Chapter 26: Blood and Water
Princewater Palace, Alicante, November 1537
There was no risk of life at Valentine's court becoming predictable.
Jace remained convinced the fortunes of all in this cut-throat world were all on a finely balanced scale. If one rose, for the sake of cosmic equilibrium, another must fall.
This latest uproar had startled everyone, from the disbelieving kitchen staff to the shaken Chancellor.
Life was full of ironic twists. Death even more so. He should have anticipated that when thwarting death meant thwarting Jonathan, more blood would run before the Crown Prince relented.
Jace owed Emma Carstairs, he reminded himself, even as the pragmatic half of his mind roared that he had more cause than most to want to avoid the matter altogether.
So much fear. He was sick of it, and sick with it.
Alec flittered alongside, silent but resolute, bound as he now was to the current of Jace's fortunes. Alec cautioned against Jace's interference, but upon finding him immovable had compromised on assisting him in whatever way he could. Alec did not trust Jace to make the best possible move in these crucial moments. He had always thought of Alec as his guiding compass and Jace was glad of him now, steering his course as best he could. Helping him balance calculated risk and self-preservation.
Few eyes batted at the comings and goings of the Duke of Broceland in these quarters, he was the King's near constant companion. But today Valentine's rooms were busy, though the usual suspects were all more subdued than usual. Only Lucian Graymark, who had been whispering rapidly with Hodge Starkweather, paused to look up at Jace as he entered.
"Where is the King?" Jace demanded breathlessly.
Luke gestured silently, his gaze thoroughly troubled, at the closed inner chamber.
Jace pressed on, refusing to allow his nerve to break now. He held Emma's stern, sweet little face in his mind. The swiftness of her unshaking hands upon Clary's laces.
There was an uncertain stirring at the door as the King's guards debated whether they should admit Jace. The blazing eyes behind the bruised and crooked nose worked wonders; a single look at Jace's face, at his outrage, and the door swung open.
The air of stale, fearful stagnation of the outer room could not have contrasted more with the frantic activity within. The Crown Prince was the only one seated, waving a sizeable sheet of paper at his father and speaking rapidly. Valentine leaned over the grand chair at the head of the table, his hands pressing into the decorative back of the chair, looking even more pensive than usual. The final occupant was the Cardinal, even more wan-faced and wary as usual, more spirit than spiritual.
The door jerked furtively but immediately shut behind Jace, as if it had been pulled by a string. The hinges rattled as Jonathan attempted to press on with his argument.
Valentine gave no indication of noting Jace's presence. It was Jonathan who acknowledged him.
"This is a private, closed meeting. It has naught to do with you."
Jace hooked his thumbs through his belt loops and pulled himself up to his full height. "The fate of a peer of the realm, a respected peer of the realm, certainly is my business. I am myself, a peer."
Jonathan scoffed impatiently, "Once respected," He corrected in a salted tone, before returning his beseeching attentions to his father, "Your Majesty."
Valentine lifted a hand to silence him and looked wearily over at Jace. "We cannot blame the Duke for taking some interest." He directed his closing comment toward Jace, "The lands do neighbour yours."
Jace's heart plummeted, a stone down a well.
This was no heated discussion over the Earl of Chene's fate. They were dividing the estate of a soon to be deceased heretic.
Then again, Jace had never been one to abandon even a futile cause, "Your Majesty, if I may?" he began,
"Spare us," The steely hatred in Valentine's voice shredded through Jace's bubbling argument, "The evidence stacked against Chene is damning indeed."
Jace dared not look to the Prince. He made himself swallow, "Sire, years of loyal service-"
"Have all been undone by this deceit." Valentine slammed the heel of his hand into the table, a surprisingly reactive, violent gesture. Valentine rarely gave so clear an indication of being riled. His evident fury had Jace shuffling a half step backwards, despite the urgency of his mission. The irritated tightening of Valentine's jaw immediately conjured memories of years' worth of thrashings. It was the same look Valentine had worn, the same vein pulsing at his throat, as when he'd tried to beat the two Jonathans into abiding each other.
