Читать книгу A Winter’s Tale: A festive winter read from the bestselling Queen of Christmas romance - Trisha Ashley - Страница 13

Father hath ridden over and hastily closed with the bargain, not seeking my wishes in the matter, though it is contrary to my will. I hear rumours that he too is to wed again, not a month after my mother and the babe departed this life…

From the journal of Alys Blezzard, 1580

After she had gone I let Charlie finish the Eccles cake, since he clearly needed feeding up—but on the floor, not the ancient and quite beautiful patchwork quilt.

It obviously refreshed him, because afterwards he started to chase invisible mice around the room, energetically leaping and pouncing.

There was an antiquated little bathroom through what looked like a cupboard door in the panelling, but I had little time to do more than splash my face with tepid water and shove my snarled hair behind my ears before I heard someone beat merry hell out of a gong, down in the depths of the house.

‘Now, where do you think lunch is?’ I asked Charlie, who wagged his tail but showed no sign of guiding me there, though he did follow me out when I called him.

I retraced my steps to the minstrels’ gallery and luckily spotted Jonah crossing the Great Hall. He was wearing a stiff brown linen apron and staggering under the weight of a huge tray, on which reposed several covered serving dishes and a large squeezy bottle of scarlet ketchup.

Quickly I ran downstairs and followed him through the door into the West Wing and then into the breakfast room.

‘There you are,’ said Aunt Hebe, a spooky figure in the Stygian gloom. ‘We always eat in here when it is just family—so much cosier and more convenient than the dining room, I always think.’

While I wouldn’t have called a room that was a ten-minute hike from the kitchens convenient, I supposed it was all relative. Once my eyes had adjusted to the darkness I did have vague recollections of the room, with its sturdy Victorian table, carved wooden fire surround and the faded hearth rug on which Charlie immediately curled, in front of the dead grate. But if only someone had taken the trouble to wipe the grime of years from the windows, things would have looked a lot better.

Or maybe they would have looked worse? For, while there was some evidence of a little low-level duster activity, the wainscoting and furniture didn’t exactly gleam with beeswax and love, and whole colonies of spiders seemed to have taken up residence in the dirty chandelier. Did no one in this house ever look up?

The table had been reduced to a cosy ten feet or so in length by removing several leaves, which were stacked against the wall. Two places had been set.

Hebe indicated that I should sit at the head of the table. ‘William’s chair, of course, and though it should be Jack’s place now, since my poor misguided brother made it perfectly clear that you were to be the head of the household, so be it—until poor dear Jack can take his rightful place.’

Jonah, who had been clattering things about on a side table, now plonked a warm plate down in front of each of us. Then, removing tarnished silver covers from the serving dishes with a flourish, he handed round two pastry-crusted hotpot pies, some mushy peas and a generous helping of pickled red cabbage.

‘You’ve forgotten the water,’ Aunt Hebe reminded him.

‘I’ve only got one pair of hands, missis, haven’t I?’ he grumbled, adding cloudy tumblers and a large jug of dubious-looking fluid to the table. Then he stood back and said benevolently, ‘There you are, then—and your semolina pud’s on the hotplate yonder when you’re ready for it, with the blackcurrant jam.’

‘Thank you, Jonah.’

‘Yes, thank you,’ I echoed, looking down at my plate, on which the violent red of the pickled cabbage had begun to seep its vinegary way into the green of the mushy peas. I put out my hand for my napkin, then hesitated, for it had been crisply folded into the shape of a white waterlily and it seemed a shame to open it.

Jonah leaned over my shoulder and poked it with one not altogether pristine finger. ‘Nice, ain’t it? It’d be easier with paper serviettes, though, like they have at the evening class down at the village hall. It’ll be swans next week.’

‘Will it? Won’t the necks be difficult?’

‘Thank you, Jonah,’ Aunt Hebe said again with slightly more emphasis, before he could reply, and he ambled off, grinning. Charlie hauled himself up and followed him, and I hoped Mrs Lark would give him something to eat. I was so starving I’d rather not share my hotpot pie, and I didn’t think he would fancy mushy peas or pickled cabbage.

Mind you, my last dog ate orange peel, so you just never know.

‘We generally find our own lunch and tea in the kitchen, but Mrs Lark wanted to give you something hot today. Though there is usually soup—’ she looked around as if surprised at its absence—‘and we just have fruit for dessert. But today there’s semolina, which is apparently your favourite pudding.’

