The Rites of Winter

The next day she was able to uproot several turnips from the small garden which she cultivated at the rear of the inn. That afternoon she asked Simon if he would help her bury her husband.

She had not entered the cellar since the morning after the snowstorm. Although the thaw was now well advanced, the cellar was still icy cold and her breath misted as she descended the stone stairway with Simon at her shoulder.

She had a sudden image of Thomas making love to her: he was a stout, red-faced man who snorted and panted, flacks of spittle gathering at the corners of his mouth, his eyes bulging. He lay on the stone slab where she had left him. The snow which had covered his body had hardened and crystallised during the winter so that he seemed to be encased in frosted glass. Then she saw that despite the coating of ice, a rat had gnawed away his face.

She tried to dislodge his body from the slab, but it would not budge. Silently she pleaded with Simon to help her, but he watched, unmoving, until finally she ran past him up the stairs.

He made her sit in an armchair and brought her a mug of strong, sweet tea. Then he returned to the cellar and brought the body up on the handcart which was used for moving wine casks. He took it outside and left it in the woodshed.

"We have to bury him," she insisted.

He shook his head. "Not until he's unfrozen." That night the temperature dropped sharply and it began to snow. Stella sat at the window, watching the world turn slowly white again. Simon had already retired, leaving his pipe on the arm of the chair. The fire in the hearth was dying; she added more wood before retiring to her room.

Through the spy-hole she saw him reading by candlelight. With the snowfall a pervasive silence seemed to have settled on the inn, and she had the impression that they were two people trapped, frozen in by the weather. She imagined Simon removing her husband's body from the woodshed and chopping it into pieces which he then fed to the fire.

At length she undressed and got into bed. She always slept nude, piling more blankets on her bed as the winter advanced until she felt like an animal cocooned in a deep burrow. To her surprise, sleep came easily. She dreamt of her husband, remembering the time in summer when a party of six guests had arrived, bound for the city. She had gone to fetch him to help prepare their rooms and had found him asleep face-down on their bed, a winy vomit surrounding him. In her dream the vomit was the colour of bile, and when she rolled him over there was a dark hole where his face should have been. Then the young men of whom she had dreamt earlier were standing in the doorway, pointing at him and laughing. She was smiling at them.

Their laughter grew louder and more staccato until she became aware of a rapping on the door knocker downstairs. She went out into the empty corridor and descended the stairway without haste, her hand on the banister.

The moment she opened the door, the icy wind blew in a flurry of snow. Marguerite was standing there, dressed in white. Her face was as glacially beautiful and as timeless as ever. She smiled her irresistible smile, and Stella felt as if she was drowning in the blueness of her eyes. Then she entered, shaking the snow from her cloak.

Stella followed her like a sleepwalker as she passed through the vestibule, glancing at the empty hook on the key board. The faint aroma of Simon's pipe-smoking still lingered in the air. Silently Marguerite ascended the stairs.

She went directly to Simon's room and turned the handle. It opened without protest, closed behind her without a sound. Stella stood outside, her mind blank. Then a shiver freed her from her numbness. She entered her own room and went directly to the spy-hole.

Everything was dark and silent in the room, but she had the strong impression of movement and life. She waited. Outside it had stopped snowing and a sickle moon shone bright between scudding clouds. The stars looked adamantine. She waited.

Abruptly Simon's room erupted with a brilliant white light which made her recoil from the spy-hole. There was a piercing scream which rent her mind like fingernails scraped on ice. And then silence.