Stein is in trouble for certain

Stein had not even remembered it was Good Friday until Father Faelan had shown up that afternoon, having come down from Raegiming to commemorate the Passion in Stein’s chapel.

Lathir had not forgotten. One of the doors in their bedchamber opened onto the chapel gallery, and she had asked that it be left open so that she could hear the service read. This had shocked the women, but Lady Lili had been there to impose their lady’s will by proxy, and she’d had her way. And not a peep had his brave wife made all the while, though her pains were well upon her by that time.

Now the bedroom door was closed and another was open, for the tabernacle in the chapel below gaped empty. All the lights were extinguished, but its shroud-​white lining seemed to glow softly in the gloom of the candles he had lit on the gallery.

Stein had never been deeply affected by religion, but the sudden absence of the Blessed Sacrament seemed a terrible omen.

And there was worse: Father Faelan had been roused in the night to administer Holy Communion to his wife. As far as he knew, from Maundy Thursday until the Easter vigil, the Blessed Sacrament could not be given except under one circumstance: the viaticum, the last supper of the dying, given them to provide strength on the way.

Stein was not as brave as she, and he had not dared ask.

He was on his feet as soon as the door opened, before he had even looked to see who was coming. He had told himself that in an ideal world, he would hear a baby’s lusty cry before that door opened again, but he had heard nothing—even the wails of his brave wife had ceased some time before.

It was Lady Lili.

“How is she?” he asked, mustering the closest thing to bravery he had: hope.

“Stein…” she began. She stared deeply into his eyes, as if they were windows onto broad plains of sorrow that she needed time to contemplate.

“Well, if Lili can’t find the words, I suppose that means there aren’t any,” someone said.

“No, dear.” She shook her head. “I must ask you something. Something Lathir wanted me to ask you. You see, Stein, the baby can’t come on his own, no matter how long we wait. And even if he did, somehow, she would surely bleed to death right after. So, you see—”

“Is she alive?” someone gasped. Stein did not even care to turn his head to see who it was.

“Yes, dear, but listen.” She laid her little hands on his, and he was startled to find he had any. “She has begun to bleed anyway, and it won’t be long now. If we—”

“May I see her?” he interrupted. Stein realized it was he who had been speaking all this time.

“No, dear, listen. If we allow her to go peacefully and slowly, she will take her baby with her. If we take the baby now, he might have a chance. He might—”

“Take him—how?” he whimpered. “You said…”

She squeezed his hands. “I mean cut him out of her.”

“Alive?” he squeaked.

“She is already far away, Stein. She has already left pain far behind. We have waited this long, but she is failing. This is what she wanted me to ask you. She loves you both and wants you to have each other. She wants us to try.”

“But she will die!” he sobbed. “She can’t! She’s too brave! She doesn’t know!”

Stein didn’t know what he was saying; someone else was speaking for him again.

Lili put her arms around him, and he squeezed her blindly. She was so tiny he was smashing her face into his collar, but she only mumbled, “She knows, Stein. She knows everything now.”

Stein held her a while, pretending to need the comfort she was not able to provide, so that he would not have to make the terrible decision. But at last Lili roused herself and put it to him bluntly.

“May we try, or mayn’t we? If we hurry we may save your son or daughter, at least long enough to be baptized so that they may be buried together.”

In his mind he saw the body of his wife lying with the body of her baby in her arms, both all in white, both glowing softly in the gloom. He did not see how either of two such creatures could have anything to do with the sordid, sorrowful world in which he lived. He still did not know how he had come to possess Lathir at all.

But if the baby died unbaptized, Lathir could not be buried with it, and that seemed more important than anything.

It did not occur to Stein that the child might live.

He did not even pray for it. He did not even pray at all. He merely knelt in a position of prayer, thinking it the wisest thing to do when one did not have the heart to pray.

He expected his vigil to last for hours, but it was not long before he heard a furious cat squalling in the bedchamber. He was horrified for a moment—what dread omen could a cat in a birthing room bring? What fool had let it in there?

Then it occurred to him that the child might live after all.

The baby had a grim face and quite a lot of dark hair, but it appeared strong and pink and healthy. It was neither as pale nor as beautiful nor as dead as the baby he had briefly imagined, and so he could not realize it was his.

“Here is your son,” Lili murmured.

Stein laughed strangely. “With that face he had better not be a girl!”

“Stein!” Lili scolded. “He’s beautiful! He’s a miracle. He’s as big and strong and hearty as a three-​week-​old. We didn’t baptize him after all, since he seemed so well. You may have it done properly tonight, at the Easter vigil. It is the best time of all.”

“I shall name him Gamle, after my father,” Stein whispered. He stared at the baby, but he could not recognize him as his child. Did a man? He could not feel anything but a neighborly curiosity in the thing.

“But no one will ever call him Silver-​White until he’s eighty, at least,” Lili said wryly. “Here, take him, Stein. Your first-​born son and heir.”

“Yes!” Stein laughed strangely again and made no move to take the baby. “Now I need never remarry!”

“Stein!” Lili said mournfully. “Now is not the time to say so. I don’t think that is what Lathir would have wanted.”

“That is what I want!” Stein’s whisper was almost a growl.

“Hush, hush, dear. For now, please take this baby and show him who’s lord around here before he stakes his own claim. He has the devil’s own gleam in his eye. He must have inherited that from his bearded grandfather.”

Stein thought Lili underestimated the devilment hidden in his slyly smiling wife, but before he could speak he remembered that his slyly smiling wife was no more.

And before he could protest, Lili was wedging the baby into the crook of his elbow.

“But, Lili—”

Then a startling thing happened. As Stein took the little head into one of his hands and turned the baby’s face away from Lili’s and towards his own, his son most emphatically winked at him.

“Lili! Did you see that?” he laughed, with a real laugh, a real delight, a real and sudden and overwhelming love.

“See what?”

“He winked at me!”

“Winked at you?” Lili laughed in disbelief.

“I swear it! On the Cross and before God! This baby just winked at me! Just like Lathir when she’s being sly!”

“Well,” Lili said skeptically, “if it’s true, you’re in trouble for certain. I know what a sly six-​year-​old can be, but a sly baby! Ach du lieber Gott! It’s lucky for you your hair is already white!”

Stein scarcely heard her, for he had forgotten again; he had slipped and spoken of his wife as if she still lived, and he would have to close off his mind until the shivering pain had subsided.

He would hurt himself this way over and over again in the coming weeks, and ever afterwards he would hurt because he would never even have the occasional brief respites of forgetting she was gone.

But he had something left of her. It was not something that could fill the gaping hole her death had left in him, but it was something he could press over the wound to keep himself alive until it began to heal.