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Hanush took him hunting when Jitka's labour began.
"I've had three children, nephew, I went hunting for every birth but one," he had said. "Care to guess which one?"
"Lady Catherine?" Hans had ventured, thinking of the Lord of Leipa's eldest: a dark-haired young woman bearing a close resemblance to her father. In likeness and temperament.
"Exactly! A little bloodletting is what makes a man— or a boy, I suppose."
And that had settled it. They rode out once the physician arrived, with little more than a kiss on Jitka’s forehead for luck and the promise of a new pair of rabbit fur mittens.
Hans twists the reins of Caballus between his hands, riding side by side with Hanush towards the shaded woods.
It's near autumn, now. The last gasps of summer are struggling against the dying light. The woods and its creatures seem to sense the oncoming winter. Even before they have arrived to the camp, Hans can see the mark of deer where they'd rubbed their antlers against the trees. He notes the bare ground around the oak trees, their acorns having been stored away or trodden to dust.
A year ago he was preparing for his courtship and the marriage to follow. Or pretending to. More often he was in woods not unlike these ones, soaking the lingering summer heat off of his lover's chest.
"Have you heard from Sir Radzig?" Hans asks lightly.
Have you heard from Henry? he is asking. He was supposed to be here for the birth.
"He'll be with the King, attending to some royal duty or another. He certainly has plenty of ruling to catch up on," Hanush grumbles, sounding no more pleased with the matter than Hans.
"Of course." It doesn't matter where Henry wishes to be, so long as his noble father wishes differently. "Perhaps they'll bring something from Prague."
"That will make two in the King's company who remember us."
Hans knows the King's neglect ought to bother him more. He had risked his neck, and more, in retaking Wenceslas's throne— a little gratitude seems polite. Yet at present he'd be satisfied with being gifted the company of one bastard.
They leave their horses to nose in the fallen leaves to hunt on foot. Their dogs circle around them, all expensive hounds that are more leg than lean body. All save one.
The mongrel in their midst has his nose in the underbrush, perhaps aware he is no match for his keen-eyed cousins' sights. He scents prey first. Athena, a grey hound, points a moment too late to make a difference. Hans nocks an arrow, draws, fires.
He thinks the hare had begun to scream when the arrow pierced it. "Go on then, Mutt! Fetch!" Hans calls. The first smile he's felt all day begins to inch across his face, stopped in its tracks by a remark from his side.
"What's the point in spending groschen on hunting dogs, when any dog can best them?"
"Not any dog, Uncle!" Hans says. "This mutt is practically worthy of a knighthood himself. Isn't that right, boy?"
Mutt returns with bright eyes and a happy tail, so pleased he looks sweet even with the dead hare hanging limply from his jaws. Athena points at it, lifting one paw to streamline her narrow frame. "You'll get the next one, girl," Hans mutters as he takes the hare from Mutt's keeping. A servant arrives with rope, stringing it onto his belt so it doesn't burden Hans's trip.
"Looks like first blood is yours, Hans," Hanush crows, bracing his nephew's shoulder. "Congratulations on your future son."
Hans tries not to flinch. Not at Hanush jostling him, but at the reminder of why they're here. For a moment he had almost convinced himself this was an ordinary hunt, an ordinary day. He corrects himself before he speaks, forcing cheer. "This ritual of yours sounds awfully close to pagan heresy."
Hanush scoffs. "Nonsense! It's perfectly orthodox. Why, even Adam went hunting when Eve broke water."
Father Kristian must have neglected to preach that chapter and verse.
"And thus Cain was borne," Hans mutters. "Best hope this son is the last in that case."
"Careful," Hanush cautions. "Don't tempt fate."
He waves his hand in dismissal. He would be quite happy with one son. In fact, he'd be quite happy if this one child were his last. One heir, and it will be over.
Pagan or no, time proves Hanush right. They return to Rattay in the morning to a castle with one more occupant.
"She sleeps," warns Lady Odilia as Hans approaches Jitka's bedroom. A childhood companion of his wife, Odilia looks like she needs some sleep herself; her green eyes are rimmed red and carrying all of yesterday beneath them. "I'll get the boy."
