Chapter Four
The bells of St. Mary’s Church sounded the hour, faint echoes of their music lingering long after the peals ceased. Quince, rosemary, and lavender scented the air. I was perched on an uncomfortable wooden chair in a confining array of smocks, petticoats, sleeves, skirts, and a tightly laced bodice. My career-oriented, twenty-first-century life faded further with each restricted breath. I stared out into the murky daylight, where cold rain pinged against the panes of glass in the leaded windows.
“Elle est ici,” Pierre announced, his glance flicking in my direction. “The witch is here to see madame.”
“At last,” Matthew said. His friends had been eager to help him find the creature. Their suggestions illuminated a collective disregard for women, witches, and everyone who lacked a university education. Henry thought London might provide the most fertile ground for the search, but Walter assured him that it would be impossible to conceal me from superstitious neighbors in the crowded city. George wondered if the scholars of Oxford might be persuaded to lend their expertise, since they at least had proper intellectual credentials. Tom and Matthew gave a brutal critique of the strengths and weaknesses of the natural philosophers in residence, and that idea was cast aside, too. Kit didn’t believe it was wise to trust any woman with the task and drew up a list of local gentlemen who might be willing to establish a training regimen for me. It included the parson of St. Mary’s, who was alert to apocalyptic signs in the heavens, a nearby landowner named Smythson, who dabbled in alchemy and had been looking for a witch or daemon to assist him, and a student at Christ Church College who paid his overdue book bills by casting horoscopes.
Matthew vetoed all these suggestions and called on Widow Beaton, Woodstock’s cunning woman and midwife. She was poor and female— precisely the sort of creature the School of Night scorned—but this, Matthew argued, would better ensure her cooperation. Besides, Widow Beaton was the only creature for miles with purported magical talents. All others had long since fled, he admitted, rather than live near a wearh.
“Summoning Widow Beaton may not be a good idea,” I said later when we were getting ready for bed.
“So you’ve mentioned,” Matthew replied with barely concealed impatience. “But if Widow Beaton can’t help us, she’ll be able to recommend someone who can.”
“The late sixteenth century really isn’t a good time to openly ask around for a witch, Matthew.” I’d been able to do little more than hint at the prospect of witch-hunts when we were with the School of Night, but Matthew knew the horrors to come. Once again he dismissed my concern.
“The Chelmsford witch trials are only memories now, and it will be another twenty years before the Lancashire hunts begin. I wouldn’t have brought you here if a witch-hunt were about to break out in England.” Matthew picked through a few letters that Pierre had left for him on the table.
“With reasoning like that, it’s a good thing you’re a scientist and not a historian,” I said bluntly. “Chelmsford and Lancashire were extreme outbursts of far more widespread concerns.”
“You think a historian can understand the tenor of the present moment better than the men living through it?” Matthew’s eyebrow cocked up in open skepticism.
“Yes,” I said, bristling. “We often do.”
“That’s not what you said this morning when you couldn’t figure out why there weren’t any forks in the house,” he observed. It was true that I’d searched high and low for twenty minutes before Pierre gently broke it to me that the utensils were not yet common in England.
“Surely you aren’t one of those people who believe that historians do nothing but memorize dates and learn obscure facts,” I said. “My job is to understand why things happened in the past. When something occurs right in front of you, it’s hard to see the reasons for it, but hindsight provides a clearer perspective.”
“Then you can relax, because I have both experience and hindsight,” Matthew said. “I understand your reservations, Diana, but calling on Widow Beaton is the right decision.” Case closed, his tone made clear.
“In the 1590s there are food shortages, and people are worried about the future,” I said, ticking the items off on my fingers. “That means people are looking for scapegoats to take the blame for the bad times. Already, human cunning women and midwives fear being accused of witchcraft, though your male friends may not be aware of it.”
“I am the most powerful man in Woodstock,” Matthew said, taking me by the shoulders. “No one will accuse you of anything.” I was amazed at his hubris.
“I’m a stranger, and Widow Beaton owes me nothing. If I draw curious eyes, I pose a serious threat to her safety,” I retorted. “At the very least, I need to pass as an upper-class Elizabethan woman before we ask her for help. Give me a few more weeks.”
