.

We departed in what I supposed was a different direction, but I couldn’t be sure, since all my attention was focused on the freshly paved streets, the first I’d seen since arriving in the past. I asked Rabbi Loew who had provided such an unusual convenience.

“Herr Maisel paid for them, along with a bathhouse for the women. He helps the emperor with small financial matters—like his holy war against the Turks.” Rabbi Loew picked his way around a puddle. It was then that I saw the golden ring stitched onto the fabric over his heart.

“What is that?” I said, nodding at the badge.

“It warns unsuspecting Christians that I am a Jew.” Rabbi Loew’s expression was wry. “I have long believed that even the dullest would eventually discover it, with or without the badge. But the authorities insist that there can be no doubt.” Rabbi Loew’s voice dropped. “And it is far preferable to the hat the Jews were once required to wear. Bright yellow and shaped like a chess piece. Just try to ignore that in the market.”

“That’s what humans would do to me and Matthew if they knew we were living among them.” I shivered. “Sometimes it’s better to hide.”

“Is that what Gabriel’s Congregation does? It keeps you hidden?”

“If so, then they’re doing a poor job of it,” I said with a laugh. “Frau Huber thinks there’s a werewolf prowling around the Stag Moat. Your neighbors in Prague believe that Edward Kelley can fly. Humans are hunting for witches in Germany and Scotland. And Elizabeth of England and Rudolf of Austria know all about us. I suppose we should be thankful that some kings and queens tolerate us.”

“Toleration is not always enough. The Jews are tolerated in Prague—for the moment—but the situation can change in a heartbeat. Then we would find ourselves out in the countryside, starving in the snow.” Rabbi Loew turned in to a narrow alley and entered a house identical to most other houses in most of the other alleys we passed through. Inside, two men sat at a table covered with mathematical instruments, books, candles, and paper.

“Astronomy will provide a common ground with Christians!” one of the men exclaimed in German, pushing a piece of paper toward his companion. He was around fifty, with a thick gray beard and heavy brow bones that shielded his eyes. His shoulders had the chronic stoop of most scholars.

“Enough, David!” the other exploded. “Maybe common ground is not the promised land we hope for.”

“Abraham, this lady wishes to speak with you,” Rabbi Loew said, interrupting their debate.

“All the women in Prague are eager to meet Abraham.” David, the scholar, stood. “Whose daughter wants a love spell this time?”

“It is not her father that should interest you but her husband. This is Frau Roydon, the Englishman’s wife.”

“The one the emperor calls La Diosa?” David laughed and clasped Abraham’s shoulder. “Your luck has turned, my friend. You are caught between a king, a goddess, and a nachzehrer.” My limited German suggested this unfamiliar word meant “devourer of the dead.”

Abraham said something rude in Hebrew, if Rabbi Loew’s disapproving expression was any indication, and turned to face me at last. He and I looked at each other, witch to witch, but neither of us could bear it for long. I twisted away with a gasp, and he winced and pressed his eyelids with his fingers. My skin was tingling all over, not just where his eyes had fallen. And the air between us was a mass of different, bright hues.

“Is she the one you were waiting for, Abraham ben Elijah?” Rabbi Loew asked.

“She is,” Abraham said. He turned away from me and rested his fists on the table. “My dreams did not tell me that she was the wife of an alukah, however.”

“Alukah?” I looked to Rabbi Loew for an explanation. If the word was German, I couldn’t decipher it.

“A leech. It is what we Jews call creatures like your husband,” he replied. “For what it is worth, Abraham, Gabriel consented to the meeting.”

“You think I trust the word of the monster who judges my people from his seat on the Qahal while turning a blind eye to those who murder them?” Abraham cried.

I wanted to protest that this was not the same Gabriel—the same Matthew—but stopped. Something I said might get everyone in this room killed in another six months when the sixteenth-century Matthew was back in his rightful place.

“I am not here for my husband or the Congregation,” I said, stepping forward. “I am here for myself.”

“Why?” Abraham demanded.

“Because I, too, am a maker of spells. And there aren’t many of us left.”

“There were more, before the Qahal—the Congregation—set up their rules.” Abraham said, a challenge in his tone. “God willing, we will live to see children born with these gifts.”

“Speaking of children, where is your golem?”

David guffawed. “Mother Abraham. What would your family in Chelm say?”

“They would say I had befriended an ass with nothing in his head but stars and idle fancies, David Gans!” Abraham said, turning red.

My firedrake, which had been restive for days, roared to life with all this merriment. Before I could stop her, she was free. Rabbi Loew and his friends gaped at the sight.

“She does this sometimes. It’s nothing to worry about.” My tone went from apologetic to brisk as I reprimanded my unruly familiar. “Come down from there!”

My firedrake tightened her grip on the wall and shrieked at me. The old plaster was not up to the task of supporting a creature with a ten-foot wingspan. A large chunk fell free, and she chattered in alarm. Her tail lashed out to the side and anchored itself into the adjacent wall for added security. The firedrake hooted triumphantly.

“If you don’t stop that, I’m going to have Gallowglass give you a really evil name,” I muttered. “Does anyone see her leash? It looks like a gauzy chain.” I searched along the skirting boards and found it behind the kindling basket, still connected to me. “Can one of you hold the slack for a minute while I rein her in?” I turned, my hands full of translucent links.

The men were gone.

“Typical,” I muttered. “Three grown men and a woman, and guess who gets stuck with the dragon?”

Heavy feet clomped across the wooden floors. I angled my body so that I could see around the door. A reddish gray creature wearing dark clothes and a black cap on his bald head was staring at my firedrake.

“No, Yosef.” Abraham stood between me and the creature, his hands raised as if he were trying to reason with it. But the golem—for this must be the legendary creature fashioned from the mud of the Moldau and animated with a spell—kept moving his feet in the firedrake’s direction.

“Yosef is fascinated by the witch’s dragon,” said David.

“I believe the golem shares his maker’s fondness for pretty girls,” Rabbi Loew said. “My reading suggests that a witch’s familiar often has some of his maker’s characteristics.”

“The golem is Abraham’s familiar?” I was shocked.

“Yes. He didn’t appear when I made my first spell. I was beginning to think I didn’t have a familiar.” Abraham waved his hands at Yosef, but the golem stared unblinking at the firedrake sprawled against the wall. As if she knew she had an admirer, the firedrake stretched her wings so that the webbing caught the light.

I held up my chain. “Didn’t he come with something like this?”

“That chain doesn’t seem to be helping you much,” Abraham observed.

“I have a lot to learn!” I said indignantly. “The firedrake appeared when I wove my first spell. How did you make Yosef?”

Abraham pulled a rough set of cords from his pocket. “With ropes like these.”

“I have cords, too.” I reached into the purse hidden in my skirt pocket for my silks.

“Do the colors help you to separate out the world’s threads and use them more effectively?” Abraham stepped toward me, interested in this variation of weaving.

“Yes. Each color has a meaning, and to make a new spell I use the cords to focus on a particular question.” I looked at the golem in confusion. He was still staring at the firedrake. “But how did you go from cords to a creature?”

“A woman came to me to ask for a new spell to help her conceive. I started making knots in the rope while I considered her request and ended up with something that looked like the skeleton of a man.” Abraham went to the desk, took up a piece of David’s paper, and, in spite of his friend’s protests, sketched out what he meant.

“It’s like a poppet,” I said, looking at his drawing. Nine knots were connected by straight lines of rope: a knot for its head, one for its heart, two knots for hands, another knot for the pelvis, two more for knees, and a final two for the feet.

“I mixed clay with some of my own blood and put it on the rope like flesh. The next morning Yosef was sitting by the fireplace.”

“You brought the clay to life,” I said, looking at the enraptured golem.

Abraham nodded. “A spell with the secret name of God is in his mouth. So long as it remains there, Yosef walks and obeys my instructions. Most of the time.”

“Yosef is incapable of making his own decisions,” Rabbi Loew explained. “Breathing life into clay and blood does not give a creature a soul, after all. So Abraham cannot let the golem out of his sight for fear Yosef will make mischief.”

“I forgot to take the spell out of his mouth one Friday when it was time for prayers,” Abraham admitted sheepishly. “Without someone to tell him what to do, Yosef wandered out of the Jewish Town and frightened our Christian neighbors. Now the Jews think Yosef’s purpose is to protect us.”

“A mother’s work is never done,” I murmured with a smile. “Speaking of which . . .” My firedrake had fallen asleep and was gently snoring, her cheek pillowed against the plaster. Gently, so as not to irritate her, I drew on the chain until she released her grip on the wall. She flapped her wings sleepily, became as transparent as smoke, and slowly dissolved into nothingness as she was absorbed back into my body.

“I wish Yosef could do that,” Abraham said enviously.

“And I wish I could keep her quiet by removing a piece of paper from under her tongue!” I retorted.

Seconds later I felt the sense of ice on my back.

“Who is this?” said a low voice.

The new arrival was not large or physically intimidating—but he was a vampire, one with dark blue eyes set into a long, pale face under dusky hair. There was something commanding about the look he gave me, and I took an instinctive step away from him.

“It is nothing that concerns you, Herr Fuchs,” Abraham said curtly.

“There is no need for bad manners, Abraham.” Rabbi Loew’s attention turned to the vampire. “This is Frau Roydon, Herr Fuchs. She has come from Malá Strana to visit the Jewish Town.”

The vampire fixed his eyes on me, and his nostrils flared just as Matthew’s did when he was picking up a new scent. His eyelids drifted closed. I took another step away.

“Why are you here, Herr Fuchs? I told you I would meet you outside the synagogue,” Abraham said, clearly rattled.

“You were late.” Herr Fuchs’s blue eyes snapped open, and he smiled at me. “But now that I know why you were detained, I no longer mind.”

“Herr Fuchs is visiting from Poland, where he and Abraham knew each other,” Rabbi Loew said, finishing his introductions.

Someone on the street called out in greeting.”Here is Herr Maisel,” Abraham said. He sounded as relieved as I felt.

Herr Maisel, provider of paved streets and fulfiller of imperial defense budgets, broadcast his prosperity from his immaculately cut woolen suit, his fur-lined cape, and the golden circle that proclaimed him a Jew. This last was affixed to the cape with golden thread, which made it look like a nobleman’s insignia rather than a mark of difference.

“There you are, Herr Fuchs.” Herr Maisel handed a pouch to the vampire. “I have your jewel.” Maisel bowed to Rabbi Loew and to me. “Frau Roydon.”

The vampire took the pouch and removed a heavy chain and pendant. I couldn’t see the design clearly, though the red and green enamel were plain. The vampire bared his teeth.

“Thank you, Herr Maisel.” Fuchs held up the jewel, and the colors caught the light. “The chain signifies my oath to slay dragons, no matter where they are found. I have missed wearing it. The city is full of dangerous creatures these days.”

Herr Maisel snorted. “No more than usual. And leave the city’s politics alone, Herr Fuchs. It will be better for all of us if you do so. Are you ready to meet your husband, Frau Roydon? He is not the most patient of men.”

“Herr Maisel will see you safely to the Ungelt,” Rabbi Loew promised. He leveled a long look at Herr Fuchs. “See Diana to the street, Abraham. You will stay with me, Herr Fuchs, and tell me about Poland.”

“Thank you, Rabbi Loew.” I curtsied in farewell.

“It was a pleasure, Frau Roydon.” Rabbi Loew paused. “And if you have time, you might reflect on what I said earlier. None of us can hide forever.”

“No.” Given the horrors the Jews of Prague would see over the next centuries, I wished he were wrong. With a final nod to Herr Fuchs, I left the house with Herr Maisel and Abraham.

“A moment, Herr Maisel,” Abraham said when we were out of earshot of the house.

“Make it quick, Abraham,” Herr Maisel said, withdrawing a few feet.

“I understand you are looking for something in Prague, Frau Roydon. A book.”

“How do you know that?” I felt a whisper of alarm.

“Most of the witches in the city know it, but I can see how you are connected to it. The book is closely guarded, and force will not work to free it.” Abraham’s face was serious. “The book must come to you, or you will lose it forever.”

“It’s a book, Abraham. Unless it sprouts legs, we are going to have to go into Rudolf’s palace and fetch it.”

