The World of All Souls Page 4

  Then Philippe receives a message that Champier’s friends are coming to Sept-Tours to look for him. On Christmas Day, Matthew and Diana leave Sept-Tours and begin the journey back to England.

  Back in 2009 Ysabeau knows that Matthew and Diana have traveled to 1590 and is sure that Philippe would have sent her word about them. She finds the note he’d hidden in the Aurora Consurgens. Philippe writes that he has seen Matthew and Diana and hints at the possibility of grandchildren. Ysabeau tells Sarah and Emily that Philippe is certain that the different species of nonhuman creatures can procreate together. The women know that having a child would place Matthew and Diana in great danger from the Congregation, in both the past and the present. A timewalking witch might even be able to follow them there. They agree to watch for any historical anomalies that Matthew and Diana might trigger so that their presence in the sixteenth century can be kept a secret.

  Matthew and Diana arrive at their inn in the Blackfriars on Christmas Eve. In 1590 England and France operated on separate calendars, causing a ten-day time difference and giving the couple the rare opportunity to celebrate the holidays twice. Matthew and Diana also learn that she is pregnant. Matthew wants to return to the present at once, but Diana reminds him she doesn’t know how to use the necessary spells. She still needs a witch. They contact Mary Sidney, the Countess of Pembroke and a good friend of Matthew’s, to see if she has any leads. Mary has religious objections to magic and cannot recommend a witch, but she invites Diana to help with her alchemical experiments. She also warns Diana that Matthew is being watched, so Diana determines to find a witch herself.

  Diana goes out into the city to draw the attention of other witches. Instead she is noticed by the vampire Father Hubbard, the self-styled ruler of all nonhuman creatures in the City of London. Hubbard requires that all newcomers become his children through a blood-tasting ritual. Only the de Clermont family is exempt from this rule. Tasting her blood will tell Hubbard Diana’s secrets, including the fact that she’s carrying Matthew’s child. Diana informs Hubbard that as Philippe de Clermont’s blood-sworn daughter she is not bound by his rule. She also asks Hubbard to provide her with a witch to attend on her in Matthew Roydon’s vampire household. Hubbard sends Diana a young witch named Annie Undercroft, niece of the powerful witch Susanna Norman. Susanna then arranges a meeting with an even more powerful witch, Goody Alsop. Diana learns from Goody Alsop that she is a rare kind of witch called a weaver. Weavers like Diana and Goody Alsop cannot perform the spells of other witches; they must create their own. Goody Alsop sets up a meeting with other witches in London. They will help Diana make a forspell, which will reveal the nature of her talents and how to develop them.

  Matthew and Diana are given a pair of miniature portraits of themselves by Mary Sidney and Henry Percy. Shortly afterward we learn that the portraits have been discovered in the twenty-first century and are for sale at Sotheby’s auction house. Ysabeau dispatches Marcus to Sotheby’s, and he purchases the portraits from a Sotheby’s representative named Phoebe Taylor.

  Two important changes to the family unit living in the Blackfriars take place. First, Diana takes in a young boy who tries to steal her purse on the street. His name is Jack, and Diana brings him home against Matthew’s objections, providing him with a roof, a job, and the first family he’s ever known. Second, shortly before the date for her forspell, Diana miscarries the baby. Matthew is grief-stricken.

  During Diana’s forspell the room is filled with filaments of magic. Diana cuts the filaments away and allows them to return to her of their own volition. As they return, Diana’s familiar takes shape: a firedrake, or dragon with two legs. The goddess appears and tells Diana that she wants Diana’s life in return for saving Matthew’s—and she is not done with Diana yet. When the vision dissolves, the firedrake disappears inside Diana’s body. The witches deduce that her magic provides answers to her questions and helps her when she is protecting someone or confronting her own fears. She can also be present in the worlds of both the living and the dead. Goody Alsop gives her nine silken cords with which to weave her spells, and Diana begins making progress with magic.

  Matthew and Diana learn that the queen’s astrologer, Dr. John Dee, had possessed Ashmole 782 but was robbed of it by his assistant, Edward Kelley. Dee and Kelley had spent time at the court of Rudolf II in Prague at Elizabeth’s behest, where Rudolf apparently persuaded Kelley to steal the manuscript and substitute another. Matthew sends someone to Prague to recover it.

