A Discovery of Witches (43 page)

“Matthew.” Ysabeau’s voice held a note of caution.
“Le chatoiement.”

“I know,” he murmured. The muscles in my shoulders tensed with concern. “Trust me,” he said quietly into my ear. “I’ve got you.”

My eyes remained tightly closed, and I sighed happily. We continued to swirl together. Matthew gently released me, spinning me out to the end of his fingers, then rolled me back along his arm until I came to rest, my back tight against his chest. The music stopped.

“Open your eyes,” he said softly.

My eyelids slowly lifted. The feeling of floating remained. Dancing was better than I had expected it to be—at least it was with a partner who’d been dancing for more than a millennium and never stepped on your toes.

I tilted my face up to thank him, but his was much closer than expected.

“Look down,” Matthew said.

Turning my head in the other direction revealed that my toes were dangling several inches above the floor. Matthew released me. He wasn’t holding me up.

I was holding me up.

The air was holding me up.

With that realization the weight returned to the lower half of my body. Matthew gripped both elbows to keep my feet from smashing into the floor.

From her seat by the fire, Marthe hummed a tune under her breath. Ysabeau’s head whipped around, eyes narrowed. Matthew smiled at me reassuringly, while I concentrated on the uncanny feeling of the earth under my feet. Had the ground always seemed so alive? It was as if a thousand tiny hands were waiting under the soles of my shoes to catch me or give me a push.

“Was it fun?” Matthew asked as the last notes of Marthe’s song faded, eyes gleaming.

“It was,” I answered, laughing, after considering his question.

“I hoped it would be. You’ve been practicing for years. Now maybe you’ll ride with your eyes open for a change.” He caught me up in an embrace full of happiness and possibility.

Ysabeau began to sing the same song Marthe had been humming.

“
Go away, go away, jealous ones,”
Matthew repeated as the final echo of his mother’s voice faded, “
let us dance together.
”

I laughed again. “With you I’ll dance. But until I figure out how this flying business works, there will be no other partners.”

“Properly speaking, you were floating, not flying,” Matthew corrected me.

“Floating, flying—whatever you call it, it would be best not to do it with strangers.”

“Agreed,” he said.

Marthe had vacated the sofa for a chair near Ysabeau. Matthew and I sat together, our hands still entwined.

“This was her first time?” Ysabeau asked him, her voice genuinely puzzled.

“Diana doesn’t use magic,
Maman,
except for little things,” he explained.

“She is full of power, Matthew. Her witch’s blood sings in her veins. She should be able to use it for big things, too.”

He frowned. “It’s hers to use or not.”

“Enough of such childishness,” she said, turning her attention to me. “It is time for you to grow up, Diana, and accept responsibility for who you are.”

Matthew growled softly.

“Do not growl at me, Matthew de Clermont! I am saying what needs to be said.”

“You’re telling her what to do. It’s not your job.”

“Nor yours, my son!” Ysabeau retorted.

“Excuse me!” My sharp tone caught their attention, and the de Clermonts, mother and son, stared at me. “It’s my decision whether—and how—to use my magic. But,” I said, turning to Ysabeau, “it can’t be ignored any longer. It seems to be bubbling out of me. I need to learn how to control my power, at the very least.”

Ysabeau and Matthew continued to stare. Finally Ysabeau nodded. Matthew did, too.

We continued to sit by the fire until the logs burned down. Matthew danced with Marthe, and each of them broke into song occasionally when a piece of music reminded them of another night, by another fire. But I didn’t dance again, and Matthew didn’t press me.

Finally he stood. “I am taking the only one of us who needs her sleep up to bed.”

I stood as well, smoothing my trousers against my thighs. “Good night, Ysabeau. Good night, Marthe. Thank you both for a lovely dinner and a surprising evening.”

Marthe gave me a smile in return. Ysabeau did her best but managed only a tight grimace.

Matthew let me lead the way and put his hand gently against the small of my back as we climbed the stairs.

“I might read for a bit,” I said, turning to face him when we reached his study.

