Winter’s Children: Curl up with this gripping, page-turning mystery as the nights get darker. Leah Fleming
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collars and cuffs, warm boots and thick cloaks in her household, master or servants. The spinning wheel clacked by the hearth and the knitting sticks were never idle. In keeping with the times there was no fancy lacework round their necks, and sadly no baby cloths to sew, much to her despair. She must learn to wait on the Lord’s will but it was not for the want of trying to bring a bairn into the world, she blushed as she scurried down the hill.
It was freezing in the stone church, and the household sat huddled together. Hepzibah could see this parson wanted to stamp his authority on this motley congregation of papist miscreants and former Royalists as he strode up into the three-tiered pulpit, his face purple with zeal. The Snowdens were sitting in their appointed pew, their feet numb with the chill. The bareness of the stone walls, stripped of any offending artefacts, could offer no distractions from the coming storm. Nathaniel, her husband, was already half dosing and she could hear his stomach rumbling for its next meal.
‘The word of the Lord came to me like fire in my bosom. Now we approach the Advent season of fasting and penance, it has come to my knowledge that there be those in our midst who still practise heathen festivals with fire burnings, feasts and are already making preparations for yuletide.
‘Let it be known that for some years now the practice of Christmas-keeping has been outlawed by the government of this realm. It is an abomination of Scriptural truth. The birth of Our Lord is a solemn occasion of prayer and fasting but I hear that there are those among you who make it an occasion of sinful profanity, licentious liberty as make it more Satan’s mass than a service of penitence.’
There was a shuffle and stir among the pews and heads bent to spare blushes, recalling past gambling parties, mummery shows and drunken revels. Hepzibah listened intently. Bentley was going hammer and tongs this morning.
‘You might well hide your shame, you wantons, who dance and sing on a holy Sabbath; who play cards and spend this holy day in drunkenness and debauchery. The eye of the Lord seeth all, brethren! He is not mocked! It is written in the Book of Judgement that Mistress Palmer did consort with others in lewd and wanton apparel, flaunting her body in such cavortings as to fetch the constable. Did not Scholar Knowles be found in the bed of one Bess Fordall, having handfasted together like man and wife, making mockery of holy wedlock as Lord of Misrule? Some of you dishonour Our Lord more in the twelve days of Christmas than the whole twelve months besides.’ He paused to deliver his cannon balls of spit.
‘Be ye no more a Christmas keeper. Shame not His sufferings with your disobedience. For some years now it hath been the universal custom to omit the observation of this festal season in favour of prayer and fasting. Let it be just another working day in this district and nothing more, or else be punished. However lax hath been the overseeing of this season in times past, you have before you one that hath great zeal to uphold the law. The season is condemned and those who disobey shall be stripped and cast into outer darkness where no light perpetual shall shine on them!
‘I speak plain. Let your feast be as Lent, plain, meatless and meagre. Let no green boughs from the hedgerows be brought into your hall with no pagan berries. Let not your children hanker after sweetmeats and trinkets, singing and carolling. Dress them in soberness and humility. Our Lord is meat and drink enough to those who love Him. He will reward your abstinence. Hear and inwardly digest the word of the Lord on pain of your soul’s salvation. Amen.’
Since the parson’s arrival at Michaelmas, Hepzibah had never heard him so fired up; his spittle was shooting from his lips like a fountain. She looked across the pew to where her cousin, Blanche Norton, sat, her pale face looking ahead, white as ice set against her widow’s weeds, flaunting yet another lace collar for all to see, her ringlets dripping out of her fancy cap. Her only child, Anona, sat quietly unheeding the warnings in her own drift of thought.
Blanche’s hair turned white almost overnight on hearing news that her husband, Kit, was slain with the Royalists at Marston Moor in 1644. There were those in the congregation only too glad to reap a bitter harvest on her of fines, robbing her of stock and chattels for taking up the Royalist cause and not attending church services each Sunday. This late war had sliced the district into two camps. Nathaniel neither turned right nor left but paid his dues when asked, steering a careful course in the middle, causing none offence. He said he only awaited the judgement of the Lord, who in His wisdom came down hard on the King. Her cousin’s delinquency brought her in the path of the constables and she was made to pay dearly for her husband’s treachery with the loss of land.
We are strange relations, she thought; I being little and dark and she being tall and fair. Considered still comely of face, with lands still worthy of ploughing, the widow had many callers to woo her but she preferred to run her household as if Kit were still in residence. They were but distant cousins in truth. Since Hepzibah’s own father took the plainer path of worship and Blanche married into a once popish household, they had seldom met until her widowhood.
Nathaniel Snowden of Wintergill was considered a good enough catch for a plain daughter. Marriage suited them both well. But for the want of an heir she was well satisfied with her stone house on the hill. It was a great sadness that her babes did not thrive above a few breaths of air.
This parson’s edicts were mightily strict for a country district where folks did things in the old ways and paid little heed to the pulpit. He would have his spies in the two constables, Robert Stickley and Thomas Carr. If there was some profit to be made from spilling oats of information Stickley was your man. They were both doing well from this change in governance.
Hepzibah had no great quarrel with the idea of banning Christmas. It was a great expense and distraction to their servants who expected roast beef, mutton pies and plum porridge. She thought the season but a ploy to swell the coffers of all the costermongers in the town. Servants wanted play days, dances and fiddling. Everyone knew that dancing was devil’s mischief for more lasses got with child at Christmas than ever fell in Lent.
Let the candle-makers and grocers, spice merchants and pedlars feel the draught. All the money she saved could be spent wisely on a fine tup or breeding mare. There were still the pigs to be killed and the hog’s head to turn into brawn and pies.
Her work was never done. Christmas-keeping was an old popish practice after all, and now that Cromwell reigned in London it was time to call a halt to frivolity. She was a sober matron now, not a flibbertigibbet of seventeen, but she must admit her feet would tap when she heard a jig.
Nathaniel would have his own thoughts on such matters. If he saw fit to give alms and tokens of thanks to his cowmen, stable boys, shepherds and yard boys, strengthen their brew or let the house servants go for a day to visit with their kin folk, that was his affair. She would heed the parson’s words for her own purposes.
‘What think you of our parson’s words, this Advent morn, Blanche?’ she said as they were walking primly down the aisle, her head held high in her broad-brimmed black hat.
Blanche followed grim-faced, clutching the child’s hand. ‘He talks through his arse, this sobersides!’ she whispered. ‘Does he not know that Christmastide is a season of joy, not mourning? There’s little enough to cheer us in a dark dreary winter of snow and ice, when the lanterns are lit all day and the fires give off little heat. ‘Tis the time when folk need a bit of singing and dancing to look forward to. I will not heed his words one whit.’
Blanche ignored the parson at the door and swept out like the grand lady she once was. It did not go unnoticed. ‘Nonie shall have a new gown and we shall call in our neighbours and make merry,’ Blanche said loudly. ‘I owe it to my late husband to keep a good Christmas. Why, in the old days we drank the cellar dry and ate haunches of venison and beef with fruit pies and all manner of exotics. Now I can little afford to feast but I will sell my last trinket to give my little one her wish. She shall not go without just because some preacher with a sourdough face tells me so. We live in sorrow because Kit can be no longer at our side to protect us. Have we not suffered enough for our troubles?’ Blanche stopped in her tracks to see if he was listening.
‘When I sit and look around this plain church with its bare walls, I see only treachery and self-seeking. Was it not Brother Stickley who knocked on my door and demanded four cows as a penance