In The Grip Of Old Winter
Read In The Grip Of Old Winter Online
Authors: Jonathan Broughton
In The Grip Of Old Winter
by
Jonathan Broughton
Copyright ©
Jonathan Broughton 2015
Hastings is a town on the south coast of England, UK
All the other locations, situations and characters are
works of fiction
Cover art Copyright © Melvyn Grant 2015
A note on
pronunciations
Eorl is pronounced Earl. Eorl
is the Anglo Saxon spelling.
The big black dog called the
barghest is pronounced bar-guest.
The spae-wife sounds like
spay-wife.
About the layout
There are no chapters in this
book. Each section is approximately fifteen hundred words long. A line of three
asterisks marks the end of each section. There are three parts to the story, as
shown in the Table of Contents. Each Part and About the Author and Artist are
linked to the Table of Contents. The story is told with British spelling and
punctuation.
Mum shivered. “It’s so cold.”
Peter sat in the back of the
car and gazed out of the window. The bare trees sparkled with frost and the
yellow sun flashed between their trunks as they sped past the countryside.
Dad adjusted the heater to
make the car warmer and then he lowered the driver’s window a tiny bit and the
icy blast made mum groan. So he shut the window and adjusted the heater again
until the temperature came right.
“Nearly there,” said dad.
“Are you excited, Peter?”
“Yeah,” he lied. It had taken
for ever
to start out from home.
Mum needed to check that all
the plugs had been pulled out of their sockets. The curtains drawn just right
to suggest that somebody might be in the house. That all the upstairs doors be
closed and the downstairs ones too that didn’t show through the windows.
When at last she climbed into
the car and dad started the engine, she panicked, scrambled out and went back
to check all over again.
“Never mind,” said dad. “It’s
just mum. We’ll soon be on our way.”
And
she didn’t let him bring his laptop.
“There’s no point, Peter.
Granny and granddad don’t have the internet. It will be good for you to have a
break from it. There will be lots of other exciting things to do.”
She didn’t say what those
‘exciting things’ might be and Peter guessed it might be boring stuff, like
walking.
At home, he liked Christmas.
Christmas at grandma and granddad’s might be really,
really
boring. They
were old and lived over five hours away in a big house all alone in a wood. Mum
reminded him of their last visit during the summer holidays four years before.
He nodded, though he didn’t remember anything.
“You remember the wolf,” she
said.
“Oh yes.” A huge wolf that
crouched with bared fangs and yellow eyes. It stood in the kitchen on the top
shelf of an enormous wooden sideboard full of plates. They let him touch its
teeth and then pretended it snapped its jaws and bit his fingers. It didn’t,
because it was dead, he knew that, but it looked as if it might. When he
pressed his finger against one of the teeth, it left a hollow in his skin.
“Will we see the wolf again?”
“I expect so,” mum said. “If
they still have it.”
Dad took hold of the steering
wheel with both hands. “Now then, I need to concentrate.”
Peter leaned forward to watch
the satnav. The orange arrow on the grey road pointed to the right and as dad
slowed down, the angle of the turn drew closer to the bottom of the screen.
Mum pointed. “There.”
Dad grumbled. “Really! They
should cut the trees back.”
The orange arrow touched the
bottom of the screen and dad flicked the indicator. The arrow slid upwards and
pointed straight ahead on another grey road.
Why did all the roads on the
satnav have to be grey? A different road should mean a different colour.
This road, Peter decided, might be brown, for high banks reared up on either
side and some of the trees grew at strange angles so that their branches
tangled high above.
Dad muttered. “I hope we
don’t meet anything coming the other way. There’s nowhere to pass.”
“Well, it’s only a lane so
slow down in case we do,” said mum.
The sun didn’t flash between
the trunks anymore and the sudden shadow turned the lane into a tunnel. Fallen
leaves lay piled against the tree trunks and branches pointed with spindly
twigs towards the sky.
Mum said, “This is so
beautiful in the summer, when the trees are in leaf. It’s all green.” The car
bounced with a jolt.
