“Come, Jack. You and Tom will go home with me,” Henry Percy said. “The night is still young.”
“I don’t want to go,” Jack said. He swung around to Matthew, eyes huge. The boy senses the impending change.
Matthew knelt before him. “There’s nothing to be afraid of, Jack. You know Master Harriot and Lord Northumberland. They won’t let you come to harm.”
“What if I have a nightmare?” Jack whispered.
“Nightmares are like Master Harriot’s star glass. They are a trick of the light, one that makes something distant seem closer and larger than it really is.”
“Oh.” Jack considered Matthew’s response. “So even if I see a monster in my dreams, it cannot reach me?”
Matthew nodded. “But I will tell you a secret. A dream is a nightmare in reverse. If you dream of someone you love, that person will seem closer, even if far away.” He stood and put his hand on Jack’s head for a moment in a silent blessing.
Once Jack and his guardians had departed, only Gallowglass remained. I took the cords from my spell box, leaving a few items within: a pebble, a white feather, a bit of the rowan tree, my jewelry, and the note my father had left.
“I’ll take care of it,” he promised, taking the box from me. It looked oddly small in his huge hand. He wrapped me up in a bear hug.
“Keep the other Matthew safe, so he can find me one day,” I whispered in his ear, my eyes scrunched tight.
I released him and stepped aside. The two de Clermonts said their goodbyes as all de Clermonts did—briefly but with feeling.
Pierre was waiting with the horses outside the Cardinal’s Hat. Matthew handed me up into the saddle and climbed into his own.
“Farewell, madame,” Pierre said, letting go of the reins.
“Thank you, friend,” I said, my eyes filling once more.
Pierre handed Matthew a letter. I recognized Philippe’s seal. “Your father’s instructions, milord.”
“If I don’t turn up in Edinburgh in two days, come looking for me.”
“I will,” Pierre promised as Matthew clucked to his horse and we turned toward Oxford.
We changed horses three times and were at the Old Lodge before sunrise. Fran?oise and Charles had been sent away. We were alone.
Matthew left the letter from Philippe propped up on his desk, where the sixteenth-century Matthew could not fail to see it. It would send him to Scotland on urgent business. Once there, Matthew Roydon would stay at the court of King James for a time before disappearing to start a new life in Amsterdam.
“The king of Scots will be pleased to have me back to my former self,” Matthew commented, touching the letter with his fingertip. “I won’t be making any more attempts to save witches, certainly.”
“You made a difference here, Matthew,” I said, sliding my arm around his waist. “Now we need to sort things out in our present.”
We stepped into the bedroom where we’d arrived all those months before.
“You know I can’t be sure that we’ll slip through the centuries and land in exactly the right time and place,” I warned.
“You’ve explained it to me, mon coeur. I have faith in you.” Matthew hooked his arm through mine, pressing it firmly against his side to anchor me. “Let’s go meet our future. Again.”
“Goodbye, house.” I looked around our first home one last time. Even though I would see it again, it would not be the same as it was on this June morning.
The blue and amber threads in the corners snapped and keened impatiently, filling the room with light and sound. I took a deep breath and knotted my brown cord, leaving the end hanging free. Apart from Matthew and the clothes on our backs, my weaver’s cords were the only objects we were taking back with us.
“With knot of one, the spell’s begun,” I whispered. Time’s volume increased with every knot until the shrieking and keening was nearly deafening.
As the ends of the ninth cord fused together, I clasped Matthew’s hand in mine. We picked up our feet and our surroundings slowly dissolved.
Chapter Forty
All the English papers had some variation of the same headline, but Ysabeau thought the one in the Times was the cleverest.
English Man Wins Race to See into Space
30 June 2010
The world’s leading expert on early scientific instruments at Oxford University’s Museum of the History of Science, Anthony Carter, confirmed today that a refracting telescope bearing the names of Elizabethan mathematician and astronomer Thomas Harriot and Nicholas Vallin, a Huguenot clockmaker who fled France for religious reasons, is indeed genuine. In addition to the names, the telescope is engraved with the date 1591.
The discovery has electrified the scientific and historical communities. For centuries, Italian mathematician Galileo Galilei had been credited with borrowing rudimentary telescope technology from the Dutch in order to view the moon in 1609.
“The history books will have to be rewritten in light of this discovery,” said Carter. “Thomas Harriot had read Giambattista della Porta’s Natural Magic and become intrigued with how convex and concave lenses could be used to ‘see both things afar off, and things near hand, both greater and clearly.’”
Thomas Harriot’s contributions to the field of astronomy were overlooked in part because he did not publish them, preferring to share his discoveries with a close group of friends some call “The School of Night.” Under the patronage of Walter Raleigh and Henry Percy, the “Wizard Earl” of Northumberland, Harriot was financially free to explore his interests.
Mr I. P. Riddell discovered the telescope, along with a box of assorted mathematical papers in Thomas Harriot’s hand and an elaborate silver mousetrap also signed by Vallin. He was repairing the bells of St. Michael’s Church, near the Percy family’s seat in Alnwick, when a particularly strong gust of wind brought down a faded tapestry of St. Margaret slaying the dragon, revealing the box that had been secreted there.
“It is rare for instruments of this period to have so many identifying marks,” Dr Carter explained to reporters, revealing the date mark stamped into the telescope, which confirms the item was made in 1591–92. “We owe a great debt to Nicholas Vallin, who knew that this was an important development in the history of scientific instrumentation and took unusual measures to record its genealogy and provenance.”
“They refuse to sell it,” Marcus said, leaning against the doorframe. With his arms and legs crossed, he looked very much like Matthew. “I’ve spoken with everyone from the Alnwick church officials to the Duke of Northumberland to the Bishop of Newcastle. They’re not going to give up the telescope, not even for the small fortune you’ve offered. I think I’ve convinced them to let me buy the mousetrap, though.”
“The whole world knows about it,” Ysabeau said. “Even Le Monde has reported the story.”
“We should have tried harder to squash it. This could give Knox and his allies vital information,” Marcus said. The growing number of people living inside the walls of Sept-Tours had been worrying for weeks about what Knox might do if the exact whereabouts of Diana and Matthew were discovered.
“What does Phoebe think?” Ysabeau asked. She had taken an instant liking to the observant young human with her firm chin and gentle ways.
Marcus’s face softened. It made him look as he had before Matthew left, when he was carefree and joyful. “She thinks it’s too soon to tell what damage has been done by the telescope’s discovery.”
“Smart girl,” Ysabeau said with a smile.
“I don’t know what I’d do—” Marcus began. His expression turned fierce. “I love her, Grand-mère.”