  Mary Sidney creates an alchemical arbor Dianae in a glass flask, a dendritic amalgam of crystallized silver that resembles a living tree. Diana realizes that the alchemical mural on the walls of Mary’s laboratory portrays a firedrake with the de Clermont family banner over its head and its tail in its mouth, dripping blood into an alchemical vessel. On a hunch Diana adds her blood to the arbor Dianae. The blood causes the tree to blacken and wither, but when Matthew adds his own blood, the tree reanimates, bearing gold leaves and fruit.

  In February 2010 one of Mary Sidney’s lab notebooks is discovered in a house in Surrey, England. The pages contain references to an assistant named “DR.” Matthew’s stepsister Verin remembers Philippe telling her and Gallowglass in 1944 that they must watch for historical anomalies, particularly related to alchemy and to a witch named Diana Bishop. He instructed them to return to Sept-Tours when the anomalies began happening. Verin calls Gallowglass, and he confirms they must return.

  In 1591 Queen Elizabeth orders Matthew to Prague to fetch Edward Kelley back because she believes he has discovered the secret of the philosopher’s stone. Diana and Matthew travel to Prague with Gallowglass, servant Pierre, Annie Undercroft, and Jack Blackfriars.

  In Prague, Edward Kelley confesses that Emperor Rudolf has taken the manuscript. Learning that Rabbi Loew, the leading Talmudic scholar in Prague, has seen it, Matthew arranges a meeting in the Jewish Town. Loew does not have much useful information, but Diana stays on without Matthew to meet a weaver named Abraham ben Elijah and a frightening vampire named Herr Fuchs.

  Matthew has been more possessive than ever, and Diana finally learns why: Vampire mates drink each other’s blood as a way of sharing everything, and without this reassurance Matthew is distracted by insecurities. Diana offers her blood, and it tells Matthew that the Herr Fuchs she mentioned is actually his own vampire son, Benjamin de Clermont.

  Rudolf becomes entranced with Diana and offers her anything she desires. She asks to see the manuscript, which is not enchanted at this point and has all pages present. The first page shows a tree composed of hundreds of intertwined bodies, and the page depicting the alchemical child is surrounded with text that Diana couldn’t see in 2009. The manuscript’s pages are made of the skin of vampires, daemons, and witches; the ink contains blood; and the glue is made from bones. Ashmole 782 is a record of creature DNA.

  Gallowglass steals the manuscript with young Jack’s assistance, but only after Kelley has ripped out the first three pages, once more bewitching the text around the alchemical-child illustration. The Londoners flee with it back to London, discovering on the way that Diana is again pregnant.

  In the spring of 2010, the witch Peter Knox discovers a letter written in 1609 by Rabbi Loew to a man named Benjamin, who is tracking pages from Ashmole 782. This letter suggests that Benjamin is Matthew de Clermont’s vampire son, and Gerbert confirms it. The two are alarmed that a portion of Ashmole 782 might be in Matthew’s hands and that Sept-Tours is sheltering a variety of creatures who are demanding repeal of the covenant. They decide to send a raiding party of witches to Sept-Tours.

  Back in London, while Matthew reports his failure to return Edward Kelley to an angry Queen Elizabeth, Christopher Marlowe and Matthew’s disturbed sister Louisa attack Diana, who saves herself with the help of her firedrake. Matthew imprisons Marlowe and Louisa in Bedlam to have his revenge, but Diana shows them unexpected mercy.

  Matthew and Diana begin pr
eparations to return to the present. One day they run into Stephen Proctor, her father, who has timewalked from the year 1980 to search for Ashmole 782 himself. After a few short precious days with his daughter, Stephen returns to 1980.

  Diana pays a last visit to Father Hubbard to discuss the safety of Jack Blackfriars and sixteenth-century Matthew Roydon once his modern counterpart departs. Hubbard promises not to harm either one in return for a drop of Diana’s blood. Diana freezes the drop to reduce the information it contains, but Father Hubbard now knows that her real name is Diana Bishop.

  Thomas Harriot shares with Diana his plans for a telescope. She engages goldsmith Nicholas Vallin to create a model, dated and engraved with Harriot’s name, providing a deliberate trail of evidence to prove that it was not Galileo who invented the telescope, as is usually credited. On June 30, 2010, the Times of London reports the discovery of a telescope invented in 1591, twenty years before Galileo made his telescope. Ysabeau recognizes that this disregard for historical consequences means that Matthew and Diana will be returning soon. Sarah Bishop watches eagerly for Diana, who is all the family she has left: Emily was killed preserving the life of Sophie and Nathaniel’s baby, Margaret.

