A Winter’s Tale: A festive winter read from the bestselling Queen of Christmas romance
fingered the heavy chased gold cross that swung against her bony chest—and I remembered I had seen the small silver pentacle on its chain around her neck earlier that day, the two symbols in incongruous proximity. Perhaps they summed up the conflicting sides of her heritage—the old religion hidden against her skin, the new for outward show?
With the brisk, detached air of a tour guide running late (which of course I recognised, having been one), she took me round the major rooms of the house. ‘Dining room, drawing room, morning room, library, cloakroom…Mr Yatton’s office is here, in the solar tower, and of course at Winter’s End he is always called the steward, rather than estate manager.’
‘Like on a cruise ship?’
‘I know nothing of cruise ships: the appellation is a tradition here,’ she said dampeningly.
This part of the house was only vaguely familiar, for my allotted domain as a child had been the nursery, kitchen wing and garden. Stumbling after her through such a warren of dark passages that I half-expected a giant rabbit to bound around the corner at any minute, I thought that each room seemed dingier and more neglected than the last. But I suppose once the sun vanished and the day started to fade it was bound to look worse, especially since the lights weren’t switched on.
‘This is Lady Anne’s parlour.’ She cracked open a door a few measly inches, then prepared to shut it again.
‘Lady Anne? You don’t mean Alys Blezzard’s daughter, do you?’ I asked, sticking my head under her arm and peering round the door into a small chamber, whose furnishings and decoration, like that of the rest of the house, were an eclectic mix of several centuries.
‘Yes, did Susan tell you about her? This was her favourite room and, so it is said, her mother’s before her. She was the heiress, of course, and married a cousin, so she remained Anne Winter and stayed on at Winter’s End. Over there in the alcove is the wooden coffer that Alys Blezzard’s household book was always kept in. We discovered both the book and key had vanished soon after your mother left, and so drew the obvious conclusion…but then, being the elder of us, Ottie had charge of the key after your grandmother died, and she is so careless, even with important things.’
The box was about two feet long and perhaps thirteen or fourteen inches high, with two narrow bands of carved flowers and foliage to the front. The sturdy strap-work hinges and lock plate were of decorative pierced metal.
‘It’s quite plain, isn’t it?’ I said, feeling slightly disappointed. ‘Somehow I expected it to be more ornate—and bigger.’
‘This one is a very unusual design for the late sixteenth century,’ she corrected me, with a look of severe disapproval. ‘Not only is the inside heavily carved instead of the outside, it also has a drop front and is fitted out with compartments. Family legend has it that Alys Blezzard’s husband, Thomas, gave it to her as a bridal gift, since he was afraid that she might be suspected of witchcraft if she left her book and some of the ingredients she used to make her various charms and potions lying around.’
‘So she really was a witch?’
‘Only a white witch—little more than what we today would call a herbalist,’ Aunt Hebe said defensively, and her long bony fingers curled around her gold cross.
I turned back to the box. ‘So, how did you know the book was missing, if you hadn’t got the key, Aunt Hebe?’
‘The box was lighter, and nothing moved inside it when it was tilted.’
‘Of course—though if it had been one of those huge heavy affairs with a complicated locking mechanism, which I thought it would be, I don’t suppose you would have known it had gone.’
‘Actually, there is one of those in the estate office, full of old family papers, which I expect Mr Yatton will show you, if you are interested. That’s where my brother discovered the original plans for both the terrace gardens and the maze, rolled up in a bundle of later documents. Smaller boxes like this one were probably intended to keep precious things like spices under lock and key originally, but Alys locked away her mother’s household book instead.’
‘Which became known as Alys Blezzard’s book—even though she was really Alys Winter after she married Thomas?’
‘Yes. When she received the book after her mother’s death, she continued to add to it, as women did then, often passing them on for several generations. But at the front she still signed herself as Alys Blezzard, so I don’t think she ever really considered herself to be a Winter. She was the last of that particular branch of the Blezzards too; her father married three times, but had no more children.’
Like a curse, I thought, shivering. I noticed that Charlie was looking fixedly at a point behind me, his tail wagging, but when I turned there was nobody there—or nobody visible.
‘I keep having the feeling that there’s someone standing right behind me, Aunt Hebe. Is the house haunted? I mean, apart from Alys.’
‘Oh, yes. When you were a little girl you called your imaginary friend Alys—I had forgotten. And you were quite convinced that she talked to you! But of course she does haunt the house, because of her tragically early death, and there are several other ghosts including the robed figure of a man from about the same time. They say the family was hiding a Catholic priest who was taking gold back to the Continent, to further the work of the Church, but he was betrayed and is still searching for his treasure.’
‘You’d think if he hid it he would know where it was, wouldn’t you?’
‘Well, yes, I suppose so, though each generation has made major alterations to Winter’s End so he might be a trifle confused. There are several other legends too, for of course there had been a dwelling on this site for many centuries before Winter’s End was built. If you are interested in such things, there is a book in the library called Hidden Hoards of the North-West…unless Jack still has it. He’s been fascinated by the idea of hidden treasure since he was a little boy,’ she added indulgently, ‘and I had to read to him from that book at bedtime every night.’
That caused me another unworthy pang of jealousy. ‘You used to read to me from a scary Victorian book of bible stories, Aunt Hebe!’
‘But you were an ungodly child,’ she said severely, ‘born of sin.’
I didn’t think I had been particularly wayward, just mischievous, but I let it go. ‘Have you seen any of the ghosts?’
‘I thought I saw a Saxon in the garden once, at dusk, looking for the hoard he had hidden before a battle. But it was probably just one of the gardeners.’
The windows of Lady Anne’s parlour looked out over the terraces at the back of the house and were curtained in a predominantly coral-coloured William Morris fabric. The walls above the inevitable dark wainscoting had been painted the same shade, and coral tones softly echoed in the faded, but still beautiful, carpet.
I felt as though the room was casting an aura of welcome around me and I could see myself sitting there in the evening, piecing together my crazy cushions. ‘Aunt Hebe, would you mind if I used this room? It’s lovely, and I’ll need somewhere to make my patchwork.’
‘I can’t say I ever much cared for sitting in here,’ she said, looking slightly surprised, ‘and though Mother was a skilled needlewoman and used to embroider beautifully, she did it in the drawing room after dinner. The firescreen in the study is her work.’
‘I’ll look out for it. Where do you like to sit in the evening, Aunt Hebe?’
‘Sometimes one place, sometimes another…’ she said vaguely, like an elderly Titania—which indeed, she resembled. ‘Though I often work in the stillroom until late, or go out—I am on several village committees. There is a TV in the library, but I also have one in my room, for William and I tended to live very separate lives.’
‘We didn’t have a TV in the commune and I’ve never really felt