“I know what I see,” Abraham said stubbornly. “The book will come to you, if only you ask for it. Don’t forget.”

“I won’t,” I promised. Herr Maisel looked pointedly in our direction. “I have to go. Thank you for meeting me and introducing me to Yosef.”

“May God keep you safe, Diana Roydon,” Abraham said solemnly, his face grave.

Herr Maisel escorted me the short distance from the Jewish Town to the Old Town. Its spacious square was thronged with people. The twin towers of Our Lady of Tyn rose to our left, while the stolid outlines of the Town Hall crouched to our right.

“If we didn’t have to meet Herr Roydon, we would stop and see the clock strike the hours,” Herr Maisel said apologetically. “You must ask him to take you past it on your way to the bridge. Every visitor to Prague should see it.”

At the Ungelt, where the foreign merchants traded under the watchful eyes of the customs officer, the merchants looked at Maisel with open hostility.

“Here is your wife, Herr Roydon. I made sure she noticed all the best shops on her way to meet you. She will have no problem finding the finest craftsmen in Prague to see to her needs and those of your household.” Maisel beamed at Matthew.

“Thank you, Herr Maisel. I am grateful for your assistance and will be sure to let His Majesty know of your kindness.”

“It is my job, Herr Roydon, to see to the prosperity of His Majesty’s people. And it was a pleasure, too, of course,” he said. “I took the liberty of hiring horses for your journey back. They are waiting for you near the town clock.” Maisel touched the side of his nose and winked conspiratorially.

“You think of everything, Herr Maisel,” Matthew murmured.

“Someone has to, Herr Roydon,” responded Maisel.

Back at the Three Ravens, I was still taking my cloak off when an eightyear-old boy and a flying mop practically knocked me off my feet. The mop was attached to a lively pink tongue and a cold black nose.

“What is this?” Matthew bellowed, steadying me so that I could locate the mop’s handle.

“His name is Lobero. Gallowglass says he will grow into a great beast and that he might as well have a saddle fitted for him as a leash. Annie loves him, too. She says he will sleep with her, but I think we should share. What do you think?” Jack said, dancing with excitement.

“The wee mop came with a note,” Gallowglass said. He pushed himself away from the doorframe and strolled over to Matthew to deliver it.

“Need I ask who sent the creature?” Matthew said, snatching at the paper.

“Oh, I don’t think so,” Gallowglass said. His eyes narrowed. “Did something happen while you were out, Auntie? You look done in.”

“Just tired,” I said with a breezy wave of my hand. The mop had teeth as well as a tongue, and he bit down on my fingers as they passed by his asyet-undiscovered mouth. “Ouch!”

“This has to stop.” Matthew crushed the note in his fingers and flung it to the floor. The mop pounced on it with a delighted bark.

“What did the note say?” I was pretty sure I knew who had sent the puppy.

“‘Ich bin Lobero. Ich will euch aus den Schatten der Nacht zu schützen,’” Matthew said flatly.

I made an impatient sound. “Why does he keep writing to me in German? Rudolf knows I have a hard time understanding it.”

“His Majesty delights in knowing I will have to translate his professions of love.”

“Oh.” I paused. “What did this note say?” “‘I am Lobero. I will protect you from the shadow of night.’”

“And what does ‘Lobero’ mean?” Once, many moons ago, Ysabeau had taught me that names were important.

“It means ‘Wolf Hunter’ in Spanish, Auntie.” Gallowglass picked up the mop. “This bit of fluff is a Hungarian guard dog. Lobero will grow so big he’ll be able to take down a bear. They’re fiercely protective—and nocturnal.”

“A bear! When we bring him back to London, I will tie a ribbon around his neck and take him to the bearbaitings so that he can learn how to fight,” Jack said with the gruesome delight of a child. “Lobero is a brave name, don’t you think? Master Shakespeare will want to use it in his next play.” Jack wriggled his fingers in the puppy’s direction, and Gallowglass obligingly deposited the squirming mass of white fur in the boy’s arms. “Annie! I will feed Lobero next!” Jack pelted up the stairs, holding the dog in a death grip.

“Shall I take them away for a few hours?” Gallowglass asked after getting a good look at Matthew’s stormy face.

“Is Baldwin’s house empty?”

“There are no tenants in it, if that’s what you mean.”

“Take everybody.” Matthew lifted my cloak from my shoulders.

“Even Lobero?”

“Especially Lobero.”

Jack chattered like a magpie throughout supper, picking fights with Annie and managing to send a fair bit of food Lobero’s way through a variety of occult methods. Between the children and the dog, it was almost possible to ignore the fact that Matthew was reconsidering his plans for the evening. On the one hand, he was a pack animal and something in him enjoyed having so many lives to take care of. On the other hand, he was a predator and I had an uneasy feeling that I was tonight’s prey. The predator won. Not even Tereza and Karolína were allowed to stay.

“Why did you send them all away?” We were still by the fire in the house’s main, first-floor room, where the comforting smells of dinner still filled the air.

“What happened this afternoon?” he asked.

“Answer my question first.”

“Don’t push me. Not tonight,” Matthew warned.

“You think my day has been easy?” The air between us was crackling with blue and black threads. It looked ominous and felt worse.

“No.” Matthew slid his chair back. “But you’re keeping something from me, Diana. What happened with the witch?”

I stared at him.

“I’m waiting.”

“You can wait until hell freezes over, Matthew, because I’m not your servant. I asked you a question.” The threads went purple, beginning to twist and distort.

“I sent them away so that they wouldn’t witness this conversation. Now, what happened?” The smell of cloves was choking.

“I met the golem. And his maker, a Jewish weaver named Abraham. He has the power of animation, too.”

“I’ve told you I don’t like it when you play with life and death.” Matthew poured himself more wine.

“You play with them all the time, and I accept that as part of who you are. You’re going to have to accept it’s part of me, too.”

“And this Abraham. Who is he?” Matthew demanded.

“God, Matthew. You cannot be jealous because I met another weaver.”

“Jealous? I am long past that warmblooded emotion.” He took a mouthful of wine.

“Why was this afternoon different from every other day we spend apart while you’re out working for the Congregation and your father?”

“It’s different because I can smell every single person you’ve been in contact with today. It’s bad enough that you always carry the scent of Annie and Jack. Gallowglass and Pierre try not to touch you, but they can’t help it—they’re around you too much. Then we add the scents of the Maharal, and Herr Maisel, and at least two other men. The only scent I can bear to have mixed with yours is my own, but I cannot keep you in a cage, and so I endure it the best I can.” Matthew put down his cup and shot to his feet in an attempt to put some distance between us.

“That sounds like jealousy to me.”

“It’s not. I could manage jealousy,” he said, furious. “What I am feeling now—this terrible gnawing sense of loss and rage because I cannot get a clear impression of you in the chaos of our life—I cannot seem to control.” His pupils were large and getting larger.

“That’s because you are a vampire. You’re possessive. It’s who you are,” I said flatly, approaching him in spite of his anger. “And I am a witch. You promised to accept me as I am—light and dark, woman and witch, my own person as well as your wife.” What if he had changed his mind? What if he wasn’t willing to have this kind of unpredictability in his life?

“I do accept you.” Matthew reached out a gentle finger and touched my cheek.

“No, Matthew. You tolerate me, because you think that one day I’ll manage my magic into submission. Rabbi Loew warned me that tolerance can be withdrawn, and then you’re out in the cold. My magic isn’t something to manage. It’s me. And I’m not going to hide myself from you. That’s not what love is.”

“All right. No more hiding.”

“Good.” I sighed with relief, but it was short-lived.

Matthew had me out of the chair and up against the wall in one clean move, his thigh pressed between mine. He pulled a curl free so that it trailed down my neck and onto my breast. Without releasing me, he bent his head and pressed his lips to the edge of my bodice. I shivered. It had been some time since he’d kissed me there, and our sex life had been practically nonexistent since the miscarriage. Matthew’s lips brushed along my jaw and over the veins of my neck.

I grabbed his hair and pulled his head away. “Don’t. Not unless you plan on finishing what you start. I’ve had enough bundling and regretful kisses to last a lifetime.”

With a few blindingly fast vampire moves, Matthew had loosened the fastenings on his britches, rucked my skirts around my waist, and plunged inside me. It wasn’t the first time I’d been taken against the wall by someone trying to forget his troubles for a few precious moments. On several occasions I’d even been the aggressor.

“This is about you and me—nothing else. Not the children. Not the damn book. Not the emperor and his gifts. Tonight the only scents in this house will be ours.”

Matthew’s hands gripped my buttocks, and his fingers were all that was saving me from being bruised as his thrusts carried my body toward the wall. I wrapped my hands in the collar of his shirt and pulled his face toward mine, ravenous for the taste of him. But Matthew was no more willing to let me control the kiss than he was our lovemaking. His lips were hard and demanding, and when I persisted in my attempts to get the upper hand, he gave me a warning nip on the lower lip.

“Oh, God,” I said breathlessly as his steady rhythm set my nerves rushing toward a release. “Oh—”

“Tonight I won’t even share you with Him.” Matthew kissed the rest of my exclamation away. One hand retained its grip on my buttock, the other dipped between my legs.

“Who has your heart, Diana?” Matthew asked, a stroke of his thumb threatening to take me over the edge of sanity. He moved, moved again. Waited for my answer. “Say it,” he growled.

“You know the answer,” I said. “You have my heart.”

“Only me,” he said, moving once more so that the coiled tension finally found release.

“Only . . . forever . . . you,” I gasped, my legs shaking around his hips. I slid my feet to the floor.

Matthew was breathing heavily, his forehead pressed to mine. His eyes showed a flash of regret as he lowered my skirts. He kissed me gently, almost chastely.

Our lovemaking, no matter how intense, had not satisfied whatever was driving Matthew to keep pursuing me in spite of the fact that I was indisputably his. I was beginning to worry that nothing could.

My frustration burbled over, taking shape in a concussive wave of air that carried him away from me and into the opposite wall. Matthew’s eyes went black at his change of position.

“And how was that for you, my heart?” I asked softly. His face registered surprise. I snapped my fingers, releasing the air’s hold on him. His muscles flexed as he regained his mobility. He opened his mouth to speak. “Don’t you dare apologize,” I said fiercely. “If you’d touched me in a way I didn’t like, I would have said no.”

Matthew’s mouth tightened.

“I can’t help thinking about your friend Giordano Bruno: ‘Desire urges me on, as fear bridles me.’ I’m not afraid of your power, or your strength, or anything else about you,” I said. “What are you afraid of, Matthew?”

Regretful lips brushed over mine. That, and a whisper of breeze against my skirts, told me he had fled rather than answer.

30

“Master Habermel stopped by. Your compendium is on the table.” Matthew didn’t look up from the plans to Prague Castle that he’d somehow procured from the emperor’s architects. In the past few days, he’d given me wide berth and taken to channeling his energy into unearthing the secrets of the palace guard so that he could breach Rudolf’s security. In spite of Abraham’s advice, which I’d duly conveyed, Matthew preferred a proactive strategy. He wanted us out of Prague. Now. I approached his side, and he looked up with restless, hungry eyes.

“It’s just a gift.” I put down my gloves and kissed him deeply. “My heart is yours, remember?”

“It isn’t just a gift. It came with an invitation to go hunting tomorrow.” Matthew wrapped his hands around my hips. “Gallowglass informed me that we will be accepting it. He’s found a way into the emperor’s apartments by seducing some poor maid into showing him Rudolf’s eroticpicture collection. The palace guard will either be hunting with us or napping. Gallowglass figures it’s as good a chance as we’re going to get to look for the book.”

I glanced over at Matthew’s desk, where another small parcel lay. “Do you know what that is, too?”

He nodded. He reached over and picked it up. “You’re always receiving gifts from other men. This one is from me. Hold out your hand.” Intrigued, I did what he asked.

He pressed something round and smooth into my palm. It was the size of a small egg.

A stream of cool, heavy metal flowed around the mysterious egg as tiny salamanders filled my hand. They were made of silver and gold, with diamonds set into their backs. I lifted one of the creatures, and up came a chain made entirely of paired salamanders, their heads joined at the mouth and their tails entwined. Still nestled in my palm was a ruby. A very large, very red ruby.

