Kate Sedley - Wheel of Fate

‘Well, it certainly wasn’t mine,’ Sybilla cut in virtuously. ‘But it was the right decision, all the same.’

‘Hush, Syb,’ her sister commanded tartly. Clemency hadn’t looked up, but she must have guessed at my expression.

‘So you sold them to the Irish slavers.’ This then was the ‘terrible secret’ my little kitchen maid had heard mentioned. ‘You knew where to find them?’

Clemency nodded. ‘I had been visiting Bristol all my life, and everyone in the city knows about “little Ireland”.’ Her voice became almost inaudible. ‘It wasn’t difficult to arrange for Henry and Lucy to be abducted.’

‘I keep telling you, Clem,’ Oswald broke in angrily, ‘this. . this persecution can have nothing to do with the Maynards. You’ve always been quite adamant that neither of them could have known that you and Charity and Sybilla were behind it.’

‘I didn’t think they did,’ Clemency admitted desperately. ‘We just took them into Bristol one morning and. . and made some excuse to leave them in the vicinity of Marsh Street for a while. We’d previously arranged with one of the slavers where they would be found. I daresay, to be sure, he was watching when we left them. Certainly, they had vanished by the time we returned and we’ve never seen anything more of them from that day to this.’

‘I hope you got a good price for them,’ I said before I could stop myself.

Clemency flushed a dark red, but her only answer was, ‘Good enough.’ She added defensively, ‘I’ve always heard that the Irish treat their slaves very well.’

I didn’t remark that well-treated or not, slavery was never the same as freedom. There seemed to be no point: they knew that as surely as I did. Instead I asked, ‘And it has never occurred to you that this Lucy and Henry Maynard might be behind all your troubles?’

‘No, of course not,’ Oswald said, bringing his hands down on the table and once more getting to his feet. ‘If they’d known the truth, why would they have waited all these years to get their revenge?’

I didn’t believe him.

I realized with sudden clarity that the possibility, although not the probability, of it being the Maynards had been lurking somewhere in the back of his mind, firmly suppressed, from the very beginning of this unhappy saga. It accounted for his indifference to my suggestion that any of his past, or even present, clients might be responsible for the terrible vengeance being wreaked upon his family, and his persistent failure to supply me with a list of names. It also explained his determination that Roderick Jeavons should prove to be the culprit. The doctor not only had a strong motive, but Oswald hated him because the man had the temerity to be in love with Celia. My previous suspicion that the lawyer was himself in love with his half-sister had now become a certainty — and it was, moreover, absolutely necessary that there should be a suspect with a good enough reason for the vendetta to obviate those two ghosts from the past.

After his outburst, Oswald stumped from the room, leaving me alone with Clemency and Sybilla. I looked at the former and raised my eyebrows. ‘What do you think, mistress?’

She appeared suddenly much older than her fifty-odd years and put up a frail hand to push back a tress of hair that had escaped from beneath her cap.

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘But from the beginning, ever since things started to go seriously wrong, I’ve been afraid that we were all being punished for our crime. Although,’ she added desperately, ‘as Oswald says, if Lucy and Henry knew all along that we were to blame for their capture, that it was not just chance, why would they have waited so long to take their revenge? And why would they have killed Reynold Makepeace? Our stepbrothers were unknown to them. And how would they have discovered where to find us?’

‘I can’t give you answers to all your questions,’ I said. ‘But as to the third, finding you would have presented little difficulty. They knew you and your siblings intended coming to London, and they knew the reason why. They would only have needed to ask around the inns of court to discover a lawyer named Godslove, and once he had been pointed out to them, following him home would have been a simple enough matter. As for why they waited so long, that would have depended on a number of factors; when they left Ireland for one. And having found you, they may have been in no hurry to execute vengeance. They could have relished seeing you suffer as they had suffered, and were in no mind to bring it to a swift conclusion. Slowly, one by one, they are eliminating the whole family. First attempts are not always successful, as witness you and Sybilla, but that probably doesn’t worry them. In some ways it makes the chase more fun and prolongs your misery.’

‘But where are they? Who are they?’ Clemency asked in trembling tones, her face as white as the broad collar protecting the shoulders of her gown. Then suddenly, like Oswald, she heaved herself to her feet, slamming both hands down on the table top and making her sister jump. ‘No! I don’t believe this is the answer! I won’t believe it! Lucy and Henry had no idea that we were behind their seizure by the Irish slavers. Charity and I had been most careful to go in disguise to that inn in Marsh Street when making the necessary arrangements, and we were careful to be nowhere near when they were taken.’

‘You don’t think the slavers themselves knew and revealed the truth?’

But even as I asked the question, I guessed it to be unlikely. The Irishmen who carried on their illegal trade with the help of Bristol’s respectable citizens, were men who knew how to keep their mouths shut. Nor were they interested in the whys and wherefores of their nefarious transactions or in exchanging small talk with their victims. It was a business like any other, though perhaps more lucrative than some, and as such, respect for the client was paramount. So when Clemency answered firmly that she thought it impossible, I was forced to agree with her.

We joined Oswald in the parlour and, by tacit consent, the rest of the evening passed without further discussion of the subject, even though it was the one uppermost in all our minds. We speculated where Adela and the children might be spending their first night on the road, I expressed my total confidence in Jack Nym, and we speculated in a desultory kind of way about Oswald’s news concerning the late king’s will. But eventually, and much earlier than usual, we parted company and went to bed. As I mounted the stairs, I could hear Arbella still clattering angrily around in the kitchen.

I woke suddenly in the middle of the night, my heart pounding and my hands groping for the comfort of Adela’s body, only to realize, of course, that I was alone. The door to the children’s room stood open, emitting a deafening silence, and there was no Hercules, snuffling and whining pitifully to be allowed on to our bed.

I sat up, pushing the hair out of my eyes and passing a hand across my damp forehead, trying to pinpoint what exactly had woken me. I had been dreaming, I was sure of that, but, most unusually, was unable immediately to recall my dream. I had been in the apothecary’s shop; I could still see the rows of bottles on the shelves, the bunches of dried herbs, the pestle and mortar on the counter, and I had been talking to someone. Julian Makepeace? No, he had not been present, I would swear to that. His housekeeper, young Naomi, then? Yes, that was it. I even recalled being able to smell the faint scent of rosemary that emanated from her gown. She had been saying something to me, but what? I shut my eyes against the shadows of the room, the empty beds, the feeling of loss, and concentrated hard. .