He was directly behind me, so close that the faint, ragged sound of his breath was audible. He took my face in his hands.

“What spell have you put on me?” He searched my face. “It’s not simply your eyes—though they do make it impossible for me to think straight—or the fact you smell like honey.” He buried his face in my neck, the fingers of one hand sliding into my hair while the other drifted down my back, pulling my hips toward him.

My body softened into his, as if it were meant to fit there.

“It’s your fearlessness,” he murmured against my skin, “and the way you move without thinking, and the shimmer you give off when you concentrate—or when you fly.”

My neck arched, exposing more flesh to his touch. Matthew slowly turned my face toward him, his thumb seeking out the warmth of my lips.

“Did you know that your mouth puckers when you sleep? You look as though you might be displeased with your dreams, but I prefer to think you wish to be kissed.” He sounded more French with each word that he spoke.

Aware of Ysabeau’s disapproving presence downstairs, as well as her acute, vampiric hearing, I tried to pull away. It wasn’t convincing, and Matthew’s arms tightened.

“Matthew, your mother—”

He gave me no chance to complete my sentence. With a soft, satisfied sound, he deliberately fitted his lips to mine and kissed me, gently but thoroughly, until my entire body—not just my hands—was tingling. I kissed him back, feeling a simultaneous sense of floating and falling until I had no clear awareness of where my body ended and his began. His mouth drifted to my cheeks and eyelids. When it brushed against my ear, I gasped. Matthew’s lips curved into a smile, and he pressed them once more against my own.

“Your lips are as red as poppies, and your hair is so alive,” he said when he was quite finished kissing me with an intensity that left me breathless.

“What is it with you and my hair? Why anyone with a head of hair like yours would be impressed with this,” I said, grabbing a fistful of it and pulling, “is beyond me. Ysabeau’s hair looks like satin, so does Marthe’s. Mine is a mess—every color of the rainbow and badly behaved as well.”

“That’s why I love it,” Matthew said, gently freeing the strands. “It’s imperfect, just like life. It’s not vampire hair, all polished and flawless. I like that you’re not a vampire, Diana.”

“And I like that you
are
a vampire, Matthew.”

A shadow flitted across his eyes, gone in a moment.

“I like your strength,” I said, kissing him with the same enthusiasm as he had kissed me. “I like your intelligence. Sometimes I even like your bossiness. But most of all”—I rubbed the tip of my nose gently against his—“I like the way you smell.”

“You do?”

“I do.” My nose went into the hollow between his collarbones, which I was fast learning was the spiciest, sweetest part of him.

“It’s late. You need your rest.” He released me reluctantly.

“Come to bed with me.”

His eyes widened with surprise at the invitation, and the blood coursed to my face.

Matthew brought my hand to his heart. It beat once, powerfully. “I will come up,” he said, “but not to stay. We have time, Diana. You’ve known me for only a few weeks. There’s no need to rush.”

Spoken like a vampire.

He saw my dejection and drew me closer for another lingering kiss. “A promise,” he said, when he was finished, “of what’s to come. In time.”

It
was
time. But my lips were alternately freezing and burning, making me wonder for a fleeting second if I was as ready as I thought.

Upstairs, the room was ablaze with candles and warm from the fire. How Marthe had managed to get up here, change dozens of candles, and light them so that they would still be burning at bedtime was a mystery, but the room didn’t have a single electrical outlet, so I was doubly grateful for her efforts.

Changing in the bathroom behind a partially closed door, I listened to Matthew’s plans for the next day. These involved a long walk, another long ride, and more work in the study.

I agreed to all of it—provided that the work came first. The alchemical manuscript was calling to me, and I was eager to get a closer look at it.

I got into Matthew’s vast four-poster, and he tightened the sheets around my body before pinching out the candles.

“Sing to me,” I said, watching his long fingers fearlessly move through the flames. “An old song—one Marthe likes.” Her wicked fondness for love songs had not gone unnoticed.

He was quiet for a few moments while he walked through the room, snuffing the candles and trailing shadows behind him as the room fell into darkness. He began to sing in his rich baritone.

