Later Matthew would look back and remember it as his last happy day.
“Do I sleep, do I dream, or are these visions I see?” demanded Matthew. “Why are Aunt Sophie and both of Thomas’s sisters taking tea in the same establishment as our private and exclusive club room?”
“They followed me,” said Thomas in beleaguered tones. “Mama was understanding, or they would have followed us directly into the club room.”
Aunt Sophie was a good sport, but that did not make Matthew feel any less uneasy about the advent of Thomas’s sisters. They were not kindred spirits, and they were liable to consider all the doings of their little brother both their business and very silly.
Matthew loved their club room and would brook no interference. He had chosen the materials for the curtains himself, made certain that James put the works of Oscar Wilde in their extensive book collection, and reinforced the corner that was Christopher’s laboratory with steel sheets on the walls.
Which led Matthew to another grievance. He regarded Christopher with a steely gaze.
“Did you sleep in those clothes, Christopher? I know Aunt Cecily, Uncle Gabriel, and Cousin Anna would never let you inflict these horrors on the populace. What are those peculiar lavender stains upon your shirtfront? Did you set your sleeves on fire?”
Christopher regarded his sleeves as if he had never beheld them before. “A bit,” he said guiltily.
“Ah well,” said Matthew. “At least the purple stains match your eyes.”
Christopher blinked said eyes, the improbable shade of violets in summer, and smiled his slow-blossoming smile. He clearly did not understand Matthew’s objections, but was vaguely pleased they had been overcome.
It was not like with James, who actually presented a very fine appearance to the world. Christopher was incorrigible. He could rumple leather boots.
He could certainly set fire to anything. Matthew had not meant for Christopher to be asked to leave Shadowhunter Academy, but as it emerged, they did not let you remain in school if you blew up any portion of it. Besides which, Professor Fell had threatened to leave the Academy forever if Christopher remained.
Thomas had stayed out the full year, but found no reason to return with his friends gone and Alastair God-Help-Us Carstairs graduated.
So by luck, the closeness between their families, and an irresponsible attitude to flammable materials, more often than not all Matthew’s closest friends could live close together in London. They trained together at the London Institute and took lessons together in various schoolrooms, and Lavinia Whitelaw had referred to them as “that notorious bunch of hooligan boys.” Matthew and James had called themselves Shadowhooligans for some time after that remark. They had decided it was long past time to have a room of their own, inviolate from parents—however well-meaning—and preserved from siblings; though Cousin Anna and Luce were always welcome, due to being kindred spirits. So they had rented a room from the proprietor of the Devil Tavern, who owed the Herondales some sort of favor. They paid a monthly fee and had it all to themselves.
Matthew regarded their room with deep satisfaction. It looked very well, he thought, and best with all four of them sitting in it. In honor of Ben Jonson’s Apollo Club, which had once held its meetings in this very tavern, a bust of the god hung over the fireplace with words cut into the marble beneath the head and shoulders:
Welcome all, who lead or follow,
To the Oracle of Apollo
All his answers are divine,
Truth itself doth flow in wine.
There was, of course, a window seat for Jamie, and Jamie was already installed with his book upon his lap. Christopher sat in his laboratory, adding an alarming orange liquid to a bubbling purple liquid, his face a picture of contentment. Thomas was seated cross-legged upon the sofa and earnestly practicing his bladework. Thomas was very conscientious and worried about not being a good enough Shadowhunter due to being undersized.
Thomas’s sisters were a good deal taller than he was. So was everybody. Aunt Sophie, Tom’s mama, said that Thomas would shoot up some day. She said she believed one of her grandpapas had been a blacksmith and a giant of a man, small as a pea until he was seventeen.
Aunt Sophie was a kind lady, very beautiful and most interesting with her tales of mundanes. Matthew did not know how Mr. Gideon Lightwood could live with himself.
Matthew turned over the vial of truth potion in his waistcoat.
“Friends, now we are all gathered together, shall we share secrets?”
Jamie fiddled with his shirt cuff again, which he always did upon certain occasions, and pretended not to hear. Matthew suspected he had a secret love. He sometimes wondered whether James would have confided in him if he had been a different sort of person, more serious-minded and dependable.
Matthew laughed. “Come now. Any deadly hatreds you harbor in your bosom? Any ladies of your heart?”
Thomas flushed a deep red, and dropped his knife. “No.”
Oscar bounded over to fetch the knife for Thomas, and Thomas stroked his floppy ears.
Matthew sauntered closer to the laboratory corner, though he knew it was rash.
“Is there anyone who has caught your eye?” he asked Christopher.
Christopher eyed Matthew with alarm. Matthew sighed and prepared himself to explain further.
“Is there a lady you find yourself thinking of more often than other ladies?” asked Matthew. “Or a fellow,” he added tentatively.
Christopher’s face cleared. “Oh! Oh yes, I see. Yes, there is a lady.”
“Christopher!” Matthew exclaimed, delighted. “You sly dog! Do I know her?”
“No, I cannot think so,” said Christopher. “She is a mundane.”
“Christopher, you dark horse,” said Matthew. “What is her name?”
