“My mother,” he whispered at once, his voice brittle and dry as old bones.
She will live, said Jem, and softened seeing the boy’s pain.
James had known his parabatai’s heart better than Jem. There had been a time when Will was a boy everybody assumed the worst of, with good reason. Everybody except for Jem. He did not want to learn harsh judgment from the Silent Brothers, or a less forgiving heart.
Matthew lifted his head to face Brother Zachariah. His eyes told of agony, but he held his voice steady.
“And the child?”
Brother Zachariah said, The child did not live.
Matthew’s hands closed on the edge of his chair. His knuckles were white. He looked older than he had a mere two nights ago.
Matthew, said Brother Zachariah, and walled off his Brothers in his head as well as he might.
“Yes?”
Rely upon a Silent Brother for silence, said Jem. I will not tell anybody about the Shadow Market or any bargains you may have made there.
Matthew swallowed. Jem thought he might be about to be thanked, but Jem had not done this for thanks.
I will not tell anybody, he said, but you should. A secret too long kept can kill a soul by inches. I watched a secret almost destroy a man once, the finest man ever made. Such a secret is like keeping treasure in a tomb. Little by little, poison eats away at the gold. By the time the door is opened, there may be nothing left but dust.
Brother Zachariah stared into the young face that had been so bright. He waited and hoped to see that face lit again.
“All this about the Shadow Market,” Matthew faltered.
Yes? said Jem.
The boy flung back his golden head.
“I’m sorry,” said Matthew coldly. “I do not know what you are talking about.”
Zachariah’s heart fell.
So be it, he said. James and Lucie are waiting for you in the library. Let them give you whatever comfort they can.
Matthew stood from his chair, moving as if he had grown suddenly old over the course of a day. Sometimes the distance Silent Brothers possessed moved them to dispassionate observation and too far from pity.
It would be a long time, Brother Zachariah knew, before there could be any comfort for Matthew Fairchild.
* * *
The library in Matthew’s house was a far smaller and less loved and lived-in room than the library in the London Institute, but tonight there was a fire burning and Herondales waiting within. Matthew stumbled into the room as if he were walking in from midwinter cold, his limbs too chilled to move.
As one, as if they had only been waiting for his coming, James and Lucie looked up at him. They were pressed together on a sofa at the hearth. By firelight, Lucie’s eyes were as eerie as James’s, a paler and more fiercely burning blue than her father’s. It was as though James’s gold were the corona of a flame and Lucie’s blue its burning heart.
They were a strange pair, these two Herondales, thorned mysterious plants in the hothouse of the Nephilim. Matthew could not have loved either of them more dearly.
Lucie leaped to her feet and ran to him with her hands outstretched. Matthew shuddered away. He realized, with dull pain, that he did not feel worthy of being touched by her.
Lucie glanced at him sharply, then nodded. She always saw a lot, their Luce.
“I will leave you two together,” she said decisively. “Take as long as ever you may.”
She reached out her hand to touch his, and Matthew shrank away from her again. This time he saw that it hurt, but Lucie only murmured his name and withdrew.
He could not tell Lucie this, and see her disgust of him, but he and James were bound. Perhaps James would try to understand.
Matthew advanced, every step a terrible effort, toward the fire. Once he was near enough, James reached out and clasped Matthew’s wrist, drawing him close to the sofa. He laid Matthew’s hand over James’s heart, and covered it with his own. Matthew looked down into James’s fire-gold eyes.
“Mathew,” said Jamie, pronouncing his name in the Welsh way and with the Welsh lilt that let Matthew know he meant it as an endearment. “I am so sorry. What can I do?”
He felt he could not live on with this massive stone of a secret crushing his chest. If he was ever going to tell anyone, he should tell his parabatai.
“Listen to me,” he said. “I was talking about Alastair Carstairs yesterday. What I meant to tell you was that he insulted my mother. He said—”
“I understand,” said James. “You do not have to tell me.”
