A Discovery of Witches: A Novel (All Souls Trilogy) Read online

  Marthe said something in Occitan, and Matthew’s brother nodded.

  “Òc,” he said, eyeing me in appraisal.

  “Not this time, Baldwin,” Matthew rumbled.

  “The number, Matthew,” Ysabeau said crisply, diverting her son’s attention. He rattled it off, and his mother pushed the corresponding buttons, the faint electronic tones audible.

  “I’m fine,” I croaked when Sarah picked up the phone. “Put me down, Matthew.”

  “No, this is Ysabeau de Clermont. Diana is with us.”

  There was more silence while Ysabeau’s icicle touches swept over me. “She is hurt, but her injuries are not life-threatening. Nevertheless, Matthew should bring her home. To you.”

  “No. She’ll follow me. Satu mustn’t harm Sarah and Em,” I said, struggling to break free.

  “Matthew,” Baldwin growled, “let Marthe see to her or keep her quiet.”

  “Stay out of this, Baldwin,” Matthew snapped. His cool lips touched my cheeks, and my pulse slowed. His voice dropped to a murmur. “We won’t do anything you don’t want to do.”

  “We can protect her from vampires.” Ysabeau sounded farther and farther away. “But not from other witches. She needs to be with those who can.” The conversation faded, and a curtain of gray fog descended.

  This time I came to consciousness upstairs in Matthew’s tower. Every candle was lit, and the fire was roaring in the hearth. The room felt almost warm, but adrenaline and shock made me shiver. Matthew was sitting on his heels on the floor with me propped between his knees, examining my right forearm. My blood-soaked pullover had a long slit where Satu had cut me. A fresh red stain was seeping into the darker spots.

  Marthe and Ysabeau stood in the doorway like a watchful pair of hawks.

  “I can take care of my wife, Maman,” Matthew said.

  “Of course, Matthew,” Ysabeau murmured in her patented subservient tone.

  Matthew tore the last inch of the sleeve to fully expose my flesh, and he swore. “Get my bag, Marthe.”

  “No,” she said firmly. “She is filthy, Matthew.”

  “Let her take a bath,” Ysabeau joined in, lending Marthe her support. “Diana is freezing, and you cannot even see her injuries. This is not helping, my child.”

  “No bath,” he said decidedly.

  “Why ever not?” Ysabeau asked impatiently. She gestured at the stairs, and Marthe departed.

  “The water would be full of her blood,” he said tightly. “Baldwin would smell it.”

  “This is not Jerusalem, Matthew,” Ysabeau said. “He has never set foot in this tower, not since it was built.”

  “What happened in Jerusalem?” I reached for the spot where Matthew’s silver coffin usually hung.

  “My love, I need to look at your back.”

  “Okay,” I whispered dully. My mind drifted, seeking an apple tree and my mother’s voice.

  “Lie on your stomach for me.”

  The cold stone floors of the castle where Satu had pinned me down were all too palpable under my chest and legs. “No, Matthew. You think I’m keeping secrets, but I don’t know anything about my magic. Satu said—”

  Matthew swore again. “There’s no witch here, and your magic is immaterial to me.” His cold hand gripped mine, as sure and firm as his gaze. “Just lean forward over my hand. I’ll hold you.”

  Seated on his thigh, I bent from the waist, resting my chest on our clasped hands. The position stretched the skin on my back painfully, but it was better than the alternative. Underneath me, Matthew stiffened.

  “Your fleece is stuck to your skin. I can’t see much with it in the way. We’re going to have to put you in the bath for a bit before it can be removed. Can you fill the tub, Ysabeau?”

  His mother disappeared, her absence followed by the sound of running water.

  “Not too hot,” he called softly after her.

  “What happened in Jerusalem?” I asked again.

  “Later,” he said, lifting me gently upright.

  “The time for secrets has passed, Matthew. Tell her, and be quick about it.” Ysabeau spoke sharply from the bathroom door. “She is your wife and has a right to know.”

  “It must be something awful, or you wouldn’t have worn Lazarus’s coffin.” I pressed lightly on the empty spot above his heart.

