Shadow of Night (58 page)

“What’s wrong with my neck?” I said, confused.

“Vampires only bite strangers and subordinates on the neck. Not lovers. Certainly not mates.”

“Dominance,” I said, thinking back to our previous conversations about vampires, blood, and sex, “and feeding. So it’s mostly humans who get bitten there. There’s the kernel of truth in that vampire legend.”

“Vampires bite their mates here,” Matthew said, “near the heart.” His lips pressed against the bare flesh above the edge of my smock. It was where he had kissed me on our wedding night, when his emotions had overwhelmed him.

“I thought your wanting to kiss me there was just ordinary lust,” I said.

“There is nothing ordinary about a vampire’s desire to take blood from this vein.” He moved his mouth a centimeter lower along the blue line and pressed his lips again.

“But if it’s not about feeding or dominance, what is it about?”

“Honesty.” When Matthew met my eyes, they were still more black than green. “Vampires keep too many secrets to ever be completely honest. We could never share them all verbally, and most are too complex to make sense, even when you try. And there are prohibitions against sharing secrets in my world.”

“‘It’s not your tale to tell,’” I said. “I’ve heard that a few times.”

“To drink from your lover is to know that nothing is hidden.” Matthew stared down at my breast, touched the vein again with his fingertip. “We call this the heart vein. The blood tastes sweeter here. There is a sense of complete possession and belonging—but it requires complete control, too, not to be swept up in the strong emotions that result.” His voice was sad.

“And you don’t trust your control because of the blood rage.”

“You’ve seen me in its grip. It’s sparked by protectiveness. And who poses a greater danger to you than I do?”

I shrugged the smock off my shoulders, pulling my arms out of the sleeves until I was bare from the waist up. I felt for the lacings on my skirt and yanked them free.

“Don’t.” Matthew’s eyes had blackened further. “There is no one here in case—”

“You drain me?” I stepped out of my skirt. “If you couldn’t trust yourself to do this when Philippe was within earshot, you’re not likely to do it with Gallowglass and Pierre standing by to help.”

“This isn’t a matter for jokes.”

“No.” I took his hands in mine. “It’s a matter for husbands and wives. It’s a matter of honesty and trust. I have nothing to hide from you. If taking blood from my vein is going to put an end to your incessant need to hunt down what you imagine to be my secrets, then that is what you’re going to do.”

“It isn’t something a vampire does just once,” Matthew warned, trying to pull away.

“I didn’t think it was.” I threaded my fingers into the hair at the nape of his neck. “Take my blood. Take my secrets. Do what your instincts are screaming for you to do. There are no hoods or jesses here. In my arms you should be free, even if nowhere else.”

I drew his mouth to mine. He responded tentatively at first, his fingers wrapped around my wrists as if he hoped to break away at the earliest opportunity. But his instincts were strong and his yearning palpable. The threads that bound the world shifted and adjusted around me as if to make room for such powerful feelings. I drew gently away, my breasts lifting with each breath.

He looked so frightened that it hurt my heart. But there was desire, too.
Fear and desire.
No wonder they’d featured in his All Souls essay back when he’d won his fellowship. Who could understand the war between them better than a vampire?

“I love you,” I whispered, dropping my hands so that they hung by my sides. He had to do this himself. I couldn’t play any role in bringing his mouth to my vein.

The wait was excruciating, but at last he lowered his head. My heart was beating fast, and I heard him draw in a deep, long breath.

“Honey. You always smell like honey,” he murmured in amazement, just before his sharp teeth broke the skin.

When he’d taken my blood before, Matthew had been careful to anesthetize the site with a touch of his own blood so that I felt no pain. Not so this time, but soon the skin went numb from the pressure of Matthew’s mouth on my flesh. His hands cradled me as he angled me back toward the surface of the bed. I hung in midair waiting for him to be satisfied that there was nothing between us but love.

