Deborah Harkness - A Discovery of Witches

He held me until the tremors subsided and my heart returned to its normal rhythm. When I finally mustered the energy to look at him, he had the self-satisfied look of a cat.

“What are the historian’s thoughts on bundling now?” he asked.

“It’s far less wholesome than it’s been made out to be in the scholarly literature,” I said, touching his lips with my fingers. “And if this is what the Amish do at night, it’s no wonder they don’t need television.”

Matthew chuckled, the look of contentment never leaving his face. “Are you sleepy now?” he asked, trailing his fingers through my hair.

“Oh, no.” I pushed him over onto his back. He folded his hands beneath his head and looked up at me with another grin. “Not in the slightest. Besides, it’s my turn.”

I studied him with the same intensity that he’d lavished on me. While I was inching up his hip bone, a white shadow in the shape of a triangle caught my attention. It was deep under the surface of his smooth, perfect skin. Frowning, I looked across the expanse of his chest. There were more odd marks, some shaped like snowflakes, others in crisscrossing lines. None of them were on the skin, though. They were all deep within him.

“What is this, Matthew?” I touched a particularly large snowflake under his left collarbone.

“It’s just a scar,” he said, craning his neck to see. “That one was made by the tip of a broadsword. The Hundred Years’ War, maybe? I can’t remember.”

I slithered up his body to get a better look, pressing my warm skin against him, and he sighed happily.

“A scar? Turn over.”

He made little sounds of pleasure while my hands swept across his back.

“Oh, Matthew.” My worst fears were realized. There were dozens, if not hundreds, of marks. I knelt and pulled the sheet down to his feet. They were on his legs, too.

His head swiveled over his shoulder. “What’s wrong?” The sight of my face was answer enough, and he turned over and sat up. “It’s nothing, mon coeur. Just my vampire body, holding on to trauma.”

“There are so many of them.” There was another one, on the swell of muscles where his arm met his shoulders.

“I said vampires were difficult to kill. Creatures try their best to do so anyway.”

“Did it hurt when you were wounded?”

“You know I feel pleasure. Why not pain, too? Yes, they hurt. But they healed quickly.”

“Why haven’t I seen them before?”

“The light has to be just right, and you have to look carefully. Do they bother you?” Matthew asked hesitantly.

“The scars themselves?” I shook my head. “No, of course not. I just want to hunt down all the people who gave them to you.”

Like Ashmole 782, Matthew’s body was a palimpsest, its bright surface obscuring the tale of him hinted at by all those scars. I shivered at the thought of the battles Matthew had already fought, in wars declared and undeclared.

“You’ve fought enough.” My voice shook with anger and remorse. “No more.”

“It’s a bit late for that, Diana. I’m a warrior.”

“No you’re not,” I said fiercely. “You’re a scientist.”

“I’ve been a warrior longer. I’m hard to kill. Here’s the proof.” He gestured at his long white body. As evidence of his indestructibility, the scars were strangely comforting. “Besides, most creatures who wounded me are long gone. You’ll have to set that desire aside.”

“Whatever will I replace it with?” I pulled the sheets over my head like a tent. Then there was silence except for an occasional gasp from Matthew, the crackle of the logs in the fireplace, and in time his own cry of pleasure. Tucking myself under his arm, I hooked my leg over his. Matthew looked down at me, one eye opened and one closed.

“Is this what they’re teaching at Oxford these days?” he asked.

“It’s magic. I was born knowing how to make you happy.” My hand rested on his heart, pleased that I instinctively understood where and how to touch him, when to be gentle and when to leave my passion unchecked.

“If it is magic, then I’m even more delighted to be sharing the rest of my life with a witch,” he said, sounding as content as I felt.

“You mean the rest of my life, not the rest of yours.”

Matthew was suspiciously quiet, and I pushed myself up to see his expression. “Tonight I feel thirty-seven. Even more important, I believe that next year I will feel thirty-eight.”

“I don’t understand,” I said uneasily.

He drew me back down and tucked my head under his chin. “For more than a thousand years, I’ve stood outside of time, watching the days and years go by. Since I’ve been with you, I’m aware of its passage. It’s easy for vampires to forget such things. It’s one of the reasons Ysabeau is so obsessed with reading the newspapers—to remind herself that there’s always change, even though time doesn’t alter her.”

“You’ve never felt this way before?”

“A few times, very fleetingly. Once or twice in battle, when I feared I was about to die.”

“So it’s about danger, not just love.” A cold wisp of fear moved through me at this matter-of-fact talk of war and death.

“My life now has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Everything before was preamble. Now I have you. One day you will be gone, and my life will be over.”

“Not necessarily,” I said hastily. “I’ve only got another handful of decades in me—you could go on forever.” A world without Matthew was unthinkable.

“We’ll see,” he said quietly, stroking my shoulder.

Suddenly his safety was of paramount concern to me. “You will be careful?”

“No one sees as many centuries as I have without being careful. I’m always careful. Now more than ever, since I have so much more to lose.”

“I would rather have had this moment with you—just this one night—than centuries with someone else,” I whispered.

Matthew considered my words. “I suppose if it’s taken me only a few weeks to feel thirty-seven again, I might be able to reach the point where one moment with you was enough,” he said, cuddling me closer. “But this talk is too serious for a marriage bed.”

“I thought conversation was the point of bundling,” I said primly.

“It depends on whom you ask—the bundlers or those being bundled.” He began working his mouth down from my ear to my shoulders. “Besides, I have another part of the medieval wedding service I’d like to discuss with you.”

“You do, husband?” I bit his ear gently as it moved past.

“Don’t do that,” he said, with mock severity. “No biting in bed.” I did it again anyway. “What I was referring to was the part of the ceremony where the obedient wife,” he said, looking at me pointedly, “promises to be ‘bonny and buxom in bed and board.’ How do you intend to fulfill that promise?” He buried his face in my breasts as if he might find the answer there.

After several more hours discussing the medieval liturgy, I had a new appreciation for church ceremonies as well as folk customs. And being with him in this way was more intimate than I’d ever been with another creature.

Relaxed and at ease, I curled against Matthew’s now-familiar body so that my head rested below his heart. His fingers ran through my hair again and again, until I fell asleep.

It was just before dawn when I awoke to a strange sound coming from the bed next to me, like gravel rolling around in a metal tube.

Matthew was sleeping—and snoring, too. He looked even more like the effigy of a knight on a tombstone now. All that was missing was the dog at his feet and the sword clasped at his waist.

I pulled the covers over him. He didn’t stir. I smoothed his hair back, and he kept breathing deeply. I kissed him lightly on the mouth, and there was still no reaction. I smiled at my beautiful vampire, sleeping like the dead, and felt like the luckiest creature on the planet as I crept from under the covers.