  With a desperate look, Matthew began his story. It came out of him in quick, staccato bursts. “I killed a woman in Jerusalem. She got between Baldwin and me. There was a great deal of blood. I loved her, and she—”

  He’d killed someone else, not a witch, but a human. My finger stilled his lips. “That’s enough for now. It was a long time ago.” I felt calm but was shaking again, unable to bear any more revelations.

  Matthew brought my left hand to his lips and kissed me hard on the knuckles. His eyes told me what he couldn’t say aloud. Finally he released both my hand and my eyes and spoke. “If you’re worried about Baldwin, we’ll do it another way. We can soak the fleece off with compresses, or you could shower.”

  The mere thought of water falling on my back or the application of pressure convinced me to risk Baldwin’s possible thirst. “The bath would be better.”

  Matthew lowered me into the lukewarm water, fully clothed right down to my running shoes. Propped in the tub, my back drawn away from the porcelain and the water wicking slowly up my fleece pullover, I began the slow process of letting go, my legs twitching and dancing under the water. Each muscle and nerve had to be told to relax, and some refused to obey.

  While I soaked, Matthew tended to my face, his fingers pressing my cheekbone. He frowned in concern and called softly for Marthe. She appeared with a huge black medical bag. Matthew took out a tiny flashlight and checked my eyes, his lips pressed tightly together.

  “My face hit the floor.” I winced. “Is it broken?”

  “I don’t think so, mon coeur, just badly bruised.”

  Marthe ripped open a package, and a whiff of rubbing alcohol reached my nose. When Matthew held the pad on the sticky part of my cheek, I gripped the sides of the tub, my eyes smarting with tears. The pad came away scarlet.

  “I cut it on the edge of a stone.” My voice was matter-of-fact in an attempt to quiet the memories of Satu that the pain brought back.

  Matthew’s cool fingers traced the stinging wound to where it disappeared under my hairline. “It’s superficial. You don’t need stitches.” He reached for a jar of ointment and smoothed some onto my skin. It smelled of mint and herbs from the garden. “Are you allergic to any medications?” he asked when he was through.

  I shook my head.

  He again called to Marthe, who trotted in with her arms full of towels. He rattled off a list of drugs, and Marthe nodded, jiggling a set of keys she pulled out of her pocket. Only one drug was familiar.

  “Morphine?” I asked, my pulse beginning to race.

  “It will alleviate the pain. The other drugs will combat swelling and infection.”

  The bath had lulled some of my anxiety and lessened my shock, but the pain was getting worse. The prospect of banishing it was enticing, and I reluctantly agreed to the drug in exchange for getting out of the bath. Sitting in the rusty water was making me queasy.

  Before climbing out, though, Matthew insisted on looking at my right foot. He hoisted it up and out of the water, resting the sole of my shoe against his shoulder. Even that slight pressure had me gasping.

  “Ysabeau. Can you come here, please?”

  Like Marthe, Ysabeau was waiting patiently in the bedroom in case her son needed help. When she came in, Matthew had her stand behind me while he snapped the water-soaked shoelaces with ease and began to pry the shoe from my foot. Ysabeau held my shoulders, keeping me from thrashing my way out of the tub.

  I cried during Matthew’s examination—even after he stopped trying to pull the shoe off and began to rip it apart by tearing as precisely as a dressmaker cutting into fine cloth. He tore my sock off, too, and ripped along the seam of my
leggings, then peeled the fabric away to reveal the ankle. It had a ring around it as though it had been closed in a manacle that had burned through the skin, leaving it black and blistered in places with odd white patches.

  Matthew looked up, his eyes angry. “How was this done?”

  “Satu hung me upside down. She wanted to see if I could fly.” I turned away uncertainly, unable to understand why so many people were furious with me over things that weren’t my fault.

  Ysabeau gently took my foot. Matthew knelt beside the tub, his black hair slicked back from his forehead and his clothing ruined from water and blood. He turned my face toward him, looking at me with a mixture of fierce protectiveness and pride.

  “You were born in August, yes? Under the sign of Leo?” He sounded entirely French, most of the Oxbridge accent gone.

  I nodded.

  “Then I will have to call you my lioness now, because only she could have fought as you did. But even la lionne needs her protectors.” His eyes flickered toward my right arm. My gripping the tub had made the bleeding resume. “Your ankle is sprained, but it’s not serious. I’ll bind it later. Now let’s see to your back and your arm.”

