Deborah Harkness - A Discovery of Witches

“Ysabeau,” I protested. “You can’t still be hungry. Leave it.”

“What? The goddess of the hunt objects to my pursuit of her deer?” Her voice mocked, but her eyes were curious.

“Yes,” I said promptly.

“I object to your hunting of my son. See what good that has done.” Ysabeau swung down from her horse.

My fingers itched to intervene, and it was all I could do to stay out of Ysabeau’s way while she stalked her prey. After each kill, her eyes revealed that she wasn’t completely in command of her emotions—or her actions.

The doe tried to escape. It almost succeeded by darting into some underbrush, but Ysabeau frightened the animal back into the open. After that, fatigue put the doe at a disadvantage. The chase touched off something visceral within me. Ysabeau killed swiftly, and the doe didn’t suffer, but I had to bite my lip to keep from shouting.

“There,” she said with satisfaction, returning to Fiddat. “We can go back to Sept-Tours.”

Wordlessly I turned Rakasa’s head in the direction of the château.

Ysabeau grabbed my horse’s reins. There were tiny drops of blood on her cream shirt. “Do you think vampires are beautiful now? Do you still think it would be easy to live with my son, knowing that he must kill to survive?”

It was difficult for me to put “Matthew” and “killing” in the same sentence. Were I to kiss him one day, when he was just returned from hunting, there might still be the taste of blood on his lips. And days like the one I was now spending with Ysabeau would be regular occurrences.

“If you’re trying to frighten me away from your son, Ysabeau, you failed,” I said resolutely. “You’re going to have to do better than this.”

“Marthe said this would not be enough to make you reconsider,” she confessed.

“She was right.” My voice was curt. “Is the trial over? Can we go home now?”

We rode toward the trees in silence. Once we were within the forest’s leafy green confines, Ysabeau turned to me. “Do you understand why you must not question Matthew when he tells you to do something?”

I sighed. “School is over for the day.”

“Do you think our dining habits are the only obstacle standing between you and my son?”

“Spit it out, Ysabeau. Why must I do what Matthew says?”

“Because he is the strongest vampire in the château. He is the head of the house.”

I stared at her in astonishment. “Are you saying I have to listen to him because he’s the alpha dog?”

“You think you are?” Ysabeau chortled.

“No,” I conceded. Ysabeau wasn’t the alpha dog either. She did what Matthew told her to do. So did Marcus, Miriam, and every vampire at the Bodleian Library. Even Domenico had ultimately backed down. “Are these the de Clermont pack rules?”

Ysabeau nodded, her green eyes glittering. “It is for your safety—and his, and everyone else’s—that you must obey. This is not a game.”

“I understand, Ysabeau.” I was losing my patience.

“No, you don’t,” she said softly. “You won’t either, until you are forced to see, just as I made you see what it is for a vampire to kill. Until then these are only words. One day your willfulness will cost your life, or someone else’s. Then you will know why I told you this.”

We returned to the château without further conversation. When we passed through Marthe’s ground-floor domain, she came out of the kitchen, a small chicken in her hands. I blanched. Marthe took in the tiny spots of blood on Ysabeau’s cuffs and gasped.

“She needs to know,” Ysabeau hissed.

Marthe said something low and foul-sounding in Occitan, then nodded at me. “Here, girl, come with me and I will teach you to make my tea.”

Now it was Ysabeau’s turn to look furious. Marthe made me something to drink and handed me a plate with a few crumbly biscuits studded with nuts. Eating chicken was out of the question.

Marthe kept me busy for hours, sorting dried herbs and spices into tiny piles and teaching me their names. By midafternoon I could identify them by smell with my eyes closed as well as by appearance.

“Parsley. Ginger. Feverfew. Rosemary. Sage. Queen Anne’s lace seeds. Mugwort. Pennyroyal. Angelica. Rue. Tansy. Juniper root.” I pointed to each in turn.

“Again,” Marthe said serenely, handing me a bunch of muslin bags.

I picked the strings apart, laying them individually on the table just as she did, reciting the names back to her one more time.

“Good. Now fill the bags with a pinch of each.”

“Why don’t we just mix it all together and spoon it into the bags?” I asked, taking a bit of pennyroyal between my fingers and wrinkling my nose at its minty smell.

“We might miss something. Each bag must have every single herb—all twelve.”

“Would missing a tiny seed like this really make a difference to the taste?” I held a tiny Queen Anne’s lace seed between my index finger and thumb.

“One pinch of each,” Marthe repeated. “Again.”

The vampire’s experienced hands moved surely from pile to pile, neatly filling the bags and tightening their strings. After we finished, Marthe brewed me a cup of tea using a bag I’d filled myself.

“It’s delicious,” I said, happily sipping my very own herbal tea.

“You will take it back to Oxford with you. One cup a day. It will keep you healthy.” She started putting bags into a tin. “When you need more, you will know how to make it.”

“Marthe, you don’t have to give me all of it,” I protested.

“You will drink this for Marthe, one cup a day. Yes?”

“Of course.” It seemed the least I could do for my sole remaining ally in the house—not to mention the person who fed me.

After my tea I went upstairs to Matthew’s study and switched on my computer. All that riding had made my forearms ache, so I moved the computer and manuscript to his desk, hoping that it might be more comfortable to work there rather than at my table by the window. Unfortunately, the leather chair was made for someone Matthew’s height, not mine, and my feet swung freely.

Sitting in Matthew’s chair made him seem closer, however, so I remained there while waiting for my computer to boot up. My eyes fell on a dark object tucked into the tallest shelf. It blended into the wood and the books’ leather bindings, which hid it from casual view. From Matthew’s desk, however, you could see its outlines.

It wasn’t a book but an ancient block of wood, octagonal in shape. Tiny arched windows were carved into each side. The thing was black, cracked, and misshapen with age.

With a pang of sadness, I realized it was a child’s toy.

Matthew had made it for Lucas before Matthew became a vampire, while he was building the first church. He’d tucked it into the corner of a shelf where no one would notice it—except him. He couldn’t fail to see it, every time he sat at his desk.

With Matthew at my side, it was all too easy to think we were the only two in the world. Not even Domenico’s warnings or Ysabeau’s tests had shaken my sense that our growing closeness was a matter solely between him and me.

But this little wooden tower, made with love an unimaginably long time ago, brought my illusions to an end. There were children to consider, both living and dead. There were families involved, including my own, with long and complicated genealogies and deeply ingrained prejudices, including my own. And Sarah and Em still didn’t know that I was in love with a vampire. It was time to share that news.

Ysabeau was in the salon, arranging flowers in a tall vase on top of a priceless Louis XIV escritoire with impeccable provenance—and a single owner.

“Ysabeau?” My voice sounded hesitant. “Is there a phone I could use?”