Matthew drew in a small shaky breath. He wondered if James really could understand.
“I know the kind of thing they say about Aunt Charlotte,” said James with quiet fierceness. “They say similar things about my mother. You remember that man Augustus Pounceby, last year? He waited until we were alone to cast slurs upon my mother’s good name.” A small grim smile curved James’s mouth. “So I threw him in the river.”
Aunt Tessa had been so glad to have a Shadowhunter visitor, Matthew remembered numbly. She displayed Shadowhunter family coats of arms on her walls to welcome any traveler to the London Institute.
“You never told me,” said Matthew.
Jamie was telling him now. Tom had told him that whatever Alastair said was nonsense. If Matthew had asked his father about what Alastair had said, his father could have told him about Great-Aunt Matty, and they might even have laughed about how absurd it was to think some stupid malicious boy could ever make them doubt their family.
Jamie’s mouth crooked down a little. “Oh well. I know you have to hear a lot about me and my unfortunate antecedents already. I do not want you to think I am an unbearable nuisance and you got a bad bargain with your parabatai.”
“Jamie,” Matthew said on a wounded breath, as if he had been hit.
“I know it must feel wretched to remember anything hurtful that worm Carstairs said about your mother,” James plunged on. “Especially when she is—she is unwell. The very next time we see him, we will punch him in the head. What do you say to that, Mathew? Let’s do it together.”
Matthew’s father and his mother and his brother and his parabatai had all been trying not to burden him, while Matthew pranced on thinking he was no end of a fine fellow and dealing remarkably by himself. James would not have done what Matthew had. Nor would Christopher or Thomas. They were loyal. They were honorable. When someone had insulted Jamie’s mother, Jamie had thrown him in the river.
Matthew pressed his palm against James’s linen shirt, over the steady beat of his loyal heart. Then Matthew clenched his hand into a fist.
He could not tell him. He could never do it.
“All right, old chap,” said Matthew. “We will do it together. Do you think I could have a moment alone, though?”
James hesitated, then drew back.
“Is that what you want?”
“It is,” said Matthew, who had never wanted to be alone in his life, and never wanted to be alone less than in this moment.
James hesitated again, but he respected Matthew’s wishes. He bowed his head and went out, Matthew assumed to rejoin his sister. They were both good and pure. They should be together and comfort each other. They deserved comfort as he did not.
After James was gone, Matthew could not keep standing. He fell to his hands and knees in front of the fire.
There was a statue above the fire showing Jonathan Shadowhunter, the first Shadowhunter, praying for the world to be washed clean of evil. Behind him was the Angel Raziel flying to gift him with strength to defeat the forces of darkness. The first Shadowhunter could not see him yet, but he was standing firm, because he had faith.
Matthew turned his face away from the light. He crawled, as his father had crawled across another floor at the beginning of this endless day, until he was in the darkest and farthest corner of the room. He had not believed. He laid his cheek against the cold floor and refused to let himself weep again. He knew he could not
be forgiven.
* * *
It was long past time for Brother Zachariah to return to the City of Bones. Tessa stood with him in the hall and touched his hand before he went.
The sweetest woman God ever made, he had heard Henry say earlier. Jem loved Charlotte, but he had his own image of the sweetest this world could offer.
She was always his anchor in cold seas, her warm hand, her steadfast eyes, and it was as if a flame leaped between them and a mad hope. For a moment Jem was as he had been. It seemed possible to be together in sorrow, united as family and friends were, to sleep under the Institute roof and go down in the morning to breakfast, sad but safe in the warmth of a shared hearth and human hearts.
He thought, Yes, ask me to stay.
He could not. They both knew he could not.
Good-bye, Tessa, he said.
She swallowed, her long lashes screening the shine of her eyes. Tessa was always brave. She would not let him take a memory of her tears back to the Silent City, but she called him by the name she was always careful not to call him when anybody but they could hear. “Good-bye, Jem.”
