By four o’clock the day was waning, giving Christmas afternoon that particular poignant winter light. The kitchen was warm and brightly lit, but the cold seeped in through the leaded windows (grade II* listing – no double glazing permitted.) Beyond them the sky was striped with rose pink and the first star had appeared above the stable.
How appropriate, Susannah thought absently, peeling potatoes at the sink.
It was a view she was not yet used to. They had moved into Wintermoor Hall in the last week of November and she had spent the run up to Christmas in a frenzy of activity: unpacking boxes, scrubbing out cupboards, ushering a succession of plumbers, carpenters, electricians and decorators through the house, begging to be quiet as David was finishing edits on a book that had given him an inordinate amount of trouble. (She would be as glad to see the back of it as he was.) Sometimes, perched on top of a stepladder with an armful of curtains, or hammering in picture hooks, the phone wedged beneath her chin on interminable hold as she tried to get someone out to look at the ancient oil-fired Aga again (‘before Christmas, madam?’ – incredulous tone) she would wonder why she was bothering. With both boys away on a gap year, it felt like Christmas would be an empty echo of their usual cosy, chaotic celebration. Especially here, in an icy medieval manor house half a mile from the nearest village.
On the windowsill the radio played a haunting piano version of Walking in the Air, conjuring the ghosts of Christmasses past; of leaving out carrots for Rudolph and tracking Santa’s progress across the world on the computer in David’s study. This year it was the boys whose whereabouts she followed.She tried to swallow the lump that seemed to be permanently in her throat these days. The twins finishing A levels and flying the nest was a great time to make the move from Chiswick, David had said; the start of a new chapter for all of them. (Or a whole new series of books in David’s case: after fifteen novels he had reached the end of the road with Captain Callow, his surgeon general in the Napoleonic wars and was switching his attention to the Civil War.) Susannah had agreed, in theory. She had thought it would provide her with a project, at least, and that the nest wouldn’t seem so empty if it didn’t contain the spaces where schoolbags had hung, and toy cars had raced and the oily marks of blu-tack on the wall where nursery school paintings and swimming certificates had been displayed. She imagined creating a new home for the boys; a sort of weekend bolt hole where they could escape student squalor to enjoy bolstering meals, blazing fires and country walks, bringing as many friends as they liked – Wintermoor Hall certainly wasn’t lacking bedrooms. It wouldn’t always feel so lonely –
Looking down she realised she was automatically peeling enough potatoes for two hungry teenagers and dropped the knife as if it was hot. David would laugh. Heaping the peelings into a bowl she carried it through to the scullery, steeling herself against the rush of cold as she opened the great studded oak door to outside.
The air was sharp and metallic after the meat-scented fug inside. (Venison this year: no point in doing a turkey for two of them.) The frosted garden glowed palely as the pink light faded into violet and she breathed in woodsmoke – the smell of winter and countryside and the past. The lid of the dustbin had frozen shut. She dislodged it and tipped the potato peelings in, then stood, wreathed in the white garlands of her breath, looking across the ghostly outlines of a long-lost knot garden (another project), past the scratchy, leafless trees in the orchard to the rising ground beyond.
The quiet had a texture, like velvet. Wintermoor Hall was situated in a shallow valley, and the sheltering hills rose up on sides, in marshmallow pink and white now. From where she stood she could just make out the posts that had been hammered in to mark out the ground on Wintermoor field. It was hard to imagine that this time tomorrow it would be teeming with activity as the re-enactors prepared for the battle.
It was another factor that had brought them here. The Battle of Wintermoor, on the 27th December 1643, had been a small but significant skirmish in the English Civil War, but it was faithfully recreated each year by a dedicated band of IT consultants, plumbers, teachers and amateur history buffs, each playing a specific role and dressed with impressive authenticity. Last year she and David had left the boys sleeping off the excesses of the season and driven up from London to watch, and view the hall (then occupied by ancient Major Moseley and his frail wife, who were in their own private siege against age and increasing infirmity and had retreated to two downstairs rooms) for a second time. It had been afterwards, in the bar of The Crown that David had announced to the company of rowdy, red-cheeked soldiers that he was going to buy Wintermoor Hall and would be happy to host them all next year. Susannah’s surprise was drowned out in the three cheers that followed.
‘It’s perfect,’ he’d said on the way home in the car (with Susannah driving, of course –several rounds of drinks had subsequently sealed the promise.) ‘The ideal place to write my Civil War series. On the doorstep of an actual battlefield – think of the PR! We can get Nigel and Bill and whoever reviews for the Sunday Times these days to come up – give them lunch and show them the place. When you’ve got it straight, of course…’
She turned now and looked up at the house, looming darkly behind her. Since moving in and living with the reality of damp, 1950s wiring and 1960s décor, the sanctuary she had envisaged seemed impossibly out of reach. Looking up at the upstairs windows, glinting pink as they reflected the day’s last light, it was easier to picture the house as it had been four hundred years ago, when the unrest that had simmered through the country had erupted into bloody violence on its very doorstep, than it was to imagine it in a year or two’s time, spilling light and warmth and welcome.
A shadow flickered in the glass. All of a sudden the frozen air felt full of menace and in that moment she understood how it had felt to be here, trying to maintain a façade of normality through the Christmas feasting as danger edged closer. She looked back at the hill beyond the garden wall and knew the fear of waiting for the bristle of pikes and muskets to appear over its brow, listening for the beat of boots and hooves on the snow.
Folding her arms to suppress a shiver she crossed the yard and went back into the house. As she closed the four-hundred year old door behind her she heard David’s voice in the kitchen. ‘Take care of yourself old man. Yes – I’ll tell her. Merry Christmas to you too.’
She rushed in, to see him replacing her mobile phone on the countertop by the kettle, where she’d left it to be easily reachable in case one of the boys rang. ‘That was Tom,’ he said cheerfully. ‘You just missed him.’
‘You should have called me.’ Her voice sounded strangled.
‘I wasn’t sure where you were.’
‘Is he all right?’
‘Of course he is – he’s spent Christmas day on a beach in Bali, the lucky sod. Sends his love – it’s just after midnight there so best not to ring back. I’d have missed him myself if I hadn’t come in to see if the kettle was on. Any chance of a cup of tea?’
