*
Over the next several days, Jane became acquainted with the variety of ways in which liver could be prepared, learned the joys of boiled greens, and drank more beef tea than she wished to consider. She had not been so exhausted since her miscarriage, and the similarity made her uncomfortably aware of the risk she was in. It took three days before she could sit up without dizziness.
During the first days of her recovery, Jane had alternated between staring out the window, drinking endless gallons of beef tea, and sleeping. She was now beginning to have enough energy to be restless, though not so much that she could leave the bed, so her thoughts had turned to exterior matters such as her book and conditions in the slave quarters.
Vincent, however, could think of nothing else but The Incident, seeming to alternate between worry and anger. If he had not had the glamural to work on, she was not sure he would have survived. He added hummingbirds to the bower, a sky that changed throughout the day, and he resolutely refused to acknowledge any of his distress.
When she pressed him, he replied, “The doctor says you are not to be agitated.”
“I will become agitated if you continue to be so remote. I am imprisoned in bed, and lost, and more than a little afraid because I do not know what is happening.”
He became even more still. Then he stood from the small table he had taken to using as a desk and came to sit on the bed. He only sat for a moment, then wove a deep silence, cutting off all sound. Jane settled down to wait for Vincent to collect his thoughts, but he only bowed his head and continued to sit. One hand dipped in and out of the ether, drawing a small trail of red along with it, a seemingly unconscious motion. The swelling on his hand had gone down, but the bruises remained in dull greens and yellows. Vincent clenched his fist, wiping out the trail of glamour.
“Jane … I am sorry for leaving you in the dark. Truly, I am protecting myself as much as you.” His voice was low and faltering, as though he were finding his way through a darkened room. “I have no practise at.… I know how to survive when I have only myself to worry about. But with you? Here? I do not know how—” He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “I feel like a glamourist trying to walk and hold two different glamours. One of them is always about to slip. I cannot breathe, and I am about to lose my grip on all the strands.”
She took his hand and ran her thumb gently over the bruises. “You worry me.”
“I worry myself.” He gave a little smile that might even have been genuine. “But worrying you is the opposite of my intentions. So I am going to ask for your indulgence. Will you let me change the subject? Your breath is distressingly quick and you are pale.”
Jane regarded him. The visible bruises were confined to the knuckles of one hand, but, much like the scars on his back, the damage ran deeper. It frustrated Jane that she understood him well enough to know that speaking of such things took effort, and that his reserves were greatly diminished already. When he requested a change of subject—and she was grateful that he at least acknowledged the retreat from the topic today—he often did so to preserve his resources for battles outside their sphere. Still, it vexed Jane that he was correct. She was having difficulty catching her breath and felt as though she were in the midst of working a large fold of glamour.
She sighed to cover her agitation. “You are insufferable.”
“I prefer ‘inscrutable.’” He smiled, softening a little at her teasing tone, and because she had allowed the change of topic.
“Inexplicable would be more accurate.”
“Inconceivable!”
She rested her hand on her ever-increasing stomach. “Not any longer.”
He laughed and kissed her on the forehead. “I do not think that word means what you think it means.”
“Humph!” But Jane was delighted that she had managed to make him laugh. She would mangle all the words in the dictionary if it would help. “I return to my previous assertion of ‘insufferable.’”
“I accept. Tell me about your book.”
“Insufferable man. I have been thinking of how to structure it.” Truly, she had little to do but think. Still, she was always somewhat nervous about discussing theory with Vincent because he had the benefit of formal training, while Jane had only books and a tutor in her history. “My plan is to approach the comparison between European and African methods of glamour as a sort of school. That is, I will treat it as a primer, documenting basic techniques and how our European method approaches teaching them. When I can once again visit Nkiruka, I shall ask her how the African schools approach early training. By comparing the training methods, I hope to illuminate any material differences between them.”