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

His tale must have demonstrated every one of the usual inconsistencies inspired by his wonderfully overactive imagination but it would have taken a harder woman than me to ignore the underlying thread of genuine alarm. Even then, I probably could still have dismissed it as fantasy and, thanks to his appalling lack of self-confidence, he almost certainly would have believed me. But his description of the moment of spotting someone floundering on the furthermost slopes with its madcap image of that same foolish soul trying to force their way uphill through deep shifting powder was inescapable and, in the end, I found it unavoidably convincing too.

And so that was how I found myself first prising a pony from its hay to reluctantly accompany me out into the disorientating amber light of a thickening snowstorm. Then, with the dark shadow of a hedge as my only guide, why I set about blindly tracing a path along the ridge top until yards felt like miles. And why now, nearly an hour later, I was standing cold and painfully breathless while the wind carved white spirals around me, dispassionately staring. At a dead man.

He was sitting unnaturally slumped and motionless in the lee of an old dry-stone wall and with wind-driven drifts already beginning to claim his silent body, he was rapidly becoming nothing more than a misshapen extension to the shade. If I had been any later I might never have seen him at all. Everything about him was adding weight to the appearance of habitual vagrancy and where his head had sunk down onto his chest, I found that I could see very little of his face beneath the tattered and filthy remains of a scarf that may once have been patterned. His stained coat had a gaping tear to the seam of one sleeve and, lying half-propped against the hard frozen support of the tumbled stones, he had one hand jammed into the buttons near his chest, presumably in a useless quest for warmth. The other, just visible as white lifeless fingers within the swathes of a fraying cuff, had slipped from his lap to rest among the exposed stones by his side. It seemed to me that he must have made that same cruel mistake experienced by many other homeless people before and, having failed to beg his way into the cover of a dry barn and a hot meal, had chosen to pause and catch his breath for a while in the comparative shelter of this old stone wall. And then, with energy and resources at their lowest ebb, he must simply have, tragically but inevitably, expired.

So it came as a surprise when the pale frozen hand suddenly tightened gruesomely upon the rock by his side to thrust him awkwardly to his feet.

I had been creeping closer with that macabre curiosity of one who needs to at least be sure before turning for home so it only took one staggering plunge forwards in a search for balance for him to crash blindly into me. I gave a yelp, mainly at finding a corpse becoming suddenly very much not a corpse, but he, poor man, found the shock of impact infinitely worse. Meeting someone at all in a whiteout was obviously utterly unexpected, and to find them standing silently and unmoving just above him was quite simply far too much. His strangled cry echoed back off the swirling barrier of icy wind; the momentum, which had carried him so suddenly and forcefully to his feet, made him rebound off me again and he stumbled, flailing backwards until he was brought crashing painfully down once more onto the hard frozen ground.

There was a brief moment of silence while I recovered my balance and my poise and the poor tramp simply lay there. He was as still and as silent as he had been before and I wondered if I really had killed him this time. But then in the next moment I saw him breathe and I was suddenly kneeling in the rubble by his side, putting a reassuring hand on his ragged sleeve and gabbling apologies and explanations like an anxious idiot.

He hadn’t moved from his crumpled heap, head concealed in the curve of his arm and a liberal dusting of windblown snow. In fact, he seemed completely insensible to my jumbled words and I was just mumbling something along the lines of “sorry, sorry. I’m so sorry” when all of a sudden he moved again. As before it was entirely unexpected and again he made me yelp and flinch away but this time, instead of plunging to his feet, he twisted round onto his back and took hold of the hand that had been steadily giving his shoulder a little shake.

For a man on the edge of existence his grip was surprisingly firm but what was more startling was the speed with which he snatched aside my other hand. It had instinctively reached to push at his chest so that I would not topple forwards onto him, I think – not hard, in spite of the sharply muttered exclamation it had drawn from him – and my mind was just beginning to make the first uncertain move from confusion into alarm when all of a sudden, quite simply, it just froze.

The hoarse voice was mumbling something up at me, a garbled torrent attempting to form an angry accusation. It sounded like he was questioning my morality and made absolutely no sense whatsoever, but I was not listening to that. All I could think of was the numbing discovery that this was no strange vagrant.

The man’s weary tones were curt and altered, and it had been a long time since I had last heard him speak, either in irritation or in friendship. But regardless, the voice was inexplicably, indisputably familiar – I knew him.

In an instant the urge to draw back evaporated. “ Matthew? ”

My enquiry was as hesitant as it was incredulous and it had to be repeated five or six times before my words finally filtered through his rage enough to at least silence his ranting. In defiance of his evidential fury, my voice was astoundingly steady as I persevered:

“Matthew? It’s me … Eleanor.”

The dark eyes that were marked and shadowed by the hollow strain of exhaustion wavered for a moment before abruptly focusing to fix upon mine. They were staring at me from behind the tattered mask of the scarf and I could see where the fabric was moving in and out over his mouth to the draw of his rapid breathing.

“Matthew?” I repeated, trying not to give in to the appalling rush of concern that had accompanied that first wild unrecognizing glare. I believe I even tried to smile.

His breathing checked.

Suddenly he moved again. It was with that same uncontrolled urgency that had startled me before. I flinched aside, raising an arm instinctively as he leapt to his feet only to realise even as I did so that he must have let me go. There was a sharp crunch of snow behind me and a rapid scattering of loose flakes. Then, irregular and stumbling, the uneven steps accelerated and diminished.

In an instant and without so much as pausing for thought, I had twisted to my feet. I could still make out the weaving shadow of the departing figure and, racing over to the sulkily waiting pony to snatch up his rope before dragging the reluctant creature after me, I set off again across the field in pursuit of the hurrying man.

Even with the handicap of a stubbornly protesting animal, I was still able to gain on him before we had travelled many yards and as I drew alongside and then began to pass him, it was easy to see why. His head was down as he forced himself onwards and it seemed to me that he was only managing to do so at all by drawing on some last deep reserves that had nothing to do with muscle or physical strength. The tatty scarf had fallen away to expose a grimy unshaven jaw and his breath was coming in short laboured puffs that misted in the air around him before being swept away by the ceaselessly bitter wind. He was clearly floundering but I didn’t dare touch him again and he seemed to have no intention of stopping until either snow or exhaustion forced it.

In desperation I dragged the pony round to partially bar his path and cried, “Matthew! You’re going the wrong way! ”