About thirty seconds after he started, Matthew stopped. He looked up at me in surprise, as if he’d discovered something unexpected. His eyes went full black, and for one fleeting moment I though that the blood rage was surfacing.

“It’s all right, my love,” I whispered.

Matthew lowered his head, drinking in more of my blood and thoughts until he discovered what he needed. It took little more than a minute. He kissed the place over my heart with the same expression of gentle reverence he had worn on our wedding night at Sept-Tours and looked up at me shyly.

“And what did you find?” I asked.

“You. Only you,” Matthew murmured.

His shyness quickly turned to hunger as he kissed me, and before long we were twined together. Except for our brief encounter standing against the wall, we had not made love for weeks, and our rhythm was awkward at first as we remembered how to move together. My body coiled tighter and tighter. Another fast glide, a deep kiss, was all it would take to set me flying.

Matthew slowed instead. Our eyes met and locked. I had never seen him look the way he did at that moment—vulnerable, hopeful, beautiful, free. There were no secrets between us now, no emotions guarded in case disaster struck and we were swept along into the dark places where hope couldn’t survive.

“Can you feel me?” Matthew was now a point of stillness at my core. I nodded again. He smiled and moved with deliberate care. “I’m inside you, Diana, giving you life.”

I’d said the same words to him as he drank my blood and pulled himself from the edge of death back into the world. I didn’t think he’d been aware of them at the time.

He moved within me again, repeating the words like an incantation. It was the simplest, purest form of magic in the world. Matthew was already woven into my soul. He was now woven into my body, just as I was woven into his. My heart, which had broken and broken again in the past months with every sad touch and regretful look, began to knit together once more.

When the sun crept over the horizon, I reached up and touched him between the eyes.

“I wonder if I could read your thoughts, too.”

“You already have,” Matthew said, lowering my fingers and kissing their tips. “Back in Oxford, when you received the picture of your parents. You weren’t conscious of what you were doing. But you kept answering questions I wasn’t able to ask aloud.”

“Can I try again?” I asked, half expecting him to say no.

“Of course. If you were a vampire I would already have offered my blood.” He lay back on the pillow.

I hesitated for a moment, stilled my thoughts, and focused on a simple question.
How can I know Matthew’s mind?

A single silver thread shimmered between my heart and the spot on his forehead where his third eye would be if he were a witch. The thread shortened, drawing me closer until my lips pressed against his skin.

An explosion of sights and sounds burst in my head like fireworks. I saw Jack and Annie, Philippe and Ysabeau. I saw Gallowglass and men I didn’t recognize who occupied important places in Matthew’s heart. I saw Eleanor and Lucas. There was a feeling of triumph as he conquered some scientific mystery, a shout of joy as he rode out in the forest to hunt and kill as he was made to do. I saw myself, smiling up at him.

Then I saw the face of Herr Fuchs, the vampire I’d met in the Jewish town, and heard quite distinctly the words
My son, Benjamin.

I sat back on my heels abruptly, my fingers touching my trembling lips.

“What is it?” Matthew said, sitting up and frowning.

“Herr Fuchs!” I looked at him in horror, afraid he had thought the worst. “I didn’t realize he was your son, that he was Benjamin.” There hadn’t been a hint of blood rage about him.

“It”s not your fault. You’re not a vampire, and Benjamin only reveals what he chooses.” Matthew’s voice was soothing. “I must have sensed his presence around you—a trace of scent, some inkling that he was near. That’s what made me think you were keeping something from me. I was wrong. I’m sorry for doubting you,
mon coeur.
”

“But Benjamin must have known who I was. Your scent would have been all over me.”

“Of course he knew,” Matthew said dispassionately. “I will look for him tomorrow, but if Benjamin doesn’t want to be found, there will be nothing to do but warn Gallowglass and Philippe. They’ll let the rest of the family know that Benjamin has reappeared.”

“Warn them?”

