A Discovery of Witches(129)

Ysabeau de Clermont was testing me.

“After you,” I said grimly, touching Rakasa’s flank with my heel.

The remainder of our ride was measured not by the movement of the sun, which was still hidden behind clouds, but by the increasing amounts of blood Ysabeau’s hungry mouth drew from her kills. She was a relatively neat eater. Still, it would be some time before I was happy at the prospect of a large steak.

I was numb to the sight of blood after the rabbit, the enormous squirrel-like creature that Ysabeau told me was a marmot, the fox, and the wild goat—or so I thought. When Ysabeau gave chase to a young doe, however, something prickled inside me.

“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 chateau.

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 chateau. 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 chateau 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.