A Discovery of Witches

by Deborah Harkness

  “It’s more than four hundred years old. Maybe you forgot.” In spite of my words, a cold finger ran up my spine.

  Matthew flipped through a few more pages and inhaled sharply. “If we leave these books in the keeping room, along with the pilgrim’s badge, will the house take care of them?”

  “It will if we ask it to,” I said. “Matthew, what’s going on?”

  “I’ll tell you later. We should go. These,” he said, lifting the books and Lazarus’s coffin, “need to stay here.”

  We changed in silence. I took off everything down to my bare skin, shivering as the linen smock slipped over my shoulders. The cuffs skimmed my wrists as it fell to my ankles, and the wide neck drew closed when I tugged on the string.

  Matthew was out of his clothes and into his shirt quickly. It nearly reached his knees, and his long white legs stuck out below. While I collected our clothes, Matthew went to the dining room and came out with stationery and one of his favorite pens. His hand sped across the page, and he folded the single sheet and tucked it into the waiting envelope.

  “A note for Sarah,” he explained. “We’ll ask the house to take care of that, too.”

  We carried the extra books, the note, and the pilgrim’s badge to the keeping room. Mathew put them carefully on the sofa.

  “Shall we leave the lights on?” Matthew asked.

  “No,” I said. “Just the porch light, in case it’s still dark when they come home.”

  There was a smudge of green when we turned off the lamps. It was my grandmother, rocking in her chair.

  “Good-bye, Grandma.” Neither Bridget Bishop nor Elizabeth was with her.

  Good-bye, Diana.

  “The house needs to take care of those.” I pointed to the pile of objects on the sofa.

  Don’t worry about a thing except for where you’re going.

  Slowly we walked the length of the house to the back door, shutting off lights as we went. In the family room, Matthew picked up Doctor Faustus, the earring, and the chess piece.

  I looked around one last time at the familiar brown kitchen. “Good-bye, house.”

  Tabitha heard my voice and ran screeching from the stillroom. She came to an abrupt halt and stared at us without blinking.

  “Good-bye, ma petite,” Matthew said, stooping to scratch her ears.

  We’d decided to leave from the hop barn. It was quiet, with no vestiges of modern life to serve as distractions. We moved through the apple orchard and over the frost-covered grass in our bare feet, the cold quickening our steps. When Matthew pulled open the barn door, my breath was visible in the chilly air.

  “It’s freezing.” I drew my smock closer, teeth chattering.

  “There will be a fire when we arrive at the Old Lodge,” he said, handing me the earring.

  I put the thin wire through the hole in my ear and held my hand out for the goddess. Matthew dropped her into my palm.

  “What else?”

  “Wine, of course—red wine.” Matthew handed me the book and folded me into his arms, planting a firm kiss on my forehead.

  “Where are your rooms?” I shut my eyes, remembering the Old Lodge.

  “Upstairs, on the western side of the courtyard, overlooking the deer park.”

  “And what will it smell like?”

  “Like home,” he said. “Wood smoke and roasted meat from the servants’ dinner, beeswax from the candles, and the lavender used to keep the linens fresh.”

  “Can you hear anything special?”

  “Nothing at all. Just the bells from St. Mary’s and St. Michael’s, the crackle of the fires, and the dogs snoring on the stairs.”

  “How do you feel when you’re there?” I asked, concentrating on his words and the way they in turn made me feel.

  “I’ve always felt . . . ordinary at the Old Lodge,” Matthew said softly. “It’s a place where I can be myself.”

  A whiff of lavender swirled through the air, out of time and place in a Madison hop barn in October. I marveled at the scent and thought of my father’s note. My eyes were fully open to the possibilities of magic now.

  “What will we do tomorrow?”

  “We’ll walk in the park,” he said, his voice a murmur and his arms iron bands around my ribs. “If the weather’s fine, we’ll go riding. There won’t be much in the gardens this time of year. There must be a lute somewhere. I’ll teach you to play, if you’d like.”

  Another scent—spicy and sweet—joined with the lavender, and I saw a tree laden with heavy, golden fruit. A hand stretched up, and a diamond winked in the sunlight, but the fruit was out of reach. I felt frustration and the keen edge of desire, and I was reminded of Emily’s telling me that magic was in the heart as well as the mind.