It was still dark when she woke the next morning. Taking care not to disturb David, she eased her feet into slippers and reached for the jumper she had left at the end of the bed to put over her nightdress, which was an old favourite – a voluminous vintage one in dense, bone-white cotton picked up at a stall on Portobello Road twenty years ago. The expensive silk one David had given her for Christmas was still folded, with its matching, lace-trimmed dressing gown, in its gift-box. Even the thought of the chilly silk against her skin in this house, this season, made her shiver. (David’s presents often seemed to reflect his own interests rather than hers. In addition to the slinky silk get-up, he had bought her the definitive book on the English Civil War, ‘so you can get ahead on research for me’, a bottle of the rather cloying perfume he liked, and membership of an upmarket gym in Worcester, fifteen miles away.)
The stairs creaked beneath her footsteps – she hadn’t yet learned where to tread more softly. Icy currents eddied around her ankles. The temperature in the kitchen was a degree warmer, she noted with relief: proof that the Aga hadn’t died again. Unable to face the glare of Major and Mrs Moseley’s fluorescent strip lighting, she picked up the kettle and went across to the sink to fill it in the pearly pre-dawn glow. Setting it on the hotplate she leaned against the warmth of the temperamental iron beast and looked out of the windows.
The landscape was beginning to emerge as the night retreated, hard-edged and glittering with cold. The star she had seen over the outbuildings last night had faded to a tiny point of silver in the strip of pale lemon sky along the horizon. Automatically her mind went to the boys, wondering where they were and what they were doing. It would be mid-afternoon in Indonesia, and she tried to imagine them on a beach or in a bar (worries about sunburn, drunkenness and dehydration popped up in her head, like annoying adverts on an internet page.) The distance felt surreal; impossible to accommodate.
And then, above the sibilant hiss of the kettle, another sound – electronic and incongruous in the sleeping kitchen. On the desk in the corner the computer screen flickered into life with an incoming Skype call. In an instant she was there, shoving aside cookery books and lists of menus and recipes for the days ahead to catch the call before it disconnected again.
‘Hey Mum!’
Oliver’s face: tanned, stubbled and beloved. She felt a lurch of painful love, and a flash of anguish. He looked so much older than the boy who had hugged her fiercely at Heathrow twelve weeks ago. A man.
‘Mum? Are you there?’
‘Yes – I’m here.’ She switched on the lamp beside the computer, so her face appeared in the dark square in the corner of the screen. God, she looked older too – about ninety. She quickly averted her eyes and looked at her boy instead. ‘It’s good to see you – you look wonderful. Is everything all right?’
‘Yeah, all good. I mean – weird, you know? – it was thirty degrees yesterday, so it doesn’t feel much like Christmas. Is it snowing there?’
‘Not snowing, but a really hard frost so everything’s white. It certainly feels cold enough. Dad said that snow has been forecast for later today though, so there might be a few inches for the battle tomorrow – ’ She broke off as the kettle began its express-train whistle on the Aga. ‘Sorry, just let me get that – ’
His smile was lopsided; wistful. ‘Make one for me, would you? God, I miss tea.’
She tilted the computer screen round so she could carry on talking to him as she warmed the pot and spooned in leaves. Sensing he wanted to hear news of home she told him about the drinks party they were having that evening – for people from the village and the re-enactment society, as well as some of the battle organisers, whom David was keen to get onside to help with research. She took her tea back to the computer and pulled out the chair. ‘And the PR people from Dad’s publisher are coming up, and Carla, of course…’
‘Of course.’ Oliver rolled his eyes and grinned. Carla was David’s agent; the one who, as an ambitious assistant, had picked his first manuscript off the slush pile and put it on the desk of her influential senior. She had been steering his career with the same combination of skill and ruthless persistence for the last twenty years, in a mutually beneficial and lucrative partnership that had seen her rise from office junior to head of a successful independent agency and him go from history graduate with an inglorious (now never to be mentioned) second class degree to Sunday Times bestselling author. ‘It would take more than a bit of snow to deter Carla,’ Oliver remarked. ‘She’s not staying with you, is she?’
‘No, the house isn’t nearly up to Carla’s standards yet. She and the PR people are staying at The Crown, in the village – though I’m not sure that will be up to Carla’s standards either. Anyway, tell me about you – where you are and what you’ve been up to.’
The teapot was empty and the sun was stealing across the silver field by the time he’d told her about the beach with the bar and the backpacker’s hostel, the barbequed pig they’d had for Christmas lunch, the girl Tom had met (blonde, Australian, annoying laugh) and his time on the café’s free wifi was up. She couldn’t help noticing the slight puffiness he got beneath his eyes when he was tired and that his hair needed washing and, as they prepared to say goodbye, she longed to ask if he was really all right – if he was feeling unwell or anxious about something. But it was too late. After a quickfire flurry of goodbyes and take cares and love yous his face vanished and she was left staring at her own ghostly reflection in the empty screen.
In a daze she emptied the dishwasher and went out to the chest freezer in the old stable to remove duck breasts and beef and industrial quantities of cocktail sausages for tonight’s canapés. She imagined Oliver, still in the shabby café she had seen behind him, ordering another coke from the bar. His face was so vivid in her mind, his voice so fresh that, going back into the kitchen she almost expected to find him standing at the Aga, putting the kettle on the hotplate for another pot of tea. It was impossible to comprehend that he was on the other side of the world, and that while she was shutting the door against the frost-sharp morning, he was stepping out into a sultry, tropical afternoon. She looked at the computer in the corner, but its screen was black and blank, as if he had never been there.
As if she had imagined it all.
*
The first flakes of snow began to fall in the late afternoon, from a jaundiced sky. They were large and ragged and settled quickly on the frosted ground. Susannah, rushing from room to room frantically lighting fires and plumping cushions, was too busy to take much notice, but as she drew the drawing room curtains she paused for a moment, mesmerised by the slow, silent procession of flakes against the darkness. From the kitchen came the sound of clanking bottles as David unpacked the cheap wine he had ordered specially for the party. Satisfied that everything was ready, she went upstairs to run a bath.
Everyone had been invited for 7pm, but she had just got out of the steaming water at 6.15 when the first heavy knock at the door echoed through the house. When it came again and she realised David wasn’t going to answer it she wrapped herself in a towel and ran downstairs to find an unknown family standing on the step.
‘Wintermoor Hall? Have we got the right house?’ said the woman uncertainly, eyeing the towel. She wore a parka with a fur-trimmed hood and clutched the hand of a child with long ringlets. ‘I’m Lisa – Sir Herbert Frobisher’s Regiment of Foote? We’re a bit early…’ She cast an accusing glance at the man standing sheepishly behind her. ‘I told him we didn’t need to allow that much extra time for the snow.’
