A Winter’s Tale: A festive winter read from the bestselling Queen of Christmas romance

Ground owl bones?

‘LIQUORICE EXTRACT’, ‘POWDERED AMBERGRIS’, ‘DRIED BAT WINGS’.

I shut the door hastily, deciding not to open any more cupboards—then immediately did, thinking it was the way out. This one contained shelf after shelf of much smaller bottles and jars with fancier labels. Pinned to the inside of the door was a hand-written price list. ‘Number 2 Essence: A sovereign remedy for restoring the joys of marriage,’ I read, ‘Two pounds fifty.’

After all these years without even a word from Rory, it would take more than an essence to restore my marriage! The next remedy was clearly aimed at all those exhausted wives with priapic elderly husbands, pepped up on Viagra: ‘Number 5 Essence: The tired wife’s friend. Two drops in any liquid given to the husband near bedtime will ensure an unbroken night’s rest. (Do not exceed dose.) Three pounds.’

It looked like Aunt Hebe had gone into production on a large scale.

I popped my head back through the kitchen door. ‘Mrs Lark, do Aunt Hebe’s remedies actually work?’

She looked up. ‘Well, no one’s ever asked for their money back to my knowledge.’ She cast on a couple more stitches and added, ‘Or died from them, either.’

‘That’s a relief,’ I said, and went back to my tour, though I hesitated before opening any more doors. But luckily the next one merely gave on to a passage with the narrow backstairs going up from it and the cellar entrance. There was a warren of rooms beyond it, many of them unused except for storage (one of them was stacked practically floor to ceiling with what looked like empty florist’s boxes), but this area looked very familiar to me. I had been allowed to play here and to ride my red tricycle up and down the flagged floors. How I’d loved that trike! The chipped skirting boards were probably my doing.

Feeling nostalgic I wandered on until I came to another passage, across which a fairly new-looking door had been installed. It was unlocked and when I passed through I saw that it had a sign on the other side saying: ‘PRIVATE! NO ADMITTANCE BEYOND THIS POINT.’

Here, by removing the door between two rooms and throwing out a little glassed-in conservatory overlooking the top terrace at the back of the house, a tearoom of kinds had been created. There was a counter topped with a glass food display cabinet adorned with dust and dead flies, and a collection of mismatched pine tables and chairs, varnished to the deep orange shade of a cheap instant suntan.

It all looked terribly half-hearted and uninviting, though perhaps in summer when they opened they gussied the place up a bit with bright tablecloths and flowers.

The visitors’ loos were off the further room and a brief glance told me were of Victorian servants’ quality, though I suppose at the time it was the height of luxury for the staff to have indoor toilets at all.

I retraced my steps to the warm kitchen, where Mrs Lark ceased knitting long enough to look up and smile at me. Charlie didn’t appear to have moved an inch since I left.

‘Did you remember your way around, lovey? You played out there all the time when the weather was bad, making dens out of old cardboard cartons, or riding that little trike of yours, though in the summer you were always outside. You used to run round and round the maze like a mad thing, with your granddad’s spaniels all chasing after you, barking their heads off.’

‘It’s all coming back to me—I remembered my way around this wing perfectly, despite a few changes. What are all those empty boxes in one of the rooms for?’

‘Mistletoe. Winter’s End is noted for it. But I don’t suppose you remember the mistletoe harvests before Christmas, when the gardeners gather it and it’s packed off to London?’

I shook my head.

‘Perhaps you were kept away, for the berries are poisonous. The boxes used to be stored in a shed, but the mice got at them.’

‘I suppose they would,’ I agreed. ‘The tearoom is a bit rough and ready, isn’t it? And the toilet is inadequate, I should have thought, especially if there’s a coach party.’

‘It was the staff toilet until Sir William put in that nice cloakroom under the backstairs, and the teashop used to be the laundry and brewhouse. But we don’t need a laundry now we’ve got the utility room, and the only brewing is what Miss Hebe does next door, and better not to ask about most of that,’ she said darkly.

‘Definitely not,’ I agreed. ‘When we’re open, who does the teas?’

‘The Friends serve them, but I cook the pastries and scones.’

‘That must make a lot of work for you?’

‘I like to do a big bake, and Grace comes in extra and cuts the sandwiches, but we don’t get so many visitors.’

‘I’m surprised you get any, because there isn’t much of the house open to see, is there?’

