Kate Sedley - Wheel of Fate

‘So,’ I said, ‘tell me about these Godsloves to whom Adela’s gone. You say they’re a branch of your father’s family, though I’ve never heard you or Adela mention them before. And yet, I do have a very, very faint recollection that Lillis might once have said their name, but in connection with what, I’ve no idea. In any case, even if she did, I took no notice.’

‘That wasn’t unusual,’ Margaret cut in waspishly. ‘You weren’t married long enough for the poor girl to make you mind her.’

I could see that, if I wasn’t careful, we were going to embark on profitless recriminations about my marriage to her daughter, and I resolutely ignored the lead she had given me, steering the conversation back to the subject under discussion. Well, the subject I wanted to discuss.

‘Tell me about the Godsloves,’ I said again. ‘I can’t go to London knowing nothing about them. For a start, whereabouts do they live?’

Margaret sat down again at her spinning wheel, but made no immediate move to resume work. She was quite ready to while away an hour or two in gossip. She frowned a little at my helping myself, unbidden, to her ale, but had obviously decided to overlook the impertinence in the interests of harmony.

‘As to where they live in London,’ she said, ‘I believe Adela mentioned that it was out in the countryside somewhere, beyond the Bishop’s Gate — wherever that is. But you’ll likely know, I daresay. It means nothing to me. I’ve never been to London in my life, and don’t want to. Nasty, dangerous place, or so I’ve heard. All those foreigners.’

Considering that the Bristol wharves and streets fairly teemed with foreign sailors most days of the week, I thought this a decidedly unfair stricture on the capital. All the same, I knew what she meant. It was not only a larger city but also far more populous than any other in the country, which meant more thieves, more pickpockets, more hustling salesmen and more tricksters per square foot than you were likely to encounter anywhere else.

Margaret continued, ‘I think Adela said the house is called The Arbour, or Harbour, or some such name. From the description of it, it sounds a bit ramshackle; a big, rambling old place. But then it would have to be in order to accommodate all that tribe.’

‘Tell me about the Godsloves, themselves,’ I invited, finishing my drink and fetching myself another one.

So she did. But there were so many corrections, so much backtracking, such a deal of ‘No, I tell a lie! That wasn’t so-and-so, it was someone else,’ that, for the sake of clarity, I will set down the history of the Godslove family as I eventually came to understand it, once I had sorted out the facts in my mind.

It begins with Morgan Godslove, who was a cousin of Margaret’s father, William Woodward, and who was born around the year 1400. He married twice. By his first wife — whose name Margaret could not remember — he had four children, three of whom were girls, Clemency, Sybilla and Charity, all born within six years of one another. The fourth child, a boy, Oswald, was ten years younger than the youngest daughter and his mother died in giving birth to him.

The following year, Morgan married again, this time a widow, Alicia Makepeace, whom he met while in London on business, and who already had two sons from her previous marriage, thus bringing their combined total of children to six. To this tally, Alicia and Morgan added two more in very short order, a boy, Martin, and a girl, Celia, with little more than twelve months between them. When the girl was only three, however, Alicia died leaving Morgan and his brood once more motherless. But this time, the widower decided against a third marriage and, instead, employed a housekeeper.

‘Tabitha Maynard, that was her name,’ Margaret proclaimed triumphantly, after some cogitation.

But five years later, during the terrible winter of 1455, both Morgan and Tabitha Maynard were drowned when the Rownham ferry capsized in the River Avon during a violent storm.

By this time, the three elder girls from Morgan’s first marriage, Clemency, Sybilla and Charity, were grown up, all in their early to late twenties, all still unmarried, all still living at home, Oswald was twelve and their half-brother and — sister younger again. As the women appeared to be inclined to the single state, it seemed natural that they should decide to bring up the younger members of the family without calling upon any outside help; an arrangement that suited everybody and which still, apparently, pertained to the present day, even though Oswald was now a man of forty and the half-siblings in their thirties.

‘Doesn’t anyone in the family believe in marriage?’ I had asked at this juncture.

Margaret had smiled. ‘They were always, to my way of thinking, a very odd family. A very close-knit unit, who all put great store by being a Godslove and were slightly contemptuous of anyone who wasn’t. It’s difficult to explain to someone who’s never experienced the ties of a large kinship. But even so, big families normally admit outsiders. They have to. But the Godsloves were different, Unhealthily so.’ Margaret had pulled a face. ‘I only visited them a couple of times, with Father, when they lived at Keynsham, but the atmosphere struck me as. . as almost incestuous.’

When Oswald Godslove was fourteen, or thereabouts, he had suddenly taken it into his head that he wanted to study for the law, and although there were lawyers enough in Bristol willing to employ and train a clerk, his three sisters had decided that nothing else would do, but he must go to London, to the Inns of Court, off the Strand. And the rest of the family would, of course, go with him. Money, if not exactly short, was not plentiful, either, but they had what their father had left them and what they could make on the sale of the Keynsham house. Sacrifices would have to be made, but in such a worthy cause, no one was complaining. Somehow, they had scraped together sufficient money to enable them to buy the place in which they now lived, a decaying mansion just outside the Bishop’s Gate, but big enough to accommodate them all, and there they had remained ever since, even though Oswald was now a successful lawyer and growing richer by the day. (As most lawyers, at least in my experience, do.)

When Margaret had finally finished telling me this complicated tale — or what she had managed to turn into a complicated tale, but was really quite straightforward once I had sorted the wheat from the chaff — I asked, ‘But how does Adela fit into the story?’

Margaret considered this as she loaded her spindle with wool.

‘I’m not perfectly sure,’ she admitted at last. ‘She could only have been about six years old when the Godsloves left Keynsham and went to London. But she had visited them once or twice, maybe oftener. I know for certain that she went once because she came with Father and me. But I feel sure that her mother, who was also Morgan’s cousin, must have taken her on visits. Katharina — God rest her soul! — was a very nosy woman and was never happier than when she was prying into other folk’s business. So I should guess that Adela might have become friends with Celia, the daughter of the second marriage, who was, it’s true, maybe three or four years older than herself. But then Adela always seemed more mature than her actual age. Perhaps the two girls started writing to one another, and have continued to do so throughout their lives. Stupidly, I’ve never asked Adela who her correspondent is, which of the numerous Godsloves, but now I think about it seriously, Celia would seem the most likely person.’ She continued spinning for a moment or two in silence, then suddenly laughed. ‘I recollect my poor father going to see them once on his own. He came back absolutely appalled. I can remember him exclaiming, “Eight children! Eight of them! You can imagine the noise! All of them talking and shouting together!” I think it made him thankful that he only had the one.’