Chapter Text
June, 1928
Skeldale House, Darrowby.
Siegfried closed the kitchen door with infinite care, preventing the heavy latch from waking the household. He was utterly defeated by exhaustion; the mud from the Pearsons' farm clung to his boots like a second skin, and the scent of disinfectant seemed to have seeped into his very pores after that complicated delivery. His only desire was a dram of whisky and to collapse into bed beside the warmth of his wonderful wife. However, after a swift and silent wash, his feet, by sheer instinct, came to a halt on the first-floor landing.
He opened the door to the girls' room a mere fraction, just enough for a sliver of yellow light from the hallway to enter. The silvery glow of the moon filtered through the curtains, bathing the bed of Amy, who at eight years old slept soundly, one arm dangling over the quilt and her copper hair spilled across the pillow. But, in the bed beside her, two dark, bright eyes observed him from the sheets.
“What is it, little bird?” Siegfried whispered from the door. His voice was a soft rasp, broken by fatigue but laden with affection.
“I can’t sleep, Pa,” Bea replied in an equally hushed whisper. At five years old, her voice sounded small and crystalline in the silence of the night. “I tried counting sheep like Tris taught me, but it doesn't work.”
“It doesn't work?” Siegfried took a step closer, intrigued. “Why is that?”
“They jump the fence, but they won’t stay still on the other side. They go running off through the dale,” Bea explained with total gravity, sitting up slightly in bed. “And then I get frightened they’ll be lost in the mist and I have to go and find them.”
Siegfried felt a pang of tenderness that eased the ache in his bones more effectively than any spirit. He ran a hand over his face, sighing; though every muscle cried out for rest, his heart dictated another order. He entered the room, careful not to wake his eldest daughter and avoiding the creak of the floorboards, and sat on the edge of Bea’s mattress, which gave way under his weight.
“Is there something occupying your mind, Bee?” he asked gently, brushing away a stray lock of hair with clumsy but sweet fingers—one that had escaped the plait Audrey made for her every night.
Bea thought for a moment, furrowing her brow as if rummaging through something deep within her mind, and finally shook her head.
“Would you like me to tell you a story?” Siegfried ventured.
“Of knights and princesses?” Bea asked, sitting up a little and smoothing the pillow to make room for him, as if sleep had vanished entirely at the promise of a tale.
“Of whatever you wish, my love,” Siegfried smiled, feeling defenceless before those eyes which, even in the shadows, held the deep and serene blue of Audrey’s. “Come now, move Christopher, make a space for me.”
Bea moved towards the wall, taking her long-eared stuffed dog with her, and Siegfried let himself fall carefully onto the counterpane. He did not remove his tweed waistcoat or his heavy working clothes which still smelled of the moorland air and the byre. He simply let his daughter burrow against his side. He felt Bea’s small head find the perfect hollow against his chest, while he draped a protective arm over her shoulders, encircling her in his warmth.
“Once upon a time...” he began, closing his eyes for a moment as the scent of lavender from the clean sheets began to lull him too. The comfort of the bed against his aching bones nearly overcame him.
“Once upon a time, what, Pa?” Bea whispered, prodding his chest gently with a finger so he wouldn't drift off.
“Forgive me, yes,” he blinked with effort, shaking off the fog of exhaustion. “Once upon a time... there was a knight who was very, very far from home. He was trapped in a grey kingdom, where the ground was always mud and the air smelled of dragon-smoke and volcanic ash.”
Siegfried squeezed his eyelids shut for a second. For a fleeting and cruel instant, the bedroom vanished. He was back in the mire of France, feeling the vibration of the earth beneath his feet and hearing the desperate whinnying of horses under artillery fire.
“His armour was rusted by the rain and his horse walked with its head hung low, very weary,” he continued, and his hand, quite unconsciously, began to stroke Bea’s shoulder as if to reassure himself that she was there. “His task was to rescue wounded beasts in the midst of a battle that seemed to have no end. The knight was afraid, Bea, though knights never admit it before their kings.”
“Was he afraid of the dragons?” Bea asked in a tiny voice, snuggling closer to him.
“He was afraid of something worse,” Siegfried confessed, his voice growing thicker. “He was about to complete his final mission and he was deathly afraid of not returning. He feared the way back had been washed away under the mud, and that the people waiting for him at home... well, he feared they would no longer remember his name.”