“Mrs.—”
“A married lady!” Matthew said, overwhelmed. “No, no. I beg your pardon. Please go on.”
“Mrs. Marie Curie,” said Christopher. “I believe her to be one of the preeminent scientists of the age. If you read her papers, Matthew, I believe you would be most interest—”
“Have you ever met this lady,” said Matthew in dangerous tones.
“No?” said Christopher, heedless of danger as he often was around irate teachers and naked flames.
Christopher had the audacity to look surprised when Matthew began to belabor him mightily about the head and face.
“Watch the test tubes!” cried Thomas. “There is a hole in the floor at the Academy that Professor Fell calls the Christopher Lightwood Chasm.”
“I suppose I hate some people,” offered James. “Augustus Pounceby. Lavinia Whitelaw. Alastair Carstairs.”
Matthew regarded his very own parabatai with deep approval.
“This is why we are chosen warrior partners, because we share such a perfect bond of sympathy. Come to me, Jamie, that we might share a manly embrace.”
He made incursions upon Jamie’s person. James thwacked him over the head with his book. It was a large book.
“Betrayed,” said Matthew, writhing prone upon the floor. “Is that why you insist on carrying about enormous tomes everywhere you go, that you might visit violence upon innocent persons? Done to death by my best friend—my heart’s brother—my own dear parabatai—”
He snagged James around the waist and brought him crashing to the floor for the second time that day. James hit Matthew with the book again, then subsided, leaning his shoulder against Matthew’s. They were both thoroughly rumpled, but Matthew did not mind being rumpled for a good cause.
Matthew jostled James, very thankful that he had brought up Alastair and provided Matthew an opening to tell his secret.
“Alastair is not so bad,” said Thomas unexpectedly from the sofa.
They all looked at him, and Tom curled up like an earwig under their scrut
iny but persisted.
“I know what Alastair did to James was wrong,” Thomas said. “Alastair knows that very well too. That was why he was prickly whenever it was mentioned.”
“How is that different from his usual ghastly demeanor?” Matthew demanded. “Besides him being particularly noxious the day everybody else’s parents came to the Academy.”
He paused to consider how to tell them, but that gave Thomas a chance to speak.
“Yes, exactly. Everybody’s papa came but Alastair’s,” Thomas said quietly. “Alastair was jealous. Mr. Herondale came rushing to Jamie’s defense, and nobody came for Alastair.”
“Can one truly blame the man?” asked Matthew. “Had I such an insufferable toad of a son, and were he blessedly to be sent away to school, I am not sure I could bring myself to blast my sight with his visage until the accursed holidays carried him back to me again.”
Thomas did not look convinced by Matthew’s sound argument. Matthew took a deep breath.
“You do not know what he said to me the day we were expelled.”
Tom shrugged. “Some nonsense, I expect. He always speaks the most shocking nonsense when he is overset. You shouldn’t listen to him.”
James’s shoulder was tense against Matthew’s. James had been the chief object of Alastair’s malice. Thomas clearly intended to defend Alastair stoutly. This line of argument was bound to upset either James or Thomas. Matthew was not about to soothe his own feelings at the expense of Jamie’s or Tom’s.
Matthew gave up. “I cannot imagine why anyone would listen to him.”
“Oh well,” said Tom. “I like his nonsense.” He looked wistful. “I think Alastair masks his pain with cleverly turned phrases.”
“What absolute bosh,” said Matthew.
Thomas was too nice, that was Thomas’s problem. Really, people would let you get away with being the worst sort of scoundrel if you simply had a secret sorrow or did not rub along terribly well with your father.
It was definitely something to look into.
His papa was the best papa in the world, so Matthew had no opportunity to be cruelly oppressed or sadly neglected. Perhaps Matthew should spend his time brooding over a forbidden passion like James was currently doing.
Matthew decided to give unrequited love a try. He stared out the window with all the pensive force he could muster. He was preparing to pass a hand across his fevered brow and murmur “Alas, my lost love” or some other such rot when he was abruptly rapped upon the head with a book.
Honestly, Jamie was lethal with that thing.
“Are you quite well, Matthew?” Jamie inquired. “Your face suggests you are suffering from an ague.”
Matthew nodded, but he ducked his head down against Jamie’s coat and stayed there for a moment. It had never occurred to Matthew that Alastair might be jealous of James’s father. He could not imagine being jealous of anybody’s papa. Having the best papa in the world, Matthew would be perfectly satisfied with him.
If only he could be certain that Henry was his papa.
Early in the morning, Matthew unstoppered the faerie’s vial and tipped a drop in among the cranberries for his mama’s scones. The scones came out of the oven plump, golden, and smelling delicious.
“You are the best boy in London,” said Cook, giving Matthew a kiss.
“I am entirely selfish,” declared Matthew. “For I love you, Cook. When shall we be married?”
“Get along with you,” said Cook, waving her wooden spoon in a menacing fashion.
When Jamie was a little boy, he had his own beloved special spoon. The family always reminisced about this. It embarrassed Jamie to death, especially when Uncle Gabriel presented him with a spoon at family gatherings. Fathers thought all sorts of sorry jests were a fine idea.
