“Orange sellers are more of a seventeenth-century thing,” I said absently, picking at the cords in my lap. I was now making steady progress with everything from simple charms against headaches to the more complicated weavings that could make waves ruffle on the Thames. I twined the gold and blue strands around my fingers. Strength and understanding.
“Wow. Nice recovery, Diana.” My father turned to Matthew. “She bounces back fast.”
“Tell me about it,” was my husband’s equally dry reply. They both relied on humor to smooth over the rough edges of their interactions, which sometimes made them unbearable.
“I’m glad I got to know you, Matthew—despite that scary look you get when you think I’m bossing Diana around,” my father said with a laugh.
Ignoring their banter, I twisted the yellow cord in with the gold and blue. Persuasion.
“Can you stay until tomorrow? It would be a shame to miss the celebrations.” It was Midsummer Eve, and the city was in a holiday mood. Worried that a final evening with his daughter would not be sufficient inducement, I shamelessly appealed to my father’s academic interests. “There will be so many folk customs for you to observe.”
“Folk customs?” My father laughed. “Very slick. Of course I’m staying until tomorrow. Annie made a wreath of flowers for my hair, and Will and I are going to share some tobacco with Walter. Then I’m going to visit with Father Hubbard.”
Matthew frowned. “You know Hubbard?”
“Oh, sure. I introduced myself to him when I arrived. I had to, since he was the man in charge. Father Hubbard figured out I was Diana’s father pretty quickly. You all have an amazing sense of smell.” My father looked at Matthew benignly. “An interesting man, with his ideas about creatures all living as one big, happy family.”
“It would be utter chaos,” I pointed out.
“We all made it through last night with three vampires, two witches, a daemon, two humans, and a dog sharing one roof. Don’t be so quick to dismiss new ideas, Diana.” My father looked at me disapprovingly. “Then I suppose I’ll hang out with Catherine and Marjorie. Lots of witches will be on the prowl tonight. Those two will definitely know where the most fun can be found.” Apparently he was on a first-name basis with half the town.
“And you’ll be careful. Especially around Will, Daddy. No ‘Wow’ or ‘Well played, Shakespeare.’” My father was fond of slang. It was, he said, the hallmark of the anthropologist.
“If only I could take Will home with me, he’d make a cool—sorry, honey—colleague. He has a sense of humor. Our department could do with someone like him. Put a bit of leavening in the lump, if you know what I mean.” My father rubbed his hands together. “What are your plans?”
“We don’t have any.” I looked at Matthew blankly, and he shrugged.
“I thought I would answer some letters,” he said hesitantly. The mail had piled up to alarming levels.
“Oh, no.” My father sat back in his chair, looking horrified.
“What?” I turned my head to see who or what had entered the room.
“Don’t tell me you’re the kind of academics who can’t tell the difference between their life and their job.” He flung up his hands as if warding off the plague. “I refuse to believe that my daughter could be one of them.”
“That’s a bit melodramatic, Daddy,” I said stiffly. “We could spend the evening with you. I’ve never smoked. It will be historic to do it with Walter for the first time, since he introduced tobacco into England.”
My father looked even more horrified. “Absolutely not. We’ll be bonding as fellow men. Lionel Tiger argues—”
“I’m not a big fan of Tiger,” Matthew interjected. “The social carnivore never made sense to me.”
“Can we put the topic of eating people aside for a moment and discuss why you don’t want to spend your last night with Matthew and me?” I was hurt.
“It’s not that, honey. Help me out here, Matthew. Take Diana out on a date. You must be able to think of something to do.”
“Like rollerskating?” Matthew’s brows shot up. “There aren’t any skating rinks in sixteenth-century London—and precious few of them left in the twenty-first century, I might add.”
“Damn.” My father and Matthew had been playing “fad versus trend” for days, and while my father was delighted to know that the popularity of disco and the Pet Rock would fade, he was shocked to hear that other things—like the leisure suit—were now the butt of jokes. “I love rollerskating. Rebecca and I go to a place in Dorchester when we want to get away from Diana for a few hours, and—”
“We’ll go for a walk,” I said hastily. My father could be unnecessarily frank when it came to discussing how he and my mother spent their free time. He seemed to think it might shock Matthew’s sense of propriety. When that failed, he took to calling Matthew “Sir Lancelot” for an added measure of annoyance.
“A walk. You’ll take a walk.” My father paused. “You mean that literally, don’t you?”
He pushed away from the table. “No wonder creatures are going the way of the dodo. Go out. Both of you. Now. And I’m ordering you to have fun.” He ushered us toward the door.
“How?” I asked, utterly mystified.
“That is not a question a daughter should ask her father. It’s Midsummer Eve. Go out and ask the first person you meet what you should do. Better yet, follow someone else’s example. Howl at the moon. Make magic. Make out, at the very least. Surely even Sir Lancelot makes out.” He waggled his eyebrows. “Get the picture, Miss Bishop?”
“I think so.” My tone reflected my doubts about my father’s notion of fun.
“Good. I won’t be back until sunrise, so don’t wait up. Better yet, stay out all night yourselves. Jack is with Tommy Harriot. Annie is with her aunt. Pierre is— I don’t know where Pierre is, but he doesn’t need a babysitter. I’ll see you at breakfast.”
“When did you start calling Thomas Harriot ‘Tommy’?” I asked. My father pretended not to hear me.
“Give me a hug before you go. And don’t forget to have fun, okay?” He enveloped me in his arms. “Catch you on the flip side, baby.”
Stephen pushed us out the door and shut it in our faces. I extended my hand to the latch and found it taken into a vampire’s cool grip.
“He’ll be leaving in a few hours, Matthew.” I reached for the door with the other hand. Matthew took that one, too.
“I know. So does he,” Matthew explained.
“Then he should understand that I want to spend more time with him.” I stared at the door, willing my father to open it. I could see the threads leading from me, through the grain in the wood, to the wizard on the other side. One of the threads snapped and struck the back of my hand like a rubber band. I gasped. “Daddy!”
“Get moving, Diana!” he shouted.
Matthew and I wandered around town, watching the shops close early and noting the revelers already filling the pubs. More than one butcher was casually stacking bones by the front door. They were white and clean, as though they had been boiled.
“What’s going on with the bones?” I asked Matthew after we saw the third such display.
“They’re for the bone fires.”
“Bonfires?”
“No,” Matthew said, “the bone fires. Traditionally, people celebrate Midsummer Eve by lighting fires: bone fires, wood fires, and mixed fires. The mayor’s warnings to cease and desist all such superstitious celebrations go up every year, and people light them anyway.”
Matthew treated me to dinner at the famous Belle Savage Inn just outside the Blackfriars on Ludgate Hill. More than a simple eatery, the Belle Savage was an entertainment complex where customers could see plays and fencing matches—not to mention Marocco, the famous horse who could pick virgins out of the crowd. It wasn’t rollerskating in Dorchester, but it was close.