“I can imagine.” Griffin’s boots crunched on the frost, her thick wool skirts swirling around her ankles.
“Were you and Thomas like that? Lost in one another?” Penelope asked, because apparently she enjoyed torturing herself.
Griffin smiled wistfully. “At first, when we were young. When we were still a little unsure of how we felt about each other. But then we had a son, and we started theMenagerie, and we had to turn our faces back to the world.” A robin trilled out from a nearby branch as they passed, then launched itself into the air in a burst of snow. Griffin’s keen eye tracked it until it vanished against the winter sky. “I wonder, though, how things would have been different if we hadn’t been able to marry. Keeping a secret love alight takes a great deal more effort, I should think. Like trying to keep a torch from being extinguished by the rain.”
“Perhaps it depends on the couple,” Penelope said. “Certainly Harry and John never seem to lack for fuel.”
Griffin snorted.
“And Isabella and Joanna—well, they weren’t like Harry and John, but they always seemed to sort of... drift toward one another. There was always a sort of pull between them, keeping them tethered. You only noticed it if you spent a long time watching, though—I’m still not entirely sure how many people in Melliton knew the truth, and how many just saw a very old, very deep friendship.”
“Isabella and Joanna...” Griffin murmured. She turned her face up to the sky, her breath making clouds in the chilly space above her muffler. “That sounds more like what Thomas and I had,” she said easily. “Our love was... comfortable. Oh, that sounds so tepid when put like that—but it didn’t feel dull. Just—strong. Steady.” Her lips quirked. “I miss that.”
“Maybe you’ll find it again someday,” Penelope said. The words were soft, hardly more than a whisper.
Perhaps they were lost on the winter wind, because Griffin made no reply.
Night had fallen, the clock was about to strike eleven, and Penelope was knocking softly on Griffin’s bedroom door.
Rustling and light swearing answered her. Then the door was pulled wide. Griffin stood, wrapped in a shawl, her eyes still sleep-softened even as they pinched at the corners. “Already?” she grumbled.
“We’ll need to hurry to have everything ready by midnight,” Penelope replied.
Griffin breathed a low curse, but Penelope only grinned in return. Anticipation thrummed through her veins and sizzled beneath her skin. This Christmas Eve tradition was one of her very favorite moments of the year, and she couldn’t wait to share it with her friend. Especially a sleepy, grouchy Agatha Griffin wearing thick-soled boots and an expression of pure suspicion.
“Too much mystery,” Griffin muttered as they crept down the stairs with only a single candle to guide them.
Eliza, Sydney, Harry, and John soon joined them in the hall. Voices were muffled and footsteps careful, to keep from waking the rest of the household. “Does everyone have their coins?” Penelope whispered, and was answered by a bobbing round of nodding heads. “Good—let’s go.” She shouldered her pack of supplies and the group slipped out into the night.
A cold moon had risen, silvering the trees and the long ribbon of the lane. Harry and John led the way in the snug shielding of their woolen pea-jackets, long tested by the Arctic climes they sailed. Griffin had wrapped her shawl over her head for extra warmth, leaving only her eyes free, and Eliza and Sydney were sporting two of the Stanhope brothers’ cast-off felt caps from when they were boys. Nobody spoke: Penelope had cautioned them against it, for stealth’s sake.
In a silent huddle, they slipped toward the Four Swallows.
They were not the first to arrive: Mr. and Mrs. Biswas let them into the darkened tavern hall, and helped Penelope begin emptying her pack. Mrs. Bedford was already setting out a bowl of her best cider, and Mr. Scriven was helping to cut slices of cold ham and bread and cheese to set beside Mrs. Biswas’s curried pies. Before long Mr. Thomas, Mr. Kitt, and the Koskinens had all hurried inside, shutting the door carefully to avoid any noise.
“How long ’til midnight?” Mrs. Koskinen whispered.
“A quarter of an hour,” Mrs. Biswas replied. By now she and Penelope had, with Griffin’s help, wrapped green-dyed muslin around several lamps, and stretched long swaths over the windows. They fluttered lightly, seaweed-like. Mr. Koskinen brought out the guitar he played only once a year, and Mrs. Biswas handed small bells to Eliza and Sydney, as the youngest in attendance.
They waited, breathless, until the bells of St. Ambrose’s rang midnight, and Christmas.
The whole group cheered. Spectral green lights blazed up as Penelope lit the muslin-masked lamps. Mr. Koskinen began singing a carol in an eerie minor key in his rich and resonant baritone. Eliza and Sydney kept time with the bells, a shiver of accompaniment. Mr. Thomas and Mr. Kitt bowed to each other and began dancing, singing along, as Mrs. Bedford handed round cups of cider and servings of bread and meat and cheese, then laughed as Mr. Scriven pulled her into a dance alongside the younger men. Harry and John were quick to make the third couple of the set, as easy on their feet as though the wooden boards beneath were the deck of a familiar ship.
Anyone passing by outside the tavern would have seen only an eldritch green glow, and shadowy figures flitting through it. Mr. Koskinen’s guitar was imperfectly tuned, and he had a way of sliding his hands along the strings to make it wail in a way that always raised the hair on Penelope’s arms in a most delicious way.
She watched as the realization dawned on Agatha Griffin’s face, transforming it from wary puzzlement to sheer, mischievous pleasure. “It’s the ghost Christmas,” she said. “Jack Calbert’s pirate treasure.”
“The very same,” Penelope said with a wild laugh. “Now empty your pockets!”
The pile of coins on the table grew and gleamed in the marine light, as they ate and sang and danced for a good hour. Then, as soon as the bells struck one, they hurried to snuff out the lamps and pull down the gauze and slip home as quietly as they could.
Mr. Biswas would pretend to discover the coins as a mystery when the tavern opened the next day, and the money would be distributed to those in sharpest need.
“It’s Mrs. Biswas’s family tradition,” Penelope explained in a whisper to her guests on the walk back. “Been doing it a hundred years, at least—every Christmas Eve in the Four Swallows, at midnight. It’s how the season always begins, for us.” She flicked a glance at Griffin, whose grin was shining like the moon. “That’s why people can never agree on the number of ghosts,” she said. “There’s always one or two who can’t make it from year to year—times when Harry and John are at sea, or when Mrs. Bedford goes to visit her family on the coast.”
“Did the ghost story come first, or did the feast?” Sydney whispered.
“Only the dead know,” Penelope breathed, and chuckled when the boy shivered.
