Zachary’s Day Out #2
“Maybe he doesn’t want to be held,” Thomas suggested back. All of Sona’s advice had completely vanished from his mind.
Alastair carefully put Zachary down. “Is that all right? We don’t have to restrain you. You can walk around on your own.”
Zachary did, in fact, stop crying almost instantly. He looked up at Alastair and Thomas consideringly. Then he turned and ran—well, toddled, but more quickly than Thomas would have expected—through the door into the sitting room.
Alastair gave Thomas a look of dismay.
“I suppose he did just get out of the carriage,” Thomas said. “I wouldn’t want to get straight back in either. Maybe you could get him to look at your toy soldiers.”
“Yes,” said Alastair. “I’ll do that.” He darted after Zachary.
Thomas attempted to follow Alastair, but was waylaid by an irritable Mrs. Killigrew, who wanted to ask him if the baby would still be there at suppertime, and whether Mrs. Carstairs and her child were spending the night, and how it really would be a great deal easier if they would tell her these things ahead of time—
Thomas eventually extricated himself, and hurried into the sitting room, where an odd tableau presented itself on the coffee table.
At one end sat Alastair, one hand rubbing his forehead in frustration.
On the table itself, tin soldiers in French blue and British red were arranged, some in ranks and some in chaotic piles.
Books had been stacked in various places, Thomas assumed to represent elevated positions.
Zachary, his black hair sticking up wildly, was sitting on the table at the opposite end from Alastair.
He had a British officer in one hand, which he was waving about excitedly. In the other hand was his lion.
“Let’s try this one more time,” Alastair said. “Here, we are in the opening hours. Wellington has been withstanding heavy skirmishing by Napoleon’s forces all afternoon.”
Zachary did not seem to be taking this in. He banged the tin soldier on the table and laughed, knocking over two of the soldier’s unlucky countrymen in the process. Thomas cleared his throat. “Alastair, isn’t this a little much for a baby?”
“He’s not just a baby,” Alastair said, carefully standing Zachary’s victims back upright. “He’s a Shadowhunter.”
“He can be both,” Thomas pointed out.
“Never too young to develop the martial mind, as my father used to say. Now, Zachary. Pay attention.”
Zachary looked over at Thomas and gave him a wave. “Ta!”
“Tom?” Thomas said. “Did you say ‘Tom,’ Zach? That’s very good!”
“Zachary,” Alastair said severely. “The Duke of Wellington has had the worst of it all day, but never fear.”
“Nern,” said Zachary, who did not look as if he feared.
“But soon,” said Alastair, “the tide of the battle will turn. Do you know why?”
Zachary very obviously did not. Experimentally he put the tin soldier’s head into his mouth.
“That’s right!” Alastair cried. “It’s the Prussians!” With a great flourish, he brought a tin soldier out from under the coffee table. “They wear blue, like the French, but you can tell them by the red and white crossed sash. Will fortune soon favor the good duke?”
“Sadly,” said Thomas, “the good duke has been seized from the battlefield by an enormous humanoid creature, and chewed thoroughly.”
Alastair appeared to notice this for the first time. “Take Wellington out of your mouth at once! What would Nelson say?” He looked over at Thomas expectantly.
“My love,” Thomas said. “You can’t play with a baby like that. He’s too young. He doesn’t understand about any of this war business. You have to be patient and just let him do as he likes.”
Alastair huffed. “And what will my mother say, if she returns home to find he has failed to learn the principles of strategic warfare?”
“She will say nothing, because she does not expect him to learn the principles of strategic warfare.”
“Well, of course he won’t be able to grasp all the ins and outs yet,” Alastair said, “but the most basic principles, surely. My father started with me when I was just as young as Zachary.”
“Lion!” declared Zachary. He put the wooden lion down on the table and used it to knock over the nearest several soldiers.
“No,” Alastair said severely. “There were no lions at Waterloo.”
Thomas sighed and came over to stand behind Zachary, who tipped his head backward to get a look at Thomas, inadvertently sprawling onto his back and kicking over a whole squadron of redcoats.
He giggled, and Thomas smiled down at him.
“You, too, probably started out by putting Lord Nelson in your mouth,” he pointed out to Alastair.
“I did not,” Alastair said quietly. “Father would have been furious.”
Thomas decided this was not the right moment to dig into it. “I’ve had an idea. Let’s put him in the carriage and take him over to the Fairchilds’. Charlotte has her own new babies; she’ll have lots of toys around. Not just whatever we can find of yours or Cordelia’s from twenty years back.”
