Clarice removed her sore, creased ear from the door’s seam and looked to the ceiling as she tried to draw breath to her churning depths.
Lady Raisa was up there, likely greatly displeased with her failed attempts to kill Lady Beata and her husband, attack the wool stores, and harm Clarice’s mother. What might she do between now and her departure on the morrow?
Clarice shivered. Hating herself for the fear urging her to bolt herself in her chamber until the night passed, she told herself to be brave and go up there and warn the witch that if ever she even looked at her mother she would find her eyes clawed out.
Told herself once…twice…a third time, then absolving herself of weakness with the reminder she was not even ten, hastened to her chamber. And barely suppressed a cry of alarm when Tina, who had taken ill this morn with a cough and running nose, groaned and turned on her pallet.
As Clarice remained unmoving, waiting for the maid to go back down into sleep, she promised herself that if that hag was still at High Castle on the morrow, she would confront her then. In daylight it would not matter so much that her years numbered less than ten. No one was going to hurt or take from her the mother she had only just found and meant to keep.
Chapter 35
The physician would be in his bed now, as were all those within the donjon excepting the few warriors who kept watch over the hall. It was dark. And safe.
Grateful for the slight weight that hardly disturbed aged floorboards, the one who had been waiting a long time for this moment stepped onto the dimly-lit landing to the soft click of that which hung from a girdle.
A guard was posted outside Lady Raisa’s chamber—to be expected, though it had not been.
I truly am as weary as I would have Lothaire believe, Sebille excused the slip of her mind as she advanced on the man who straightened from the wall.
She halted before him. “All is quiet?”
“Too quiet, my lady. No snoring, meaning she is likely unable to sleep.”
She patted his arm. “Gain your rest. I shall sit with her.”
“The remainder of the night?”
“Aye, her last night here.”
He inclined his head and stepped past.
Sebille gathered strength to speak words long unspoken, then stepped inside and closed the door.
“You,” Lady Raisa croaked where she sat propped on pillows, the light of candles on a bedside table revealing how pale she was.
It made Sebille’s heart hurt as she did not wish it to. Not for this woman. Such hurt ought to be all for Angus.
“Aye, ’tis Sebille,” she said as she walked forward. “Not your daughter. Never your daughter. This I know.”
“How?”
Sebille settled on the bed beside Raisa, and as the older woman sank further into the pillows, covered an aged hand with her own.
The old woman snatched it away, said again, “How?”
You will not cry, Sebille told herself. Words. That is what you came to give, not tears one such as she does not deserve.
She angled her body nearer and, fighting the longing to take up her prayer beads, gripped her hands in her lap. “I do not truly hate you. What I hate is what you did to me—the childhood you stole.” She closed her eyes. “Oh, my beautiful childhood.” She returned her gaze to the one staring at her. “My youth. The husband and children I ought to have. Your love—”
“Tell me how,” Raisa barked.
“More than anything, I hate that you stole my father.” Sebille frowned. “I confess I did hate you until we learned it was Lady Beata’s cousin who murdered him. Until then, I thought it very possible you killed him.”
Raisa was quaking, color seeping into her skin. “How?”
“How, indeed.” Sebille sighed. “The night he left never to return, I heard the two of you arguing.”
Raisa gasped, wheezed as if she had taken spit into her lungs.
“That is how I know who I am, who I was to father, who I am not to you, and who you are not to me. I know it hurt when you learned the truth, but I was innocent and undeserving of vengeance. All you had to do was love me as you had before—even half as much would have been enough.”
“You who did foul deeds in my name are the daughter of a whore!”
“Only by birth. Until you found that missive, I was the daughter of your heart. Your miracle.”
“Miracle! You are deception. Disease. You are—” A gust of air exited her mouth, and the hands she refused Sebille began to clutch at her head.
Her antics nearly made Sebille retch. “Pray, cease. I know what you do—what ever you do to gain pity and prolong your stay at High Castle.”
Raisa moaned. Familiar as well. But then her eyes began to jerk, and it looked as if one side of her face slid down.
Sebille sprang off the bed. “Is this real, Mother?” she surprised herself by how thoughtlessly she claimed kinship with the woman. “Is it?”
“You!” Raisa said with a slur and pointed at Sebille. “You!” Then the arm with which she pointed dropped. Hand hooked, she gripped the fallen arm and jerkily rubbed it elbow to shoulder.
Was this truly her end? Sebille wondered as she stared at the one she did not have in common with her beloved brother.
Leave her to it, urged the anger sown deep. Why make hell wait when it can have her now?
“Is this real?” Sebille asked again, and receiving no response beyond the sound of suffering, reminded herself it mattered not if this was a ploy to deliver Lothaire to his mother’s side. Regardless what Raisa told of her meeting with Sebille, he would think it born of further spite—would never believe his sister had composed messages in his mother’s name in the hope they would reflect ill on Raisa.
The older woman made a sound even more terrible, one never before heard.
“I shall summon the physician,” Sebille cried and ran.
Guilt. Such an appetite it had.
Lothaire had been certain Sebille was duped again, that her own guilt which had returned her abovestairs near the middling of night made her believe the unbelievable. But the physician’s confirmation Raisa Soames had suffered a stroke was not needed. One had but to look upon her to know she was truly near the end of her life. And no matter how hard she tried to form words with a terribly misshapen mouth, only her eyes were speaking—with desperation and pleading. When she slept finally, Lothaire loosed the hand he had held for hours and followed Martin into the corridor.
“It has been a long night, my lord. You ought to sleep while you can. I believe ’twill be a longer day.”
“You do not think she will survive it?”
“Unlikely.”
Lothaire nodded. “You will send for me if she turns for the worse?”
“Of course, my lord.”
Lothaire traversed the corridor, descended the stairs, and after checking on his sister who slept in the middle of her bed with knees clasped to her chest, entered the solar whose shutters were open to let in dawn’s light.
Laura hastened to his side. “Is your mother as ill as Sebille feared?”
“Aye, she will not make it to her dower property. The remainder of her life shall be spent here.”
She cupped his face. “As it should be.”