Still, when you ran an Institute, you couldn’t be completely invisible. Matthew had seen James at various parties before and tried to acquire him as a friend, only Matthew was impeded because he felt he should contribute to parties being a success and James tended to be in a corner, reading.
It was usually a simple matter for Matthew to make friends, but he did not see the point unless it was a challenge. Friends who were easy to get might be easy to lose, and Matthew wanted to keep people.
It had been rather shattering when James seemed to actively dislike Matthew, but Matthew had won him over. He still was not entirely sure how, which made him uneasy, but James had recently referred to himself, Matthew, Christopher, and Thomas as the three Musketeers and d’Artagnan, from a book he liked. Everything had been going splendidly aside from missing Papa, but now James was expelled and everything was ruined. Still, Matthew could not forget his responsibilities.
Christopher had a tempestuous relationship with science, and Professor Fell had commanded Matthew not to let Christopher come into contact with any flammable materials after the last time. Thomas was so quiet and small they were always losing him, rather like a human marble, and if left to his own devices he would inevitably roll toward Alastair Carstairs.
This was a hideous situation with only one bright side. It was a simple matter to locate Thomas when he was lost. Matthew only had to follow the sound of Alastair’s irritating voice.
Unfortunately this meant being forced to behold Alastair’s irritating face.
He found Alastair soon enough, gazing out a window, with Thomas shyly standing at his elbow.
Thomas’s hero worship was inexplicable. The only things Matthew could find to like about Alastair were his extraordinarily expressive eyebrows, and eyebrows did not make the man.
“Are you very sad, Alastair?” Matthew heard Thomas ask as he approached, bent on retrieval.
“Stop bothering me, pipsqueak,” said Alastair, though his voice was tolerant. Even he could not strongly object to being adored.
“You heard the low, snaky serpent,” said Matthew. “Come away, Tom.”
“Ah, Mother Hen Fairchild,” sneered Alastair. “What a lovely wife you will make for somebody one of these fine days.”
Matthew was outraged to see Thomas’s tiny smile, though Thomas quickly concealed it out of respect for Matthew’s feelings. Thomas was meek and much afflicted by sisters. He seemed to think Alastair being rude to everyone was daring.
“I wish I could say the same for you,” said Matthew. “Has no kind soul thought to inform you that your hairstyle is, to use the gentlest words available to me, ill-advised? A friend? Your papa? Does nobody care enough to prevent you from making a spectacle of yourself? Or are you simply too busy perpetrating acts of evil upon the innocent to bother about your unfortunate appearance?”
“Matthew!” said Thomas. “His friend died.”
Matthew strongly desired to point out that Alastair and his friends had been the ones to unleash a demon upon James, and their nasty prank going wrong was no more than their just deserts. He could see, however, that would distress Thomas extremely.
“Oh very well. Let us go,” he said. “Though I cannot help but wonder whose idea their nasty little trick was.”
“Wait a moment, Fairchild,” snapped Alastair. “You can go ahead, Lightwood.”
Thomas looked deeply worried as he went, but Matthew could see he was loath to disobey his idol. When Thomas’s worried hazel eyes flicked to Matthew, Matthew nodded, and Thomas reluctantly departed.
When he was gone, Matthew and Alastair squared off. Matthew understood that Alastair had sent Thomas away for a purpose. He bit his lip, resigned to a scuffle.
Instead Alastair said: “Who are you to play the moralist, talking about tricks and papas, considering the circumstances of your birth?”
Matthew frowned. “What on earth are you driveling about, Carstairs?”
“Everyone talks about your mama and her unwomanly pursuits,” said awful, unthinkable worm Alastair Carstairs. Matthew scoffed but Alastair raised his voice, persisting. “A woman cannot be a good Consul. Nevertheless your mother can continue her career, of course, since she has such strong support from the powerful Lightwoods.”
“Certainly our families are friends,” said Matthew. “Are you unfamiliar with the concept of friendship, Carstairs? How tragic for you, though understandable on the part of everyone else in the universe.”
Alastair raised his eyebrows. “Oh, great friends, no doubt. Your mama must require friends, since your papa is unable to play a man’s part.”
“I beg your pardon?” said Matthew.
“Odd that you were born so long after your papa’s terrible accident,” Alastair said, all but twirling an imaginary moustache. “Strange that your papa’s family will have nothing to do with you, to the extent of demanding that your mother renounce her married name. Remarkable that you bear no resemblance to your papa, and your coloring is so like Gideon Lightwood’s.”
Gideon Lightwood was Thomas’s papa. No wonder Alastair had sent Thomas away before making a ridiculous accusation like that.
It was absurd. Perhaps it was true that Matthew had fair hair, while his mama’s was brown and his father’s and Charles Buford’s was red. Matthew’s mama was tiny, but Cook said she thought Matthew would be taller than Charles Buford. Uncle Gideon was often with Mama. Matthew knew he had spoken for her when she was at odds with the Clave. Mama had once called him her good and faithful friend. Matthew had never thought much about it before.
His mama said his papa had such a dear, friendly, freckled face. Matthew had always wished he looked like him.
But he didn’t.
Matthew said, his voice strange in his own ears: “I do not understand what you mean.”
“Henry Branwell is not your father,” spat Alastair. “You are Gideon Lightwood’s bastard. Everybody knows it but you.”
In a white and blinding rage, Matthew struck him in the face. Then he went to find Christopher, cleared the area, and gave him matches.
A short but eventful time passed before Matthew left school, never to return. In that interval, a wing of the Academy blew up.
Matthew realized it had been rather a shocking thing to do, but while he was deranged he also demanded James be his parabatai and by some miracle James agreed. Matthew and his papa arranged to spend more time at the Fairchilds’ London home so that Matthew could be with both his papa and his parabatai. It had all, Matthew considered, worked out rather well.
If only he could forget.
The Shadow Market, London, 1901
Jem halted in the midst of the dancing flames and black iron arches of the London Market, startled by the appearance of a familiar face in an unexpected context, and even more so by the warmth of Matthew’s greeting.
He knew Charlotte’s son, of course. Her other boy, Charles, was always very cool and distant when he encountered Brother Zachariah on official business. Brother Zachariah knew that the Silent Brothers were meant to be detached from the world. His uncle Elias’s son, Alastair, had made that very clear when Brother Zachariah reached out to him.
This is how it should be, said his brothers in his mind. He could not always tell one of their voices from the others. They were a quiet chorus, a silent, ever-present song.
Jem would not have held it against Matthew if he felt the same way as many others, but he didn’t seem to. His bright, delicate face showed dismay all too clearly. “Am I being too familiar?” he asked anxiously. “I only supposed since I was James’s parabatai and that is what he calls you, I might do so as well.”
Of course you may, said Brother Zachariah.
James did, and James’s sister, Lucie, and Alastair’s sister, Cordelia, had taken to doing so as well. Zachariah considered that they were the three sweetest children in the world. He knew he might be a little partial, but faith created truth.
Matthew glowed. Zachariah was reminded of Matthew’s mother, and the kindness that had taken in three orphans when she was hardly more than a child herself.
“They all talk about you all the time in the London Institute,” Matthew confided. “James and Lucie and Uncle Will and Aunt Tessa too. I feel as if I know you a great deal better than I actually do, so I beg pardon if I trespass on your kindness.”