“The only thing more frightening than Benjamin in the grip of blood rage is Benjamin when he is lucid, as he was when you were with Rabbi Loew. It is as Jack said,” Matthew replied. “The most terrifying monsters always look just like ordinary men.”

T
hat night marked the true beginning of our marriage. Matthew was more centered than I had ever seen him. Gone were the sharp retorts, abrupt changes of direction, and impulsive decisions that had characterized our time together thus far. Instead Matthew was methodical, measured— but no less deadly. He fed more regularly, hunting in the city and the villages nearby. As his muscles gained in weight and strength, I came to see what Philippe had already observed: Unlikely though it might seem given his size, his son had been wasting away from lack of proper nourishment.

I was left with a silvery moon on my breast marking the place where he

drank. It was unlike any other scar on my body, lacking the tough buildup of protective tissue that formed over most wounds. Matthew told me that this was due to a property in his saliva, which sealed the bite without letting it heal completely.

The vampire’s ritual taking of a mate’s blood from a vein near the heart and my new ritual of the witch’s kiss that gave me access to his thoughts provided us with a deeper intimacy. We didn’t make love every time he joined me in bed, but when we did, it was always preceded and followed by those two searing moments of absolute honesty that removed not only Matthew’s greatest worry but mine: that our secrets would somehow destroy us. And even when we didn’t make love, we talked in the open, easy way that lovers dream of doing.

The next morning, Matthew told Gallowglass and Pierre about Benjamin. Gallowglass’s fury was shorter-lived than Pierre’s fear, which rose to the surface whenever someone knocked on the door or approached me in the market. The vampires searched for him day and night, with Matthew planning the expeditions.

But Benjamin could not be found. He had simply vanished. Easter came and went, and our plans for Rudolf’s spring festival the following Saturday reached their final stages. Master Hoefnagel and I transformed the palace’s Great Hall into a blooming garden with pots of tulips. I was in awe of the place, with its graceful curved vaults supporting the arched roof like the branches of a willow tree.

“We’ll move the emperor’s orange trees here as well,” Hoefnagel said, his eyes gleaming with possibilities. “And the peacocks.”

On the day of the performance, servants dragged every spare candelabrum in the palace and cathedral into the echoing expanse of stone to provide the illusion of a starry night sky and spread fresh rushes on the floor. For the stage we used the base of the stairs leading up to the royal chapel. It was Master Hoefnagel’s idea, since then I could appear at the top of the staircase, like the moon, while Matthew charted my changing position with one of Master Habermel’s astrolabes.

“You don’t think we’re being too philosophical?” I wondered aloud, worrying at my lip with my fingers.

“This is the court of Rudolf II,” Hoefnagel said drily. “There is so such thing as too philosophical.”

On the night of the celebration, the court filed in for the banquet and gasped in amazement at the scene we’d set.

“They like it,” I whispered to Matthew from behind the curtain that concealed us from the crowd. Our grand entrance was scheduled for the dessert course, and we were holed up in the Knights’ Staircase off the hall until then. Matthew had been keeping me occupied with tales of olden times, when he had ridden his horse up the wide stone stairs for a joust. When I’d questioned the room’s suitability for this particular purpose, he quirked an eyebrow at me.

“Why do you think we made the room so big and the ceiling so high? Prague winters can be damn long, and bored young men with weapons are dangerous. Far better to have them run at each other at high speed than start wars with neighboring kingdoms.”

With the free pouring of wine and the liberal serving of food, the din in the room was soon deafening. When the desserts went by, Matthew and I slipped into our places. Master Hoefnagel had painted some lovely pastoral scenery for Matthew and grudgingly allotted him one of the orange trees to sit beneath on his felt-covered stool meant to look like a rock. I would wait for my cue and then come out of the chapel and stand behind an old wooden door turned on its side and painted to resemble a chariot.

“Don’t you dare make me laugh,” I warned Matthew when he kissed me on the cheek for luck.

“I do love a challenge,” he whispered back.

