Saturday noonish (I think?), 12 September 1942
Somehow I just have to get through the rest of this day. Then all I have to do is get the Governors here tomorrow night and find an untraceable way to kill Lala Parkinson. That’s all. Nothing big.
I want to call everything off, but I can’t do that to Marco. I can’t let Marco know what’s happened, because Marco used to look up to Yvon and Alessio, and I know he still cares for them. We just have to tell Marco that we’re keeping the boys away for the sake of Valeria’s pride.
Nicodemo wants me to take a nap, says he’ll handle the guests when they start to come up…but I can’t, I can’t sleep. It was hard enough to get him to let me lie down on the couch in Yvon’s sitting room, but I want to be able to hear them if they call out. Even though I know they won’t. Steren says they’ll sleep the whole day away.
I don’t know what Lala Parkinson did to her girl. I don’t really care, to be perfectly honest. Not that it isn’t horrible and not that I wouldn’t be outraged on general principles, but Lindoria Gallinaro wants to send my son to his place of business to be cared for in his own ward. And we’d have done it, but Steren says we can’t move him off the land or he’ll die, and she’s never wrong about things like that. I remember when Ercole hit me with whatever the hell that was (it was only last week, so how could I not?) and I got worse as soon as I left the Bois. I know how this works; as long as we’re on our own land, we partake of its strength. Yvon and Charis and Lucius are my heirs; they would rule if I couldn’t. May yet, if it turns out that this life (gods forbid) or this sovereignty was only returned to me so the war could be finished.
So I care, a little, maybe, what Lala did to the girl, but it’s what she did to my son…I’ve heard of things like this before. She must have known that only Yvon would see what she’d done to her daughter, and that he’d be the one to remove it if anyone did. So she wove an extra layer into the curse and somehow she must have had a bit of his hair or something like that-for all I know, Portia had taken some piece of him straight to her mother, she could have been made to do that and how were we to have known? Lala shouldn’t have been able to hide an extra spell from Yvon, but he was already exhausted-and maybe the fact that it was for him was the thing that kept him from seeing it. If he hadn’t been working alone, Alessio might have caught it…but who knows what might have been hidden in there for Alessio?
He’s with Alessio. Asleep in bed. It must be more like a normal sleep and less like a coma, or he wouldn’t be lying like that; they’re curled into each other like commas or spoons. Steren stripped him of his pretty clothes and laid him down on one of the standing stones. Not the most important one. The grass just…died around that stone. It will grow back-the land isn’t poisoned forever-and better the grass than my boy. I was sick just watching, and Steren told Nico to take me inside, and he did, so I don’t know what she did after that. I’ve always known she was a healer as well as a warrior mist-side, but I never saw her do it before. She put him in bed with Alessio. Lindoria doesn’t know what to do for him, but Steren says he’ll be fine by sundown as long as he’s kept right here on the property for at least the next three days and Alessio stays with him. He’d do better in Brocéliande-but that’s not possible.
Steren says there was iron in the spell itself. I’m not sure how that can be.
I want to pledge myself to Nico tonight. I want to do so many things. But it’s hard to leave them even for an hour. Steren promised me she’d stay with them, and Magistra Gallinaro’s staying with Portia. Maybe I can send Portia back with one of the guests from Mungo’s.
I’m overwhelmed, but I can’t help but feel that I’ve got to get going. I’d rather be a moving target than a stationary one, and I’ve got three lives to protect in this body. Seeing him hurt makes me want to take all of the children and swathe them in wax and silk, feed them on milk and honey until they are grown and as strong as they can be, but it just isn’t possible. They won’t become strong without testing. I just don’t think that it should have to be like this.