Charlotte was not incorrect. Emily admired the spirit that had been unafraid of digging foundations here, on the wildest and most inhospitable location for a hundred miles around. Up here there was no shelter of any kind, no higher peak to prevent the freezing north wind from pouring in through every crack and fissure in the house. Or to stop it from bending the stunted trees to its volition, making them a permanent testament to its ferocity.

The old wrought iron gate, which once was meant to proclaim the entrance to a house of note, and which had been torn almost off its hinges sometime over the winter, swung and creaked in the wind like a hanged man. At each gatepost and on every corner of the hall’s roof stood roughly hewn, ghastly-looking gargoyles, each standing sentinel over one of the four corners of the earth. The front yard was a quagmire of snow, ice and frozen mud, and though the gate was no longer a barrier to entry, the all-pervading sense of misery that seemed to form droplets in the dank air certainly was.

It was rare that Emily ever wanted to turn back from any moment, reckoning that the dark and difficult ones were as necessary as the ones that brought comfort and joy. Yet at that moment, she hesitated; every instinct she possessed looked into the shadowy windows of Top Withens Hall and whispered, Beware.

As they entered the yard, a pack of hounds of every shape and size flew to greet them with a frenzy of barking and bared teeth.

“Get back ’ere, foul beasts!” Clifton Bradshaw roared at the animals as he appeared from within the house, hastily putting on a filthy-looking coat. “Shut your noise, or I’ll whip you till you bleed.” At once the animals cowered and whimpered, rolling meekly over onto their backs, and he strode towards their small party. The dogs were terrified of him.

“Good day to you, sir, ladies,” Bradshaw said, affecting something approximating a smile, his cold, cracked lips stretched painfully thin over yellowing teeth. “No guests were expected on such a day.”

“We aren’t visiting socially,” Anne told him, having to raise her voice to make herself heard over the wind. “We have come as representatives of our father, the Reverend Patrick Brontë, to demand that you give over the remains found on your premises to the church so that the poor soul may be able to receive a Christian burial at once.”

Emily couldn’t be sure, but she wouldn’t have been surprised if her sister had stamped a furious foot on that last word. For a moment Clifton looked bemusedly into her sister’s face, then exploded into rough and raucous laughter that echoed all around the yard, distressing the animals in the barn and scattering the dogs at his feet.