  Matthew scooped me out of the tub and set me down, instructing me to keep the weight off my right foot. Marthe and Ysabeau steadied me while he cut off my leggings and underclothes. The three vampires’ premodern matter-of-factness about bodies left me strangely unconcerned at standing half naked in front of them. Matthew lifted the front hem of my soggy pullover, revealing a dark purple bruise that spread across my abdomen.

  “Christ,” he said, his fingers pushing into the stained flesh above my pubic bone. “How the hell did she do that?”

  “Satu lost her temper.” My teeth chattered at the memory of flying through the air and the sharp pain in my gut. Matthew tucked the towel around my waist.

  “Let’s get the pullover off,” he said grimly. He went behind me, and there was a sting of cold metal against my back.

  “What are you doing?” I twisted my head, desperate to see. Satu had kept me on my stomach for hours, and it was intolerable to have anyone—even Matthew—behind me. The trembling in my body intensified.

  “Stop, Matthew,” Ysabeau said urgently. “She cannot bear it.”

  A pair of scissors clattered to the floor.

  “It’s all right.” Matthew nestled his body against mine like a protective shell. He crossed his arms over my chest, completely enfolding me. “I’ll do it from the front.”

  Once the shaking subsided, he came around and resumed cutting the fabric away from my body. The cold air on my back told me that there wasn’t much of it left in any case. He sliced through my bra, then got the front panel of the pullover off.

  Ysabeau gasped as the last shreds fell from my back.

  “Maria, Deu maire.” Marthe sounded stunned.

  “What is it? What did she do?” The room was swinging like a chandelier in an earthquake. Matthew whipped me around to face his mother. Grief and sympathy were etched on her face.

  “La sorcière est morte,” Matthew said softly.

  He was already planning on killing another witch. Ice filled my veins, and there was blackness at the edges of my vision.

  Matthew’s hands held me upright. “Stay with me, Diana.”

  “Did you have to kill Gillian?” I sobbed.

  “Yes.” His voice was flat and dead.

  “Why did you let me hear this from someone else? Satu told me you’d been in my rooms—that you were using your blood to drug me. Why, Matthew? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because I was afraid of losing you. You know so little about me, Diana. Secrecy, the instinct to protect—to kill if I must. This is who I am.”

  I turned to face him, wearing nothing but a towel around my waist. My arms were crossed over my bare chest, and my emotions careened from fear to anger to something darker. “So you’ll kill Satu also?”

  “Yes.” He made no apologies and offered no further explanation, but his eyes were full of barely controlled rage. Cold and gray, they searched my face. “You’re far braver than I am. I’ve told you that before. Do you want to see what she did to you?” Matthew asked, gripping my elbows.

  I thought for a moment, then nodded.

  Ysabeau protested in rapid Occitan, and Matthew stopped her with a hiss.

  “She survived the doing of it, Maman. The seeing of it cannot possibly be worse.”

  Ysabeau and Marthe went downstairs to fetch two mirrors while Matthew patted my torso with feather-light touches of a towel until it was barely damp.

  “Stay with me,” he repeated every time I tried to slip away from the rough fabric.

  The women returned with one mirror in an ornate gilt frame from the salon and a tall cheval glass that only a vampire could have carried up to the tower. Matthew positioned the larger mirror behind me, and Ysabeau and Marthe held the other in front, angling it so that I could see both my back and Matthew, too.

  But it couldn’t be my back. It was someone else’s—someone who had been flayed and burned until her skin was red, and blue, and black. There were strange marks on it, too—circles and symbols. The memory of fire erupted along the lesions.

  “Satu said she was going to open me up,” I whispered, mesmerized. “But I kept my secrets inside, Mama, just like you wanted.”

  Matthew’s attempt to catch me was the last thing I saw reflected in the mirror before the blackness overtook me.

  I awoke next to the bedroom fire again. My lower half was still wrapped up in a towel, and I was sitting on the edge of one damask-covered chair, bent over at the waist, with my torso draped across a stack of pillows on another damask-covered chair. All I could see was feet, and someone was applying ointment to my back. It was Marthe, her rough strength clearly distinguishable from Matthew’s cool touches.