Brother Zachariah bowed his head, his hood falling about his face, and went out into the winter cold of London.
Finally you leave, said Brother Enoch in his mind.
All the Silent Brothers hushed when Brother Zachariah was with Tessa, like small animals in the trees hearing the approach of that which they did not understand. In a way, they were all in love with her, and some resented her for that. Brother Enoch had made it clear he was tired of two names ceaselessly echoing in their minds.
Brother Zachariah was halfway down the street where the Fairchilds lived when a tall shadow struck his across the pale streets.
He looked up from the shadows and saw Will Herondale, head of the London Institute. He carried a walking stick that had once been Zachariah’s, before Zachariah took a staff into his hands.
Charlotte will live, said Brother Zachariah. The child never had a chance to.
“I know,” said Will. “I already knew. I did not come to you for those tidings.”
Brother Zachariah should really have learned better by now. Of course Tessa would have sent word to Will, and while Will often traded upon Brother Zachariah’s position as a Silent Brother to command his services and thus his presence, he very seldom spoke to Zachariah of his duties as a Silent Brother, as if he could make Zachariah not what he was by dint of sheer determination.
If anyone could have done it, Will would have been that one.
Will threw him the walking stick, which he must have stolen from James’s room, and confiscated Brother Zachariah’s staff. Jem had asked them to give James his room at the Institute, fill it with their son’s bright presence, and not keep it as some dreary shrine. He was not dead. He had felt when they made him a Silent Brother as if he had been cut open and all things inside him ripped out.
Only, there was that which they could not take away.
“Carry it awhile,” said Will. “It lightens my heart to see you with it. We could all do with lighter hearts tonight.”
He traced a carving upon the staff, the Herondale ring winking by moonlight.
Where shall I carry it?
“Wherever you please. I thought I would walk with you a little way, my parabatai.”
How far? asked Jem.
Will smiled. “Need you ask? I will go with you as far as I possibly may.”
Jem smiled back. Perhaps there was more hope and less sorrow in store for Matthew Fairchild than he feared. None knew better than Jem that someone could be not fully known yet still entirely loved. Forgiven all sins, and dearest in darkness. James would not let his parabatai travel any shadowy paths alone. No matter what catastrophe came, Jem believed the son had as great a heart as his father.
New streetlights showed Will’s and Jem’s silhouettes, walking together through their city, as they had of old. Even though both knew they must part.
Across London the bells rang all together in a sudden terrifying clamor. Frightened birds in mad wheeling flight cast deeper shadows across the city at night, and Jem knew the queen was dead.
A new age was beginning.
Every Exquisite Thing
By Cassandra Clare and Maureen Johnson
London, 1901
This one was stained with something purple.
This one had a hole in the sleeve.
This one was missing a . . . back. An entire back. It was just a front of a shirt and two sleeves clinging on for dear life.
“Christopher,” Anna said, turning the garment over in her hands, “how do you do these things?”
Everyone had their small wonderland. For her brother Christopher and Uncle Henry, it was the laboratory. For Cousin James and Uncle Will, the library. For Lucie, her writing desk, where she wrote her long adventures for Cordelia Carstairs. For Matthew Fairchild, it was any troublesome corner of London.
For Anna Lightwood, it was her brother’s wardrobe.
In many ways, it was very good to have a brother who was largely oblivious about his clothes. Anna could have taken Christopher’s coat right off his back and he would hardly have noticed. The only downside was that Christopher’s clothes had suffered fates no clothes should suffer. They were dipped in acids, brushed by fire, poked with sharp objects, left out in the rain. . . . His wardrobe was like a museum of experiment and disaster, tattered, stained, charred, and stinking of sulfur.
To Anna, though, the clothes were still precious.