  “Is there a quince in the garden?”

  “Yes,” Matthew said, his mouth against my hair. “The fruit will be ripe now.”

  The tree dissolved, though the honeyed scent remained. Now I saw a shallow silver dish sitting on a long wooden table. Candles and firelight were reflected in its burnished surface. Piled inside the dish were the bright yellow quinces that were the source of the scent. My fingers flexed on the cover of the book I held in the present, but in my mind they closed on a piece of fruit in the past.

  “I can smell the quinces.” Our new life in the Old Lodge was already calling to me. “Remember, don’t let go—no matter what.” With the past everywhere around me, the possibility of losing him was all that was frightening.

  “Never,” he said firmly.

  “And lift up your foot and then put it down again when I tell you.”

  He chuckled. “I love you, ma lionne.” It was an unusual response, but it was enough.

  Home, I thought.

  My heart tugged with longing.

  An unfamiliar bell tolled the hour.

  There was a warm touch of fire against my skin.

  The air filled with scents of lavender, beeswax, and ripe quince.

  “It’s time.” Together we lifted our feet and stepped into the unknown.

  Chapter 43

  The house was unnaturally quiet.

  For Sarah it wasn’t just the absence of chatter or the removal of seven active minds that made it seem so empty.

  It was not knowing.

  They’d come home earlier than usual from the coven’s gathering, claiming they needed to pack for Faye and Janet’s road trip. Em had found the empty briefcase sitting by the family-room couch, and Sarah had discovered the clothes bundled up on top of the washing machine.

  “They’re gone,” Em had said.

  Sarah went straight into her arms, her shoulders shaking.

  “Are they all right?” she’d whispered.

  “They’re together,” Em had replied. It wasn’t the answer Sarah wanted, but it was honest, just like Em.

  They’d thrown their own clothes into duffel bags, paying little attention to what they were doing. Now Tabitha and Em were already in the RV, and Faye and Janet were waiting patiently for Sarah to close up the house.

  Sarah and the vampire had talked for hours in the stillroom on their last night in the house, sharing a bottle of red wine. Matthew had told her something of his past and shared his fears for the future. Sarah had listened, making an effort not to show her own shock and surprise at some of the tales he told. Though she was pagan, Sarah understood he wanted to make confession and had cast her in the role of priest. She had given him the absolution she could, knowing all the while that some deeds could never be forgiven or forgotten.

  But there was one secret he’d refused to share, and Sarah still knew nothing of where and when her niece had gone.

  The floorboards of the Bishop house creaked a chorus of groans and wheezes as Sarah walked through the familiar, darkened rooms. She closed the keeping-room doors and turned to bid farewell to the only home she’d ever known.

  The keeping-room doors opened with a sharp bang. One of the floorboards near the fireplace sprang up, revealing a small, black-bound
book and a creamy envelope. It was the brightest thing in the room, and it gleamed in the moonlight.

  Sarah muffled a cry and held out her hand. The cream square flew easily into it, landed with a slight smack, and flipped over. A single word was written on it.

  “Sarah.”

  She touched the letters lightly and saw Matthew’s long white fingers. She tore at the paper, her heart beating fast.

  “Sarah,” it said. “Don’t worry. We made it.”

  Her heart rate calmed.

  Sarah put the single sheet of paper on her mother’s rocking chair and gestured for the book. Once the house delivered it, the floorboard returned to its normal resting place with a groan of old wood and the shriek of old nails.

  She flipped to the first page. The Shadow of Night, Containing Two Poeticall Hymnes devised by G. C. gent. 1594. The book smelled old but not unpleasant, like incense in a dusty cathedral.

  Just like Matthew, Sarah thought with a smile.

  A slip of paper stuck out of the top. It led her to the dedication page. “To my deare and most worthy friend Matthew Roydon.” Sarah peered more closely and saw a tiny, faded drawing of a hand with a ruffled cuff pointing imperiously to the name, with the number “29” written underneath in ancient brown ink.

  She turned obediently to page twenty-nine, struggling through tears as she read the underlined passage: She hunters makes: and of that substance hounds

  Whose mouths deafe heaven, and furrow earth with wounds,

  And marvaile not a Nimphe so rich in grace

  To hounds rude pursuits should be given in chase.

