A Discovery of Witches - Deborah Harkness [306]
I shut the door and leaned against it, groaning. “My feet are killing me.” I unlaced my boots and kicked them off, tossing the hat onto the steps.
“The page from Ashmole 782 is gone,” Matthew announced quietly, leaning against the banister post.
“Mom’s letter?”
“Also gone.”
“It’s time, then.” I pulled myself away from the old door, and the house moaned softly.
“Make yourself some tea and meet me in the family room. I’ll get the bag.”
He waited for me on the couch, the soft-sided briefcase sitting closed at his feet and the silver chess piece and gold earring lying on the coffee table. I handed him a glass of wine and sat alongside. “That’s the last of the wine.”
Matthew eyed my tea. “And that’s the last of the tea for you as well.” He ran his hands nervously through his hair and took a deep breath. “I would have liked to go sometime closer, when there was less death and disease,” he began, sounding tentative, “and somewhere closer, with tea and plumbing. But I think you’ll like it once you get used to it.”
I still didn’t know when or where “it” was.
Matthew bent down to undo the lock. When he opened the bag and saw what was on top, he let out a sigh of relief. “Thank God. I was afraid Ysabeau might have sent the wrong one.”
“You haven’t opened the bag yet?” I was amazed at his self-control.
“No.” Matthew lifted out a book. “I didn’t want to think about it too much. Just in case.”
He handed me the book. It had black leather bindings with simple silver borders.
“It’s beautiful,” I said, running my fingers over its surface.
“Open it.” Matthew looked anxious.
“Will I know where we’re going once I do?” Now that the third object was in my hands, I felt strangely reluctant.
“I think so.”
The front cover creaked open, and the unmistakable scent of old paper and ink rose in the air. There were no marbled endpapers, no bookplates, no additional blank sheets such as eighteenth- and nineteenth-century collectors put in their books. And the covers were heavy, indicating that wooden boards were concealed beneath the smoothly stretched leather.
Two lines were written in thick black ink on the first page, in a tight, spiky script of the late sixteenth century.
“‘To my own sweet Matt,’ ” I read aloud. “‘Who ever loved, that loved not at first sight?’”
The dedication was unsigned, but it was familiar.
“Shakespeare?” I lifted my eyes to Matthew.
“Not originally,” he replied, his face tense. “Will was something of a magpie when it came to collecting other people’s words.”
I slowly turned the page.
It wasn’t a printed book but a manuscript, written in the same bold hand as the inscription. I looked closer to make out the words.
Settle thy studies, Faustus, and begin
To sound the depth of that thou wilt profess.
“Jesus,” I said hoarsely, clapping the book shut. My hands were shaking.
“He’ll laugh like a fool when he hears that was your reaction,” Matthew commented.
“Is this what I think it is?”
“Probably.”
“How did you get it?”
“Kit gave it to me.” Matthew touched the cover lightly. “Faustus was always my favorite.”
Every historian of alchemy knew Christopher Marlowe’s play about Dr. Faustus, who sold his soul to the devil in exchange for magical knowledge and power. I opened the book and ran my fingers over the inscription while Matthew continued.
“Kit and I were friends—good friends—in a dangerous time when there were few creatures you could trust. We raised a certain amount of hell and eyebrows. When Sophie pulled the chess piece I’d lost to him from her pocket, it seemed clear that England was our destination.”
The feeling my fingertips detected in the inscription was not friendship, however. This was a lover’s dedication.
“Were you in love with him, too?” I asked quietly.
“No,” Matthew said shortly. “I loved Kit, but not the way you mean, and not in the way he wanted. Left to Kit, things would have been different. But it wasn’t up to him, and we were never more