In the Shadow of Winter: A gripping historical novel with murder, secrets and forbidden love

“Don’t tell them.” His voice rose anxiously as the draw on my arm forced me to bend awkwardly down towards him. “You won’t tell them about me, will you? Please?”

I shook my head, trying to discreetly prise my wrist free only to feel a cold stab of apprehension as he begged again, “Please!”

“I won’t, Matthew,” I said, not really knowing to what I was promising.

He gave me one long hard look and seemed to believe me. Releasing my hand, he blinked from me to Freddy and back to me again. Then, letting out his breath in a long gentle sigh, he slowly and with about as much grace as a bad actor playing a part, crumpled backwards onto the soft panels of the settee.

I stared down at his prone form for a moment before my brain clicked into gear.

“Right Freddy,” I said crisply. “Fetch my scissors, the medical kit – the horse one I mean, we’re going to need more than plasters – and some blankets. I’ll get some water on the boil.”

Freddy looked at me with big scared eyes. “Is he dead?” he whispered.

“No Freddy, he’s not,” I said firmly. “Now off you go, quickly please!”

When the boy had finished that little task, I would strategically send him on another lengthier errand, this time to the hay barn.

If I had been determined to protect Freddy from further shock and the subsequent bad dreams, I only wish I could have extended the same courtesy to myself. Patching up the various wounds that the horses have presented over the years may have trained me in all the practical skills, but nothing could have prepared me for the emotional horror of having to cut away his shirt and examine the twelve or so shotgun pellet wounds that had splattered across his upper arm and chest. None of them had gone deep, he must have been hit at the very edge of the gun’s range, but blood still oozed sickeningly from the wounds as I carefully eased the pellets free.

Blessedly, he was still unconscious as I dressed the wounds with iodine solution and gauze; it seemed to take forever to strap it all firmly into place with the thick rolls of bandage when I had to deal with the leaden weight of his body on my own. But then at long last it was finished and I could place bandages, wounds and everything safely out of sight under the great stack of blankets which would slowly but surely bring him back to vital warmth, and pause a while to gather my thoughts.

Many hours later though, and after all that bustle and urgency it was suddenly feeling very much like I was being given rather too much time in which to think. Freddy had been fed and dispatched off to bed long ago and with the wind outside picking up little gusts of ice and sending them in a distant rattle against the glass, I was actually for the first time in my life finding the house slightly eerie. The rhythmic hiss and creak of the door beneath the stairs made it sound like I was catching the stealthy betrayal of someone’s passing footsteps and with very little else to do now but sit and wait, I found myself wishing very fervently that the back room was not so draughty and my imagination not quite so alive.

Like our water supply, this little corner of the Cotswolds had never been connected to mains electricity either, so the room was merely lit by the inky amber of an oil lamp and the formerly companionable glow of the hearth. This scene was not unique to my household; on the assumption that others were keeping the same late hours, and hopefully for considerably more ordinary reasons than mine, their homes too must be chasing away the shadows with mild lamp light. Across the country, main roads and railways were closed by impossibly deep drifts and after a month when only a few coal trains had managed to reach the power stations, urban homes and even the factories that had managed to labour for years under the most fearsome bombardment had no choice now but to at long last fall silent. Here was another reminder that the weather had the power to do what the war had not.

Admittedly, I could not exactly claim this particular shortage for myself or my little rural farmstead, having never had any electric heaters, refrigerators or lighting to worry about. But at this precise moment the background hum from a little domestic machinery might well have made all the difference to the windblown whispers which were presently stalking me across the room.

Matthew’s head moved on the arm of the settee and I tensed, thinking that he was awake, but his eyes remained closed. His sleep must have been punctuated by nightmares because every once in a while his breathing would jerk and catch in his throat, and occasionally I caught the low murmur of words uttered in an agitated undertone, but he said nothing I could make any sense of. I put the back of my hand lightly to his forehead; it was warm but not alarmingly hot.

