“But the longer those two stay in the past, the more likely it is they’ll change the present,” Emily observed. “Sooner or later, Diana and Matthew will give themselves away.” “What do you mean, Emily?” asked Ysabeau.
“Time has to adjust—and not in the melodramatic way people think, with wars averted and presidential elections changed. It will be little things, like this note, that pop up here and there.”
“Anomalies,” Ysabeau murmured. “Philippe was always looking for anomalies in the world. It is why I still read all the newspapers. It became our habit to look through them each morning.” Her eyes closed against the memory. “He loved the sports section, of course, and read the education columns as well. Philippe was worried about what children would learn in the future. He established fellowships for the study of Greek and philosophy, and he endowed colleges for women. I always thought it strange.”
“He was looking for Diana,” Emily said with the certainty of someone blessed with second sight.
“Perhaps. Once I asked him why he was so preoccupied with current events and what he hoped to discover in the papers. Philippe said he would know it when he saw it,” Ysabeau replied. She smiled sadly. “He loved his mysteries and said if it were possible, he would like to be a detective, like Sherlock Holmes.”
“We need to make sure we notice any of these little time bumps before the Congregation does,” said Sarah.
“I will tell Marcus,” Ysabeau agreed with a nod.
“You should have told Matthew about that mixed-species baby.” Sarah was unable to keep the note of recrimination from her voice.
“My son loves Diana, and if he had known about that child, Matthew would have turned his back on her rather than put her—and the baby—in danger.”
“Bishops aren’t so easily cowed, Ysabeau. If Diana wanted your son, she would have found a way to have him.”
“Well, Diana did want him, and they have each other now,” Emily pointed out. “But we’re not going to have to share this news only with Marcus. Sophie and Nathaniel have to know, too.”
Sarah and Emily left the library. They were staying in Louisa de Clermont’s old room, down the hall from Ysabeau. Sarah thought there were times of day when it smelled a bit like Diana.
Ysabeau remained after they’d gone, gathering up books and reshelving them. When the room was orderly once again, she returned to the sofa and picked up the message from her husband. There was more to it than she had shared with the witches. She reread the final lines.
“But enough of these dark matters. You must keep yourself safe, too, so that you can enjoy the future with them. It has been two days since I reminded you that you hold my heart. I wish that I could do so every moment, so that you do not forget it, or the name of the man who will cherish yours forevermore. Philipos.”
In the last days of his life, there had been moments when Philippe couldn’t remember his own name, let alone hers.
“Thank you, Diana,” Ysabeau whispered into the night, “for giving him back to me.”
Several hours later, Sarah heard a strange sound overhead—like music, but more than music. She stumbled out of the room to find Marthe in the hall, wrapped in an old chenille bathrobe with a frog embroidered on the pocket, a bittersweet expression on her face.
“What is that?” Sarah asked, looking up. Nothing human could hope to produce a sound that beautiful and poignant. There must be an angel on the roof.
“Ysabeau is singing again,” Marthe answered. “She has only done so once since Philippe died—when your niece was in danger and needed to be pulled back into this world.”
“Is she all right?” There was so much grief and loss in every note that Sarah’s heart constricted. There weren’t words to describe the sound.
Marthe nodded. “The music is a good thing, a sign that her mourning may at last be coming to an end. Only then will Ysabeau begin to live again.”
Two women, vampire and witch, listened until the vampire’s final notes faded into silence.
London: The Blackfriars
Chapter Fifteen
"It looks like a demented hedgehog,” I observed. Elizabeth’s London was filled with needlelike spires that stuck up from the huddle of buildings that surrounded them. “What is that?” I gasped, pointing to a vast expanse of stone pierced by tall windows. High above the wooden roof was a charred, stout stump that made the building’s proportions look all wrong.
“St. Paul’s,” Matthew explained. This was not Christopher Wren’s graceful white-domed masterpiece, its bulk concealed until the last moment by modern office blocks. Old St. Paul’s, perched on London’s highest hill, was seen all at once.