Christopher was over visiting the Institute and Uncle Henry, so he would be gone for hours. Her mother and father were both out in the park with her baby brother, Alexander. This was her golden hour, and there was no time to waste. Christopher was taller than her now and growing all the time. This meant that his older trousers suited her frame. She chose a pair and found the least-damaged shirt and a satisfactory gray-striped waistcoat. She dug through the pile of ties, scarves, kerchiefs, cuffs, and collars that lay on the bottom of Christopher’s wardrobe and selected the most passable items. On his dressing stand she found a hat that had a sandwich in it. It was ham, Anna noted, as she tipped it out and dusted away the crumbs. Once she had everything she needed, she bundled it all under her arm and slipped out into the hall, shutting his door quietly.
Anna’s room was so different from her brother’s. Her walls were papered in a dusty rose. There was a white lace coverlet, a pink vase with lilacs next to her bed. Her cousin Lucie thought her bedroom quite charming. Anna had different tastes. Given her choice, the paper would be a rich, deep green, her decor black and gold. She would have a deep chaise longue on which she could read and smoke.
Still, she had a long dressing mirror, and that was all that mattered right now. (Christopher’s mirror had met its fate in an experiment in which he attempted to magnify the effect of glamours. It had not been replaced.) She drew the curtains against the warm summer sun and began to change. Anna had long forsworn wearing a corset—she had no interest in squeezing her internal organs into a lump or pushing her small bosom up. She slipped out of her tea gown, letting it drop to the floor. She kicked it away. Off went the stockings, down came the hair. The trousers were tucked in at the ankle to adjust for height. A few adjustments of the waistcoat hid the damage to the shirt. She put one of Christopher’s black ascots around her slender neck and tied it expertly. Then she took the derby that had been hosting the ham sandwich and placed it on her head, tucking her black hair carefully up under it and arranging it until it appeared that her hair was shorn short.
Anna stood before the mirror, examining the effect. The waistcoat flattened her chest a bit. She tugged it up and adjusted it until the fit was right. She rolled the legs of the trousers and knocked the hat down over her eye.
There. Even in these clothes—stains and ham sandwiches and all—her confidence swelled. She was no longer a gangly girl who looked awkward in ribbons and flounces. Instead she looked elegant, her lean body complemented by more severe
tailoring, the waistcoat nipping in her slim waist and flaring over her narrow hips.
Imagine what she could do with Matthew Fairchild’s wardrobe! He was a real peacock, with his colorful waistcoats and ties, and the beautiful suits. She walked back and forth a bit, tipping her hat to imaginary ladies. She bowed, pretending to be taking the hand of a fair maiden, keeping her eyes turned up. Always keep the fair maiden’s eye as you press your lips to her hand.
“Enchanted,” she said to her imaginary lady. “Would you care for a dance?”
The lady would be delighted to dance.
Anna crooked her arm around the waist of her phantom beauty; she had danced with her many times. Though Anna could not see her face, she swore she could feel the fabric of her lover’s dress, the soft swooshing noise it made as it brushed the floor. The lady’s heart was fluttering as Anna pressed her hand. Her lady would wear a delicate scent. Orange blossom, perhaps. Anna would press her face closer to the lady’s ear and whisper.
“You are quite the most beautiful girl here,” Anna would say.
The lady would blush and press closer.
“How is it you look more lovely in every light?” Anna would go on. “The way the velvet of your dress crushes against your skin. The way your—”
“Anna!”
She dropped her airy companion to the floor in her surprise.
“Anna!” her mother called again. “Where are you?”
Anna hurried to her door and opened it just a crack.
“Here!” she said in a panic.
“Can you come down, please?”
“Of course,” Anna replied, already pulling at the ascot around her neck. “Coming!”
Anna had to step right through her fallen dancing partner in her haste. Off with the waistcoat, the trousers. Everything off, off, off. She shoved the clothes into the bottom of her wardrobe. The discarded dress was hastily put back on, her fingers fumbling on the buttons. Everything about girls’ clothing was fussy and complicated.
Several minutes later, she hurried downstairs, attempting to look composed. Her mother, Cecily Lightwood, was sifting through a stack of letters at her desk in the sitting room.
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