Jamie kept the spoons Uncle Gabriel gave him. When asked why, he said it was because he loved his Uncle Gabriel. James was able to say such things with a sincerity that would shame anyone else.
After James said that, Uncle Will loudly asked what was the point in even having a son, but Uncle Gabriel looked touched. Uncle Gabriel loved Anna and Christopher, but Matthew was not sure he entirely understood his children. James greatly resembled his Aunt Cecily, and tried very hard at being a Shadowhunter, while Christopher might not be aware any of them even were Shadowhunters. Uncle Gabriel was especially fond of James. Of course, who would not be?
Matthew stole the spoon to give to James.
“I suppose that is for some absurd jest,” said Charles Buford when he saw the spoon at breakfast. “I wish you would grow up, Matthew.”
Matthew considered this, then stuck his tongue out at Charles. His puppy was not allowed in the breakfast parlor, because Charles Buford said Oscar was not hygienic.
“If you would simply make an effort to be sensible,” said Charles.
“I shan’t,” said Matthew. “I might sustain a strain from which I would never recover.”
His mother did not smile at his theatrics. She was staring at her teacup, to all appearances lost in thought. His father was watching her.
“Is Mr. Gideon Lightwood coming to conduct you to Idris this morning?” Matthew asked, and pushed the plate of scones toward his mother.
Mama picked up a scone, buttered it liberally, and took a bite.
“Yes,” she said. “I would thank you to be civil to him this time. You can have no idea, Matthew, how much I—”
Mama stopped speaking. Her small hand flew to her mouth. She sprang to her feet as if trying to take action in an emergency, in the manner she always did. Under Matthew’s horrified gaze, tears shimmered in her eyes and abruptly spilled in two long, bright tracks down her face. In the morning light, Matthew discerned a faint tinge of violet in her tears.
Then she collapsed, her hair falling out of its tidy coil, her gray skirts a sudden riot on the floor.
“Charlotte!” cried Father.
Henry Fairchild used all kinds of ingenious contraptions to get about, but at family breakfasts he only had an ordinary chair. Not that it mattered. He simply launched himself from the chair in his haste to get to Charlotte, and fell heavily on the ground. He hardly seemed to notice he had fallen. Instead he crawled on his elbows toward the inert heap that was Mama, dragging his body painfully across the carpet as Matthew watched, frozen in horror.
He reached Mama and clasped her in his arms. She was always so small, but now she looked small as a child. Her face was still and white as the face of the marble busts in mundane tombs.
“Charlotte,” murmured Papa, as if he was praying. “Dearest. Please.”
“Mama,” Matthew whispered. “Papa. Charlie!”
He turned to his brother the way he had when he was small, when he had followed Charlie around everywhere and believed his brother could do anything in the world.
Charles had bolted out of his chair and was shouting for help. He turned back in the doorway, staring at his parents with a wretched expression which was very unlike him. “I knew how it would be, Portaling back and forth from London to Idris so that Matthew could be near his precious parabatai—”
“What?” asked Matthew. “I didn’t know. I swear I didn’t know . . .”
Cook had appeared in the doorway in response to Charles’s shouts. She gasped. “Mrs. Fairchild!”
Matthew’s voice shook. “We need Brother Zachariah—”
Brother Zachariah would know what he had given Mama, and what to do. Matthew began to explain the evil thing he had done, but then there was a noise from Charlotte, and the room went still.
“Oh, yes,” faltered Mama, her voice terrifyingly weak. “Oh, please. Fetch Jem.”
Charles and Cook raced from the room. Matthew did not dare approach his mother and father. Finally, after some long and terrible time, Brother Zachariah came, parchment-colored cloak swirling about him like the robes
of a fell presence come to deliver judgment and punishment.
Matthew knew Brother Zachariah’s closed eyes still saw. He could see Matthew, through to his sinful heart.
Brother Zachariah bent and scooped Matthew’s mother up in his arms. He carried her away.
All day Matthew heard the sounds of comings and goings. He saw the carriage from the London Institute rattle up to the door, and Aunt Tessa emerge with a basket of medicine. She had been learning some warlock magic.
Matthew understood that they needed a Silent Brother and a warlock, and they still might not save his mother.
Charles did not return. Matthew had helped his father back to his chair. They sat together in the breakfast parlor as the light turned from the glow of morning to the blaze of day, then faded into the shadows of evening.
Papa’s face looked carved out of old stone. When he spoke at last, he sounded as if he were dying inside. “You should know, Matthew,” he said. “Your mama and I, we were . . .”
Separating. Ending our marriage. She loved another. Matthew braced himself for the horror, but when it came, it was greater than anything he could have imagined.
“We were in anticipation of—of a happy event,” said Papa, his voice catching in his throat.
Matthew stared at him with blank incomprehension. He simply could not understand. It would hurt too much.
“Your mama and I had to wait some time for Charles Buford, and for you, and we thought you were both worth the wait,” said Father, and even in the midst of horror he tried to smile for Matthew. “This time Charlotte was hoping for—for a daughter.”
Matthew choked on his horror. He thought he might never speak another word or eat another bite. He would be choking on horror for years.
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