I sat back in my chair and settled to watch as he slept. It was strange to find myself so unexpectedly maintaining this late night vigil over a man I had not seen for years, and who now lay restlessly sleeping on my settee. Earlier, my confusion had fixed itself upon flimsy theories of wandering too far in deteriorating weather, but it was impossible to continue this pretence, especially when I remembered that even in a whiteout Matthew would have known these fields and byways as well as I did, if not better.

He stirred again, uneasily. The features of his face were being drawn into sharp relief by the sooty smear of light from the lamp behind me and beneath the tangle of sandy hair which had been thick with dirt and burrs, I could see scratches on his cheek that were days old. His chest was marked by a darkening smudge of fresh bruises and earlier, while I had been dressing his shoulder, I had noted that there were scars too, a jagged series of lines running lightly across his ribs, whitened with age, which must have been from the war.

I shivered suddenly in spite of the fierce heat from the nearby fire and, tucking my legs up under myself, I turned my head aside to fix instead upon the shredded remains of clothing which were laid out on the hearth beside me. Most would be burnt as soon as they were dry enough and only his boots and trousers had been cleaned and hung out with more care. Torn and battered though they were, I suspected he would be too tall for my father’s old clothes and with no hope of getting more from elsewhere, I could not possibly discard them.

His breathing changed and I did not need to see the eyelashes flutter on his cheek to know that he was awake. Silently, I slipped across to the fireside hotplate where I had set some broth to warm and, tipping some into a bowl, I slowly turned back to face him once more. His eyes were glinting in the firelight, following me as I carefully drifted closer. Although they ought to have been a dark hazel with flecks of deeper brown, under the light fever of exhaustion they were paler, almost amber.

“Are you hungry?” I asked. He didn’t answer and just lay there, staring at me.

“Come on, let’s get some of this into you,” I said brightly and, firmly ignoring the foolishness that tried to make me clumsy, knelt by the settee before helping him to spoon some of the warming liquid into his mouth.

For a little while he gulped it down hungrily but then, unexpectedly and with surprising force, he pushed my hand away as if the thin meal suddenly disgusted him. He must have noticed my flinch because he quickly apologised.

“Thank you,” he said softly, allowing his head to fall back onto the cushions. His voice was weak and quiet as though the effort of speaking was almost too much for him but I was relieved to note that there was more colour in his pallid cheeks.

“Don’t mention it,” I replied lightly.

He shut his eyes, “I’ll be on my way again in the morning.”

“I’m sure you will.” He looked like the idea of even sitting up was beyond him.

He gave me a little smile, eyes still closed, and suddenly looked more like the man I knew.

“How did this happen to you?” I asked gently as I climbed to my feet. When I looked back, he was staring at me with an expression strongly reminiscent of the one I had first seen in the snow, but I was determined not to let the opportunity pass this time. “Who did this to you, Matthew?”

His head moved awkwardly on the arm of the chair and I thought for a moment he was going to try to get up. “I don’t … I can’t seem to remember,” he whispered helplessly.

“It’s all right,” I said quickly, guiltily covering the rush of concern that filled me. “It’ll keep until morning I’m sure.”

“You won’t tell them I’m here, will you?” His fingers clutched at the blankets and my heart tightened painfully as that same hunted expression beat a return to his pale haggard face.

“I won’t tell them, Matthew. Don’t worry.”

“He … I didn’t mean to … They’re …” He spoke agitatedly, seeming to be talking more to himself than to me, and I stepped back as he tried to sit up, feeling suddenly nervous as that wild urge to bolt altered his eyes again. His strength failed him however, and slowly he sank back down onto the settee, looking grey and utterly exhausted.

After a while he seemed to fall helplessly into an unmoving slumber and finally I was able to unclench my fingers from the bowl enough to set it down on the kitchen table. His agitation disturbed me and as I gazed down at his averted face from the comparative distance of the other end of the settee, I wondered just what sort of explanation I was expecting him to give, when the morning came.

Would he even be glad when he finally regained his senses, to discover that it was me that had patched and bathed his wounds? So far his reactions had ranged from gentle recognition to horrified aversion, and I really wasn’t sure which emotion I could expect to prevail when daylight and lucid reasoning made their return at last.

