Deborah Harkness - A Discovery of Witches

“Enough!” Ysabeau startled them into silence. “I have already lost my husband, a daughter, and two of my sons. I will not have you at each other’s throats. I will not let witches take someone from my home without my permission.” Her last words were uttered in a low hiss. “And I will not stand here and argue while my son’s wife is in the hands of my enemies.”

“In 1944 you insisted that challenging the witches wouldn’t solve anything. Now look at you,” Baldwin snapped, glaring at his brother.

“This is different,” Matthew said tightly.

“Oh, it’s different, I grant you that. You’re risking the Congregation’s interference in our family’s affairs just so you can bed one of them.”

“The decision to engage in open hostilities with the witches was not yours to make then. It was your father’s—and he expressly forbade prolonging a world war.” Ysabeau stopped behind Baldwin and waited until he turned to face her. “You must let this go. The power to punish such atrocities was placed in the hands of human authorities.”

Baldwin looked at her sourly. “You took matters into your own hands, as I recall, Ysabeau. How many Nazis did you dine on before you were satisfied?” It was an unforgivable thing to say, but he had been pushed past his normal limits.

“As for Diana,” Ysabeau continued smoothly, though her eyes sparked in warning, “if your father were alive, Lucius Sigéric Benoit Christophe Baldwin de Clermont, he would be out looking for her—witch or not. He would be ashamed of you, in here settling old scores with your brother.” Every one of the names Philippe had given him over the years sounded like a slap, and Baldwin’s head jerked back when they struck.

He exhaled slowly through his nose. “Thank you for the advice, Ysabeau, and the history lesson. Now, happily, it is my decision. Matthew will not indulge himself with this girl. End of discussion.” He felt better after exercising his authority and turned to stalk out of Sept-Tours.

“Then you leave me no choice.” Matthew’s response stopped him in his tracks.

“Choice?” Baldwin snorted. “You’ll do what I tell you to do.”

“I may not be head of the family, but this is no longer a family matter.” Matthew had, at last, figured out the point of Ysabeau’s earlier remark.

“Fine.” Baldwin shrugged. “Go on this foolish crusade, if you must. Find your witch. Take Marthe—she seems to be as enamored of her as you are. If the two of you want to pester the witches and bring the Congregation down on your heads, that’s your business. To protect the family, I’ll disown you.”

He was on his way out the door again when his younger brother laid down his trump.

“I absolve the de Clermonts of any responsibility for sheltering Diana Bishop. The Knights of Lazarus will now see to her safety, as we have done for others in the past.”

Ysabeau turned away to hide her expression of pride.

“You can’t be serious,” Baldwin hissed. “If you rally the brotherhood, it will be tantamount to a declaration of war.”

“If that’s your decision, you know the consequences. I could kill you for your disobedience, but I don’t have time. Your lands and possessions are forfeit. Leave this house, and surrender your seal of office. A new French master will be appointed within the week. You are beyond the protection of the order and have seven days to find yourself a new place to live.”

“Try to take Sept-Tours from me,” Baldwin growled, “and you’ll regret it.”

“Sept-Tours isn’t yours. It belongs to the Knights of Lazarus. Ysabeau lives here with the brotherhood’s blessing. I’ll give you one more chance to be included in that arrangement.” Matthew’s voice took on an indisputable tone of command. “Baldwin de Clermont, I call upon you to fulfill your sworn oath and enter the field of battle, where you will obey my commands until I release you.”

He hadn’t spoken or written the words for ages, but Matthew remembered each one perfectly. The Knights of Lazarus were in his blood, just as Diana was. Long-unused muscles flexed deep within him, and talents that had grown rusty began to sharpen.

“The Knights don’t come to their master’s aid because of a love affair gone wrong, Matthew. We fought at the Battle of Acre. We helped the Albigensian heretics resist the northerners. We survived the demise of the Templars and the English advances at Crécy and Agincourt. The Knights of Lazarus were on the ships that beat back the Ottoman Empire at Lepanto, and when we refused to fight any further, the Thirty Years’ War came to an end. The brotherhood’s purpose is to ensure that vampires survive in a world dominated by humans.”

“We started out protecting those who could not protect themselves, Baldwin. Our heroic reputation was simply an unexpected by-product of that mission.”

“Father should never have passed the order on to you when he died. You’re a soldier—and an idealist—not a commander. You don’t have the stomach to make the difficult decisions.” Baldwin’s scorn for his brother was clear from his words, but his eyes were worried.

“Diana came to me seeking protection from her own people. I will see to it that she gets it—just as the Knights protected the citizens of Jerusalem, and Germany, and Occitania when they were under threat.”

“No one will believe that this isn’t personal, any more than they would have believed it in 1944. Then you said no.”

“I was wrong.”

Baldwin looked shocked.

Matthew drew a long, shuddering breath. “Once we would have responded immediately to such an outrage and to hell with the consequences. But a fear of divulging the family’s secrets and a reluctance to raise the Congregation’s ire held me back. This only encouraged our enemies to strike at this family again, and I won’t make the same mistake where Diana is concerned. The witches will stop at nothing to learn about her power. They’ve invaded our home and snatched one of their own. It’s worse than what they did to Philippe. In the witches’ eyes, he was only a vampire. By taking Diana they’ve gone too far.”

As Baldwin considered his brother’s words, Matthew’s anxiety grew more acute.

“Diana.” Ysabeau brought Baldwin back to the matter at hand.

Baldwin nodded, once.

“Thank you,” Matthew said simply. “A witch grabbed her straight up and out of the garden. Any clues there might have been about the direction they took were gone by the time we discovered she was missing.” He pulled a creased map from his pocket. “Here is where we still need to search.”

Baldwin looked at the areas that Ysabeau and his brother had already covered and the wide swaths of countryside that remained. “You’ve been searching all these places since she was taken?”

Matthew nodded. “Of course.”

Baldwin couldn’t conceal his irritation. “Matthew, will you never learn to stop and think before you act? Show me the garden.”

Matthew and Baldwin went outdoors, leaving Marthe and Ysabeau inside so that their scents wouldn’t obscure any faint traces of Diana. When the two were gone, Ysabeau began to shake from head to toe.

“It is too much, Marthe. If they have harmed her—”

“We have always known, you and I, that a day like this was coming.” Marthe put a compassionate hand on her mistress’s shoulder, then walked into the kitchens, leaving Ysabeau sitting pensively by the cold hearth.

In the garden Baldwin turned his preternaturally sharp eyes to the ground, where an apple lay next to a billowing patch of rue. Ysabeau had wisely insisted that they leave the fruit where they’d found it. Its location helped Baldwin see what his brother had not. The stems on the rue were slightly bent and led to another patch of herbs with ruffled leaves, then another.