Shadow of Night

Matthew says they must go back to the 21st century to monitor their child. Diana wants to stay, get a tutor, find out more about her identity, and look for Ashmole 782. He agrees to find her a tutor and figure out how to leave before she’s seven weeks pregnant.

The School of Night decide to introduce Diana to Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke. As Diana admires Mary’s shoes and focuses on the embroidered insects, her powers accidentally bring them to life.

Matthew asks Mary to recommend a witch, but she refuses. They get into an argument about religion and magic. Before they leave, Mary says that Londoners aren’t to be trusted with knowledge of Diana’s witchcraft, as they’re liable to blame her for their ills. Henry thinks Mary is just being cautious. Later, Diana receives an invitation from Mary to help her with an alchemical experiment.

Later that day, Diana goes into town to shop and “be seen,” hoping to draw the attention of a witch. She visits a printer to get blank paper, and his wife advises her on an apothecary to visit for soap and wax. The shop is near St. Paul’s, where Matthew warned Diana not to go. When she asks for directions, she realizes everyone knows who she is, and they whisper about her. She sees George, who says he’ll take her to his own apothecary outside the city walls.

They walk through an impoverished area to a “dark, pungent, and unsettling” apothecary (244). The owner, Chandler, is a witch, and Diana looks at his shop while he and George speak. She spots a pamphlet about a vampire being persecuted in Germany. Diana buys assorted items, including the pamphlet. Diana uses the power of silent speech to ask Chandler for a witch to help her, and he says to be careful requesting assistance from people. On the way back, she feels witches watching her.

Matthew returns after being forced by Queen Elizabeth to attend the torturing of a prisoner. The prisoner was a witch whose community turned on him, and Matthew’s only way to help him was to end his suffering quickly. He’s not pleased that Diana went to Cripplegate with George. She shows him the vampire persecution. One of the publishers is their neighbor, which makes Diana nervous, but Matthew tells her not to worry.

Two vampires employed by the “king” of London’s creatures, Hubbard, request that Matthew and Diana meet Hubbard immediately. Hubbard is a vampire, but over the last several centuries, he collected the allegiance of all three creatures, drinking their blood to “adopt” them, seeing their memories and gaining leverage over them.

Hubbard’s headquarters are below a church. Chandler and Kit are among his gathered followers. Hubbard dismisses everyone but Matthew and Diana. He can tell Diana is pregnant, though he doesn’t know Matthew is the father. He commands that Diana and her unborn child be inducted into his “flock” to keep them safe from the Congregation, whose rules Matthew and Diana have broken.

Diana claims the safety from Hubbard that the de Clermont name gives her, as Philippe’s blood-sworn child. She uses this relationship to compel Hubbard to find a tutor for her. He agrees.

That weekend, Hubbard sends them a 14-year-old orphan named Annie. Annie will take them to her aunt, who is a powerful witch. In return, they are to watch over Annie, who will do basic household tasks. Diana takes Annie to Mary’s for lunch. Diana and Mary talk about the nature of being female in the Elizabethan period; Mary makes sure her female servants are educated. Diana decides to do the same for Annie.

Mary and Diana do alchemical experiments until Henry and Matthew arrive. Mary and Henry give Diana and Matthew each a locket with a painted miniature of the other inside. Diana is touched by the gift, but worries they are leaving too many marks on the past.

Diana and Matthew meet Annie’s aunt, Susanna Norman. They are stunned by her resemblance to their daemon ally in the 21st century, Sophie Norman. Diana fills Susanna in on her magical history. Susanna asks her to use magic to crack an egg in a bowl. Diana tries, to no avail. She begins thinking about the hen who laid the egg. This makes her think of her own child, which she imagines alongside the warmth of a mother hen. Unbeknownst to Diana, she uses her magic to accelerate and incubate the egg, hatching a chick.

In the present day, a woman named Phoebe, who works at Sotheby’s London auction, waits for an after-hours meeting, where she is to give a special package to a customer, Dr. Marcus Whitmore. She gives Marcus the package, which has two Elizabethan miniatures inside, painted by a famous limner named Nicholas Hilliard. 

Marcus, who was sired by Matthew during the Revolutionary War, is shocked. He calls Ysabeau and then sends a message. Phoebe’s boss calls her telling her Marcus paid for the miniatures outright. Sophie warns him he overpaid, but he disregards the warning. He had been flirting with her throughout their interaction, and finally asks her on a date for lunch the next day.

Susanna sends for an old witch, Goody Alsop, who investigates Diana’s power. Goody Alsop says that Diana is a “weaver,” a “maker of spells” (292). Weavers cannot perform other people’s spells: They must make their own. Other witches hunt them because they fear their power. Goody Alsop knows Diana is pregnant, which is also possible because Diana is a weaver. Goody Alsop, who is a weaver, explains how spells are born of a need and a desire for the need to be filled.

Goody Alsop wants to bring together witches from every elemental specialty. Susanna protests, saying they’re drawing too much attention from Hubbard; she plans to take their disagreement to a group of elders called the Rede.

