The church was not large, a sixteenth-century stone building settled deep in the trees of the estate. The service lasted an hour, the choir's voices rising under the vaulted ceiling, the bass notes of the organ settling low in the chest.
The pastor's sermon spoke of light, hope, and peace, of those who light candles in the darkness. It was a familiar theme, nothing surprising in it, but steady and reliable in the way such things are meant to be.
Afterward, the family walked back through the grounds.
Christmas dinner began at one o'clock. The dining room table was laid with a white cloth and dressed with fresh holly wreaths, a name card and a full set of silver cutlery at each place, from soup spoon to dessert fork, nothing missing.
Everyone had changed clothes before sitting down.
Elizabeth sat at the centre of the head table, Philip to her right, Charles to her left.
Henry was beside Diana, at her specific request, she had said she had not seen her son in three months and intended to actually look at him during a meal.
The first course was lobster and prawn salad, brought out on silver trays arranged with considerable care.
William leaned across and looked at the whole lobster on Henry's plate with considerable interest.
"Henry, yours is—"
"Eat your own," Diana said, without turning her head.
William pulled back, muttering.
The main course followed: roast turkey with chestnut stuffing, roast ham, roast potatoes, parsnip purée, and Brussels sprouts with bacon and chestnuts.
The turkey had been prepared three days prior, stuffed by traditional methods with chestnuts, sausage, onion, and sage.
The skin was a deep golden-brown and glistened under the chandelier. A single cut released a smell that required no description.
Henry carved a piece of turkey breast and added a few Brussels sprouts to his plate, which remained his least favourite food both before and after transmigration.
"How is the food at Hogwarts?" Diana asked.
"Perfectly good," Henry said. "Slightly below the standard here."
Diana smiled. "Of course. The chef here is French."
Henry glanced to the far end of the table where his grandmother was eating with her characteristic unhurried precision, then looked back at Diana. "Is it always exactly like this? Every year?"
"Every year," Diana said. "It hasn't changed since I married into the family."
She paused, her eyes moving to the children's end of the table, where William and Zara were conducting a dispute over the last meat pie and Harry had somehow achieved an impressive distribution of sauce across his face.
"There are simply more people each time," she added.
The third course was Christmas pudding with brandy butter. The enormous pudding arrived at the table intact, was doused in brandy, and set alight.
Blue flames rose over it and lit the room. The waiters moved through and served each person a portion with a spoonful of golden brandy sauce.
An exclamation came from the children's end: a silver sixpence had been found in someone's pudding. By tradition, whoever found the coin would have good luck in the year to come.
"Who has it?" Diana asked.
"Me!" William's hand went up, the coin gleaming between his fingers. "It's mine!"
Zara looked deeply unimpressed.
Harry muttered something about having seen it first.
William put the coin in his pocket and made a face at his brother.
At three o'clock precisely, everyone moved back to the sitting room. The television was turned on and tuned to BBC One. The Queen's Christmas broadcast was about to begin.
This tradition had not changed since George V first addressed the nation and the Commonwealth by radio on Christmas Day in 1932. Elizabeth had delivered the speech without interruption every year since her accession in 1952.
The room was quiet.
On screen, she appeared in her pink suit, seated behind the familiar desk in the study at Sandringham, composed and entirely herself.
"In 1952, when I first broadcast to you at Christmas, the world was a very different place to the one we live in today..."
She spoke of the year's events and of those who had persevered through difficulty. She mentioned her father, King George VI, whose example of service she had tried to follow, noting that February would mark forty years since his death. She spoke of gratitude, of continuity, of the things that do not change.
The speech concluded. On screen, she smiled very slightly.
"May God bless you, and bring you a Happy Christmas."
Henry had only learned after arriving in England that Happy and Merry were not interchangeable in all quarters. His grandmother, in particular, had a decided preference.
He had not asked why. He supposed that his grandmother's usage was, by definition, the correct one.
What he also knew, and did not mention, was that the Queen's broadcast would not be the most watched television address of the evening.
At twenty-five past seven, there would be something considerably more historically significant on every channel.
The afternoon wound down. William and Harry were taken by the nanny to wash and change for dinner.
Zara and her cousins were led off by their mothers. The sitting room settled into the quiet company of adults around the fireplace.
The fire burned steadily, warming faces and casting long shadows. Outside the windows, full dark had come down over the estate, and snow had begun again, drifting slowly in the windless air.
Diana was leaning back against the sofa cushions, her gaze on the snow, her expression somewhere private.
Charles sat beside her with a book about Quidditch open in his lap that he was plainly not reading. Philip was deep in his armchair by the fire with his whisky, eyes half-closed.
Elizabeth sat with her wool blanket and her eyes on the flames.
No one was saying much. The fire crackled. The wind occasionally moved outside.
Paul came in quietly, bowed toward Elizabeth, and spoke in a low voice.
"Your Majesty. Both the BBC and ITV have informed us that at twenty-five past seven this evening, that gentleman will deliver a national televised address."
A change moved through the room, not loud, but perceptible.
Henry knew exactly what was coming. He was about to watch history happen in a sitting room in Norfolk.
Philip opened his eyes. Charles set his book down. Diana turned from the window.
Elizabeth nodded. "Thank you, Paul."
After the door closed, the room held its quiet for a moment.
Philip lifted his glass, took a deliberate sip, and said, "It's finally arrived."
Charles looked at his father. "You also think it will be—"
"Yes," Philip said, without hesitation. "Nobody cares about the new union treaty any longer. That man Yeltsin has everything in his hands now. There is nothing left for Gorbachev to do."