The Book of Life (60 page)

“How many pregnant women have you helped this way?” I asked, mildly curious about where he had acquired this skill. Matthew’s hands stilled.

“Only you.” His soothing motions continued.

I turned my head and found him looking at me, though his fingers never stopped moving.

“Ysabeau said I’m the only one to sleep in this bedroom.”

“Nobody I met seemed worthy of it. But I could envision you in this room—with me, of course— shortly after we met.”

“Why do you love me so much, Matthew?” I couldn’t see the attraction, especially not when I was rotund, facedown, and gasping with pain. His response was swift.

“To every question I have ever had, or ever will have, you are the answer.” He pulled my hair away from my neck and kissed me on the soft flesh beneath the ear. “Do you feel like getting up for a bit?”

A sudden, sharper pain that coursed through my lower extremities kept me from responding. I gasped instead.

“That sounds like ten centimeters’ dilation to me,” Matthew murmured. “Marcus?”

“Good news, Diana,” Marcus said cheerfully as he walked into the room. “You get to push now!”

Push I did. For what seemed like days.

I tried it the modern way first: lying down, with Matthew clasping my hand, a look of adoration on his face.

That didn’t work well.

“It’s not necessarily a sign of trouble,” Dr. Sharp told us, looking at Matthew and me from her vantage point between my thighs. “Twins can take longer to get moving during this stage of labor. Right, Marthe?”

“She needs a stool,” Marthe said with a frown.

“I brought mine,” Dr. Sharp said. “It’s in the hall.” She jerked her head in that direction.

And so the babies that were conceived in the sixteenth century opted to eschew modern medical convention and be born the old-fashioned way: on a simple wooden chair with a horseshoe-shaped seat.

Instead of having a half dozen strangers share the birth experience, I was surrounded by the ones I loved: Matthew behind me, holding me up physically and emotionally; Jane and Marthe at my feet, congratulating me on having babies so considerate as to present themselves to the world headfirst;

Marcus offering a gentle suggestion every now and then; Sarah at my side, telling me when to breathe and when to push; Ysabeau standing by the door, relaying messages to Phoebe, who waited in the hall and sent a constant stream of texts to Pickering Place, where Fernando, Jack, and Andrew were waiting for news.

It was excruciating.

It took forever.

When at 11:55
P
.
M
. the first indignant cry was heard at long last, I started to weep and laugh. A fierce protective feeling took root where my child had been only moments before, filling me with purpose.

“Is it okay?” I asked, looking down.

“She is perfect,” Marthe said, beaming at me proudly.

“She?” Matthew sounded dazed.

“It is a girl. Phoebe, tell them
Madame
has given birth to a girl,” Ysabeau said with excitement. Jane held the tiny creature up. She was blue and wrinkled and smeared with gruesome-looking substances that I’d read about but was inadequately prepared to see on my own child. Her hair was jet black, and there was plenty of it.

“Why is she blue? What’s wrong with her? Is she dying?” I felt my anxiety climb.

“She’ll turn as red as a beet in no time,” Marcus said, looking down at his new sister. He held out a pair of scissors and a clamp to Matthew. “And there’s certainly nothing wrong with her lungs. I think you should do the honors.”

Matthew stood, motionless.

“If you faint, Matthew Clairmont, I will never let you forget it,” Sarah said testily. “Get your ass over there and cut the cord.”

“You do it, Sarah.” Matthew’s hands trembled on my shoulders.

“No. I want Matthew to do it,” I said. If he didn’t, he was going to regret it later.

My words got Matthew moving, and he was soon on his knees next to Dr. Sharp. In spite of his initial reluctance, once he was presented with a baby and the proper medical equipment, his movements were practiced and sure. After the cord was clamped and cut, Dr. Sharp quickly swaddled our daughter in a waiting blanket. Then she presented this bundle to Matthew.

He stood, dumbstruck, cradling the tiny body in his large hands. There was something miraculous in the juxtaposition of a father’s strength with his daughter’s vulnerability. She stopped crying for a moment, yawned, and resumed yelling at the cold indignity of her current situation.

“Hello, little stranger,” Matthew whispered. He looked at me in awe. “She’s beautiful.”

“Lord, just listen to her,” Marcus said. “A solid eight on the Apgar test, don’t you think, Jane?”

