The Book of Life (15 page)

“We’ll go to Amsterdam,” Matthew said promptly.

“Also out of the question,” Baldwin said. “The house is indefensible. If you cannot ensure her safety, Matthew, Diana will stay with my daughter Miyako.”

“Diana would hate Hachiōji,” Gallowglass stated with conviction.

“Not to mention Miyako,” Verin murmured.

“Then Matthew had better do his duty.” Baldwin stood. “Quickly.” Matthew’s brother left the room so fast he seemed to vanish. Verin and Ernst quickly said their good-nights and followed. Once they’d gone, Ysabeau suggested we adjourn to the salon. There was an ancient stereo there and enough Brahms to muffle the lengthiest of conversations.

“What will you do, Matthew?” Ysabeau still looked shattered. “You cannot let Diana go to Japan.

Miyako would eat her alive.”

“We’re going to the Bishop house in Madison,” I said. It was hard to know who was most surprised by this revelation we were going to New York: Ysabeau, Matthew, or Sarah.

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” Matthew said cautiously.

“Em discovered something important here at Sept-Tours—something she’d rather die than reveal.”

I marveled at how calm I sounded.

“What makes you think so?” Matthew asked.

“Sarah said Em had been poking through things in the Round Tower, where all the de Clermont family records are kept. If she knew about the witch’s baby in Jerusalem, she would have wanted to know more,” I replied.

“Ysabeau told both of us about the baby,” Sarah said, looking at Ysabeau for confirmation. “Then we told Marcus. I still don’t see why this means we should go to Madison.”

“Because whatever it was that Emily discovered drove her to summon up spirits,” I said. “Sarah thinks Emily was trying to reach Mom. Maybe Mom knew something, too. If that’s true, we might be able to find out more about it in Madison.”

“That’s a lot of thinks, mights, and maybes, Auntie,” Gallowglass said with a frown.

I looked at my husband, who had not responded to my suggestion but was instead staring absently into his wineglass. “What do you think, Matthew?”

“We can go to Madison,” he said. “For now.”

“I’ll go with you,” Fernando murmured. “Keep Sarah company.” She smiled at him gratefully.

“There’s more going on here than meets the eye—and it involves Knox and Gerbert. Knox came to Sept-Tours because of a letter he’d found in Prague that mentioned Ashmole 782.” Matthew looked somber. “It can’t be a coincidence that Knox’s discovery of that letter coincides with Emily’s death and Benjamin’s reappearance.”

“You were in Prague. The Book of Life was in Prague. Benjamin was in Prague. Knox found something in Prague,” Fernando said slowly. “You’re right, Matthew. That’s more than a coincidence.

It’s a pattern.”

“There’s something else—something we haven’t told you about the Book of Life,” Matthew said.

“It’s written on parchment made from the skins of daemons, vampires, and witches.”

Marcus’s eyes widened. “That means it contains genetic information.”

“That’s our suspicion,” Matthew said. “We can’t let it fall into Knox’s hands—or, God forbid, Benjamin’s.”

“Finding the Book of Life and its missing pages still has to be our top priority,” I agreed.

“Not only could it tell us about creature origins and evolution, it may help us understand blood rage,” Marcus said. “But we might not be able to gather any useful genetic information from it.”

“The Bishop house returned the page with the chemical wedding to Diana shortly after we came back,” Matthew said. The house was known among the area’s witches for its magical misbehavior and often took cherished items for safekeeping, only to restore them to their owners at a later date. “If we can get to a lab, we could test it.”

“Unfortunately, it isn’t easy to talk your way into state-of-the-art genetics laboratories.” Marcus shook his head. “And Baldwin is right. You can’t go to Oxford.”

“Maybe Chris could find you something at Yale. He’s a biochemist, too. Would his lab have the right equipment?” My understanding of laboratory practices petered out around 1715.

“I’m not analyzing a page from the Book of Life in a college laboratory,” Matthew said. “Working with ancient DNA is exacting. I’ll look for a private laboratory. There must be something I can hire out.”

“Ancient DNA is fragile. And we’ll need more than a single page to work with if we want reliable results,” Marcus warned.

