A Discovery of Witches - Deborah Harkness [181]
“You told me you weren’t a witch, Ysabeau,” I said, astonished.
“I have known many witches over the years. Not one of them would leave a strand of her hair or scrap of her nails for fear that another witch would find them.”
“My mother never told me.” I wondered what other secrets my mother had kept.
“Sometimes it is best for a mother to reveal things slowly to her children.” Ysabeau’s glance flicked from me to her son.
“Who broke in?” I remembered Ysabeau’s list of possibilities.
“Vampires tried to get into the lab, but we’re less sure about your rooms. Marcus thinks it was vampires and witches working together, but I think it was just witches.”
“Is this why you were so angry? Because those creatures violated my territory?”
“Yes.”
We were back to monosyllables. I waited for the rest of the answer.
“I might overlook a trespasser on my land or in my lab, Diana, but I cannot stand by while someone does it to you. It feels like a threat, and I simply . . . can’t. Keeping you safe is instinctive now.” Matthew ran his white fingers through his hair, and a patch stuck out over his ear.
“I’m not a vampire, and I don’t know the rules. You have to explain how this works,” I said, smoothing his hair into place. “So it was the break-in at New College that convinced you to be with me?”
Matthew’s hands moved in a flash to rest on either side of my face. “I needed no encouragement to be with you. You say you’ve loved me since you resisted hitting me with an oar at the river.” His eyes were unguarded. “I’ve loved you longer than that—since the moment you used magic to take a book from its shelf at the Bodleian. You looked so relieved, and then so terribly guilty.”
Ysabeau stood, uncomfortable with her son’s open affection. “We will leave you.”
Marthe started rustling at the table, preparing to depart for the kitchens, where she would doubtless begin whipping up a ten-course feast.
“No, Maman. You should hear the rest.”
“So you are not merely outlaws.” Ysabeau’s voice was heavy. She sank back onto her chair.
“There’s always been animosity between creatures—vampires and witches especially. But Diana and I have brought those tensions into the open. It’s just an excuse, though. The Congregation isn’t really bothered by our decision to break the covenant.”
“Stop speaking in riddles, Matthew,” Ysabeau said sharply. “I’m out of patience with them.”
Matthew looked at me regretfully before he responded. “The Congregation has become interested in Ashmole 782 and the mystery of how Diana acquired it. Witches have been watching the manuscript for at least as long as I have. They never foresaw that you would be the one to reclaim it. And no one imagined that I would reach you first.”
Old fears wriggled to the surface, telling me there was something wrong deep inside me.
“If not for Mabon,” Matthew continued, “powerful witches would have been in the Bodleian, witches who knew the manuscript’s importance. But they were busy with the festival and let their guard down. They left the task to that young witch, and she let you—and the manuscript—slip through her fingers.”
“Poor Gillian,” I whispered. Peter Knox must be furious with her.
“Indeed.” Matthew’s mouth tightened. “But the Congregation has been watching you, too—for reasons that go well beyond the book and have to do with your power.”
“How long?” I wasn’t able to finish my sentence.
“Probably your whole life.”
“Since my parents died.” Unsettling memories from childhood floated back to me, of feeling the tingles of a witch’s attention while on the swings at school and a vampire’s cold stare at a friend’s birthday party. “They’ve been watching me since my parents died.”
Ysabeau opened her mouth to speak, saw her son’s face, and thought better of it.
“If they have you, they’ll have the book, too, or so they think. You’re connected to Ashmole 782 in some powerful way I don’t yet understand. I don’t believe they do either.”
“Not even Peter Knox?”
“Marcus asked around. He’s good at wheedling