The Reef

about. The diary, the amulet.”
    “Why are you telling me this, Matthew? Why go back over something so painful that can’t be changed?”
    “Because I know you won’t stay because I tell you to.”
    She withdrew her hand. “So it’s a play on my sympathies.”
    “It’s background. Scientists need background, facts and theories, right? I know you don’t believe we’ll find the Isabella.” His gaze held hers, measuring. “You’re not convinced we’ll ever find the amulet, or, if we do, that it’s anything but an interesting and valuable piece of antique jewelry.”
    “All right, that’s true. Nothing you’ve told me convinces me otherwise. I understand why you need to believe, but it doesn’t change the facts.”
    “But we’re not hunting facts, Tate.” He opened the box and handed her papers covered with cramped, hurried writing. “I don’t think you’ve forgotten that. If you have, maybe this will remind you.”
October 9, 1553
    In the morning they will kill me. I have only one night left on earth, and spend it alone. They have taken even my dear Colette from me. Though she went weeping, it is for the best. Not even her prayers, as pure and selfless as they are, can aid me now, and she would have suffered needlessly in this cell, waiting for dawn. Companionship. I have already learned to live without it. With Etienne’s death six long weeks ago, I lost not only my dearest companion, my love, my joy, but also my protector.
    They say I poisoned him, plying him with one of my witch brews. What fools they are. I would have given my life for his. Indeed, I am doing so. His illness was deep within, and beyond my powers to cure. So quickly it came on him, so violently, the fever, the pain. No potion, no prayer I devised could halt his death. And I as his wife am condemned. I, who once treated the ills and suffering of the village, am reviled as a murderess. And a witch. Those whose fevers I cooled, whose pains I eased have turned against me, shouting for my death like beasts howling at the moon.
    It is the count who leads them. Etienne’s father who hates and desires me. Does he watch from his castle window as they build the pyre that will be mydeathbed? I’m sure he does with his greedy eyes glinting and his thin, wicked fingers twisted in prayer. Though I will burn tomorrow, he will burn for eternity. A small but useful revenge.
    If I had succumbed to him, if I had betrayed my love even after his death and gone to the bed of Etienne’s father, perhaps I would live. So he promised me. I have faced the tortures of this damnable Christian court with more joy than that.
    I hear my jailers laughing. They are drunk with the excitement of tomorrow. But they do not laugh when they come into my cell. Their eyes are wide and frightened as they fork their fingers in the sign against witchcraft. Such fools to believe that such a small, pitiful gesture could stop true power.
    They have cut my hair. Etienne often called it his angel fire and ran his fingers through its length. It was my vanity, and even that is stripped from me. My flesh is wasting on my bones from sickness, scarred from their relentless tortures. For this one night, they will leave me in peace. That is their mistake.
    However weak my body now, my heart grows stronger. I will be with Etienne soon. And that is comfort. I no longer weep at the thought of leaving a world that has become cruel, that uses God’s name to torture and condemn and murder. I will face the flames, and I swear on Etienne’s soul that I will not cry out for mercy from the merciless or call out to the God they use to destroy me.
    Colette has smuggled the amulet to me. They will find it and steal it, of course. But for tonight I wear it around my neck, the heavy gold chain, its bright tear-shaped ruby framed in more gold and etched with Etienne’s name and mine, studded with more rubies and diamonds. Blood and tears. I close my hand around it and feel Etienne close to me, see his face.
    And with it, I curse the fates that killed us, that will kill the child only I and Colette know stirswithin me. A child who will never know life, with its pleasures and its pains.
    For Etienne and our child I gather what strength I have, I call on whatever forces listen, loose whatever power I hold. May those who condemn me suffer as we have suffered. May those who would take from me all that I value never know joy. I curse whoever wrests this amulet from me, this last earthly link