“This can’t wait, Diana,” he said brusquely.
“I’m not asking you to be patient so I can learn how to embroider samplers and make jam. There are good reasons for it.” I looked at him sourly. “Call in your cunning woman. But don’t be surprised when this goes badly.”
“Trust me.” Matthew lowered his lips toward mine. His eyes were smoky, and his instincts to pursue his prey and push it into submission were sharp. Not only did the sixteenth-century husband want to prevail over his wife, but the vampire wanted to capture the witch.
“I don’t find arguments the slightest bit arousing,” I said, turning my head. Matthew clearly did, however. I moved a few inches away from him.
“I’m not arguing,” Matthew said softly, his mouth close to my ear. “You are. And if you think I would ever touch you in anger, wife, you are very much mistaken.” After pinning me to the bedpost with frosty eyes, he turned and snatched up his breeches. “I’m going downstairs. Someone will still be awake to keep me company.” He stalked toward the door. Once he’d reached it, he paused.
“And if you really want to behave like an Elizabethan woman, stop questioning me,” he said roughly as he departed.
The next day one vampire, two daemons, and three humans examined my appearance in silence across the wide floorboards. The severe lines of Matthew’s doublet made him look even broader through the shoulders, while the acorns and oak leaves stitched in black around the edges of his white collar accentuated the paleness of his skin. He angled his dark head to gain a fresh perspective on whether I passed muster as a respectable Elizabethan wife.
“Well?” he demanded. “Will that do?” George lowered his spectacles. “Yes. The russet of this gown suits her far better than the last one did and gives a pleasant cast to her hair.”
“Mistress Roydon looks the part, George, it is true. But we cannot explain away her unusual speech simply by saying that she comes from the c-c-country,” Henry said in his toneless bass. He stepped forward to twitch the folds of my brocade skirt into place. “And her height. There is no disguising that. She is taller even than the queen.”
“Are you sure we can’t pass her off as French, Walt, or Dutch?” Tom lifted a clove-studded orange to his nose with ink-stained fingers. “Perhaps Mistress Roydon could survive in London after all. Daemons cannot fail to notice her, of course, but ordinary men may not give her a second glance.”
Walter snorted with amusement and unspooled from a low settle. “Mistress Roydon is finely shaped as well as uncommon tall. Ordinary men between the ages of thirteen and sixty will find reason enough to study her. No, Tom, she’s better off here, with Widow Beaton.”
“Perhaps I could meet Widow Beaton later, in the village, alone?” I suggested, hoping that one of them might see sense and persuade Matthew to let me do this my way.
“No!” cried out six horrified male voices.
Fran?oise appeared bearing two pieces of starched linen and lace, her bosom swelling like that of an indignant hen facing down a pugnacious rooster. She was as annoyed by Matthew’s constant interference as I was.
“Diana’s not going to court. That ruff is unnecessary,” said Matthew with an impatient gesture. “Besides, it’s her hair that’s the problem.”
“You have no idea what’s necessary,” Fran?oise retorted. Though she was a vampire and I was a witch, we had reached unexpected common ground when it came to the idiocy of men. “Which would Madame de Clermont prefer?” She extended a pleated nest of gauzy fabric and something crescent-shaped that resembled snowflakes joined together with invisible stitches.
The snowflakes looked more comfortable. I pointed to them.
While Fran?oise affixed the collar to the edge of my bodice, Matthew reached up in another attempt to put my hair in a more pleasing arrangement. Fran?oise slapped his hand away. “Don’t touch.”
“I’ll touch my wife when I like. And stop calling Diana ‘Madame de Clermont,’” Matthew rumbled, moving his hands to my shoulders. “I keep expecting my mother to walk through the door.” He drew the edges of the collar apart, pulling loose the black velvet cord that hid Fran?oise’s pins.
“Madame is a married woman. Her bosom should be covered. There is enough gossip about the new mistress,” Fran?oise protested.
“Gossip? What kind of gossip?” I asked with a frown.
“You were not in church yesterday, so there is talk that you are with child, or afflicted by smallpox. That heretic priest believes you are Catholic. Others say you are Spanish.”
“Spanish?”