  Diana meets her ancestor Rebecca White Davies and gives Ysabeau’s earring (which eventually ends up in a poppet in the Bishop house) to the child for safekeeping.

  Diana and Matthew timewalk back to 2010, where they are met by Ysabeau, Sarah, Sophie, Nathaniel, and their baby. And when Ysabeau greets Diana, she hears the heartbeats of the twins her daughter-in-law is carrying.

  The Book of Life

  Diana and Matthew return from the past to Sept-Tours in July 2010. Tragic news awaits them: Emily Mather died being interrogated by the wizard Peter Knox as to the whereabouts of Ashmole 782, also known as the Book of Life. Knox was forced to resign from the Congregation afterward, but delegates still plan to search Sept-Tours for the missing book. Baldwin is outraged to learn that Diana and Matthew are married, that she is Philippe’s blood-sworn daughter, and that she is pregnant with twins. He demands that Matthew and Diana leave Sept-Tours and stay out of sight, avoiding notice by any members of the Congregation.

  Diana wants to go to Oxford immediately to search for the Book of Life and its two missing pages, but Matthew insists that they obey Baldwin’s orders to let the situation settle down. As Philippe’s full-blooded son, Baldwin is head of the family, and they require his protection. An exploration of the family genealogy by Marcus and Hamish suggests a solution to Baldwin’s despotic authority, which Matthew resists: As a male vampire with children of his own, he could form a separate branch of the family called a scion—provided he has Baldwin’s approval.

  The genealogy also reveals the existence of Matthew’s son Benjamin, whom Matthew disavowed centuries before. Benjamin inherited Matthew’s blood rage, a vampire sickness passed to him by Ysabeau, though she is only a carrier. Their illness has been kept secret from the Congregation, who long ago demanded that any vampire afflicted with blood rage be put to death. But a recent series of vampire murders all over the world has raised the Congregation’s suspicions that blood rage has not died out.

  Ysabeau reveals that shortly after Matthew made Benjamin in the early twelfth century, a witch in Jerusalem was raped by a vampire and gave birth. Such mixed race children are one of the Congregation’s greatest fears and would lead to genocide. If a vampire informs the Congregation that blood rage runs in the de Clermont family and they learn that a witch is pregnant with Matthew’s twins, the entire de Clermont family will be in danger.

  On Matthew and Diana’s last night at Sept-Tours, Benjamin calls to announce that he knows “what the witches discovered all those years ago.” Benjamin is not only alive but in pursuit of the Book of Life. They can’t hide in Oxford, so Diana suggests they return to the Bishop home in Madison, New York. They are accompanied by Fernando Gonçalves, the partner of Philippe’s dead vampire son Hugh, who has become a source of support to the grieving Sarah.

  The Madison coven rallies around them as Diana begins to explore her weaver’s powers. On Diana’s birthday her friend Chris Roberts, a biochemist from Yale, arrives. He has been worried ever since she disappeared the previous November. Chris, a true scientist, takes with equanimity the news that she is a witch and that vampires and daemons also exist, objecting only to the secrecy and the segregation of creatures.

  Benjamin contacts them again, this time showing a video feed of a bleak laboratory with a bloodied witch lying on the floor. Benjamin blandly explains that he has been raping the witch to impregnate her, but she has been unable to carry the babies to term. If she can’t give him a child, he will come after Diana.

  Chris spurs Matthew to action. They must understand creature DNA, and fast. Matthew is still concerned about the need for secrecy, but Chris warns him it’s only a matter of time before creatures are outed to the human world. They go to Yale, where Chris puts his graduate students to work on mapping creature genomes. Meanwhile Diana enlists the help of a Beinecke librarian to locate the two missing pages of the Book of Life.

  One of the missing pages arrives, along with unexpected visitors: Father Hubbard and Jack Blackfriars. Diana’s London waif from 1590 is now a young man—and a vampire. Hubbard has brought the page showing two alchemical dragons, sent to him by Edward Kelley in the autumn of 1592.

  Hubbard was made a vampire by Benjamin and is Jack’s sire. Jack has inherited a severe case of blood rage, which Benjamin used for his own ends. One night Jack covers the walls of Gallowglass’s condo with nightmarish images of his own and Benjamin’s atrocities. Baldwin arrives unexpectedly, realizes that Jack is responsible for the vampire murders, and commands Matthew to kill him.

