Deborah Harkness - Shadow of Night

“Can you feel me?” Matthew was now a point of stillness at my core. I nodded again. He smiled and moved with deliberate care. “I’m inside you, Diana, giving you life.”

I’d said the same words to him as he drank my blood and pulled himself from the edge of death back into the world. I didn’t think he’d been aware of them at the time.

He moved within me again, repeating the words like an incantation. It was the simplest, purest form of magic in the world. Matthew was already woven into my soul. He was now woven into my body, just as I was woven into his. My heart, which had broken and broken again in the past months with every sad touch and regretful look, began to knit together once more.

When the sun crept over the horizon, I reached up and touched him between the eyes.

“I wonder if I could read your thoughts, too.”

“You already have,” Matthew said, lowering my fingers and kissing their tips. “Back in Oxford, when you received the picture of your parents. You weren’t conscious of what you were doing. But you kept answering questions I wasn’t able to ask aloud.”

“Can I try again?” I asked, half expecting him to say no.

“Of course. If you were a vampire I would already have offered my blood.” He lay back on the pillow.

I hesitated for a moment, stilled my thoughts, and focused on a simple question. How can I know Matthew’s mind ?

A single silver thread shimmered between my heart and the spot on his forehead where his third eye would be if he were a witch. The thread shortened, drawing me closer until my lips pressed against his skin.

An explosion of sights and sounds burst in my head like fireworks. I saw Jack and Annie, Philippe and Ysabeau. I saw Gallowglass and men I didn’t recognize who occupied important places in Matthew’s heart. I saw Eleanor and Lucas. There was a feeling of triumph as he conquered some scientific mystery, a shout of joy as he rode out in the forest to hunt and kill as he was made to do. I saw myself, smiling up at him.

Then I saw the face of Herr Fuchs, the vampire I’d met in the Jewish town, and heard quite distinctly the words My son, Benjamin .

I sat back on my heels abruptly, my fingers touching my trembling lips.

“What is it?” Matthew said, sitting up and frowning.

“Herr Fuchs!” I looked at him in horror, afraid he had thought the worst. “I didn’t realize he was your son, that he was Benjamin.” There hadn’t been a hint of blood rage about him.

“It”s not your fault. You’re not a vampire, and Benjamin only reveals what he chooses.” Matthew’s voice was soothing. “I must have sensed his presence around you—a trace of scent, some inkling that he was near. That’s what made me think you were keeping something from me. I was wrong. I’m sorry for doubting you, mon coeur .”

“But Benjamin must have known who I was. Your scent would have been all over me.”

“Of course he knew,” Matthew said dispassionately. “I will look for him tomorrow, but if Benjamin doesn’t want to be found, there will be nothing to do but warn Gallowglass and Philippe. They’ll let the rest of the family know that Benjamin has reappeared.”

“Warn them?”

“The only thing more frightening than Benjamin in the grip of blood rage is Benjamin when he is lucid, as he was when you were with Rabbi Loew. It is as Jack said,” Matthew replied. “The most terrifying monsters always look just like ordinary men.”

That night marked the true beginning of our marriage. Matthew was more centered than I had ever seen him. Gone were the sharp retorts, abrupt changes of direction, and impulsive decisions that had characterized our time together thus far. Instead Matthew was methodical, measured— but no less deadly. He fed more regularly, hunting in the city and the villages nearby. As his muscles gained in weight and strength, I came to see what Philippe had already observed: Unlikely though it might seem given his size, his son had been wasting away from lack of proper nourishment.

I was left with a silvery moon on my breast marking the place where he drank. It was unlike any other scar on my body, lacking the tough buildup of protective tissue that formed over most wounds. Matthew told me that this was due to a property in his saliva, which sealed the bite without letting it heal completely.

The vampire’s ritual taking of a mate’s blood from a vein near the heart and my new ritual of the witch’s kiss that gave me access to his thoughts provided us with a deeper intimacy. We didn’t make love every time he joined me in bed, but when we did, it was always preceded and followed by those two searing moments of absolute honesty that removed not only Matthew’s greatest worry but mine: that our secrets would somehow destroy us. And even when we didn’t make love, we talked in the open, easy way that lovers dream of doing.

The next morning, Matthew told Gallowglass and Pierre about Benjamin. Gallowglass’s fury was shorter-lived than Pierre’s fear, which rose to the surface whenever someone knocked on the door or approached me in the market. The vampires searched for him day and night, with Matthew planning the expeditions.

But Benjamin could not be found. He had simply vanished. Easter came and went, and our plans for Rudolf’s spring festival the following Saturday reached their final stages. Master Hoefnagel and I transformed the palace’s Great Hall into a blooming garden with pots of tulips. I was in awe of the place, with its graceful curved vaults supporting the arched roof like the branches of a willow tree.

“We’ll move the emperor’s orange trees here as well,” Hoefnagel said, his eyes gleaming with possibilities. “And the peacocks.”

On the day of the performance, servants dragged every spare candelabrum in the palace and cathedral into the echoing expanse of stone to provide the illusion of a starry night sky and spread fresh rushes on the floor. For the stage we used the base of the stairs leading up to the royal chapel. It was Master Hoefnagel’s idea, since then I could appear at the top of the staircase, like the moon, while Matthew charted my changing position with one of Master Habermel’s astrolabes.

“You don’t think we’re being too philosophical?” I wondered aloud, worrying at my lip with my fingers.

“This is the court of Rudolf II,” Hoefnagel said drily. “There is so such thing as too philosophical.”

On the night of the celebration, the court filed in for the banquet and gasped in amazement at the scene we’d set.

“They like it,” I whispered to Matthew from behind the curtain that concealed us from the crowd. Our grand entrance was scheduled for the dessert course, and we were holed up in the Knights’ Staircase off the hall until then. Matthew had been keeping me occupied with tales of olden times, when he had ridden his horse up the wide stone stairs for a joust. When I’d questioned the room’s suitability for this particular purpose, he quirked an eyebrow at me.

“Why do you think we made the room so big and the ceiling so high? Prague winters can be damn long, and bored young men with weapons are dangerous. Far better to have them run at each other at high speed than start wars with neighboring kingdoms.”

With the free pouring of wine and the liberal serving of food, the din in the room was soon deafening. When the desserts went by, Matthew and I slipped into our places. Master Hoefnagel had painted some lovely pastoral scenery for Matthew and grudgingly allotted him one of the orange trees to sit beneath on his felt-covered stool meant to look like a rock. I would wait for my cue and then come out of the chapel and stand behind an old wooden door turned on its side and painted to resemble a chariot.