“It’s beautiful!” I looked up at Matthew. “When did you have time to buy this?” It wasn’t the kind of chain that goldsmiths stocked for drop-in customers.

“I’ve had it for a while,” Matthew confessed. “My father sent it with the altarpiece. I wasn’t sure you’d like it.”

“Of course I like it. Salamanders are alchemical, you know,” I said, giving him another kiss. “Besides, what woman would object to two feet of silver, gold, and diamond salamanders and a ruby big enough to fill an eggcup?

“These particular salamanders were a gift from the king when I returned to France late in 1541. King Francis chose the salamander in flames for his emblem, and his motto was ‘I nourish and extinguish.’” Matthew laughed. “Kit enjoyed the conceit so much he adapted it for his own use: ‘What nourishes me destroys me.’”

“Kit is definitely a glass-half-empty daemon,” I said, joining in his laughter. I poked at one of the salamanders, and it caught the light from the candles. I started to speak, then stopped.

“What?” Matthew said.

“Have you given this to someone . . . before?” After the other night, my own sudden insecurity was embarrassing.

“No,” Matthew said, taking my hand and its treasure between his.

“I’m sorry. It’s ridiculous, I know, especially considering Rudolf’s behavior. I’d rather not wonder, that’s all. If you give me something you once gave to Eleanor, or someone else, just tell me.”

“I wouldn’t give you something I’d first given to someone else, mon coeur.” Matthew waited until I met his eyes. “Your firedrake reminded me of Francis’s gift, so I asked my father to fish it out of its hidey-hole. I wore it once. Since then it’s been sitting in a box.”

“It’s not exactly everyday wear,” I said, trying to laugh. But it didn’t quite work. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

Matthew pulled me down into a kiss. “My heart belongs to you no less than yours belongs to me. Never doubt it.”

“I won’t.”

“Good. Because Rudolf is doing everything he can to wear us both down. We need to keep our heads. And then we need to get the hell out of Prague.”

Matthew’s words came back to haunt me the next afternoon, when we joined Rudolf’s closest companions at court for an afternoon of sport. The plan had been to ride out to the emperor’s hunting lodge at White Mountain to shoot deer, but the heavy gray skies kept us closer to the palace. It was the second week of April, but spring came slowly to Prague, and snow was still possible.

Rudolf called Matthew over to his side, leaving me to the mercy of the women of the court. They were openly curious and entirely at a loss about what to do with me.

The emperor and his companions drank freely from the wine that the servants passed. Given the high speeds of the impending chase, I wished there were regulations about drinking and riding. Not that I had much to worry about in Matthew’s case. For one thing, he was being rather abstemious. And there was little chance of him dying, even if his horse did crash into a tree.

Two men arrived, a long pole resting on their shoulders to provide a perch for the splendid assortment of falcons that would be bringing down the birds this afternoon. Two more men followed bearing a single, hooded bird with a lethal curved beak and brown feathered legs that gave the effect of boots. It was huge.

“Ah!” Rudolf said, rubbing his hands together with delight. “Here is my eagle, Augusta. I wanted La Diosa to see her, even though we cannot fly her here. She requires more room to hunt than the Stag Moat provides.”

Augusta was a fitting name for such a proud creature. The eagle was nearly three feet tall and, though hooded, held her head at a haughty angle.

“She can sense that we are watching her,” I murmured.

Someone translated this for the emperor, and he smiled at me approvingly. “One huntress understands another. Take her hood off. Let Augusta and La Diosa get acquainted.”

A wizened old man with bowed legs and a cautious expression approached the eagle. He pulled on the leather strings that tightened the hood around Augusta’s head and gently drew it away from the bird. The golden feathers around her neck and head ruffled in the breeze, highlighting their texture. Augusta, sensing freedom and danger both, spread her wings in a gesture that could be read either as the promise of imminent flight or as a warning.

But I was not the one Augusta wanted to meet. With unerring instinct her head turned to the only predator in the company more dangerous than she was. Matthew stared back at her gravely, his eyes sad. Augusta cried out in acknowledgment of his sympathy.

“I did not bring Augusta out to amuse Herr Roydon but to meet La Diosa,” Rudolf grumbled.

“And I thank you for the introduction, Your Majesty,” I said, wanting to capture the moody monarch’s attention.

“Augusta has taken down two wolves, you know,” Rudolf said with a pointed look at Matthew. The emperor’s feathers were far more ruffled than those of his prize bird. “They were both bloody struggles.”

“Were I the wolf, I would simply lie down and let the lady have her way,” Matthew said lazily. He was every inch the courtier this afternoon in a green-and-gray ensemble, his black hair pushed under a rakish cap that provided little protection from the elements but did provide an opportunity to display a silver badge on its crown—the de Clermont family’s ouroboros—lest Rudolf forgot with whom he was dealing.

The other courtiers smirked and tittered at his daring remark. Rudolf, once he had made sure the laughter was not directed at him, joined in. “It is another thing we have in common, Herr Roydon,” he said, pounding on Matthew’s shoulder. He surveyed me. “Neither of us fears a strong woman.”

The tension broken, the falconer returned Augusta to her perch with some relief and asked the emperor which bird he wished to use this afternoon to take down the royal grouse. Rudolf fussed over his selection. Once the emperor chose a large gyrfalcon, the Austrian archdukes and German princes fought over the remaining birds until only a single animal was left. It was small and shivering in the cold. Matthew reached for it.

“That is a woman’s bird,” Rudolf said with a snort, settling into his saddle. “I had it sent for La Diosa.”

“In spite of her name, Diana doesn’t like hunting. But it’s no matter. I will fly the merlin,” Matthew said. He ran the jesses through his fingers, put out his hand, and the bird stepped onto his gloved wrist. “Hello, beauty,” he murmured while the bird adjusted her feet. With every small step, her bells jingled.

“Her name is Šárka,” the gamekeeper whispered with a smile.

“Is she as clever as her namesake?” Matthew asked him.

“More so,” the old man answered with a grin.

Matthew leaned toward the bird and took one of the strings that held her hood in his teeth. His mouth was so close to Šárka, and the gesture so intimate, that it could have been mistaken for a kiss. Matthew drew the string back. Once that was done, it was easy for him to remove the hood with his other hand and slip the decorated leather blindfold into a pocket.

Šárka blinked as the world came into view. She blinked again, studying me and then the man who held her.

“Can I touch her?” There was something irresistible about the soft layers of brown-and-white feathers.

“I wouldn’t. She’s hungry. I don’t think she gets her fair share of kills,” Matthew said. He looked sad again, even wistful. Šárka made low, chortling sounds and kept her eyes on Matthew.

“She likes you.” It was no wonder. They were both hunters by instinct, both fettered so that they couldn’t give in to the urge to track and kill.

We rode on a twisting path down into the river gorge that had once served as the palace moat. The river was gone and the gorge fenced in to keep the emperor’s game from roaming the city. Red deer, roe deer, and boar all prowled the grounds. So, too, did the lions and other big cats from the menagerie on those days when Rudolf decided to hunt deer with them rather than birds.

I expected utter chaos, but hunting was as precisely choreographed as any ballet. As soon as Rudolf released his gyrfalcon into the air, the birds resting in the trees rose up in a cloud, taking flight to avoid becoming a snack. The gyrfalcon swooped down and flew over the brush, the wind whistling through the bells on his feet. Startled grouse erupted from cover, running and flapping in all directions before taking to the air. The gyrfalcon banked, selected a target, harried it into position, and shot forward to hit it with talons and beak. The grouse fell from the sky, the falcon pursuing it relentlessly to the ground, where the grouse, startled and injured, was finally killed. The gamekeepers released the dogs and ran with them across the snowy ground. The horses thundered after, the men’s cries of triumph drowned out by the baying of the hounds.

When the horses and riders caught up, we found the falcon standing by its prey, its wings curved to shield the grouse from rival claimants. Matthew had adopted a similar stance at the Bodleian Library, and I felt his eyes fall on me to make sure that I was nearby.

Now that the emperor had the first kill, the others were free to join in the hunt. Together they caught more than a hundred birds, enough to feed a fair number of courtiers. There was only one altercation. Not surprisingly, it occurred between Rudolf’s magnificent silver gyrfalcon and Matthew’s small brown-and-white merlin.

Matthew had been hanging back from the rest of the male pack. He released his bird well after the others and was unhurried in claiming the grouse that she brought down. Though none of the other men got off their mounts, Matthew did, coaxing Šárka away from her prey with a murmured word and a bit of meat that he’d pulled off a previous kill.

Once, however, Šárka failed to connect with the grouse she was pursuing. It eluded her, flying straight into the path of Rudolf’s gyrfalcon. But Šárka refused to yield. Though the gyrfalcon was larger, Šárka was scrappier and more agile. To reach her grouse, the merlin flew past my head so closely that I felt the changing pressure in the air. She was such a little thing—smaller even than the grouse, and definitely outsized by the emperor’s bird. The grouse flew higher, but there was no escape. Šárka quickly reversed direction and sank her curved talons into her prey, her weight carrying them both down. The indignant gyrfalcon screamed in frustration, and Rudolf added his own loud protest.

“Your bird interfered with mine,” Rudolf said furiously as Matthew kicked his horse forward to fetch the merlin.

“She isn’t my bird, Your Majesty,” Matthew said. Šárka, who had puffed herself up and stretched out her wings to look as large and menacing as possible, let out a shrill peep as he approached. Matthew murmured something that sounded vaguely familiar and more than a little amorous, and the bird’s feathers smoothed. “Šárka belongs to you. And today she has proved to be a worthy namesake of a great Bohemian warrior.”

Matthew picked up the merlin, grouse and all, and held it up for the court to see. Šárka’s jesses swung freely, and her bells tinkled with sound as he circled her around. Unsure what their response should be, the courtiers waited for Rudolf to do something. I intervened instead.

“Was this a female warrior, husband?”

Matthew stopped in his rotation and grinned. “Why, yes, wife. The real Šárka was small and feisty, just like the emperor’s bird, and knew that a warrior’s greatest weapon lies between the ears.” He tapped his head to make sure everyone received the message. Rudolf not only received it, he looked nonplussed.

“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, so you’re going to have to be an astronomer.”

“Matthew can 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 things 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.

“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 and kill 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?

“I love you,” I whispered, dropping my hands so that they hung by my sides. He had to do this himself. I couldn’t play any role in bringing his mouth to my vein.

The wait was excruciating, but at last he lowered his head. My heart was beating fast, and I heard him draw in a deep, long breath.

“Honey. You always smell like honey,” he murmured in amazement, just before his sharp teeth broke the skin.

When he’d taken my blood before, Matthew had been careful to anesthetize the site with a touch of his own blood so that I felt no pain. Not so this time, but soon the skin went numb from the pressure of Matthew’s mouth on my flesh. His hands cradled me as he angled me back toward the surface of the bed. I hung in midair waiting for him to be satisfied that there was nothing between us but love.

About thirty seconds after he started, Matthew stopped. He looked up at me in surprise, as if he’d discovered something unexpected. His eyes went full black, and for one fleeting moment I though that the blood rage was surfacing.

“It’s all right, my love,” I whispered.

Matthew lowered his head, drinking in more of my blood and thoughts until he discovered what he needed. It took little more than a minute. He kissed the place over my heart with the same expression of gentle reverence he had worn on our wedding night at Sept-Tours and looked up at me shyly.

“And what did you find?” I asked.

“You. Only you,” Matthew murmured.

His shyness quickly turned to hunger as he kissed me, and before long we were twined together. Except for our brief encounter standing against the wall, we had not made love for weeks, and our rhythm was awkward at first as we remembered how to move together. My body coiled tighter and tighter. Another fast glide, a deep kiss, was all it would take to set me flying.

Matthew slowed instead. Our eyes met and locked. I had never seen him look the way he did at that moment—vulnerable, hopeful, beautiful, free. There were no secrets between us now, no emotions guarded in case disaster struck and we were swept along into the dark places where hope couldn’t survive.

“Can you feel me?” Matthew was now a point of stillness at my core. I nodded again. He smiled and moved with deliberate care. “I’m inside you, Diana, giving you life.”