She disappears into the room, leaving the door open behind her. The stink of blood and birth seep out from within, stirring a sudden gratitude within Hans that he and his wife do not share sleeping arrangements.
Odilia returns with a bundle of blankets that kicks. Something curls inside Hans, waiting to spring. "Would you like to hold him, Lord Capon?" she asks.
"I suppose," he says, hurriedly adding, "that is if it won't confuse the boy."
"What could be confusing about his da? Excuse me, Sir, his father. Here."
He takes it clumsily in his arms, mimicking her. Supporting the head, tucking the body against his breast. He can't remember the last time he held a child— he may have been a boy himself, visiting some cousin or distant relation.
Now he holds his own child.
His child.
He repeats it to himself, waiting for the thought to sink. Waiting for something to spring from the quiet of his heart. But it sits, it settles. His child, his baby, his son.
Nothing.
"He looks just like his father!" Hanush chuckles.
The boy in his arms is a stranger. He better resembles an old man, one pressed into a body the size of the rabbit he'd skewered this morning. There is a blond drift of hair on his skull, so pale it looks almost white against his pink little body.
"Aye, Konyash said the same," Odilia agrees on his behalf. "He said the babe was hale, nowt to worry 'bout but he'll be back in the morning, all the same." She has the same musical quality to her voice as Jitka, but Hans hears it more in hers.
Her smile appears forced, carved across her face, and when something jumps in Hans it isn't elation, dread, ecstasy, but the sudden awareness that she might see his hollow heart.
"I can scarcely believe it…" he says, thinking it's the thing to be said. "A son." Not any son, he reminds himself. "My son."
Odilia's smile finds its character, twining towards her tired eyes. "Lady Jitka was most pleased. She said you had a name picked out."
"Yes… we do, although we agreed not to share it until the official christening."
The baby stirs in his arms. He looks down, feeling indifference burn behind his ribs.
Odilia coos. "Eee, he dinnae like that, eh? You'll have to learn patience, little lord." Hardly more than a few hours old, and already saddled with assumptions. A well of pity swells in him, and he grasps it, strangling the feeling before it slips away. Its ears are so small it's a wonder if it can hear at all, its bulbous eyes seem hardly fit to see.
She tickles it through the blanket, and the baby moves its arms with greater insistence, a whine that sounds somewhere between a stifled yawn and a moan squeezing between its lips. "I think he might be getting hungry. I'll take him back if you like, m'lord."
Hans doesn't protest, although it certainly does. Its whine pitches to a point of pain, and as Odilia whisks him away Hanush laughs beside him.
"Your lady wife will soon tire of that sound, and wish she'd found a nursemaid!"
Yet Hans can't help how envy curls around his ribcage, a more difficult feeling to pin down than his pity. Flighty as a flock of birds.
"Jitka may tire," Hans says, feeling at least some inclination to defend his wife, "but she doesn't make up her mind twice."
He had hoped some feeling would come to him after his fifth hour as a father, or the sixth, and every hour after. He had hoped that seeing the baby with Jitka, hanging happily off her, a splotch of milk colouring his cheek, might kindle something. He feels like wood too dry to make a fire with, any fleeting emotion quickly burned upon the pyre of his heart.
The next day he returns. Jitka has gone to get some air, and her ladies with her. They cling to her like a hive of bees around a flower, letting servants watch over the little boy. When he arrives, Dusca is stationed with him.
One of their oldest, and most trustworthy, servants. She had raised children of her own in both castles, and her husband serves as a carpenter. It occurs to him he has rarely seen her idle in all the years he's known her. Yet as she sits at the baby's cradle, her hands are still, the clothes she was stitching forgotten in her lap.
She turns the smile meant for the baby to him, quickly dropping when she sees who has entered. "M'lord," she says, rising to her feet with a curtsey.
"God be with you, Goodwife. You can sit, it's alright. I've only come to see him."
That is the thing to do, isn't it? So much of his life since the wedding has seemed like mummer's play, with him playing the part written for him. Marry, fuck, make an heir; then pretend that sacred duty is not a chore, like a penitent man made to do Hail Mary's after doing something worth living for.
She smiles approvingly, scooting her chair over so he may have the better view.
