“You’re not going,” Matthew said. “I’ll give myself up first.”
Before I could protest, Ysabeau spoke. “No, my son. Gerbert and I have done this before, as you know. I will be back in no time—a few months at most.”
“Why is this necessary at all?” Marcus said. “Once the Congregation inspects Sept-Tours and finds nothing objectionable, they should leave us alone.”
“The Congregation must have a hostage to demonstrate that they are greater than the de Clermonts,” Phoebe explained, showing a remarkable grasp of the situation.
“But, Grand-mère,” Marcus began, looking stricken, “it should be me, not you. This is my fault.”
“I may be your grandmother, but I am not so old and fragile as you think,” Ysabeau said with a touch of frostiness. “My blood, inferior though it might be, does not shrink from its duty.”
“Surely there’s another way,” I protested.
“No, Diana,” Ysabeau answered. “We all have our roles in this family. Baldwin will bully us.
Marcus will look after the brotherhood. Matthew will look after you, and you will look after my grandchildren. As for me, I find that I am invigorated at the prospect of being held for ransom once more.”
My mother-in-law’s feral smile made me believe her.
Having helped Baldwin and Marcus to reach a fragile state of détente, Matthew and I returned to our rooms on the other side of the chateau. Matthew turned on the sound system as soon as we’d passed through the doorway, flooding the room with the intricate strains of Bach. The music made it more difficult for the other vampires in the house to overhear our conversations, so Matthew invariably had something playing in the background. “It’s a good thing we know more about Ashmole 782 than Knox does,” I said quietly. “Once I retrieve the book from the Bodleian Library, the Congregation will have to stop handing out ultimatums from Venice and start dealing with us directly.”
Matthew studied me silently for a moment, then poured himself some wine and drank it down in one gulp. He offered me water, but I shook my head. The only thing I craved at this hour was tea.
Marcus had urged me to avoid caffeine during the pregnancy, however, and herbal blends were a poor substitute.
“What do you know about the Congregation’s vampire pedigrees?” I took a seat on the sofa.
“Not much,” Matthew replied, pouring another glass of wine. I frowned. There was no chance of a vampire getting intoxicated by drinking wine from a bottle—the only way that one could feel the influence was to drink blood from an inebriated source—but it wasn’t usual for him to drink like this.
“Does the Congregation keep witch and daemon genealogies, too?” I asked, hoping to distract him.
“I don’t know. The affairs of witches and daemons never concerned me.” Matthew moved across the room and stood facing the fireplace.
“Well, it doesn’t matter,” I said, all business. “Our top priority has to be Ashmole 782. I’ll need to go to Oxford as quickly as possible.”
“And what will you do then, ma lionne?”
“Figure out a way to recall it.” I thought for a moment of the conditions my father had woven through the spell that bound the book to the library. “My father made sure that the Book of Life would come to me if I need it. Our present circumstances certainly qualify.”
“So the safety of Ashmole 782 is your chief concern,” Matthew said with dangerous softness.
“Of course. That and finding its missing pages,” I said. “Without them the Book of Life will never reveal its secrets.”
When the daemon alchemist Edward Kelley removed three of its pages in sixteenth-century Prague, he had damaged whatever magic had been used in the making of the book. For protection, the text had burrowed into the parchment, creating a magical palimpsest, and the words chased one another through the pages as if looking for the missing letters. It wasn’t possible to read what remained.