I’d said the same words to him as he drank my blood and pulled himself from the edge of death back into the world. I didn’t think he’d been aware of them at the time.

He moved within me again, repeating the words like an incantation. It was the simplest, purest form of magic in the world. Matthew was already woven into my soul. He was now woven into my body, just as I was woven into his. My heart, which had broken and broken again in the past months with every sad touch and regretful look, began to knit together once more.

When the sun crept over the horizon, I reached up and touched him between the eyes.

“I wonder if I could read your thoughts, too.”

“You already have,” Matthew said, lowering my fingers and kissing their tips. “Back in Oxford, when you received the picture of your parents. You weren’t conscious of what you were doing. But you kept answering questions I wasn’t able to ask aloud.”

“Can I try again?” I asked, half expecting him to say no.

“Of course. If you were a vampire I would already have offered my blood.” He lay back on the pillow.

I hesitated for a moment, stilled my thoughts, and focused on a simple question. How can I know Matthew’s mind?

A single silver thread shimmered between my heart and the spot on his forehead where his third eye would be if he were a witch. The thread shortened, drawing me closer until my lips pressed against his skin.

An explosion of sights and sounds burst in my head like fireworks. I saw Jack and Annie, Philippe and Ysabeau. I saw Gallowglass and men I didn’t recognize who occupied important places in Matthew’s heart. I saw Eleanor and Lucas. There was a feeling of triumph as he conquered some scientific mystery, a shout of joy as he rode out in the forest to hunt and kill as he was made to do. I saw myself, smiling up at him.

Then I saw the face of Herr Fuchs, the vampire I’d met in the Jewish town, and heard quite distinctly the words My son, Benjamin.

I sat back on my heels abruptly, my fingers touching my trembling lips.

“What is it?” Matthew said, sitting up and frowning.

“Herr Fuchs!” I looked at him in horror, afraid he had thought the worst. “I didn’t realize he was your son, that he was Benjamin.” There hadn’t been a hint of blood rage about him.

“It”s not your fault. You’re not a vampire, and Benjamin only reveals what he chooses.” Matthew’s voice was soothing. “I must have sensed his presence around you—a trace of scent, some inkling that he was near. That’s what made me think you were keeping something from me. I was wrong. I’m sorry for doubting you, mon coeur.”

“But Benjamin must have known who I was. Your scent would have been all over me.”

“Of course he knew,” Matthew said dispassionately. “I will look for him tomorrow, but if Benjamin doesn’t want to be found, there will be nothing to do but warn Gallowglass and Philippe. They’ll let the rest of the family know that Benjamin has reappeared.”

“Warn them?”

“The only thing more frightening than Benjamin in the grip of blood rage is Benjamin when he is lucid, as he was when you were with Rabbi Loew. It is as Jack said,” Matthew replied. “The most terrifying monsters always look just like ordinary men.”

31

That night marked the true beginning of our marriage. Matthew was more centered than I had ever seen him. Gone were the sharp retorts, abrupt changes of direction, and impulsive decisions that had characterized our time together thus far. Instead Matthew was methodical, measured— but no less deadly. He fed more regularly, hunting in the city and the villages nearby. As his muscles gained in weight and strength, I came to see what Philippe had already observed: Unlikely though it might seem given his size, his son had been wasting away from lack of proper nourishment.

I was left with a silvery moon on my breast marking the place where he drank. It was unlike any other scar on my body, lacking the tough buildup of protective tissue that formed over most wounds. Matthew told me that this was due to a property in his saliva, which sealed the bite without letting it heal completely.

The vampire’s ritual taking of a mate’s blood from a vein near the heart and my new ritual of the witch’s kiss that gave me access to his thoughts provided us with a deeper intimacy. We didn’t make love every time he joined me in bed, but when we did, it was always preceded and followed by those two searing moments of absolute honesty that removed not only Matthew’s greatest worry but mine: that our secrets would somehow destroy us. And even when we didn’t make love, we talked in the open, easy way that lovers dream of doing.

The next morning, Matthew told Gallowglass and Pierre about Benjamin. Gallowglass’s fury was shorter-lived than Pierre’s fear, which rose to the surface whenever someone knocked on the door or approached me in the market. The vampires searched for him day and night, with Matthew planning the expeditions.

But Benjamin could not be found. He had simply vanished. Easter came and went, and our plans for Rudolf’s spring festival the following Saturday reached their final stages. Master Hoefnagel and I transformed the palace’s Great Hall into a blooming garden with pots of tulips. I was in awe of the place, with its graceful curved vaults supporting the arched roof like the branches of a willow tree.

“We’ll move the emperor’s orange trees here as well,” Hoefnagel said, his eyes gleaming with possibilities. “And the peacocks.”

On the day of the performance, servants dragged every spare candelabrum in the palace and cathedral into the echoing expanse of stone to provide the illusion of a starry night sky and spread fresh rushes on the floor. For the stage we used the base of the stairs leading up to the royal chapel. It was Master Hoefnagel’s idea, since then I could appear at the top of the staircase, like the moon, while Matthew charted my changing position with one of Master Habermel’s astrolabes.

“You don’t think we’re being too philosophical?” I wondered aloud, worrying at my lip with my fingers.

“This is the court of Rudolf II,” Hoefnagel said drily. “There is so such thing as too philosophical.”

On the night of the celebration, the court filed in for the banquet and gasped in amazement at the scene we’d set.

“They like it,” I whispered to Matthew from behind the curtain that concealed us from the crowd. Our grand entrance was scheduled for the dessert course, and we were holed up in the Knights’ Staircase off the hall until then. Matthew had been keeping me occupied with tales of olden times, when he had ridden his horse up the wide stone stairs for a joust. When I’d questioned the room’s suitability for this particular purpose, he quirked an eyebrow at me.

“Why do you think we made the room so big and the ceiling so high? Prague winters can be damn long, and bored young men with weapons are dangerous. Far better to have them run at each other at high speed than start wars with neighboring kingdoms.”

With the free pouring of wine and the liberal serving of food, the din in the room was soon deafening. When the desserts went by, Matthew and I slipped into our places. Master Hoefnagel had painted some lovely pastoral scenery for Matthew and grudgingly allotted him one of the orange trees to sit beneath on his felt-covered stool meant to look like a rock. I would wait for my cue and then come out of the chapel and stand behind an old wooden door turned on its side and painted to resemble a chariot.

“Don’t you dare make me laugh,” I warned Matthew when he kissed me on the cheek for luck.

“I do love a challenge,” he whispered back.

As strains of music filled through the room, the courtiers gradually hushed. When the room was fully quiet, Matthew lifted his astrolabe to the heavens and the masque began.

I had decided that our best approach to the production involved minimal dialogue and maximum dancing. For one thing, who wanted to sit around after a big dinner and listen to speeches? I’d been to enough academic events to know that wasn’t a good idea. Signor Pasetti was delighted to teach some of the court ladies a “dance of the wandering stars,” which would provide Matthew something heavenly to observe while he waited for his beloved moon to appear. With famous court beauties given a role in the entertainment and wearing fabulously spangled and jeweled costumes, the masque quickly took on the tone of a school play, complete with admiring parents. Matthew made agonized faces as though he weren’t sure he could endure the spectacle for one more moment.

When the dance ended, the musicians cued my entrance with a crash of drums and blare of trumpets. Master Hoefnagel had rigged up a curtain over the chapel doors, so that all I had to do was push my way through them with a goddess’s éclat (and without spearing my moon headdress on the fabric as I had done in rehearsal) and stare wistfully down at Matthew. He, goddess willing, would stare raptly at me without crossing his eyes or looking suggestively at my breasts.

I took a moment to get in character, drew in a deep breath, and pushed confidently through the curtains, trying to glide and float like the moon.

The court gasped in wonder.

Pleased that I had made such a convincing entrance, I looked down at Matthew. His eyes were round as saucers.

Oh, no. I felt with my toe for the floor, but as I suspected, I was already a few inches above it—and rising. I reached out a hand to anchor myself to the edge of my chariot and saw that a distinctively pearly gleam was emanating from my skin. Matthew jerked his head up in the direction of my little silver crescent moon. I’d worn my hair loose, the waves rippling down my back and the front caught up with a tiara-like band of wire that held the moon. Without a mirror I had no idea what it was doing, but I feared the worst.

“La Diosa!” Rudolf said, standing up and applauding. “Wonderful! A wonderful effect!”

Uncertainly, the court joined in. A few of them crossed themselves first. Holding the room’s complete attention, I clasped my hands to my bosom and batted my eyes at Matthew, who returned my admiring looks with a grim smile. I concentrated on lowering myself to the floor so that I could make my way to Rudolf’s throne. As Zeus, he occupied the most splendid carved piece of furniture we could find in the palace attics. It was unbelievably ugly, but it suited the occasion.

Happily, I was not glowing so much anymore as I approached the emperor, and the audience had stopped looking at my head as if it were a Roman candle. I sank into a curtsy.

“Greetings, La Diosa,” Rudolf boomed in what was meant to be a godlike tone but was only a classic example of overacting.

“I am in love with the beautiful Endymion,” I said, rising and gesturing back to the staircase, where Matthew had sunk into a downy nest of feather beds and was feigning sleep. I had written the lines myself. (Matthew suggested I say, “If you do not agree to leave me in peace, Endymion will tear your throat out.” I vetoed that, along with the Keats.) “He looks so peaceful. And though I am a goddess and will never age, fair Endymion will soon grow old and die. I beg of you, make him immortal so that he can stay with me always.”

“On one condition!” Rudolf shouted, abandoning all pretense of godlike sonorousness in favor of simple volume. “He must sleep for the rest of time, never waking. Only then will he remain young.”

“Thank you, mighty Zeus,” I said, trying not to sound too much like a member of a British comedy troupe. “Now I can gaze upon my beloved forevermore.”

Rudolf scowled. It was a good thing he hadn’t been granted script approval.

I withdrew to my chariot and walked slowly backward through the curtains while the court ladies performed their final dance. When it was over, Rudolf led the court in a round of loud stomping and clapping that almost brought the roof down. What it did not do was rouse Endymion.

“Get up!” I hissed as I went past to thank the emperor for providing us an opportunity to entertain his royal self. All I got in response was a theatrical snore.

And so I curtsied alone in front of Rudolf and made speeches in praise of Master Habermel’s astrolabe, Master Hoefnagel’s sets and special effects, and the quality of the music.

“I was greatly entertained, La Diosa—much more than I expected to be. You may ask Zeus for a reward,” Rudolf said, his eyes drifting over my shoulder and down to the swell of my breasts. “Whatever you wish. Name it and it shall be yours.”

The room’s idle chatter stopped. In the silence I heard Abraham’s words: The book will come to you, if only you ask for it. Could it really be that simple?

Endymion stirred in his downy bed. Not wanting him to interfere, I flapped my hands behind my back to encourage him to return to his dreams. The court held its breath, waiting for me to name a prestigious title, a piece of land, a fortune in gold.

“I would like to see Roger Bacon’s alchemical book, Your Majesty.” “You have balls of iron, Auntie,” Gallowglass said in a tone of hushed admiration on the way home. “Not to mention a way with words.”

“Why, thank you,” I said, pleased. “By the way, what was my head doing during the masque? People were staring at it.”

“Wee stars rose out of the moon and then faded away. I wouldn’t worry. It looked so real that everybody will assume it was an illusion. Most of Rudolf’s aristocrats are human, after all.”

Matthew’s response was more guarded. “Don’t be too pleased yet, mon coeur. Rudolf may have had no other choice than to agree, given the situation, but he hasn’t produced the manuscript. This is a very complicated dance you’re doing. And you can be sure the emperor will want something from you in return for a glimpse of his book.”

“Then we will have to be long gone before he can insist upon it,” I said.

But it turned out that Matthew was right to be cautious. I had imagined that he and I would be invited to view the treasure the next day, in private. Yet no such invitation arrived. Days passed before we received a formal summons to dine at the palace with some up-and-coming Catholic theologians. Afterward, the note promised, a select group would be invited back to Rudolf’s rooms to see items of particular mystical and religious import from the emperor’s collections. Among the visitors was one Johannes Pistorius, who had grown up Lutheran, converted to Calvinism, and was about to become a Catholic priest.