‘It doesn’t matter at all,’ Susannah lied. ‘Come in.’
From then on there was a steady stream of early arrivals. Susannah, running up and down stairs in various stages of unreadiness, showed them all into the drawing room where the fire blazed and the Christmas tree twinkled. David appeared eventually, wafting Eau Sauvage and wearing a new Paul Smith shirt, to pour champagne (the good stuff first, to impress people, the budget stuff later) and distribute charm. Susannah had pulled on a faithful old pewter velvet shift dress by then, but hadn’t had time to do more than rub some foundation onto her flushed cheeks and drag a brush through her hair. As the rooms rapidly filled with people she circulated with trays of canapés and glasses of champagne.
The re-enactors ate a prodigious amount. Her supplies of vol-au-vents and sausage rolls were quickly decimated and she had to cross the yard to get more from the freezer in the stables. The snow was two inches deep by then, and the garden glowed palely beneath an almost-full moon. Standing at the back door, arms laden with frozen mini-yorkshire puddings, she gazed around. The neglected garden had been made new by the snow, the ravages of time erased. The leafless branches of the trees of the orchard carried armfuls of white, like blossom. In the distance Wintermoor Field was pale lavender. Pristine.
Back into the kitchen she heard a familiar voice. Carla might not be used to bellowing orders on a battlefield but her cool, clipped tones cut through the rumble of noise from the drawing room. ‘We tried to book a taxi at the pub, but the landlord just laughed. He brought us down in his Range Rover – I’m covered in dog hair.’
Susannah filled flutes with champagne and put them on a tray. Carla was standing in front of the fire in the oak-panelled hallway, clutching the lapels of her glossy faux leopard fur coat (at least Susannah assumed it was faux – one never quite knew with Clara) and handing David an expensive-looking bottle of brandy. ‘From Roger.’
David held it at arm’s length to read the label (he was too vain to wear glasses anywhere except at his desk.)
‘Henessey…’ He nodded appreciatively. ‘Very generous. I’ll hide this well away from the marauding troops.’
Carla looked around. ‘Well, I must say it’s very atmospheric. Very… authentic. Like stepping back into the seventeenth century. One almost expects a dashing cavalier to appear at any moment, or a plump serving wench bearing ale.’
David laughed. ‘You know me, I hate to disappoint. We have half of the Battle of Wintermoor re-enactment society here – dashing Cavaliers guaranteed. And look, here’s my plump serving wench now. Bearing champagne rather than ale, I’m afraid…’
‘Oh David, you are awful.’ Carla batted him playfully on the arm, taking a glass from the tray before leaning forward to briefly touch her cool cheek against Susannah’s flushed one. ‘Susie darling, I don’t know how you put up with him. I’d have buried him under the patio long ago – but I suppose that’s why none of my marriages lasted more than five minutes and you’re still going strong after twenty years. Now, let me introduce you to Fabrice, Roger’s assistant – such a shame darling Roger couldn’t come – and Kitty, who’s going to be taking charge of David’s PR for the next book. Kitty, where are you? Come and say hello to Susie – ’
The girl who was talking to David turned round mid-laugh, her sootily-lashed eyes widening as they swept over Susannah. Her blonde hair shone like old gold beneath the light of the heavy brass lantern that hung in the centre of the hallway and her smooth skin gleamed with youth and vitality and possibly some delicious wonder product unknown to Susannah. She was wearing a tiny sequinned dress that shimmered as she came forwards on coltish long legs.
‘Oh my gosh – how lovely to meet you!’ As her eyes travelled slowly over Susannah, her tone was one of astonishment, her expression slightly incredulous. ‘Your house is amazing. Literally like something from a movie, or an Agatha Christie set. David has promised to give me a grand tour later.’
I bet he has, Susannah thought wearily, trying to balance the tray as she accepted the girl’s double cheek kiss. The black glass of the uncurtained window reflected herself as she had been twenty years ago, embracing someone that looked like her mother. She suddenly wished she’d got round to finding a hairdresser and have the gold painted back into her faded hair, or at least had time to straighten it, which David always said suited her far better than her natural curls.
‘Do you have any ghosts?’ Kitty was asking.
‘Well, if such things exist, you can be sure this is where they’d be,’ David said, in the thoughtful, melodious tone much remarked upon by interviewers. ‘Think about it. Four hundred years of life and death, joy and sorrow, triumph and tragedy within these walls. A witness to one of the darkest and most dramatic moments in England’s history. Five hundred men slain in a single day on the hill behind the house, near enough for the blasts of canon and musket fire to be deafening, not to mention the cries of the dying. If you believe that restless souls return to the place of their death, it would be surprising if there weren’t a fair few haunting the corridors of Wintermoor Hall…’
David knew how to capture an audience. His voice – always one of his most attractive features – had dropped to a hypnotic murmur. Kitty’s thin shoulders rose as she moved closer to him. ‘Gosh, I’ve got goosebumps…’
Carla shivered ostentatiously. ‘I don’t believe in any of that nonsense, but I’m suddenly rather glad we’re staying at The Crown. What about you, Susannah? Have you seen any headless Cavaliers or grey ladies?’
‘Not so far.’ Only herself in the mirror. A loud rap on the door made her jump, putting the tray of champagne in jeopardy. She put it down on the big oak sidetable (one of the many things left behind by the Moseleys, who had neither space nor use for Wintermoor’s pieces in their sheltered accommodation) and opened the door. A group of men stood there, their barrel chests and bristling beards marking them out as civil war foot soldiers, even though they were dressed mostly in denim and carried six packs of ale. Susannah accepted these, then ushered them through to the drawing room, from where she heard a chorus of good-natured booing from a rival regiment as they went in.
Carla had been cornered by someone from the village who was writing a novel (‘Lord of the Rings meets Fifty Shades of Grey.’ Susannah almost felt sorry for her.) There was no sign of David or Kitty. A faint, insistent bleep, just discernible above the rising noise of the party, reminded her that the Yorkshire puddings needed to be taken out of the Aga. Grabbing a glass of champagne from the tray she retreated to the kitchen and pulled the tray from the oven, then drained the glass in two gulps, standing at the sink. It didn’t quite wash away the sour burn of resentment at the back of her throat.