Landing any punch on the Prince had been worth the strap, Jace had once thought. Today he was not so sure.
"Souls are at stake." Valentine blazed on, "If I do not smoke out the heretics at my court how can I call myself loyal to the Catholic Church? The ruling families of this land must lead by example. The common people are too ignorant to think for themselves. It is the very threat of Satan's chaos we fight here, in this holiest war at home. The lives of a few are fit price for the souls of the many."
Jace could not ignore the very real zeal that flavoured the King's rant. Valentine was frightening in pursuit of what he wanted. All scorching conviction. A torch of light to burn away all the evil he perceived. It was almost painful to look directly at him.
Alec's hand landed with a warning clap on his arm. "Enough" he thrummed out a warning through gritted teeth, a hissed undertone, "If you stick your head above the parapet any further, Jace, you are like to lose it."
Alec was right. The past few days had only evidenced how thin the ice Jace trod upon truly was. He had never dared to imagine himself invincible, but he had allowed himself to become unforgivably carried away with the fancy of being the King's son. Of his son soon being the King's heir. He had gotten too used to sleeping on silken sheets, of eating at a lord's table. Jace had begun to imagine himself as powerful, and it had brought him dangerously close to complacence.
Clary's frightened face sprang back to his mind.
Power was precarious. And now was not a time to test the limits of his influence at this court. Jace suspected he would not like his findings.
There was no saving John.
He'd had the chance to recant and save himself. John Carstairs, a rare man of principle, was one of the few prepared to make a last stand for his conscience. And he'd die for it.
John had made his choice. And somehow, though he had not known the man very long, Jace felt certain he knew what the Earl would say to him, if he were here.
Jace knew what really mattered to him. The thing that had always mattered most to John in this world.
"The Lady Emma Carstairs. She is but a child. Too young to know her own conscience." Jonathan's real crime here had not been snatching up the Earl and Countess but spiriting their daughter off under armed guard too. The Black Tower still gave Jace nightmares as a grown man. The thought of sweet, feisty Emma locked in there alone at the mercy of the Cardinal's interrogators had his indignation flaring up over his reticence.
After a taut pause, Valentine conceded the point. "Quite." This time his fingers tapped instead of slammed the table-top, "The Earl and Countess of Chene, who refuse to recant their heretical errors, will die at dawn. But the girl will be released from our custody tomorrow."
"The question is to where," Jonathan cut in coolly, "She is too young to wed, as yet."
"She was intended for the Blackthorn boy," Jace supplied hastily, "Julian."
"I cannot imagine the Duke of Lyn will want her for his son now," Jonathan added just as quickly.
Well, thought Jace to himself, that would depend on what was decided here today. How much of Emma's inheritance the Church and the Crown's mercy left intact.
As one orphan on the King's charity to another, Jace decided to cut to the matter at heart.
"She was in my wife's care prior to all this. I will gladly take responsibility for the girl."
Jonathan scoffed and snorted. The Cardinal raised a grey eyebrow but did not speak. Valentine touched his lips, inhaled pensively, and then shook his head.
"I think not. The arrangement with you was only ever intended to be temporary." This pronouncement was followed by a piercing black stare and an accusatory silence.
Then the King cleared his throat decisively, snatching the paper out of his son's hand and dipping his quill with purpose. "In accordance with the laws of this realm, upon the enacting of the penalty for heresy on the morrow, a quarter of the Carstairs estate is forfeit to the Holy Church."
"What if they repent before then?" Jace clutched shamelessly at straws.
"They will not" The Cardinal confirmed, as a man who had been personally pressing on the Earl and his wife's conscience for days.
A quick, impatient nod followed from His Majesty as his signature was etched onto the document.
"A further tenth is resigned to the Crown."
Once the ink dried, the Cardinal tenderly folded up the decree.
Hot, red wax splashed on the paper. Jace flinched at the brutal brightness of the stain.
Valentine pounded his seal downward. With a sickening squelch, the wood sucked at the paper. There could be no uncertainty as to whose command the deed carried.
