Shadow of Night

Matthew is a main character and Diana’s love interest. Though he is known as Matthew Clairmont in the 21st century, and “Matthew Roydon” in 16th-century England, his true family name is de Clermont. Matthew struggles with two internal conflicts through the course of the novel: His penchant for keeping secrets from Diana and his inability to forgive himself.

Walter makes a fitting observation about Matthew: “You keep too many secrets and have too many enemies to take a wife. And yet you’ve done so anyways” (24). At one point, Matthew’s secret keeping makes Gallowglass exclaim, “By all that is holy, Matthew, I’ve seen you do terrible things, but how could you keep this from your wife, too?” (73).

Some of Matthew’s secrecy is born from his nature as a vampire, and some is born from his unresolved trauma. He blames himself for his first wife Blanca’s miscarriages, which he calls “filling her with death” (139). He also blames himself for not being able to save Blanca and their son, Lucas, from illness. This led him to try “to give my own life, too. But God didn’t want it” (140). He tried to die by suicide but became a vampire. He thinks this is punishment for his “sins” (140), which he has not forgiven himself for. He also carries guilt about Philippe’s death, though he killed him at Philippe’s own request.

By the end of the novel, Matthew begins to see himself anew, particularly as it relates to being a father figure. He is attached to Jack, coaching him through his nightmares and the “monsters” that trouble him. He tells Jack that “[y]our monsters have frightened mine away” (390). That is, caring for Jack has helped Matthew release his own trauma.

Philippe is an important side character and Matthew’s stepfather. Philippe looks “leonine” and like a “Greek god” (106), with dark brows, golden eyes, and golden-brown hair.

Though Philippe is intimidating and can be ruthless, he is also imminently fair. He does three important things for Diana. First, he urges her to know more about Matthew’s past, which is how she learns about Blanca and Lucas. Then, he takes her to an altar for Diana—known as Artemis to Greeks—to receive a blessing for her marriage to Matthew, which he hosts. Third, he makes her his “blood-sworn” daughter, effectively adopting her as his kin before she marries Matthew. Philippe does this because Diana has won his love with her own respect and intelligence. Of all the men in the 16th century, Philippe bears the most respect and fewest gender-based assumptions toward Diana.

Philippe somehow intuits that Matthew is the one who will kill him in the future, out of love for him. Matthew tells Diana privately about Philippe’s death. Diana calls Matthew’s actions “an act of mercy” (142), and Philippe tells Matthew “te absolvo”: he forgives him. Philippe is as intuitive and kind as he is intimidating, and he uses this moment to give Matthew the closure he needs, so he can begin forgiving himself.

Though Gallowglass is present in many scenes of the novel in both England and Prague, the active role he plays in the 16th-century plot is relatively minor. He mostly watches out for Diana silently, sometimes pretending to be her servant so he can secretly serve as her bodyguard. He has “chilly blue eyes” and looks like “a Viking on the brink of a killing spree” (59). His name, Gallowglass, is the generic name for a branch of Norse mercenary warrior. While Gallowglass is capable of violence to defend his family, he loves Diana and is her staunch defender.

Gallowglass’s most important role is one he plays between the 16th and 21st century: Philippe told Gallowglass to “watch for signs: stories of a young American witch with great power, the name Bishop, alchemy, and then a rash of anomalous historical discoveries” (377). Philippe also gives the instruction to Matthew’s sister Verin, but unlike Verin, “Gallowglass knew” why Philippe asked them to do this (378), having spent time with Matthew and Diana in the past. Unbeknownst to Diana, Gallowglass has been looking after her for her entire life. He “tried to keep his distance, but sometimes he had to interfere” (378), keeping her safe so she could one day meet Matthew and travel to the past.

Watching after Diana after not seeing her for hundreds of years was torturous for Gallowglass, who loves her and calls her “Auntie,” and had to refrain “from rushing down the stairs of Yale’s bell tower, throwing his arms around Professor Bishop, and telling her how glad he was to see her after so many years” (378). Since this version of Diana hadn’t yet traveled back in time, he had to watch from afar.

Kit, both historically and in the novel, is an English playwright and “intelligencer” famous for writing the play Doctor Faustus. In the novel, he is also a daemon. This lends his play an air of irony, as it revolves around an academic who makes a deal with a devil. Though he is Matthew’s friend, he occupies the role of an antagonist toward Diana. Diana knows intuitively that he dislikes her because she is a witch and because he is “in love” with Matthew (5). In his more vulnerable moments, he begs Diana to leave Matthew for him, and claims he can only write poetry in honor of Matthew.

