AVIGNON, 1236
It happened like the others, sweat and blood, screaming, and then—disappointment.
“I am very sorry,” the doctor mumbled as he wiped his hands on the sheets between the woman’s legs.
The father thought about snapping the doctor’s neck. He had done that once before. But the sting of failure cooled his rage. He had no one to blame but himself and the woman, and she would be dead soon anyway. Now it was just a matter of ridding himself of the unfortunate outcome. He had no need of a girl.
He watched as the nurse lowered the baby into the arms of the woman lying twisted among bedcoverings soaked with blood and afterbirth. She lifted her breast and teased the infant’s lips with her nipple until, mewling with hunger, it opened its mouth and latched on to suck. The mother whispered a lullaby: “On t’aime, ma petite. On t’aime. Le bon Dieu, au ciel, t’aime. On t’aime, ma petite. On t’aime. Ta mère, à jamais, t’aime.”
The father cocked his head in confusion at the tender moment. Compelled by a craving to understand this intimacy that was so alien to him, he took a step toward the bed.
“Like the others, my lord,” the doctor interrupted. “A girl. But this one is alive. Shall I dispose of it?” He smirked with self-importance.
The father turned swiftly, his arm snaking from underneath the cloak and closing around the doctor’s neck. His claws sank into the doctor’s flesh. When he snatched his arm back, he held the doctor’s ragged and bloody throat in his hand. He flung the bits of shattered cartilage as he pivoted back toward the bed.
The mother lay dead.
The nurse and the infant were gone.
The father moved to the open door and listened for the sounds that would expose them; he heard nothing but a peal of thunder as it found its way down the alley. He sniffed the air to catch their scent, but the rain muted everything and mingled smells together like soup. He knew he would not be able to track them.
“Unexpected,” he whispered.
This girl—this disappointment—would live. For now. He needed to turn his thoughts toward his next conquest—the one that would profit him a son. He took the edge of his cloak and pulled it over his shoulder, folding himself into the blackness of the night.
Cowering in the deeper dark of a bend in the alley not far past the still gaping door, the nurse laid her face gently against the baby’s head, silently pleading: Don’t make a sound. Be quiet. Quiet as a little mouse.