She returns quickly to the design, her needle flashing in and out of the linen at speed, following the form of her under-drawn lines closely with speckling stitch, to create shadows under the roses. She wants to show him this section completed, having copied the pattern from those same carved and painted roses in red and white twining over her head here in this, his favorite chamber. She is to work only the red roses, he has directed her; the time of the white rose is all to come. And she must find a place for the pale gray silk-moth, at once the shadow of our mortality and symbol of the transcended state to which we may aspire—“in your pleasing couching stitch, Kate, taught you by Mistress Goodwin”—he has told her. And so she has assented, and the moth grows under her skillful hand, a rebus for the precious silk of our soul, and the dark-faced angel of Saturn who watches over alchemists. “And the dark lady,” she whispers.

A book falls to the floor as he rouses himself, and she lights at his side like a bee on a flower. “Rest longer, Father.” She adjusts a small cushion and replaces the counterpane for him, noticing his dear face shows the color of parchment; his eyes are looking at her, she thinks, yet not seeing. She is happy when he closes them again, a line at his mouth trying to smile some reassurance at her. And she slips back to her chair in the light, picks up her frame.

“The words will be as the numbers, Kate.” She starts, and pricks a finger on hearing him speak with closed eyes, surprising her. “Your return journey will retrace the steps through the labyrinth.”

“Yes, Father.” She smiles at him without lifting her head from her work. He would be talking to his last hour. “You’ve told me. The numbers must count downward again, from the end of the Tablet of Jupiter; and the first number I use shall be thirteen, as the day of your birth.”

“It is just so, Kate. And your chosen word will be thirteenth in the line, though it is but ‘and’; and your daughter—God willing you shall have one—must choose lines to give her the proper word in the eighth place, and her daughter in the twelfth.”

“Or if it be not me, Father—for you know I have left it late to marry in this life—the task shall pass to my niece, your granddaughter Margarita. She shall choose lines for me, to render ‘Adonis’ in the eighth place, as you ask.” She looks up at him from her broidery, unable to upbraid fate for demanding she nurse her father as her mother had wished in these last years. Now more than twenty-six, she knows her hopes of marriage are not high.