Sometimes she felt as if she was slowly becoming invisible, like a photograph left on a sunny windowsill gradually having its colours bleached, its outlines faded until it was hard to make out the person it had once shown. Who would believe that, when she and David had met as History undergrads at UEA, she had been the brighter one; the one with all the promise? David had charm, of course, and confidence, but he partied harder than he worked, skipped lectures or turned up hungover, and wrote every essay the night before it was due in, if he wrote it at all, with the result that he had scraped a 2:2 (largely thanks so Susannah’s notes and essay plans) while she had got a first.
They had met in the second year, when he had come in late to a lecture on Gender and the Enlightenment and fallen asleep in the seat beside her. That was the first time she had given him her notes to copy. They started going out together properly in the third year, after she bumped into him going into the library the night before an important assessment was due in, and ended up staying up to help him finish it. He had taken her out for breakfast the next morning and, dizzy with lack of sleep and burgeoning attraction, she had drunk half a bottle of champagne and gone back to his room. By the time finals came round it seemed perfectly normal that she was working for both of them (to her at least, though her friends saw it differently.) His disappointing degree had taken the shine off her pleasure in her First, and she had felt almost guilty about landing the job of her dreams – trainee Assistant Curator in the British Galleries of the V&A – while he received rejection after rejection, and stayed in the flat in Camberwell (paid for out of her wages) getting drunk and depressed and writing scrawled, structureless stories instead of filling in application forms.
In interviews he glamorised that time into one of Bohemian adversity, dwelling on the drink, cigarettes, poverty and squalor, and airbrushing Susannah (and the fact that she had paid the rent, cooked and cleaned) out of the picture. Perhaps that was when she had begun to disappear. When she got pregnant she had fully intended to return to work, but having twins had turned out to be more exhausting – physically, mentally and emotionally – than she could ever have anticipated. There had been a dark period of depression, and a nagging anxiety that persisted even after the fog eventually cleared. And by the time the boys started school David’s writing career had begun to take off properly, and there was no longer a desperate need for her salary. Instead of picking up her career again she had filled her days doing research for David’s books, and the girl with the first class degree and ambitions of her own had herself faded into history.
Her translucent reflection in the window above the sink hammered the point home. Her grey dress (faithful, serviceable) made her body blend with the darkness outside, so her head seemed to float above it, her features blurred and indistinct. She thought of Kitty’s lustrous doe eyes and was tempted to dash upstairs now to put on mascara and try to do something with her hair, but the thought of encountering David, giving the promised ‘grand tour’ put her off.
She tipped the vol-au-vents onto a plate with some smoked salmon blinis and took them through to the drawing room. It was a long, low room with a vast fireplace at one end and doors to the garden (an Edwardian addition) along one side. With just her and David there, it felt cavernously large and was impossible to keep warm, but now, packed with people, it seemed positively cosy. She was enveloped by noise and heat as she shouldered her way through the knots of people – most of them strangers – offering canapés and eavesdropping snatches of conversation. ‘He was a Pikeman in the Blewcoats but they chucked him out for being drunk on the field…’ ‘The doctor said it was from wearing wool breeches. Gave him some ointment and told him to keep it dry, but there’s not much chance of that on a battlefield in winter…’
The plate was empty before she got halfway round the room: this was a very different crowd to the polite publishing people she was used to hosting. Back in the kitchen, tearing the cellophane of packet after packet of cocktail sausages (quantity seemed to be more important than creativity) she made a mental note to stretch tomorrow’s beef casserole as far as possible with extra stock and vegetables. In the hallway, Carla had managed to escape from the aspiring author, who had now captured a Royalist re-enactor and was torturing him with details of his protagonist’s journey instead. Returning to the drawing room she saw that someone had opened the French windows and people were spilling out into the garden, dividing into their Royalist and Parliamentarian factions for a snowball fight. The icy air cut through the stuffy room, spreading ripples of excitement.
‘It’s coming down fast!’
‘We’ll be knee-deep by tomorrow, if it keeps on like this.’
‘Just like 1643. Should get some good photos for the blog…’
Susannah made the most of the sudden lull to collect up empty glasses. David usually took charge of refilling drinks, but he was obviously still playing tour guide: it would be a very dry party at this rate, she thought sourly. Carla was on the sofa beside Fabrice, who was looking bored and scrolling through his phone. She was talking to one of the older and most senior re-enactors, who took the role of a Royalist general (Susannah couldn’t remember which one) and commanded a regiment. Susannah remembered him from the battlefield last year. He was one of the few re-enactors to use a horse, and had cut an impressive figure in his red velvet coat and lace-trimmed collar; hard to reconcile with the unremarkable (slightly unkempt) man holding forth on the sofa. Poor Carla – frying pan to fire. Her glass was empty. Since it looked like the kind of conversation for which alcoholic enhancement was very much needed, Susannah took pity on her and went to collect a bottle from the kitchen.
‘How fascinating,’ Carla was saying when she returned, with barely detectable irony. ‘I’m afraid I’m terribly ignorant about that period in history. So complicated – all those battles. I must admit I don’t even know who won at Wintermoor.’
‘Often it was less than obvious, and both sides claimed victory,’ the general explained loftily. ‘However, Wintermoor was a decisive result for the Roundheads – in the end. For a long time it looked like being another stalemate skirmish, but a Roundhead general called Keston put a daring plan into action, retreating just when the Royalists thought they’d won, regrouping and attacking from the back, with devastating effect. As you’ll see tomorrow, Wintermoor Hill was strewn with Royalist bodies, the snow stained red with Cavalier blood.’
Susannah supressed a sudden shiver as she filled Carla’s glass. The feeling of unease she’d had earlier, looking out towards the hill, returned, merging with the anxiety that had nagged at her since her conversation with Oliver.
‘Poor Royalists.’ Carla drawled. ‘I don’t know all the political ins and outs, but one instinctively warms to them more than the joyless Roundheads.’
The general gave a gust of patronising laughter and held his glass out to be topped up. ‘That’s a bit of an oversimplification. The Roundheads wanted democracy, remember? Anyway, the Royalists had the last laugh on this occasion. This area was overwhelmingly Royalist: the nearest Roundhead garrison was at Gloucester. They wanted to get back there quickly, but the weather and the shortness of the day were against them, so they planned to take the house of Sir John Farriner at Bishop’s Longford on the way. Farriner hadn’t shown strong allegiance to any side, so they believed he would be an easy target, but they underestimated the man’s attachment to his horses. Farriner was a dedicated huntsman and knew his stables would be plundered if the army seized the house. He also knew the lie of his land, and how to use it to his advantage.’
