INTERIM: ISABELLA

Havenfold House, Alicante, 1538

The Brocelands named their first child, their most beloved daughter, Isabella.

They selected the name carefully, after finding one which might honour her Christmastime birthday, such as Christine or Marie, ill at odds with the child herself. They wanted something closer to both their hearts. Yet neither parent felt comfortable naming her for either of their own mothers. Instead, her father advanced the woman they each loved as a sister as a possible namesake. It was Jace's way of honouring the family that had chosen him, sheltered, and loved him for so many uncertain years before he made this family of his own.

Her mother offered only a small amendment- a single letter- so their little girl, this meeting of Idris's two greatest bloodlines, may have a name befitting a queen. One fit for the chronicles.

Considering the tumult of the seasons leading up to her arrival, Lady Isabella Herondale's first year of life was a quiet one, framed by relative peace and prosperity in Idris.

She was installed in Havenfold House at three months old, despite her mother's tears at their parting, and placed under the watchful, tender gaze of a legion of nursemaids.

Around this time, ill at ease with the inquisition which, though apparently with its appetite whetted for the time being, Isabella's mother's childhood friend and confidant, Simon Lewis, received permission from the Duchess to leave Idris. He went to Venice, where there was no King, but where artists and thinkers thronged the streets and music was on every street corner.

Clary missed him desperately and might have envied him his departure, had it not been for Isabella, who brought her more joy than she had ever thought possible.

Although Isabella's wants were simple, consisting mainly of desires for milk and warmth and smiles upon her, she could want for nothing. She had a frequent stream of visitors, not just her mother who doted on her, even her father, to the surprise of several of her attendants, for it was rare that a father took such an interest in any child so young, let alone a female one.

Every week one or both of her parents would descend to marvel at how fast she grew; how her hair thickened, her limbs became sturdier. They praised her on how quickly she had mastered crawling and laughed at her keenness in grasping anything that came into her proximity; locks of hair, toys, fingers.

Isabella had a further contingent of admirers, her godmother and namesake kept a steady stream of gifts flowing to her too, her most prized of which was a little hand sewn, brown dog made of felt that the youngest royal refused to go to sleep without and sucked within an inch of its life. Isabella did not mind in the slightest that Dog's button eyes had been stitched on unevenly, and that one of them was navy as another black could not be found at the time of its creation.

Her esteemed grandfather the King also deigned to visit Isabella, occasionally. Even he, a stern man, found it hard to resist the little lady's gummy smiles and giggles. He could dispense of his duties for a brief time, to bounce the infant on his knee or pat her head, promising her in his deep voice that he would find a prince or an emperor for her to marry, one day.

While the Duchess of Broceland gushed that Isabella favoured the Duke in her looks and colouring, the Duke in turn insisted she favoured the Duchess. At a glance, her auburn ringlets seemed to confirm her as her mother's daughter and a Fairchild. Yet as she grew into herself, more of the Herondale set in. Her hair had lightened from the ruddier red it had been at her birth, maturing to a reddish gold. And her eyes were unmistakably her father's: a glimmering gold.

Isabella already possessed the regal propensity for impatience. A racket was sure to ensue if her nurses were slow to spoon her gruel into her mouth. Equally, she was curious, for there were few crannies she would not crawl into, few things she would not pull down to her level and suck on for investigation. She was as quick to delight as she was irritation, though her laughter was vastly more common than her tears.

It was fortunate the child thrived and, save the occasional brief cold and a fevered teething, no ill health or accidents befell her. She spent her first year of life guarded by a legion of devoted servants and treasured, a pearl at the centre of Havenfold, of Idris. Even the girl hired to rock her cradle knew the child was royal twice over.

Though in Isabella's little world, her nursery palace at Havenfold, everything and everyone orbited her, the real world continued turning. Isabella Herondale slumbered in her cot while peace was negotiated at last between France and Spain, and her father was instrumental in successfully negotiating a new trade deal for Idris with King Francois. Isabella suffered her worst bouts of colic over the summer as the English monasteries were dissolved, and her grandfather lost hours of sleep thinking on it. On a dreary autumn day, while the New World boasted its first university, Isabella took her first steps, hauling herself upright, away from the painted blocks she had been grizzling on. Using a small stool as her propeller she marched over toward her nurse on unsteady legs, arms waving in a demand to be lifted.

While her joys were many, her concerns were small. Isabella herself had no inkling that her existence was a setback to the fulfilment of a grand plan that had been conceived long before she, or her mother, had been born. She could not have imagined there could ever be cause for her not to be smiled on, that she could be greeted with anything less than reverence, that there was any aspect in which she was not fortunate.

The elder Isabelle, who shared none of Isabella's royal blood or good fortune, dined and danced in a different kind of oblivion under King Valentine's watchful eye during that year.

During that year Valentine's mind, which rarely dwelled much on little Lady Isabella, began to fill increasingly with thoughts of the Lady Isabelle.

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