Before Alastair could object, Thomas addressed Zachary directly, as he was still watching Thomas upside down. “Do you want to go for a stroll? A little sun, a little walk? See your Aunt Charlotte and the babies?”
“He doesn’t know any more about them than he does about Napoleon,” Alastair protested, but Zachary nodded (knocking over another two soldiers) and scrambled to his feet on top of the table.
“All right,” said Thomas, picking him up. “And there might be ice cream in it for you, if you’re good.”
—
The suggestion of ice cream was evidently a clever gambit, as Zachary all but leapt into the baby buggy on his own.
Alastair fussed about, wrapping blankets around Zachary (who immediately threw them off again) and tucking toys into the pram.
At last, standing by the front door, he turned to Thomas. “Shall we go?”
Thomas knew what shall we go, when spoken by Alastair on the way out of the house, meant.
It meant, we must be out in the world now, so kiss me before we open the door.
And so he did, allowing his tension and frustration to dissolve for a moment as Alastair drew him close.
He felt a small unknotting of his muscles at the familiar feel of Alastair’s strong arms around him, his smell of soap and cologne, the softness of his mouth.
Zachary made a noise that, despite missing most of its consonants, Thomas was fairly sure meant “Ice cream!” He smiled against Alastair’s cheek and pulled away.
“Shall we go indeed,” he whispered.
The walk was lovely, as Thomas had hoped; the route to Grosvenor Square took them mostly across Hyde Park, which was crowded with others out for a stroll or picnicking on the grass.
A few passersby shot them odd looks: not because of their runes or weapons, which, when they were glamoured, were invisible to mundanes.
But rather because they were two men, one of them pushing a baby carriage.
Few gentlemen would be caught dead pushing a pram—perhaps a husband might take over for a moment while his wife adjusted a flyaway hat—and two men was a mystery.
Brothers, perhaps? Not that he and Alastair looked at all alike.
Thomas returned all curious stares with a look of flat indifference. Let them wonder.
On their way they passed a few faeries dozing in the low branches of a hemlock. One of them lifted his head to regard them sleepily, but soon closed his eyes and returned to his nap.
—
Alastair pointed out that they should go to Charlotte’s first, and then seek ice cream, as Charlotte might not appreciate ice cream’s unexpected arrival into her well-kept parlour.
Nobody answered the door when they rang the Fairchilds’ bell. At the second ring, they heard Charlotte herself call out for them to come in.
Inside, the famous well-kept parlour was in an unusually unkept state. Charlotte, her hair askew, was sitting in one of the large armchairs, holding both of her twins, one in each arm. She gave Thomas, Alastair, and the pram a surprised look.
“I thought you were Mrs. Paisley, back from the shops,” she exclaimed.
“Well,” said Alastair, “we aren’t. Where’s Henry?”
“He’s out getting things for his lab. Is that little Zachary?”
Thomas nodded. “We’re watching him while Sona is having a day with the Lightwood ladies,” he explained. “We thought we’d bring him by to meet the new Fairchilds.”
“Lovely,” said Charlotte, with a marked lack of enthusiasm. Zachary was looking around at the new environs; he hadn’t taken any apparent notice of the new Fairchilds or, indeed, the Fairchild he’d met before. Alastair began extracting him from the pram.
“Who is Mrs. Paisley?” said Thomas.
“Oh, I suppose you wouldn’t have met. She’s the nanny—you’ve no idea what it’s like to deal with two of them at the same time, when one has only two hands and one head. She was only supposed to pop out for some provisions; I expected her back twenty minutes ago.”
Alastair carefully placed Zachary on the divan, sitting up with his back against the pillows. “This is your Aunt Charlotte,” he said. “You’ve met her before. Do you remember?”
In answer, Zachary tipped himself over onto his side and started giggling again. Thomas reached over and ruffled his hair.
“You’re very good with him,” Charlotte said, a dangerous thoughtfulness in her voice. She stood up with sudden purpose, and handed Thomas and then Alastair one of the twins.
“Um,” said Thomas carefully, examining his baby. It was bald, and wrapped in a purple fuzzy thing. “I don’t mean to be rude, but…which one is which?”
“You have Alice there,” said Charlotte, “and Alastair has Branwell. I’m going to go take a short nap, but feel free to hand them off to Mrs. Paisley when she returns. It shouldn’t be long now.”