“Really?” I pitched forward in my chair.
“It was 1615. War hadn’t broken out yet, and the French king had married a Spanish princess that no one liked—especially not the king.” When I smiled, he smiled back, though his eyes were fixed on some distant image. “She brought chocolate to Paris. It was as bitter as sin and as decadent, too. We drank the cacao straight, mixed with water and no sugar.”
I laughed. “It sounds awful. Thank goodness someone figured out that chocolate deserved to be sweet.”
“That was a human, I’m afraid. The vampires liked it bitter and thick.”
We picked up our forks and started in on the venison. “More Scottish food,” I said, gesturing at the meat with my knife.
Matthew chewed a piece. “Red deer. A young Highlands stag from the taste of it.”
I shook my head in amazement.
“As I said,” he continued, “some of the stories are true.”
“Can you fly?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
He snorted. “Of course not. We leave that to the witches, since you can control the elements. But we’re strong and fast. Vampires can run and jump, which makes humans think we can fly. We’re efficient, too.”
“Efficient?” I put my fork down, unsure whether raw venison was to my liking.
“Our bodies don’t waste much energy. We have a lot of it to spend on moving when we need to.”
“You don’t breathe much,” I said, thinking back to yoga and taking a sip of wine.
“No,” Matthew said. “Our hearts don’t beat very often. We don’t need to eat very often. We run cold, which slows down most bodily processes and helps explain why we live so long.”
“The coffin story! You don’t sleep much, but when you do, you sleep like the dead.”
He grinned. “You’re getting the hang of this, I see.”
Matthew’s plate was empty of everything except for the beets, and mine was empty except for the venison. I cleared away the second course and invited him to pour more wine.
The main dish was the only part of the meal that required heat, and not much of it. I had already made a bizarre biscuitlike thing from ground chestnuts. All that was left for me to do was sear some rabbit. The list of ingredients included rosemary, garlic, and celery. I decided to forgo the garlic. With his sense of smell, garlic must overpower everything else—there was the nugget of truth in that vampire legend. The celery was also ruled out. Vampires categorically did not like vegetables. Spices didn’t seem to pose a problem, so I kept the rosemary and ground some pepper over the rabbit while it seared in the pan.
Leaving Matthew’s rabbit a little underdone, I cooked mine a bit more than was required, in the hope that it would get the taste of raw venison out of my mouth. After assembling everything in an artistic pile, I delivered it to the table. “This is cooked, I’m afraid—but barely.”
“You don’t think this is a test of some sort, do you?” Matthew’s face creased into a frown.
“No, no,” I said hurriedly. “But I’m not used to entertaining vampires.”
“I’m relieved to hear it,” he murmured. He gave the rabbit a sniff. “It smells delicious.” While he was bent over his plate, the heat from the rabbit amplified his distinctive scent of cinnamon and clove. Matthew forked up a bit of the chestnut biscuit. As it traveled to his mouth, his eyes widened. “Chestnuts?”
“Nothing but chestnuts, olive oil, and a bit of baking powder.”
“And salt. And water, rosemary, and pepper,” he commented calmly, taking another bite of the biscuit.
“Given your dietary restrictions, it’s a good thing you can figure out exactly what you’re putting in your mouth,” I grumbled jokingly.
With most of the meal behind us, I began to relax. We chatted about Oxford while I cleared the plates and brought cheese, berries, and roasted chestnuts to the table.
“Help yourself,” I said, putting an empty plate in front of him. Matthew savored the aroma of the tiny strawberries and sighed happily as he picked up a chestnut.
“These really are better warm,” he observed. He cracked the hard nut easily in his fingers and popped the meat out of the shell. The nutcracker hanging off the edge of the bowl was clearly optional equipment with a vampire at the table.
“What do I smell like?” I asked, toying with the stem of my wineglass.
For a few moments, it seemed as though he wasn’t going to answer. The silence stretched thin before he turned wistful eyes on me. His lids fell, and he inhaled deeply.
