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Dayne Topkin

Chapter 15

On Monday morning the air had that magically still quality common in autumn. The whole world felt crisp and bright, and time seemed suspended.

This chapter starts pleasantly enough, but it spirals rapidly downhil. In fact, the plot moves so quickly in this chapter that there’s not a ton of threads to pull for Real-Time Reading goodies.

When Matthew angers Diana after she fails to pull the manuscript from the Bodleian, her fingers begin to emit blue sparks and he advises her not to get them near water. While most people know not to put water on an electrical fire, they might not know why. The main risk is electrocution – water conducts electricity and will simply spread the current, which can result in severe electrical damage. What remains an open question for me is why Diana’s power–which we learn is partially elemental–presents in electrical surges. I don’t know that we ever get a very good explanation for that over the course of the book. I am open to suggestions.

Chapter 16

She’s a witch, he reminded himself as he watched her sleep. She’s not for you.

The more he said it, the less it seemed to matter.

In Chapter 16, Diana sleeps–though I am rather inclined to believe that Matthew drugged her with his blood–and Matthew stalks angrily around her rooms. It’s not his best moment. When Marcus arrives, he’s in a bit of a state.

And Marcus had never seen his father so coldly furious as he was now. Matthew Clairmont had entered Marcus’s life in 1777 and changed it–forever. He had appeared at the side of an improvised sling that carried the wounded Marquis de Lafayette from the killing fields at the Battle of Brandywine.

First, you wouldn’t be alone if you automatically sing Oui, oui, mon ami, je m’appelle Lafayette/ The Lancelot of the revolutionary set when the Marquis appears in this passage. Hamilton is everywhere. Did you know that the Marquis de Lafayette was born in the Auvergne? Near Chavaniac, to be precise. He was, in fact, wounded at the Battle of the Brandywine – he took a shot in the calf.

 

If you’re curious, the legend of Dagwanoenyent, the daughter of the wind, is presented here. As near as I can tell, there is no Iroquois, Seneca, or Oneida myth that parallels the European vampire myth. I am, however, open to education about the matter – and curious how any indigeneous readers might react to the reference to Dagwanoenyent.

Deb’s post on Chapters 15 and 16 is here. Her chosen music for Chapter 16 is David Berkeley’s “Fire Sign:”

The Daemons tackle Chapters 15 and 16 in separate episodes – Take 16 and Take 17.

When next we meet, we’ll be in France. Until then!

Best,

Cait

 

 Marco Mornati

Chapter 14

“We’re dining in college tonight,” he answered, gesturing down toward the Bodelian. I had fully anticipated that he would take me to Woodstock, or an apartment in some Victorian pile in North Oxford. It had never occurred to me that he might actually live in a college.”

“In hall, at high table?” I felt terribly underdressed and pulled at the hem of my silky black top.

Today, in the world of All Souls, Diana follows Matthew home to dine “in college.” This has a very precise meaning in Oxford, where it refers to the tradition of taking a meal with the students and fellows of a college in formal dress and academic robes. It’s a production – if you’d like to read about it, I found accounts here and here.

We rounded the corner and turned toward the Radcliffe Camera. When we passed by the entrance to Hertford College without stopping, I put my hand on his arm. There was one college in Oxford notorious for its exclusivity and rigid attention to protocol.

It was the same college famous for its brilliant fellows.

“You aren’t.”

As it turns out, Matthew’s a member of All Souls, a prestiguous college of graduate and postgraduate fellows established in 1438. The college has extraordinary entrance requirements – you must apply within three years of receiving your bachelor’s degree from Oxford or while studying at Oxford as a postgraduate and pass two examinations. You must sit for two “papers,” or exams, from a general discipline and two from your specific discipline in the humanities and social sciences.

Sample questions include:

• Should intellectuals tweet?
• Is vegetarianism the future?
• ‘Secure people dare.’ Do they?
• What, if anything, is wrong with using drones in warfare?
• What are universities for?
• Is the financial sector larger than it should be?
• Can we be forced to be free?
• How can words be beautiful?
• “Every act you have ever performed since the day you were born was performed because you wanted something.” Do you agree?
• What, if anything, is wrong with selective schools?
• Why is a leather jacket more acceptable than a fur coat?

