A Discovery of Witches(95)

A stout old woman with skin like snow and a mass of incongruously dark hair wrapped around her head in intricate braids stepped into the front hall, her arms outstretched. “Matthew!” she cried. “Cossí anatz?”

“Va plan, mercés. E tu?” Matthew caught her in a hug, and kissed her on both cheeks.

“Aital aital,” she replied, grabbing her elbow and grimacing.

Matthew murmured in sympathy, and Ysabeau appealed to the ceiling for deliverance from the emotional spectacle.

“Marthe, this is my friend Diana,” he said, drawing me forward.

Marthe, too, was a vampire, one of the oldest I’d ever seen. She had to have been in her sixties when she was reborn, and though her hair was dark, there was no mistaking her age. Lines crisscrossed her face, and the joints of her hands were so gnarled that apparently not even vampiric blood could straighten them.

“Welcome, Diana,” she said in a husky voice of sand and treacle, looking deep into my eyes. She nodded at Matthew and reached for my hand. Her nostrils flared. “Elle est une puissante sorcière,” she said to Matthew, her voice appreciative.

“She says you’re a powerful witch,” Matthew explained. His closeness somewhat diminished my instinctive concern with having a vampire sniff me.

Having no idea what the proper French response was to such a comment, I smiled weakly at Marthe and hoped that would do.

“You’re exhausted,” Matthew said, his eyes flicking over my face. He began rapidly questioning the two vampires in the unfamiliar language. This led to a great deal of pointing, eye rolling, emphatic gestures, and sighs. When Ysabeau mentioned the name Louisa, Matthew looked at his mother with renewed fury. His voice took on a flat, abrupt finality when he answered her.

Ysabeau shrugged. “Of course, Matthew,” she murmured with patent insincerity.

“Let’s get you settled.” Matthew’s voice warmed as he spoke to me.

“I will bring food and wine,” Marthe said in halting English.

“Thank you,” I said. “And thank you, Ysabeau, for having me in your home.” She sniffed and bared her teeth. I hoped it was a smile but feared it was not.

“And water, Marthe,” Matthew added. “Oh, and food is coming this morning.”

“Some of it has already arrived,” his mother said tartly. “Leaves. Sacks of vegetables and eggs. You were very bad to ask them to drive it down.”

“Diana needs to eat, Maman. I didn’t imagine you had a great deal of proper food in the house.” Matthew’s long ribbon of patience was fraying from the events of last evening and now his lukewarm homecoming.

“I need fresh blood, but I don’t expect Victoire and Alain to fetch it from Paris in the middle of the night.” Ysabeau looked vastly pleased with herself as my knees swayed.

Matthew exhaled sharply, his hand under my elbow to steady me. “Marthe,” he asked, pointedly ignoring Ysabeau, “can you bring up eggs and toast and some tea for Diana?”

Marthe eyed Ysabeau and then Matthew as if she were at center court at Wimbledon. She cackled with laughter. “òc,” she replied, with a cheerful nod.

“We’ll see you two at dinner,” Matthew said calmly. I felt four icy patches on my shoulders as the women watched us depart. Marthe said something to Ysabeau that made her snort and Matthew smile broadly.

“What did Marthe say?” I whispered, remembering too late that there were few conversations, whispered or shouted, that would not be overheard by everyone in the house.

“She said we looked well together.”

“I don’t want Ysabeau to be furious with me the whole time we’re here.”

“Pay no attention to her,” he said serenely. “Her bark is worse than her bite.”

We passed through a doorway into a long room with a wide assortment of chairs and tables of many different styles and periods. There were two fireplaces, and two knights in glistening armor jousted over one of them, their bright lances crossing neatly without a drop of bloodshed. The fresco had clearly been painted by the same dewy-eyed chivalric enthusiast who’d decorated the hall. A pair of doors led to another room, this one lined with bookcases.

“Is that a library?” I asked, Ysabeau’s hostility momentarily forgotten. “Can I see your copy of Aurora Consurgens now?”

“Later,” Matthew said firmly. “You’re going to eat something and then sleep.”

He led the way to another curving staircase, navigating through the labyrinth of ancient furniture with the ease of long experience. My own passage was more tentative, and my thighs grazed a bow-fronted chest of drawers, setting a tall porcelain vase swaying. When we finally reached the bottom of the staircase, Matthew paused.

“It’s a long climb, and you’re tired. Do you need me to carry you?”

“No,” I said indignantly. “You are not going to sling me over your shoulder like a victorious medieval knight making off with the spoils of battle.”

Matthew pressed his lips together, eyes dancing.

“Don’t you dare laugh at me.”

He did laugh, the sound bouncing off the stone walls as if a pack of amused vampires were standing in the stairwell. This was, after all, precisely the kind of place where knights would have carried women upstairs. But I didn’t plan on being counted among them.