A Discovery of Witches - Deborah Harkness [46]
He picked up his keys. “Can I interest you in some tea before we head back to Oxford?”
“Where?”
“We’ll go to the gatehouse,” Matthew said matter-of-factly.
“There’s a café there?”
“No, but there’s a kitchen. A place to sit down, too. I can make tea,” he teased.
“Matthew,” I said, shocked, “is this your house?”
By that time we were standing in the doorway, looking out into the courtyard. I saw the keystone over the house’s gate: 1536.
“I built it,” he said, watching me closely.
Matthew Clairmont was at least five hundred years old.
“The spoils of the Reformation,” he continued. “Henry gave me the land, on the condition that I tear down the abbey that was here and start over. I saved what I could, but it was difficult to get away with much. The king was in a foul mood that year. There’s an angel here and there, and some stonework I couldn’t bear to destroy. Other than that, it’s all new construction.”
“I’ve never heard anyone describe a house built in the early sixteenth century as ‘new construction’ before.” I tried to see the house not only through Matthew’s eyes but as a part of him. This was the house he had wanted to live in nearly five hundred years ago. In seeing it I knew him better. It was quiet and still, just as he was. More than that, it was solid and true. There was nothing unnecessary—no extra ornamentation, no distractions.
“It’s beautiful,” I said simply.
“It’s too big to live in now,” he replied, “not to mention too fragile. Every time I open a window, something seems to fall off it, despite careful maintenance. I let Amira live in some of the rooms and open the house to her students a few times a week.”
“You live in the gatehouse?” I asked as we walked across the open expanse of cobbles and brick to the car.
“Part of the time. I live in Oxford during the week but come here on the weekends. It’s quieter.”
I thought that it must be challenging for a vampire to live surrounded by noisy undergraduates whose conversations he couldn’t help overhearing.
We got back into the car and drove the short distance to the gatehouse. As the manor’s onetime public face, it had slightly more frills and embellishments than the main house. I studied the twisted chimneys and the elaborate patterns in the brick.
Matthew groaned. “I know. The chimneys were a mistake. The stonemason was dying to try his hand at them. His cousin worked for Wolsey at Hampton Court, and the man simply wouldn’t take no for an answer.”
He flipped a light switch near the door, and the gatehouse’s main room was bathed in a golden glow. It had serviceable flagstone floors and a big stone fireplace suitable for roasting an ox.
“Are you cold?” Matthew asked as he went to the part of the space that had been turned into a sleek, modern kitchen. It was dominated by a refrigerator rather than a stove. I tried not to think about what he might keep in it.
“A little bit.” I drew my sweater closer. It was still relatively warm in Oxford, but my drying perspiration made the night air feel chilly.
“Light the fire, then,” Matthew suggested. It was already laid, and I set it alight with a long match drawn from an antique pewter tankard.
Matthew put the kettle on, and I walked around the room, taking in the elements of his taste. It ran heavily toward brown leather and dark polished wood, which stood out handsomely against the flagstones. An old carpet in warm shades of red, blue, and ocher provided jolts of color. Over the mantel there was an enormous portrait of a dark-haired, late-seventeenth-century beauty in a yellow gown. It had certainly been painted by Sir Peter Lely.
Matthew noticed my interest. “My sister Louisa,” he said, coming around the counter with a fully outfitted tea tray. He looked up at the canvas, his face touched with sadness. “Dieu, she was beautiful.”
“What happened to her?”
“She went to Barbados, intent on making herself queen of the Indies. We tried to tell her that her taste for young gentlemen