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.
We thought. We were in anticipation. It was entirely clear that Father was certain, and had reason to believe, his children were his.
“We were concerned since you and Charles are both now quite grown up,” said Henry. “Gideon, good fellow, has been dancing attendance on Charlotte during Clave meetings. He has always stood your mother’s friend, lending her the Lightwood name and consequence whenever she needed support, and advising her when she wished for good counsel. I am afraid I have never truly understood the workings of an Institute, let alone the Clave. Your mama is a wonder.”
Gideon had been helping his mother. Matthew was the one who had attacked her.
“I had thought we might name her Matilda,” Father said in a slow, sad voice. “I had a Great-Aunt Matilda. She was very old when I was still a young rip, and the other boys used to tease me. She would give me books and tell me that I was smarter than any of them. She had splendid buttery-white wavy hair, but it was gold when she was a girl. When you were born, you already had the dearest fair lovelocks. I called her Aunt Matty. I never told you, because I thought you might not like to be named for a lady. You already have a great deal to endure with your foolish father, and those who cavil at your mother and your parabatai. You bear it all so gracefully.”
Matthew’s father touched his hair with a gentle, loving hand. Matthew wished he would pick up a blade and cut Matthew’s throat.
“I wish you could have known your great-great aunt. She was very like you. She was the sweetest woman God ever made,” said Father. “Save your mother.”
Brother Zachariah glided in then, a shadow amid all the other shadows crowding that room, to summon Matthew’s father to his mother’s bedside.
Matthew was left alone.
He stared in the gathering darkness at his mother’s overturned chair, the dropped scone and its trail of crumbs going nowhere, the greasy remnants of breakfast over the disarranged table. He, Matthew, was always dragging his friends and family to art galleries, always anxious to dance through life, always prattling of truth and beauty like a fool. He had run headlong into a Shadow Market and blithely trusted a Downworlder, because Downworlders seemed exciting, because she had called Shadowhunters brutal and Matthew had agreed, believing he knew better than they. It was not the faerie woman’s fault, or Alastair’s, or the fault of any other soul. He was the one who had chosen to distrust his mother. He had fed his mother poison with his own hands. He was not a fool. He was a villain.
Matthew bowed the fair head that had been passed to him through his father, from his father’s best-loved relative. He sat in that dark room and wept.
Brother Zachariah descended the stairs after a long battle with death, to tell Matthew Fairchild that his mother would live.
James and Lucie had come with Tessa and waited in the hall all this long day. Lucie’s hands were chilled when she clung to him.
She asked: “Aunt Charlotte, is she safe?”
Yes, my darlings, said Jem. Yes.
“Thank the Angel,” breathed James. “Matthew’s heart would break. All our hearts would.”
Brother Zachariah was not so sure of Matthew’s heart, after the mischief Matthew had wrought, but he wanted to offer James and Lucie what comfort he could.
Go to the library. There is a fire lit. I will send Matthew to you.
When he went into the breakfast room, he found Matthew, who had been all gold and laughter, cowering in his chair as if he could not bear what was to come.
“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, 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.