The song was full of yearning, and teetered on the edge of sadness. By the time he returned to my side, the song was finished. Matthew left one candle burning next to the bed.

“What do the words mean?” I reached for his hand.

“‘
Not dying nor living nor healing, there is no pain in my sickness, for I am not kept from her love.’”
He leaned down and kissed me on the forehead. “‘
I don’t know if I will ever have it, for all the mercy that makes me flourish or decay is in her power.’
”

“Who wrote that?” I asked, struck by the aptness of the words when sung by a vampire.

“My father wrote it for Ysabeau. Someone else took the credit, though,” Matthew said, his eyes gleaming and his smile bright and content. He hummed the song under his breath as he went downstairs. I lay in his bed, alone, and watched the last candle burn until it guttered out.

Chapter 21

A
vampire holding a breakfast tray greeted me the next morning after my shower.

“I told Marthe you wanted to work this morning,” Matthew explained, lifting the cover that was keeping the food warm.

“You two are spoiling me.” I unfolded the napkin waiting on a nearby chair.

“I don’t think your character is in any real danger.” Matthew stooped and gave me a lingering kiss, his eyes smoky. “Good morning. Did you sleep well?”

“Very well.” I took the plate from his hands, my cheeks reddening at the memory of the invitation I’d extended to him last night. There was still a twinge of hurt when I recalled his gentle rebuff, but this morning’s kiss confirmed that we had slipped past the limits of friendship and were moving in a new direction.

After my breakfast we headed downstairs, turned on our computers, and got to work. Matthew had left a perfectly ordinary nineteenth-century copy of an early English translation of the Vulgate Bible on the table next to his manuscript.

“Thank you,” I called over my shoulder, holding it up.

“I found it downstairs. Apparently the one I have isn’t good enough for you.” He grinned.

“I absolutely refuse to treat a Gutenberg Bible as a reference book, Matthew.” My voice came out more sternly than anticipated, making me sound like a schoolmarm.

“I know the Bible backwards and forwards. If you have a question, you could just ask me,” he suggested.

“I’m not using you as a reference book either.”

“Suit yourself,” he said with a shrug and another smile.

With my computer at my side and an alchemical manuscript before me, I was soon absorbed in reading, analyzing, and recording my ideas. There was one distracting incident when I asked Matthew for something to weight down the book’s pages while I typed. He rummaged around and found a bronze medal with the likeness of Louis XIV on it and a small wooden foot that he claimed came from a German angel. He wouldn’t surrender the two objects without sureties for their return. Finally he was satisfied by several more kisses.

Aurora Consurgens
was one of the most beautiful texts in the alchemical tradition, a meditation on the female figure of Wisdom as well as an exploration of the chemical reconciliation of opposing natural forces. The text in Matthew’s copy was nearly identical to the copies I’d consulted in Zurich, Glasgow, and London. But the illustrations were quite different.

The artist, Bourgot Le Noir, had been a true master of her craft. Each illumination was precise and beautifully executed. But her talent did not lie simply in technical mastery. Her depictions of the female characters showed a different sensibility. Bourgot’s Wisdom was full of strength, but there was a softness to her as well. In the first illumination, where Wisdom shielded the personification of the seven metals in her cloak, she bore an expression of fierce, maternal pride.

There were two illuminations—just as Matthew had promised—that weren’t included in any known copy of
Aurora Consurgens.
Both appeared in the final parable, devoted to the chemical wedding of gold and silver. The first accompanied words spoken by the female principle in alchemical change. Often represented as a queen dressed in white with emblems of the moon to show her association with silver, she had been transformed by Bourgot into a beautiful, terrifying creature with silvery snakes instead of hair, her face shadowed like a moon eclipsed by the sun. Silently I read the accompanying text, translating the Latin into English:
“Turn to me with all your heart. Do not refuse me because I am dark and shadowed. The fire of the sun has altered me. The seas have encompassed me. The earth has been corrupted because of my work. Night fell over the earth when I sank into the miry deep, and my substance was hidden.”