‘It might have been once…I can’t remember.’ I hoped Mrs Lark wasn’t going to feed me exclusively on the type of nursery diet I ate as a child. My tastes have changed a little over the years.

Mind you, when I stirred a generous dollop of home-made blackcurrant jam into my semolina and it went a strange purple-grey colour, it did all sort of come back to me why I had liked it—stodgy puds are nearly as comforting as chocolate.

When we had finished, and Jonah had brought coffee in mismatched cups and saucers, Aunt Hebe said that she would give me a brief tour of the house. ‘Just enough to remind you of the layout, for I am sure you will want a more detailed survey as soon as you have time,’ she said shrewdly.

She was quite right, I was already mentally compiling a mammoth shopping list of cleaning materials, some of them only obtainable from specialist suppliers. It was lucky I already knew a good one, called Stately Solutions, wasn’t it? Serendipity again, you see.

‘After that, I am afraid I must go out, she said, glancing down at the watch pinned to her cardigan. ‘I am closely involved in the work of the Church, and it is my turn to do the flowers.’

She 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 the need for one since, but we always had a radio when I worked at Lady Betty’s. I like to listen to Radio 4 when I’m sewing. You can’t really watch something and sew properly, can you?’

‘I don’t know, I’ve never tried.’ She looked at her watch and then shooed me out along a tapestry-hung passage and up some spiral stairs. The door at the top opened between my bedroom and the arch leading to the upper level of the tower, which was a complete surprise—I’d noticed it, but thought it was another cupboard.

‘I don’t remember these stairs at all!’

‘That is because you were not allowed to use them. William insisted you were confined to the nursery and the kitchens, though we were forever finding you sliding down the Great Hall banisters. There are the stairs to the attic nursery floor over there, which you will recall, so we won’t bother going up—the rest of the roof space is now entirely given up to storage. I keep the door to that side locked, otherwise Grace sneaks off up there and smokes.’

She turned on her white, wellington-booted heel and sped off, appearing to be losing interest in the tour fast. ‘You know this bedroom floor already,’ she tossed over her shoulder. ‘There are six bedrooms—eight if you include the nursery suite—but the Rose Room is never used.’

I fell down some ill-lit steps and bumped into her round the corner as she came to an abrupt stop.

‘Turn left and you enter the Long Room again, at the end of which is the door to the East Wing where there are further bedchambers, the Larks’ living quarters, and the backstairs to the kitchens. This one takes us onto the landing, of course, commonly called the minstrels’ gallery, and, since it projects over the hall, I expect they did sometimes have musicians there when they were entertaining. When Ottie and I were girls we had parties with dancing in the Great Hall, and the band sat up here and played.’

That must have been quite a sight—the tall, slim, blue-eyed Miss Winters, their red-gold hair floating as they danced the night away with their dinner-jacketed partners…

‘What sort of music did you dance to?’ I asked curiously, and would have loved to have known if she had a favourite partner too, had she been in the mood for reminiscence, but the past clearly held no fascination for Aunt Hebe. Ignoring my question as though I had never asked it, she carried on with her tour. ‘The Great Hall and the solar are much older than the rest of the house, but the Winters were forever knocking bits down and rebuilding them. You can see from the blocked fireplace halfway up the wall that the hall was once single storey with rooms over it, and then the height was increased and the ceiling plastered, leaving only the minstrels’ gallery.’

She clomped off and I could feel the gallery floorboards bouncing under my feet. ‘Most of the lesser family portraits are hung here, and on open days the visitors can come up. We lock the door at the end, but the family can still reach either wing of the house by way of the Long Room if they wish, without meeting a member of the public.’

‘It’s very dark; you can hardly make the portraits out. Does anyone actually want to come up here?’

‘Oh, yes, for Shakespeare is rumoured to have visited Winter’s End, and if so presumably would have stood on this very spot—if he came at all. But show me an old manor house in this part of Lancashire where he isn’t supposed to have been!’

‘Really?’ I said, interested. ‘I didn’t know that.’

She shrugged bony shoulders impatiently. ‘There is a theory that he spent the Lost Years here in Lancashire, in the employment of various local families, especially the Hoghtons—and he is supposed to have a particular connection with Rufford Old Hall, near Ormskirk, which is now, of course, a National Trust property. There is a book about it in the library, I believe.’

‘Really? I’ll look for it later, along with that hidden treasures one.’