“Honestly!” Dad’s neck went
red, the first sign of his anger. “Doesn’t the council look after these roads?”
Mum slapped her hands in her
lap, the first sign of her anger. “I keep telling you, it’s a lane, so slow
down.”
Dad banged the steering
wheel, but did as she said.
“And I think you should put
your lights on, too.”
“It’s fine.”
Peter peered up at the patches
of blue sky criss-crossed by the ever changing pattern of branches. Big grey
clouds filled some of the patches and hid the blue. Shadows shifted around the
trees as they drove past.
Dark things might hide in
these banks that no one ever sees.
And as he tried to imagine
what those dark things might be, a man stepped out from behind a tree and
looked straight at him. His heart jumped and he gasped.
Mum turned in her seat. “What
is it, darling?”
Dad moaned. “He doesn’t feel
sick again does he? We’re nearly there.”
“Do you want some water?”
Peter pointed out of the back
window. “Did you see that man?”
Mum reached for the water
bottle at her feet. “What man?”
“He was standing by a tree.”
“I didn’t see a man,” said
dad.
Peter stuttered. “He had...”
Mum frowned. “What did he
have?”
“A sword and... and a
shield.”
Mum laughed. “You must have
imagined it.”
Dad laughed too. “I don’t
know. This is Ten Sixty-Six Country, so he might have got left behind after the
Battle of Hastings.”
Mum stroked Peter’s hair off
his forehead. “I think you’ve been playing too many computer games. Sit back,
we’re nearly there.”
He didn’t imagine it. It must
be almost impossible to imagine something so obvious, a man with big scared
eyes and his hand on the hilt of a sword and a shield that covered his chest.
Perhaps he didn’t want to be seen, is that why he looked so frightened? Or
perhaps he did want to be spotted, because he needed help?
Peter wanted to glance back,
to see if he had moved, but he didn’t dare.
Maybe grandma and granddad knew
about the man. He needed to get used to them before he talked about it and if
he liked them he would ask.
The tree tunnel grew darker
and dad switched on the headlights. The little patches of blue sky disappeared
behind the dark clouds that rolled upwards in giant curves.
Mum shivered and rubbed her
arms. “Brrgh! It feels even colder.”
Dad adjusted the heater and a
blast of hot air swept across Peter’s face.
I’m not frightened.
Nothing frightens dad and I’m like him.
Though Peter wished that mum
or dad had seen the man, then he didn’t even need to think about being
frightened.
No, I’m not frightened...
but why was the man there with a sword and a shield?
The car bounced and rolled
and dad growled some bad word under his breath.
Mum laughed a bit too loud.
“Here we are. At last! I could do with a nice cup of tea.”
Dad pulled up the handbrake
and Peter clicked his seat belt undone, opened the door and stepped out into
the freezing air.
A forest of trees loomed
behind him. Nothing moved in the shadows between their trunks. The man must be
a long way back and nobody ran as fast as a moving car.
As he stared, a big white
snowflake drifted down.
***
“There you are.”
The call came from the house.
Granddad and grandma hurried towards them. They both had long white hair down
to their shoulders.
Mum flung her arms wide and
ran. “Mummy, daddy, how lovely to see you.” She hugged them both at once. It
sounded strange, mum calling two old people ‘mummy’ and ‘daddy,’ but then he
didn’t remember hearing her say it before.
They exchanged kisses. Peter
stared, this house didn’t look anything like a home. No red brick walls or
windows with painted white frames. No porch over the front door with a lantern
to light the step.
These walls were made of
massive stones that didn’t fit together in neat lines. At the very top, gaps,
cut between the stones, looked like the battlements of a castle. An archer
might stand there to shoot arrows. Above the battlements stood another, smaller
house with a slanting roof. A house on top of a house. Peter didn’t ever remember
seeing any building like it
ever
before. Had he really been here four
years ago?
Such different windows too.
Not neat rectangles like all the houses in his crescent, but narrow and dark
and at odd places in the walls. No two windows lined up.