Source: The Independent, The Guardian.

Notice something? This isn’t the exam that Matthew sat for when he became a fellow. That exam no longer exists. True to the text, it required students to write coherently for three hours on a single word – “innocence,” for example.  All Souls dropped this requirement in 2010. If you pass the exam, you might be invited to present a viva – that is, a live explanation of your answers. If you do, expect the rest of the college to attend.

Diana gives a rather extensive description of Matthew’s rooms–methinks Deb has a bit of a thing for interior design–which includes an Aubusson rug and William Morris furniture. If you pay less attention to home goods than Deb does and cannot bring them immediately to mind (I couldn’t), I gathered some examples of those items.

The next course was a stew, with chunks of meat in a fragrant sauce. My first bite told me it was veal, fixed with apples and a bit of cream, served atop rice. Matthew watched me eat, and he smiled as I tasted the tartness of the apple for the first time. “It’s an old recipe from Normany,” he said.

Jacques Pepin, one of the fathers of modern French cooking, has a recipe for veal scaloppine with cream, calvados (apple brandy), and apples that sounds just about right. The cuisine of Normandy is heavy on apples and the region is famous for its cider. In Normandy, you’d also expect to dine on seafood and excellent cheeses, like Camembert and Neufchâtel. As we learn later in this book, Matthew is from the Auvergne–so I rather wonder how he chose a dish from Normandy to feed Diana. The cuisine of the Auvergne, by contrast, has a lot of pork, cabbage, game meat, cheese, and river fish. Perhaps it’s not as amorous as veal and apples? Then again, I can’t find “veal” or “apple” on any list of aphrodesiac foods.

“Are you going to tell me what it is?” I asked around the flavors in my mouth.

“Malmsey,” he replied with a grin. “Old, old malmsey.”

Your last tidbit for today is about malmsey, a varietal of wine grown in Madeira. The grape–Malvasia–is white and is one of the four recognized styles of fortified wine.

Deb has a playlist especially for Matthew Clairmont that you can follow here. Deb’s post on 3 October is here. Daemons Discuss covered Chapter 14 in Take 16!

If you have thoughts, comments, or questions, you can find us at @chamomilenclove on Twitter or chamomileandclovecast@gmail.com.

Until Chapter 15,

Cait

 

Yair Aronshtam

Chapter 12

Sigh. If you’re romantically inclined, I think Chapters 12-14 are likely some of your favorites in the series. In Chapter 11, Diana invited Matthew to dinner–only to realize that she has precisely no idea what to do once he actually arrives.

He arrives punctually, carrying wine and white roses. White roses used to symbolize true love, a role later adopted by their scarlet-hued cousins.

Throughout dinner, Diana learns about Matthew’s tastes, his history, and his exceptionally acute sense of smell. As Jen and I mentioned in our first episode, Deb wrote an award-winning wine blog prior to publishing A Discovery of Witches. She was interviewed about both wine and ADOW for Tom Wark’s daily wine blog, Fermentation.

“You smell of willow sap. And chamomile that’s been crushed underfoot.” He sniffed again and smiled a small, sad smile. “There’s honeysuckle and fallen oak leaves, too,” he said softly, breathing out, “along with witch hazel blooming and the first narcissus of spring. And ancient things–horehound, frankincense, lady’s mantle. Scents I thought I’d forgotten.”

During All Souls Con 2017, Deb confirmed something that I suspected–she has a very strong sense of smell and associates memories, places, and things with smells. That’s how each of the characters came to have a scent. I’m like that, too, which is one of the reasons I connected so strongly with the series. Unsurprisingly, each plant Matthew mentions has a symbolic meaning:

Willow: Sadness. The willow tree represents nature, fertility, and life.

Chamomile: Patience.

Honeysuckle: The bonds of love.

Oak: Strength.

Witch hazel: Protection.

Narcissus: Rebirth and new beginnings.

