“Is that what you were looking for?” Emily eyed the scrap. It didn’t seem worth tearing the room apart.
Ysabeau’s answer was clear from the way she handled it. She carefully unfolded it to reveal a five-inch square of thick paper, both sides covered in tiny characters.
“That’s written in some kind of code,” said Sarah. She swung her zebrastriped reading glasses onto her nose from the cord around her neck to get a better look.
“Not a code—Greek.” Ysabeau’s hands trembled as she smoothed the paper flat.
“What does it say?” Sarah asked.
“Sarah!” Emily scolded. “It’s private.”
“It’s from Philippe. He saw them,” Ysabeau breathed, her eyes racing across the text. Her hand went to her mouth, relief vying with disbelief.
Sarah waited for the vampire to finish reading. It took two minutes, which was ninety seconds longer than she would have given anyone else. “Well?”
“They were with him for the holidays. ‘On the morning of the Christians’ holy celebration, I said farewell to your son. He is happy at last, mated to a woman who walks in the footsteps of the goddess and is worthy of his love,’” Ysabeau read aloud.
“Are you sure he means Matthew and Diana?” Emily found the phrasing oddly formal and vague for an exchange between husband and wife.
“Yes. Matthew was always the child we worried over, though his brothers and sisters got into far worse predicaments. My one wish was to see Matthew happy.”
“And the reference to the ‘woman who walks in the footsteps of the goddess’ is pretty clear,” Sarah agreed. “He couldn’t very well give her name and identify Diana as a witch. What if someone else had found it?”
“There is more,” Ysabeau continued. “‘Fate still has the power to surprise us, bright one. I fear there are difficult times ahead for all of us. I will do what I can, in what time remains to me, to ensure your safety and that of our children and grandchildren, those whose blessings we already enjoy and those as yet unborn.’”
Sarah swore. “Unborn, not unmade?”
“Yes,” Ysabeau whispered. “Philippe always chose his words carefully.”
“So he was trying to tell us something about Diana and Matthew.”
Ysabeau sank onto the sofa. “A long, long time ago, there were rumors about creatures who were different—immortal but powerful, too. Around the time the covenant was first signed, some claimed that a witch gave birth to a baby who wept tears of blood like a vampire. Whenever the child did so, fierce winds blew in from the sea.”
“I’ve never heard that before,” Emily said, frowning.
“It was dismissed as a myth—a story created to engender fear among creatures. Few among us now would remember, and even fewer would believe it possible.” Ysabeau touched the paper in her lap. “But Philippe knew it was true. He held the child, you see, and knew if for what it was.”
“Which was what?” Sarah said, stunned.
“A manjasang born of a witch. The poor child was starving. The witch’s family took the baby boy from her and refused to feed him blood on the grounds that if he was forced to take only milk, it would keep him from turning into one of us.”
“Surely Matthew knows this story,” Emily said. “You would have told him for his research, if not for Diana’s sake.”
Ysabeau shook her head. “It was not my tale to tell.”
“You and your secrets,” Sarah said bitterly.
“And what of your secrets, Sarah?” Ysabeau cried. “Do you really believe that the witches— creatures like Satu and Peter Knox—know nothing about this manjasang child and its mother?”
“Stop it, both of you,” Emily said sharply. “If the story is true, and other creatures know it, then Diana is in grave danger. So is Sophie.”
“Her parents were both witches, but she is a daemon,” Sarah said, thinking of the young couple who had appeared on her doorstep in New York days before Halloween. No one understood how the two daemons fit into this mystery.
“So is Sophie’s husband, but their daughter will be a witch. She and Nathaniel are further proof that we don’t understand how witches, daemons, and vampires reproduce and pass their abilities on to their children,” Emily said, worried.
“Sophie and Nathaniel aren’t the only creatures who need to stay clear of the Congregation. So do Diana and Matthew. It’s a good thing they’re safely in the past and not here.” Sarah was grim.
“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.