“Another reason to get Ashmole 782 out of the Bodleian,” I said. “It’s safe where it is, Diana,”

Matthew assured me.

“For the moment,” I replied.

“Aren’t there two more loose pages out there in the world?” Marcus said. “We could look for them first.”

“Maybe I can help,” Phoebe offered.”

“Thanks, Phoebe.” I’d seen Marcus’s mate in research mode in the Round Tower. I’d be happy to have her skills at my disposal.

“And Benjamin?” Ysabeau asked. “Do you know what he meant when he said he had come to share your appreciation for witches, Matthew?”

Matthew shook his head.

My witch’s sixth sense told me that finding out the answer to Ysabeau’s question might well be the key to everything.

7

I
stood in Sarah’s stillroom and stared through the dust on the surface of the window’s wavy glass. The whole house needed a good airing. The stiff brass latch on the sash resisted my attempts at first, but the swollen frame finally gave up the fight and the window rocketed upward, quivering with indignation at the rough treatment.

“Deal with it,” I said crossly, turning away and surveying the room before me. It was a familiarly strange place, this room where my aunts had spent so much of their time and I so little. Sarah left her usual disorderly ways at the threshold. In here all was neat and tidy, surfaces clear, mason jars lined up on the shelves, and wooden drawers labeled with their contents.

CONEFLOWER
,
FEVERFEW
,
MILK THISTLE
,
SKULLCAP
,
BONESET
,
YARROW
,
MOONWORT
.

Though the ingredients for Sarah’s craft were not arranged alphabetically, I was sure some witchy principle governed their placement, since she was always able to reach instantly for the herb or seed she needed.

Sarah had taken the Bishop grimoire with her to Sept-Tours, but now it was back where it belonged: resting on what remained of an old pulpit that Em had bought in one of Bouckville’s antique shops. She and Sarah had sawed off its supporting pillar, and now the lectern sat on the old kitchen table that had come here with the first Bishops at the end of the eighteenth century. One of the table’s legs was markedly shorter than the other—nobody knew why—but the unevenness of the floorboards meant that its surface was surprisingly level and solid. As a child I’d thought it was magic. As an adult I knew it was dumb luck.

Various old appliances and a battered electrical-outlet strip were strewn around Sarah’s work surface. There was an avocado green slow cooker, a venerable coffeemaker, two coffee grinders, and a blender. These were the tools of the modern witch, though Sarah kept a big black cauldron by the fireplace for old times’ sake. My aunts used the slow cooker for making oils and potions, the coffee grinders and blender for preparing incense and pulverizing herbs, and the coffee machine for brewing infusions. In the corner stood a shining white specimen fridge with a red cross on the door, unplugged and unused.

“Maybe Matthew can find something more high-tech for Sarah,” I mused aloud. A Bunsen burner.

A few alembics, perhaps. Suddenly I longed for Mary Sidney’s well-equipped sixteenth-century laboratory. I looked up, half hoping to see the splendid murals of alchemical processes that decorated her walls at Baynard’s Castle.

Instead dried herbs and flowers hung from twine strung up between the exposed rafters. I could identify some of them: the swollen pods of nigella, bursting with tiny seeds; prickly-topped milk thistle;

long-stemmed mullein crowned with the bright yellow flowers that earned them the name of witches’ candles; stalks of fennel. Sarah knew every one of them by sight, touch, taste, and smell. With them she cast spells and manufactured charms. The dried plants were gray with dust, but I knew better than to disturb them. Sarah would never forgive me if she came into her stillroom and discovered nothing but stems.

The stillroom had once been the farmhouse’s kitchen. One wall was occupied by a huge fireplace complete with a wide hearth and a pair of ovens. Above it was a storage loft accessible by a rickety old ladder. I’d spent many a rainy afternoon there, curled up with a book listening to the rain patter against the roof. Corra was up there now, one eye open in lazy interest.

I sighed and set the dust motes dancing. It was going to take water—and lots of elbow grease—to make this room welcoming again. And if my mother had known something that might help us find the Book of Life, this is where I would find it.