He didn’t like all this
difference. Who’d want to build such a strange house? Why did anyone want to
live in it? It made him nervous to think of staying here and he imagined that
the house watched him too and brooded. Such an old house might live, like the
trees that surrounded it, and grow wise with age.
“Come on, Peter.” Dad’s hand
rested on his shoulder. “Let’s go and say hello.”
“Are we really staying here?”
Dad laughed. “It’ll be fine
as long it’s warm.”
Grandma opened her arms as he
approached. “Peter, there you are my love. Come and give your old granny a
kiss.”
She held him in a close
embrace and kissed his forehead. “Haven’t you grown?” Peter smelled perfume,
like flowers and her cheeks, creased with a beaming smile, reminded him of the
snow-capped ridges of a mountain range in his school atlas. “Did you have a
good journey?” She cupped his face in her hands and her blue eyes sparkled.
“It was ok.”
“It’s wonderful having you
come for Christmas. And your Aunty Almina will be joining us tomorrow, so we’ll
be one big happy family.” She let go and turned to dad. “Richard, my love.
Merry Christmas.”
Peter didn’t know Aunty Almina
at all, though mum mentioned her when they packed their cases yesterday.
Granddad held out his hand
for Peter to shake. “Hello, young man.” The grip, though firm, didn’t squeeze
and the skin felt warm. “Looking forward to Christmas?”
Peter nodded.
Mum said, “This is his first
Christmas away from home. He’s ever so excited.”
“That’s good,” replied
granddad. “I hope we live up to expectations.” He glanced at the sky. “Snow’s
coming, best be heading inside.”
Grandma put an arm around
Peter’s shoulders and held him close. “Ooh yes, it’s jolly chilly. Let’s put
the kettle on and I’ve made some cheese scones to warm you all up. Come along.”
“I’ll fetch the cases,” dad
said.
“Let me give you a hand,”
granddad offered.
Dad called. “Peter, can you
carry your backpack?”
Peter slipped out from under
granny’s arm. “Ok.”
“Don’t be long now, can’t
have you catching chills.” She and mum hurried towards the house.
Peter heaved his backpack
onto one shoulder and waited at the front of the car for dad and granddad. Big
snowflakes fell one after another and dotted the ground with white. They landed
on his anorak and stuck. When he touched them, they fell to pieces, but they
didn’t melt. He remembered one of the songs they sang at the end of term
concert at school, ‘I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas’. Last year, the snow
didn’t settle, but this year it might.
A light shone from one of the
downstairs windows at the side of the house. Mum and grandma appeared and
darted backwards and forwards. Mum filled a kettle and grandma wore oven gloves
and carried a tray. The bright light, warm and welcoming, made him feel better.
If all the windows shone with light then he needn’t be anxious and he imagined
that it might be cosy to live inside those old stone walls, even safe.
A light flashed from a middle
window high up under the battlements. Someone must have struck a match, that’s
what it looked like, but mum and grandma still bustled to-and-fro through the
downstairs window.
The light flickered in the
high window, difficult to see through the falling snow. Neither bright nor
steady, it hung suspended in the air and slid from side to side. Then, closer
to the glass, another paler light appeared which, with a gasp, Peter recognised
as a face.
“What is it, son?” Dad strode
up behind him.
Peter pointed. “There’s
someone up there in that window.”
Dad handed him a plastic bag
full of boxes wrapped in Christmas paper. “Take this will you. I can’t carry
anymore.” He glanced up at the house. “Which one?”
“That...” No light shone, no
face pressed against the glass.
Dad frowned. “Which window
was it?”
“It was... I swear I saw it.”
Dad patted Peter’s head. “Let’s
get inside before the cold freezes our brains. Hurry now.”
Peter jabbed the air with his
finger. “There really was, that window right at the top.”
“What is it, young man?”
Granddad stood beside him with a large suitcase in either hand.
Dad laughed. “It’s nothing.
Just something he thinks he’s seen. Probably just the snow making strange
shapes.”