A Discovery of Witches (91 page)

“Extra sensitivity,” Matthew said, “as if you’re part vampire.” He bent and put his lips against my pulse.

“Oh,” I gasped, taken aback at the intensity of feeling.

Mindful of the time, I buttoned myself into the black dress. With a braid down my back, I might have stepped out of a photograph from the turn of the nineteenth century.

“Too bad we’re not timewalking to World War I,” Matthew said, pulling at the sleeves of the dress. “You’d make a convincing schoolmistress circa 1912 in that getup.”

“Not with these on.” I sat on the bed and started pulling on the candy-striped stockings.

Matthew roared with laughter and begged me to put the hat on immediately.

“I’ll set fire to myself,” I protested. “Wait until the jack-o’-lanterns are lit.”

We went outside with matches, thinking we could light the pumpkins the human way. A breeze had kicked up, though, which made it difficult to strike the matches and impossible to keep the candles illuminated.

“Damn it,” I swore. “Sophie’s work shouldn’t go to waste.”

“Can you use a spell?” Matthew said, already prepared to have another go at the matchbox.

“If not, then I have no business even pretending to be a witch on Halloween.” The mere thought of explaining my failure to Sophie made me concentrate on the task at hand, and the wick burst into life. I lit the other eleven pumpkins that were scattered down the drive, each more amazing or terrifying than the last.

At six o’clock there was a fierce pounding on the door and muffled cries of “Trick or treat!” Matthew had never experienced an American Halloween, and he eagerly greeted our first visitors.

Whoever was outside received one of his heart-stopping smiles before Matthew grinned and beckoned me forward.

A tiny witch and a slightly larger vampire were holding hands on the front porch.

“Trick or treat,” they intoned, holding out their open pillowcases.

“I’m a vampire,” the boy said, baring his fangs at Matthew. He pointed to his sister. “She’s a witch.”

“I can see that,” Matthew said gravely, taking in the black cape and white makeup. “I’m a vampire, too.”

The boy examined him critically. “Your mother should have worked harder on your costume. You don’t look like a vampire at all. Where’s your cape?” The miniature vampire swept his arms up, a fold of his own satin cape in each fist, revealing its bat-shaped wings. “See, you need your cape to fly. Otherwise you can’t turn into a bat.”

“Ah. That is a problem. My cape is at home, and now I can’t fly back and get it. Perhaps I can borrow yours.” Matthew dumped a handful of candy into each pillowcase, the eyes of both children growing large at his generosity. I peeked around the door to wave at their parents.

“You can tell she’s a witch,” the girl piped up, nodding approvingly at my red-and-white-striped stockings and black boots. At their parents’ urging, they shouted thank-yous as they trotted down the walk and climbed into the waiting car.

Over the next three hours, we greeted a steady stream of fairy princesses, pirates, ghosts, skeletons, mermaids, and space aliens, along with still more witches and vampires. I gently told Matthew that one piece of candy per goblin was de rigueur and that if he didn’t stop distributing handfuls of goodies now, we would run out long before the trick-or-treating stopped at nine o’clock.

It was hard to criticize, however, given his obvious delight. His responses to the children who came to the door revealed a wholly new side of him. Crouching down so that he was less intimidating, he asked questions about their costumes and told every young boy purporting to be a vampire that he was the most frightening creature he’d ever beheld.

But it was his encounter with one fairy princess wearing an oversize set of wings and a gauze skirt that tugged hardest at my heart. Overwhelmed and exhausted by the occasion, she burst into tears when Matthew asked which piece of candy she wanted. Her brother, a strapping young pirate aged six, dropped her hand in horror.

“We shall ask your mother.” Matthew swept the fairy princess into his arms and grabbed the pirate by the back of his bandanna. He safely delivered both children into the waiting arms of their parents. Long before reaching them, however, the fairy princess had forgotten her tears. Instead she had one sticky hand wrapped in the collar of Matthew’s sweater and was tapping him lightly on the head with her wand, repeating, “Bippity, bop-pity, BOO!”

“When she grows up and thinks about Prince Charming, he’ll look just like you,” I told him after he returned to the house. A shower of silver glitter fell as he dipped his head for a kiss. “You’re covered with fairy dust,” I said, laughing and brushing the last of it from his hair.

