Deborah Harkness - A Discovery of Witches

After saying good-bye to Miriam and Marcus, Matthew drove me to New College. He went to change and returned to pick me up for yoga. We rode to Woodstock in near silence, both lost in our own thoughts.

At the Old Lodge, Matthew let me out as usual, unloaded the mats from the trunk, and slung them over his shoulder.

A pair of vampires brushed by. One touched me briefly, and Matthew’s hand was lightning fast as he laced his fingers through mine. The contrast between us was so striking, his skin so pale and cold, and mine so alive and warm in comparison.

Matthew held on to me until we got inside. After class we drove back to Oxford, talking first about something Amira had said, then about something one of the daemons had inadvertently done or not done that seemed to perfectly capture what it was to be a daemon. Once inside the New College gates, Matthew uncharacteristically turned off the car before he let me out.

Fred looked up from his security monitors when the vampire went to the lodge’s glass partition. The porter slid it open. “Yes?”

“I’d like to walk Dr. Bishop to her rooms. Is it all right if I leave the car here, and the keys, too, in case you need to shift it?”

Fred eyed the John Radcliffe tag and nodded. Matthew tossed the keys through the window.

“Matthew,” I said urgently, “it’s just across the way. You don’t have to walk me home.”

“I am, though,” he said, in a tone that inhibited further discussion. Beyond the lodge’s archways and out of Fred’s sight, he caught my hand again. This time the shock of his cold skin was accompanied by a disturbing lick of warmth in the pit of my stomach.

At the bottom of my staircase, I faced Matthew, still holding his hand. “Thanks for taking me to yoga—again.”

“You’re welcome.” He tucked my impossible piece of hair back behind my ear, fingers lingering on my cheek. “Come to dinner tomorrow,” he said softly. “My turn to cook. Can I pick you up here at half past seven?”

My heart leaped. Say no, I told myself sternly in spite of its sudden jump.

“I’d love to,” came out instead.

The vampire pressed his cold lips first to one cheek, then the other. “Ma vaillante fille, ” he whispered into my ear. The dizzying, alluring smell of him filled my nose.

Upstairs, someone had tightened the doorknob as requested, and it was a struggle to turn the key in the lock. The blinking light on the answering machine greeted me, indicating there was another message from Sarah. I crossed to the window and looked down, only to see Matthew looking up. I waved. He smiled, put his hands in his pockets, and turned back to the lodge, slipping into the night’s darkness as if it belonged to him.

Matthew was waiting for me in the lodge at half past seven, immaculate as always in a monochromatic combination of dove and charcoal, his dark hair swept back from his uneven hairline. He patiently withstood the inspection of the weekend porter, who sent me off with a nod and a deliberate, “We’ll see you later, Dr. Bishop.”

“You do bring out people’s protective instincts,” Matthew murmured as we passed through the gates.

“Where are we going?” There was no sign of his car in the street.

“We’re dining in college tonight,” he answered, gesturing down toward the Bodleian. I had fully anticipated he would take me to Woodstock, or an apartment in some Victorian pile in North Oxford. It had never occurred to me that he might live in a college.

“In hall, at high table?” I felt terribly underdressed and pulled at the hem of my silky black top.

Matthew tilted his head back and laughed. “I avoid hall whenever possible. And I’m certainly not taking you in there, to sit in the Siege Perilous and be inspected by the fellows.”

We rounded the corner and turned toward the Radcliffe Camera. When we passed by the entrance to Hertford College without stopping, I put my hand on his arm. There was one college in Oxford notorious for its exclusivity and rigid attention to protocol.

It was the same college famous for its brilliant fellows.

“You aren’t.”

Matthew stopped. “Why does it matter what college I belong to?” He looked away. “If you’d rather be around other people, of course, I understand.”

“I’m not worried you’re going to eat me for dinner, Matthew. I’ve just never been inside.” A pair of ornate, scrolled gates guarded his college as if it were Wonderland. Matthew made an impatient noise and caught my hand to prevent me from peering through them.

“It’s just a collection of people in a set of old buildings.” His gruffness did nothing to detract from the fact that he was one of six dozen or so fellows in a college with no students. “Besides, we’re going to my rooms.”

We walked the remaining distance, Matthew relaxing into the darkness with every step as if in the company of an old friend. We passed through a low wooden door that kept the public out of his college’s quiet confines. There was no one in the lodge except the porter, no undergraduates or graduates on the benches in the front quad. It was as quiet and hushed as if its members truly were the “souls of all the faithful people deceased in the university of Oxford.”

Matthew looked down with a shy smile. “Welcome to All Souls.”

All Souls College was a masterpiece of late Gothic architecture, resembling the love child of a wedding cake and a cathedral, with its airy spires and delicate stonework. I sighed with pleasure, unable to say much—at least not yet. But Matthew was going to have a lot of explaining to do later.

“Evening, James,” he said to the porter, who looked over his bifocals and nodded in welcome. Matthew held up his hand. An ancient key dangled off his index finger from a leather loop. “I’ll be just a moment.”

“Right, Professor Clairmont.”

Matthew took my hand again. “Let’s go. We need to continue your education.”

He was like a mischievous boy on a treasure hunt, pulling me along. We ducked through a cracked door black with age, and Matthew switched on a light. His white skin leaped out of the dark, and he looked every inch a vampire.

“It’s a good thing I’m a witch,” I teased. “The sight of you here would be enough to scare a human to death.”

At the bottom of a flight of stairs, Matthew entered a long string of numbers at a security keypad, then hit the star key. I heard a soft click, and he pulled another door open. The smell of must and age and something else that I couldn’t name hit me in a wave. Blackness extended away from the stairway lights.

“This is straight out of a Gothic novel. Where are you taking me?”

“Patience, Diana. It’s not much farther.” Patience, alas, was not the strong suit of Bishop women.

Matthew reached past my shoulder and flipped another switch. Suspended on wires like trapeze artists, a string of old bulbs cast pools of light over what looked like horse stalls for miniature Shetland ponies.

I stared at Matthew, a hundred questions in my eyes.

“After you,” he said with a bow.

Stepping forward, I recognized the strange smell. It was stale alcohol—like the pub on Sunday morning. “Wine?”

“Wine.”

We passed dozens of small enclosures that contained bottles in racks, piles, and crates. Each had a small slate tag, a year scrawled on it in chalk. We wandered past bins that held wine from the First World War and the Second, as well as bottles that Florence Nightingale might have packed in her trunks for the Crimea. There were wines from the year the Berlin Wall was built and the year it came down. Deeper into the cellar, the years scrawled on the slates gave way to broad categories like “Old Claret” and “Vintage Port.”