Coruscating sunlight transformed the castle grounds into a cut-crystal masterwork. They bumped along cobblestone trails and wide sloping lawns in relative comfort. A glass windshield and plastic side screens blocked the worst of the chilly breeze. The little blue and white cart pumped a stream of hot air through the vents that couldn't entirely banish the cold, but managed to keep the worst of it at bay. Eleanor tugged her cap down over her ears, heedless as to what it would do to her hair, and twisted the ends of her woolen scarf around her gloved hands for an extra layer of protection between the elements and her achy joints.

Sasha pointed out the elaborately carved western gate, built a century before the Mayflower sailed for the New World. He took a turn around a vast pond where he informed them the gamekeeper was trying his hand at stocking fish for the castle kitchen. "The rose gardens are over there, and the kitchen gardens are behind that low wall. It's supposed to keep the deer out, but they get pretty determined sometimes."

All of it looked like one enormous sequin-covered blanket to Eleanor's eyes. "Forgive my ignorance. I can see that you must have your hands full throughout the warm months, but what constitutes a gardener's duties in winter?"

"I spend too much time sitting at a desk, for one thing," he answered. They approached a split-rail fence and he gestured to the animals clustered together at a distance. "Reindeer. I don't know why, just know Vlad wanted them, so here there are. Smelly, but pretty."

"Vlad is the game keeper?" Eleanor asked.

Sasha nodded. "Vlad Jovanovic. Anyway, in winter I add up all the data from the growing months. How much compost did we need? How much gravel did we bring in? That kind of stuff. I study the soil samples and figure out if we're acid or alkaline – pretty much always more alkaline than I want it to be, what with all the pine trees around here, so that's a constant battle. I order seeds and whatnot for next spring, but hold on. I'll show you the best part." 

He followed the fence to where it turned and continued on over a gentle rise until a long, low glass building came into view. He stopped in front of the door and offered a hand to help Eleanor out. By the time her feet touched the frozen ground, Lydia had sprung from her seat and wandered halfway up the next slope.

"You coming inside?" Sasha called. "It's summer in there."

His words proved true. Inside the building, the warm air was redolent with the scent of flowers and herbs. Bees buzzed somewhere at the edge of Eleanor's hearing, and a frog croaked in greeting.

The gardener tilted his face toward the sunlight streaming through the transparent ceiling and inhaled with such slow, luxuriant pleasure one could believe he hadn't had a proper breath in days. "When I started, this building was hardly used. The last guy stored his tools in here and three quarters of the planters were dead, full of spiderwebs and mildew. He said everything caught the fungus and died, but it was because he had no ecosystem. Look at this." He crossed to a tangle of tomato vines lacing along a whitewashed latticework, picked a perfect ripe fruit, and held it out for their inspection.

"Does this look like it came from a plant that's growing in fungus?" He rushed on without waiting for an answer. "I brought in ladybugs. Aphids will grow in a hot house at ten times the rate of any plant so they need predators. Frogs, worms, praying mantis, they all have their work to do here and, as you can see, they do it well."

"Your love of this place is obvious," she said.

"Yeah. My very own summer. Sometimes I come out here with my girlfriend, Anna, and we have picnics. It saves me. Restores my soul. Winter lasts too long here."

"Anna is in charge of maintenance for the castle?" Eleanor asked.

"Yeah. She's a genius. She can fix anything. No idea why she's with a blockhead like me, but I'm not complaining."

"Is it you or Anna that dug those trenches?" Lydia asked.

"Trenches?" Eleanor echoed, confused.

Lydia gestured toward the far end of the building. "Out there, on the other side of the hill, there's a back hoe. Someone's been digging. Doesn't seem like a thing you'd do in wintertime around here."

Sasha picked up a pair of pruning scissors and clipped a few dead leaves from a sprawling plant with little yellow and white flowers. "You're right. It's not a thing I'd do if I could avoid it. Especially not in that space. Nothing but rocks and tree roots in that soil, but that's the problem. The roots put cracks in the waterlines coming in here and the first hard freeze broke them open. If I wanted to keep the irrigation going in this building, I didn't have much choice."

Eleanor could just make out the tip of the tallest part of a bright yellow tractor from where she stood. "Hmm. Interesting." She perched on a nearby stool and tugged at her scarf to loosen it from around her neck. "While we're here in the warmth, why don't you tell us exactly what you saw the night you encountered the so-called ghost."

Lydia wandered away from them, running her fingertips across the tops of the rows of flowers, but Eleanor had no doubt the girl's astute ears would catch every bit of the conversation.

The gardener leaned one hip against the nearest row of tables and pushed the sleeves of his heavy sweater up to his elbows. "There's not a whole lot to tell. I figured it was some creep in a mask or something, so I waited around in the hallway to catch him. When he didn't show up, I went to the kitchen and... boom!"

"Boom?"

He nodded. "Boom! There he was--glowing blue and stinking to high heaven, demanding I tell him where the treasure is. As if the treasure is real. And even if it is, and no way something like that could be, right? Why would I know where it is?"

Eleanor tipped her head, conspiratorially. "You never dug anything up from under an old tree?"

"Sure. I've dug up loads of stuff. Old buckles and screws and bits of glass and such. Found a whole sword once, and a half-rotten whisky barrel. Nothing you'd call treasure. For sure nothing like what they say the castle treasure is supposed to be. What would that even look like, anyway? A crystal ball? A steal box?" He shrugged. "Anyway, I told the creep I didn't know anything and it freaked out and disappeared."

"Hmm," said Eleanor. "You say the ghost stank?"

He wrinkled his nose at the memory. "Tore out one of the old latrines once. Smelled a lot like that."

"Do you believe it was a ghost?" she asked.

"Maybe. Then again, maybe it's the Easter Bunny and not the deer who's been eating the lettuce out of the kitchen garden."