Over the next few days, Diana meets the members of the Rede. Diana and Matthew get into a fight when Matthew catches an orphan named Jack trying to pick Diana’s pocket, and she decides to take him in as an errand boy for Françoise. 

That evening, Diana is called to Goody Alsop’s house. The Rede agree Diana needs teachers. Diana meets Marjorie Cooper, an earthwitch like Susanna, Elizabeth Jackson, a waterwitch, and Catherine Streeter, a firewitch. During next week’s crescent moon, they will form a barrier around Diana so she can cast a “forspell” that will reveal the nature of her power.

While walking with Annie and Jack at the market, Diana is cornered by Hubbard, who asks her about meeting with Goody Alsop. She deflects all his questions, but he says he can smell her secrets. When she gets home, Matthew smells Hubbard. He warns her never to get within striking distance of him.

Diana and Annie go to Mary’s, where Mary is excited to show her an alchemical creation called the arbor Dianæ, a formation of crystallized silver formed in mercury. Mary intuits that Diana is pregnant; since she doesn’t believe Matthew can be the father, she concludes Diana is pregnant by rape. Mary pledges to help her. 

That night, Diana wakes soaked in blood, feeling sharp cramps.

At a gathering of witches at Goody Alsop’s, every woman tells Diana the stories of their own miscarriages and lost children. For the second night in a row, Matthew comes home high, after having drank blood with opiates in it. Pierre arrives with the news that Agnes Sampson—another weaver—has been killed. Matthew is angry that his intervention on her behalf didn’t help.

The next evening, Matthew escorts Diana to Goody Alsop’s for her forspell. The gathering casts a complex spell around Diana, releasing her powers. Diana conjures a firedrake as her familiar, then a rowan tree to extinguish the firedrake’s flames. The tree’s roots connect Diana to another world, where she sees the goddess Diana, who has claimed her. When she returns to Goody Alsop’s house, the firedrake disappears in her chest. The witches tell Diana she can walk between the realms of life and death.

Later, Diana goes to Mary’s and looks at an alchemical manual. She realizes that an image she thought depicted a dragon depicts a firedrake, arranged in a moon-and-star pattern like the de Clermont crest. She asks Mary to sample her blood and mix it in an alchemical concoction.

With Goody Alsop, Diana works on identifying the threads that connect worlds and creating knots to perform magic weaving. 

George says he found an alchemical manuscript that could be Ashmole 782. It is in possession of John Dee, Queen Elizabeth’s astrologer. Dee agrees to show them the manuscript; Diana recognizes it as the Voynich manuscript, not Ashmole 782. Dee says that he received the manuscript from Emperor Rudolph, who employed Dee’s old assistant Edward Kelley to steal away a larger alchemical manuscript that once belonged to Roger Bacon. Hearing the description, Diana knows this book must be the Ashmole manuscript. Matthew tells Dee that he and Diana can take the Voynich and return it for Dee’s rightful book. 

When they return, they’re summoned urgently by Mary, who used Diana’s blood to make a new arbor Dianæ. Instead of silver, this one is stout and dark, like an oak tree. On a hunch, Matthew adds his own blood, which makes red fruit sprout on the tree.

Over the next few days, the chemical tree made by Diana and Matthew’s blood goes through multiple cycles of blossoms and flowers. One day, when Diana arrives home after practice with her gathering, she finds William Cecil. He advises her to return to Woodstock before Queen Elizabeth seeks revenge on her for marrying one of her favorites.

The next day, Matthew tells Diana they are summoned to Elizabeth’s court. The next morning, Mary arrives with dozens of gowns for Diana. When they meet Elizabeth, the queen is angry Matthew wed without her permission. She also wants to know why they met with Dee. She wants Dee’s old assistant, Kelley, back in England; she suspects he can make a philosopher’s stone. Matthew agrees to bring Kelley back if Elizabeth pledges to harbor the Scottish witches who are being persecuted. 

Elizabeth agrees but wants to keep Diana at court to ensure Matthew’s quick return. Unexpectedly, Mary enters to invoke a favor Elizabeth owes her. She asks that Diana go to Prague for her to get a special eyeglass. Elizabeth agrees.

Matthew wants to go back to their own time, but Diana thinks they’re too close to finding the manuscript; Goody Alsop says it will take weeks to learn the spell to go forward in time again. They prepare to go to the Holy Roman Empire.

In the present day, Philippe’s daughter, Verin de Clermont, finds a newspaper article about someone in Surrey finding an alchemical notebook belonging to Mary Sidney, which details the making of an arbor Dianæ. Verin calls Gallowglass, who urges her to keep a promise she made to Philippe on his deathbed. He told Verin and Gallowglass to “watch for signs” of “anomalous historical discoveries” (377). Verin hadn’t understood the context, but Gallowglass had. He’d watched Diana her entire life and kept her safe. They agree to meet at Sept-Tours the day after next.