“Don’t be too hard on them, Diana. They’re focused on witches at the moment. It will be the daemons’ turn in another hundred years or so, thanks to the reform of the asylums. After that, humans will get around to vampires, and witches will be nothing more than a wicked fairy tale to frighten children.” Mathew looked worried, in spite of his words.
“Our next-door neighbor is preoccupied with werewolves, not witches. And if you could be mistaken for one, I want you to stop worrying about me and start taking care of yourself. Besides, it shouldn’t be long now before a witch knocks on our door.” I clung to the certainty that it would be dangerous for Matthew to look any further for a witch. My husband’s eyes flashed a warning, but his mouth remained closed until his anger was under control.
“I know you’re itching for independence, but the next time you decide to take matters into your own hands, promise you’ll discuss it with me first.” His response was far milder than I expected.
“Only if you promise to listen. You’re being watched, Matthew. I’m sure of it, and so is Mary Sidney. You take care of the queen’s business and the problem in Scotland, and let me take care of this.”
When he opened his mouth to negotiate further, I shook my head.
“Listen to me. A witch will come. I promise.”
Chapter Eighteen
Matthew was waiting for me in Mary’s airy solar at Baynard’s Castle the next afternoon, staring out at the Thames with an amused expression. He turned at my approach, grinning at the Elizabethan version of a lab coat that covered my golden brown bodice and skirts. The underlying white sleeves that stuck out from my shoulders were ridiculously padded, but the ruff around my neck was small and unobtrusive, making it one of my more comfortable outfits.
“Mary can’t leave her experiment. She said we should come in time for dinner on Monday.” I flung my arms around his neck and kissed him soundly. He reared back.
“Why do you smell of vinegar?”
“Mary washes in it. It cleans your hands better than soap.” “You left my house covered with the sweet scent of bread and honey,
and the Countess of Pembroke returns you to me smelling like a pickle.” Matthew’s nose went to the patch of skin behind my ear. He gave a satisfied sigh. “I knew I could find some place the vinegar hadn’t reached.”
“Matthew,” I murmured. The countess’s maid, Joan, was standing right behind us.
“You’re behaving like a prim Victorian rather than a bawdy Elizabethan,” Matthew said, laughing. He straightened with one last caress of my neck. “How was your afternoon?”
“Have you seen Mary’s laboratory?” I exchanged the shapeless gray coat for my cloak before sending Joan away to tend to her other duties. “She’s taken over one of the castle’s towers and painted the walls with images of the philosopher’s stone. It’s like working inside a Ripley scroll! I’ve seen the Beinecke’s copy at Yale, but it’s only twenty feet long. Mary’s murals are twice as big. It made it hard to focus on the work.”
“What was your experiment?”
“We hunted the green lion,” I replied proudly, referring to a stage of the alchemical process that combined two acidic solutions and produced startling color transformations. “We almost caught it, too. But then something went wrong and the flask exploded. It was fantastic!”
“I’m glad you don’t work in my lab. Generally speaking, explosions are to be avoided when working with nitric acid. You two might do something a bit less volatile next time, like distilling rose water.” Matthew’s eyes narrowed. “You weren’t working with mercury?”
“Don’t worry. I wouldn’t do anything that might harm the baby,” I said defensively.
“Every time I say something about your well-being, you assume my concern lies elsewhere.” His brows drew together in a scowl. Thanks to his dark beard and mustache—which I was still getting used to—Matthew looked even more forbidding. But I didn’t want to argue with him.
“Sorry,” I said quickly before changing the subject. “Next week we’re going to mix up a fresh batch of prima materia. That has mercury in it, but I promise not to touch it. Mary wants to see if it will putrefy into the alchemical toad by the end of January.”
“That sounds like a festive start to the New Year.” Matthew said, settling the cloak over my shoulders.
“What were you looking at?” I peered out the windows.
“Someone’s building a bonfire across the river for New Year’s Eve. Every time they send the wagon for fresh wood, the local residents filch what’s already there. The pile gets smaller by the hour. It’s like watching Penelope ply her needle.”
“Mary said no one will be working tomorrow. Oh, and to be sure to tell Fran?oise to buy extra manchet—that’s bread, right?—and to soak it in milk and honey to make it soft again for Saturday’s breakfast.” It was Elizabethan French toast in all but name. “I think Mary’s worried I might go hungry in a house run by vampires.”
“Lady Pembroke has a don’t-ask, don’t-tell policy when it comes to creatures and their habits,” Matthew observed.
“She certainly never mentioned what happened to her shoes,” I said thoughtfully.
“Mary Sidney survives as her mother did: by turning a blind eye to every inconvenient truth. The women in the Dudley family have had to do so.”
“Dudley?” I frowned. That was a family of notorious troublemakers— nothing at all like the mild-mannered Mary.
“Lady Pembroke’s mother was Mary Dudley, a friend of Her Majesty and sister to the queen’s favorite, Robert.” Matthew’s mouth twisted. “She was brilliant, just like her daughter. Mary Dudley filled her head with ideas so there was no room in it for knowledge of her father’s treason, or her brothers’ missteps. When she caught smallpox from our blessed sovereign, Mary Dudley never acknowledged that both the queen and her own husband thereafter preferred the company of others rather than face her disfigurement.”
I stopped, shocked. “What happened to her?”
“She died alone and embittered, like most Dudley women before her. Her greatest triumph was marrying off her fifteen-year-old namesake to the forty-year-old Earl of Pembroke.”
“Mary Sidney was a bride at fifteen?” The shrewd, vibrant woman ran an enormous household, reared a pack of energetic children, and was devoted to her alchemical experiments, all with no apparent effort. Now I understood how. Lady Pembroke was younger than me by a few years, but by the age of thirty she’d been juggling these responsibilities for half her life.
“Yes. But Mary’s mother provided her all the tools necessary for her survival: iron discipline, a deep sense of duty, the best schooling money could buy, a love of poetry, and her passion for alchemy.”
I touched my bodice, thinking of the life growing within me. What tools would he need to survive in the world?
We talked about chemistry on our way home. Matthew explained that the crystals that Mary brooded over like a hen were oxidized iron ore and that she would later distill them in a flask to make sulfuric acid. I’d always been more interested in the symbolism of alchemy than in its practical aspects, but my afternoon with the Countess of Pembroke had shown me how intriguing the links between the two might be.
Soon we were safely inside the Hart and Crown and I was sipping a warm tisane made from mint and lemon balm. It turned out the Elizabethans did have teas, but they were all herbal. I was chattering on about Mary when I noticed Matthew’s smile.
“What’s so funny?”
“I haven’t seen you like this before,” he commented.
“Like what?”
“So animated—full of questions and reports of what you’ve been doing and all the plans you and Mary have for next week.”
“I like being a student again,” I confessed. “It was difficult at first, not to have all the answers. Over the years I’ve forgotten how much fun it is to have nothing but questions.”
“And you feel free here, in a way that you didn’t in Oxford. Secrets are a lonely business.” Matthew’s eyes were sympathetic as his fingers moved along my jaw.
“I was never lonely.”
“Yes you were. I think you still are,” he said softly.