  For she could turne her selfe to everie shape

  Of swiftest beasts, and at her pleasure scape.

  The words conjured up the image of Diana—clear, bright, unbidden—her face framed with gauzy wings and her throat thickly encircled with silver and diamonds. A single tear-shaped ruby quivered on her skin like a drop of blood, nestled into the notch between her collarbones.

  In the stillroom, as the sun was rising, he had promised to find some way to let her know Diana was safe.

  “Thank you, Matthew.” Sarah kissed the book and the note and threw them into the cavernous fireplace. She said the words to conjure a white-hot fire. The paper caught quickly, and the book’s edges began to curl.

  Sarah watched the fire burn for a few moments. Then she walked out the front door, leaving it unlocked, and didn’t look back.

  Once the door closed, a worn silver coffin shot down the chimney and landed on the burning paper. Two gobbets of blood and mercury, released from the hollow chambers inside the ampulla by the heat of the fire, chased each other around the surface of the book before falling into the grate. There they seeped into the soft old mortar of the fireplace and traveled into the heart of the house. When they reached it, the house sighed with relief and released a forgotten, forbidden scent.

  Sarah drank in the cool night air as she climbed into the RV. Her senses were not sharp enough to catch the cinnamon and blackthorn, honeysuckle and chamomile dancing in the air.

  “Okay?” Em asked, her voice serene.

  Sarah leaned across the cat carrier that held Tabitha and squeezed Em’s knee. “Just fine.”

  Faye turned the key in the ignition and pulled down the driveway and onto the county road that would take them to the interstate, chattering about where they could stop for breakfast.

  The four witches were too far away to perceive the shift in atmosphere around the house as hundreds of night creatures detected the unusual aroma of commingled vampire and witch, or to see the pale green smudges of the two ghosts in the keeping-room window.

  Bridget Bishop and Diana’s grandmother watched the vehicle’s departure.

  What will we do now? Diana’s grandmother asked.

  What we’ve always done, Joanna, Bridget replied. Remember the past—and await the future.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  My greatest debt is to the friends and family who read this book, chapter by chapter, as it was written: Cara, Karen, Lisa, Margaret, and my mom, Olive. Peg and Lynn, as always, provided excellent meals, warm companionship, and wise counsel. And I am especially appreciative of the editorial work that Lisa Halttunen did to prepare the manuscript for submission.

  Colleagues generously lent me their expertise as I wandered far from my own area of specialization. Philippa Levine, Andrés Reséndez, Vanessa Schwartz, and Patrick Wyman steered me in the right direction whenever I took a misstep. Any errors that remain are, of course, my own.

  I will always be grateful that Sam Stoloff of the Frances Goldin Literary Agency took the news that I had written a novel, and not another work of history, with grace and good humor. He also read the early drafts with a keen eye. Additional thanks to the agency’s Ellen Geiger, for her inspired choice of dinner companions!

  The team at Viking has become a second family to me. My editor, Car-ole DeSanti, represents what every author hopes for when they are writing a book: someone who will not only appreciate what you have put on the page but can envision what story those words could tell if they were tweaked just so. Maureen Sugden, copy editor extraordinaire, polished the book in record time. Thank you also to Clare Ferraro, Leigh Butler, Hal Fessenden, and the rights group; Nancy Sheppard, Carolyn Coleburn, and the marketing and sales team; Victoria Klose, Christopher Russell, and everyone who has helped transform this work from a stack of paper into a book.

  Because this is a book about books, I consulted a substantial number of texts as I wrote. Curious readers can find some of them by consulting the Douay-Rheims translation of the Bible, Marie-Louise von Franz’s critical edition and translation of Aurora Consurgens (Pantheon Books, 1966), and Paul Eugene Memmo’s translation of Giordano Bruno’s Heroic Frenzies (University of North Carolina Press, 1964). Those readers who do go exploring should know that the translations here are my own and therefore have their idiosyncrasies. Anyone who wants to delve further into the mind of Charles Darwin has the ideal place to start in Janet Browne’s Charles Darwin: A Biography (2 vols., Alfred Knopf, 1995 and 2002). And for a lucid introduction to mtDNA and its application to the problems of human history consult Brian Sykes, The Seven Daughters of Eve (W. W. Norton, 2001).