“But he had a secret map, didn't he?” she ventured with the certainty of one who believes in happy endings. “Or a star that guided him?”
Siegfried swallowed hard, feeling a lump form in his throat. He opened his eyes and looked at the ceiling, watching the shadows of the branches dance against the wallpaper.
“Yes,” he said finally, and a small smile formed on his lips. “He had a star that guided him. It was given to him by the Guardian of Hope.”
“What? Who is?” the little girl asked, her eyes wide.
“One night, just before his final battle, when the cold chilled him to the bone, the knight entered an old stone tower seeking refuge from the storm... and there he found her. She was a very special woman, Bea. She had no need for gold crowns or grand silken gowns; a cloak of a blue as deep as the night sky was enough for her, and a gaze so kind that, they say, it could calm the fiercest wind.”
“Did she have magic?” Bea whispered, moving closer to her father, seeking the warmth of his waistcoat.
“She had the rarest and most powerful magic of all,” Siegfried continued with a softness that cracked his voice, almost as if he were confessing a sacred secret. “She had the power to see a person’s soul through their armour. When the knight entered her tower, she did not see a weary and frightened warrior; she saw a man who needed to remember the way home. The Guardian gave him a star, so that in the midst of the battle, he could look to the sky and remember the way home.”
Siegfried made a long pause. In the silence of the room, broken only by Amy’s rhythmic breathing, it seemed as if he himself were returning to that night at Southampton docks, to the exact moment when Audrey had restored his faith.
“She promised him that, if he managed to cross the sea, she would wait for him so they could go together to the Emerald Valley, a place where winter could never enter one’s heart. And the knight decided that he would cross a thousand oceans just to see her smile again, that it was worth surviving, just to reach her and live happily ever after.”
“And what happened, Papa?” Bea asked in an urgent whisper, her eyes shining in the darkness. “Did the knight return? Could he cross the sea?”
Siegfried let out a long sigh, a sound that carried years of relief within it.
“He returned, my little one. He crossed the sea under a black and stormy sky, clinging to the star she had given him. But it was not easy to find the Guardian again. When the knight set foot in his old kingdom, he found that a great pestilence had shaken the entire world while he was away.”
“No...” Bea whispered, clutching her father’s chest. In her poet’s mind, tragedy lurked in every shadow of the room.
“The knight, terrified, thought that the Guardian too had been lost to the pestilence,” Siegfried continued, his voice trembling a mere fraction, recalling the real panic of that return in 1918. “He thought the light that had guided him had been extinguished before he could be with her. He searched everywhere for her; he went to every tower and every inn, but there was no sign of her; she seemed to have vanished among the trees.”
“What did he do then?” she asked, her voice laden with genuine anxiety.
“He went to the Emerald Valleys on his own,” Siegfried continued, his voice somewhat flatter, lost in the sombre corner of his own memory. “And when he arrived there, weary and with a broken soul, he was tended to by a very kind woman who tried to heal his wounds...”
“No!” Bea protested, bolting upright and pulling away from her father’s side in a gesture of deep betrayal. Her blue eyes flashed with the indignation of one who defends sacred love against the clumsiness of adults. “Why? Did he forget the Guardian so quickly? I don’t like this story, Papa! It’s horrid. He had to wait for her!”
Siegfried sighed, stroking the edge of the quilt with his rough fingers. He knew it would hurt his little poet, but the truth of life, even when disguised as a tale, is rarely a straight line.
“Listen, Bea... The knight was very confused,” he explained with a gentleness that begged forgiveness. “He had seen terrible things and the din of battle still prevented him from thinking clearly. He was lost in his own kingdom, walking like a ghost. That other woman was good, it’s true; she tried to heal him and offered him a quiet refuge. For a moment, the knight thought that comfort would be enough to keep breathing, but in the depths of his heart, the compass still pointed elsewhere. Towards a star he believed lost.”
Bea looked at him with a scowl, her arms crossed over her white cotton nightgown, waiting with silent demand for her father to mend the narrative disaster he had just committed.
“And then?” she demanded, curtly.
“Then,” Siegfried smiled, and his gaze seemed to focus on an invisible point in the air, where the past and the present met. “When the knight was about to surrender to a life without light, the Guardian appeared. Because she, Bea, was always much braver than he.”
Siegfried paused, being able to see Audrey Sinclair in the middle of his room, her heavy coat covering her belly and the pain in her eyes.
