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

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.