Chapter 43
The house was unnaturally quiet.
For Sarah it wasn’t just the absence of chatter or the removal of seven active minds that made it seem so empty.
It was not knowing.
They’d come home earlier than usual from the coven’s gathering, claiming they needed to pack for Faye and Janet’s road trip. Em had found the empty briefcase sitting by the family-room couch, and Sarah had discovered the clothes bundled up on top of the washing machine.
“They’re gone,” Em had said.
Sarah went straight into her arms, her shoulders shaking.
“Are they all right?” she’d whispered.
“They’re together,” Em had replied. It wasn’t the answer Sarah wanted, but it was honest, just like Em.
They’d thrown their own clothes into duffel bags, paying little attention to what they were doing. Now Tabitha and Em were already in the RV, and Faye and Janet were waiting patiently for Sarah to close up the house.
Sarah and the vampire had talked for hours in the stillroom on their last night in the house, sharing a bottle of red wine. Matthew had told her something of his past and shared his fears for the future. Sarah had listened, making an effort not to show her own shock and surprise at some of the tales he told. Though she was pagan, Sarah understood he wanted to make confession and had cast her in the role of priest. She had given him the absolution she could, knowing all the while that some deeds could never be forgiven or forgotten.
But there was one secret he’d refused to share, and Sarah still knew nothing of where and when her niece had gone.
The floorboards of the Bishop house creaked a chorus of groans and wheezes as Sarah walked through the familiar, darkened rooms. She closed the keeping-room doors and turned to bid farewell to the only home she’d ever known.
The keeping-room doors opened with a sharp bang. One of the floorboards near the fireplace sprang up, revealing a small, black-bound book and a creamy envelope. It was the brightest thing in the room, and it gleamed in the moonlight.
Sarah muffled a cry and held out her hand. The cream square flew easily into it, landed with a slight smack, and flipped over. A single word was written on it.
“Sarah.”
She touched the letters lightly and saw Matthew’s long white fingers. She tore at the paper, her heart beating fast.
“Sarah,” it said. “Don’t worry. We made it.”
Her heart rate calmed.
Sarah put the single sheet of paper on her mother’s rocking chair and gestured for the book. Once the house delivered it, the floorboard returned to its normal resting place with a groan of old wood and the shriek of old nails.
She flipped to the first page. The Shadow of Night, Containing Two Poeticall Hymnes devised by G. C. gent. 1594. The book smelled old but not unpleasant, like incense in a dusty cathedral.
Just like Matthew, Sarah thought with a smile.
A slip of paper stuck out of the top. It led her to the dedication page. “To my deare and most worthy friend Matthew Roydon.” Sarah peered more closely and saw a tiny, faded drawing of a hand with a ruffled cuff pointing imperiously to the name, with the number “29” written underneath in ancient brown ink.
She turned obediently to page twenty-nine, struggling through tears as she read the underlined passage:She hunters makes: and of that substance hounds
Whose mouths deafe heaven, and furrow earth with wounds,
And marvaile not a Nimphe so rich in grace
To hounds rude pursuits should be given in chase.
For she could turne her selfe to everie shape
Of swiftest beasts, and at her pleasure scape.
The words conjured up the image of Diana—clear, bright, unbidden—her face framed with gauzy wings and her throat thickly encircled with silver and diamonds. A single tear-shaped ruby quivered on her skin like a drop of blood, nestled into the notch between her collarbones.
In the stillroom, as the sun was rising, he had promised to find some way to let her know Diana was safe.
“Thank you, Matthew.” Sarah kissed the book and the note and threw them into the cavernous fireplace. She said the words to conjure a white-hot fire. The paper caught quickly, and the book’s edges began to curl.
Sarah watched the fire burn for a few moments. Then she walked out the front door, leaving it unlocked, and didn’t look back.
Once the door closed, a worn silver coffin shot down the chimney and landed on the burning paper. Two gobbets of blood and mercury, released from the hollow chambers inside the ampulla by the heat of the fire, chased each other around the surface of the book before falling into the grate. There they seeped into the soft old mortar of the fireplace and traveled into the heart of the house. When they reached it, the house sighed with relief and released a forgotten, forbidden scent.
Sarah drank in the cool night air as she climbed into the RV. Her senses were not sharp enough to catch the cinnamon and blackthorn, honeysuckle and chamomile dancing in the air.
“Okay?” Em asked, her voice serene.
Sarah leaned across the cat carrier that held Tabitha and squeezed Em’s knee. “Just fine.”
Faye turned the key in the ignition and pulled down the driveway and onto the county road that would take them to the interstate, chattering about where they could stop for breakfast.
The four witches were too far away to perceive the shift in atmosphere around the house as hundreds of night creatures detected the unusual aroma of commingled vampire and witch, or to see the pale green smudges of the two ghosts in the keeping-room window.
Bridget Bishop and Diana’s grandmother watched the vehicle’s departure.
What will we do now? Diana’s grandmother asked.
What we’ve always done, Joanna, Bridget replied. Remember the past—and await the future.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My greatest debt is to the friends and family who read this book, chapter by chapter, as it was written: Cara, Karen, Lisa, Margaret, and my mom, Olive. Peg and Lynn, as always, provided excellent meals, warm companionship, and wise counsel. And I am especially appreciative of the editorial work that Lisa Halttunen did to prepare the manuscript for submission.
Colleagues generously lent me their expertise as I wandered far from my own area of specialization. Philippa Levine, Andrés Reséndez, Vanessa Schwartz, and Patrick Wyman steered me in the right direction whenever I took a misstep. Any errors that remain are, of course, my own.
I will always be grateful that Sam Stoloff of the Frances Goldin Literary Agency took the news that I had written a novel, and not another work of history, with grace and good humor. He also read the early drafts with a keen eye. Additional thanks to the agency’s Ellen Geiger, for her inspired choice of dinner companions!
The team at Viking has become a second family to me. My editor, Car-ole DeSanti, represents what every author hopes for when they are writing a book: someone who will not only appreciate what you have put on the page but can envision what story those words could tell if they were tweaked just so. Maureen Sugden, copy editor extraordinaire, polished the book in record time. Thank you also to Clare Ferraro, Leigh Butler, Hal Fessenden, and the rights group; Nancy Sheppard, Carolyn Coleburn, and the marketing and sales team; Victoria Klose, Christopher Russell, and everyone who has helped transform this work from a stack of paper into a book.
Because this is a book about books, I consulted a substantial number of texts as I wrote. Curious readers can find some of them by consulting the Douay-Rheims translation of the Bible, Marie-Louise von Franz’s critical edition and translation of Aurora Consurgens (Pantheon Books, 1966), and Paul Eugene Memmo’s translation of Giordano Bruno’s Heroic Frenzies (University of North Carolina Press, 1964). Those readers who do go exploring should know that the translations here are my own and therefore have their idiosyncrasies. Anyone who wants to delve further into the mind of Charles Darwin has the ideal place to start in Janet Browne’s Charles Darwin: A Biography (2 vols., Alfred Knopf, 1995 and 2002). And for a lucid introduction to mtDNA and its application to the problems of human history consult Brian Sykes, The Seven Daughters of Eve (W. W. Norton, 2001).