#adows1e3

[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.” 

[mametupa]

Thursday, September 24

Diana’s day starts with her waking up from a nightmare about drowning followed by being sick from an overload of adrenaline. Despite the weather, she needs to move and goes for a row followed by a walk. And that’s how Matthew finds Diana, walking around with her eyes closed in the fog. He decides to “rescue” her by offering to drive her home. On the way, he invites Diana for breakfast and she agrees. They talk and eat, well, Diana does. 

[mametupa]

Tuesday, October 6

It’s past midnight before Matthew returns, looking angrier than when he left. He tells Marcus he’s taking Diana to France, something Marcus feels is unfair to both Ysabeaus and Diana but Matthew’s mind is already made up.

Matthew watches a sleeping Diana, and when she answers his thoughts as if he was saying them out loud, he realizes that she can hear them, but only when she’s not conscious.

When Diana wakes up, she causes a witchwind remembering what Gillian told her about her parents and Knox’s threat. She’s feeling trapped but Matthew is able to calm her down again. He tells her they are going to France when her the phone rings. It’s her aunts. They have been calling all night, worried about Diana. When they hear what’s happened, they want her to get back home immediately but Diana says she’s going to France with Matthew. 

Diana’s trying to get out of the deal so Matt bribes her with the chance to read a very unique alchemy book he owns, Aurora Consurgens. They leave and fly to France in a private plane. 

The couple arrive by car at Sept-Tours and meet Matthew’s vampire mother Ysabeau and Marthe, an old vampire woman that’s been with the family for as long as anyone can remember. 

Matthew takes Diana to his rooms as she needs rest. She then spends the day either sleeping or exploring the castle with Matthew. 

[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]

Thursday, October 1

Diana invites Matthew to dinner, using wolves feeding habits as a guideline for what to serve. They spend a nice evening getting to know one another. Matthew answers all Diana’s questions, including the one about his age, more than 1500 years. ““We didn’t keep track of birthdays back then. It’s tidier to pick the date of five hundred and be done with it.” He looked up at me, briefly, and returned his attention to the candles. “I was reborn a vampire in 537.”” 

Matthew tells Diana what he thinks Ashmole 782 contains and why he has been looking for it since 1859, the same year he first read Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. She reveals that it is a  palimpsest where magic hides what is written on its pages. 

The evening ends with a kiss on the cheek, Matthew returning it favor twice. 

[mametupa]

Monday, October 5

Diana’s attempt to recall Ashmole 782 fails and when Knox threatens Diana, who starts to panic, Matthew decides she needs to be protected and decides to take her to Woodstock which turns Diana’s panic into anger and her fingers start to sparkle to Matthew’s delight. She decides to listen to him so he takes her home to pack what she needs for a couple of days. 

A home, a letter is waiting for Diana. She opens it and has a full blown panic attack when seeing the photo inside. Matthew senses Diana and comes running to see what’s happening. He manages to calm her down, giving her a sedative and exhausted, she falls asleep. 

Marcus has left a number of messages for Matthew, Diana’s results are in. “I have Diana’s DNA test results. They’re . . . surprising. Call me.” Matthew calls and Marcus comes over, bringing Matthew his passport. Matthew reads the results and doesn’t believe they are correct. A heated discussion follows, should Diana be told or not? Matthew leaves Marcus guarding a sleeping Diana to find Gillian.

[mametupa]

Friday, September 25

Diana goes with Matthew for a yoga lesson in an old Tudor house in the countryside. To Diana’s surprise, the class is lead by a witch and all participants are either vampire, witch, or daemon.

After the lesson, Matthew invites Diana to the gatehouse for some tea. They talk and she discovers that not only is Matthew the owner of the estate, he was the one that built it in 1536. A paining turns out to be of his sister Louisa, which leads to a discussion of her death, how Matthew took up yoga, why Diana rejects magic and how she wants to be normal. Matthew says she’s fooling herself believing she can pass for a human as everyone knows she’s different already and denying her powers won’t make them go away. Diana suggest they work together with Ashmole 782 but Matthew isn’t sure they can. 

“The ride back to Oxford was quiet. Humans had it all wrong when it came to vampires, I reflected. To make them frightening, humans imagined vampires as bloodthirsty. But it was Matthew’s remoteness, combined with his flashes of anger and abrupt mood swings, that scared me.” - Diana Bishop 

[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