Horehound: Intuition.

Frankincense: Used to mark priests, an ointment for spiritual beginnings.

Lady’s mantle: Fertility. The holy mother.

As for Matthew, cloves represent love and protection. The carnation, or clove pink, is a flower associated with both sacred and profane love. The Met has a fascinating article on the cultivation of clove pinks in medieval gardens here.

“I believe that my body is nearly thirty-seven years of age. I was born around the time Clovis converted to Christianity… I was reborn a vampire in 537, and with the exception of Attila–who was before my time–you’ve touched on most of the high and low points in the millenium between then and the year I put the keystone into my house in Woodstock.”

Deb says that the soundtrack for this scene is Over the Rhine, Drunkard’s Prayer:

It’s lovely. If you don’t already follow Deb’s excellent ADOW playlist on Spotify, I recommend that you do so immediately. I would see the Drunkard’s Prayer and raise on Loreena McKennitt, The Dark Night of the Soul:

You can find Deb’s post on Chapter 12 here. The daemons talk about Chapter 12 in Take 15!  The All Souls Podcast covers Chapter 12 in Episode 13: Wherein begins the wooing. We swooned over Chapter 12 in Episode 5 – “Friends.” Until tomorrow, and the lab, I hope you curl up with the playlist, some candles, and a glass of wine,

xoxo

Cait

Sabrina Bachmann

Chapter 11

When Matthew came into the Selden End, without warning or sound, no icy patches announced his arrival. Instead there were touches of snowflakes all along my hair, shoulders, and back, as if he were checking quickly to make sure I was all in one piece.

When Matthew returns to Oxford, he finds Diana and Miriam in the Bodleian, holding an assortment of creatures at bay. Matthew takes Diana for another yoga class so that they can talk about all that’s happening around them.

“Miriam said you were hunting.”

He exhaled softly, his fingers rising to the bump under his sweater. “She shouldn’t have.”

“Why?”

“Because some things shouldn’t be discussed in mixed company,” he said with a touch of impatience. “Do witches tell creatures who aren’t witches that they’ve just returned from four days of casting spells and boiling bats?”

Matthew’s reference to “boiling bats” seems to come from Macbeth, Act IV, Scene I. You can find a reading of the Witches’ Chant here. In that scene, the witches prepare their enchantments before Macbeth arrives. Jen and I are theater nerds, so we’re pretty familiar with the curse of the Scottish play – but you might not be. In theatrical tradition, speaking the name “Macbeth” inside a theater is very, very, very bad luck. By speaking the name of the play when you are not rehearsing and/or performing it, you invite a curse upon the theater and all involved with the current production. To cleanse yourself, you must go outside, turn around three times, spit over your left shoulder, and say the foulest word you can think of at the time. Then, you must be invited back in. I know theater folk who take this Quite Seriously Indeed.

“Is that a pilgrim’s badge?” The shape reminded me of one in the British museum. It looked ancient.

 

According to Wikipedia, the production of pilgrim’s badges flourished in the Middle Ages in Europe, particularly in the 14th and 15th centuries.   Pilgrim’s badges typically displayed the symbols of the saint honored by the shrine or town that produced them. The medieval church encouraged pilgrimages and pilgrims returned with badges in order to benefit from the power of the saints.  Should you care to have your own replica, Lionheart Replicas would be happy to help you out.  If you’d like one directly inspired by ADOW, then Trilogie Jewelry makes a Lazarus coffin ampulla for your collection. Deb writes extensively about Matthew and his badge for her 30 September post.

 

The text describes Matthew’s badge as an ampulla, a traditional vessel for holding liquid dating back to ancient Rome. In medieval times, ampullae were used to

carry holy water from sacred sites. The ampullae from the Crusades typically carried holy water or oil from shrines near Alexandria.

 

The daemons talk about Chapter 11 in Take 16!. The All Souls Podcast covers Chapter 11 in One thump or two? We talked about Chapter 11 in Episode 5 – “Friends.”

I’ll see you tomorrow for dinner at Diana’s.

Until then,

xox

Cait