Fabrice had put down his phone. Carla’s mouth had lost its sardonic twist.
‘He hastily mustered a band of men and sent them up to destroy the bridge the approaching troops had to use to cross the river, then ordered them to hide in the copse on the other side. The battle-weary Roundheads straggled down the hill in the fading light and, finding the bridge destroyed, gathered on the riverbank. Farriner’s men opened fire from the trees. Sitting ducks, they were. There was nowhere for them to go, no means of escape. Some of them jumped into the water, but the river was high and in full spate and they were washed away or perished from the cold. Some tried to turn back and run, but the hill they had come down was steep and they were an easy target for the muskets. It was a massacre – no survivors.’
A log fell in the grate in a shower of sparks. Distant voices carried across the frozen garden; a collective shout of triumph as a snowball hit its target. Susannah felt lightheaded, and for a moment the smell of wet earth and the iron tang of blood seemed to fill the stuffy room. And then she felt David’s warm hand on her bottom and breathed in Eau Sauvage again.
‘Ah – I came to top up drinks, but I can see my lovely serving wench has beaten me to it.’ He kissed her cheek fondly.
‘How marvellous,’ Carla breathed, moving up to make room for David on the sofa. ‘And there we have your opening scene…’
*
Susannah slept badly, flitting uneasily between waking and dreaming, uncertain which was which. She was quite used to staring into the darkness, listening to David’s leisurely breathing, but this felt different. There was a strange pressure in her head and her heart beat unusually hard, making her whole body vibrate. A shadow of nameless dread loomed over her. Maybe she’d had more to drink than she realised?
She got up early, as the sky was beginning to pale, feeling groggy and slightly disorientated. The landing was icy cold, dimly lit by the bluish glow of snow. Passing the uncurtained window her heart jolted at the sight of figures on the brow of Midwinter Hill, small and black against the expanse of white, but somehow ominous. For a moment she caught it again, that smell of mud and iron, overlaid now with something warmer; cinnamon perhaps, or cloves. Missing her step on the stairs, she gripped the banister to steady herself, pausing a moment until the whooshing in her head subsided.
In the kitchen she laid her hands against the comforting warmth of the Aga as she waited for the kettle to boil, and wondered if she was getting a migraine. It had been years since she’d had one – when she was pregnant with the twins, in fact – but she remembered the swimmy, disconnected feeling that used to herald their onset; the way that space and sound felt distorted. Hormones, the doctor had told her absently, without looking up from the notes he was writing. Oh dear, perhaps that was the explanation for the strange way she’d been feeling since the move; the odd sense of displacement, the weird impression she kept getting of walls shifting and floors sloping, the lurch she kept feeling in her chest. Was forty-three too young for the menopause?
As the tea brewed she went across to the computer. A calendar reminder, set by David, flashed up onto the screen: Battle of Wintermoor Re-enactment and she felt a stab of irritation. As if she could forget. As if she hadn’t spent the last two weeks writing lists, planning menus and batch cooking for the freezer with roughly the same focused attention Fairfax and Montagu must have given to their battle plans.
Her fingers hovered over the keys. Symptoms of m – , she typed, and watched as Google anticipated her query – malaria, malnutrition, multiple sclerosis. She withdrew her hands abruptly, folding her fingers into fists. Never google – that was the golden rule. Instead, as a distraction, she picked up her phone. Another golden rule was that she always waited for the boys to ring her, but she couldn’t stop thinking about Oliver’s face yesterday, or shake the feeling that all wasn’t as it should be. Quickly, without allowing her logical brain to override maternal instinct, she dialled his number.
The electronic tone trilled into the quiet kitchen, followed by a clipped, impersonal tone informing her that the number she had called was unavailable. Outside a ragged cloud of rooks rose from the trees on Wintermoor Hill and a line of men appeared over its crest, their shadows stretching blackly across the snow.
*
By ten o’clock the place was teeming.
The paddock alongside the drive had already filled up with cars, and harassed marshals in very un-historic hi-vis jackets were trying in vain to stop people from parking on the verges in the narrow road. The landlord of The Crown had set up gazebos in the field beyond the orchard, and the scent of mulled cider spiced the frost-sharp air. No more snow had fallen, but it still lay thick on the ground, pristine beneath hedges and over flowerbeds where roses poked their spiky fingers; trampled into slush and sullied brown on pathways where the re-enactors’ health and safety sub-committee had liberally scattered salt and grit.
Susannah moved amongst the jovial, purposeful people like a ghost. The anticipated headache hadn’t materialised but as she stirred great vats of beef casserole and lentil stew she felt oddly detached, as if she was slightly outside of her own body. Having not been able to make contact with Oliver, she had sent a message to Tom and received a reply saying Oliver had decided to go to some remote beach along the coast. His casual reassurance that Ol would be fine and she should ‘just chill’ didn’t silence the maternal alarm that was going off in some primal part of her brain. The kitchen was full of strangers – bearded men in rough woollen tunics, women in velvet cloaks – but they talked with the easy familiarity of old friends, making her feel like she was the one who didn’t belong.
The original Battle of Wintermoor had taken place in the early morning, but the re-enactment was scheduled to begin at midday. As the hour approached the tension mounted. The Cavaliers and Roundheads who had mixed happily as they topped up water bottles in the kitchen and queued for the portaloos in the field retreated to their respective camps, and in the distance a drumbeat started up. At ten to twelve Susannah shrugged on her coat and went out of the back door to watch the start.
The music of a penny whistle drifted through the frozen air; a jaunty enough tune, though somehow plaintive and haunting at this distance. She went through the orchard, ducking beneath the spiky branches of the trees. The hillside was empty now, though spectators were gathered two and three-deep against the orange taped cordons that marked the edge of the battlefield. Only the guns – authentic civil war cannons on carriages – stood out starkly against the snow. Going through the gate in the wall to the field beyond she had the same lurching sense she’d had when she’d missed the step on the stairs.
A village had sprung up. A canvas camp where women in woollen dresses and felt hats stood over braziers with cooking pots steaming above them and men chopped wood and compared weaponry. A blacksmith was hammering iron over a fire, the blows ringing out a thin, repetitive note. A child streaked past, laughing wildly, chased by another, who Susannah belatedly recognised from last night’s party.
