lower myself into Del’s chair with an audible sigh of contentment.
“So,” she says. “Are you going to tell William how exhausted you are—having flown across the world, six months pregnant, right after exams—or am I going to need to have a word with our Lord Thorne?”
I sigh. “It’s not his fault.”
“Nope, it’s yours.” She catches my look and arches her white brows. “Well, it is. He’s like a child who just devoured an entire bowl of sugar. His new bride is home, at the holidays no less, and he’s too excited to pause long enough to see that the only place you want to visit is your bed.”
I sigh again. Deeper. Then I straighten. “Oh, I haven’t told you where we went this afternoon.”
“Don’t change the subject. We’re—”
“The Festival of the Penitent Rapscallions.”
That stops her. She blinks. “The what?”
I smile. “You mean you haven’t heard of it? Aren’t you the local historian and folklorist?” I lean back in my seat. “Well, I suppose it’s not that important. Just a forgotten local tradition that I attended personally and could tell you all about . . . if only you wouldn’t rather discuss my need for sleep.”
She glares. Which is adorable, really. Freya is barely over five feet tall, plump and white haired, and about as menacing as a Persian kitten.
“Would you like to talk about the festival?” I say.
“Would you like to tell William you’re too tired for all this holiday running about?”
“After the ball. I really do want to go to that. Until then, if I can just sit here, with nice cuppa and a biscuit or two to sustain me . . .”
She rolls her eyes but walks to the table and pours me a tea as I start telling her about the festival.
“That is remarkable,” she says twenty minutes later, sitting in her own chair, madly typing my observations into her laptop.
“You’ve never heard of it?” I say.
“I have heard of a local tradition involving pardons, but I was never able to track down details. It seems I was looking in the wrong direction. Pardons are primarily Roman Catholic in nature, mostly associated with Easter and Michaelmas. There’s very little Catholic influence here, though, which is why I wasn’t getting anywhere. What you’re talking about more likely holds traces of Saturnalia.”
She chuckles at my expression. “Yes, you’d best not tell the vicar that their beloved festival is rooted in paganism.”
“Aren’t most, though?” I say as I glance around her living room.
While there’s a small tree in the corner, her own decorations suggest a celebration of Yule and the solstice more than Christmas, though they also bring to mind the Victorian decorations William put up, strengthening the commonalities between the two.
The emphasis is on nature, with evergreen boughs and holly, dried citrus slices, mistletoe balls and pine cones. And, of course, candles. So many candles, as if to summon the sun indoors as the days grow ever shorter.
“Saturnalia then?” I prompt. “Roman holiday held in December and one of the precursors to the non-Christian aspects of Christmas.”
She smiles. “Correct. Saturnalia celebrated freedom, among other things. Masters would serve dinner to their servants and slaves, who were free for that brief period of time. According to some historians, there was also a practice of pardoning criminals during that time. Your local penitent festival could have its roots there. There are also potential origins closer to home. In the middle ages, the York minster hosted a winter mistletoe service that pardoned wrongdoers. It clearly rose from pagan practices.” She taps her keys, making more notes. “I’ll take a closer look at the York mistletoe service and see whether the practice spread to any other villages in the area.”
We chat a bit more about the High Thornesbury festival and its possible antecedents. Then I pull my feet under me. “I also had . . . Well, I have a situation I need to discuss with you.”
I tell her about Mary.
“And you’re hesitating to hire her?” Freya says. “For fear of what exactly? That you might interfere with her destiny to die broken down in a field by the age of thirty?”
I give her a look.
“Well?” she says.
“It won’t come to that, obviously. If I don’t hire her, we’ll find another—less intrusive—way to help. But it’s a symptom of an issue I need to deal with. What if, in the correct timeline, she went to Whitby, met the farmer’s son, fell in love, and lived both happily and comfortably for the rest of