I tried for Sept-Tours instead. The threads that linked us there were tinged with Matthew’s idiosyncratic blend of silver, red, and black. I imagined the house full of familiar faces—Sarah and Em, Ysabeau and Marthe, Marcus and Miriam, Sophie and Nathaniel. But I couldn’t reach that safe port either.
Resolutely ignoring the rising panic, I searched among hundreds of options for an alternative destination. Oxford? The Blackfriars underground station in modern London? St. Paul’s Cathedral?
My fingers kept returning to the same strand in the warp and weft of time that was not silky and smooth but hard and rough. I inched along its twisting length and discovered that it was not a thread but a root connected to some unseen tree. With that realization I tripped, as over an invisible threshold, and fell into the keeping room of the Bishop House.
Home. I landed on my hands and knees, the knotted cords flattened between my palms and the floor. Centuries of polish and the passage of hundreds of ancestral feet had long since smoothed out its wide pine boards. They felt familiar under my hands, a token of permanence in a world of change. I looked up, half expecting to see my aunts waiting in the front hall. It had been so easy to find my way back to Madison that I assumed they were guiding us. But the air in the Bishop House was still and lifeless, as though not a soul had disturbed it since Halloween. Not even the ghosts seemed to be in residence.
Matthew was kneeling next to me, his hand still clasped in mine and his muscles trembling from the stress of moving through time.
“Are we alone?” I asked.
He took in the house’s scents. “Yes.”
With his quiet response, the house wakened and the atmosphere went from flat and lifeless to thick and uneasy in a blink. Matthew looked at me and smiled. “Your hair. It’s changed again.”
I glanced down to find not the strawberry blond curls I’d grown accustomed to but straight, silky strands that were a brighter reddish gold—just like my mother’s hair.
“It must be the timewalking.”
The house creaked and moaned. I felt it gathering its energy for an outburst.
“It’s only me and Matthew.”
My words were soothing, but my voice was oddly accented and harsh. The house recognized it nonetheless, and a sigh of relief filled the room. A breeze came down the chimney, carrying an unfamiliar aroma of chamomile mixed with cinnamon. I looked over my shoulder to the fireplace and the cracked wooden panels that surrounded it and scrambled to my feet.
“What the hell is that?”
A tree had erupted from under the grate. Its black trunk filled the chimney, and its limbs had pushed through the stone and the surrounding wood paneling.
“It’s like the tree from Mary’s alembic.” Matthew crouched down by the hearth in his black velvet breeches and embroidered linen shirt. His finger touched a small lump of silver embedded in the bark. Like mine, his voice sounded out of time and place.
“That looks like your pilgrim’s badge.” I joined him, my full black skirts belling out over the floor. The outline of Lazarus’s coffin was barely recognizable.
“I think it is. The ampulla had two gilded hollows inside to hold holy water. Before I left Oxford, I’d filled one with my blood and the other with yours.” Matthew’s eyes met mine. “Having our blood so close made me feel as though we could never be separated.”
“It looks as though the ampulla was exposed to heat and partially melted. If the inside of the ampulla was gilded, traces of mercury would have been released along with the blood.”
“So this tree was made with some of the same ingredients as Mary’s arbor Dian?.” Matthew looked up into the bare branches.
The scent of chamomile and cinnamon intensified. The tree began to bloom—but not the usual fruit or flowers. Instead a key and a single sheet of vellum sprouted from the branches.
“It’s the page from the manuscript,” said Matthew, pulling it free.
“That means the book is still broken and incomplete in the twenty-first century. Nothing we did in the past altered that fact.” I took a steadying breath.
“Then the likelihood is that Ashmole 782 is safely hidden in the Bodleian Library,” Matthew said quietly. “This is the key to a car.” He snagged it off the branches. For months I hadn’t thought about any form of transportation besides a horse or a ship. I looked out the front window, but no vehicle awaited us there. Matthew’s eyes followed mine.
“Marcus and Hamish would have made sure we had a way to get to Sept-Tours as planned without calling them for help. They probably have cars waiting all over Europe and America just in case. But they wouldn’t have left one visible,” Matthew continued.