A soft chime sounded. Then another. Goody Alsop had taught me how to discern the threads that bound the world and pull on them to weave spells that were not in any grimoire. The threads were around me all the time, and when they brushed together, they made a sort of music. I reached out and snagged a few strands on my fingers.

Blue and amber—the colors that connected the past to the present and the future. I’d seen them before, but only in corners where unsuspecting creatures wouldn’t be caught in time’s warp and weft.

Not surprisingly, time was not behaving as it should in the Bishop house. I twisted the blue and amber threads into a knot and tried to push them back where they belonged, but they sprang back, weighting the air with memories and regret. A weaver’s knot wouldn’t fix what was wrong here.

My body was damp with perspiration, even though all I’d done was displace the dust and dirt from one location to another. I’d forgotten how hot Madison could be at this time of year. Picking up a bucket full of dingy water, I pushed against the stillroom door. It didn’t budge.

“Move, Tabitha,” I said, nudging the door another inch in hopes of dislodging the cat.

Tabitha yowled. She refused to join me in the stillroom. It was Sarah and Em’s domain, and she considered me an invader.

“I’ll set Corra on you,” I threatened.

Tabitha shifted. One paw stretched forward past the crack, then the other as she slipped away.

Sarah’s cat had no wish to battle my familiar, but her dignity forbade a hurried retreat.

I pushed open the back door. Outside, a drone of insects and an unrelenting pounding filled the air.

I flung the dirty water off the deck, and Tabitha shot outside to join Fernando. He was standing with a foot propped up on a stump we used to split wood, watching Matthew drive fence posts into the field.

“Is he still at it?” I asked, swinging the empty bucket. The pounding had been going on for days:

first replacing loose shingles on the roof, then hammering the trellises into place in the garden, and now mending fences.

“Matthew’s mind is quieter when he is working with his hands,” Fernando said. “Carving stone, fighting with his sword, sailing a boat, writing a poem, doing an experiment—it doesn’t really matter.”

“He’s thinking about Benjamin.” If so, it was no wonder Matthew was seeking distractions.

Fernando’s cool attention turned to me. “The more Matthew thinks about his son, the more he is taken back to a time when he did not like himself or the choices he made.”

“Matthew doesn’t often talk about Jerusalem. He showed me his pilgrim’s badge and told me about Eleanor.” It wasn’t a lot, given how much time Matthew must have spent there. And such ancient memories weren’t likely to reveal themselves to my witch’s kiss.

“Ah. Fair Eleanor. Her death was another preventable mistake,” Fernando said bitterly. “Matthew should never have gone to the Holy Land the first time, never mind the second. The politics and bloodshed were too much for any young vampire to handle, especially one with blood rage. But Philippe needed every weapon at his disposal if he hoped to succeed in Outremer.”

Medieval history was not my area of expertise, but the Crusader colonies brought back hazy memories of bloody conflicts and the deadly siege of Jerusalem.

“Philippe dreamed of setting up a
manjasang
kingdom there, but it was not to be. For once in his life, he underestimated the avarice of the warmbloods, not to mention their religious fanaticism. Philippe should have left Matthew in Córdoba with Hugh and me, for Matthew was no help to him in Jerusalem or Acre or any of the other places his father sent him.” Fernando gave the stump a savage kick, dislodging a bit of moss clinging to the old wood. “Blood rage can be an asset, it seems, when what you want is a killer.”

“I don’t think you liked Philippe,” I said softly.

“In time I came to respect him. But like him?” Fernando shook his head. “No.”

Recently, I’d experienced twinges of dislike where Philippe was concerned. He had given Matthew the job of family assassin, after all. Sometimes I looked at my husband, standing alone in the lengthening summer shadows or silhouetted against the light from the window, and saw the heaviness of that responsibility weighing on his shoulders.

Matthew fitted a fence post into the ground and looked up. “Do you need something?” he shouted. “Nope. Just getting some water,” I called back.

“Have Fernando help you.” Matthew pointed to the empty bucket. He didn’t approve of pregnant women doing heavy lifting.

“Of course,” I said noncommittally as Matthew went back to his work.