As strains of music filled through the room, the courtiers gradually hushed. When the room was fully quiet, Matthew lifted his astrolabe to the heavens and the masque began.

I had decided that our best approach to the production involved minimal dialogue and maximum dancing. For one thing, who wanted to sit around after a big dinner and listen to speeches? I’d been to enough academic events to know that wasn’t a good idea. Signor Pasetti was delighted to teach some of the court ladies a “dance of the wandering stars,” which would provide Matthew something heavenly to observe while he waited for his beloved moon to appear. With famous court beauties given a role in the entertainment and wearing fabulously spangled and jeweled costumes, the masque quickly took on the tone of a school play, complete with admiring parents. Matthew made agonized faces as though he weren’t sure he could endure the spectacle for one more moment.

When the dance ended, the musicians cued my entrance with a crash of drums and blare of trumpets. Master Hoefnagel had rigged up a curtain over the chapel doors, so that all I had to do was push my way through them with a goddess’s
éclat
(and without spearing my moon headdress on the fabric as I had done in rehearsal) and stare wistfully down at Matthew. He, goddess willing, would stare raptly at me without crossing his eyes or looking suggestively at my breasts.

I took a moment to get in character, drew in a deep breath, and pushed confidently through the curtains, trying to glide and float like the moon.

The court gasped in wonder.

Pleased that I had made such a convincing entrance, I looked down at Matthew. His eyes were round as saucers.

Oh, no.
I felt with my toe for the floor, but as I suspected, I was already a few inches above it—and rising. I reached out a hand to anchor myself to the edge of my chariot and saw that a distinctively pearly gleam was emanating from my skin. Matthew jerked his head up in the direction of my little silver crescent moon. I’d worn my hair loose, the waves rippling down my back and the front caught up with a tiara-like band of wire that held the moon. Without a mirror I had no idea what it was doing, but I feared the worst.

“
La Diosa
!” Rudolf said, standing up and applauding. “Wonderful! A wonderful effect!”

Uncertainly, the court joined in. A few of them crossed themselves first. Holding the room’s complete attention, I clasped my hands to my bosom and batted my eyes at Matthew, who returned my admiring looks with a grim smile. I concentrated on lowering myself to the floor so that I could make my way to Rudolf’s throne. As Zeus, he occupied the most splendid carved piece of furniture we could find in the palace attics. It was unbelievably ugly, but it suited the occasion.

Happily, I was not glowing so much anymore as I approached the emperor, and the audience had stopped looking at my head as if it were a Roman candle. I sank into a curtsy.

“Greetings,
La Diosa
,” Rudolf boomed in what was meant to be a godlike tone but was only a classic example of overacting.

“I am in love with the beautiful Endymion,” I said, rising and gesturing back to the staircase, where Matthew had sunk into a downy nest of feather beds and was feigning sleep. I had written the lines myself. (Matthew suggested I say, “If you do not agree to leave me in peace, Endymion will tear your throat out.” I vetoed that, along with the Keats.) “He looks so peaceful. And though I am a goddess and will never age, fair Endymion will soon grow old and die. I beg of you, make him immortal so that he can stay with me always.”

“On one condition!” Rudolf shouted, abandoning all pretense of godlike sonorousness in favor of simple volume. “He must sleep for the rest of time, never waking. Only then will he remain young.”

“Thank you, mighty Zeus,” I said, trying not to sound too much like a member of a British comedy troupe. “Now I can gaze upon my beloved forevermore.”

Rudolf scowled. It was a good thing he hadn’t been granted script approval.

I withdrew to my chariot and walked slowly backward through the curtains while the court ladies performed their final dance. When it was over, Rudolf led the court in a round of loud stomping and clapping that almost brought the roof down. What it did not do was rouse Endymion.

“Get up!” I hissed as I went past to thank the emperor for providing us an opportunity to entertain his royal self. All I got in response was a theatrical snore.

And so I curtsied alone in front of Rudolf and made speeches in praise of Master Habermel’s astrolabe, Master Hoefnagel’s sets and special effects, and the quality of the music.