"And Lady Emma Carstairs shall be placed under the wardship of the Crown." Into Valentine's keeping, in other words. Giving him legal possession of the girl and all her hereditary assets, until such a time when, "The remainder of the estate and its hereditary titles shall be bestowed upon her marriage."
"To Julian Blackthorn?" Jace enquired, dazed, defeated and more than a little humbled by how quickly he had been swatted aside.
Valentine shrugged noncommittally as the Cardinal took the paper, sketched his bow, and scuttled off to see its desire enacted.
"There is no pressing need to decide that now. When the moment is right, the Carstairs girl will be wed to a groom of the Crown's choosing."
Another time, and another case, Jace might have laughed at the absurd cleverness of it all. Now if the Duke of Lyn wanted the existing arrangement to stand, he would effectively have to buy Emma back off the King. There was no official contract to impede Valentine doing so. The King cared not a whit for the fledgling betrothal, nor for the long-held understanding between two lifelong friends. Certainly not for the preferences of two children to whom anyone else would be a stranger. Emma Carstairs, now a useful bargaining chip in Valentine's palm, would go to the highest bidder.
With that assertion of Valentine's final decision, both Jonathan and Jace were dismissed.
Ears hot, Jace lowered himself to a bow and backed out of the chamber. Slowly, he was learning to choose his battles. He had not been outright labelled a heretic, but the suspicion was not easily dispelled. Any more threatened insubordination and Valentine may lose patience with him altogether and sign Jace's death warrant next.
Although it was in part his victory, even Jonathan was more subdued than he might have been. He cut across Jace's path.
Halting clumsily, Jace found himself face to face with the Crown Prince for the first time in weeks. They had studiously ignored one another since they had last come to blows.
"His Majesty wants results."
"Of course he does," Jace agreed slowly. He had thought Jonathan many things, but stupid had never been one. He wondered what compelled his old foe to state the obvious now.
Jonathan shrugged, unapologetic, "I had to deliver those results. When my father commissioned that search, at the inconvenience of the whole court, casting everyone in the King's household under suspicion, it was a bold move. The result needed to be just as bold. It took a great deal of persuading for His Majesty to allow me to execute the search. I could not go back empty handed."
People were staring, Jace could feel the heat of all the inquisitive eyes on the duo. Everyone knew they were by not friends. What they could be doing in such confidential conversation now confounded any observer.
"Do you mean to tell me that because you could not deliver my head on a platter, you had to make do with John Carstairs?" It was a small detail now, one Jace had entirely overlooked in the wake of the calamity that had ensued, but it burned in his mind now. The damning hatred and cruelty with which Jonathan's eyes had razed Emma Carstairs, the silent but crucial presence in the Broceland's rooms that day. The common denominator.
Jace rubbed the underside of his face, pressing his fingers to his lips as he tried to find the right words, "You could not bring me down, so you diverted your attentions to my closest ally."
Jonathan shifted his weight and let his hands rest on his hips, seeming casually thoughtful. But he did not budge an inch to let Jace pass.
"Come now, little brother. I suppose the Dukedom was yours by birth, or by blood, despite whatever unflattering rumours about the validity of your parent's marriage may still lurk."
Jace drew a sharp intake of breath, about to demand who said such a thing, but Jonathan tore on, poking a forefinger firmly into his chest. "But reach not for that which is not yours to grasp. My sister will not always be able to protect you."
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The Black Tower, The Gard, early November 1537
Emma could not see the scaffold from her window. But she heard the noise as it was assembled. The scraping of the saws and hacking of hammers had echoed between the stone towers for days.
At dawn her parents climbed it.
She knew, because her custodian here, Sir Anthony Greenmantle, had attempted to reassure her with the information that the usual penalty of burning had been waived. Her parents, though heretics, remained noblemen. Sir Anthony had been hesitant to furnish his charge with further details, but Emma had been insistent. She now knew that the axe had ended them, the only mercy the King afforded.
Emma could not have said why, but she needed to know more-nigh on everything- about the final moments of the people she loved most.