  “Matthew?” I croaked, swiveling my head to the side to look for him.

  His face appeared. “Yes, my darling?”

  “Where did the pain go?”

  “It’s magic,” he said, attempting a lopsided grin for my benefit.

  “Morphine,” I said slowly, remembering the list of drugs he’d given to Marthe.

  “That’s what I said. Everyone who has ever been in pain knows that morphine and magic are the same. Now that you’re awake, we’re going to wrap you up.” He tossed a spool of gauze to Marthe, explaining that it would keep down the swelling and further protect my skin. It also had the benefit of binding my breasts, since I would not be wearing a bra in the near future.

  The two of them unrolled miles of white surgical dressing around my torso. Thanks to the drugs, I underwent the process with a curious sense of detachment. It vanished, however, when Matthew began to rummage in his medical bag and talk about sutures. As a child I’d fallen and stuck a long fork used for toasting marshmallows into my thigh. It had required sutures, too, and my nightmares had lasted for months. I told Matthew my fears, but he was resolute.

  “The cut on your arm is deep, Diana. It won’t heal properly unless it’s sutured.”

  Afterward the women got me dressed while Matthew drank some wine, his fingers shaking. I didn’t have anything that fastened up the front, so Marthe disappeared once more, returning with her arms full of Matthew’s clothing. They slid me into one of his fine cotton shirts. It swam on me but felt silky against my skin. Marthe carefully draped a black cashmere cardigan with leather-covered buttons—also Matthew’s—around my shoulders, and she and Ysabeau snaked a pair of my own stretchy black pants up my legs and over my hips. Then Matthew lowered me into a nest of pillows on the sofa.

  “Change,” Marthe ordered, pushing him in the direction of the bathroom.

  Matthew showered quickly and emerged from the bathroom in a fresh pair of trousers. He dried his hair roughly by the fire before pulling on the rest of his clothes.

  “Will you be all right if I go downstairs for a moment?” he asked. “Marthe and Ysabeau will stay with you.”

&n
bsp; I suspected his trip downstairs involved his brother, and I nodded, still feeling the effects of the powerful drug.

  While he was gone, Ysabeau muttered every now and again in a language that was neither Occitan nor French, and Marthe clucked and fussed. They’d removed most of the ruined clothes and bloody linen from the room by the time Matthew reappeared. Fallon and Hector were padding along at his side, their tongues hanging out.

  Ysabeau’s eyes narrowed. “Your dogs do not belong in my house.”

  Fallon and Hector looked from Ysabeau to Matthew with interest. Matthew clicked his fingers and pointed to the floor. The dogs sank down, their watchful faces turned to me.

  “They’ll stay with Diana until we leave,” he said firmly, and though his mother sighed, she didn’t argue with him.

  Matthew picked up my feet and slid his body underneath them, his hands lightly stroking my legs. Marthe plunked down a glass of wine in front of him, then thrust a mug of tea into my hands. She and Ysabeau withdrew, leaving us alone with the watchful dogs.

  My mind drifted, soothed by the morphine and the hypnotic touch of Matthew’s fingers. I sorted through my memories, trying to distinguish what was real from what I’d only imagined. Had my mother’s ghost really been in the oubliette, or was that a recollection of our time together before Africa? Or was it my mind’s attempt to cope with stress by fracturing off into an imaginary world? I frowned.

  “What is it, ma lionne?” Matthew asked, his voice concerned. “Are you in pain?”

  “No. I’m just thinking.” I focused on his face, pulling myself through the fog to his safer shores. “Where was I?”

  “La Pierre. It’s an old castle that no one has lived in for years.”

  “I met Gerbert.” My brain was playing hopscotch, not wanting to linger in one place for too long.

  Matthew’s fingers stilled. “He was there?”

  “Only in the beginning. He and Domenico were waiting when we arrived, but Satu sent them away.”

  “I see. Did he touch you?” Matthew’s body tensed.

  “On the cheek.” I shivered. “He had the manuscript, Matthew, long, long ago. Gerbert boasted about how he’d taken it from Spain. It was under a spell even then. He kept a witch enthralled, hoping she would be able to break the enchantment.”