The younger woman nodded. “Since now you can keep a secret even better than Father Atticus, I would have you be my confessor. What think you?”
Slowly, Clarice sat back on her heels to better observe the women. Though Lady Raisa’s face was very crooked, there seemed interest in her widening eyes and the arch of an eyebrow.
“I thought you would like that.” The younger woman lifted a lax hand between hers. “You know ’twas me, so that is already told, and you know much of it was vengeance. But ere you leave us, I would assure you the greater part of it was done out of a sister’s concern for her brother, even though we are siblings by only half. I had to save Lothaire from you who should have been gone from High Castle years ago.” She shook her head. “You nearly ruined him. Had your convenient illness not kept him from going to Lady Laura ere the weather turned foul, all these years she would have been wed to him.”
Clarice caught her breath, blessedly not so loudly she disturbed Lady Sebille. However, if the woman followed her mother’s gaze that shot to the girl’s hiding place, her presence might be discovered as easily.
“Would she have proven more faithful than Lady Edeva?” Lady Sebille shrugged. “That cannot be known, but the burden she brought with her as Lothaire’s third wife is of your doing.”
Of what did she speak? Clarice wondered. Had her mother had the opportunity to wed the Baron of Lexeter sooner than she had done? If so, why had she not? And what burden was brought to her marriage?
The lady sighed. “Long I have known where you keep your keys and, more importantly, the household items you hid from Lothaire when he took control of Lexeter. Quite the trove that could have been sold with what you could not hide and which would have eased the financial difficulties caused by your extravagance.”
Lady Raisa mumbled something, shook her head.
“Oh, it is true,” her daughter said. “You know it, as do all. So when you are gone, I will conveniently discover that secret compartment in the solar from which many a time I have taken an item to pay for necessary things like…”
Though more and more Clarice grasped what was said, this she did not understand.
“I hesitate to be specific,” Lady Sebille said, “but you are my confessor, and if the Lord cannot put a seal on your lips, the stroke shall.” She caught up her prayer beads. “From out of your trove I paid the assassins to set upon Lady Beata and Baron Marshal.”
Clarice pressed a hand over her mouth to keep from crying out.
“But ere you rejoice in believing I am as foul as you, those men but played a part. Never were they to commit murder, only to make Lothaire believe that was what you sent them to do. And ’twas I who alerted him to your plans.” She held up a hand as if to prevent her mother from interrupting. “Of course I know they were not your plans, but I was certain you would approve had you thought to do more than snap and snarl and demand Queen Eleanor honor the marriage made between Lothaire and Lady Beata. And I alerted my brother again the day of the shearing supper when two of those same men were to make it appear the fleece stores were under attack.”
Clarice’s head lightened as all she was privy to whirled through her head. And though she felt guilty for eavesdropping on her parents on the night past, she was glad she had. Otherwise, her shock could have revealed she once more listened in on what was to have been a private conversation.
“Thus, Lothaire was going to send you away at long last, and though I do not trust Lady Laura to be a good and dutiful wife, far more difficult that would be with you here. So you had to go. But I never…” She drew a shuddering breath. “I did not mean you to go like this.”
“Lo,” Lady Raisa said again, then more forcefully, “Lo!”
Lady Sebille clapped her hands over her face, and with her prayer beads pouring between her fingers, began to weep. Moments later, a choking sound came from Lady Raisa as if she wept as well.
Clarice crossed her arm over her chest, caught up handfuls of her bodice, and squeezed. In that moment, she wanted what she would have declared she did not—to remain a girl, womanhood so distant she need not give it more than a passing thought. She did not like the world she had forced her way into. It was too complicated, despairing, and dark.
Far more than a young man’s kisses, she wanted to play with the lambs no matter how muddy they made her. More, she wanted arms around her and kisses atop her head, to be enveloped in her mother’s freshly bathed scent rather than the smell of a boy laboring to become a man.
It was almost enough to make her scramble from her hiding place and run. She was fairly certain of success since surprise ought to see her away from the chamber before Lady Sebille could make it off the bed, but two things held her there—fear of the lady whose depth of deception was frightening, and the horror and shame Lady Sebille would feel knowing she had done far more than bare herself to her mother.
Be still, Clarice told herself. When she departs, then you can, the silent Lady Raisa the only witness to your duplicity.
Lady Sebille did not cry long, and when she dried her eyes on her skirt, her mother returned to silence excepting the occasional hiccough.
“Worry not for Lothaire,” Lady Sebille said and touched her lips to her mother’s brow. “I shall keep watch over him, and if his lady wife fails him again, I will make her life so miserable she will wither away the same as Lady Edeva.”
The threat against her mother made outrage suffuse Clarice’s being. It was not the old woman who should be warned Lady Laura’s daughter would claw out her eyes, it was Lady Sebille.
“And if that misbegotten girl proves no different from her mother,” Lady Sebille continued, “I shall find a way to remove her from High Castle. We would not want her to corrupt my brother’s legitimate children.”
“Witch!” Clarice did not know how she made it to her feet before Lady Sebille’s gaze flew across the space between them.
The woman snapped back so hard she nearly tumbled off the bed, but then she was also on her feet and, belatedly, Clarice lunged toward the door.
“Sly, deceitful child,” Lady Sebille screeched and wrenched the girl back. “Filthy, misbegotten—”
“Nay!” Lady Raisa protested. “Nay, Se!”
Lady Sebille flung the girl onto the bed, causing her to fall facedown across the old woman’s bony legs. Clarice rolled to her back, brought her arms up in front of her chest and face.
But Lady Sebille stood unmoving alongside the bed. “You have ruined all,” she snarled.
“You ruined all,” Clarice retorted.
The lady jabbed a finger at the old woman. “Because she ruined all—my father, me, nearly my brother. It began with her, she who is incapable of feeling deep enough to hold onto love when what was thought a miracle is but a mistake, even when that mistake still loves her.”