A Discovery of Witches(98)
The thought of a hot shower had me eagerly pushing back the covers. “Yes, please!”
Matthew dodged my flying limbs and helped me to the floor, which was farther away than I had expected. It was cold, too, the stone flagstones stinging against my bare feet.
“Your bag is in the bathroom, the computer is downstairs in my study, and there are fresh towels. Take your time.” He watched as I skittered into the bathroom.
“This is a palace!” I exclaimed. An enormous white, freestanding tub was tucked between two of the windows, and a long wooden bench held my dilapidated Yale duffel. In the far corner, a showerhead was set into the wall.
I started running the water, expecting to wait a long time for it to heat up. Miraculously, steam enveloped me immediately, and the honey-and-nectarine scent of my soap helped to lift the tension of the past twenty-four hours.
Once my muscles were unkinked, I slipped on jeans and a turtleneck, along with a pair of socks. There was no outlet for my blow dryer, so I settled instead for roughly toweling my hair and dragging a comb through it before tying it back in a ponytail.
“Marthe brought up tea,” he said when I walked into the bedroom, glancing at a teapot and cup sitting on the table. “Do you want me to pour you some?”
I sighed with pleasure as the soothing liquid went down my throat. “When can I see the Aurora manuscript?”
“When I’m sure you won’t get lost on your way to the library. Ready for the grand tour?”
“Yes, please.” I slid loafers on over my socks and ran back into the bathroom to get a sweater. As I raced around, Matthew waited patiently, standing near the top of the stairs.
“Should we take the teapot down?” I asked, skidding to a halt.
“No, she’d be furious if I let a guest touch a dish. Wait twenty-four hours before helping Marthe.”
Matthew slipped down the stairs as if he could handle the uneven, smooth treads blindfolded. I crept along, guiding my fingers against the stone wall.
When we reached his study, he pointed to my computer, already plugged in and resting on a table by the window, before we descended to the salon. Marthe had been there, and a warm fire was crackling in the fireplace, sending the smell of wood smoke through the room. I grabbed Matthew.
“The library,” I said. “The tour needs to start there.”
It was another room that had been filled over the years with bric-a-brac and furniture. An Italian Savonarola folding chair was pulled up to a French Directory secretary, while a vast oak table circa 1700 held display cabinets that looked as if they’d been plucked from a Victorian museum. Despite the mismatches, the room was held together by miles of leather-bound books on walnut shelving and by an enormous Aubusson carpet in soft golds, blues, and browns.
As in most old libraries, the books were shelved by size. There were thick manuscripts in leather bindings, shelved with spines in and ornamental clasps out, the titles inked onto the fore edges of the vellum. There were tiny incunabula and pocket-size books in neat rows on one bookcase, spanning the history of print from the 1450s to the present. A number of rare modern first editions, including a run of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories and T. H. White’s The Sword in the Stone, were there, too. One case held nothing but large folios—botanical books, atlases, medical books. If all this was downstairs, what treasures lived in Matthew’s tower study?
He let me circle the room, peering at the titles and gasping. When I returned to his side, all I could do was shake my head in disbelief.
“Imagine what you’d have if you’d been buying books for centuries,” Matthew said with a shrug that reminded me of Ysabeau. “Things pile up. We’ve gotten rid of a lot over the years. We had to. Otherwise this room would be the size of the Bibliothèque Nationale.”
“So where is it?”
“You’re already out of patience, I see.” He went to a shelf, his eyes darting among the volumes. He pulled out a small book with black tooled covers and presented it to me.
When I looked for a velveteen cradle to put it on, he laughed.
“Just open it, Diana. It’s not going to disintegrate.”
It felt strange to hold such a manuscript in my hands, trained as I was to think of them as rare, precious objects rather than reading material. Trying not to open the covers too wide and crack the binding, I peeked inside. An explosion of bright colors, gold, and silver leaped out.
“Oh,” I breathed. The other copies I’d seen of Aurora Consurgens were not nearly so fine. “It’s beautiful. Do you know who did the illuminations?”
“A woman named Bourgot Le Noir. She was quite popular in Paris in the middle of the fourteenth century.” Matthew took the book from me and opened it fully. “There. Now you can see it properly.”
The first illumination showed a queen standing on a small hill, sheltering seven small creatures inside her outspread cloak. Delicate vines framed the image, twisting and turning their way across the vellum. Here and there, buds burst into flowers, and birds sat on the branches. In the afternoon light, the queen’s embroidered golden dress glowed against a brilliant vermilion background. At the bottom of the page, a man in a black robe sat atop a shield that bore a coat of arms in black and silver. The man’s attention was directed at the queen, a rapt expression on his face and his hands raised in supplication.