Now she knew that her father had died first, pale but staunch. Her mother had been less composed, shaking badly, but had also made her end well. Bravely.
Sir Anthony insisted they both met their fate with dignity, though unrelenting in their error.
Emma could not understand how anyone could be condemned to die for things they did not believe. Nor did she know why, when told to convert and save themselves, Mama and Papa had chosen such a brutal end over her. Why they opted to leave their only child behind. Go somewhere she could not follow.
It bewildered Emma, that what was surely common sense, that the Communion wafer was merely a symbol of Christ, was considered heresy. Bread and wine, not body and blood. But this was a perception punishable by death. No one had asked her what it was she believed, as she was young enough that what they deemed her 'misunderstandings' excusable.
It was the only count on which whatever Emma might say was inconsequential. The Cardinal's inquisitors were not really interested in the state of Emma's soul. It was made plain to her from her first interviews with the grave, deep-voiced clerics that they already had gathered a wealth of evidence against the Earl and Countess of Chene: the testimonies of bribed or threatened servants at Hendonne and an array of confiscated texts and correspondence from their rooms at court.
Emma's father had been proud of his friends, had called their house a haven for thinkers. He welcomed the visitors from far and wide their liberal hall attracted and relished their debates. Even when it doomed him.
Emma remembered how he would chuck her under the chin, "God would not have created man, or woman, without a mind of their own had He not wanted them to use it. There is no shame in asking questions, my dove." Emma had quickly learned not to speak outside their walls of the babbling German, Dutch, and English of her father's guests, who came without fanfare and often left as quickly in the night. When she thought of her father it was of the philosophical twinkling in his hazel eyes, his quick, bright humour sparking like the sun off a stream, the strength in his arms as he hugged her. Her father was supposed to have been invincible. Forever there to protect and guide her.
It was not her parents the men who came to visit her in the Gard wanted Emma Carstairs to damn. Their greater interest was in her brief time with the Brocelands. Specifically, the Duke.
Who had visited him? What had he been reading? What had he and the Duchess talked about by the fireside of an evening, when the doors were closed and the servants abed?
They thought that she was a stupid little girl, so Emma had become just that. She had blinked at their questions as though she could not understand them, told them about sewing techniques the Duchess had taught her instead.
Now that she lay on her narrow bed, in the clean but bare room in the kingdom's most notorious tower and unable to summon any more tears, Emma felt she had been chastised enough.
The winds moaned its malcontent at the shutters. When the old Duchess of Lyn had been alive and Emma her ward at Bellgate, Julian's older half-brother had teased them with stories of how the Gard's towers were haunted. Mark claimed the ghosts of the King's enemies still wandered the halls at night, plaintively begging forgiveness for their sins, exiled from heaven and the earth alike. Caught betwixt, in a purgatory.
The lost souls of Emma's parents might now be among them. Though they had never seemed lost to her, nor mistaken.
Emma stared upwards, eyes stinging, and watched the watery light fade from the arrow-slit window over her head.
Her persecutors were correct. The Duke of Broceland shared her father's sympathies. Emma knew he visited the same printer's shop. The one that got special, secret orders from the German principalities.
But she had held her tongue in a wasted effort to save them all. Her mother, her father, and the Duchess of Broceland, the kindly elder sister she never had.
Emma Carstairs would have to grow accustomed to silence. She was, for the first time in her life, entirely alone. Too miserable to contemplate much beyond the raw, screaming space in her heart where her mother's smile and father's laugh belonged.
It had yet to occur to her that her parent's property was also forfeit for their treason against the King and against his Church. Emma Carstairs had no home to return to.
A small fire snapped and hissed in the far wall of her prison. Though her parents had not been burnt and the room was cold, Emma could not bring herself to sit by it. She recoiled from the flames, felt sure she would choke on the smoke.
The lock clicked. Emma turned her head, half-daring to hope that someone had come for her at last, Jace, or the Duke of Lyn.
