A Discovery of Witches - Deborah Harkness [160]
“Don’t do it, Matthew. Please don’t try to negotiate with Knox.”
“I’ll make sure you’re safe before you return to Oxford.”
“Then there’s nothing more to say. You’ve decided. So have I.” I returned the phone to Ysabeau.
She frowned, her cold fingers pulling it from my grip. Ysabeau said good-bye to her son, his reply audible only as a staccato burst of unintelligible sound.
“Thank you for not telling him about the witchwater,” I said quietly after she’d disconnected the line.
“That is your tale to tell, not mine.” Ysabeau drifted toward the fireplace.
“It’s no good trying to tell a story you don’t understand. Why is the power coming out now? First it was the wind, then the visions, and now the water, too.” I shuddered.
“What kind of visions?” Ysabeau asked, her curiosity evident.
“Didn’t Matthew tell you? My DNA has all this . . . magic,” I said, stumbling over the word, “in it. The tests warned there might be visions, and they’ve begun.”
“Matthew would never tell me what your blood revealed—certainly not without your permission, and probably not with your permission either.”
“I’ve seen them here in the château.” I hesitated. “How did you learn to control them?”
“Matthew told you that I had visions before I became a vampire.” Ysabeau shook her head. “He should not have.”
“Were you a witch?” That might explain why she disliked me so much.
“A witch? No. Matthew wonders if I was a daemon, but I’m sure I was an ordinary human. They have their visionaries, too. It’s not only creatures who are blessed and cursed in this way.”
“Did you ever manage to control your second sight and anticipate it?”
“It gets easier. There are warning signs. They can be subtle, but you will learn. Marthe helped me as well.”
It was the only piece of information I had about Marthe’s past. Not for the first time, I wondered how old these two women were and what workings of fate had brought them together.
Marthe stood with her arms crossed. “Òc,” she said, giving Ysabeau a tender, protective look. “It is easier if you let the visions move through you without fighting.”
“I’m too shocked to fight,” I said, thinking back to the salon and the library.
“Shock is your body’s way of resisting,” Ysabeau said. “You must try to relax.”
“It’s difficult to let go when you see knights in armor and the faces of women you’ve never met mixed up with scenes from your own past.” My jaw cracked with a yawn.
“You are too exhausted to think about this now.” Ysabeau rose to her feet.
“I’m not ready to sleep.” I smothered another yawn with the back of my hand.
She eyed me speculatively, like a beautiful falcon scrutinizing a field mouse. Ysabeau’s glance turned mischievous. “Get into bed, and I will tell you how I made Matthew.”
Her offer was too tempting to resist. I did as she told me while she pulled up a chair and Marthe busied herself with dishes and towels.
“So where do I begin?” She drew herself straighter in the chair and stared into the candles’ flames. “I cannot begin simply with my part of the story but must start with his birth, here in the village. I remember him as a baby, you know. His father and mother came when Philippe decided to build on this land back when Clovis was king. That’s the only reason the village is here—it was where the farmers and craftsmen who built the church and castle lived.”
“Why did your husband pick this spot?” I leaned against the pillows, my knees folded close to my chest under the bedclothes.
“Clovis promised him the land in hopes it would encourage Philippe to fight against the king’s rivals. My husband was always playing both sides against the middle.” Ysabeau smiled wistfully. “Very few people caught him at it, though.”
“Was Matthew’s father a farmer?”
“A farmer?” Ysabeau looked surprised. “No, he was a carpenter, as was Matthew—before he became a stonemason.”
A mason. The tower’s stones all fit together so smoothly they didn’t seem to require mortar. And there were the oddly ornate chimneys at the Old Lodge gatehouse that Matthew just had to let some craftsman try his hand