It was beginning to look as if I would have plenty of bedtime reading for the foreseeable future!

Aunt Hebe was losing interest in Shakespeare. ‘One of the volunteer stewards, the Friends of Winter’s End, stands at either end of the gallery, and they have a fund of anecdotes concerning his apocryphal visit and stories about Alys Blezzard. That portrait in the middle is supposed to be her, but it is some dreadful affair painted by a jobbing artist, from the look of it, more used to depicting prize bulls and sheep.’

‘Hard to tell,’ I agreed, peering at it. ‘It looks as if it has been dipped in Brown Windsor soup. In fact, most of the paintings I’ve seen seem in want of a cleaning.’

‘Only a few in the Long Room were cleaned when your grandfather was searching for something to pay the death duties with. But once they found the Stubbs, that sufficed.’

She started to descend the stairs, but I paused and ran my hand over the curved banister, remembering the small Sophy who used to climb up onto it, clinging on for dear life as she swooshed down…

The Great Hall looked dark and yawningly empty below me, but not half as big as I recalled—nothing was. The house, which had seemed so huge in my childhood memories, had in reality shrunk to quite modest proportions, though it would still be a worryingly monumental task to restore it to its former glory.

‘Do you ever light the fire now?’ I asked, joining her at the bottom of the stairs.

‘The fire?’ She turned to look at it, as if, by magic, flames would appear. ‘We always used to—but I suppose no one has given the orders since William died.’

She pointed at a stack of screens against one wall. ‘On open days all these are set out into a display of the history of the house, the supposed Shakespeare connection—and Alys Blezzard’s story, of course. You know the legend is she was distantly related through her mother to the Nutters, who were known witches?’

‘Yes, Mum told me all about that. She said Alys really was a witch.’

‘Yes…Susan was always a fanciful child,’ Aunt Hebe said dismissively. ‘A knowledge of simple herbs and their curative effects does not mean one is versed in the black arts and in league with the devil.’ She pulled out the corner of a screen: ‘This one is the history of Winter’s End and the Winter family. Then there is the story of how the original Elizabethan plans for the terrace were discovered and the restoration begun—and about the missing part for the lower terrace.’

‘Missing?’

‘Yes, torn off and not anywhere to be found. William and Seth were still arguing about what might have been on the lower terrace right up until the end. Indeed, the arguments kept William’s spirits up amazingly.’

‘Seth?’

‘The head gardener—so called.’

‘Oh, yes, I’d forgotten, though his name’s pretty apt for a gardener, isn’t it? Sort of Cold Comfort Farm. I only hope there isn’t something nasty in the woodshed.’

‘Only wood,’ she said seriously, ‘and spiders—did you mean spiders? I am not fond of them myself, but freshly gathered cobwebs make an excellent poultice for wounds.’

The tour ended in the kitchen, where Mrs Lark was sitting in a rocking chair in front of the Aga knitting, with the radio on. Charlie lay in a position of blissful abandon on a rag rug at her feet. His stomach, as round as if he’d swallowed a small football, rose and fell to his stertorous breathing.

Aunt Hebe again consulted the watch attached to her flat bosom by a bow-shaped golden brooch. ‘Time to go—but before I do, I will be happy to pass you these.’

And she literally did pass me the most enormous bunch of keys, some of them museum pieces in their own right. ‘But Aunt Hebe, I can’t take these from you!’ I protested.

‘There is no reason why not, for this bunch is mainly symbolic. We hardly ever lock anything away—except the Book, when we had it, and a fat lot of good that did us. Indeed, I have no idea what half of the keys are for, and in any case I was only ever nominal housekeeper, for Mrs Lark does it all. No, my business is the walled garden—which that Seth Greenwood is forbidden to touch! I grow practically all the fruit and vegetables for the house and I have bees and chickens. And of course, the stillroom through there is for my use only. You may look at both,’ she added grandly, ‘but not poke and pry and stick your fingers into what doesn’t concern you!’

‘Yes, Aunt Hebe,’ I said meekly, hearing the echo of the same words in the voice of an eight-year-old, curious to know what her witchy ancient relative was cooking up.

‘I expect Mrs Lark will show you her apartment herself, though perhaps after your long journey you might wish to put off any further inspections of your realm until another day,’ she said slightly acidly, and departed back through the swinging, baize-lined door to the hall.

She left a snail trail of silver sequins behind her: she must have caught a loose thread on something.