“Oh, stop it,” I muttered to myself, crossly avoiding working this up into a larger complication than it deserved. There were, I was sure, any number of more pressing concerns in the mind of a man who had very nearly died than whether or not the person that had helped him was feeling suitably thanked.

Armed with this fresh conviction, I slipped silently back to my station in the armchair and prepared to watch once more. I was just beginning to doze myself when he spoke again;

“What is your name? I’ve forgotten it, I’m sorry.” His head moved on the cushion as he tried to twist round to look at me but his shoulder must have hurt him because he gave a short hiss of pain before allowing his head to fall back again.

“Eleanor,” I said softly from my armchair.

“Oh.” There was a long pause and I thought that he had fallen asleep but then he added, “I knew an Eleanor once, but that was a long time ago; before I went away.”

I said nothing and just watched the fire as it flickered gently in the grate.

“She was a lot like you, but younger. And possibly a little shorter, although that could just be because you’re thinner than she was.” His voice was faint as he mumbled dozily and I realised that he didn’t know where he was. “Her father died you know. I meant to write and tell her how sorry I was but somehow I just couldn’t find the words.”

There was another long pause and then I saw his body tauten. “I’m not making sense, am I, Eleanor?”

“You’re fine,” I replied soothingly. “Just go to sleep.”

For a while I thought he had, but then in a stronger voice he asked, “What did he die of?” He turned his head to look at me and I saw that this time he knew who I was.

“Something with a long unpronounceable name, but basically it was his breathing again,” I said quietly. “He lasted a long time, much longer than the doctors said he could. But he went peacefully, and at least it wasn’t a shock.”

“And you nursed him to the end.” It was a statement, not a question.

“Yes,” I said quietly.

“No wonder you look so …” He stopped.

“So what exactly? My weather-beaten exterior is confusing you,” I supplied lightly.

I think he might have even given a faint chuckle, “I was going to say careworn, but weather-beaten will do.”

For some unfathomable reason, given that I had started it, his evident amusement irritated me and I really didn’t want to think about why. “Go to sleep.” I spoke firmly.

“Yes ma’am,” he said with a faint hint of the wry humour that had once so typified him. He didn’t speak again.

Chapter 3

After a night of dozing fitfully in the armchair, it was hard to gingerly ease my aching joints out of their cramped position, but he was sleeping more soundly now and finally I dared leave him long enough to go about my morning chores.

Yesterday’s fresh bout of snow had not ceased with the dawn and it was still falling thickly on the yard. It had long since filled in the areas I had laboriously cleared a few days previously and the barbed wind was picking it up, tossing it about so that flakes curled around me in little flurries as I sleepily scrunched my way across to the stables. The inmates must have only managed about two hours of escape before the weather had put an end to their liberty once more but judging by the chorus of whickering that met me as soon as I began rattling about in the feed bins, they were all contented enough with their return to confinement, particularly when it meant they got breakfast.

Leaving my assortment of horses and ponies happily munching their meal, I trudged with a relative contentment of my own across the yard and ducked into the goat house. This odd little building had probably had a previous incarnation as a bull house back in the days when this had been a dairy farm, but now it was simply a rough tin roof set on thick stone walls with a small improvised pen area so that they could exercise when the weather was better.

Three cheerful faces greeted me before trotting eagerly over the rough cobbled floor of their house to perform a little boisterous tap-dance about my feet as I tipped out their feed. Laughing, I swept up the small amount of mess they had made and then fetched a milk pail while they ate. Myrtle was a good goat and very docile, and she did not even pause in her steady chewing as I relieved her of her burden of milk. If I had time, I would make butter later.

There was just one animal in my collection that did not inspire quite the same degree of affection and this was the cockerel. He, being a very brave sort of creature, had a habit of feigning indifference until the very moment that my back was turned only to then, with a flurry of feathers, make a wild dive for my ankles. It was always a remarkable coincidence how as soon as I turned back again, he would be intently pecking at the dirt as if nothing had happened. Today, however, he must have wisely read that confrontation would rapidly lead to a close encounter with a cooking pot and as I carefully carried the precious milk back to the chilly gloom of the dairy, he chose to simply fix his beady eye upon me in a disdainful glare before losing all of his sophistication and joining the girls in a frenzied pecking of the kitchen scraps from their feeder.

