Pernel's Tale

The soul's winter - A Christmas Ghost Story

✨💕Hello darling reader, quiet, faithful audience, and much-loved subscriber! I can’t believe there are 250 people subscribed to me - thank you for this wonderful early Christmas present!💕✨

And this means, as per my deal with E. A. Morales , I owe you all a bonus celebration story! As luck would have it, I happen to have penned Pernel’s tale as a prologue for the Christmas Market that’s still in full swing, but it didn’t fit the remit. Pernel didn’t belong. I hope you’ll take her to your heart, instead.

The air tingled with the promise of snow. The market square was alive with lights, laughter, the sugared scent of ginger and cloves. From the lytchgate’s shadow, Pernel gazed smiling, unseen in the bustle and joy. Christmas shoppers flittered from stall to festive stall like butterflies. On the far side of the square, a skating rink glowed ghostly white, and clumsy figures fumbled their way around its edges, giggling and shrieking. Across the broad centre of it, a few superior skaters glided, serene as swans.

At the end of the churchyard path, the great wooden doors of All Saints Parish Church stood open, warmth and light glowing like a beacon to guide the faithful to the Christingle service. Pernel watched them arrive, little children bundled up in boots and mittens, their eyes aglow, elderly couples leaning on each other’s arms as they tried not to slip on the frosty flagstones. They passed through the gate close enough for her to reach out and touch them, but none suspected she was there. Silently, she breathed a hope of blessing for each one.

How many had she watched pass by, over the centuries? Thousands, surely. And yet she never tired of them: the beautiful and the ugly, the sweet and the sour, those that smiled, those that squabbled, those that fought only to kiss and make up. It was a poor kind of recompense, she knew, for the life she had lost, but on nights like this, with joy and love palpable on the frosty air, it almost seemed enough.

Her eyes came to rest on the little stone wall near the river’s edge. Unbidden, a memory arose of another winter’s night, centuries ago. A misfated meeting in the dark, a struggle for breath, the sudden shock of icy water. Treachery so deep it was scored into her soul, even now. She tried to blink it away, focus her attention back on the life and light of the Christmas market, but it was useless, she knew. The memory would run its course until it reached its end.

Her true love’s name was Robin, and when they were children she used to tease him that his blue eyes were robin’s eggs, stolen from a nest in the hedgerow that marked the boundary between their fathers’ fields. Laughing, he would tease her right back – her eyes, he said, were green stones stolen from the man in the moon. Then, both would squeal in mock fear, scamper into the woods and huddle in the undergrowth, hiding from the avenging birds and moon-man, holding their breath until it gave way in giggles, tickling. And later, kisses.

They should have been married in the January, the Church having forbidden weddings during Advent. The banns were read, Pernel’s dress and veil lovingly embroidered by her mother and aunt. All was ready. Christmas that year felt like the enchanted pause after a spell is spoken, before the magic takes effect.

But there was one who was not happy about the match. Robin’s younger brother, Richard, had ever been a spoilt, envious child. Their flights to the woodland were often as much from him as from deliciously imagined terrors. Soft-hearted, Pernel would try to include him in their games, only to find, time and again, that he thwarted all, broke toys and cheer for fun, was happy only when others were not.

Bitterly she asked herself the question that had tormented her down years without number: how could she not have seen what he would do?

That night it had been bright with stars, but cold. Pernel hugged her cloak about her, snuggled deeper into her rabbit-fur cowl. Down below the little stone wall, the river moved sluggishly, ice fringing the reeds at its edge. Her breath, on the dark air, was white smoke scented with dried mint, for the kisses she held on her tongue. Robin was coming. The note, scribbled on a rough scrap of paper and pushed through the shutters of her window, said to meet her. Said he had something to give her that couldn’t wait. She smiled as she imagined what Christmas trinket he had found for her. Sweetmeats from his mother’s kitchen? Ribbons for her hair?

“Pernel.”

A male voice, deep, on the thin air. Not Robin.

Richard.

Her eyes searched his face, confused. “Richard? Is all well?”

“No, Pernel, it is not. How could it be?”

“Why, what’s amiss?” Panic started in her chest, her heart fluttering with frightened thoughts. “Robin? Is he hurt? Is he ill?”

“Robin is well, Pernel,” Richard’s voice was terse with irritation. “Of course he is. He has everything he wants. But what of me?”

“Of you, Richard? What of you?”

