#adows1e2

[mametupa]

Saturday, October 3

First kiss.

Diana is wined and dined by Matthew at his college, All Souls, the college for the elite of the elite. When she asks what she’ll taste like, he gets angry and starts challenging her, kissing, touching wanting her scared, but she tells him she’s safe with him. At the end of dinner, Diana says she’s recalling Ashmole come Monday, expecting Matthew to be there by her side. He then takes her home, kissing her palm as they part. “Wordlessly I looked back at him, astonished that a kiss on the palm could be so intimate.” 

[adiscoveryofbishmont]

Hamish: Wait, think before your next move!

Matthew: No!

Matthew Clairmont, a summary.

[mametupa]

Friday, October 2

Matthew brings Diana to his lab where he’s doing research on creature blood, old and contemporary. The results show that creatures are failing and dying out and he’s trying to understand why. After hearing about what the test can reveal, Diana wants her blood tested, thinking she might finally get some answers: 

“It seemed very simple to me. My blood could tell Matthew things I didn’t want to risk discovering haphazardly. I didn’t want to set fire to the furniture, or fly through the trees, or think a bad thought about someone only to have that person fall deathly ill two days later. Matthew might think giving blood was risky. To me it seemed safe as houses, all things considered.” 

Matthew takes the blood himself, not trusting any other vampire to do it. Diana’s AB-negative and she was born August 13, 1976. Both things will be relevant later on.

[mametupa]

Sunday, October 11

Hunting, family and bundling.

Diana’s determined for Matthew to let her into his life as a vampire so she makes him take her hunting. He needs to know she can cope with all of him and that he can trust her. Matthew’s not happy, but even less when he learns Ysabeau took Diana hunting and that she told her about him as “the life stories of a vampire are theirs to tell—and theirs alone.”  

After the hunt, Matthew wants to know how Diana feels about not being able to have children of her own with him. She says that there are other ways of having children and he reveals that Marcus is his.

Diana tells him she needs to know how the world of vampire works and what the rules are. She also says that the trouble they are in with the Congregation wouldn’t exist if she was made into a vampire, and he really doesn’t like hearing that.

They return home and Matthew calls her his wife to Diana’s surprise. ““Did I miss something?” I finally asked. “When were we married?”” and is told it was when he told her he loved her the day before, explaining how vampires mate.

They go to bed and Diana finds out just how intimate “bundling” can be.

[mametupa]

Monday, September 28 

Diana is looking for Matthew at Bodleian but instead, she meets an irritated Miriam. She asks for Matthew and is told he’s hunting in Scotland. Miriam returns a sweater Diana left in Matthew’s car, tells her to be more careful with her things. Diana walks away, fuming, and her hands starts to spark, not a good thing in a place full of old books but she manages to calm down enough for it to stop.

The library is still full of creatures and Diana asks them to step away as ordinary people are bound to notice. The first one she approaches introduces himself as Peter Knox and wants to make a deal but Diana is not interested in what he has to say.

[mametupa]

Saturday, September 26

Matthew goes hunting in Scotland in an attempt to get away from his feelings for Diana. His old friend Hamish Osborne - a daemon - decides to join him for some much needed R&R. The weekend turns into a confession when Matthew opens up about his feelings for Diana, Ashmole 782 and what actually happened to the human women in his past. 

Diana finally returns the call to her aunts back in Madison. Sarah is concerned about the company Diana is keeping and how she acted with Ashmole 782.

[mametupa]

Tuesday. September 29 

Diana is working at the Bodleian, as usual, when Gillian decides it’s time to tell Diana the truth about her parents deaths. It was witches that murdered them and not humans. Gillian greatly enjoys seeing Diana’s pain and continues to blame the Bishop witches for being too powerful and attracting human interest throughout history, ending with threatening Diana her parents fate might just turn out to be hers as well. 

Diana is then invited to drinks with the warden and feels she can’t decline the invite. When she gets there, Knox is waiting for her. With a bit of magic, he manages to get her alone and starts to talk about why the witches need to be the ones getting hold of Ashmole, belittling the fact that she managed to call it up as being “a fluke”. Diana excuses herself and leaves as soon as the warden returns. 

[mametupa]

“Alchemy is woven into every aspect of the All Souls story from the very beginning, even down to the timings. The action of A Discovery of Witches takes place over forty days and is purposely structured to mirror the forty days of an alchemical experiment. Forty was a significant number in alchemy, as Mary Sidney pointed out to Diana when they were working in her laboratory. Mary was delighted when her own experiment with the arbor Dianae took exactly forty days to complete, ‘just as the sages promised.’”

Deborah Harkness, The World of All Souls