The Book of Life (49 page)

The car stopped abruptly across the entrance to a loading dock.

“Your house, madame,” Leonard said, sounding like a tour guide and waving at the red-and-cream brick office building that loomed above us. He released the door locks. “It’s safe to walk about. Please mind the uneven pavement. Don’t want to have to explain to Father H how you broke your leg, do I?”

I stepped out onto the stone sidewalk. It was firmer footing than the usual mud and muck of Water Lane, as we’d called the street in 1590. Automatically I headed in the general direction of St. Paul’s Cathedral. I felt a hand on my elbow, holding me back.

“You know how Uncle feels about you wandering around town unaccompanied.” Gallowglass bowed, and for a moment I saw him in doublet and hose. “At your service, Madame Roydon.”

“Where exactly are we?” Sarah asked, scanning the nearby alleys. “This doesn’t look like a residential area.”

“The Blackfriars. Once upon a time, hundreds of people lived here.” It took me only a few steps to reach a narrow cobbled street that used to lead to the inner precincts of the old Blackfriars Priory. I frowned and pointed. “Wasn’t the Cardinal’s Hat in there?” It was one of Kit Marlowe’s watering holes.

“Good memory, Auntie. They call it Playhouse Yard now.”

Our house had backed up to that part of the former monastery. Gallowglass and Sarah followed me into the cul-de-sac. Once it had been filled to bursting with merchants, craftsmen, housewives, apprentices, and children—not to mention carts, dogs, and chickens. Today it was deserted.

“Slow down,” Sarah said peevishly, struggling to keep up.

It didn’t matter how much the old neighborhood had changed. My heart had provided the necessary directions, and my feet followed, swift and sure. In 1591 I would have been surrounded by the ramshackle tenement and entertainment complex that had sprung up within the former priory. Now there were office buildings, a small residence serving well-heeled business executives, more office buildings, and the headquarters of London’s apothecaries. I crossed Playhouse Yard and slipped between two buildings.

“Where is she going now?” Sarah asked Gallowglass, her irritation mounting.

“Unless I miss my guess, Auntie’s looking for the back way to Baynard’s Castle.”

At the foot of a narrow thoroughfare called Church Entry, I stopped to get my bearings. If only I could orient myself properly, I could find my way to Mary’s house. Where had the Fields’ printing shop been? I shut my eyes to avoid the distraction of the incongruous modern buildings.

“Just there,” I pointed. “That’s where the Fields’ shop was. The apothecary lived a few houses along the lane. This way led down to the docks.” I kept turning, my arms, tracing the line of buildings I saw in my mind. “The door to Monsieur Vallin’s silver shop stood here. You could see our back garden from this spot. And here was the old gate that I took to get to Baynard’s Castle.” I stood for a moment, soaking in the familiar feeling of my former home and wishing I could open my eyes and find myself in the Countess of Pembroke’s solar. Mary would have understood my current predicament perfectly and been generous with her expertise on matters dynastic and political.

“Holy shit,” Sarah gasped.

My eyes flew open. A transparent wooden door was a few yards away, set into a crumbling, equally transparent stone wall. Mesmerized, I tried to take a step toward it but was prevented from doing so by the blue and amber threads that swirled tightly around my legs.

“Don’t move!” Sarah sounded panicked.

“Why?” I could see her through a scrim of Elizabethan shop fronts.

“You’ve cast a counterclock. It rewinds images from past times, like a movie,” Sarah said, peering at me through the windows of Master Prior’s pastry shop.

“Magic,” Gallowglass moaned. “Just what we need.”

An elderly woman in a neat navy blue cardigan and a pale blue shirtwaist dress who was very much of the here and now came out of the nearby apartment building.

“You’ll find this part of London can be a bit tricky, magically speaking,” she called out in that authoritative, cheerful tone that only British women of a certain age and social status could produce.

“You’ll want to take some precautions if you plan on doing any more spell casting.”

As the woman approached, I was struck by a sense of déjà vu. She reminded me of one of the witches I’d known in 1591—an earthwitch called Marjorie Cooper, who had helped me to weave my first spell.

“I’m Linda Crosby.” She smiled, and the resemblance to Marjorie became more pronounced.

“Welcome home, Diana Bishop. We’ve been expecting you.”

I stared at her, dumfounded.

“I’m Diana’s aunt,” Sarah said, wading into the silence. “Sarah Bishop.”

