Dear James
 
It’s been a long time since I wrote to you and I’m sorry. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t even know whether I would see you again.
 
Growing up together on your father’s estate, we saw each other every day. We played together. We studied together until I had to go and work in the kitchen. We walked in the garden and talked. And then you went away to war. To France. When you left, we were just children, but when you came home you had become a man.
 
My father told me that I had to keep away from you. That we were both grown and we needed to have friends from our own class. I watched you out with your father from my window in the gatekeeper’s lodge, and you didn’t even look for me.
 
That night you found me. You said that you were sorry. And you kissed me. It was the first time I had ever been kissed. You told me stories of the front, and you cried in my arms.
 
The next day you went back to war.
 
I didn’t have a mother to explain what was happening to me. Your mother’s maid, a girl not much older than me, told me that I was having a child.
 
Your mother found out. Said that I wasn’t to tell anyone. Not even you. Told me that my father wouldn’t lose his job if I married the gardener’s boy and went up to live in Northumberland on your uncle’s estate. Albert is kind. He looks after me and will bring Matilda up as his own.
 
I am making a bodice for our baby daughter from a linen sheet and scraps of lace, and I have sewn your name inside a seam, where no-one will see it.
 
I am going to burn this letter. But I just wanted to have one last chance to write these words. To say, James, I love you. I am ever your Lizzie

You want to hear the story of that Pentecost? It's so many years ago now, but I'll tell you what I can remember. I was a little girl and my father had an inn in Jerusalem – he would grin at you and tell you that it was the best inn in the city. Every year there would be a stream of people who came in on foot and in carts from towns and villages far and wide for the Feast of Weeks, which is the other name for Pentecost. It's when we bring the first fruits of harvest to the temple.

The scriptures say to bring two loaves of yeasted bread made from the finest wheat flour, seven male lambs, one young bull and two rams as burnt offerings, and one male goat and two lambs as sacrifices. The people with money could sleep in an inn and leave their servants to tend the animals. The poor people had to sleep in the street, clutching the lamb or the flour and oil that was all they could afford to bring as an offering.

The main things I remember about the Feast of Weeks – well, the ones before – was the noise. People shouting, laughing, greeting old friends, animals bleating, mooing, sometimes running through the streets with a clatter of hooves. The mess. And the smells through the whole of the city. The mouthwatering smell of bread, the iron smell of blood, the reek of animal droppings, and the odour of burning meat and grain and oil that fell somewhere between delicious and bitter.

That year, we’d been planning since Passover – where people were to sleep in my father’s inn. What we could feed them. How we could make space for everyone. We managed it all, as we always did.

When it was time to go up to the temple, I watched my father disappear into the ribbon of men and animals heading up through the streets to the Mount of Moriah where the temple spread huge across the hillside. My father had told me that it was built on the foundation stone that was used to create the world, and when I was small, I imagined an enormous workbench like the potters and carpenters. I couldn't watch for long – my mother spotted me and pulled me back inside to help her to help her to sweep and clean and cook. I looked out of the window every chance I could, imagining what was going on inside the towering walls and gates, hearing the distant sound of the celebrations.

That was the day that everything changed. All of a sudden, people came running back down from the temple. They poured through the streets. It was hard to understand what they were saying. My mother and I clutched each other – it was all a bit frightening. Eventually my father pushed his way through the crowds. We had expected him to throw the doors open to start serving people, but instead he closed them behind him, shutting out the torrent of people.

He told us what he had seen in the Temple. That there had been a sound like a wind filling the place, and lights like flames of fire on the Galilean followers of the man he called Jesus, and that they started talking about their teacher. And though the temple was full of people from all places, from Mesopotamia, Judaea, even as far as Libya and Rome, they all heard the words in their own languages. One man shouted that they must be drunk, and my father laughed out loud – after all, an innkeeper knew what drunken people look like, and he said they were mothing of the kind.

A man called Peter, one of the Galileans, told them all about Jesus, about how he died at the hands of men and was resurrected, and how he was now the fulfilment of the prophesies and the Lord and Christ. Father said that that Pentecost used to be the first fruits of the harvest, and now it's the first fruits of the spirit. He hugged my mother and I and told us all about his baptism. At the time I didn't understand any of it, but I knew that I had never seen him so happy. And now, looking back, I realise that it was the start of something new.

Door opens but there's no-one there