Shadow of Night

Rudolf sends Diana a large gold-and-silver statue of her namesake goddess in the nude. Matthew warns Diana that Rudolf is a collector of people as well as objects.

Diana and Gallowglass attend mass to thank the emperor. After the service, they are barraged by noblemen who have been tasked with making Diana expensive gifts or painting her portrait on the emperor’s command. Over the following weeks, Gallowglass takes her to all her engagements and shows her the palace. The only place they can’t access is the tower where Kelley resides, trying to make the philosopher’s stone.

The local witches Diana meets at the market get her a meeting at the Kelley household. Matthew questions Kelley about the book. Kelley claims he doesn’t know where it currently is, but he showed it to a rabbi named Loew, who attempted to decipher it.

Matthew and Diana visit Rabbi Loew. Matthew has great respect for the rabbi and tells him the truth about Diana’s origin and mission. Loew says Kelley stole the text from Dee to give to Rudolf. He confirms there is a weaver in Prague who has been waiting for Diana to seek him out.

On the way to see the weaver, Diana asks Loew what the embroidered gold ring on his clothes is. He says that local authorities make Jewish people wear markers so Christians can identify them. He introduces her to the weaver, Abraham, whose familiar is the golem that has been seen in the city. She also briefly meets a vampire named Herr Benjamin Fuchs. Diana and Abraham exchange stories about how they make spells. Abraham tells her the manuscript she is looking for will “come to you, if only you ask for it” (426).

When Diana and Matthew get back home, Matthew questions Diana about her afternoon. She is annoyed that he only tolerates her magic and autonomy. They have sex for the first time since her miscarriage. After, she still worries he’ll never stop pursuing her. She uses air powers to throw him away from her, reversing their power dynamic and asking him what scares him about her power. He leaves.

Rudolf suggests they put on a masque. To avoid being cast as Rudolf’s love interest, Diana suggests a play in which Rudolf plays Zeus, Diana plays her namesake goddess, and Matthew plays Endymion. 

Later at home, Matthew and Diana argue, prompting Gallowglass to leave the house with the children. He tells Matthew and Diana that they frighten Jack when they argue, and Gallowglass will take the children both back to London if they don’t sort out their conflicts. Diana is angry that Matthew won’t stop trying to control her. He tears her bodice and confesses he has an “unspeakable urge to possess [her] body and soul in ways that no warmblood can fathom” (443). Diana unclothes, urging him to drink from her heart vein if it stops his “incessant need to hunt down what you imagine to be my secrets” (445).

After drinking from Diana’s heart vein, he understands her better. They have sex. Afterward, at Matthew’s urging, Diana uses her powers to look at the threads that connect them, trying to read his mind like he read hers. She sees that Herr Fuchs is Matthew’s son, Benjamin, who previously disappeared. Matthew recognizes that Benjamin has his blood rage and is dangerous; he will warn Gallowglass and Philippe of his reappearance.

Diana feels that, with Matthew drinking from her heart vein and her using her “witch’s kiss” to see his thoughts, their marriage has truly begun. Matthew’s suspicion and short temper largely dissolve.

They put on the masque at Rudolf’s court. Rudolf loves Diana’s performance and says he’ll grant one favor. She asks to see Roger Bacon’s book. Several days later, they’re summoned to court. In his room of treasures, Rudolf gives Diana a pendant of a dragon strangling itself with its own tail, arranged in the shape of an ouroboros, the de Clermont family crest. The gift is a “declaration of war” against Matthew’s family. Matthew deftly turns the conversation to the manuscript, which is not yet in the room.

Rudolf orders Kelley to enter with the manuscript. Rudolf watches Diana as she pages through the book, which she knows is the Ashmole manuscript. The pages that are missing in the 21st century are present. The first shows a tree much like the arbor Dianæ made with Diana and Matthew’s blood, but it is made up of hundreds of miniature bodies. The next image is one Diana knows, as it was removed and sent to her parents: a phoenix’s wings enfolding a chemical wedding. The next missing image is of two intertwined dragons. The next image is one Diana saw in Oxford, but there, the text was disguised by a spell, while now it is visible. Diana is unable to read it, as both Kelley and Dee were before her.

With her weaving powers, she sees threads shaped like a double helix connecting the manuscript and Kelley. Kelley begins to act erratically, shouting things about being connected to the book. Diana sees threads curl out and connect both her and Matthew to the book. Matthew urges them to leave, against Rudolf’s exclamations. Gallowglass arrives to escort them away. Diana doesn’t want to leave the manuscript behind, but Matthew says she needs to get the children ready to leave while he goes back for the book.

Diana realizes that Ashmole 782’s pages are vellum made from vampire, witch, and daemon skin. Matthew and Gallowglass tell Diana that the pendant Rudolf gave her bears the mark of the Order of the Defeated Dragon, who hate the Knights of Lazarus. Diana recalls she saw Benjamin with the same insignia. Since she saw Benjamin, they haven’t been able to find him.

When Matthew and Gallowglass leave and return with the book. They said they heard Kelley and the book conversing, before Kelley started ripping pages out. Gallowglass quickly got the book, but the three first pages are missing again. They leave Prague immediately. As they sail, Matthew determines that the book is bound with hair, the ink is made from blood, and the gilt from bones of creatures. Diana is seasick; she thinks she is pregnant again.

In the modern day, the witch and Diana’s antagonist in A Discovery of Witches, Peter Knox, goes to Prague to respond to a tip from a mole working at a monastery archive there. The man shows Knox a letter from Rabbi Loew to a man named Benjamin, written in 1609. It details how Kelley took three pages from the Book of Life before it was stolen from Rudolf’s court. Kelley gave Loew one page but wouldn’t say to whom he gave the other two pages. Loew gave his page to Abraham, and it vanished when Abraham died.

With the dates on the letter, Knox can tell that the events Loew describes happened in spring 1591. Knox calls Gerbert, a vampire in the Congregation, to ask him who Benjamin is. Gerbert says he is Matthew’s son, but Knox has never heard of him because Benjamin disowned his family. Knox wants to find Benjamin and learn what he knows. He wants to start at Sept-Tours, where Gerbert says Marcus is gathering witches, daemons, and vampires, all demanding the Congregation put an end to the covenant that forbids inter-creature relationships.