It was Cardinal Enoch who stepped with a quiet deftness over the threshold of her cell, his scarlet, satin slippers a whisper on the bare slate floor. Over his shoulder, Sir Anthony loitered, his lined face bright with sympathy and concern. Emma could not bear to look at it, and so turned to the Cardinal's stony gaze. She glared at the unlined face, the hook of his nose, the sunken flesh clinging to his cheekbones, the unsmiling line of his mouth.
The face of the man who had taken everything from her.
She rose to a sitting position slowly, her head aching, meeting Enoch's gaze with her reddened eyes. What more could he want of her?
"Lady Emma." He had such an odd voice. For a man of his towering height, of his sharp features, it was oddly soft, oddly musical. The sort of voice that could pour out poison and make it taste like honey.
Sensing she was not prepared to come any closer of her own volition, Enoch approached her. In the paltry light his skin seemed waxen, but taut. It sucked into his harsh jaw and puckered over his knuckles.
He slid to his knees before her, a startlingly patronising gesture.
Emma had always assumed his eyes were grey like the rest of him, but this close she realised they were in fact a pale, pale blue. She noticed too the slight, colourless hairs beginning to poke through on his chin. A healing nick on his throat where he had been cut shaving.
"You have caused us a great deal of trouble, Madam." He was genuinely displeased. He did not credit Emma with the wit or the mettle to evade him deliberately, but that she was evasive remained a point of contention.
Emma could guess why. This is not the first time he'd moved against Broceland and failed. Knowing that the Duke of Broceland had been locked in the Gard too and survived it, emerging stronger, was all that sustained Emma.
As did the memory of how Prince Jonathan had looked at her that fateful day in Clary's rooms. As though he could have torn her limb for limb right there, without even knowing for certain she had conspired against him.
This was his doing too.
The Cardinal reached out and grasped her chin. His fingers were cold and dry, but his grip was too tight for Emma to flinch away. With a sharp jerk of his wrist, he drew her eye level. She could smell the cloying sweetness of burnt incense drifting from his garments and stale wine on his breath. "His Majesty has yet to decide what to do with you. Where to send you. I could help him reach that decision, were you to help me."
The Cardinal had failed to ensnare Jace before. Emma had heard Clary talk of it, with pride.
But in this matter, Enoch had chosen his prey poorly. There was nothing left they could threaten to take from her.
"I have given you everything." Emma's voice was hoarse, yet forceful.
For a moment the Cardinal's face stayed frozen. The slightest quiver of his lower lip was the only betrayal of feeling. Then, he sighed.
"That, my lady, is a pity."
He straightened slowly, as if it pained him. Emma clenched her fists in her lap. She should feel more than hollow, she knew, as the Cardinal paced away from her again almost soundlessly. She ought to feel some despair, or panic as the door slammed shut and the lock turned with a grating clatter.
No one was coming for her. She and her family name were cursed now, and no one would risk the taint of association. Now, hopeless of ever getting the answers he needed, even the Cardinal would soon forget her.
She hated them, and the potency of this new hatred stole Emma's breath away.
The Crown Prince and the Cardinal were two of the most powerful men in the realm, she knew that, and she was only a girl. But she was also a Carstairs. She thought of her father's face, of his pride in her, in their old, esteemed family name.
Emma's nails bit into her palms and she clung to the pain. Her anger and grief smelted together, cooling into a solitary resolve, stern and deadly as a blade.
Someday, somehow, they would all pay.
Outside her narrow window, the first hesitant snowflakes of the season drifted from the clouds.
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Chapeltoute Hall, Alicante, 24th December 1537
In the disorientating darkness, it took Clary a long moment to grasp where she was. The fireplace was empty, and the candles sprouted forlorn, unlit wicks. The furniture had changed since the years when she had lived there, but she remembered the shape of the rooms and the feel of the floors she had learned to walk and run on.
She stood alone, without a nurse or servant in sight. Her legs began to move of their own accord, further into the royal nursery.
As she did so, Clary realised she was no longer alone. At the other end of the room, a familiar male form stood with his back to her. She recognised the slope of those broad shoulders, the narrow hips, the long, lithe legs.