Kit does two main things that endanger Diana: The first is to incite rumors in town after she arrives that she is a witch who is causing the townspeople to fall ill. He genuinely believes that Diana has “enchanted everyone in this house” (77), so he tries to get a priest to persecute her. Later, after Matthew and Diana get back from Prague, he enlists Matthew’s sister to kill Diana on the same grounds, though Matthew and Walter stop them. Kit is driven “wild with anger” and jealousy (498), which motivates his antagonism.

The School of Night is a historical group of preeminent male poets, scientists, and political thinkers. In addition to Kit, its members included George Chapman, a poet, Walter Raleigh, a writer and explorer, Thomas Harriot, a scientist, and Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, who served as their patron. Little is known about the School of Night member Matthew Roydon, a poet, so Harkness imagines this as Matthew de Clermont. In the novel, these men are human, human, daemon, human, and vampire respectively.

Other than Kit, Diana gets along well with the School of Night. While Kit is not correct that Diana has enchanted the men, he is correct in his assessment that they “dote on her like a sister” (77). They use their creative power to think up a convincing backstory for her, and they use their influence to provide connections and audiences with important people that will help Diana and Matthew on their mission.

Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke, is a side character who acts as Diana’s friend, mentor, and confidant. Initially, Mary doesn’t want to talk about the fact that Diana and Matthew are creatures who work with magic. She believes her alchemical practices do not demonstrate magic, but God’s miracles. She and Diana end up becoming friends and Diana helps Mary in her laboratory as her assistant.

In one of the historical anomalies, Mary’s laboratory notebook is discovered. A news article says that they cannot “identify the man who helped” in Mary’s laboratory (374). Historians make a false assumption that her assistant must have been a man, when in fact Mary’s lab was staffed by two women. Though Mary is Diana’s age, in her early thirties, she has teenage children. When Diana becomes pregnant, Mary intuits this and helps Diana, including after she miscarries. Mary also lost a daughter and understands Diana’s pain.

Mary’s alchemical experiments create the arbor Dianæ, thought to be the first step to the philosopher’s stone. She makes a second version with Diana and Matthew’s blood. Thus, Mary’s alchemical experiments help prove to Matthew and Diana that their genetic combination can produce life.

Goody Alsop is a lower-class woman who is a witch and a weaver. She acts as Diana’s mentor, along with the rest of her “gathering,” another word for a coven. She teaches Diana about weaving and helps her cast the forspell that reveals her firedrake familiar. Though it is risky to help Diana, who has drawn the attention of all local creatures, Goody Alsop knows that she must pass her knowledge as a weaver on. She is the only weaver left in Britain.

Before Diana goes back to her own time, Goody Alsop shows her how to make “a loop with no beginning and no ending” (541), symbolizing eternity. Goody Alsop preserved the knowledge of this knot, though it “is impossible for me to make it” and her “own teacher could not make the knot either” (540-41). They passed on the knowledge regardless, “in hope that a weaver such as you might come along” (541). Though Goody Alsop technically lived long before Diana, she waited her whole life to pass her knowledge onto her. Unlike Gallowglass, whose parting from Diana is made easier because she knows she will see him again, she and Goody Alsop know their parting is final. Goody Alsop knows that she will not live to see the future she is helping Diana preserve, and when they part, she says her “heart will be heavy” (542).

Annie is a minor character. When Diana makes a deal with Hubbard, he sends Annie, who is 14, to work as a servant in Diana’s house in exchange for shelter. Annie’s aunt, Susanna, is also meant to help Diana learn about her powers, but Susanna can’t take Annie in because her husband bears “prejudices” against the circumstances of Annie’s birth, as her mother was unmarried. Annie said she was not a “virtuous woman” (269). Hubbard found Annie next to her dead mother’s body in an undercroft, giving her the surname Undercroft.

As a lower-class orphan, Annie has “a life that promised little in the way of comfort or hope” (269). Diana eventually drops the pretense of Annie being a servant and treats her as a daughter. She teaches her to read and do basic math. In the last chapter, the reader sees that this lands Annie in the employment of Will Shakespeare, which is promising for her future success and prospects.

Jack is the second orphan that Diana and Matthew take in. They predict that he is seven or eight. Diana caught him trying to pick her pockets. Against Matthew’s will, she takes him home, feeds and clothes him, and gives him employment. As with Annie, she quickly drops the pretense that he is an errand boy and treats him like a son.

Jack particularly bonds with Matthew. He has nightmares when he isn’t with Matthew, usually about the mistreatment he has received through his life. Matthew stays up with Jack when he has nightmares. He shows him how to draw his “monsters” so they stop bothering him in his sleep. Through his treatment of Jack, Matthew demonstrates his paternal side.