“We’re being set up,” Matthew said, fingers running back and forth through his hair. “Pistorius is a dangerous man, a ruthless adversary, and a witch. He will be back here in ten years to serve as Rudolf’s confessor.”

“Is it true he’s being groomed for the Congregation?” Gallowglass asked quietly.

“Yes. He’s just the kind of intellectual thug that the witches want representing them. No offense meant, Diana. It is a difficult time for witches,” he conceded.

“None taken,” I said mildly. “But he’s not a member of the Congregation yet. You are. What are the chances he’ll want to cause trouble with you watching him, if he has those aspirations?”

“Excellent—or Rudolf wouldn’t have asked him to dine with us. The emperor is drawing his battle lines and rallying his troops.”

“What, exactly, is he planning to fight over?”

“The manuscript—and you. He won’t give up either.”

“I told you before that I wasn’t for sale. I’m not war booty either.”

“No, but you’re unclaimed territory so far as Rudolf’s concerned. Rudolf is an Austrian archduke, king of Hungary, Croatia, and Bohemia, margrave of Moravia, and Holy Roman Emperor. He is also Philip of Spain’s nephew. The Hapsburgs are an acquisitive and competitive family and will stop at nothing to get what they want.”

“Matthew’s not coddling you, Auntie,” Gallowglass said somberly when I started to protest. “If you were my wife, you’d have been out of Prague the day the first gift arrived.”

Because of the delicacy of the situation, Pierre and Gallowglass accompanied us to the palace. Three vampires and a witch caused the expected ripples of interest as we went toward the Great Hall, which, once upon a time, Matthew had helped to design.

Rudolf seated me near him, and Gallowglass took up a position behind my chair like a well-mannered servant. Matthew was placed at the opposite end of the banqueting table with an attentive Pierre. To a casual observer, Matthew was having a grand time among a raucous group of ladies and young men who were eager to find a role model with more dash than the emperor. Gales of laughter occasionally drifted in our direction from Matthew’s rival court, which did nothing to brighten His Majesty’s dour mood.

“But why does there have to be so much bloodshed, Father Johannes?” Rudolf complained to the fleshy, middle-aged physician sitting to his left. Pistorius’s ordination was still several months away, but, with the zeal typical of the convert, he made no objection to his premature elevation to the priesthood.

“Because heresy and unorthodoxies must be rooted out completely, Your Majesty. Otherwise they find fresh soil in which to grow.” Pistorius’s heavy-lidded eyes fell on me, his glance probing. My witch’s third eye opened, indignant at his rude attempts to capture my attention, which was strikingly similar to Champier’s method for ferreting out my secrets. I was beginning to dislike university-educated wizards. I put down my knife and returned his stare. He was the first to break it.

“My father believed that tolerance was a wiser policy,” Rudolf replied. “And you have studied the Jewish wisdom of the kabbalah. There are men of God who would call that heresy.”

Matthew’s keen hearing allowed him to zero in on my conversation as intensely as Šárka had pursued her grouse. He frowned.

“My husband tells me you are a physician, Herr Pistorius.” It was not a smooth conversational segue, but it did the job.

“I am, Frau Roydon. Or I was, before I turned my attention from the preservation of bodies to the salvation of souls.”

“Father Johannes’s reputation is based on his cures for the plague,” Rudolf said.

“I was merely a vehicle for God’s will. He is the only true healer,” Pistorius said modestly. “Out of love for us, He created many natural remedies that can effect miraculous results in our imperfect bodies.”

“Ah, yes. I remember your advocacy of bezoars as panaceas against illness. I sent La Diosa one of my stones when she was lately ill.” Rudolf smiled at him approvingly.

Pistorius studied me. “Your cure evidently worked, Your Majesty.”

“Yes. La Diosa is fully recovered. She looks very well,” Rudolf said, his lower lip jutting out even further as he examined me. I wore a simple black gown embroidered in white covered with a black velvet robe. A gauzy ruff winged away from my face, and the red ruby of Matthew’s salamander necklace was arranged to hang in the notch of my throat, providing the only splash of color in my otherwise somber outfit. Rudolf’s attention fixed on the beautiful piece of jewelry. He frowned and motioned to a servant.

“It’s hard to say whether the bezoar stone or Emperor Maximilian’s electuary was the more beneficial,” I said, looking to Dr. Hájek for assistance while Rudolf held his whispered conversation. He was tucking into the third game course, and after a startled cough to free the bit of venison he had just swallowed, Hájek rose to the occasion.

“I believe it was the electuary, Dr. Pistorius,” Hájek admitted. “I prepared it in a cup made from the unicorn’s horn. Emperor Rudolf believed this would increase its efficacy.”

“La Diosa took the electuary from a horn spoon, too,” Rudolf said, his eyes lingering on my lips now, “for additional surety.”

“Will this cup and spoon be among the specimens we see tonight in your cabinet of wonders, Your Majesty?” Pistorius asked. The air between me and the other witch came to sudden, crackling life. Threads surrounding the physician-priest exploded in violent red and orange hues, warning me of the danger. Then he smiled. I do not trust you, witch, he whispered into my mind. Nor does your would-be lover, Emperor Rudolf.

The wild boar that I was chewing—a delicious dish flavored with rosemary and black pepper that, according to the emperor, was supposed to heat the blood—turned to dust in my mouth. Instead of its achieving its desired effect, my blood ran cold.

“Is something wrong?” Gallowglass murmured, bending low over my shoulder. He handed me a shawl, which I hadn’t asked for and didn’t know he was carrying.

“Pistorius has been invited upstairs to see the book,” I said, turning my head toward him and speaking in rapid English to reduce the risk of being understood. Gallowglass smelled of sea salt and mint, a bracing and reassuring combination. My nerves steadied.

“Leave it to me,” he replied, giving my shoulder a squeeze. “By the way, you’re a bit shiny, Auntie. It would be best if no one saw stars tonight.”

Having delivered his warning shot across the bow, Pistorius turned the conversation to other topics and engaged Dr. Hájek in a lively debate about the medical benefits of theriac. Rudolf divided his time between sneaking melancholic looks at me and glaring at Matthew. The closer we got to seeing Ashmole 782, the less appetite I had, so I made small talk with the noblewoman next to me. It was only after five more courses—including a parade of gilded peacocks and a tableau of roast pork and suckling pigs— that the banquet finally concluded.

“You look pale,” Matthew said, whisking me away from the table.

“Pistorius suspects me.” The man reminded me of Peter Knox and Champier, and for similar reasons. “Intellectual thug” was the perfect description for both of them. “Gallowglass said he would take care of it.”

“No wonder Pierre followed on his heels, then.”

“What is Pierre going to do?”

“Make sure Pistorius gets out of here alive,” Matthew said cheerfully. “Left to his own devices, Gallowglass would strangle the man and throw him into the Stag’s Moat for the lions’ midnight snack. My nephew is almost as protective of you as I am.”

Rudolf’s invited guests accompanied him to his inner sanctum: the private gallery where Matthew and I viewed the Bosch altarpiece. Ottavio Strada met us there to guide us through the collection and answer our questions.

When we entered the room, Matthew’s altarpiece still sat in the center of the green-covered table. Rudolf had scattered other objects around it for our viewing pleasure. While the guests oohed and aahed over Bosch’s work, I scanned the room. There were some stunning cups made out of semiprecious stones, an enameled chain of office, a long horn reputedly from a unicorn, some statuary, and a carved Seychelles nut—a nice mix of the expensive, the medicinal, and the exotic. But no alchemical manuscript.

“Where is it?” I hissed to Matthew. Before he could respond, I felt the touch of a warm hand on my arm. Matthew stiffened.

“I have a gift for you, querida diosa.” Rudolf’s breath smelled of onions and red wine, and my stomach flopped over in protest. I turned, expecting to see Ashmole 782. Instead the emperor was holding up the enameled chain. Before I could protest, he draped it over my head and settled it on my shoulders. I looked down and saw a green ouroboros hanging from a circle of red crosses, thickly encrusted with emeralds, rubies, diamonds, and pearls. The color scheme reminded me of the jewel Herr Maisel gave to Benjamin.

“That is a strange gift to give my wife, Your Majesty,” Matthew said softly. He was standing right behind the emperor and looking at the necklace with distaste. This was my third such chain, and I knew there must be a meaning behind the symbolism. I lifted the ouroboros so that I could study the enameling. It wasn’t an ouroboros, exactly, because it had feet. It looked more like a lizard or a salamander than a snake. A bloody red cross emerged from the lizard’s flayed back. Most important, the tail was not held in the creature’s mouth but wrapped around the lizard’s throat, strangling it.

“It is a mark of respect, Herr Roydon.” Rudolf placed a subtle emphasis on the name. “This once belonged to King Vladislaus and was passed on to my grandmother. The insignia belongs to a brave company of Hungarian knights known as the Order of the Defeated Dragon.”

“Dragon?” I said faintly, looking at Matthew. With its stumpy legs, this might well be a dragon. But it was otherwise strikingly similar to the de Clermont family’s ouroboros—except this ouroboros was dying a slow, painful death. I remembered Herr Fuchs’s oath—Benjamin’s oath—to slay dragons wherever he found them.

“The dragon symbolizes our enemies, especially those who might wish to interfere with our royal prerogatives.” Rudolf said it in a civilized tone, but it was a virtual declaration of war on the whole de Clermont clan. “It would please me if you would wear it next time you come to court.” Rudolf ’s finger touched the dragon at my breast lightly and lingered there. “Then you can leave your little French salamanders at home.”

Matthew’s eyes, which were glued to the dragon and the imperial finger, went black when Rudolf made his insulting remark about French salamanders. I tried to think like Mary Sidney and come up with a response that was appropriate for the period and likely to calm the vampire. I’d deal with my outraged sense of feminism later.

“Whether or not I wear your gift will be up to my husband, Your Majesty,” I said coolly, forcing myself not to step away from Rudolf’s finger. I heard gasps, a few hushed whispers. But the only reaction I cared about was Matthew’s.

“I see no reason you should not wear it for the rest of the evening, mon coeur,” Matthew said agreeably. He was no longer concerned that the queen of England’s ambassador sounded like a French aristocrat. “Salamanders and dragons are kin, after all. Both will endure the flames to protect those they love. And the emperor is being kind enough to show you his book.” Matthew looked around. “Though it seems Signor Strada’s incompetency continues, for the book is not here.” Another bridge burned behind us.

“Not yet, not yet,” Rudolf said testily. “I have something else to present to La Diosa first. Go see my carved nut from the Maldives. It is the only one of its kind.” Everybody but Matthew trooped off obediently in the direction of Strada’s pointing finger. “You, too, Herr Roydon.”

“Of course,” Matthew murmured, imitating his mother’s tone perfectly. He slowly trailed after the crowd.

“Here is something I requested especially. Father Johannes helped to procure the treasure.” Rudolf looked around the room but failed to locate Pistorius. He frowned. “Where has he gone, Signor Strada?”

“I have not seen him since we left the Great Hall, Your Majesty,” Strada replied.

“You!” Rudolf pointed to a servant. “Go and find him!” The man left immediately, and at a run. The emperor gathered his composure and returned his attention to the strange object in front of us. It looked like a crude carving of a naked man. “This, La Diosa, is a fabled root from Eppendorf. A century ago a woman stole a consecrated host from the church and planted it by the light of the full moon to increase her garden’s fertility. The next morning they discovered an enormous cabbage.”

“Growing out of the host?” Surely something was being lost in translation, unless I very much misunderstood the nature of the Christian Eucharist. An arbor Dianæ was one thing. An arbor brassicæ was quite another.

“Yes. It was a miracle. And when the cabbage was dug up, its root resembled the body of Christ.” Rudolf held out the item to me. It was crowned with a golden diadem studded with pearls. Presumably that had been added later.

“Fascinating,” I said, trying to look and sound interested.

“I wanted you to see it in part because it resembles a picture in the book you requested. Fetch Edward, Ottavio.”

Edward Kelley entered, clutching a leather-bound volume to his chest.

As soon as I saw it, I knew. My entire body was tingling while the book was still across the room. Its power was palpable—far more so than it had been at the Bodleian on that September night when my whole life changed.