The curious spectators who had spilled out of the cars parked in the paddock milled amongst them, incongruous in their waterproofs and waxed jackets, overexcited dogs straining at leads. The voice of a laconic commentator echoed out from a PA system further up the hill, keeping up a running narration of what each faction was doing and how they were positioning themselves for the start of the battle. She hadn’t seen David, but she knew he was in the mobile commentary box, insulated from the cold and with a bird’s eye view over the field. Earlier she’d heard the announcer thanking him for hosting the event, and David’s voice had crackled over the cold air, welcoming everyone, as if it was a jolly village fete, not a staged slaughter.
Was Susannah the only one who felt the tautness in the air? The hum of menace?
The ripple of excitement that went through the crowd as the battle got underway suggested that she was. Mobile phones were held aloft to film and people strained for a better view as Roundhead met Cavalier with a crash of staffs, a clash of steel. The noise was tremendous, and it reverberated deep inside her, winding the thread of tension tighter.
She wasn’t sure that she wanted to watch, but found she couldn’t look away. Something about the immediacy of it; the rawness of the voices calling across the field, the thud of boots and hooves and drums and weapons. Every now and then she caught a glimpse of someone she recognised from the party – the general on his horse, a musketeer here and a pikeman there, and it gave her a disconcerting jolt, like she had slipped out of time.
She kept telling herself she would go back to the house, but when she had edged her way through the spectators she realised she was further up the field than she thought. Wintermoor Hall stood some way below her, its rows of chimneys silhouetted against the sallow sky, its uneven roof silvered with snow.
It felt good to walk. Her feet were frozen and she had come out without gloves so she could quickly accept a call if Oliver should ring. On the hill soldiers were falling fast, and she remembered what the general had said about the ground being strewn with Royalist dead, the snow stained red with Cavalier blood. She felt a pulse of nausea. Thrusting her hands (still clasping her phone) deep into her coat pockets she strode along the fringes of the thinning crowd, up the hill, towards the wood. Her face stung with the cold and her head felt pinched tight with it; there was a tight band around her temples, and a dull thud of pain behind it. It came to her, absently, that she hadn’t eaten anything since a hasty piece of toast at seven o’clock. No wonder she felt spacey and strange.
She reached the shadow of the trees and looked back. Smoke from the musket fire had thickened and was blowing across the field, obscuring the figures in its pale veils, smudging them into ghosts of themselves. The spectators had vanished completely, and the voice on the PA reduced to a tinny echo that came and went on the icy wind that buffeted Susannah’s ears and made her eyes stream. The lightheaded feeling intensified. She fumbled in her coat pocket for something to wipe her eyes, but found only the shreds of an ancient tissue and a screwed-up chocolate wrapper so had to rub her sleeve across her cheeks.
And that was when she heard it. The beat of hooves, the rustling snap of undergrowth. She swung round in time to see a horse coming through the trees at a canter, sweat foaming on its shoulders. At the same moment the cannons fired on the hill again, a succession of three explosions that made the earth shudder and seemed to suck the air inwards. Her head boomed and was filled with a sort of crackling silence, through which she watched the horse throw its head back, the whites of its eyes glinting wildly in the gloom. Its rider turned, throwing his arm out and gesturing urgently, and she saw his mouth open in a shout that didn’t penetrate the vacuum of sound. Smoke wreathed between the trees, bleaching the colours from his clothes and the sash he wore across his chest, making his horse appear to tread on air.
‘Excuse me – hello!’
The noise rushed back with a ferocity that made her wince. A steward in a high-vis jacket was hurrying towards her, frowning with officious concern. ‘You need to move away from the wood, back down the hill!’ he called. ‘The action is moving to this part of the field, see? It’s not safe.’
‘Oh. Sorry.’
Her throat ached, as if something was lodged there, so the words came out as a croak. She put her head down and hurried past him, towards the crowds of spectators, the canvas tents, the smell of frying onions, heading for home. Over the PA system the commentator was describing how both armies were now low on ammunition and the Parliamentarians were now making their tactical retreat. The snow on the hill was dirtied and littered with bodies.
She looked away, back towards the woods. The sky was yellow over the trees, heavy with snow. There was no sign of the man on the horse, but his image stayed in her mind, as if it had been printed there.
*
‘So, the consensus is it couldn’t have gone any better. A resounding success. People are saying it’s the best event they’ve been to, and some of them have been doing this thing for forty years. They’re already talking about next year.’
Susannah was in bed when David came back from The Crown. He was flushed with brandy and bonhomie, expansive with self-satisfaction as he stood in front of the dressing table mirror to undo his cufflinks. ‘I said we’d be happy to host again, of course.’
‘Of course,’ murmured Susannah dryly.
‘Kitty has some marvellous ideas for PR around it. Rather exciting. She’s young, but very switched on. Pretty impressive…’ His eyes flicked briefly from his own reflection to that of Susannah in the bed behind him and his tone lost some of its warmth. ‘How are you feeling? Headache better?’
She knew what he was thinking; could see him assessing what the chances were. Poor David – all fired up after an evening of pretty Kitty’s impressive company.
‘Not really.’
She turned her bedside light off. It hadn’t really been a headache as such; more a feeling of absence than of pain, as if a sheet of glass had been put between her and everyone else, or her head was swaddled in wool. It was partly anxiety, of course; Oliver still hadn’t returned any of her calls and she was distracted by a sense of unease that she couldn’t rationalise. She certainly hadn’t tried to explain it to David when he’d come back to the house to change for an evening in the pub. Instead she’d said she thought she might be coming down with something and would have a bath an early night.
It wasn’t exactly a lie. After watching the battle she hadn’t been able to get warm at all, and neither paracetamol nor a hot bath and half a bottle of red wine by the fire in the little parlour had helped. She’d come to bed with two hot water bottles and fallen asleep over the Civil War book David had bought her for Christmas.
He nodded at it as he sat on the edge of the bed to remove his socks. ‘Glad to see you’re making use of one of the gifts I got you,’ he said sourly, and his eyes swept over her impenetrable antique nightdress. ‘Shame you’re not so interested in the others.’
He got up and went into the bathroom, leaving a whisper of Eau Sauvage mixed with a sweet, unfamiliar perfume in his wake.
*
She hadn’t expected to sleep, but she did, deeply. Perhaps it was exhaustion after the events of the day, or the wine, which had been stronger than she realised, but she tumbled almost instantly into deep oblivion.