Freddy was up and making a pot of tea when I reappeared in the kitchen, kicking the snow off my boots and trying to breathe some warmth back into my hands. He looked sleepy but nothing compared to how shattered I felt.

“Eggs for breakfast?” I asked only to smile as he nodded enthusiastically. Clearly there was no need to worry that the upset of the previous day’s events would have affected his appetite. “All right then, what sort? Fried, poached, scrambled or boiled? We’ve got a bit of bread left from yesterday for toast.”

Freddy thought for a moment. “Scrambled, I think.”

“Right, scrambled it is.” I cheerfully returned his grin and it almost seemed for a moment that we could forget the other silent presence in my home. My memories of the past day seemed so unlikely now that it felt as if I had simply experienced an exceptionally bad night with an exceptionally bad dream, and had it not been for the long absent figure from my past currently deeply asleep on my settee, I would not have been able to convince myself that any of it had really happened at all.

Freddy set the table and poured the tea while I juggled eggs and toast, which respectively tried to weld themselves to the pan or spontaneously combust. Finally, however, we were able to sit down and eat and, despite a certain hint of carbon, it was delicious. It was a relief to feel little warming tendrils of energy begin at long last to make their return to my weary limbs.

“Do you think I could have some of that?”

A faint voice from the fireside made us both jump. Feeling strangely guilty again, I looked over to see that Matthew had managed to shuffle himself up to be sitting propped against the arm of the settee. His face was deathly pale and with his dishevelled hair and the scruffs and scrapes on his skin he could still have convincingly passed as a vagrant, and not, as he actually was, a reasonably well-to-do local man. But although his cheeks were sunken and he looked very fragile under the scruffy fuzz of growth on his jaw, the eyes that were cautiously smiling at me from beneath the mask of pain and weariness were calm and disconcertingly familiar, and it was hard to believe now that he was the same person that had been found stumbling about in that blind manner across my land.

He gave me a warmer smile as I abandoned my breakfast to pour him a cup of tea, putting several spoonfuls of sugar in it to help him regain his strength. I was feeling an odd sensation that could best be described as cheerful uncertainty as I approached to hand him the cup and I was relieved to find that I was able to greet him quite easily after all; only to ruin the effect by flinching stupidly as his fingers accidentally pressed over mine. He blinked in surprise, but said nothing.

“What do you want to eat?” I asked, more sharply than I intended.

“Toast?” he said hopefully.

His quick grin was so easy and relaxed that the momentary tension evaporated abruptly, and I couldn’t help breaking into a smile myself as I dragged a table over to him and set a plate down by his side. It was a relief to have him so swiftly establish the tenor of our renewed acquaintance, and still more of a relief to see him reach eagerly for the toast. I had feared that his wounds allied with the extreme exhaustion would have brought on a fever but he seemed well enough, or at least not in any great danger.

He managed to eat most of the plain breakfast before grimacing suddenly and thrusting the plate rather quickly back onto the table. In an attempt to suppress the urge to fuss, I had been trying to concentrate on the remains of my own meal but I heard his pained sigh as he settled back against the arm once more, and I could not help watching as he tucked the blankets up under his chin to cover his bandaged chest in what was a very telling mark of vulnerability.

He unexpectedly looked up to catch me staring and I felt myself jump again, flushing as I quickly looked away. It was impossible to know what to say, particularly when I had to wrestle with an overwhelming impulse to gabble idiotic nothings at him, but he must have misunderstood my meaning because I heard him draw a little breath before saying rather hurriedly, “I’m sorry to put upon you like this. It’s very good of you to have taken me in.”

I did look up at him then, shyness instantly being replaced by a sort of offended irritation as I wondered exactly what else he would have expected me to do. My mouth curled into a brief impression of a smile.

“What actually has happened to you?”