Here was the missing Ashmole manuscript—before it belonged to Elias Ashmole and before it went missing.

“You will sit here, with me, and we will look at the book together.” Rudolf gestured toward a table and two chairs that were set up in an intimate tête-à-tête. “Give me the book, Edward.” Rudolf held out his hand, and Kelley reluctantly placed the book in it.

I shot Matthew a questioning look. What if the manuscript started to glow as it had in the Bodleian or behaved strangely in some other way? And what if I weren’t able to stop my mind from wondering about the book or its secrets? An eruption of magic at this point would be disastrous.

This is why we’re here, said his confident nod.

I sat down next to the emperor, and Strada ushered the courtiers around the room to the unicorn’s horn. Matthew drifted still closer. I stared at the book in front of me, hardly daring to believe that the moment had come when I would at last see Ashmole 782 whole and complete.

“Well?” Rudolf demanded. “Are you going to open it?”

“Of course,” I said, pulling the book closer. No iridescence escaped from the pages. For purposes of comparison, I rested my hand on the cover for just a moment, as I had when I’d retrieved Ashmole 782 from the stacks. Then it had sighed in recognition, as though it had been waiting for me to show up. This time the book lay still.

I flipped open the hide-bound wooden board of the front cover. A blank sheet of parchment. My mind raced back over what I’d seen months ago. This was the sheet on which Ashmole and my father would one day write the book’s title.

I turned the page and felt the same sense of uncanny heaviness. When the page fell open, I gasped.

The first, missing page of Ashmole 782 was a glorious illumination of a tree. The tree’s trunk was knotted and gnarled, thick and yet sinuous. Branches sprang from the top, twisting and turning their way across the page and ending in a defiant combination of leaves, bright red fruit, and flowers. It was like the arbor Dianæ that Mary had made using blood drawn from Matthew and me.

When I bent closer, my breath caught in my throat. The tree’s trunk was not made of wood, sap, and bark. It was made of hundreds of bodies— some writhing and thrashing in pain, some serenely entwined, others alone and frightened.

At the bottom of the page, written in a late-thirteenth-century hand, was the title Roger Bacon had given it: The True Secret of Secrets.

Matthew’s nostrils flared, as though he were trying to identify a scent. The book did have a strange odor—the same musty smell that I had noticed at Oxford.

I turned the page. Here was the image sent to my parents, the one the Bishop house had saved for so many years: the phoenix enfolding the chemical wedding in her wings, while mythical and alchemical beasts witnessed the union of Sol and Luna.

Matthew looked shocked, and he was staring at the book. I frowned. He was still too far away to see it clearly. What had surprised him?

Quickly, I flipped over the image of the alchemical wedding. The third missing page turned out to be two alchemical dragons, their tails intertwined and their bodies locked in either a battle or an embrace— it was impossible to tell which. A rain of blood fell from their wounds, pooling in a basin from which sprang dozens of naked, pale figures. I’d never seen an alchemical image like it.

Matthew stood over the emperor’s shoulder, and I expected his shock to turn to excitement at seeing these new images and getting closer to solving the book’s mysteries. But he looked as if he’d seen a ghost. A white hand covered his mouth and nose. When I frowned with concern, Matthew nodded to me, a sign that I should keep going.

I took a deep breath and turned to what should be the first of the strange alchemical images I’d seen in Oxford. Here, as expected, was the baby girl with the two roses. What was unexpected was that every inch of space around her was covered in text. It was an odd mix of symbols and a few scattered letters. In the Bodleian this text had been hidden by a spell that transformed the book into a magical palimpsest. Now, with the book intact, the secret text was on full view. Though I could see it, I still couldn’t read it. What did it say?

My fingers traced the lines of text. My touch unmade the words, transforming them into a face, a silhouette, a name. It was as though the text were trying to tell a story involving thousands of creatures.

“I would have given you anything you asked for,” Rudolf said, his breath hot against my cheek. Once again I smelled onions and wine. It was so unlike Matthew’s clean, spicy scent. And Rudolf’s warmth was off-putting now that I was used to a vampire’s cool temperature. “Why did you choose this? It cannot be understood, though Edward believes it contains a great secret.”

A long arm reached between us and gently touched the page. “Why, this is as meaningless as the manuscript you foisted off on poor Dr. Dee.” Matthew’s face belied his words. Rudolf might not have seen the muscle ticking in Matthew’s jaw or known how the fine lines around his eyes deepened when he concentrated.

“Not necessarily,” I said hastily. “Alchemical texts require study and contemplation if you wish to understand them fully. Perhaps if I spent more time with it . . .”

“Even then one must have God’s special blessing,” Rudolf said, scowling at Matthew. “Edward is touched by God in ways you are not, Herr Roydon.”

“Oh, he’s touched all right,” Matthew said, looking over at Kelley. The English alchemist was acting strange now that the book was not in his possession. There were threads connecting him and the book. But why was Kelley bound to Ashmole 782?

As the question went through my mind, the fine yellow and white threads tying Kelley to Ashmole 782 took on a new appearance. Instead of the normal tight twist of two colors or a weave of horizontal and vertical threads, these spooled loosely around an invisible center, like the curling ribbons on a birthday present. Short, horizontal threads kept the curls from touching. It looked like—

A double helix. My hand rose to my mouth, and I stared down at the manuscript. Now that I’d touched the book, its musty smell was on my fingers. It was strong, gamy, like—

Flesh and blood. I looked to Matthew, knowing that the expression on my face mirrored the shocked look I had seen on his.

“You don’t look well, mon coeur,” he said solicitously, helping me to my feet. “Let me take you home.” Edward Kelley chose this moment to lose control.

“I hear their voices. They speak in languages I cannot understand. Can you hear them?”

He moaned in distress, his hands clapped over his ears.

“What are you chattering about?” Rudolf said. “Dr. Hájek, something is wrong with Edward.”

“You will find your name in it, too,” Edward told me, his voice getting louder, as if he were trying to drown out some other sound. “I knew it the moment I saw you.”

I looked down. Curling threads bound me to the book, too—only mine were white and lavender. Matthew was bound to it by curling strands of red and white.

Gallowglass appeared, unannounced and uninvited. A burly guard followed him, clutching at his own limp arm.

“The horses are ready,” Gallowglass informed us, gesturing toward the exit.

“You do not have permission to be here!” Rudolf shouted, his fury mounting as his careful arrangements disintegrated. “And you, La Diosa, do not have permission to leave.”

Matthew paid absolutely no attention to Rudolf. He simply took my arm and strode in the direction of the door. I could feel the manuscript pulling on me, the threads stretching to bring me back to its side.

“We can’t leave the book. It’s—”

“I know what it is,” Matthew said grimly.

“Stop them!” Rudolf screamed.

But the guard with the broken arm had already tangled with one angry vampire tonight. He wasn’t going to tempt fate by interfering with Matthew. Instead his eyes rolled up into his head and he dropped to the floor in a faint.

Gallowglass threw my cloak over my shoulders as we pelted down the stairs. Two more guards— both unconscious—lay at the bottom.

“Go back and get the book!” I said to Gallowglass, breathless from my constrictive corset and the speed at which we were moving across the courtyard. “We can’t let Rudolf have it now that we know what it is.”

Matthew stopped, his fingers digging into my arm. “We won’t leave Prague without the manuscript. I’ll go back and get it, I promise. But first we are going home. You must have the children ready to leave the moment I get back.”

“We’ve burned our bridges, Auntie,” Gallowglass said grimly. “Pistorius is locked up in the White Tower. I killed one guard and injured three more. Rudolf touched you most improperly, and I have a strong desire to see him dead, too.”

“You don’t understand, Gallowglass. That book may be the answer to everything,” I managed to squeak out before Matthew had me in motion again.

“Oh, I understand more than you think I do.” Gallowglass’s voice floated in the breeze next to me. “I picked up the scent of it downstairs when I knocked out the guards. There are dead wearhs in that book. Witches and daemons, too, I warrant. Whoever could have imagined that the lost Book of Life would stink to high heaven of death?”

32

“Who would make such a thing?” Twenty minutes later I was shivering by the fireplace in our main first-floor room, clutching a beaker of herbal tea. “It’s gruesome.”

Like most manuscripts, Ashmole 782 was made of vellum—specially prepared skin that had been soaked in lime to remove the hair, scraped to take away the subcutaneous layers of flesh and fat, then soaked again before being stretched on a frame and scraped some more.

The difference here was that the creatures used to make the vellum were not sheep, calves, or goats but daemons, vampires, and witches.

“It must have been kept as a record.” Matthew was still trying to come to terms with what we had seen.

“But it has hundreds of pages,” I said in disbelief. The thought of someone flaying so many daemons, vampires, and witches and making vellum from their skins was incomprehensible. I wasn’t sure I would ever sleep through the night again.

“Which means the book contains hundreds of distinct pieces of DNA.” Matthew had run his fingers through his hair so many times he was starting to resemble a porcupine.

“The threads twisting between us and Ashmole 782 looked like double helices,” I said. We’d had to explain modern genetics to Gallowglass, who, without the intervening four and a half centuries of biology and chemistry, was doing his best to follow it.

“So D-N-A is like a family tree, but its branches cover more than just one family?” Gallowglass sounded out “DNA” slowly, with a break between each letter.

“Yes,” Matthew said. “That’s about it.”

“Did you see the tree on the first page?” I asked Matthew. “The trunk was made of bodies, and the tree was flowering, fruiting, and leafing out just like the arbor Dianæ we made in Mary’s laboratory.”

“No, but I saw the creature with its tail in its mouth,” Matthew said.

I tried feverishly to recall what I’d seen, but my photographic memory failed me when I needed it most. There was too much new information to absorb.

“The picture showed two creatures fighting—or embracing, I couldn’t tell which. I didn’t have a chance to count their legs. Their falling blood was generating hundreds of creatures. Although if one of them was not a four-legged dragon but a snake . . .”

“And one was a two-legged firedrake, then those alchemical dragons could symbolize you and me.” Matthew swore, briefly but with feeling.

Gallowglass listened patiently until we were through, then went back to his original topic. “And this D-N-A, it lives in our skin?”

“Not just your skin, but your blood, bones, hair, nails—it’s throughout your entire body,” Matthew explained.

“Huh.” Gallowglass rubbed his chin. “And what question is it you have in mind, exactly, when you say this book might have all the answers?”

“Why we’re different from the humans,” Matthew said simply. “And why a witch like Diana might carry a wearh’s child.”

Gallowglass gave us a radiant smile. “You mean your child, Matthew. I knew full well Auntie was capable of that back in London. She never smelled like anyone but herself—and you. Did Philippe know?”

“Few people knew,” I said quickly.

“Hancock did. So did Françoise and Pierre. My guess is Philippe was told all about it.” Gallowglass stood. “I’ll just go fetch Auntie’s book, then. If it has to do with de Clermont babes, we must have it.”

“Rudolf will have locked it up tight or tucked it into bed with him,” Matthew predicted. “It’s not going to be easy to get it out of the palace, especially not if they’ve found Pistorius and he’s out casting spells and making mischief.”

“Speaking of Emperor Rudolf, can we get that necklace off Auntie’s shoulders? I hate that bloody insignia.”

“Gladly,” I said, plucking at the chain and tossing the garish object onto the table. “What, exactly, does the Order of the Defeated Dragon have to do with the de Clermonts? I assume that they must not be friends with the Knights of Lazarus, given the fact that the poor ouroboros has been partially skinned and is strangling itself.”

“They hate us and wish us dead,” Matthew said flatly. “The Drăculeşti disapprove of my father’s broad-minded views on Islam and the Ottomans and have vowed to bring us all down. That way they can fulfill their political aspirations unchecked.”

“And they want the de Clermont money,” Gallowglass observed.

“The Drăculeşti?” My voice was faint. “But Dracula is a human myth— one meant to spread fear about vampires.” It was the human myth about vampires.

“That would come as some surprise to the patriarch of the clan, Vlad the Dragon,” Gallowglass commented, “though he would be pleased to know he will go on terrifying people.”

“The humans’ Dracula—the Dragon’s son known as the Impaler—was only one of Vlad’s brood,” Matthew said.