“You smell of willow sap. And chamomile that’s been crushed underfoot.” He sniffed again and smiled a small, sad smile. “There’s honeysuckle and fallen oak leaves, too,” he said softly, breathing out, “along with witch hazel blooming and the first narcissus of spring. And ancient things—horehound, frankincense, lady’s mantle. Scents I thought I’d forgotten.”
His eyes opened slowly, and I looked into their gray depths, afraid to breathe and break the spell his words had cast.
“What about me?” he asked, his eyes holding on to mine.
“Cinnamon.” My voice was hesitant. “And cloves. Sometimes I think you smell of carnations—not the kind in the florist shops but the old-fashioned ones that grow in English cottage gardens.”
“Clove pinks,” Matthew said, his eyes crinkling at the corners in amusement. “Not bad for a witch.”
I reached for a chestnut. Cupping the nut in my palms, I rolled it from one hand to the other, the warmth traveling up my suddenly chilly arms.
Matthew sat back in his chair again, surveying my face with little flicks of his eyes. “How did you decide what to serve for dinner tonight?” He gestured at the berries and nuts that were left from the meal.
“Well, it wasn’t magic. The zoology department helped a lot,” I explained.
He looked startled, then roared with laughter. “You asked the zoology department what to make me for dinner?”
“Not exactly,” I said defensively. “There were raw-food recipes on the Net, but I got stuck after I bought the meat. They told me what gray wolves ate.”
Matthew shook his head, but he was still smiling, and my irritation dissolved. “Thank you,” he said simply. “It’s been a very long time since someone made me a meal.”
“You’re welcome. The wine was the worst part.”
Matthew’s eyes brightened. “Speaking of wine,” he said, standing up and folding his napkin, “I brought us something to have after dinner.”
He asked me to fetch two fresh glasses from the kitchen. An old, slightly lopsided bottle was sitting on the table when I returned. It had a faded cream label with simple lettering and a coronet. Matthew was working the corkscrew carefully into a cork that was crumbly and black with age.
His nostrils flared when he pulled it free, his face taking on the look of a cat in secure possession of a delectable canary. The wine that came out of the bottle was syrupy, its golden color glinting in the light of the candles.
“Smell it,” he commanded, handing me one of the glasses, “and tell me what you think.”
I took a sniff and gasped. “It smells like caramels and berries,” I said, wondering how something so yellow could smell of something red.
Matthew was watching me closely, interested in my reactions. “Take a sip,” he suggested.
The wine’s sweet flavors exploded in my mouth. Apricots and vanilla custard from the kitchen ladies tumbled across my tongue, and my mouth tingled with them long after I’d swallowed. It was like drinking magic.
“What is this?” I finally said, after the taste of the wine had faded.
“It was made from grapes picked a long, long time ago. That summer had been hot and sunny, and the farmers worried that the rains were going to come and ruin the crop. But the weather held, and they got the grapes in just before the weather changed.”
“You can taste the sunshine,” I said, earning myself another beautiful smile.
“During the harvest a
comet blazed over the vineyards. It had been visible through astronomers’ telescopes for months, but in October it was so bright you could almost read by its light. The workers saw it as a sign that the grapes were blessed.”
“Was this in 1986? Was it Halley’s comet?”
Matthew shook his head. “No. It was 1811.” I stared in astonishment at the almost two-hundred-year-old wine in my glass, fearing it might evaporate before my eyes. “Halley’s comet came in 1759 and 1835.” He pronounced the name “Hawley.”
“Where did you get it?” The wine store by the train station did not have wine like this.
“I bought it from Antoine-Marie as soon as he told me it was going to be extraordinary,” he said with amusement.
Turning the bottle, I looked at the label. Château Yquem. Even I had heard of that.
“And you’ve had it ever since,” I said. He’d drunk chocolate in Paris in 1615 and received a building permit from Henry VIII in 1536—of course he was buying wine in 1811. And there was the ancient-looking ampulla he was wearing around his neck, the cord visible at his throat.