It's less red than yesterday, its colour faded to a more human pink. Though it lies fast asleep, its face is impressed with lines that suggest a greater familiarity with the world and its troubles than its short existence imply. Jitka had read to it while it was still in the womb: her favourite Bible verses; her favourite songs; his favourite myths, but he imagines if any of it sank in, it would have come out talking.
Instead, it's silent. When he listens close, he can hear its breath, fragile in new lungs.
"This takes me back," Dusca murmurs.
"To your own children?"
"No, Sir. Forgive me, I ought not to speak out of turn."
"I would hear what you have to say, Goodwife." If only to kill the silence. "Go on."
Her cheeks redden, no doubt regretting that she had said anything. "I sat with you, at his age. When Kedruta needed a moment to herself." Invoking the memory of his nursemaid, Dusca signs a cross. "You were a quiet one, m'lord. Never heard a peep off you til dinner, and sometimes not even then. He's a quiet one, too. Although Lady Jitka's diligence allows for that. And yours as well, Sir."
Nothing, he notes, about his own mother and father's diligence.
Across the years, across the boundary between life and death, he feels a unity with his mother's memory like never before.
He had heard he best resembled her, as well.
When Jitka returns she smiles to see him, and he thinks he must have done something right. His thoughts come to him clipped, like a caged bird's wings. The ladies dote and coo, and the baby hardly seems to notice. Hardly seems to know it's alive.
"Can I sleep with you tonight?" Hans asks when they are alone. "I can help you with i— him."
He can count the nights he'd spent with her on one hand. Typically spending is what ends their evenings. Jitka has no appetite for the intimacy of sharing a bed, and Hans no strong urge to whet it. He almost liked it remaining something he and Henry share that he and Jitka never will. Crawling into bed beside her feels like a betrayal to the man he'd made vows to in the waning glow of summer.
Even if he knows Henry will understand.
Jitka smells of flowers. Only the petals and nectar, not the root and soil they grow from. The baby smells… sweet. Like soft cheese that melts under the spread of a knife.
It would be an easy mistake to assume one castle at night would be the same as another, but not so. Pirkstein is quiet. The open windows let in the woods, the servants are like ghosts in the hallway. Rattay Castle opens to the stables, cats yowling in the night.
He lies in bed, undreaming— until a wailing shocks him awake from a sleep so unpleasant he hadn't felt it happen.
Hans stirs from under the blankets, moving before Jitka can. Perhaps if the child becomes an inconvenience, it will coax the stubborn seed of fatherly affection into bloom.
"Shh, shh," he tells it. "It's alright."
But it doesn't know that. It doesn't know anything but the empty pit in its stomach or the mess in its swaddle. It doesn't know there's a fresh change of clothes in waiting for it, or a willing breast to suckle on.
"I'm here," he says, and wonders if a lie can be true.
It shouts as if it's as horrified of him as he is of it. Its little mouth is torn open like a wound, bubbling at the corners.
"I don't think you can give him what he needs," Jitka says from the bed. She means it kindly, to spare them both a headache. "Bring him to me, please."
Jitka's breast is already bared by the time he turns around, swollen as a full moon and pale against the milky light. "Thank you for trying," she says gently. More gently than she would have said it ten months ago.
The baby latches, sucking eagerly. Sickeningly. The sound pops in Hans's ear like he's standing in the high mountains where the air is thin as straw.
"I keep almost calling him his name," she says. He is sitting beside her, in the room with her, and yet she looks at her son as if he is the only thing that bears contemplation.
He shifts, just to hear the bed move under his weight. Just to remind himself that he is here. "You might as well. Who else is listening but us?"
"You're right." She laughs at herself, a rare sound— a wonderful one. Hans isn't certain he makes her happy, or how to tell, but laughs he can measure. She wears her hair down when she sleeps and when she laughs an auburn lock escapes her braid, curling into her lip.
Jitka kisses the baby's name into its forehead before she tucks it back into its crib.
Before dawn it's hungry again. He feigns sleep and lets Jitka tend to it.
He could die, he thinks, and it would not notice for years.
"What do you mean, detained?"
"It's just what I heard, Sir."
