A Winter’s Tale: A festive winter read from the bestselling Queen of Christmas romance
Mother, what did you foretell, when you held my hand so tightly and wept, then said that the future could not be altered and I must go to the manor of Wynter’s End in your stead?
From the journal of Alys Bezzard, 1580
No house as ancient as Winter’s End was ever entirely silent: even at eight years old, Sophy Winter knew that. Crouched on the floor of the gallery, she felt like Jonah sitting in the belly of the whale, surrounded by creaks and sighing, feeling, rather than hearing, the heavy heartbeat of a distant long-case clock and the sharply flatulent rattling of the water pipes.
She peered through the wooden banisters, down into the depths of the stone-flagged Great Hall where her grand—father’s King Charles spaniels lay in a tangled, snoring, comatose heap on a rag rug before the log fire.
Nothing stirred in the darker shadows beyond. Satisfied, she ran to the end of the gallery and climbed onto a curved stair rail that seemed to have been designed for little fingers to grip; then, clinging on for dear life, she slid with an exhilarating, rushing swoosh! of cold air, right to the bottom.
Slowing down was always tricky. Fetching up with a thump against a newel post bearing a carved cherub’s head, she lost her grip and would have fallen off, had she not been caught and rather roughly set on her feet.
In the ensuing silence, a moth-eaten stag’s head dropped off the wall and landed with a clatter, glassy eyes vacantly staring at the intricately plastered ceiling.
Sophy looked up and her impish, round-cheeked face, framed in dark curls, not unlike the carved cherub’s behind her, became instantly serious. Grandfather didn’t like her to use the front stairs, let alone slide down the banisters. In fact, Grandfather didn’t seem to like her at all, and it was somehow Mummy’s fault—and where was Mummy? If Sophy hadn’t been sitting on the gallery floor watching for her for so long, she wouldn’t have been tempted to slide down the banisters in the first place.
Grandfather stared back at her, ferocious bushy brows drawn together over a formidable nose and an arrested expression in his eyes. ‘A Pharamond, that’s who your father was,’ he said slowly, ‘from over Middlemoss way. Why didn’t I see that before? But which one…?’
Nervously Sophy began slowly to back away, ready to make a run for the safety of the kitchen wing.
‘Hebe!’ he shouted suddenly, making Sophy jump and all the spaniels start awake and rush over, yapping.
‘What are you bellowing for? You sound like a cross between the Last Trump and a cow in labour,’ Great-Aunt Hebe snapped, appearing suddenly round the carved screen. Her fine, pale, red-gold hair stood out around her head in a flossy halo and she brandished a large wooden spoon that dripped a glutinous splat onto the flagged floor. One of the spaniels licked it tentatively: you never knew quite what Hebe was cooking up.
Sophy gave a little nervous giggle—Grandfather was loud enough to wake the dead slumbering in the graveyard, and since that was her least favourite of Aunt Hebe’s biblical bedtime stories she found the idea slightly worrying…
‘Aunt Hebe,’ she said urgently, running to her and grabbing a handful of slightly tacky cotton apron, ‘the dead people won’t climb out and walk round the graveyard in their bones, will they?’
‘No, they’ll all wait for the end of the world,’ Hebe said. ‘It was just a figure of speech.’
She looked over her head at her brother. ‘What’s up?’
‘The child was sliding down the banisters again.’
‘Well, she is a child. You did it, I did it, Ottie did it…we all did it! Now, let me get back to my stillroom. Come on, Sophy, you can give me a hand.’
‘Wait,’ he said. ‘Take a look at her and tell me which family round here has black, curly hair? I don’t know why I didn’t realise it before: she’s a Pharamond.’
‘What, from the Mosses?’ Hebe held Sophy away and stared at her. ‘What nonsense! There’s been the occasional dark-haired Winters ever since Alys Blezzard married into the family in the sixteenth century—and anyway, all the Pharamonds I’ve ever met have had dark blue eyes, not hazel, and narrow, aquiline noses. If anything, Sophy’s nose turns up.’
‘She’s got the look,’ he insisted.
‘I don’t think so—and does it matter anyway?’
‘Of course it bloody matters! They’re all mad as hatters in Middlemoss!’
‘Sophy isn’t mad.’
‘Oh, no? What about her imaginary playmate?’
Aunt Hebe shrugged. ‘Lots of children have invisible friends.’
‘Alys isn’t always invisible,’ Sophy said in a small voice, but Grandfather didn’t seem to hear her.
‘I’m sure I’m right,’ he said, ‘and why wouldn’t Susan say who the father was, unless he was a married man? God knows where she’s been the last few days, but if she doesn’t mend her ways, she’ll find herself out on her ear.’
At this inopportune moment, Susan Winter slid in through the great oak door, setting down a colourful carpetbag on the floor; tall, fair, slender and pretty in a long, floaty dress with little bells that chimed softly as she moved, smelling of sandalwood and patchouli. Like a fairy, Sophy always thought, not a dark little hobgoblin like herself.
‘So you’re back, then? Where have you been?’ Grandfather demanded, switching that fierce gaze to a new victim. ‘And, more to the point, who have you been with? Another married man?’
Susan, who had been smiling vaguely at the group, her blue eyes unfocused, flinched and took a step backwards. ‘W-what do you mean? Some friends took me to the Reading Festival to see Genesis, that’s all, Daddy!’
‘Friends! I know the riffraff you call friends! Layabouts and hippie scum! I’m telling you, Susan, I won’t tolerate any more of your loose behaviour, so if you want me to house you and your bas—’
‘Not in front of the child!’ protested Hebe, and Sophy was suddenly snatched off her feet and carried away through the baize-lined door to the kitchen wing. It slammed behind them, cutting off the escalating sound of shouting and weeping.
‘What’s Mummy done now?’ Sophy asked, as she was set back down again. ‘Is it my fault, for making Grandfather angry? Aunt Hebe, what has Mummy—’
‘Quickly!’ Aunt Hebe said, flapping her apron and shooing her through the kitchen past Mrs Lark, like a reluctant hen into the coop.
The cook, who was single-mindedly pounding steaks with a sort of knobbly wooden mallet, looked up long enough to remark, ‘Bile pills, that’s what he’ll be needing, before the night’s out,’ before resuming her assault.
‘Deadly nightshade, more like,’ muttered Aunt Hebe. ‘Come on, Sophy, into the stillroom—I’ve got rose conserve on the stove, and I don’t want it spoiled. And you should know by now that your grandfather is all bark and no bite.’
Although Aunt Hebe was tall and rangy and not at all cosy, she always smelled of roses, which was safe and somehow comforting, unlike Mummy’s patchouli, which made Sophy feel excited but vaguely unsettled, much like Mummy herself did.
And after Mummy took her away late that night, leaving behind Winter’s End, Aunt Hebe, the little dogs, and everything loved and familiar, she always did find the scent of roses a comfort in an alien world, long after she had forgotten the reason why.