“Matthew,” I said slowly, watching him for any early warning signs of anger. “How old are you?”
His mouth hardened, but he kept his voice light. “I’m older than I look.”
“I know that,” I said, unable to curb my impatience.
“Why is my age important?”
“I’m a historian. If somebody tells me he remembers when chocolate was introduced into France or a comet passing overhead in 1811, it’s difficult not to be curious about the other events he might have lived through. You were alive in 1536—I’ve been to the house you had built. Did you know Machiavelli? Live through the Black Death? Attend the University of Paris when Abelard was teaching there?”
He remained silent. The hair on the back of my neck started to prickle.
“Your pilgrim’s badge tells me you were once in the Holy Land. Did you go on crusade? See Halley’s comet pass over Normandy in 1066?”
Still nothing.
“Watch Charlemagne’s coronation? Survive the fall of Carthage? Help keep Attila from reaching Rome?”
Matthew held up his right index finger. “Which fall of Carthage?”
“You tell me!”
“Damn you, Hamish Osborne,” he muttered, his hand flexing on the tablecloth. For the second time in two days, Matthew struggled over what to say. He stared into the candle, drawing his finger slowly through the flame. His flesh erupted into angry red blisters, then smoothed itself out into white, cold perfection an instant later without a flicker of pain evident on his face.
“I believe that my body is nearly thirty-seven years of age. I was born around the time Clovis converted to Christianity. My parents remembered that, or I’d have no idea. We didn’t keep track of birthdays back then. It’s tidier to pick the date of five hundred and be done with it.” He looked up at me, briefly, and returned his attention to the candles. “I was reborn a vampire in 537, and with the exception of Attila—who was before my time—you’ve touched on most of the high and low points in the millennium between then and the year I put the keystone into my house in Woodstock. Because you’re a historian, I feel obligated to tell you that Machiavelli was not nearly as impressive as you all seem to think he was. He was just a Florentine politician—and not a terribly good one at that.” A note of weariness had crept into his voice.
Matthew Clairmont was more than fifteen hundred years old.
“I shouldn’t pry,” I said by way of apology, unsure of where to look and mystified as to what had led me to think that knowing the historical events this vampire had lived through would help me know him better. A line from Ben Jonson floated into my mind. It seemed to explain Matthew in a way that the coronation of Charlemagne could not. “‘He was not of an age, but for all time,’” I murmured.
“‘With thee conversing I forget all time,’” he responded, traveling further into seventeenth-century literature and offering up a line from Milton.
We looked at each other for as long as we could stand it, working another fragile spell between us. I broke it.
“What were you doing in the fall of 1859?”
His face darkened. “What has Peter Knox been telling you?”
“That you were unlikely to share your secrets with a witch.” My voice sounded calmer than I felt.
“Did he?” Matthew said softly, sounding less angry than he clearly was. I could see it in the set of his jaw and shoulders. “In September 1859 I was looking through the manuscripts in the Ashmolean Museum.”
“Why, Matthew?” Please tell me, I urged silently, crossing my fingers in my lap. I’d provoked him into revealing the first part of his secret but wanted him to freely give me the rest. No games, no riddles. Just tell me.
“I’d recently finished reading a book manuscript that was soon going to press. It was written by a Cambridge naturalist.” Matthew put down his glass.
My hand flew to my mouth as the significance of the date registered. “Origin.” Like Newton’s great work of physics, the Principia, this was a book that did not require a full citation. Anyone who’d passed high-school biology knew Darwin’s On the Origin of Species.
“Darwin’s article the previous summer laid out his theory of natural selection, but the book was quite different. It was marvelous, the way he established easily observable changes in nature and inched you toward accepting something so revolutionary.”
“But alchemy has nothing to do with evolution.” Grabbing the bottle, I poured myself more of the precious wine, less concerned that it might vanish than that I might come unglued.