“Pleasure,” Linda said warmly, shaking Sarah’s hand. Both witches stared down at my feet. During our brief introductions, time’s blue and amber bindings had loosened somewhat, fading away one by one as they were absorbed back into the fabric of the Blackfriars. Monsieur Vallin’s front door was still all too evident, however.

“I’d give it a few more minutes. You are a timewalker, after all,” Linda said, perching on one of the curved benches that surrounded a circular brick planter. It occupied the same spot as had the wellhead in the Cardinal’s Hat yard.

“Are you one of Hubbard’s family?” Sarah asked, reaching into her pocket. Out came her forbidden cigarettes. She offered one to Linda.

“I’m a witch,” Linda said, taking the cigarette. “And I live in the City of London. So, yes—I am a member of Father Hubbard’s family. Proudly so.”

Gallowglass lit the witches’ cigarettes and then his own. The three puffed away like chimneys, careful to direct the smoke so it didn’t waft toward me.

“I haven’t met Hubbard yet,” Sarah confessed. “Most of the vampires I know don’t think much of him.”

“Really?” Linda asked with interest. “How very odd. Father Hubbard is a beloved figure here. He protects everybody’s interests, be they daemon, vampire, or witch. So many creatures have wanted to move into his territory that it’s led to a housing crisis. He can’t buy property fast enough to satisfy the demand.”

“He’s still a wanker,” Gallowglass muttered.

“Language!” Linda said, shocked.

“How many witches are there in the city?” Sarah asked.

“Three dozen,” Linda responded. “We limit the numbers, of course, or it would be madness in the Square Mile.”

“The Madison coven is the same size,” Sarah said approvingly. “Makes it easier to hold the meetings, that’s for sure.”

“We gather once a month in Father Hubbard’s crypt. He lives in what’s left of the Greyfriars Priory, just over there.” Linda aimed her cigarette at a point north of Playhouse Yard. “These days most of the creatures in the City proper are vampires—financiers and hedge-fund managers and such. They don’t like to hire out their meeting rooms to witches. No offense, sir.”

“None taken,” Gallowglass said mildly.

“The Greyfriars? Has Lady Agnes moved on?” I asked, surprised. The ghost’s antics had been the talk of the town when I lived here.

“Oh, no. Lady Agnes is still there. With Father Hubbard’s help, we were able to broker an agreement between her and Queen Isabella. They seem to be on friendly terms now—which is more than I can say for the ghost of Elizabeth Barton. Ever since that novel about Cromwell came out, she’s been impossible.” Linda eyed my belly speculatively. “At our Mabon tea this year, Elizabeth Barton said you’re having twins.”

“I am.” Even the ghosts of London knew my business.

“It’s so difficult to tell which of Elizabeth’s prophecies are to be taken seriously when every one of them is accompanied by shrieking. It’s all so . . . vulgar.” Linda pursed her lips in disapproval, and Sarah nodded sympathetically.

“Um, I hate to break this up, but I think my spell for the counterclock thingy expired.” Not only could I see my own ankle (provided I lifted my leg up—otherwise the babies were in the way), but Monsieur Vallin’s door had utterly vanished.

“Expired?” Linda laughed. “You make it sound as though your magic has a sell-by date.”

“I certainly didn’t tell it to stop,” I grumbled. Then again, I had never told it to start either.

“It stopped because you didn’t wind it up tight enough,” Sarah said. “If you don’t give a counterclock a good crank, it runs down.”

“And we do recommend that you not stand on top of the counterclock once you cast it,” Linda said, sounding a bit like my middle-school gym teacher. “You want to address the spell without blinking, then step away from it at the last minute.”

“My mistake,” I murmured. “Can I move now?”

Linda surveyed Playhouse Yard with a crinkled brow. “Yes, I do believe it’s perfectly safe now,”

she proclaimed.

I groaned and rubbed at my back. Standing still for so long had made it ache, and my feet felt like they were going to explode. I propped one of them upon the bench where Sarah and Linda were sitting and bent to loosen the ties on my sneakers.

“What’s that?” I said, peering through the bench’s slats. I reached down and retrieved a scroll of paper tied up with a red ribbon. The fingers on my right hand tingled when I touched it, and the pentacle at my wrist swirled with color.