“The Impaler was a nasty bastard. Happily, he’s dead now, and all we have to worry about are his father, his brothers, and their Báthory allies.” Gallowglass looked somewhat cheered and poured himself a glass of wine.

“According to human accounts, Dracula lived on for centuries—he may still be living. Are you sure he’s really dead?”

“I watched Baldwin rip his head off and bury it thirty miles away from the rest of his body. He was really dead then, and he’s really dead now.” Gallowglass looked at me reprovingly. “You should know better than to believe these human stories, Auntie. They’ve never got more than a speck of truth in them.”

“I think Benjamin had one of these dragon emblems. Herr Maisel gave it to him. I noticed the similarity in colors when the emperor first held it out.”

“You told me Benjamin left Hungary,” Matthew said accusingly to his nephew.

“He did. I swear it. Baldwin ordered him to leave or face the same fate as the Impaler. You should have seen Baldwin’s face. The devil himself wouldn’t have disobeyed your brother.”

“I want us all as far from Prague as possible by the time the sun rises,” Matthew said grimly. “Something is very wrong. I can smell it.”

“That may not be such a good idea. Do you not know what night it is?” Gallowglass asked. Matthew shook his head. “Walpurgisnacht. They are lighting bonfires all around the city and burning effigies of witches— unless they can find a real one, of course.”

“Christ.” Matthew drove his fingers through his hair, giving it a good shake as he did. “At least the fires will provide some distraction. We have to figure out how to circumvent Rudolf’s guards, get into his private chambers, and find the book. Then, fires or no fires, we are getting out of the city.”

“We’re wearhs, Matthew. If anyone can steal it, we can,” Gallowglass said confidently.

“It’s not going to be as easy as you think. We may get in, but will we get out?”

“I can help, Master Roydon.” Jack’s voice sounded like a flute compared to Gallowglass’s rumbling bass and Matthew’s baritone. Matthew turned and scowled at him.

“No, Jack,” he said firmly. “You aren’t to steal anything, remember? Besides, you’ve only been to the palace stables. You wouldn’t have any idea where to look.”

“Er . . . that’s not strictly true.” Gallowglass looked uncomfortable. “I took him to the cathedral. And the Great Hall to see the cartoons you once drew on the walls of the Knights’ Staircase. And he’s been to the kitchens. Oh,” Gallowglass said as an afterthought, “he’s been to the menagerie, too, of course. It would have been cruel not to let him see the animals.”

“He has been there with me as well,” Pierre said from the doorway. “I didn’t want him to go adventuring one day and get lost.”

“And where did you take him, Pierre?” Matthew’s tone was icy. “The throne room, so he could jump up and down on the royal seat?”

“No, milord. I took him to the blacksmith’s shop and to meet Master Hoefnagel.” Pierre drew himself up to his full, relatively diminutive height and stared his employer down. “I thought he should show his drawings to someone with real skill in these matters. Master Hoefnagel was most impressed and drew a pen-and-ink portrait of him on the spot for a reward.”

“Pierre also took me to the guards’ chamber,” Jack said in a small voice. “That’s where I got these.” He held up a ring of keys. “I only wanted to see the unicorn, for I couldn’t imagine how a unicorn climbed the stairs and thought they must have wings. Then Master Gallowglass showed me the Knights’ Staircase —I like your drawing of the running deer very much, Master Roydon. The guards were talking. I couldn’t understand everything, but the word einhorn stuck out, and I thought maybe they knew where it was, and —”

Matthew took Jack by the shoulders and crouched down so that their eyes met. “Do you know what they would have done if they’d caught you?” My husband looked as fearful as the child did.

Jack nodded.

“And seeing a unicorn was worth being beaten?”

“I’ve been beaten before. But I’ve never seen a magical beast. Except for the lion in the emperor’s menagerie. And Mistress Roydon’s dragon.” Jack looked horrified and clapped his hand over his mouth.

“So you’ve seen that, too? Prague has been an eye-opening experience for all concerned, then.” Matthew stood and held out his hand. “Give me the keys.” Jack did so, reluctantly. Matthew bowed to the boy. “I am in your debt, Jack.”

“But I was bad,” Jack whispered. He rubbed his backside, as if he had already felt the punishment Matthew was bound to dole out.

“I’m bad all the time,” Matthew confessed. “Sometimes good comes of it.”

“Yes, but nobody beats you,” Jack said, still trying to understand this strange world where grown men were in debt to little boys and his hero was not perfect after all.

“Matthew’s father beat him with a sword once. I saw it.” The firedrake’s wings fluttered softly within my rib cage in silent agreement. “Then he knocked him over and stood on him.”

“He must be as big as the emperor’s bear Sixtus,” Jack said, awed at the thought of anyone conquering Matthew.

“He is,” Matthew said, growling like the bear in question. “Back to bed. Now.”

“But I’m nimble—and quick,” Jack protested. “I can get Mistress Roydon’s book without anyone seeing me.”

“So can I, Jack,” Matthew promised. Matthew and Gallowglass returned from the palace covered with blood, dirt, and soot—and bearing Ashmole 782.

“You got it!” I cried. Annie and I were waiting on the first floor. We had small bags packed with traveling essentials.

Matthew opened the cover. “The first three pages are gone.”

The book that had been whole just hours before was now broken, the text racing across the page. I’d planned on running my fingers over the letters and symbols once it was in our possession to determine its meaning. Now that was impossible. As soon as my fingertips touched the page, the words skittered in every direction.

“We found Kelley with the book. He was bent over it and crooning like a madman.” Matthew paused. “The book was talking back.”

“He tells you true, Auntie. I heard the words, though I couldn’t make them out.”

“Then the book really is alive,” I murmured.

“And really dead, too,” Gallowglass said, touching the binding. “It’s an evil thing as well as a powerful one.”

“When Kelley spotted us, he screamed at the top of his lungs and started ripping pages from the book. Before I could reach him, the guards were there. I had to choose between the book and Kelley.” Mathew hesitated. “Did I do the right thing?”

“I think so,” I said. “When I found the book in England, it was broken. And it may be easier to find the fugitive pages in the future than it would be now.” Modern search engines and library catalogs would be enormously helpful, now that I knew what I was seeking.

“Provided the pages weren’t destroyed,” Matthew said. “If that’s the case . . .”

“Then we’ll never know all of the book’s secrets. Even so, your modern laboratory might reveal more about what’s left than we imagined when we set out on this quest.”

“So you’re ready to go back?” Matthew asked. There was a spark of something in his eye. He smothered it quickly. Was it excitement? Dread?

I nodded. “It’s time.”

We fled Prague by the light of the bonfires. The creatures were in hiding on Walpurgisnacht, not wanting to be seen by the revelers in case they found themselves flung onto the pyre.

The frigid waters of the North Sea were just navigable, and the spring thaw had broken up the ice in the harbors. Boats were leaving the ports for England, and we were able to catch one without delay. Even so, the weather was stormy when we pulled away from the European shore.

In our cabin belowdecks, I found Matthew studying the book. He had discovered that it was sewn together with long strands of hair.

“Dieu,” he murmured, “how much more genetic information might this thing contain?” Before I could stop him, he touched the tip of his pinkie to his tongue and then to the drops of blood showering down from the baby’s hair on the first extant page.

“Matthew!” I said, horrified.

“The inks contain blood. And if that’s the case, my guess is that the gold and silver leaf on these illustrations is applied to a glue base made from bones. Creature bones.”

The boat lurched leeward, and my stomach went along with it. When I was through being sick, Matthew held me in his arms. The book lay between us, slightly open, the lines of text searching to find their place in the order of things.

“What have we done?” I whispered.

“We’ve found the Tree of Life and the Book of Life, all wrapped up in one.” Matthew rested his cheek on my hair.

“When Peter Knox told me the book held all the witches’ original spells, I told him he was mad. I couldn’t imagine anyone being so foolish as to put so much knowledge in one place.” I touched the book. “But this book contains so much more—and we still don’t know what the words say. If this were to fall into the wrong hands in our own time—”

“It could be used to destroy us all,” Matthew finished.

I craned my head to look at him. “What are we going to do with it, then? Take it back with us to the future or leave it here?”

“I don’t know, mon coeur.” He gathered me closer, muffling the sound of the storm as it lashed against the hull.

“But this book may well hold the key to all your questions.” I was surprised that Matthew could part with it now that he knew what it contained.

“Not all,” he said. “There’s one only you can answer.”

“What’s that?” I asked with a frown.

“Are you seasick or are you with child?” Matthew’s eyes were as heavy and stormy as the sky, with glints of bright lightning.

“You would know better than I.” He had taken blood from my vein a few days ago, soon after I realized that my period was late.

“I didn’t see the child in your blood or hear its heart—not yet. It’s the change in your scent that I noticed. I remember it from last time. You can’t be more than a few weeks pregnant.”

“I would have thought my being pregnant would make you more eager than ever to keep the book with you.”

“Maybe my questions don’t need answers as urgently as I thought they did.” To prove his point, Matthew put the book on the floor, out of sight. “I thought it would tell me who I am and why I’m here. Perhaps I already know.”

I waited for him to explain.

“After all my searching, I discover that I am who I always was: Matthew de Clermont. Husband. Father. Vampire. And I am here for only one reason: To make a difference.”

33

Peter Knox dodged the puddles in the courtyard of the Strahov Monastery in Prague. He was on his annual spring circuit of libraries in central and Eastern Europe. When the tourists and scholars were at their lowest ebb, Knox went from one old repository to another, making sure that nothing untoward had turned up in the past twelve months that might cause the Congregation—or him—trouble. In each library he had a trusted informant, a member of staff who was of sufficiently high standing to have free access to the books and manuscripts, but not so elevated that he might later be required to take a principled stand against library treasures simply . . . disappearing.

Knox had been making regular visits like this since he’d finished his doctorate and begun working for the Congregation. Much had changed in their world since World War II, and the Congregation’s administrative structure had adjusted to the times. With the transportation revolution of the nineteenth century, trains and roads allowed a new style of governance, with each species policing its own kind rather than overseeing a geographic location. It meant a lot of traveling and letter writing, both possible in the Age of Steam. Philippe de Clermont had been instrumental in modernizing the Congregation’s operations, though Knox had long suspected he did it more to protect vampire secrets than to promote progress.

Then the world wars disrupted communications and transportation networks, and the Congregation reverted to its old ways. It was more sensible to break up the globe into slices than to crisscross it tracking down a specific individual accused of wrongdoing. No one would have dared to suggest such a radical change when Philippe was alive. Happily, the former head of the de Clermont family was no longer around to resist. The Internet and e-mail threatened to make such trips unnecessary, but Knox liked tradition.

Knox’s mole at the Strahov Library was a middle-aged man named Pavel Skovajsa. He was brown all over, like foxed paper, and wore a pair of Communist-era glasses that he refused to replace, though it was unclear whether his reluctance was for historical or sentimental reasons. Usually the two men met in the monastery brewery, which had gleaming copper tanks and served an excellent amber beer named after St. Norbert, whose earthly remains rested nearby.

But this year Skovajsa had actually found something.

“It is a letter. In Hebrew,” Skovajsa had whispered down the phone line. He was suspicious of new technology, didn’t have a cell phone, and detested e-mail. That’s why he was employed in the conservation department, where his idiosyncratic approach to knowledge wouldn’t slow the library’s steady march toward modernity.

“Why are you whispering, Pavel?” Knox had asked in irritation. The only problem with Skovajsa was that he liked to think of himself as a spy hewn from the ice of the Cold War. As a result he was a tad paranoid.

“Because I took a book apart to get at it. Someone hid it underneath the endpapers of a copy of Johannes Reuchlin’s De Arte Cabalistica,” Skovajsa explained, his excitement mounting. Knox looked at his watch. It was so early that he hadn’t had his coffee yet. “You must come, at once. It mentions alchemy and that Englishman who worked for Rudolf II. It may be important.”

Knox was on the next flight out of Berlin. And now Skovajsa had spirited him away to a dingy room in the basement of the library illuminated by a single bare lightbulb.

“Isn’t there somewhere more comfortable for us to conduct business?” Knox said, eyeing the metal table (also Communist-era) with suspicion. “Is that goulash?” He pointed to a sticky spot on its surface.

