It is Innocents’ Day and another storm is building, another chapter in the unfinished story of what will become the Big Freeze, the coldest winter in England since 1740. The winds spin clockwise from Iceland, from Sweden, moving south, moving west. There will be snowbanks eight feet deep in Kent; there will be drifts of twenty-five feet on Dartmoor, freezing ponies in their steps, cattle and sheep, swans freezing to the ice of their lakes. The snow and the cold will stop the trains, the roads, the pipes, the telephones, the electricity, the Thames, London falling back on Dickensian candlelight, snow on the ground every day in England until the first week of March, the country ground to a halt, and spring an impossibility. Until the end of February 1963, the weather will remain incommensurate to the island it strands, the ungovernable heavens bringing out their big guns against so mild a target, the echoing gunshot of snow slumping off rooftops seeming the voice of an unmoved God.

But on Innocents’ Day the Napoleonic dimensions of the winter are yet unknown, the snow as yet a delight, an unusual wonder. London is a palace in ivory, tigers cavorting in their outdoor enclosures at the zoo, lions dragging their horsemeat into the snow to eat. And Sylvia, too, smiles up at the snow, like everybody, at the heaven-sent tabula rasa, at the sledders on their cardboards on Primrose Hill.

In the nearly undetectable warmth of two portable heaters running at once, Frieda rides the springing gee-up horse, her nose crusty, and slides off to give her babies rides. And Nicholas wriggles in Sylvia’s lap, slapping her typewriter keys and squealing and grabbing, quick to imagine being unfairly thwarted, grumpy with his lingering cold. And before the view of a snow-marbled sky stilled under chimney smoke, Sylvia retypes the table of contents for her manuscript, her new book, her heart racing, her cheeks hot. Her book begins with “love.” It ends with “spring.” The bees will fly from their combs past winter, housekeeping at the door of the hive, sipping the roses. The hellebore, the snow rose, will bloom out of the darkest months—the legend of a simple faith. The little shepherdess watched the wise men pass with their rich gifts, the shepherds with their fruit and honey and doves. The little shepherdess wept to have nothing, not even a flower. And seeing her tears, an angel swept away the snow. There was the Christmas rose: a single white bloom, its petals tipped pink.

Rolling out Christmas cakes, lebkuchen and gingerbread and springerle, the anise-scented springerle dough imprinted with a thorny rose pattern, Sylvia’s Catholic grandmother had told her the story, the cresting December waves of the Atlantic grinding ice on the beach outside. Her granny sang an old chorale in German and English, “Est ist ein Ros’ entsprungen,” as she gathered scraps of dough to reroll:

Lo, how a Rose e’er blooming from tender stem hath sprung!