Chapter 23: The Door

It took eleven hours.

The midwife kept her sleeves rolled and her voice calm. The cook kept the water hot. Anselm kept Tobin in the yard, teaching him a new tune.

Matvei kept my hand.

"You're going to break it," I told him around the sixth hour.

"Then I'll break it."

"I'll hold you to that."

"Do."

The pains came closer together, and I stopped being clever.

I swore at him in three languages, two of which I made up. I swore at the midwife, and at the moon.

I swore at Madam Crane, who was lying in a lords' cell with a leg that had never set right.

"Good," the midwife said. "Anger helps. Push."

I pushed.

At dawn a thin furious cry went up in the room, and the midwife laughed out loud.

"A son," she said. "A strong one."

They laid him on my chest, wet and red and furious, with a fuzz of black hair.

He opened his eyes.

They were hazel, like mine.

I counted his fingers twice.

Matvei was kneeling beside the bed. He did not say anything.

He put one finger into the tiny fist, and it closed.

His face broke open.

"His name," I said, "is his own business. He can tell us when he's older."

"Agreed," Matvei said, and his voice cracked in the middle.

Tobin came in at noon, scrubbed to the ears, and stood at the foot of the bed with his hands behind his back.

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