Deborah Harkness - A Discovery of Witches

“Where’s Matthew?” Sarah and Em were standing in the doorway, holding hands.

“Outside, talking to England,” I said, nodding again in the direction of the back door.

Sarah got another clean mug out of the cabinet—the fourth she’d used that morning, by my count—and filled it with fresh coffee. Emily picked up the newspaper. Still, their eyes tingled with curiosity. The back door opened and closed. I braced for the worst.

“How is Marcus?”

“He and Miriam are on their way to New York. They have something to discuss with you.” Matthew’s face looked like a thundercloud.

“Me? What is it?”

“He wouldn’t tell me.”

“Marcus didn’t want you to be on your own with only witches to keep you company.” I smiled at him, and some of the tension left his face.

“They’ll be here by nightfall and will check in to the inn we passed on our way through town. I’ll go by and see them tonight. Whatever they need to tell you can wait until tomorrow.” Matthew’s worried eyes darted to Sarah and Em.

I turned to the sink again. “Call him back, Matthew. They should come straight here.”

“They won’t want to disturb anyone,” he said smoothly. Matthew didn’t want to upset Sarah and the rest of the Bishops by bringing two more vampires into the house. But my mother would never have let Marcus travel so far only to stay in a hotel.

Marcus was Matthew’s son. He was my son.

My fingers prickled, and the cup I was washing slipped from my grasp. It bobbed in the water for a few moments, then sank.

“No son of mine is checking in to a hotel. He belongs in the Bishop house, with his family, and Miriam shouldn’t be alone. They’re both staying here, and that’s final,” I said firmly.

“Son?” said Sarah faintly.

“Marcus is Matthew’s son, which makes him my son, too. That makes him a Bishop, and this house belongs to him as much as it does to you, or me, or Em.” I turned to face them, grabbing the sleeves of my shirt tightly with my wet hands, which were shaking.

My grandmother drifted down the hallway to see what the fuss was about.

“Did you hear me, Grandma?” I called.

I believe we all heard you, Diana, she said in her rustly voice.

“Good. No acting up. And that goes for every Bishop in this house—living and dead.”

The house opened its front and back doors in a premature gesture of welcome, sending a gust of chilly air through the downstairs rooms.

“Where will they sleep?” Sarah grumbled.

“They don’t sleep, Sarah. They’re vampires.” The prickling in my fingers increased.

“Diana,” Matthew said, “please step away from the sink. The electricity, mon coeur.”

I gripped my sleeves tighter. The edges of my fingers were bright blue.

“We get the message,” Sarah said hastily, eyeing my hands. “We’ve already got one vampire in the house.”

“I’ll get their rooms ready,” Emily said, with a smile that looked genuine. “I’m glad we’ll have a chance to meet your son, Matthew.”

Matthew, who had been leaning against an ancient wooden cupboard, pulled himself upright and walked slowly toward me. “All right,” he said, drawing me from the sink and tucking my head under his chin. “You’ve made your point. I’ll call Marcus and let him know they’re welcome here.”

“Don’t tell Marcus I called him my son. He may not want a stepmother.”

“You two will have to sort that out,” Matthew said, trying to suppress his amusement.

“What’s so funny?” I tipped my face up to look at him.

“With all that’s happened this morning, the one thing you’re worried about is whether Marcus wants a stepmother. You confound me.” Matthew shook his head. “Are all witches this surprising, Sarah, or is it just Bishops?”

Sarah considered her answer. “Just Bishops.”

I peeked around Matthew’s shoulder to give her a grateful smile.

My aunts were surrounded by a mob of ghosts, all of whom were solemnly nodding in agreement.

After the dishes were done, Matthew and I gathered up my mother’s letter, the mysterious note, and the page from Ashmole 782 and carried them into the dining room. We spread the papers out on the room’s vast, well-worn table. These days it was seldom used, since it made no sense for two people to sit at the end of a piece of furniture designed to easily seat twelve. My aunts joined us, steaming mugs of coffee in their hands.

Sarah and Matthew crouched over the page from the alchemical manuscript.

“Why is it so heavy?” Sarah picked the page up and weighed it carefully.

“I don’t feel any special weightiness,” Matthew confessed, taking it from her hands, “but there’s something odd about the way it smells.”

Sarah gave it a long sniff. “No, it just smells old.”

“It’s more than that. I know what old smells like,” he said sardonically.

Em and I, on the other hand, were more interested in the enigmatic note.

“What do you think it means?” I asked, pulling out a chair and sitting down.

“I’m not sure.” Em hesitated. “Blood usually signifies family, war, or death. But what about absence? Does it mean this page is absent from the book? Or did it warn your parents that they wouldn’t be present as you grew up?”

“Look at the last line. Did my parents discover something in Africa?”

“Or were you the discovery of witches?” Em suggested gently.

“The last line must be about Diana’s discovery of Ashmole 782,” Matthew chimed in, looking up from the chemical wedding.

“You believe that everything is about me and that manuscript,” I grumbled. “The note mentions the subject of your All Souls essay—fear and desire. Don’t you think that’s strange?”

“No stranger than the fact that the white queen in this picture is wearing my crest.” Matthew brought the illustration over to me.

“She’s the embodiment of quicksilver—the principle of volatility in alchemy,” I said.

“Quicksilver?” Matthew looked amused. “A metallic perpetual-motion machine?”

“You could say that.” I smiled, too, thinking of the ball of energy I’d given him.

“What about the red king?”

“He’s stable and grounded.” I frowned. “But he’s also supposed to be the sun, and he’s not usually depicted wearing black and red. Usually he’s just red.”

“So maybe the king isn’t me and the queen isn’t you.” He touched the white queen’s face delicately with his fingertip.

“Perhaps,” I said slowly, remembering a passage from the Matthew’s Aurora manuscript. “‘Attend to me, all people, and listen to me, all who inhabit the world: my beloved, who is red, has called to me. He sought, and found me. I am the flower of the field, a lily growing in the valley. I am the mother of true love, and of fear, and of understanding, and blessed hope.’”

“What is that?” Matthew touched my face now. “It sounds biblical, but the words aren’t quite right.”

“It’s one of the passages on the chemical wedding from the Aurora Consurgens .” Our eyes locked, held. When the air became heavy, I changed the subject. “What did my father mean when he said we’d have to travel far to figure out the picture’s significance?”

“The stamp came from Israel. Maybe Stephen meant we would have to return there.”

“There are a lot of alchemical manuscripts in Jerusalem at the Hebrew University. Most of them belonged to Isaac Newton.” Given Matthew’s history with the place, not to mention the Knights of Lazarus, it was not a city I was eager to visit.

“Israel didn’t count as ‘traveling far’ for your father,” said Sarah, sitting opposite. Em walked around the table and joined her.