Something had been bothering Matthew since he’d received the first batch of mail this morning. A stillness had come over him, and he’d held the pouch without opening it. Though he’d explained that the letters dealt with ordinary estate business, surely there was more there than demands for taxes and bills due.
I pressed my warm palm against the cold pane as if it were only the glass that stood between me and Matthew. The play of temperatures reminded me of the contrast between warmblooded witch and cool-blooded vampire. I returned to my seat and picked up my pen.
“You decided to make your mark on the sixteenth century after all.” Matthew was suddenly at my side. The twitch at the corner of his mouth indicated amusement but didn’t entirely disguise his tension.
“I’m still not sure that creating a lasting memento of my time here is a good idea,” I confessed. “A future scholar might realize there’s something odd about it.” Just as Kit had known there was something wrong with me.
“Don’t worry. The book won’t leave the house.” Matthew reached for his stack of mail.
“You can’t be sure of that,” I protested.
“Let history take care of itself, Diana,” he said decisively, as if the matter were now closed. But I couldn’t let go of the future—or my worries about the effects that our presence in the past might have on it.
“And I still don’t think we should let Kit keep that chess piece.” The memory of Marlowe triumphantly brandishing the tiny figure of Diana haunted me. She occupied the role of the white queen in Matthew’s costly silver chess set and had been the third object I’d used to steer us to the proper place in the past, along with Ysabeau’s earring and Matthew’s copy of Kit’s play Doctor Faustus. Two unfamiliar young daemons, Sophie Norman and her husband Nathaniel Wilson, had unexpectedly delivered it to my aunts’ house in Madison just as we were deciding to timewalk.
“Kit won it from me fair and square last night—just as he was supposed to do. At least this time I could see how he managed it. He distracted me with his rook.” Matthew dashed off a note with enviable speed before folding the pages into a neat packet. He dropped a molten blob of vermilion across the edges of the letter before pressing his signet ring into it. The golden surface of the ring bore the simple glyph for the planet Jupiter, not the more elaborate emblem that Satu had burned into my flesh. The wax crackled as it cooled. “Somehow my white queen went from Kit to a family of witches in North Carolina. We have to believe that it will do so again, with or without our help.”
“Kit didn’t know me before. And he doesn’t like me.”
“All the more reason not to worry. As long as it pains him to look upon the likeness of Diana, he won’t be able to part with it. Christopher Marlowe is a masochist of the first order.” Matthew took up another letter and sliced it open with his knife.
I surveyed the other items on my table and picked up a pile of coins. A working knowledge of Elizabethan currency had not been covered in my graduate education. Nor had household management, the proper order of donning undergarments, forms of address for servants, or how to make a medicine for Tom’s headache. Discussions with Fran?oise about my wardrobe revealed my ignorance of common names for ordinary colors. “Gooseturd green” was familiar to me, but the peculiar shade of grizzled brown known as “rat hair” was not. My experiences thus far had me planning to throttle the first Tudor historian I met upon my return for gross dereliction of duty.
But there was something compelling about figuring out the details of everyday life, and I quickly forgot my annoyance. I picked through the coins in my palm, looking for a silver penny. It was the cornerstone on which my precarious knowledge was built. The coin was no bigger than my thumbnail, as thin as a wafer, and bore the same profile of Queen Elizabeth as did most of the others. I organized the rest according to relative worth and began an orderly account of them on the next clean page in my book.
“Thank you, Pierre,” Matthew murmured, barely glancing up as his servant whisked away the sealed letters and deposited still more correspondence on the surface.
We wrote in companionable silence. Soon finished with my list of coins, I tried to remember what Charles, the household’s laconic cook, had taught me about making a caudle—or was it a posset?
A Caudle for pains in the head… Satisfied with the relatively straight line of text, three tiny blots, and the wobbly C, I continued.
Set your water to boil. Beat two egge yolkes. Add white wine and beat some more. When the water boils, set it to cool, then add the wine and egge. Stirre it as it boils again, adding saffron and honey.