Jack met his eyes.
“Benjamin is dead,” Matthew said.
“I know.” Jack looked away, shifting restlessly from one foot to the other.
“Benjamin can’t hurt you. Not anymore.”
“He hurt you. And he would have hurt my mother.” Jack looked at me, and his eyes filled with darkness.
Fearing that the blood rage would engulf him, I took a step in Jack’s direction. I stopped before taking another, forcing myself to let Matthew handle it.
“Eyes on me, Jack.”
Matthew’s skin was gray with effort. He had uttered more words since Jack’s arrival than he had in a full week, and they were sapping his strength. Jack’s wandering attention returned to the head of his clan.
“Take Rebecca. Give her to Diana. Then come back.”
Jack did as asked, while the rest of us watched warily in case either he or Matthew lost control.
With Becca safely in my arms, I kissed her and told her in a whisper what a good girl she was not to fuss at being taken from her father.
Becca frowned, indicating she was playing this game under protest.
Back at Matthew’s side, Jack reached for Philip.
“No. I’ll keep him.” Matthew’s eyes were getting ominously dark, too. “Take Ysabeau home, Jack. Everybody else go, too.”
“But, Matthieu,” Ysabeau protested. Fernando whispered something in her ear. Reluctantly she nodded. “Come, Jack. On the way to Sept-Tours, I will tell you a story about the time Baldwin attempted to banish me from Jerusalem. Many men died.”
After delivering that thinly veiled warning, Ysabeau swept Jack from the room.
“Thank you, Maman,” Matthew murmured. He was still supporting Philip’s weight, and his arms shook alarmingly.
“Call if you need me,” Marcus whispered as he headed out the door.
As soon as it was just the four of us in the house, I took Philip from Matthew’s lap and plunked both babies in the cradle by the fireplace.
“Too heavy,” Matthew said wearily as I tried to lift him from the chair. “Stay here.”
“You will not stay here.” I studied the situation and decided on a solution. I marshaled the air to support my hastily woven levitation spell. “Stand back, I’m going to try magic.” Matthew made a faint sound that might have been an attempt at laughter.
“Don’t. The floor’s okay,” he said, his words slurring with exhaustion.
“The bed’s better,” I replied firmly as we skimmed over the floor to the elevator.
During our first week at Les Revenants, Matthew permitted Ysabeau to come and feed him. He regained some of his strength and a bit more mobility. He still couldn’t walk, but he could stand provided he had assistance, his arms hanging limply at his sides.
“You’re making such quick progress,” I said brightly, as though everything in the world were rosy.
Inside my head it was very dark indeed. And I was screaming in anger, fear, and frustration as the man I loved struggled to find his way through the shadows of the past that had overtaken him in Chelm.
Sol in Pisces
When the sun is in Pisces, expect weariness and sadness. Those who can banish feare will experience forgiveness and understanding. You will be called to work in faraway places.
—Anonymous English Commonplace Book, c. 1590,
Gonçalves MS 4890, f. 10r
“I want some of my books,” Matthew said with deceptive casualness. He rattled off a list of titles. “Hamish will know where to find them.” His friend had gone back to London briefly, then returned to France. Hamish had been ensconced in Matthew’s rooms at Sept-Tours ever since. He spent his days trying to keep clueless bureaucrats from ruining the world economy and his nights depleting Baldwin’s wine cellar.
Hamish arrived at Les Revenants with the books, and Matthew asked him to sit and have a glass of Champagne. Hamish seemed to understand that this attempt at normalcy was a turning point in Matthew’s recovery.
“Why not? Man cannot live on claret alone.” With a subtle glance at me, Hamish indicated that he would take care of Matthew.
Hamish was still there three hours later—and the two of them were playing chess. My knees weakened at the unexpected sight of Matthew sitting on the white side of the board, considering his options. Since Matthew’s hands were still useless—the hand was a terribly complicated bit of anatomical engineering, it turned out—Hamish moved the pieces according to Matthew’s encoded commands.
“E4,” Matthew said.
“The Central Variation? How daring of you.” Hamish moved one of the white pawns.
“You accepted the Queen’s Gambit,” Matthew said mildly. “What did you expect?”
“I expect you to mix things up. Once upon a time, you refused to put your queen at risk. Now you do it every game.” Hamish frowned. “It’s a poor strategy.”
“The queen did just fine last time,” I whispered in Matthew’s ear, and he smiled.
When Hamish left, Matthew asked me to read to him. It was now a ritual for us to sit in front of the fire, the snow falling past the windows and one of Matthew’s beloved books in my hand: Abelard, Marlowe, Darwin, Thoreau, Shelley, Rilke. Often Matthew’s lips moved along with the words as I uttered them, proving to me—and, more important, to him—that his mind was as sharp and whole as ever.
“‘I am the daughter of Earth and Water, / And the nursling of the Sky,’” I read from his battered copy of Prometheus Unbound.
“‘I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores,’” Matthew whispered. “‘I change, but I cannot die.’”
After Hamish’s visit our society at Les Revenants gradually expanded. Jack was invited to join Matthew and to bring his cello with him. He played Beethoven for hours on end, and not only did the music have positive effects on my husband, it unfailingly put my daughter to sleep as well.
Matthew was improving, but he still had a long way to go. When he rested fitfully, I dozed at his side and hoped that the babies wouldn’t stir. He let me help him bathe and dress, though he hated himself—and me—for it. Whenever I thought I couldn’t endure another moment of watching him struggle, I focused on some patch of skin that had knit itself back together. Like the shadows of Chelm, the scars would never fully disappear.
When Sarah came to see him, her worry was palpable. But Matthew was not the cause of her concern.
“How much magic are you using to stay upright?” Accustomed to living with bat-eared vampires, she had waited until I walked her to the car before she asked.