Around eight o’clock, when the tide of fairy princesses and pirates turned to Gothic teenagers wearing black lipstick and leather garments festooned with chains, Matthew handed me the basket of candy and retreated to the keeping room.

“Coward,” I teased, straightening my hat before answering the door to another gloomy bunch.

Only three minutes before it would be safe to turn out the porch light without ruining the Bishops’ Halloween reputation, we heard another loud knock and a bellowed “Trick or treat!”

“Who can that be?” I groaned, slamming my hat back on my head.

Two young wizards stood on the front steps. One was the paperboy. He was accompanied by a lanky teenager with bad skin and a pierced nose, whom I recognized dimly as belonging to the O’Neil clan. Their costumes, such as they were, consisted of torn jeans, safety-pinned T-shirts, fake blood, plastic teeth, and lengths of dog leash.

“Aren’t you a bit old for this, Sammy?”

“It’th Tham now.” Sammy’s voice was breaking, full of unexpected ups and downs, and his prosthetic fangs gave him a lisp.

“Hello, Sam.” There were half a dozen pieces in the bottom of the candy basket. “You’re welcome to what’s left. We were just about to put out the lights. Shouldn’t you be at the Hunters’ house, bobbing for apples?”

“We heard your pumpkinth were really cool thith year.” Sammy shifted from one foot to the other. “And, uh, well . . .” He flushed and took out his plastic teeth. “Rob swore he saw a vampire here the other day. I bet him twenty bucks the Bishops wouldn’t let one in the house.”

“What makes you so sure you’d recognize a vampire if you saw one?”

The vampire in question came out of the keeping room and stood behind me. “Gentlemen,” he said quietly. Two adolescent jaws dropped.

“We’d have to be either human or really stupid not to recognize him,” said Rob, awestruck. “He’s the biggest vampire I’ve ever seen.”

“Cool.” Sammy grinned from ear to ear. He high-fived his friend and grabbed the candy.

“Don’t forget to pay up, Sam,” I said sternly.

“And, Samuel,” Matthew said, his French accent unusually pronounced, “could I ask you—as a favor to me—not to tell anyone else about this?”

“Ever?” Sammy was incredulous at the notion of keeping such a juicy piece of information to himself.

Matthew’s mouth twitched. “No. I see your point. Can you keep quiet until tomorrow?”

“Sure!” Sammy nodded, looking to Rob for confirmation. “That’s only three hours. We can do that. No problem.”

They got on their bikes and headed off.

“The roads are dark,” Matthew said with a frown of concern. “We should drive them.”

“They’ll be fine. They’re not vampires, but they can definitely find their way to town.”

The two bikes skidded to a halt, sending up a shower of loose gravel.

“You want us to turn off the pumpkins?” Sammy shouted from the driveway.

“If you want to,” I said. “Thanks!”

Rob O’Neil waved at the left side of the driveway and Sammy at the right, extinguishing all the jack-o’-lanterns with enviable casualness. The two boys rode off, their bikes bumping over the ruts, their progress made easier by the moon and the burgeoning sixth sense of the teenage witch.

I shut the door and leaned against it, groaning. “My feet are killing me.” I unlaced my boots and kicked them off, tossing the hat onto the steps.

“The page from Ashmole 782 is gone,” Matthew announced quietly, leaning against the banister post.

“Mom’s letter?”

“Also gone.”

“It’s time, then.” I pulled myself away from the old door, and the house moaned softly.

“Make yourself some tea and meet me in the family room. I’ll get the bag.”

He waited for me on the couch, the soft-sided briefcase sitting closed at his feet and the silver chess piece and gold earring lying on the coffee table. I handed him a glass of wine and sat alongside. “That’s the last of the wine.”

Matthew eyed my tea. “And that’s the last of the tea for you as well.” He ran his hands nervously through his hair and took a deep breath. “I would have liked to go sometime closer, when there was less death and disease,” he began, sounding tentative, “and
somewhere
closer, with tea and plumbing. But I think you’ll like it once you get used to it.”

I still didn’t know when or where “it” was.

Matthew bent down to undo the lock. When he opened the bag and saw what was on top, he let out a sigh of relief. “Thank God. I was afraid Ysabeau might have sent the wrong one.”

“You haven’t opened the bag yet?” I was amazed at his self-control.

