“What is it, Alain?” Matthew asked.
“I have business with Madame de Clermont,” Alain replied. “Business?” Matthew frowned. “Can it wait?”
“I’m afraid not,” Alain said apologetically. “This is a difficult time I know, milord, but Sieur Philippe was adamant that Madame de Clermont be given her things as soon as possible.”
Alain ushered us back up to our tower. What I saw on Matthew’s desk drove the events of the past hour completely from my mind and left me breathless.
A small book bound in brown leather.
An embroidered sleeve, threadbare with age.
Priceless jewels—pearls and diamonds and sapphires.
A golden arrowhead on a long chain.
A pair of miniatures, their bright surfaces as fresh as the day they were painted.
Letters, tied with a faded carnation ribbon.
A silver rat trap, tarnish clinging to the fine engraving.
A gilded astronomical instrument fit for an emperor.
A wooden box carved by a wizard out of a branch from a rowan tree.
The collection of objects didn’t look like much, but they held enormous significance, for they represented the past eight months.
I picked up the small book with a trembling hand and flipped it open. Matthew had given it to me soon after we’d arrived at his mansion in Woodstock. In the autumn of 1590, the book’s binding had been fresh and the pages creamy. Today the leather was speckled and the paper yellowed with age. In the past I’d tucked the book away on a high shelf in the Old Lodge, but a bookplate inside told me that it was now the property of a library in Seville. The call mark, “Manuscrito Gon?alves 4890,” was inked onto the flyleaf. Someone—Gallowglass, no doubt—had removed the first page. Once it had been covered with my tentative attempts to record my name. The blots from that missing leaf had seeped through to the page below, but the list I’d made of the Elizabethan coins in circulation in 1590 was still legible. I flipped through the rest of the pages, remembering the headache cure I’d attempted to master in a futile attempt to appear a proper Elizabethan housewife. My diary of daily happenings brought back bittersweet memories of our time with the School of Night. I’d dedicated a handful of pages to an overview of the twelve signs of the zodiac, copied down a few more recipes, and scribbled a packing list for our journey to Sept-Tours in the back. I heard the gentle chime as past and present rubbed against each other, and I spotted the blue and amber threads that were barely visible in the corners of the fireplace.
“How did you get this?” I said, focusing on the here and now.
“Master Gallowglass gave it to Dom Fernando long ago. When he arrived at Sept-Tours in May, Dom Fernando asked me to return it to you,” Alain explained.
“It’s a miracle anything survived. How did you manage to keep all this hidden from me for so many years?” Matthew picked up the silver rat trap. He had teased me when I’d commissioned one of London’s most expensive clockmakers to make the mechanism to catch the rats prowling our attics in the Blackfriars. Monsieur Vallin had designed it to resemble a cat, with ears set on the crossbars and a little mouse perched on the fierce feline’s nose. Matthew deliberately sprang the mechanism, and the cat’s sharp teeth dug into the flesh of his finger.
“We did as we must, milord. We waited. We kept silent. We never lost faith that time would bring Madame de Clermont back to us.” A sad smile played at the corners of Alain’s mouth. “If only Sieur Philippe could have lived to see this day.”
At the thought of Philippe, my heart skittered. He must have known how badly his children would react to having me as a sister. Why had he put me in such an impossible situation?
“All right, Diana?” Matthew gently laid his hand over mine.