Hanush smacks the tabletop in frustration. Bernard doesn't even flinch, long accustomed to these outbursts. The wood trembles, and yet his uncle's anger is a pale flame compared to his own, kept, fire. He's felt so little lately that he nurses it to keep it alive, asking, "Do you know why?" so he can be mad at the answer provided.
"Groschen." Bernard says, though his tone implies: isn't it always? And Hans can't bring himself to disagree. Silver is why he starved in Suchdol, and why he now wears a ring on the fourth finger of each hand, rather than just the one. One ring for duty, one for love.
Bernard carries on, "The King is still recuperating his losses after the Praguers made off with his silver. Something tells me he'll be wanting the expertise of Master Feyfar for some time yet."
But Hans has stopped listening. None of these things matter.
All that matters is they're what keep Henry from the birth. From the Christening. From Hans.
It feels childish— it is— but he kept his duty, and is only rewarded with more. He longs for the anger to build until he has no choice but to strike out: with a fist; with a blade; with his tongue. Instead it roars dully in his ears.
When their business for the day has concluded, and everything is squared away, Bernard lingers in the doorway to join him on the walk to Pirkstein. They walk side-by-side, the cart ruts acting as little paths within a path.
"Your son's going to be a swordsman," Bernard says, with an unusual sentimentality for the typically stern captain.
Hans arches his brow. "Most noble sons are."
"Aye, but him sooner than most." He waits for Hans to ask him why he thinks so, but when he isn't given the satisfaction he continues on anyway, "I went to see him this morning, he's flexing his swordhand already. Soon as he can speak, he'll be asking for a little one."
Hans manages a laugh, or the approximation of one. "Christ! I hope not. He'll terrorise the nursemaids."
"Or sisters, if he gets any."
Hans's stomach lurches at the thought, although Bernard seems not to notice. They've had new recruits, some men who were once Skalitz boys, and tired of begging; Henry, it seemed, had lit a fire under some of their arses. Whatever their motive, it has left Bernard tired, and less sharp after a day of running drills and shouting.
"You were the same." Bernard chuckles. "Although instead of sisters you terrorised the castle's mousers."
"And we had the fastest cats in Bohemia as a result!" Hans keeps his tone cheerful, but he thinks he hears an echo behind his ribs—from the empty space where his heart ought to be.
Fortunately, Bernard doesn't mention the babe again the rest of the journey. Instead, they talk of felines, and the old grey cat named Whiskers who still stalks the courtyard and kitchens of Pirkstein to this day.
Jitka's family arrive, the rooms in Pirkstein and Rattay fill with faces he struggles to remember the names of. They are Jitka's blood, of that there is no doubt, with red hair and severe noses all wrinkled with laughter at the happy occasion. They visit her, her quarters as busy as confession after a lively Saint's day. They dote upon her, upon the babe, presenting gifts as he lies oblivious, or wailing, or sleeping.
They congratulate him. They tell him the babe has his eyes, his hair, as if that is remarkable. As if that does not describe half the children squeezed out of a woman's cunt in this part of the world.
He bares his teeth in a grin and thanks them, for at least trying to see him.
No family comes on his behalf. Hanush does not send for his children, nor his wife.
Jitka's family go to Mass together. Jitka herself, still within her forty days, takes a carriage to a conciliatory cross to express her faith to it. Her ladies go with her. He remains.
The Christening will be the day after tomorrow.
No word, yet, from Henry.
There is work upon his desk, but the ink dries in the nib of his quill. Some has dripped off the tip, pooling in black puddles that resemble blood spilt by a blade. He does not notice until the back of his hand has smeared it across the page. He hears himself curse, feels the sleeves drag back across his wrist before the fabric can stain. At the washbasin, he lets the ink bleed from his hand and stain the water, black lifting from all but the most stubborn creases of his fingers.
In the courtyard, a guardsman makes the signal of an approaching horseman.
A fleeting hope bids he remain at the window, watching. A thin thing it is, but the brightest he's felt in days, and even the feeling of it dying in his chest will be more than nothing.
As he strains his ears to listen, however, his hope only grows.
He would know the sound of those hoofbeats anywhere.
