Ravenscliffe by Jane Sanderson Page B

been replaced by a tense silence, broken occasionally by an ill-tempered outburst from the cook. Eve had considered offering to stay and help with other things, but she thought again when Mrs Adams flung a basin of spoiled hollandaise at the wall. It wasn’t characteristic of the cook, this irrational, hysterical behaviour, and it wasn’t going to help put a ten-course banquet on the table either. Asmall posse of kitchen maids, cowed into silence by the horror of the smashed bowl and the slick of pale yellow sauce sliding down the tiles, shrank back as one to let Eve pass when she left them all to it. She hoped that by the time she returned at half-past five, a semblance of order would have been restored.
    ‘Where’s Anna?’ Silas said. ‘Didn’t see her in the crowds.’
    ‘No, you won’t find Anna anywhere near King Edward. She doesn’t rate ’im.’
    Silas laughed, but he wasn’t really amused. Personally, he found Anna’s disapproval too liberally distributed; he had realised from her tight smile that he wasn’t always welcome at Beaumont Lane when Eve wasn’t there. It didn’t surprise him now to hear that the king was on her blacklist too.
    ‘She thinks ’e should ’ave brought t’queen, for a start. And she doesn’t like what she’s read about ’im. Y’know, t’way ’e carries on.’
    Silas shrugged. ‘He can do as he pleases.’
    ‘Aye well, and so can Anna. She’s with Amos, I think.’
    ‘Ah, yes, Comrade Sykes. Another one unlikely to cheer the king, I should imagine.’
    This casual derision played uneasily with Eve; Silas knew so little about any of them that to mock seemed hardly appropriate. But she let it pass, because he was smiling and seemed to mean no harm and because his presence in her kitchen still seemed nothing short of miraculous. They looked at each other for a moment, seeing in each other’s faces the similarity to themselves. With his fine clothes and well-modulated voice he might have been called an imposter, except for this startling resemblance to his sister. They could have been twins, Eve and Silas, everyone said so, and once there’d been five of them, all with the same fine features and dark eyes: Eve, the oldest, then Silas, then the little ones, Clara, Michael and Thomas. Not much more than babies really, when they died, all of them under three years old. Looking at Silas now called them tomind: Clara would have been seventeen in November, Eve thought. She could see the little girl in her brother, though by the end Clara had been drawn and hollow-eyed with hunger and sickness. How good life had been to Silas, and to her: how bitterly cruel the fate of their siblings. The unfulfilled promise of those three little souls, the injustice to them of a life denied, weighed heavily on Eve now as she contemplated her own advantages, and those of her affluent, debonair brother.
    ‘Do you think about Grangely?’ she said. ‘Do you think about t’bairns?’
    Silas shifted slightly, folded his arms. The past was hostile terrain, best left alone; he hadn’t expected the question and didn’t much like it. No, never, would have been the honest answer, but he knew how that would sound.
    ‘Do you?’ he said instead.
    ‘Aye. I wish I could have another chance. Now that I’m not a child myself.’
    ‘You did your best. We both did.’
    She dismissed his platitude with the wave of a hand. ‘We knew nowt,’ she said.
    ‘Evie, we were orphans. We’re lucky to be here to tell the tale ourselves. And it’s gone now, it’s the past.’ Truly, he was bewildered at her train of thought. ‘What’s got into you?’
    She couldn’t say for sure. The sorrows of Grangely were long ago, the wounding sharpness of their memory dulled by the passing of time; she remembered the past, of course she did, but only rarely and not in detail. But then along came Silas, and she saw in his face the faces of the little ones and she recalled the horror, the misplaced faith in their