“The walls have ears, and the floors have eyes.” Skovajsa wiped at the spot with the hem of his brown sweater. “We are safer here. Sit. Let me bring you the letter.”

“And the book,” Knox said sharply. Skovajsa turned, surprised at his tone.

“Yes, of course. The book, too.”

“That isn’t On the Art of Kabbalah,” Knox said when Skovajsa returned, growing more irritated with each passing moment. Johannes Reuchlin’s book was slim and elegant. This monstrosity had to be nearly eight hundred pages long. When it hit the table, the impact reverberated across the top and down the metal legs.

“Not exactly,” Skovajsa said defensively. “It’s Galatino’s De Arcanis Catholicae Veritatis. But the Reuchlin is in it.” A cavalier approach to precise bibliographic details was one of Knox’s bêtes noires.

“The title page has inscriptions in Hebrew, Latin, and French.” Skovajsa flung open the cover. Since there was nothing to support the spine of the large tome, Knox was not surprised to hear an ominous crack. He looked at Skovajsa in alarm. “Don’t worry,” the conservationist reassured him, “it isn’t cataloged. I only discovered it because it was shelved next to our other copy, which was due to go out for rebinding. It probably came here by mistake when our books were returned in 1989.”

Knox dutifully examined the title page and its inscriptions.

‎בנימין זאב יטרף בבקר יאכל עד ולערב יחלק שלל Genesis 49:27

Beniamin lupus rapax mane comedet praedam et vespere dividet spolia.

Benjamin est un loup qui déchire; au matin il dévore la proie, et sur le soir il partage le butin.

“It is an old hand, is it not? And the owner was clearly well educated,” Skovajsa said.

“‘Benjamin shall raven as a wolf: in the morning he shall devour the prey, and at night he shall divide the spoil,’” Knox mused.

He couldn’t imagine what these verses had to do with De Arcanis. Galatino’s work contributed a single shot in the Catholic Church’s war against Jewish mysticism—the same war that had led to book burnings, inquisitorial proceedings, and witch-hunts in the sixteenth century. Galatino’s position on these matters was given away by his title: Concerning Secrets of the Universal Truth. In a nifty bit of intellectual acrobatics, Galatino argued that the Jews had anticipated Christian doctrines and that the study of kabbalah could help Catholic efforts to convert the Jews to the true faith.

“Perhaps the owner’s name was Benjamin?” Skovajsa looked over his shoulder and passed Knox a file. Knox was happy to see that it was not stamped top secret in red letters. “And here is the letter. I do not know Hebrew, but the name Edwardus Kellaeus and alchemy—alchymia—are in Latin.”

Knox turned the page. He was dreaming. He had to be. The letter was dated from the second day of Elul 5369—1 September 1609 in the Christian calendar. And it was signed Yehuda ben Bezalel, a man most knew as Rabbi Judah Loew.

“You know Hebrew, yes?” Skovajsa said.

“Yes.” This time it was Knox who was whispering. “Yes,” he said more strongly. He stared at the letter.

“Well?” Skovajsa said after nearly a minute of silence had passed. “What does it say?”

“It seems that a Jew from Prague met Edward Kelley and was writing to a friend to tell him so.” It was true—in a way.

“Long life and peace to you, Benjamin son of Gabriel, cherished friend,”

Rabbi Loew wrote.

I received your letter from my birth city with great joy. Poznań is a better place for you than Hungary, where nothing awaits you but misery. Though I am an old man, your letter brought back clearly the strange events that occurred in the spring of 5351 when Edwardus Kellaeus, student of alchymia and beloved of the emperor, came to me. He raved about a man he had killed and that the emperor’s guards would soon arrest him for murder and treason. He foresaw his own death, crying out, “I will fall like the angels into hell.” He also spoke of this book you seek, which was stolen from Emperor Rudolf, as you know. Kellaeus sometimes called it the Book of Creation and sometimes the Book of Life. Kellaeus wept, saying that the end of the world was upon us. He kept repeating omens, such as “It begins with absence and desire,” “It begins with blood and fear,” “It begins with a discovery of witches,” and so forth.

In his madness Kellaeus had removed three pages from this Book of Life even before it was taken from the emperor. He gave one leaf to me. Kellaeus would not tell me to whom he had given the other pages, speaking in riddles about the angel of death and the angel of life. Alas, I do not know the book’s present whereabouts. I no longer have my leaf from it, having given it to Abraham ben Elijah for safekeeping. He died of the pestilence, and the page may be forever lost. The only one who might be able to shed light on the mystery is your maker. He, too, sought this book. May your interest in healing this broken book extend to healing your broken lineage so that you might find peace with the Father who gave you life and breath. The Lord guard your spirit, from your loving friend Yehuda of the holy city of Prague, son of Bezalel, 2nd of the month Elul 5369

“That’s all?” Skovajsa said after another long pause. “It’s just about a meeting?”

“In essence.” Knox made rapid calculations on the back of the folder. Loew died in 1609. Kelley visited him eighteen years before that. Spring 1591. He dug in his pocket for his phone and looked at the display in disgust. “Don’t you get a signal up here?”

“We’re underground,” Skovajsa said, shrugging as he pointed to the thick walls. “So was I right to tell you about this?” He licked his lips in anticipation.

“You did well, Pavel. I’m taking the letter. And the book.” They were the only items Knox had ever removed from the Strahov Library.

“Good. I thought it was worth your time, what with the mention of alchemy.” Pavel grinned.

What happened next was regrettable. Skovajsa had the misfortune, after years of rooting about without success, of finding something precious to Knox. With a few words and a small gesture, Knox made sure Pavel would never be able to share what he had seen with another creature. For sentimental and ethical reasons, Knox didn’t kill him. That would have been a vampire’s response, as he knew from finding Gillian Chamberlain propped up against his door at the Randolph Hotel last autumn. Being a witch, he simply freed the clot in Skovajsa’s thigh so it could travel up to his brain. Once there, it caused a massive stroke. It would be hours before someone found him, and too late for any good to come of it.

Knox found his way back to his rental car with the biblically proportioned book and the letter safely tucked under his arm. Once he was far enough from the Strahov complex, he pulled over to the side of the road and took out the letter, his hands shaking.

Everything the Congregation knew about the mysterious book of origins—Ashmole 782—was based on fragments such as this. Any new discovery dramatically increased their knowledge. And this letter contained more than just a brief description of the book and some veiled hints as to its significance. There were names and dates and the startling revelation that the book Diana Bishop had seen in Oxford was missing three pages.

Knox looked over the letter again. He wanted to know more—to squeeze every potentially useful bit of information from it. This time certain words and phrases stood out: your broken lineage; the Father who gave you life and breath; your maker. On the first reading, Knox assumed that Loew was talking about God. Upon the second he came to a very different conclusion. Knox picked up his phone and punched in a single number.

“Oui.”

“Who is Benjamin ben Gabriel?” Knox demanded.

There was a moment of complete silence.

“Hello, Peter,” said Gerbert of Aurillac. Knox’s free hand curled into a fist at the bland response. This was so typical of the vampires on the Congregation. They talked about honesty and cooperation, but they had lived too long and knew too much. And, like all predators, they weren’t eager to share their spoils.

“‘Benjamin shall raven like a wolf.’ I know Benjamin ben Gabriel is a vampire. Who is he?”

“No one of importance.”

“Do you know what happened in Prague in 1591?” Knox asked tightly.

“A great many things. You cannot expect me to rehearse every event for you, like a grammar-school history teacher.”

Knox heard a faint tremble in Gerbert’s voice, something that only someone who knew the man well would catch. Gerbert, the venerable vampire who was never at a loss for words, was nervous.

“Dr. Dee’s assistant, Edward Kelley, was in the city in 1591.”

“We’ve been over this before. It’s true, the Congregation once believed that Ashmole 782 might have been in Dee’s library. But I met with Edward Kelley in Prague when those suspicions first surfaced in the spring of 1586. Dr. Dee had a book full of pictures. It wasn’t ours. Since then we’ve tracked down every item from Dee’s library just to be sure. Elias Ashmole didn’t come into possession of the manuscript through Dee or Kelley.”

“You’re wrong. Kelley had the book in May 1591.” Knox paused. “And he took it apart. The book Diana Bishop saw in Oxford was missing three pages.”

“What do you know, Peter?” Gerbert said sharply.

“What do you know, Gerbert?” Knox didn’t like the vampire, but they had been allies for years. Both men understood that cataclysmic change was coming to their world. In the aftermath there would be winners and losers. Neither man had any intention of being on the losing side.

“Benjamin ben Gabriel is Matthew Clairmont’s son,” Gerbert said reluctantly.

“His son?” Knox repeated numbly. Benjamin de Clermont was on none of the elaborate vampire genealogies the Congregation kept.

“Yes. But Benjamin disowned his bloodline. It is not something that a vampire does lightly, for the rest of the family is likely to kill him to protect their secrets. Matthew forbade any de Clermont to take his son’s life. And no one has caught a glimpse of Benjamin since the nineteenth century, when he disappeared in Jerusalem.”

The bottom dropped out of Knox’s world. Matthew Clairmont couldn’t be allowed to have Ashmole 782. Not if it held the witches’ most cherished lore.

“Well, we’re going to have to find him,” Knox said grimly, “because according to this letter Edward Kelley scattered the three pages. One he gave to Rabbi Loew, who passed it on to someone called Abraham ben Elijah of Chelm.”

“Abraham ben Elijah was once known as a very powerful witch. Do you creatures know anything about your own history?”

“We know not to trust vampires. I’d always dismissed that prejudice as histrionics, not history, but now I’m not so sure.” Knox paused. “Loew told Benjamin to ask his father for help. I knew that de Clermont was hiding something. We have to find Benjamin de Clermont and make him tell us what he— and his father—know about Ashmole 782.”

“Benjamin de Clermont is a volatile young man. He was afflicted with the same illness that plagued Matthew’s sister Louisa.” The vampires called it blood rage, and the Congregation wondered if the disease was not somehow related to the new illness afflicting vampires—the one that made it impossible for them to make new vampires. “If there really are three lost sheets from Ashmole 782, we will find them without his help. It will be better that way.”

“No. It’s time for the vampires to yield their secrets.” Knox knew that the success or failure of their plans might well depend on this unstable branch of the de Clermont family tree. He looked at the letter once more. Loew was clear that he had wanted Benjamin to heal not only the book but his relationship with his family. Matthew Clairmont might know more about the book than any of them suspected.

“I suppose you’ll be wanting to timewalk to Rudolphine Prague now to look for Edward Kelley,” Gerbert grumbled, trying to stifle an impatient sigh. Witches could be so impulsive.

“On the contrary. I’m going to Sept-Tours.”

Gerbert snorted. Storming the de Clermont family château was an even more ridiculous idea than going back to the past.

“Tempting though that might be, it isn’t wise. Baldwin turns a blind eye only because of the rift between him and Matthew.” It was Philippe’s only strategic failure, so far as Gerbert could remember, to hand over the Knights of Lazarus to Matthew rather than to the elder son who had always thought he was entitled to the position. “Besides, Benjamin no longer considers himself a de Clermont—and the de Clermonts certainly don’t believe he’s one of theirs. The last place we would find him is Sept-Tours.”

“For all we know, Matthew de Clermont has had one of the missing pages in his possession for centuries. The book is of no use to us if it’s incomplete. Besides, it’s time that vampire pays for his sins— and those of his mother and father, too.” Together they had been responsible for the deaths of thousands of witches. Let the vampires worry about placating Baldwin. Knox had justice on his side.

“Don’t forget the sins of his lover,” Gerbert said, his voice vicious. “I miss my Juliette. Diana Bishop owes me a life for the one she took.”

“I have your support, then?” Knox didn’t care one way or the other. He’d be leading a raiding party of witches against the de Clermont stronghold before the week’s end, with or without Gerbert’s help.

“You do,” Gerbert agreed reluctantly. “They are all gathering there, you know. The witches. The vampires. There are even a few daemons inside. They are calling themselves the Conventicle. Marcus sent a message to the vampires on the Congregation suggesting that the covenant be repealed.”

“But that would mean—”

“The end of our world,” Gerbert finished.