“She hadn't sat idly by waiting in her tower. She had crossed the seas and the mountains on her own to remind him who he was. She appeared at his door one winter morning, with the cold on her cheeks but the fire of a thousand suns in her eyes. She needed to say nothing; with but one look, the knight’s armour shattered into a thousand pieces and he remembered the promise. He remembered that the Emerald Valley was not a place, but a person. And that person stood before him.”
“The Guardian is the best!” Bea exclaimed with a sigh of relief so deep she seemed to deflate. She sank back into the warmth of her father’s side, rubbing her cheek against the fabric of his waistcoat. For her, the honour of the tale and the justice of love had been restored. “I knew she’d come back! Knights can be very silly, Pa.”
Siegfried let out a soft laugh, one that dispelled the last traces of the ghosts of France from the room. “I quite agree, my little bird,” he nodded, kissing her head with infinite tenderness.
“So they lived happily ever after?” Bea asked, closing her eyes as sleep, finally, claimed her.
“They did. In the Emerald Valley, surrounded by love and a silence that was no longer frightening,” he whispered, thinking for a moment of all they had built.
“The Guardian was Mama, wasn't she?”
Amy’s voice, clear and perfectly awake, startled Siegfried in the gloom. He turned slightly and saw his eldest daughter watching him from the next bed. She was propped on an elbow, her chin in her hand, with a cunning smile that betrayed she had been listening for much longer than he imagined. There was no trace of sleep in her dark eyes; only the bright satisfaction of one who has solved a complex enigma.
Siegfried remained silent for a few seconds, caught in the knowing gaze of his firstborn. Her eyes were like his own, but sometimes her look reminded him all too much of Audrey’s lucidity.
“I fear your sister is far too clever for my tales, Bea,” Siegfried admitted with a smile that was half defeat and half pride. “Yes, dear. It was Mama.”
Bea’s mouth fell open, sitting up a little more on the mattress. Her eyes widened, absorbing the revelation with a sacred fascination.
“She gave you a real star?” the little one asked, marvelling, imagining ancient parchments and stardust falling upon her father’s armour.
Siegfried pressed Bea a little closer to his side, feeling her small, vital warmth against the memory of the cold of the trenches. Relieved to have survived to be able to tell this.
“Though she lived in no stone tower, she saved me in a way no storybook princess ever could,” he confessed, and his voice grew deeper, laden with a devotion that Amy listened to with attention and Bea with awe. “She was the one who kept the light burning when the rest of the world was in darkness, girls. She was my home, even before we came to this house.”
Siegfried closed his eyes and, for a second, he could see Audrey’s silhouette silhouetted against the mist.
“She gave me back my name when I had almost forgotten it,” he whispered, almost to himself. “And that is why, in this house, we are always safe from winter.”
Bea let out a long, happy sigh, finally surrendering to the weight of her eyelids. She rubbed her face against her father’s waistcoat, murmuring something about stars and blue aprons, until her breathing became slow and rhythmic. Siegfried remained motionless, feeling the peace of the room, while Amy, from her bed, gave him one last look before settling down to sleep.
When the girls finally slept, Siegfried slipped out of the room slowly. He entered his own bedroom with the same care. In a corner, little Ben slept soundly in his cot after a bad run of restless nights, while Audrey occupied her place in bed, sunken in a dense, restorative sleep.
Siegfried removed his clothes with mechanical movements, leaving them folded on the chair, and slipped between the cold sheets that soon warmed with his presence. He moved towards his wife, seeking her contact, and put an arm around her back. He draped an arm over her waist, pulling her towards him until not a millimetre of air remained between their bodies, and buried his face in the curve of her neck, leaving a warm kiss upon her skin.
Audrey stirred in her sleep, letting out a languid sigh as her body, by sheer instinct, moulded itself to her husband’s. She snuggled against his chest, seeking his hands.
“Thank you,” he whispered against her skin, barely a breath that lost itself in her hair.
“What for?” she murmured thickly, without opening her eyes, interlacing her fingers with his over her stomach.
“For coming to find me,” he replied, closing his eyes tightly.
Audrey did not understand what he meant; she was too deep in the mists of sleep to decipher riddles. Instead, she simply brought Siegfried’s hand to her lips, gave his knuckles a soft kiss, and settled down again, sinking into the pillow with the certainty that he was there.
Siegfried held her more tightly, feeling the rhythmic beat of her heart against his arm. The knight, at last, had completed his most important mission: he had come home.