“I agree. Why don’t you weigh and measure her while we clean up a bit and get ready for the next one?”

Suddenly aware that my job was only half done, Matthew handed the baby into Marcus’s care. He then gave me a long look, a deep kiss, and a nod. “Ready,
ma lionne
?”

“As I’ll ever be,” I said, seized by another sharp pain.

Twenty minutes later, at 12:15
A
.
M
., our son was born. He was larger than his sister, in both length and weight, but blessed with a similarly robust lung capacity. This, I was told, was a very good thing, though I did wonder if we would still feel that way in twelve hours. Unlike our firstborn, our son had reddish blond hair.

Matthew asked Sarah to cut the cord, since he was wholly absorbed in murmuring a stream of pleasant nonsense into my ear about how beautiful I was and how strong I’d been, all the while holding me upright.

It was after the second baby was born that I started to shake from head to foot.

“What’s. Wrong?” I asked through chattering teeth.

Matthew had me out of the birthing stool and onto the bed in a blink.

“Get the babies over here,” he ordered.

Marthe plopped one baby on me, and Sarah deposited the other. The babies’ limbs were all hitched up and their faces puce with irritation. As soon as I felt the weight of my son and daughter on my chest, the shaking stopped.

“That’s the one downside to a birthing stool when there are twins,” Dr. Sharp said, beaming.

“Mums can get a bit shaky from the sudden emptiness, and we don’t get a chance to let you bond with the first child before the second one needs your attention.”

Marthe pushed Matthew aside and wrapped both babies in blankets without ever seeming to disturb their position, a bit of vampire legerdemain that I was sure was beyond the capacity of most midwives, no matter how experienced. While Marthe tended to the babies, Sarah gently massaged my stomach until the afterbirth came free with a final, constrictive cramp.

Matthew held the babies for a few moments while Sarah gently cleaned me. A shower, she told me, could wait until I felt like getting up—which I was sure would be approximately never. She and Marthe removed the sheets and replaced them with new ones, all without my being required to stir. In no time I was propped up against the bed’s downy pillows, surrounded by fresh linen.

Matthew put the babies back into my arms. The room was empty.

“I don’t know how you women survive it,” he said, pressing his lips against my forehead.

“Being turned inside out?” I looked at one tiny face, then the other. “I don’t know either.” My voice dropped. “I wish Mom and Dad were here. Philippe, too.”

“If he were, Philippe would be shouting in the streets and waking the neighbors,” Matthew said.

“I want to name him Philip, after your father,” I said softly. At my words our son cracked one eye open. “Is that okay with you?”

“Only if we name our daughter Rebecca,” Matthew said, his hand cupping her dark head. She screwed up her face tighter.

“I’m not sure she approves,” I said, marveling that someone so tiny could be so opinionated.

“Rebecca will have plenty of other names to choose from if she continues to object,” Matthew said.

“Almost as many names as godparents, come to think of it.”

“We’re going to need a spreadsheet to figure that mess out,” I said, hitching Philip higher in my arms. “He is definitely the heavy one.”

“They’re both a very good size. And Philip is eighteen inches long.” Matthew looked at his son with pride.

“He’s going to be tall, like his father.” I settled more deeply into the pillows.

“And a redhead like his mother and grandmother,” Matthew said. He rounded the bed, gave the fire a poke, then lay next to me, propped up on one elbow.

“We’ve spent all this time searching for ancient secrets and long-lost books of magic, but they’re the true chemical wedding,” I said, watching while Matthew put his finger in Philip’s tiny hand. The baby gripped it with surprising strength.

“You’re right.” Matthew turned his son’s hand this way and that. “A little bit of you, a little bit of me. Part vampire, part witch.”

“And all ours,” I said firmly, sealing his mouth with a kiss.

“I have a daughter and a son,” Matthew told Baldwin. “Philip and Rebecca. Both are healthy and well.”

“And their mother?” Baldwin asked.

“Diana got through it beautifully.” Matthew’s hands shook whenever he thought of what she’d been through.

“Congratulations, Matthew.” Baldwin didn’t sound happy.

“What is it?” Matthew frowned.

“The Congregation already knows about the birth.”

“How?” Matthew demanded. Someone must be watching the house—either a vampire with very sharp eyes, or a witch with strong second sight.