  How can Matthew kill the young man that he and Diana consider their son? Establishing his own scion would enable him to defy Baldwin but also require him to expose his own blood rage to his children and grandchildren, and to make them potential targets for the Congregation if they keep his secret. Diana is adamant: Matthew cannot kill Jack. Matthew agrees to try to convince Marcus’s vampire children in New Orleans to accept his leadership. Matthew, Marcus, Jack, and Hubbard set off for New Orleans, and Diana goes to London to continue her search for the last missing page from the Book of Life.

  Ysabeau and Phoebe join Diana in London, along with Sarah and Fernando. With help from Phoebe, Ysabeau, and the London coven, Diana locates the owner of the page. It’s the daemon Timothy, whom she’d met the year before at the Bodleian. He gives her the page: an illustration of the Tree of Life, made from the skin of his own dead ancestor.

  Now she must steal the Book of Life from the Bodleian, a task that, as a scholar, Diana dreads. The goddess advises her that to be successful she must give up something she holds precious. She shoots a silver-shafted arrow at Diana, driving Philippe’s golden arrowhead that she wears around her neck deep into her breast. “When you have need of it, do not hesitate.” But when Benjamin threatens Phoebe at the Bodleian, Diana hesitates to use the arrow against him out of fear of injuring Phoebe and committing violence at the Bodleian, where humans might witness it. Ysabeau has to rescue them.

  Matthew finally secures support from Marcus’s family in New Orleans for his new scion, and he and Jack return to Diana. Gallowglass immediately leaves, because he has long been in love with Diana and knows that there is no hope of their being together. He must go so that he’s able to move forward with his own life. Shortly afterward Diana gives birth to twins: a boy, Philip, and a girl, Rebecca. She is in more danger than ever; the witch whom Benjamin kidnapped is dead, along with her unborn fetus, and Benjamin’s sights are now set on Diana.

  The family returns to Sept-Tours for the christening of Philip and Rebecca. Baldwin has secured the Congregation’s agreement to Diana’s status as a de Clermont. At the christening Matthew drops the bombshell that the twins are not junior members of the de Clermont family but prominently placed in hi
s own new scion. Baldwin tentatively agrees to this plan only after Diana assures him she will spellbind any family members who act on their blood rage and put the larger de Clermont family at risk.

  In Les Revenants, the house that Ysabeau has given the newlyweds, Matthew discovers letters that prove both Benjamin and Gerbert have preyed on witches for centuries in pursuit of the Book of Life. He sets off for Central Europe, Benjamin’s known haunt, to destroy him. Knowing that he could fail, Matthew instructs Diana to return to London to obtain the Book of Life for her own protection.

  With magical and vampiric help, Diana breaks into the Bodleian. She has just learned that Matthew is Benjamin’s prisoner, and this enables her to use her full powers without hesitation or fear—the “something precious” that the goddess had mentioned. Her familiar, the firedrake Corra, bursts free, retrieves the book, then disappears forever. The book creates new pages that record the birth of the twins, then goes blank. Diana has absorbed the text of the Book of Life. It is now inextricably part of her.

  Diana returns to Sept-Tours, where Benjamin sends the family live feeds of his torture of Matthew. The room in which Matthew is being held provides Ysabeau a clue: It was Benjamin, not the Nazis, who tortured Philippe. This narrows their search for Matthew to the city of Chelm.

  Diana’s instinct is to fly to Matthew’s side, but Baldwin knows that defeating Benjamin will require the support of the entire Congregation. When the Congregation was first formed, Philippe had insisted that it always include one delegate from the de Clermont family. As Philippe’s blood-sworn daughter, Diana is eligible to be that delegate. Baldwin takes her to Matthew’s house in Venice, near the Congregation’s headquarters, and then secretly sets off to locate Matthew.

  In Venice, Diana makes a motion for the Congregation’s support and shows them the Book of Life, both the blank pages of creature skin and the palimpsest under the surface of her own skin. Diana explains that reproduction is possible between weavers and vampires with blood rage. Domenico insists that such children would be monsters, but the witch Janet Gowdie counters that she is the ancestor of a weaver-vampire union—and that the vampire was Matthew’s son Benjamin. Gradually Diana convinces the delegates that the rules against creatures intermingling are based not on logic but on fear. The Congregation agrees to mount a campaign to rescue Matthew and destroy Benjamin.