Jace, standing over the cradle. The royal cradle, it dawned on her, as she glimpsed the tip of Raziel's sword from where the angel had been carved into the arching wooden hood. Clary kept moving onwards, over the bars of thin bars of white moonlight cast upon the floor.
It felt an age before at last the distance between them fell away.
As it did his shape changed. Clary's heart plunged downward.
"Jonathan?" she whispered, his name clanging around the room in a tremoring echo. Her brother turned to her, dark eyes glittering with a feral fear. She sidestepped him, letting the sides of the crib nip into her palms. Clary leaned over it, shielding the precious contents with her body.
But there was nothing in the cradle. Naught but a smoothly folded crisp white sheet to see. Empty.
Jonathan began to laugh, a grating, gleeful sound.
Too late Clary noticed the glint of metal, the blade in Jonathan's right hand. The knife plunged into her belly-
-And Clary gasped awake, mouth torn open as the scream wrangled itself from her throat. It took her a long, fearful moment to assess her surroundings; the dark, hot chamber and the wide, alien bed.
She blinked several times, trying to adjust to a world much darker than her vivid dreams. Slowly, she began to recognise the gloom of her confinement chamber around her.
She felt no relief that it had all been a dream, could not, for the stabbing pain was very real.
Clary scrabbled at the sheets, chest heaving, as she clawed them away from her huge belly. The sheets that twisted between her legs as she tossed in her nightmare were warm and wet. She cried out as there came another sudden, heart-stopping pain to her stomach.
It was impossible to tell the hour, if it were night or morning, for the thick tapestries barricading her in darkness and heat, both day and night. Whoever had hung them had taken their task of fending off evil spirits and chills most seriously, there was only the vaguest rim of grey surrounding a detailed, cheerful rendering of the Nativity to offer any clues.
By the time the pain released her, the noise of her distress had a small cohort of her legion of attendants thundering toward her bedside. They carried candles, and a servant whisked around lighting more.
Clary had never been so glad to see Jocelyn, tailed by a gaping Isabelle and a young midwife. In her present alarm, Clary was shocked at how few had come to her aid. Then she recalled it was Christmas Eve and, until a few moments ago, all had been quiet here.
"Clary! What is it?"
"My baby," Clary started to wail, "Mama, something is wrong with my baby!"
She had not called her mother that in years, not since she had been little, she thought to herself dazedly as Jocelyn started to snatch back the covers. Her mother conducted a brisk, worried inspection. To Clary's disbelief, Jocelyn released a quick laugh, shuddering with relief. "Clary, naught is wrong. Your time is come." She glanced up at her daughter's distraught face, "Your baby is coming."
Clary blinked frantically, her brief moment of relief swamped by fear of her very real, immediate travail, "It is too early!"
Jocelyn finished folding the covers primly back with sharp determination, "When the babe decides it is time, it is time. It is only a fortnight early." True enough, the midwives' predictions ran on guesswork. One could only judge from when the first symptoms of pregnancy became apparent. The suggested date of delivery was just that, a suggestion.
Jocelyn propelled herself straight back into action, "Fetch Madame Pierre and the other midwives" she instructed the lingering maid before giving Isabelle her orders, "Collect some clean towels and warm water." She glanced back to Clary, reaching up to touch her cheek, "Hush now, let's get you cleaned up."
"Shall I fetch anyone?" Izzy inquired, having already bounded for the door, her longing for escape apparent.
"Jace." Clary wanted her husband here; to comfort her and hold her, to kiss her brow and promise her that she and their child would both be well. But, in accordance with centuries of royal birthing rituals, she had not spoken properly to Jace in weeks. Their conversations had to be held through a screen and with at least three dour-faced nurses privy to it.
She even knew it to be a hopeless suggestion. Jocelyn shook her head, "Men are forbidden from the birthing chamber. Besides, we would have no use for him in here." With the nod of the commanding officer on the field, the Queen dispatched all on their errands. "He will be notified in due course, as will the King," she told Clary firmly, "There is no haste. It will be some hours yet before there is anything to tell them."
