A Discovery of Witches (24 page)

Matthew’s face adopted an expression of long-suffering patience. He sat back in his chair, taking the wineglass with him. I stood up slightly and reached across the table to pour him some more. If I was going to ply him with questions, I could at least ply him with wine, too. Leaning over the candles, I almost set my shirt on fire. Matthew grabbed the wine bottle.

“Why don’t I do that?” he suggested. He poured himself some more and topped up my glass as well before he answered. “Most of what you know about me—about vampires—was dreamed up by humans. These legends made it possible for humans to live around us. Creatures frighten them. And I’m not talking solely about vampires.”

“Black hats, bats, brooms.” It was the unholy trinity of witchcraft lore, which burst into spectacular, ridiculous life every year on Halloween.

“Exactly.” Matthew nodded. “Somewhere in each of these stories, there’s a nugget of truth, something that frightened humans and helped them deny we were real. The strongest distinguishing characteristic of humans is their power of denial. I have strength and long life, you have supernatural abilities, daemons have awe-inspiring creativity. Humans can convince themselves up is down and black is white. It’s their special gift.”

“What’s the truth in the story about vampires not being allowed inside without an invitation?” Having pressed him on his diet, I focused on the entrance protocols.

“Humans are with us all the time. They just refuse to acknowledge our existence because we don’t make sense in their limited world. Once they allow us in—see us for who we really are—then we’re in to stay, just as someone you’ve invited into your home can be hard to get rid of. They can’t ignore us anymore.”

“So it’s like the stories of sunlight,” I said slowly. “It’s not that you can’t be in sunlight, but when you are, it’s harder for humans to ignore you. Rather than admit that you’re walking among them, humans tell themselves you can’t survive the light.”

Matthew nodded again. “They manage to ignore us anyway, of course. We can’t stay indoors until it’s dark. But we make more sense to humans after twilight—and that goes for you, too. You should see the looks when you walk into a room or down the street.”

I thought about my ordinary appearance and glanced at him doubtfully. Matthew chuckled.

“You don’t believe me, I know. But it’s true. When humans see a creature in broad daylight, it makes them uneasy. We’re too much for them—too tall, too strong, too confident, too creative, too powerful, too different. They try very hard to push our square pegs into their round holes all day long. At night it’s a bit easier to dismiss us as merely odd.”

I stood up and removed the fish plates, happy to see that Matthew had eaten everything but the garnish. He poured a bit more of the German wine into his glass while I pulled two more plates out of the refrigerator. Each held neatly arranged slices of raw venison so thin that the butcher insisted you could read the
Oxford Mail
through them. Vampires didn’t like greens. We’d see about root vegetables and cheese. I heaped beets in the center of each plate and shaved Parmesan on top.

A broad-bottomed decanter full of red wine went into the center of the table, where it quickly caught Matthew’s attention.

“May I?” he asked, no doubt worried about my burning down the college. He reached for the plain glass container, poured a bit of wine into our glasses, then held it up to his nose.

“Côte-Rôtie,” he said with satisfaction. “One of my favorites.”

I eyed the plain glass container. “You can tell that just from smelling it?”

He laughed. “Some vampire stories are true. I have an exceptional sense of smell—and excellent sight and hearing, too. But even a human could tell that this was Côte-Rôtie.” He closed his eyes again. “Is it 2003?”

My mouth gaped open. “Yes!” This was better than watching a game show. There had been a little crown on the label. “Does your nose tell you who made it?”

“Yes, but that’s because I’ve walked the fields where the grapes were grown,” he confessed sheepishly, as if he’d been caught pulling a trick on me.

“You can smell the fields in this?” I stuck my nose in the glass, relieved that the odor of horse manure was no longer there.

“Sometimes I believe I can remember everything I’ve ever smelled. It’s probably vanity,” he said ruefully, “but scents bring back powerful memories. I remember the first time I smelled chocolate as if it were yesterday.”

“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?”