“It’s tradition for people to leave requests for magic in the yard. There’s always been a concentration of power associated with this spot.” Linda’s voice softened. “A great witch lived here once, you see. Legend says she’ll return one day, to remind us of all we once were and could be again.

We haven’t forgotten her and trust that she will not forget us.”

The Blackfriars was haunted by my past self. Part of me had died when we left London. It was the part that had once been able to juggle being Matthew’s wife, Annie and Jack’s mother, Mary Sidney’s alchemical assistant, and a weaver-in-training. And another part of me had joined it in the grave when I walked away from Matthew on the mountain outside New Haven. I buried my head in my hands.

“I’ve made a mess of things,” I whispered.

“No, you dove into the deep end and got in over your head,” Sarah replied. “This is what Em and I worried about when you and Matthew first got involved. You both moved so fast, and we knew that neither of you had thought about what this relationship was going to require.”

“We knew we would face plenty of opposition.”

“Oh, you two had the star-crossed-lovers part down—and I understand how romantic it can be to feel it’s just the two of you against the world.” Sarah chuckled. “Em and I were star-crossed lovers, after all. In upstate New York in the 1970s, nothing was more star-crossed than two women falling in love.”

Her tone grew serious. “But the sun always rises the next morning. Fairy tales don’t tell you much about what happens to star-crossed lovers in the bright light of day, but somehow you have to figure out how to be happy.”

“We were happy here,” I said quietly. “Weren’t we, Gallowglass?”

“Aye, Auntie, you were—even with Matthew’s spymaster breathing down his neck and the whole country on the lookout for witches.” Gallowglass shook his head. “How you managed it, I’ve never understood.”

“You managed it because neither of you were trying to be something you weren’t. Matthew wasn’t trying to be civilized, and you weren’t trying to be human,” Sarah said. “You weren’t trying to be Rebecca’s perfect daughter, or Matthew’s perfect wife, or a tenured professor at Yale either.”

She took my hands in hers, scroll and all, and turned them so the palms faced up. My weaver’s cords stood out bright against the pale flesh.

“You’re a witch, Diana. A weaver. Don’t deny your power. Use it.” Sarah looked pointedly at my left hand. “All of it.”

My phone pinged in the pocket of my jacket. I scrambled for it, hoping against hope it was a kind of message from Matthew. He’d promised to let me know how he was doing. The display indicated there was a text waiting from him. I opened it eagerly.

The message contained no words that the Congregation could use against us, only a picture of Jack.

He was sitting on a porch, his face split into a wide grin as he listened to someone—a man, though his back was to the camera and I could see nothing more than the black hair curling around his collar—tell a story as only a southerner could. Marcus stood behind Jack, one hand draped casually over his shoulder.

Like Jack, he was grinning.

They looked like two ordinary young men enjoying a laugh over the weekend. Jack fit perfectly into Marcus’s family, as though he belonged.

“Who’s that with Marcus?” Sarah said, looking over my shoulder.

“Jack.” I touched his face. “I’m not sure who the other man is.”

“That’s Ransome.” Gallowglass sniffed. “Marcus’s eldest, and he puts Lucifer to shame. Not the best role model for young Jack, but I reckon Matthew knows best.”

“Look at the lad,” Linda said fondly, standing so she could get a look at the picture, too. “I’ve never seen Jack look so happy—except when he was telling stories about Diana, of course.”

St. Paul’s bells rang the hour. I pushed the button on my phone, dimming the display. I would look at the picture again later, in private.

“See, honey. Matthew is doing just fine,” Sarah said, her voice soothing.

But without seeing his eyes, gauging the set of his shoulders, hearing the tone of his voice, I couldn’t be sure.

“Matthew’s doing his job,” I reminded myself, standing up. “I need to get back to mine.”

“Does that mean you’re ready to do whatever it takes to keep your family together like you did in 1591—even if higher magics are involved?” Sarah’s eyebrow shot up in open query.

“Yes.” I sounded more convinced than I felt.

“Higher magics? How deliciously dark.” Linda beamed. “Can I help?”

“No,” I said quickly.

“Possibly,” Sarah said at the same time.

“Well, if you need us, give a ring. Leonard knows how to reach me,” Linda said. “The London coven is at your disposal. And if you were to come to one of our meetings, it would be quite a boost to morale.”

“We’ll see,” I said vaguely, not wanting to make a promise I couldn’t keep. “The situation is complicated, and I wouldn’t want to get anyone into trouble.”