Kate Sedley - Wheel of Fate

‘A boy and a girl,’ Sybilla burst out. ‘Henry and Luc. .’ Her voice tailed away as she realized that Oswald was glaring furiously at her and had even raised a hand as though to strike her. ‘Oh. . I–I’m sorry.’ Her eyes filled with tears. ‘Sh-shouldn’t I have said anything?’ She started to cry again.

‘Why can you never keep your mouth shut?’ Oswald thundered at her.

Clemency hushed him sternly and put an arm around her sister’s shoulders. ‘There, there, Syb,’ she comforted the younger woman, frowning at her brother. ‘There’s no reason at all why Roger shouldn’t be told.’ She added significantly, ‘There’s no mystery about it.’

‘No. No, of course not,’ Oswald agreed hurriedly, realizing his mistake. ‘I’m sorry, Sybilla my dear. I’ve had a very trying day and I’m worried out of my mind about Celia.’ He turned to me. ‘Yes, our housekeeper — Tabitha Maynard as you so rightly say — had two children. A boy, Henry and girl, Lucy.’ He forced a smile. ‘May I ask what your sudden interest in them is?’

‘How old were they?’ I asked ignoring his question.

‘Oh. .’ He looked vaguely towards his elder sister. ‘What would you say, Clem?’

Clemency was brisk. ‘When our stepmother died and Mistress Maynard came to look after us, I should say that Henry was about six, a year younger than Oswald. Lucy was a little older, nine perhaps, or ten. Probably ten. She was fifteen when Father and her mother were drowned on the Rownham ferry.’

‘And what happened to them after that? Did they continue to live with you?’

Sybilla nodded eagerly. ‘Yes, they did.’

I moved so that I was looking directly at her on the opposite side of the table. ‘But they didn’t come to London with you, did they?’ I asked gently. ‘What happened to them?’

Sybilla immediately became confused. ‘I. . I. .’ she began, glancing wildly first in her brother’s direction, then at her sister.

Once again, it was Clemency who stepped smoothly into the breach. ‘Neither Henry nor Lucy wished to remove to London, so they decided to return to their mother’s family — a sister or cousin or someone — who lived in the village of St Bede’s Minster.’

‘But-’ Sybilla began, obviously bewildered.

Oswald hissed at her to be silent. ‘Yes, of course. I recollect now that’s what happened. I was only fourteen or so at the time,’ he explained. ‘Clem would have been nearly thirty. That’s why her memory is so much better than mine. But you still haven’t explained your reason for asking these questions, Roger.’

I glanced towards Arbella, sitting at one end of the table, her lips slightly parted, her eyes wide with curiosity, the raisin pasty on her plate quite forgotten in her interest in the story. Clemency, ever swift on the uptake, began stacking the dirty dishes.

‘Time to wash up, Arbella,’ she said firmly in a tone that brooked no argument. ‘I’ll call one of the girls to help you clear the table.’

The housekeeper flushed resentfully at what amounted to a summary dismissal, but had no option except to obey. She was not the mistress of the house yet, however much she would like to be, and probably knew deep down that she never would be. She moved as slowly as she dared, but in the end, with the maid’s help, she was forced to retire to the kitchen.

Clemency sat down again at the table and regarded me straitly. ‘What’s this all about, Roger?’ she asked. ‘You obviously have something to say that you don’t want Arbella to hear.’

‘Arbella is perfectly trustworthy, you know,’ Sybilla protested in her usual vague, woolly-minded fashion. ‘She’s been with us now for quite a few years.’

‘I’m not questioning Mistress Rokeswood’s character,’ I said. ‘I’m sure she is most reliable.’

‘But for some reason you don’t want her overhearing what you have to say to us, is that it?’ Clemency half-looked towards her brother, then changed her mind. When I inclined my head, she went on, ‘Does that mean that it — whatever “it” is — reflects badly upon us?’

‘Not necessarily,’ I replied quickly before Oswald could start to bluster. ‘It depends what your answer is.’

Oswald was on his feet, every inch the lawyer. ‘You have no right to catechize us about anything,’ he pronounced in his best courtroom voice. ‘Clemency! Sybilla! You are obliged to say nothing.’

Sybilla looked frightened, but Clemency said, in an elder sister tone that I had never heard her use before, ‘Sit down, Oswald, and don’t make a fool of yourself. You want Master Chapman to discover who’s been terrorizing us, don’t you? Who killed Martin and Charity. You want to find Celia or. . or her. . her body.’ She took a deep, steadying breath and nodded at me as, most surprisingly, Oswald obeyed and resumed his seat. ‘Well, Roger, what is it you want to ask us that you don’t want Arbella to know about?’

‘I want to know what really happened to Henry and Lucy Maynard.’

‘We’ve told you what happened,’ Oswald began, but once again, Clemency intervened.

‘Be quiet, brother! It’s time Roger knew everything. He’s been handicapped by our reticence, our inability to tell the truth, from the start.’

‘It has nothing to do with that,’ Oswald said positively. ‘I keep telling you.’

‘It may have no bearing on the matter,’ Clemency agreed. ‘But we don’t know for certain. And even if it doesn’t, for my own part, I can’t help feeling that heaven is punishing us for our sin.’ Sybilla began to grizzle again, but her sister ignored her and turned to me. ‘You want to know what happened to Henry and Lucy Maynard? We sold them to the Irish slavers working out of Bristol. You may think that the trade, which was outlawed by both Church and state, ended centuries ago, but-’

‘I think nothing of the sort,’ I interrupted. ‘I know that it still exists.’ I didn’t enlarge on the subject, although I saw avid curiosity in all their eyes. ‘Why did you sell your late housekeeper’s children to the slavers?’

‘We needed the money,’ Clemency replied simply. ‘Oswald wanted to study law and we knew — at least, Charity and Sybilla and I knew — that it would be as much as we could afford. We wanted the best for Oswald, so we had to move to London and quickly. He was already fourteen. Consequently, the house at Keynsham was sold for less than it might have been had we had more time at our disposal. Moreover, the Maynards, who were nothing to us. .’

‘We’d only let them stay on with us after Tabitha died out of the goodness of our hearts,’ Sybilla chimed in indignantly. ‘They weren’t Godsloves, after all.’

‘They intended to accompany you to London?’ I queried.

Clemency bit her lip. ‘It never occurred to them that we didn’t want them. After seven years, I’m afraid they regarded themselves as a part of the family. It was partly our own fault. We should have asked them to leave when Father and their mother died. Unfortunately, we were quite fond of them and stupidly let them remain.’

‘But now you didn’t want them any more?’

Clemency sighed. ‘It sounds so callous when put like that. But no, once the decision was taken concerning Oswald and the move to London, and once money became an object with us, they were just two more mouths to feed.’

‘We did ask them to leave,’ Sybilla pointed out self-righteously, wagging her head from side to side.

‘They had nowhere to go. There was no kinswoman living in St Bede’s Minster.’ Clemency suddenly dropped her gaze, avoiding my eyes. ‘I don’t know whose idea it was to rid ourselves of them and make money at the same time. Maybe it was Charity’s, maybe it was mine.’