“Lamarck believed that each species descended from different ancestors and progressed independently toward higher forms of being. It’s remarkably similar to what your alchemists believed—that the philosopher’s stone was the elusive end product of a natural transmutation of base metals into more exalted metals like copper, silver, and gold.” Matthew reached for the wine, and I pushed it toward him.
“But Darwin disagreed with Lamarck, even if he did use the same word—‘transmutation’—in his initial discussions of evolution.”
“He disagreed with linear transmutation, it’s true. But Darwin’s theory of natural selection can still be seen as a series of linked transmutations.”
Maybe Matthew was right and magic really was in everything. It was in Newton’s theory of gravity, and it might be in Darwin’s theory of evolution, too.
“There are alchemical manuscripts all over the world.” I was trying to remain moored to the details while coming to terms with the bigger picture. “Why the Ashmole manuscripts?”
“When I read Darwin and saw how he seemed to explore the alchemical theory of transmutation through biology, I remembered stories about a mysterious book that explained the origin of our three species—daemons, witches, and vampires. I’d always dismissed them as fantastic.” He took a sip of wine. “Most suggested that the story was concealed from human eyes in a book of alchemy. The publication of Origin prompted me to look for it, and if such a book existed, Elias Ashmole would have bought it. He had an uncanny ability to find bizarre manuscripts.”
“You were looking for it here in Oxford, one hundred and fifty years ago?”
“Yes,” Matthew said. “And one hundred and fifty years before you received Ashmole 782, I was told that it was missing.”
My heart sped up, and he looked at me in concern. “Keep going,” I said, waving him on.
“I’ve been trying to get my hands on it ever since. Every other Ashmole manuscript was there, and none seemed promising. I’ve looked at manuscripts in other libraries—at the Herzog August Bibliothek in Germany, the Bibliothèque Nationale in France, the Medici Library in Florence, the Vatican, the Library of Congress.”
I blinked, thinking of a vampire wandering the hallways of the Vatican.
“The only manuscript I haven’t seen is Ashmole 782. By simple process of elimination, it must be the manuscript th
at contains our story—if it still survives.”
“You’ve looked at more alchemical manuscripts than I have.”
“Perhaps,” Matthew admitted, “but it doesn’t mean I understand them as well as you do. What all the manuscripts I’ve seen have in common, though, is an absolute confidence that the alchemist can help one substance change into another, creating new forms of life.”
“That sounds like evolution,” I said flatly.
“Yes,” Matthew said gently, “it does.”
We moved to the sofas, and I curled up into a ball at the end of one while Matthew sprawled in the corner of the other, his long legs stretched out in front of him. Happily, he’d brought the wine. Once we were settled, it was time for more honesty between us.
“I met a daemon, Agatha Wilson, at Blackwell’s last week. According to the Internet, she’s a famous designer. Agatha told me the daemons believe that Ashmole 782 is the story of all origins—even human origins. Peter Knox told me a different story. He said it was the first grimoire, the source of all witches’ power. Knox believes that the manuscript contains the secret of immortality,” I said, glancing at Matthew, “and how to destroy vampires. I’ve heard the daemon and witch versions of the story—now I want yours.”
“Vampires believe the lost manuscript explains our longevity and our strength,” he said. “In the past, our fear was that this secret—if it fell into witches’ hands—would lead to our extermination. Some fear that magic was involved in our making and that the witches might find a way to reverse the magic and destroy us. It seems that that part of the legend might be true.” He exhaled softly, looking worried.
“I still don’t understand why you’re so certain that this book of origins—whatever it may contain—is hidden inside an alchemy book.”
“An alchemy book could hide these secrets in plain sight—just like Peter Knox hides his identity as a witch under the veneer that he’s an expert in the occult. I think it was vampires who learned that the book was alchemical. It’s too perfect a fit to be coincidence. The human alchemists seemed to capture what it is to be a vampire when they wrote about the philosopher’s stone. Becoming a vampire makes us nearly immortal, it makes most of us rich, and it gives us the chance to accrue unimaginable knowledge and learning.”
A Discovery of Witches Page 19