Jocelyn's hand slipped into hers and Clary held on to it tightly. "I am afraid it will get worse before it gets better."
Even without his unabating restlessness, one did not need to be an especially observant individual to guess what was afoot while sitting at Valentine's table.
His Majesty was practically beside himself, ranging between extremes of impatience and assured elation from his pride of place in the massive dining hall. Tradition dictated that after Mass on Christmas Eve the royal family throw a great feast in the hall, which Jace would not have enjoyed in any other circumstance either. Tonight, being gawked at by the chosen few from Alicante's common populace as he munched his way through delicately chosen slabs of meat was truly unbearable. He could not dispel the knowledge that a mere few hallways and a flight of stairs away, Clary was giving birth to their child.
Strange though it seemed, he was in exactly the right place. Valentine had received the news that Clary's travail had begun but the child was not expected for hours yet with the knowing nod of a man who had witnessed royal births before. Nonetheless, it proved that whenever there was something to report, His Majesty would be the first to hear it. So Jace stuck to Valentine's shoulder with an insincere smile plastered to his face.
He had anticipated anxiety when the moment came, he had even voiced his fears to Clary on the subject as, but only when she pried them from him.
Not all mothers survived the ordeal. Jace's had not. It was the most perilous thing a woman could do in her lifetime, they said.
Jace knew that Clary was not delicate in character, but it beggared belief that her petite body could have the strength required.
For the King however, none of this was a cause for any concern. In fact, he was determined to consider the timing the finest omen which could have been sent. "Born on this, the holiest of nights, like the Christ child himself."
All the soothsayers and midwives Valentine had consulted had been stridently confident of a boy.
As it would appear, the only one in a similar mindset to Jace was Jonathan, who glowered from his seat on the King's left, the seat Jocelyn would have had if she had not absented herself from the festive celebrations to aid in the birthing chamber too. The Prince was prodding the same foods Jace was struggling to digest around his plate. Staring at them as though the answer to all his problems might appear as a sign in the gravy.
Valentine's hand swooped down to clap Jace's forearm. He dropped his tightly knotted table cloth in surprise and swept his eyes upwards.
"What shall you name him?"
Jace's nerves were fraught enough that he almost snapped back the first thing that came into his head, Not Jonathan.
It was a question Jace had been asked avidly before, but in truth he and Clary had mostly refrained from thinking of names. The journey to birth was far too precarious. Looking too far ahead into the future seemed like tempting fate.
In the lapse, Jonathan piped up, "Women make such a song and dance about it. No need for half the fuss."
Valentine made some reply about sympathy for the weaker sex and Jace framed his face with his hands.
That enough. He shot up, and with the contagious feeling of celebration in the air, few noticed his unexpected movement. Aside from Valentine, who glanced away from Jonathan's grumbled confusion as to why it was taking Clary so long.
Jace could not do anything to help her, he knew that. But that did not mean she had to do it all alone.
"Your Majesty, may I be excused?"
There was an agonizing beat of uncertainty, before Valentine sighed and granted his dismissal, as though he had expected nothing better. Apparently, with the culmination of all his ambitions and schemes so near, Valentine was not prepared to allow anything to dull his good mood.
Instantly grateful for the release, Jace barrelled his way out of the hall and through the maze of a palace until he reached the confinement chamber.
As luck would have it, he was met at the door by Isabelle, who looked unsurprised to see Jace, but more than a touch peaky. "Marriage has nothing to recommend it" she informed him with, tired conviction.
"How is she? Why are you not with her?"
Izzy's spine stiffened with her affront, "Because someone need fetch warm water and I would rather it be me. Any moment spent away from that…" she grappled for a gruesome enough word, "…chamber, is a blessed one. She tipped her head back to look into Jace's face properly, "They will not admit you, you must know" she informed him, as if he were a notorious jewel thief enquiring about a job at a goldsmith's.
Jace shook his head impatiently, "Izzy I cannot just sit there as if nothing is happening."
