“She spoke in truth. Though once I was hers and loved for the miracle I am not, never have I been her daughter in blood. That which flows through me is only half of what flows through you.”
More senselessness, but now was not the time to demand an explanation. His mother’s rattling was louder.
He set a hand on Lady Raisa’s forehead. “Be at peace, Mother.”
“Pe…Seb…”
“You want Sebille?”
“Nay. You…” She gave a weak cough. “Fo…give…huh.”
“Forgive her?” That could not be what she meant, but it was the only sense he could make of her words, and when she jerked her chin as if to confirm it, he said, “Sebille?”
She eased a hand from his, and its fingers slowly crawled up her chest to her collarbone. “I…made…huh.”
“Aye.” This from Sebille. “You made me into this. But I allowed it.”
“Fo…give…huh.”
“Of course, Mother.”
“An…me.”
He touched his lips to her brow. “All is forgiven. Now rest. Father Atticus will be here soon.” Hardly were the words spoken than one last rattle left her and all that was yet hard in Raisa Soames went soft.
He drew her hand from her chest, settled it atop the one on her abdomen, and looked around. “She is gone from us, Sebille.”
His sister sighed long and set her cheek on Laura’s knees.
He would have liked to allow her to remain thus, but there was a frightened girl who needed to know her mother was safe.
He rose from the bed, kissed the top of his wife’s head, then gently lifted his sister.
She did not sleep, as evidenced by eyes so tightly closed it was as if she feared she would be made to explain what she herself did not understand.
“Clarice?” Laura said low as she pushed up out of the chair.
“In the solar. As soon as I have settled my sister, I will join you.”
She walked ahead of him and down the stairs, paused before the solar door to touch his arm as he carried Sebille past. As she closed the door of their chamber, he heard Clarice’s cry of relief and knew the girl was in her mother’s arms.
Chapter 37
Sebille did not keep them guessing long.
Between the meals of dinner and supper, she sent word by way of Father Atticus that she wished to speak with her brother and his wife.
Accompanied by the priest, she came to the solar with the rest of a tale she knew had too many holes to be believable. Thus, she would fill those which Lady Laura and her daughter had surely been unable to do in relating what was revealed to them, knowing even then it might be inconceivable. Perhaps that was because the tale was heartbreaking…hopeless…cruel. But it would soon be done and no further chapter or word added once she departed High Castle.
Lothaire placed a chair in front of the one into which Father Atticus had handed her, glanced at the priest who went to stand behind his sister, then his wife who had taken the chair alongside Sebille.
Praying Lothaire and Lady Laura would be as understanding and forgiving as Father Atticus who had received her confession of all she had done in Lady Raisa’s name, Sebille curled fingers around her prayer beads.
When her brother lowered to the chair and caught up her hand, she nearly fell to weeping again for fear he might soon toss it aside.
Not Lothaire, she told herself. Not he who loves me nearly as well as I love him.
“I am here.” He smiled. “We are here. Speak when you are ready—or not at all if you are not.”
She glanced over her shoulder at the priest who responded by settling a hand on her shoulder.
“For years Father Atticus has kept the secret a nine-year-old girl entrusted to him after returning to High Castle from which she thought herself banished,” she began.
As expected, Lothaire’s face mapped confusion. He had been too young to comprehend a connection between his missing father and his sister’s absence—perhaps did not even remember she had been gone a fortnight.
“Do you recall how much once I was loved and favored for being a miracle, Lothaire?”
“You were our parents’ joy, far more than this boy who did not behave as he should have.”
She had to smile, for that was the boy she had adored, perhaps as much as she had been adored by Ricard and Raisa Soames. “What you do not know was that our father’s feelings for me had naught to do with a miracle. As he knew well and his wife would not for years, there was naught miraculous about me. And when I was nine, his secret that would become mine was discovered. Now I shall tell it to you.”
“Ricard of my heart, my soul, and my ache, it is done,” Sebille’s mother heralded, turning the heads of those in the hall to where she stepped off the stairs. Continuing forward, she looked up from the parchment she carried, but not at her husband who had paused in breaking his fast—at Sebille, who had been slicing an apple to share with her little brother.
Never had the Lady of Lexeter looked at her daughter that way, the same as she regarded the dog who had messed in front of her a week past and for it received a kick to its soft place.
“Mother?” Sebille spoke into a silence that felt as if all held their breath.
Lady Raisa’s upper lip curled, and the knife Sebille held slipped and sliced the tip of a finger with which she gripped the apple. But she was so shaken she felt only a sting and the warmth of blood running down the other fingers.
Returning her regard to the parchment, her mother continued, “The child is born.”
Ricard Soames thrust upright, causing his chair to screech backward and nearly upend. “Clear the hall! Now!”
As knights, men-at-arms, and servants abandoned their places at table and around the great room, Lady Raisa halted before the dais. “But such enlightening reading I have happened upon, Husband. Surely all ought to know the Lord is not as merciful as we were made to believe.” Once more her gaze fell on Sebille who, along with her brother, could only stare.
Of a sudden, their father was behind them, snatching his children off the bench and, with one beneath each arm, descending the dais.
“Aye,” Sebille’s mother called, “see our miracle safely away lest the deceived harm her. Quite wise, Ricard.”
Harm? Sebille wondered, heart beating so hard she whimpered as her father’s long strides carried Lothaire and her across the hall. Who is the deceived? Why would he wish me harm? And what has so angered Mother she looks at me like that?
Her father lowered her and his son to their feet. “Sebille, take Lothaire—”
“Our daughter is beautiful,” his wife said. “Her hair golden red.”
Thinking whatever had turned her mother’s mood dark was past, Sebille touched her golden-red braid falling over her shoulder, then peered around her father. But it seemed those words were not directed at Sebille. They were read like those others.