“Let’s play hide-and-seek.” Ginevra, the bride, cast her new husband a coquettish look from beneath her dark lashes. “I shall hide and you may come and seek me out.”

A roar went up at her words. There were whistles and catcalls. The wedding guests knew how that would end. No doubt Lord Lovell would find his bride hiding in their bed and then the game would instantly be forgotten in favor of another, more pleasurable one. A mood of faintly debauched anticipation began to seep into the room with the wine tossed back and the singing growing louder.

Ginevra stood, smiling, enjoying the attention of the crowd. For a moment she waited, poised, like a deer on the edge of flight, and then she ran, followed by the cheers and hunting calls of the wedding guests.

John Lovell stood too, flushed and a little unsteady, barely able to restrain his pursuit until his bride had had time to hide. He listened to the patter of her slippers die away and then with a shout he was off, eager for the conquest. He tripped over furniture, searched behind curtains and clattered up the stairs. Excitement and the thrill of the chase sustained him for the first ten minutes and determination not to be bested for the next ten but after a half hour he rolled back into the great hall, out of breath, a little sullen, his lust frustrated. All the other guests were quaffing more ale and eating more pie. They seemed surprised to see him. Quiet fell over the hall like a shroud. The drunks sobered abruptly.

“Ginevra!” John Lovell bellowed, torn between indulgence and injured pride. “You win the game! Come out!”

There was a moment when the wind seemed to die away, and the sudden hush in the house grew to become a complete and terrifying silence. It was a silence that seemed alive, reaching out from another time to steal them away.

“Ginevra!” John Lovell called again, but this time his voice shook as doubt and fear tightened its grip on him. He marched to the front door, men crowding at his shoulder, and flung it wide. Nothing but blank snow met their gaze, no footprints, no sign of life, nothing but December’s cold moon shining on the empty land.

“The Lodestar!” Suddenly John Lovell turned and ran back down the cross passage to the library. Here his father, a most learned man, had kept those manuscripts and documents so cherished by the monks of the early minster church that had stood on the site centuries before. Here was the heart of Minster Lovell, the Lodestar, a holy relic locked away in its gold and enameled box. No one in living memory had seen the stone; no one had dared to look, for it was said to possess miraculous power beyond man’s wildest imaginings.

The room was as still and cold as the rest of the house; colder, for it felt as though the very soul of winter had set within those walls. The ancient oaken chest, bound within iron bands, that had held the golden box safely locked within, lay open and empty. The Lodestar was gone.