“Who knows?” Baldwin said wearily. “They’re willing to hold in abeyance the charges against you and Diana in exchange for an opportunity to examine the babies.”

“Never.” Matthew’s anger caught light.

“The Congregation only wants to know what the twins are,” Baldwin said shortly.

“Mine. Philip and Rebecca are mine,” Matthew replied.

“No one seems to be disputing that—impossible though it supposedly is,” Baldwin said.

“This is Gerbert’s doing.” Every instinct told him that the vampire was a crucial link between Benjamin and the search for the Book of Life. He had been manipulating Congregation politics for years.

“Perhaps. Not every vampire in London is Hubbard’s creature,” Baldwin said. “Verin still intends to go to the Congregation on the sixth of December.”

“The babies’ birth doesn’t change anything,” Matthew said, though he knew that it did.

“Take care of my sister, Matthew,” Baldwin said quietly. Matthew thought he detected a note of real worry in his brother’s tone.

“Always,” Matthew replied.

The grandmothers were the babies’ first visitors. Sarah’s grin stretched from ear to ear, and Ysabeau’s face was shining with happiness. When we shared the babies’ first names, they both were touched at the thought that the legacy of the children’s absent grandparents would be carried into the future.

“Leave it to you two to have twins that aren’t even born on the same day,” Sarah said, swapping Rebecca for Philip, who had been staring at his grandmother with a fascinated frown. “See if you can get her to open her eyes, Ysabeau.”

Ysabeau blew gently on Rebecca’s face. Her eyes popped wide, and she began to scream, waving her mittened hands at her grandmother. “There. Now we can see you properly, my beauty.”

“They’re different signs of the zodiac, too,” Sarah said, swaying gently with Philip in her arms.

Unlike his sister, Philip was content to lie still and quietly observe his surroundings, his dark eyes wide.

“Who are?” I was feeling drowsy, and Sarah’s chatter was too complicated for me to follow.

“The babies. Rebecca is a Scorpio, and Philip is a Sagittarius. The serpent and the archer,” Sarah replied.

The de Clermonts and the Bishops. The tenth knot and the goddess.
The arrow’s owl-feather fletches tickled my shoulder, and the firedrake’s tail tightened around my aching hips. A premonitory finger drew up my spine, leaving my nerves tingling.

Matthew frowned. “Something wrong,
mon coeur
?”

“No. Just a strange feeling.” The urge to protect that had taken root in the aftermath of the babies’ birth grew stronger. I didn’t want Rebecca and Philip tied to some larger weaving, the design of which could never be understood by someone as small and insignificant as their mother. They were my children—our children—and I would make sure that they were allowed to find their own path, not follow the one that destiny and fate handed them. “Hello, Father. Are you watching?”

Matthew stared at his computer screen, his phone tucked between his shoulder and his ear. This time Benjamin had called to deliver the message. He wanted to hear Matthew’s reactions to what he was seeing on the screen.

“I understand that congratulations are in order.” Benjamin’s voice was pinched with fatigue. The body of a dead witch lay on an operating table behind him, cut open in a vain attempt to save the child she’d been carrying. “A girl. A boy, too.”

“What do you want?” The question was expressed calmly, but Matthew was seething inside. Why could no one find his godforsaken son?

“Your wife and daughter, of course.” Benjamin’s eyes hardened. “Your witch is fertile. Why is that, Matthew?”

Matthew remained silent.

“I’ll find out what makes your witch so special.” Benjamin leaned forward and smiled. “You know I will. If you tell me what I want to know now, I won’t have to extract it from her later.”

“You will never touch her.” Matthew’s voice—and his control—broke. Upstairs a baby cried.

“Oh, but I will,” Benjamin promised softly. “Over and over again, until Diana Bishop gives me what I want.”

I couldn’t have slept for more than thirty or forty minutes before Rebecca’s furious cries woke me.

When my bleary eyes focused, I saw that Matthew was walking her in front of the fireplace, murmuring endearments and words of comfort.

“I know. The world can be a harsh place, little one. It will be easier to bear in time. Can you hear the logs crackle? See the lights play on the wall? That’s fire, Rebecca. You may have it in your veins, like your mother. Shh. It’s just a shadow. Nothing but a shadow.” Matthew cuddled the baby closer, crooning a French lullaby.