Hans had dreamt of them in Maleshov, listened out the window for them at Suchdol; he imagines them in his dreams every night they are parted. He leans out of the window in time to see a dappled grey mare burst through the gate, only slowing when her hooves are safe in Rattay's walls. Her rider wears a knightly armour, and a liripipe with the Skalitz crest stitched into its pattern.
In the courtyard, the stablehand shouts what Hans's heart is singing: "It's Henry! Henry's here!"
He doesn't linger to see who gathers to meet him, pushing from the windowsill to alight to the courtyard. The steps seem to fold beneath him, carrying him quickly down. It feels like the first gasp of spring after a long winter, a shaft of sunlight on a cloudy day— his best and dearest friend, returned to him.
"Give her an apple or two along with her oats," Hans hears Henry say as he trusts the stablehand with Pebbles's reins. "I rode her harder than I ought to've, to make it here in good time."
For me, Hans thinks, light-headed with glee.
"And who is this knight," he asks, raising his voice so that it rings, "so boldly making himself welcome in another lord's castle?"
Henry turns his smile upon Hans, but flashes his gaze to the ground in a mock show of apology. "Sorry, Sir, but it was the lord of the castle himself who told me once to make myself home here."
"That isn't what he said, and you know it!"
In his peripheries, some of the new hands and hires look up to pry into the apparent argument unfolding in the courtyard. The older, more familiar faces carry along despite (or in spite of) their prattle. Hans continues forward until he can capture Henry in his arms, embracing him in a hug. The breastplate and pauldrons turn away more than swords— Hans must work to feel the warmth beneath the armour, but he manages.
Henry smells of the wind and sweat off a horse's flank, and all the glory he had won in tourney since they'd parted.
"He said…" Hans says in a quieter voice, after the servants have turned away, disappointed at the lack of a a duel to break up the day. "He said that you will be home wherever he is, wherever that may be."
A shy laugh brushes past his neck. "Forgive me, my lord. Such generous words do not come easily to a tongue as common as mine. We simple folk prefer to demonstrate our affection with deed, not word."
Nearly bursting into laughter too large for his chest to hold, Hans is just glad to be choking on something. Torn between holding Henry and looking at him, he pries them apart, just enough to get a view of the face he's been deprived these past few months.
His hair is askew from his helmet, but Hans can tell he's had it cut. His beard, which left to his own devices he will grow in an even bristle, bears the distinct impression of having recently been a moustache. A shave only the last few days have cured him of. He must have looked every inch the son of Sir Radzig of Kobyla, only now returning to Henry, the blacksmith's boy, as Hans still calls him in moments fond and teasing.
"I didn't think you would come," Hans admits. "Sir Bernard made it seem like the King himself had you captive."
Henry puffs air out of the side of his mouth. "My father, more like. King Wenceslas won't miss me til tourney day, when he suddenly realises his bets aren't so sure a thing, and by then it'll be too late." A devil's grin spreads over Henry's face, the gap between the rows of teeth seem to grasp Hans's heart between them. The King's company— second to his. "I'll be quite at home here."
"You'll have to start calling yourself Henry of Rattay."
"And who says I haven't already?" Henry's brows travel towards his hairline, but the mischief in his eyes begins to fade. Their brightness isn't diminished, but softens. Hans imagines if they were alone, he might feel a gauntlet upon his cheek. "How is Jitka? And the babe, the messenger said it was—"
"A boy, yes."
"Healthy?"
"So it seems. It hasn't told us otherwise." Henry's soft chuckle stirs something in his chest, even as his stomach twists and his feet are brought down to the earth by talk of family. "Jitka is doing well, all her planning and praying amounted to some good, after all."
"Aye, I remember from your letters." What he'd professed to Henry in writing and what he'd merely remarked upon in his head has blurred to the point of irrelevance. He would give the blood in his veins to Henry without being asked; the details of his wedded life are trivial matters. "And what about you?"
Henry's gaze pierces him as he asks the question, clear eyes so earnest they're like a spear between his ribs.
"I've been fine." He wonders to himself if it is truly a lie. He is eating, shitting, and fucking as usual. Puppeting himself like a mummer on a Saint's day. Ask anyone, and they will say the same. Ask anyone.
But Henry has asked him.