“No.” Matthew lifted out a book. “I didn’t want to think about it too much. Just in case.”

He handed me the book. It had black leather bindings with simple silver borders.

“It’s beautiful,” I said, running my fingers over its surface.

“Open it.” Matthew looked anxious.

“Will I know where we’re going once I do?” Now that the third object was in my hands, I felt strangely reluctant.

“I think so.”

The front cover creaked open, and the unmistakable scent of old paper and ink rose in the air. There were no marbled endpapers, no bookplates, no additional blank sheets such as eighteenth- and nineteenth-century collectors put in their books. And the covers were heavy, indicating that wooden boards were concealed beneath the smoothly stretched leather.

Two lines were written in thick black ink on the first page, in a tight, spiky script of the late sixteenth century.

“‘
To my own sweet Matt,’
” I read aloud.
“‘Who ever loved, that loved not at first sight?’”

The dedication was unsigned, but it was familiar.

“Shakespeare?” I lifted my eyes to Matthew.

“Not originally,” he replied, his face tense. “Will was something of a magpie when it came to collecting other people’s words.”

I slowly turned the page.

It wasn’t a printed book but a manuscript, written in the same bold hand as the inscription. I looked closer to make out the words.

Settle thy studies, Faustus, and begin
To sound the depth of that thou wilt profess.

“Jesus,” I said hoarsely, clapping the book shut. My hands were shaking.

“He’ll laugh like a fool when he hears that was your reaction,” Matthew commented.

“Is this what I think it is?”

“Probably.”

“How did you get it?”

“Kit gave it to me.” Matthew touched the cover lightly. “
Faustus
was always my favorite.”

Every historian of alchemy knew Christopher Marlowe’s play about Dr. Faustus, who sold his soul to the devil in exchange for magical knowledge and power. I opened the book and ran my fingers over the inscription while Matthew continued.

“Kit and I were friends—good friends—in a dangerous time when there were few creatures you could trust. We raised a certain amount of hell and eyebrows. When Sophie pulled the chess piece I’d lost to him from her pocket, it seemed clear that England was our destination.”

The feeling my fingertips detected in the inscription was not friendship, however. This was a lover’s dedication.

“Were you in love with him, too?” I asked quietly.

“No,” Matthew said shortly. “I loved Kit, but not the way you mean, and not in the way he wanted. Left to Kit, things would have been different. But it wasn’t up to him, and we were never more than friends.”

“Did he know what you are?” I hugged the book to my chest like a priceless treasure.

“Yes. We couldn’t afford secrets. Besides, he was a daemon, and an unusually perceptive one at that. You’ll soon discover it’s pointless trying to keep anything from Kit.”

That Christopher Marlowe was a daemon made a certain sense, based on my limited knowledge of him.

“So we’re going to England,” I said slowly. “When, exactly?”

“To 1590.”

“Where?”

“Every year a group of us met at the Old Lodge for the old Catholic holidays of All Saints and All Souls. Few dared to celebrate them, but it made Kit feel daring and dangerous to commemorate them in some way. He would read us his latest draft of
Faustus
—he was always fiddling with it, never satisfied. We’d drink too much, play chess, and stay awake until dawn.” Matthew drew the manuscript from my arms. He rested it on the table and took my hands in his. “Is this all right with you,
mon coeur
? We don’t have to go. We can think of sometime else.”

But it was already too late. The historian in me had started to process the opportunities of life in Elizabethan England.

“There are alchemists in England in 1590.”

“Yes,” he said warily. “None of them particularly pleasant to be around, given the mercury poisoning and their strange work habits. More important, Diana, there are witches—powerful witches, who can guide your magic.”

“Will you take me to the playhouses?”

“Could I keep you from them?” Matthew’s brows rose.

“Probably not.” My imagination was caught by the prospect opening before us. “Can we walk through the Royal Exchange? After they light the lamps?”

“Yes.” He drew me into his arms. “And go to St. Paul’s to hear a sermon, and to Tyburn for an execution. We’ll even chat about the inmates with the clerk at Bedlam.” His body shook with suppressed laughter. “Good Lord, Diana. I’m taking you to a time when there was plague, few comforts, no tea, and bad dentistry, and all you can think about is what Gresham’s Exchange looked like at night.”