A Discovery of Witches - Deborah Harkness [162]
“Finally, after so many years of trying and failing, Blanca was with child. It was 531. Such a year. There was a new king to the south, and the battles had started all over again. Matthew began to look happy, as if he dared to hope this baby would survive. And it did. Lucas was born in the autumn and was baptized in the unfinished church that Matthew was helping to build. It was a hard birth for Blanca. The midwife said that he would be the last child she bore. For Matthew, though, Lucas was enough. And he was so like his father, with his black curls and pointed chin—and those long legs.”
“What happened to Blanca and Lucas?” I asked softly. We were only six years from Matthew’s transformation into a vampire. Something must have happened, or he would never have let Ysabeau exchange his life for a new one.
“Matthew and Blanca watched their son grow and thrive. Matthew had learned to work in stone rather than wood, and he was in high demand among the lords from here to Paris. Then fever came to the village. Everyone fell ill. Matthew survived. Blanca and Lucas did not. That was in 536. The year before had been strange, with very little sunshine, and the winter was cold. When spring came, the sickness came, too, and carried Blanca and Lucas away.”
“Didn’t the villagers wonder why you and Philippe remained healthy?”
“Of course. But there were more explanations then than there would be today. It was easier to think God was angry with the village or that the castle was cursed than to think that the manjasang were living among them.”
“Manjasang?” I tried to roll the syllables around my mouth as Ysabeau had.
“It is the old tongue’s word for vampire—‘blood eater.’ There were those who suspected the truth and whispered by the fireside. But in those days the return of the Ostrogoth warriors was a far more frightening prospect than a manjasang overlord. Philippe promised the village his protection if the raiders came back. Besides, we made it a point never to feed close to home,” she explained primly.
“What did Matthew do after Blanca and Lucas were gone?”
“He grieved. Matthew was inconsolable. He stopped eating. He looked like a skeleton, and the village came to us for help. I took him food”—Ysabeau smiled at Marthe—“and made him eat and walked with him until he wasn’t so restless. When he could not sleep, we went to church and prayed for the souls of Blanca and Lucas. Matthew was very religious in those days. We talked about heaven and hell, and he worried about where their souls were and if he would be able to find them again.”
Matthew was so gentle with me when I woke up in terror. Had the nights before he’d become a vampire been as sleepless as those that came after?
“By autumn he seemed more hopeful. But the winter was difficult. People were hungry, and the sickness continued. Death was everywhere. The spring could not lift the gloom. Philippe was anxious about the church’s progress, and Matthew worked harder than ever. At the beginning of the second week in June, he was found on the floor beneath its vaulted ceiling, his legs and back broken.”
I gasped at the thought of Matthew’s soft, human body plummeting to the hard stones.
“There was no way he could survive the fall, of course,” Ysabeau said softly. “He was a dying man. Some of the masons said he’d slipped. Others said he was standing on the scaffolding one moment and gone the next. They thought Matthew had jumped and were already talking about how he could not be buried in the church because he was a suicide. I could not let him die fearing he might not be saved from hell. He was so worried about being with Blanca and Lucas—how could he go to his death wondering if he would be separated from them for all eternity?”
“You did the right