"It's remarkable how little has changed. I can continue much as I have before." His lips seal against his teeth, smiling at Henry, who frowns in return.
"That's great," he says, unconvinced. "How soon until I can see him?"
Hans's heart sinks, but his lips laugh, and his voice says, "You bastard! I thought you'd come to see me."
But of course it's about the baby, everything is— and everything isn't. All lives touched and changed by his arrival, and yet Hans's carries on as usual.
"Both of you!" Henry protests. "Is now too soon? Surely Lady Jitka won't mind."
"She can be a bit of a bear about her cub, but she may make an exception for your sake." Guiding Henry by the shoulder, they walk up the stairs to the castle together, Henry's step rattling with his armour. He pauses to remove his gauntlets, then splashes his face to wash the grime of a day's journey from his hands— smelling just a little less like himself as they enter the room.
Dusca is in attendance again, much to her satisfaction, although she does not protest when Hans asks her for a moment alone.
Henry does not pause to admire or question the various charms and trinkets Jitka has affixed to every corner of the room, as intricate as the buckles and braces as a knight's armour. He undoes his, now, the leather holding his vambraces to his arm coming undone, exposing the soft cushion of a quilted blue gambeson as he steps towards the cradle.
Hans remains by the door.
"Oh…" Henry makes a sound like he's been shot. "Christ, Hans."
The ancients sometimes likened falling in love to the strike of an arrow— Eros, taking aim at an unsuspecting fool. But there are many words for love in Greek, and in that moment, watching Henry reach into the cradle, Hans wonders if there were many gods, too. Agape, Philia… and Storge, striking Henry in the heart as he pulls the baby up into his arms.
Perhaps that god has missed Hans. Perhaps that is why he feels so empty. Perhaps all the love Henry feels in this moment was meant for him.
"He's beautiful."
It appears to take a great feat of strength for Henry to sink evenly into the nearest chair, not to simply collapse— shoulders that have carried Hans's weight upon them made feeble. The softness of the mass in the blankets is at odds with the ride of steel up his thighs and the breastplate still hitched around his chest, but he wields his arms like pillows.
There are tears in his eyes that threaten to spill over his cheeks.
Envy wells, and anger, a bitter concoction. Even ugliness, only Henry can stir within him. In his mind, he strikes his cheek with a fist, the ring Henry had made him leaving a mark in its maker's face. Give him something real to cry about.
But Hans remains by the door.
Beneath the steel, Hans sees Henry's breath intake, preparing to speak. He prepares for the blow, knowing well what will come next:
"He's your spittin' image," he says, voice cracking.
"Don't be ridiculous," Hans bites out. Henry looks up, the knit of his brow confused, but Hans continues with a wave of his hand. "So he has blue eyes, and blond hair. Plenty of infants do."
"Perhaps my lord needs his ears cleaned," Henry says reproachfully. "Or else he might've noticed I didn't say nothin' about no hair or eyes."
"Then what else? Surely not my chin. Or my nose."
In spite of the fact that he's earned a glower, Henry snorts. "No. Not yet, at least. Could you imagine that beak on an infant?"
More surprising, yet— Hans laughs. He barely feels it, but hears it; feels it, warm upon his lips.
He's afraid Henry won't answer, but he takes a second glance at the baby. It's awake in Henry's lap, but not screaming. It's moving more than it used to, Hans notices. Wiggling in its blankets like it's alive.
"He has your ears," Henry settles on. "For starters."
"My ears?" Hans touches them, encircling the shell with his fingers. He knows their shape better through Henry's touch than his own; their tips are round to Henry's points, the lobes hang lower before they connect to his face.
"Aye, those." He jerks his chin back, motioning with it. "Come see."
Hans leaves the safety of the doorway, touching a figure of Lady Mary as he crosses the room. He settles in the same seat as Henry, sinking into the cushion, thighs spreading so their legs touch.
The baby has its eyes open, and for once Hans has the impression that it's looking at something, rather than blindly looking towards whatever sounds it hears. Henry folds one of its ears, pliant as a petal, demonstrating the shape: round at the tips, with low-hanging lobes.
Hans glances between it and Henry, trying to capture what glimpse he had caught of it that Hans hadn't— that made what was obscured to him so self-evident.
"What else?" he asks.
"He sleeps with his hands touching his face."
"I don't—
"—You do. Like two philosophers, you are."
He might protest again, but memories of early mornings, and Henry backing his hand into Hans's palm, dawn upon him. And in Henry's lap, the baby's eyes are closed again, one little fist curled upon its cheek. The other lies empty, thrown above its head. Hans tries to manoeuvre it back down with a ginger touch, suddenly worried it might be uncomfortable, but it reaches; stubby hand spread like a five-pointed star, it grasps his finger. Just the last knuckle, holding fast.
"Clingy, too," Henry adds, and there's no need for him to elaborate. They'd shared a tent too many times for him to try denying it.
"You've made your point," Hans says. Firm, a little bitterness bleeding into his affection. He feels it swell in his throat, and he speaks in a voice small enough he hopes his son won't hear: "I had just imagined… that it would be easier to love him."
He doesn't anticipate Henry's judgment, nor does he receive it. He only feels Henry's eyes, sacrificing the miracle of drinking in his son's existence to turn their pity upon him. "You don't hate him, though."
It isn't a question.
Hans is grateful for that.
"No. In some ways I might prefer that. It would, at least, be something— not this…" Void. "I feel like I have failed before I've hardly begun."
"It's still early days yet. There's time."
Their eyes meet. He wants the babe's eyes to be blue like Henry's. Maybe he could love it, then. "And if nothing changes?"
"Then there's more to havin' a son than lovin' him," Henry says. And I should know, hangs despairingly off the end of his words. "It matters more that you're there, doesn't it?"
"Maybe."
He can't bring himself to say that he'd imagined himself absent, or erased entirely. His image like his mother's, a spectre he can imagine only through what they share: his ears, his eyes, his hair. Maybe one day his nose.
"It mattered to me," Henry says. Then quickly adds, "to be here, I mean."
"Of course. It mattered to me, as well." The baby's hand flexes, but grips harder. One day it will be a knight's grasp— for now it can barely fit around his ring finger. "May it one day matter to him, as well."
"I would like it to…" Henry is quiet for a long time after. His expression settles over his eyes, troubled. Hans finds himself drawn to his son's face, the contemplation he imagines for him, but still he hears Henry fighting… something. His cheeks blow with it, and he mutters, "My father's getting married."
"Sir Radzig?" Hans asks, as if there can be another. "When? To whom?"
"To Lady Anna of Úlibice, and soon, I'd imagine. Her father was quite eager, from what I'd heard."
"And where does that leave you?"
Henry sits with the question long enough that Hans can guess the answer.
"No one's told you."
"There's a lot that goes into noble marriages. Dowries and inheritance… I imagine my fate is trifling, in comparison." Henry speaks to the indignation and frustration stirring in Hans's heart, and perhaps to his own, although he isn't likely to admit it.
"Sir Radzig won't forget you. He can't, he's…" Trailing off, Hans realises that for all he talks of indifference, he could never forget the babe between them. Not for all the water in the Lethe. He feels his son's heartbeat through the little fist around his finger, fluttering. Alive.
It isn't love he feels, then. But it's something. He's alive, too.
"You'll see."
"Aye… we will." Henry sniffles wetly, ducking his face to wipe his face on his hood. Tears are caught between his lashes, resembling the morning dew trapped upon threads of a spider's web. Hans captures his cheek, catching them upon his thumb.
Clearing his throat, Henry asks in a thick voice, "Have you settled upon a name?"
The tears on Hans's hands anoint his son's hair as he strokes it, the blond darker where he's wet it.
"Well, his Christian name will be Heinrich." Jitka had laughed when he told her. More often of late she laughs rather than frowns when he says foolish or honest things. "But we settled upon calling him Hynce."
"Hynce… a good, Czech name." Henry nudges Hans with a careful shoulder, nodding down at the babe asleep in his lap. "Look, I think he likes it. He's smilin'."
Sure enough, a little toothless grin has spread across Hynce's face, so small his joy touches every inch of him— from his round ears, to his wrinkled face, to the pink toes curled in his blankets.
A stranger, still, but less so than yesterday.