It came out like an accusation and even I was appalled by my own lack of grace. My thoughts might well have been occupied by very little else for the past day but even so, I had still intended to start by asking him how he was feeling or by making one of the many other commonplace social niceties that might have done in the present situation. I certainly had never meant to fling his experience at him quite like this.

Equally certainly, he hadn’t been expecting it either. He glanced quickly from me to Freddy and the gentle grin that had appeared in response to mine darkened abruptly to that same unspeakable tension that was so unlike him.

“I … er …” he began and then stopped. I waited but he didn’t continue.

“Look, you don’t need to tell me anything if you don’t want to,” I said hastily as my embarrassment increased. “It doesn’t matter, but it might help if I understand a little of what’s been happening. Just a very little…?”

“Eleanor … I … I don’t think that I should…You…” He faltered.

My intense shame clouded to puzzlement then. The contractions of his mouth had already betrayed the pattern of his emotions from surprise through to discomfort and onwards, not entirely unreasonably, to impatience. But in this last awkward hesitation, I thought I saw another expression flicker briefly across his face. It was so swiftly suppressed that it barely registered, but just for a moment, only a brief fleeting instant, I thought I saw guilt.

I watched him run a hand over his face and it shook a little. He tried again, “It’s difficult. You’re…”

Then his eyes flicked up to catch mine, crucially, before dropping quickly away again.

“Oh,” I said with that odd note of sharpness back in my voice. It could not have been made plainer if he had tried. “Of course. You can’t tell me.”

He didn’t contradict me.

“Right,” I said in a strangled croak and ignored the pathetically appeasing smile he attempted.

It was a shock to be so emphatically rebuffed. I know that I had been half expecting something like this but somehow the wise thoughts of three o’clock in the morning were no consolation now that it was daylight and he very clearly had not lost his mind.

I turned abruptly away to crash the breakfast things into the sink, setting about scrubbing the dishes as if the boiling water from the pan on the stove could cleanse me of the strain of his unwelcome presence. After all the worry I had expended in the night on his behalf, I had thought that, at the very least, he would owe me a little basic honesty. But instead it appeared that I was to be roughly abandoned to the thin logic of my imagination, understanding nothing except the very bitter sting of his rejection. And knowing all the while that it ought to have been for me to shun him.

Apparently, however, this last little truth was not allowed to matter. Instead, infuriatingly trapped within a straitjacket of compassion, I could do little else but maintain an icy silence while the day passed into a blur of keeping him fed, keeping him warm, making him tea; providing, in fact, any one of the many little things that were essential to his ongoing comfort and recovery. He didn’t even seem to register the insult contained within his unthinking acceptance of my continued care.

It might have been a little easier if I could have continued my chores in some other room. Unfortunately, however, there were no fires laid in any other part of the house and while I could still remember a time when there had been a wall between kitchen and living room, my father had removed it years ago so that my mother could have one of the new Calor gas stoves that were suddenly all the rage. Her lively presence and divine cooking had left us for higher things in my early teens but the gas oven still lived on and the only boundary that could separate me now from the presence on my settee was the thin join between the red-tinted tiles in the kitchen and the fraying carpet of the living room floor.

For his part, Matthew, in his brief moments of full wakefulness seemed fixed upon giving me glimpses of that same bright meaningless smile which had irritated me before. This was apparently an attempt to conceal the darker moments of being caught looking broodingly thoughtful and intensely fierce but the improbability of a civilised man such as him even bearing such an expression was unsettling enough.

Added to his continued silence, this obvious secrecy was actually making my own show of frosty distance seem absurdly irrelevant and with the acknowledged flaw in my living arrangements to deal with as well, I was forced in the end to spend the rest of the day attempting to take myself as far away from him as possible. In weather such as ours, however, there was only so long that I could bear it and by about eight o’clock I was shattered, slumping defeated in the armchair by the fire, unable to pretend any longer that I was anything but utterly wearied of this act. I would have dearly liked to have abandoned it, but the only thing I could think of was to scream at Matthew to explain what had happened to him. But he had already made it clear that he had no intention of letting me understand anything about his business and so I held my tongue, and kept my stare fixed upon the crackling flames.