Letter from Eleanor Mason

Among the personal effects looted from Captain Mason's sea chest during the escape from the Fortnum was a small, oilskin-wrapped keepsake pouch: a plain gold ring and a handful of folded letters in a woman's hand. This is the one letter from that packet worth reading in full.

The Capitol, KC 8

My dearest Herod,

I pray this finds you well, and that the seas have been kinder to you than the winter has been to us here. I have news that I could not bear to entrust to anyone's pen but my own, though I have started this letter three times now and blotted the first two with foolish tears.

You have a son.

He came two nights ago, loud and furious about it, with your temper already plain in him if nothing else of you is yet visible in his face. He is small but sound, the midwife tells me, and feeds well, and I am mending faster than I did the first time, whatever that is worth to you from so far away. I have named him Herod, after his father, though I confess I already call him "little Herod" to keep us straight, and I suspect the house will call him that long after he has outgrown the need for it.

I wish you could see him. I wish that more than I have wished for anything since you last sailed. He has your stubbornness already — he would not settle until I gave up and let him have his own way of it, which I am told is no way to raise a child and which I intend to do anyway, at least until you are home to tell me otherwise.

The house is quiet without you in it, quieter still now that there are two of us waiting instead of one. I do not ask when you will be back — I have learned better than to ask, and I know you would tell me if you could — but I will say that I count the days regardless, and that your son will know your face from the miniature on the mantel long before he knows it from the man himself, unless the Two are kinder to us than they have been.

Come home safe, Herod. Come home soon, if you can manage it, but safe above all. We will be here.

Your loving wife, Eleanor