“Is it right, Pernel, that you and he should be so happy, while I have nothing? When you wed, you both shall inherit our fathers’ land. That were bad enough. But why should he then have you, to hold and comfort him, and I all alone?”

Pernel heard it then, the familiar whine in his voice. Strangely it echoed, the high indignant note of a ten-year-old, in the deep bass of a man almost grown. Habit bit down impatience. “You shall not be landless, Richard, you know that. Your father has fields set aside for you at the other end of the village. And you will find a lass of your own soon enough. What of Alice Grey? Susanna Fletcher? Both like you well.”

“Alice and Susanna!” Richard’s lip curled in scorn. “You offer me scrapings from the table. Shall I not at least taste the best dish, before it’s broken?” And he lunged toward her, one hand at the back of her skull, another at her waist, pulling her to him as her feet slipped on the icy stones of the river walk. His lips pressed hers so hard she felt his teeth, and her hands scrabbled at his chest, pushing, useless. Because he was Richard, Robin’s little brother, she forbore to use her nails on his skin until his hand snaked under her cloak, began to explore her clothing.

The slap of her hand on his face rang out on the iron-cold air, but he paused only a moment to grasp it in his wrist. The other was still free and she raked it down his cheek, drawing blood. The pain woke some beast in him worse than the one she’d glimpsed all his childhood and he threw her down on the frozen stone, his hands around her throat, squeezing until the stars winked out in the dark winter sky, and the sound of the river surged to silence in her ears.

After that, she knew only a moment’s sharp consciousness, awakened by icy water, fear, and a desperate struggle against the leaden pull of the river, a struggle that seemed to last a lifetime, but was over very soon.

She opened her eyes, in the churchyard. She was standing at the lytchgate, watching Robin, her father and her uncles weep silent tears as they carried a bier into the church.

They hanged Richard the following week at the crossroads, and only his mother wept for him.

At first, Robin came to church on Sundays with his shoulders hunched, his eyes downcast. Seated next to him unseen, she heard him sigh his way through the service and her heart ached for him, until one day he sighed differently. His eyes lifted, his shoulders drew back, and across the pews, Alice Grey met his gaze with eyes like a doe in woodland.

The Sunday came when Robin led Alice Grey down the church steps to the cobbled market square, threw back her veil, and kissed her in the spring sunshine. Pernel watched, as they brought their babes to the church to be baptized, watched them grow, from Sunday to Sunday, Easter to Michaelmas and Easter again. Watched, the babes marry, and christen babes of their own. Watched them bury first Alice, and then Robin.

She had wondered, then, if his spirit might join her, if they might be together again, one last time. Pernel was not the only soul still walking the churchyard. The little community of shades eased each other’s loneliness, smoothed the long years. The others knew she was waiting for him, watched with an anxious impatience that echoed her own. But Robin’s grave remained quiet. He and Alice slept side by side, at peace. He had forgotten Pernel completely, had forgotten all, his blue eyes dimmed and closed forever.

Pernel lingered. Centuries wore on, without her learning why her soul had not passed over to peace, as Robin’s had. The years changed the buildings, but not her prison. Her world was bounded by the church, the churchyard, the market square, the river path and the little stone wall.

With a heavy sigh, Pernel tore her eyes away from the dark water, forced her gaze back to the bustling square, and happier thoughts. But something at the market was wrong.

The twinkling strings of fairy lights were blotted out by strobing blue, the notes of a carol from the church behind her drowned in the wail of a siren. Pernel gasped, readied herself to follow the press of people out of the church to the gathering crowd, but a hand on her arm held her back.

“Hello.”

She blinked.

Yes, the stranger was speaking to her. His hand rested on her arm. He could see her, could feel her. Which could mean only one thing.

“You’re dead,” she murmured.

He smiled back, his lips trembling a little, and she realised it was not from cold, but shock.

“Yes,” he said, sadly. “I think so.”

Silently, she took his hand. His eyes met hers, and they were blue as moonlight, blue as a summer river in the sun, blue as those rare December days when clouds that seemed gathered forever part, like a promise of thaw in midwinter.

They made her wonder if, perhaps, there was a reason she had not left the churchyard, after all.

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© Moll Moonlight. All rights reserved.

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If your taste runs to romance with a little more romp in it, and you’re not already reading my Regency bodice-ripper, Taken by the Highwayman, give it a whirl here: