Worship on the Silk

The fire in the great stone hearth had burned down to a deep, radiant bed of crimson embers when the first quiet light of dawn began to seep through the high stained-glass windows of the library. Outside, the ferocious howling of the blizzard had gradually subsided into a calm, pristine silence. The snow had stopped falling, leaving the Yorkshire moors buried beneath four-foot drifts of sparkling, untouched white powder that…