“I was greatly entertained,
La Diosa
—much more than I expected to be. You may ask Zeus for a reward,” Rudolf said, his eyes drifting over my shoulder and down to the swell of my breasts. “Whatever you wish. Name it and it shall be yours.”

The room’s idle chatter stopped. In the silence I heard Abraham’s words:
The book will come to you, if only you ask for it.
Could it really be that simple?

Endymion stirred in his downy bed. Not wanting him to interfere, I flapped my hands behind my back to encourage him to return to his dreams. The court held its breath, waiting for me to name a prestigious title, a piece of land, a fortune in gold.

“I would like to see Roger Bacon’s alchemical book
,
Your Majesty.”

“Why, thank you,” I said, pleased. “By the way, what was my head doing during the masque? People were staring at it.”

“Wee stars rose out of the moon and then faded away. I wouldn’t worry. It looked so real that everybody will assume it was an illusion. Most of Rudolf’s aristocrats are human, after all.”

Matthew’s response was more guarded. “Don’t be too pleased yet,
mon coeur.
Rudolf may have had no other choice than to agree, given the situation, but he hasn’t produced the manuscript
.
This is a very complicated dance you’re doing. And you can be sure the emperor will want something from you in return for a glimpse of his book.”

“Then we will have to be long gone before he can insist upon it,” I said.

But it turned out that Matthew was right to be cautious. I had imagined that he and I would be invited to view the treasure the next day, in private. Yet no such invitation arrived. Days passed before we received a formal summons to dine at the palace with some up-and-coming Catholic theologians. Afterward, the note promised, a select group would be invited back to Rudolf’s rooms to see items of particular mystical and religious import from the emperor’s collections. Among the visitors was one Johannes Pistorius, who had grown up Lutheran, converted to Calvinism, and was about to become a Catholic priest.

“We’re being set up,” Matthew said, fingers running back and forth through his hair. “Pistorius is a dangerous man, a ruthless adversary, and a witch. He will be back here in ten years to serve as Rudolf’s confessor.”

“Is it true he’s being groomed for the Congregation?” Gallowglass asked quietly.

“Yes. He’s just the kind of intellectual thug that the witches want representing them. No offense meant, Diana. It is a difficult time for witches,” he conceded.

“None taken,” I said mildly. “But he’s not a member of the Congregation yet. You are. What are the chances he’ll want to cause trouble with you watching him, if he has those aspirations?”

“Excellent—or Rudolf wouldn’t have asked him to dine with us. The emperor is drawing his battle lines and rallying his troops.”

“What, exactly, is he planning to fight over?”

“The manuscript—and you. He won’t give up either.”

“I told you before that I wasn’t for sale. I’m not war booty either.”

“No, but you’re unclaimed territory so far as Rudolf’s concerned. Rudolf is an Austrian archduke, king of Hungary, Croatia, and Bohemia, margrave of Moravia, and Holy Roman Emperor. He is also Philip of Spain’s nephew. The Hapsburgs are an acquisitive and competitive family and will stop at nothing to get what they want.”

“Matthew’s not coddling you, Auntie,” Gallowglass said somberly when I started to protest. “If you were my wife, you’d have been out of Prague the day the first gift arrived.”

Because of the delicacy of the situation, Pierre and Gallowglass accompanied us to the palace. Three vampires and a witch caused the expected ripples of interest as we went toward the Great Hall, which, once upon a time, Matthew had helped to design.

Rudolf seated me near him, and Gallowglass took up a position behind my chair like a well-mannered servant. Matthew was placed at the opposite end of the banqueting table with an attentive Pierre. To a casual observer, Matthew was having a grand time among a raucous group of ladies and young men who were eager to find a role model with more dash than the emperor. Gales of laughter occasionally drifted in our direction from Matthew’s rival court, which did nothing to brighten His Majesty’s dour mood.