"Why not?" Isabelle shuddered again, "I wish I could."
Now it was Jace's turn to flinch, "Has anything gone wrong?"
"No." Isabelle shuddered again, "They keep saying it is a good labour. I should not like to see a bad labour if that is the case."
An unmistakable scream of pain tore through their conversation, audible even through the dividing walls and door. Jace recoiled, as did Isabelle.
"I must go" Izzy spoke as Clary's cry subsided.
"Help her, Izzy, in whatever way you can." The raw pleading in Jace's hoarse voice brought them both to a moment of uncharacteristically vulnerable seriousness.
"Of course," she promised softly.
"Would you come back to me, every now and again? Just to tell me what is happening, for no one else will. I will be hereabouts."
"I will tell her that you are here, waiting. She will be glad to know it."
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Jace staked out his vigil through the long night, floorboards squealing underfoot as he paced, hands clasped tight behind his back.
He had removed, or rather been chased, into a draughty antechamber to wait. It made no difference, for just down the gloomy hall he could hear Clary's cries, always followed by the sharp bark of the head midwife, Madame Pierre. She was supposed to be the finest of her trade, she certainly had enough lines on her face to suggest experience. Pierre had been delivering babies longer than Jace had been alive, she had informed him frankly on their first and only meeting.
At some point as the hours wore on and Jace wore a track into the carpets, Alec drifted in looking thoroughly lost. He sat opposite Jace now, watching him pace with tired eyes. Though he had no words of comfort, Jace found Alec's presence, as ever, an immeasurable help. He possessed an air of calm, although he undoubtedly would rather be anywhere other than a birthing chamber. For his Jace's sake, Alec squared his shoulders, folded his arms, and held his ground.
Their endless waiting took on a pattern; Alec's set jaw, Jace's frantic pacing, Clary's barely muted screams and Isabelle's clipped reports of reassurance as she came and went.
The only interruption had been Simon's arrival. The musician slunk in sheepishly, looking to Jace as though he fully expected to be hunted out. Although Jace would never admit it, he was glad of the lute player's silent support as the long night slipped by. His resentment of Clary's childhood friend was such a foreign, historic feeling, that seemed trivial now. It was hard to recall how much he had hated their easy familiarity, how envious Jace had once been of the pasty, ordinary boy who had loved his Clary.
Tonight, Simon proved he loved Clary, though mercifully not in the way that Jace had feared.
Jace had thought that sound of his wife's pain unbearable, but the new, sudden silence was worse. He was certain that time itself had stopped as that moment stretched on and on.
Finally, unmistakably, he heard it.
A quavering, defiant little cry.
Just like that, Jace found he could breathe again, exhaling in a stunned, disbelieving laugh.
He felt a hand clap his shoulder and turned to see Alec, blue eyes brimming. Alec's face split into a grin, the fingers still resting on Jace's shoulders tightened in a squeeze. Nothing needed to be said. He could trace Jace's thoughts exactly.
Jace had not been entirely alone before; he'd had a family. The Lightwoods had cared for him, made him one of their own.
This was different. This was his own flesh and blood.
Herondale blood was no longer the brand of shame it had been. And Jace was no longer the only one carrying it. No longer the last Herondale.
Alec landed another pat before withdrawing his hand. They both turned back towards the door as Isabelle burst through it, her lip quivering.
Jace's heart stuttered again, his thoughts had been captured by the baby, for a moment he had almost forgotten Clary. The cold claw of fear flexed by his heart again.
Isabelle's face cracked as her eyes flitted from Jace to Alec and then back to Jace again.
"Is she alright?" He demanded breathlessly.
"She is perfectly well."
"Why then-"
Isabelle enunciated slowly, clearly, with a hint of a smile, "As is her mother."
Jace was stunned.
He had been so caught up in Valentine's fervour, his certainty of a boy. Everybody else had.
Isabelle watched his smile falter and tensed defensively.
"She is perfect" she repeated defiantly, daring either of her brothers to disagree.
Neither did.
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