Marthe’s eyes narrowed at this sudden change in my eating habits. “Eat.”
The food tasted like sawdust, but my stomach rumbled nonetheless. After I’d swallowed two of the tiny sandwiches, Marthe thrust a mug into my hands. She didn’t need to tell me to drink. The hot liquid slid down my throat, carrying away the water’s salty vestiges.
“Was that witchwater?” I shivered at the memory of all that water coming out of me.
Ysabeau, who had been standing by the window looking out into the darkness, walked toward the opposite sofa. “Yes,” she said. “It has been a long time, though, since we have seen it come forth like that.”
“Thank God that wasn’t the usual way,” I said faintly, swallowing another sip of tea.
“Most witches today are not powerful enough to draw on the witchwater as you did. They can make waves on ponds and cause rain when there are clouds. They do not become the water.” Ysabeau sat across from me, studying me with evident curiosity.
I had become the water. Knowing that this was no longer common made me feel vulnerable—and even more alone.
A phone rang.
Ysabeau reached into her pocket and pulled out a small red phone that seemed uncharacteristically bright and high-tech against her pale skin and classic, buff-colored clothes.
“
Oui?
Ah, good. I am glad that you are there and safe.” She spoke English out of courtesy to me and nodded in my direction. “Yes, she is fine. She is eating.” She stood and handed me the phone. “Matthew would like to speak with you.”
“Diana?” Matthew was barely audible.
“Yes?” I didn’t trust myself to say much for fear that more than words would tumble out.
He made a soft sound of relief. “I just wanted to make sure you were all right.”
“Your mother and Marthe are taking good care of me.”
And I didn’t flood the castle,
I thought.
“You’re tired.” The distance between us was making him anxious, and he was tuned into every nuance of our exchange.
“I am. It’s been a long day.”
“Sleep, then,” he said, his tone unexpectedly gentle. My eyes closed against the sudden sting of tears. There would be little sleep for me tonight. I was too worried about what he might do in some half-baked, heroic attempt to protect me.
“Have you been to the lab?”
“I’m headed there now. Marcus wants me to go over everything carefully and make sure we’ve taken all the necessary precautions. Miriam’s checked the security at the house as well.” He told the half-truth with smooth conviction, but I knew it for what it was. The silence stretched out until it became uncomfortable.
“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 at constructing. His long, slender fingers were strong enough to twist open an oyster shell or crack a chestnut. Another piece of Matthew fell into place, fitting perfectly next to the warrior, the scientist, and the courtier.
“And they both worked on the château?”
“Not this château,” Ysabeau said, looking around her. “This was a present from Matthew, when I was sad over being forced to leave a place that I loved. He tore down the fortress his father had built and replaced it with a new one.” Her green-and-black eyes glittered with amusement. “Philippe was furious. But it was time for a change. The first château was made of wood, and even though there had been stone additions over the years, it was a bit ramshackle.”
My mind tried to take in the time line of events, from the construction of the first fortress and its village in the sixth century to Matthew’s tower in the thirteenth century.
Ysabeau’s nose crinkled in distaste. “Then he stuck this tower onto the back when he returned home and didn’t want to live so close to the family. I never liked it—it seemed a romantic trifle—but it was his wish, and I let him.” She shrugged. “Such a funny tower. It didn’t help defend the castle. He had already built far more towers here than we needed.”
Ysabeau continued to spin her tale, seeming only partially in the twenty-first century.
“Matthew was born in the village. He was always such a bright child, so curious. He drove his father mad, following him to the château and picking up tools and sticks and stones. Children learned their trades early then, but Matthew was precocious. By the time he could hold a hatchet without injuring himself, he was put to work.”
An eight-year-old Matthew with gangly legs and gray-green eyes ran around the hills in my imagination.
“Yes.” She smiled, agreeing with my unspoken thoughts. “He was indeed a beautiful child. A beautiful young man as well. Matthew was unusually tall for the time, though not as tall as he became once he was a vampire.
“And he had a wicked sense of humor. He was always pretending that something had gone wrong or that instructions had not been given to him regarding this roof beam or that foundation. Philippe never failed to believe the tall tales Matthew told him.” Ysabeau’s voice was indulgent. “Matthew’s first father died when he was in his late teens, and his first mother had been dead for years by then. He was alone, and we worried about him finding a woman to settle down with and start a family.
“And then he met Blanca.” Ysabeau paused, her look level and without malice. “You cannot have imagined that he was without the love of women.” It was a statement, not a question. Marthe shot Ysabeau an evil look but kept quiet.
“Of course not,” I said calmly, though my heart felt heavy.
“Blanca was new to the village, a servant to one of the master masons Philippe had brought in from Ravenna to construct the first church. She was as pale as her name suggested, with white skin, eyes the color of a spring sky, and hair that looked like spun gold.”
A pale, beautiful woman had appeared in my visions when I went to fetch Matthew’s computer. Ysabeau’s description of Blanca fit her perfectly.
“She had a sweet smile, didn’t she?” I whispered.
Ysabeau’s eyes widened. “Yes, she did.”
“I know. I saw her when Matthew’s armor caught the light in his study.”
Marthe made a warning sound, but Ysabeau continued.
“Sometimes Blanca seemed so delicate that I feared she would break when drawing water from the well or picking vegetables. My Matthew was drawn to that delicacy, I suppose. He has always liked fragile things.” Ysabeau’s eyes flicked over my far-from-fragile form. “They were married when Matthew turned twenty-five and could support a family. Blanca was just nineteen.
“They were a beautiful couple, of course. There was such a strong contrast between Matthew’s darkness and Blanca’s pale prettiness. They were very much in love, and the marriage was a happy one. But they could not seem to have children. Blanca had miscarriage after miscarriage. I cannot imagine what it was like inside their house, to see so many children of your body die before they drew breath.” I wasn’t sure if vampires could cry, though I remembered the bloodstained tear on Ysabeau’s cheek from my earlier visions in the salon. Even without the tears, however, she looked now as though she were weeping, her face a mask of regret.
“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.”