‘No, but they come for the garden mostly. It’s a picture in summer, though Seth says the terraces are still a work in progress. Gardening clubs and so on—they like to keep coming year after year to see how it’s going on.’

‘Surely it must be nearly finished by now? They’ve been at it for years, from what Mr Hobbs was saying!’

‘Oh, yes, I think there’s only the bottom terrace to do, though it seems to me they spend as much time maintaining the garden as they did making the thing in the first place—all these grown men snipping and clipping! Miss Hebe seems able to manage the whole walled garden on her own, apart from getting one of the gardeners to do the heavy digging, or clean out the hens, which makes Seth mad. He thinks of nothing but his blessed restoration scheme and your granddad was just the same.’

‘I’ll look round the garden as soon as I’ve got the chance, but it sounds as if it’s had enough time and money expended on it and getting the house back in good order will be what’s important now. Things are going to change.’

‘I’m glad to hear it. When we heard how Sir William had left things, we did wonder if you would come back or just sell the place.’

‘I wondered too, at first, but once I’d seen Winter’s End again I knew I was back for good,’ I said firmly, though somewhere inside I was quaking at the thought of explaining that to Jack…

Charlie gave a sudden snort and opened his eyes, then got to his feet and ambled over, tail wagging. I bent down to stroke his matted head. ‘Do you know where Charlie’s brushes are?’

‘The cleaning room, two doors down the passage on the left. I doubt you’ll get a brush through that mess, though, but I’ll tell Jonah to give it a go, shall I?’

‘No, I think you might be right about not being able to get a brush through it. He’ll have to be clipped, and I’d say from the way he’s walking that his claws need cutting too. He can’t have been getting out and about enough to wear them down, while he’s been moping. In fact,’ I decided, ‘what I really need is a dog grooming parlour!’

‘Milly’s Mutt-Mobile,’ Mrs Lark said.

‘What?’

‘Jonah’s sister’s husband’s brother’s girl. She has a mobile dog parlour. Shall I ring her?’

‘Oh, would you? Ask her if she could come up and do something with Charlie as soon as she has time.’

‘I’ll be glad to. I feel that bad for neglecting the poor little thing, though I kept trying to coax him to eat, and Miss Hebe tried one or two of her potions on him. But he’s just had a huge dinner now, so he’s on the mend.’

Yes…Aunt Hebe’s household-book-derived potions.

‘Mrs Lark,’ I said, sitting on the wooden settle facing her, ‘I expect you know about Alys Blezzard’s book, don’t you?’

‘Oh, yes, there’ve always been copies of what you might call the everyday recipes in circulation, and they were used in the kitchens here, but of course not nowadays…though come to think of it, I do still use the one for medlar cheese. Your aunt got her recipes for the lotions and potions and stuff she brews up from the original, though they’re not Christian to my way of thinking, because it’s well known that Alys Blezzard and her mother were both witches. Lots of people locally, they come up here of nights and buy them. I use the rose face cream and hand cream myself,’ she added reluctantly. ‘There’s no harm in them.’

‘My mother always said Alys was a witch. She liked to think she took after her, brewing up charms and spells, but she didn’t really. It was just a pose.’

‘Alys Blezzard was distantly related to the Nutters through her mother, and they were witches,’ Mrs Lark said. ‘Some of them were burned for it, I think, a lot later. Alys was took—betrayed by the family, some say.’

‘Took?’

‘Gaoled her for questioning, but she died before they could do anything. Just as well, though Seth says she probably wouldn’t have been burned as a witch back then; the burnings was later. But ducking would likely have been just as fatal, especially in the wintertime, if they got carried away.’

I shivered. ‘What a horrible thought! And didn’t they sometimes tie suspected witches up and throw them in the water, and if they sank they were innocent, but if they floated they were guilty? They had no chance, did they?’

‘Before she died Alys entrusted the book to a servant, to give to her daughter when she was old enough,’ she said, with a bright-eyed look at me. ‘I overheard Miss Hebe saying so to Jack—and that it was full of treasures. Alys had said so herself on the flyleaf.’

‘She told Jack that!’ I exclaimed, because Mum had definitely led me to understand that the ancient, handwritten book with all its recipes, was some great and precious secret handed down only to the women of the family—and if there was one thing certain, it was that Jack wasn’t one of those.

‘Of course, that was enough to get him going, seeing the way he’s been treasure-hunt mad from a little lad—and he turned the place upside down looking for the book in case your mum hadn’t taken it after all.’