The dream came later, when she surfaced enough to hear the dog barking at the farm across the fields. Her mouth was dry and the thought of getting up for water half-formed itself in her head, but her body was weighted with sleep. She turned over and let it reclaim her.
But in some chamber of her dreaming mind, another Susannah did get up.
She felt the teeth of the savage cold as she went out onto the landing and saw her breath forming wisps of white in front of her face. Through the window on the stairs the sky was foxed silver like an old mirror, the moon veiled in mackerel cloud. The house below was still and dark, except for a glow of light coming through the half-open door of the parlour.
She moved slowly, in the disconnected way of dreams, her limbs out of sync with her brain so it was like moving underwater. At the bottom of the stairs she stopped, holding onto the oak newel post. Anchoring herself as she got her bearings in a house that was familiar, but somehow profoundly altered.
From the parlour came the sound of movement; the scrape of a chair, slow footsteps. A sigh.
The walls wavered. Blood roared in her ears.
Inside the room was all shadows and smoke and flickering firelight. The battered navy sofa that had come from the kitchen in Chiswick was gone and in its place was a hard wooden settle. There was a dresser against the wall, a chair by the fireplace. A man slumped in it.
The man on the horse from the woods.
His face was as pale as wax, an unearthly white that couldn’t be warmed by the firelight. His dark hair was matted, streaked with grey. With some effort, he raised his head to look directly at her, with wary eyes that were unnaturally dark. There were shadows like bruises beneath them.
‘Madam… I mean you no harm.’
His voice was low and rusty with pain. It vibrated inside her. By contrast her own words seem to come from a long way away. From someone else.
‘How did you get in here? And what do you mean, entering my house in the dead of night?’
‘Your watchmen are gone, madam, and your dog was easily won over.’ For the first time she noticed the animal lying in the shadows by the fireplace; a shaggy-haired lurcher of some sort, looking up at her with liquid eyes and thumping its thin tail sleepily. ‘Perhaps she senses that I am injured…’
He moved then, awkwardly, and she saw the blood that had soaked through the arm of his tunic and stained his shirtfront. It was crusted on his elegant fingers, riming his nails. She smelled the iron tang of it, mixed with the earth of the field.
‘Do you need bandages?’
He shook his head; a sharp, brief movement that sent a flicker of pain across his face. He chased it away with a rueful smile.
‘The surgeon has removed the musket shot and tended to it. I need… wine, for the pain. Or ale, cider, sack – anything at all that might take the edge off it. The stronger the better.’
‘My husband has some spirits of wine.’
She was at once herself, and outside herself, watching as she went to the dresser and stooped to pick up a leather bottle from beneath, collecting a pewter mug from the shelf above.
‘This house is for the King, I think,’ he remarked as she poured the brandy.
‘My husband is for the King,’ she corrected, then glanced at his orange sash, filthy now and stained dark with his blood. ‘You fight for Cromwell?’
His hand shook as he took the mug from her, and for a moment she let her fingers rest on his, to steady it. His skin was icy.
‘I am not for fighting at all, at present.’
She pulled out a wooden stool from inside the wide fireplace and sat down. The dog got up, detaching itself from the shadows to come and press its nose into her palm.
He took a sip of brandy. ‘She is your dog, it seems, not your husband’s.’
‘She is my son’s. He left her with me, when he went away to fight.’ She felt a faint lick of surprise as the words came out. ‘He’s with Sir William Waller’s men.’
‘A Parliamentarian, then.’
‘His father has disowned him, but I will not. He’s a good man. A good son. I miss him. I worry about him.’
Her voice cracked and her eyes filled with tears and in that second she was purely herself, all the anguish her own.
‘Have you had news of him?’
She shook her head.
‘Waller was at Arundel the last I heard. I will make enquiries and get word to you of how he does, if I can. Or better still – get him to send word himself. They get caught up in their own adventuring, these young men. They are unaware of their mothers’ anguish.’
For a moment she was choked by gratitude and could only nod. When she could speak again she whispered, ‘I would be forever in your debt.’
‘As I am in yours.’
He tipped his head back and drained his cup with a grimace. Then he handed it to her and made to rise, but his face contorted with pain, his eyes closing against it as he fell back into the chair.
‘You cannot leave. Not tonight, when you are so badly hurt – ’
‘I cannot stay.’ His eyes gleamed darkly beneath his lashes and one corner of his mouth lifted slightly. ‘Your husband would not allow it, for one thing.’
Her heart quickened. She began to say that her husband need not know, but he cut across her. ‘And for another, I need to catch up with my men. They are headed to Gloucester.’
‘Gloucester is a long way, even in daylight. At night, and in such weather as this – ’
A steady pulse of fear had begun to beat in her blood. Through the muffled feeling in her head and the strange sensation of floating just outside her own body, one thought emerged quite clearly – that she must persuade him not to go.
‘I do not intend to make Gloucester tonight. The men were set for a house along the way to rest and feed the horses – at a place called Bishop’s Longford, I believe…’
‘John Farriner’s house.’
The name came to her from nowhere. She heard herself speak it as if from an echoing distance as she watched the soldier gather himself to get to his feet and saw the effort that it cost him. There was a rushing in her head again; an increase in pressure that made her ears pop. Her skin was clammy with dread.
‘Stay, please – just a little while longer. It makes no sense to travel in such weather. You are hurt. Your men will –’
‘My son is with them.’ He moved his blood-soaked arm and spoke through gritted teeth. A muscle flickered in his jaw, beneath the dark stubble there. ‘He is young. It is his first time fighting. His mother…’ For a second his eyes closed again. ‘She will never forgive me if anything happens to him.’
It was too late. She knew it, and her heart ached with knowing.
‘She will not want anything to happen to you either,’ she said hoarsely, following him to the door. The dog slunk beside her, its tail rammed between its legs, its head low. ‘I do not want anything to happen to you. Please, stay – ’
They were in the kitchen now, though it was not her kitchen. She was dimly aware of a cavernous fireplace, a long table. There was no light here and it was hard to make him out; his skin was the thin, bluish-white of buttermilk, his eyes dark smudges. Haunted.
‘I have to go. I have to find him.’
He lifted a hand to her cheek then, but she didn’t feel his touch. Only a chill that shivered through her whole body and closed around her heart. Her head reeled and roared. She still held the pewter cup and through the noise she heard the clink of a coin, the murmured words, ‘payment for your husband’s wine’. Then the familiar creak of the door and a blast of iced air, and she was clinging to the rough wooden doorframe, watching his shape dissolve into the night. Too late she saw that the dog was at his heels. She opened her mouth to call it back, but she didn’t know its name and could make no sound anyway.
They were lost from sight and she could not follow. They had left no footprints in the snow.
*
Something was banging.
In her dream it was Tom, pounding at the door with a pikeman’s staff. ‘Your watchmen are gone,’ he said, ‘And so is Oliver. You have to find him, mum,’ and a blonde girl in a bikini appeared and laughed.
Her eyes felt like they’d been glued together. When she prised them open the cold light seemed dazzling. She got up stiffly, moving like someone a hundred years old. Her head felt unevenly weighted, as if it was filled with wet sand, which had settled on one side as she slept.
Downstairs she found David, already dressed, crashing about in the kitchen, opening cupboards and shutting them again in a way that was clearly more designed to secure her attention than achieve anything useful in itself.
‘Paracetamol,’ he snapped. ‘Where the bloody hell are they? The packet in the bathroom is empty. And if you’re hoping for a coffee, join the bloody club. The Aga’s gone out. You’ll have to get someone out to it today – it’s ridiculous to expect people to live in these bloody primitive conditions.’
David was always at his meanest with a hangover. Now was not the time to remind him that he was the one who had wanted ‘a simpler, more traditional life in the country.’ Wordlessly Susannah went to the drawer by the computer and found a foil pack of painkillers. She took two herself before handing it to David.
‘I thought you might be in need of some too,’ he said, watching her beadily as she filled a glass of water at the sink. ‘What the hell were you doing drinking brandy on your own in the middle of the night? If you were annoyed that I went out without you, you should have just said. You were perfectly welcome to come, but instead you had to be childish and open my very nice Hennessey from Roger…’
Susannah had stopped listening. Or maybe just stopped hearing, through the crackle and hiss in her head. She wanted to muster the energy to deny it, but the bottle Carla had brought was on the table, clearly depleted. And anyway, David was shrugging on his jacket and collecting his keys. ‘I’m going to the Crown to join the others for breakfast before they leave. At least I’ll get coffee and some proper conversation there.’
The back door creaked and slammed behind him.
For a moment she let the silence settle around her again. It felt as if the old house was exhaling in relief.
David had clearly forgotten about the electric kettle (brought from Chiswick and hidden away, along with the microwave, in the pantry, on the grounds that they were ‘suburban’.) Moving unsteadily, holding on to furniture, she went to get it, pausing in the doorway of the parlour as she passed.
All was as it should be. The blue sofa and the television in the corner, the Moseleys threadbare dark red carpet (scheduled for replacement in the new year), the woodburner in the wide fireplace and the blackened oak above it.
Her eye snagged on something and snapped back. A pewter tankard was placed on the fireplace lintel at one end; one of the random items left by the Moseleys, on the grounds that they ‘belonged to Wintermoor’. Susannah had suspected it was a clever way of dealing with the overwhelming task of a drastic downsize, easier than taking stuff to a charity shop. Now the words had a different resonance.
Like a sleepwalker she crossed the room to the fireplace. Details of the dream (was that what it was?) moved through her mind like fish in a deep pool. She reached up to get the tankard and felt a jolt as her fingers closed around the handle.
That sensation again: tilting and sliding, as if she was inside the belly of a great galleon on pitching seas. For a moment she squeezed her eyes shut and her heart faltered in its rhythm. Then she opened her eyes and looked down.
There it was, in the bottom of the cup, as she’d somehow known it would be. A tarnished coin, more black than silver. Payment for your husband’s wine.
*
It was early afternoon when her phone lit up with an incoming video call. She had got a good blaze going in the woodburner in the little parlour and settled on the sofa with a bowl of yesterday’s beef stew (reheated in the suburban microwave, as David hadn’t returned from the Crown) and the Civil War book.
‘Mum!’
Oliver’s face filled the screen. His smile loosened the tension in her shoulders and released the pent-up anxiety of the last twenty-four hours in an instant. He spoke quickly and excitedly, apologising for not replying her messages, giving her time to swallow the lump of emotion in her throat before she was able to get a word in. ‘As long as you’re all right, love.’
‘I’m more than all right. The thing is – I’ve met someone.’
‘Oh Oliver!’ Concern mingled with pleasure at the joy that radiated from him. He didn’t open up easily, like Tom, but when he offered his sensitive heart it was completely, leaving him vulnerable to hurt. ‘What’s his name?’
‘It’s a her, and I don’t know yet. But I’m definitely in love…’
He tilted the camera down, and she found herself looking into liquid eyes that seemed oddly familiar. They met hers across the space of eight thousand miles and four hundred years.
‘She’s some sort of lurcher cross, I think. People leave them, you know – can you believe that? Travellers pick them up as puppies and find they can’t cope when they grow to full size. She was starving when I found her, but she’s so sweet natured. I took her to a vet’s in Uluwatu, which cost quite a lot, but they said she just needs worming and feeding up. I really want to keep her, Mum…’
‘What about when you go to uni? You can’t keep a dog that size in a hall of residence!’
It was a token protest against a deal that was already sealed, and she was laughing as she said it. He looked happy. Purely happy, for the first time in a long time, and across the distance his happiness reached her too.
‘I could leave her with you, couldn’t I? She could be your dog too – you’ve always talked about getting one. It was one of the reasons you didn’t mind moving out of London. I know Dad won’t like it, but… well, tough. He can’t have everything his own way.’ The dog leaned against him with a sigh. ‘I just know you’ll love her. It feels like it’s meant to be, somehow. Like she found me, not the other way round. Does that sound mad?’
She laughed. ‘Completely.’
On the sofa beside her the book lay open at the page showing Nathaniel Keston’s portrait. The artist had captured a handsome, well-groomed gentleman, with a slightly haughty expression. His beard was neat, his hair as smooth and silken as a modern-day shampoo commercial. But the eyes that looked out from the page were the ones she had seen in her dream. Dark and deep as winter woods. Intense, intimate, unfathomable.
‘OK, you’re right.’ Oliver grinned, and stroked the dog’s ears. ‘It is mad. But do you think it might be possible?’
Her fingers closed around the coin in the pocket of her cardigan.
‘I think… a lot more things are possible than we realise.’
THE END