Under The Kissing Bough: 15 Romantic Holiday Novellas

by Kathryn Le Veque

  UPON A MIDNIGHT DREAM

  KATHRYN LE VEQUE

  A NOTE FROM

  KATHRYN LE VEQUE

  Another novella based on a poem by Edgar Allan Poe!

  This novella is based upon the ethereal poem “A Dream within a Dream”. How perfect that a Christmas legend based on dreaming should tie in with Poe’s poem of the great dream that is life. Like most poetry, Poe’s works can be interpretive and I chose to use this particular poem as a basis for this story.

  A grieving lady, a lost knight, a bit of a Christmastide miracle, and we have the makings for a very sweet story.

  Enjoy!

  Love,

  Kathryn

  PART ONE: TAKE THIS KISS UPON THE BROW

  DERBY CATHEDRAL

  YEAR OF OUR LORD 1194

  MID-DECEMBER

  He thought he’d been dreaming….

  In fact, he probably had been because he couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept more than an hour or two at once. Months of traveling, of brutal conditions, and of hunger and sickness had all brought him to this point.

  It was morning, just a few days before the festival of Christes Maesses celebrating the birth of the Christ child. Derby’s cathedral was a vast, cavernous place with nooks and alcoves and shadowed corners where it was easy to lose oneself.

  The knight, alone and weary, had found a darkened corner and had dropped his saddlebags, and himself, onto the dirt because he was so exhausted he’d not been able to take another step. Not one more step. Outside, snow was swirling. Not enough to keep people indoors but enough to make them miserable as they went about their business. As for him, on this cold winter’s morning, he was done with his business.

  Perhaps even done for the rest of his life.

  So he lay down in the corner of the church as the snow fell outside. He was surrounded by the signs of the Christmas season which included fresh boughs that had been cut from the forest surrounding Derby, boughs that signified both the Christian and old pagan rites of the season.

  The greenery filled the church with the smell of fresh rushes, combating the smell of unwashed bodies and the heavy scent of tallow tapers. This church in particular had a festival in two days, so the boughs and the parasitic mistletoe plants that often attached themselves to the trees lined the walls and were spread near the altar. There were also boughs of holly about, the sharp leaves signifying the Crown of Thorns worn by Christ and the red berries symbolizing his blood.

  Symbols, on this holiday, were everywhere.

  The knight could smell the greenery as he lay there, exhausted to the bone and inhaling the comforting scent. He hadn’t smelled them in a great many years, at least as long as he’d been on crusade. In the lands of The Levant, there was nothing but dirt and sand and heat. He didn’t miss that in the least which was why he welcomed the snow. He’d often dreamed of it in days past when the sun was so hot it turned his skin brown and his nose red. Today, he was living a dream as the snow fell outside the church.

  He was home again.

  “There! Pick that one right there!”

  Hissing whispers interrupted his sleep. At first, he thought he’d dreamt them, but he could hear scuffling on the dirt nearby, too. That was no dream. Covered up with his cloak, he had but to open his eyes to see where the hissing was coming from; two young women were standing a few feet away, huddled together as one reached out to pluck a substantial piece of mistletoe from a nearby bunch of rushes.

  “Look at this!” the woman whispered. “Will this work?”

  The other woman nodded. “It has berries on it,” she said. “It is not too big. It should work very well, indeed.”

  The first woman seemed to sober. “I feel badly for doing this,” she said. “But it is her own fault we have been driven to such things. Imagine! She has sworn not to marry! How in the world are we to get husbands if she will not marry?”

  The second woman took the mistletoe sprig and tucked it into her expensive cloak. “It is Holly’s duty to marry,” she said, anger in her tone. “She is our eldest sister and Papa will not allow us to entertain suitors until she is married. I will not be a spinster simply because my older sister refuses to marry!”

  The first woman nodded. “Then we will put the sprig beneath her pillow so that she will dream of her husband,” she said, making clear the plan. “Once she dreams of him, it will make her more open to the idea of marriage. Of course, she will want to marry if she dreams of her future husband.”

  The second woman shook her head. “Or she will dream of her dead love and it will ruin everything,” she said, annoyed. “It is his ghost that stands between her and marrying another. Holly has everything; she is Father’s heiress and she shall inherit his estate when he dies. Father is having a big feast tomorrow in celebration of her day of birth and everyone in the county will be there. She will have men admiring her and people bestowing great presents upon her. How on earth can she be so unhappy with her life?”

  The first woman wasn’t as irate as the second one. There was sympathy in her voice as she spoke. “She did love him, Rose,” she said. “I suppose it is difficult to forget a man when you loved him.”

  Rose frowned. “If she does not forget him, you and I shall never wed,” she said, agitated. “Do you have any idea how many eligible men will be at the feast tomorrow? Dozens! It is not my intention to insult you, Lily, but I do not want to wake up to your nasty little face for the next forty years. We must make sure Holly sleeps with this sprig tucked beneath her pillow and dreams of her future husband, or I shall be very unhappy in the years to come!”

  Lily was worried now. “But what if this does not work?” she asked. “What shall we do?”

  Rose frowned, once again. They were out of ideas as to how to push their older sister into the marital bed. The lore of the mistletoe was nearly their last hope. As she fretted, she caught a glimpse of the knight sleeping not far from them. He was covered up in his heavy oiled cloak but he had his possessions with him, including a broadsword that was lying on the ground beneath his hand and a shield that was propped up on the wall beside him. The shield was worn, with remnants of dark blue and white paint on it, but she could see the hilt of the sword from where she stood. She could see some kind of a jewel in the hilt. It gave her an idea.

  “Look,” she pointed to the supine knight. “Let us put the sprig beneath her pillow and then whisper of a knight with a bejeweled sword in her ear once she has gone to sleep. We shall put the dream in her head.”

  Lily looked fearfully at the sleeping knight. “Him?”

  “Him! Look at his sword!”

  Lily craned her neck in his direction without actually taking a step, trying to get a better look at the sword with the jewel in the hilt. “It is very ornate,” she said. “I see the jewel.”

  “So do I! We shall fill Holly’s head with dreams of that sword as she sleeps!”

  Lily was still doubtful. “But what if it does not work?” she asked. “What then?”

  Rose sighed. “Then we shall have to see if we can conjure a man to rise out of that precious box she keeps next to her bed.”

  Lily’s lip stuck out in a pout. “But those are her memories, Rose. He gave her the box and…”

  “And that box is the source of all of our problems!”

  With that, Rose grabbed her sister’s hand and yanked the woman along with her as they hurried from the church. The knight, having heard everything that was said, lifted his head slightly and watched the pair as they disappeared into the falling snow. He thought the conversation to be a rather silly one and would have considered it purely an annoyance except for one word that had captured his attention - heiress. An heiress who refused to marry? A feast in her honor? And a box full of memories? He found that all quite interesting, in fact.

  Perhaps too interesting. Already, those women were pulling him into their little scheme, threatening to describe his sword to their spinster sister as she slept. Here he was, a penniless knigh
t, wandering from town to town, trying to find some greater purpose in his life since leaving Richard’s crusade. He mostly spent his nights in churches because he spent his days begging for God’s forgiveness for what he’d done in the Holy Land, orders he’d carried out that he was certain would condemn him to a Godless eternity. He was a wanderer who was quite lost in more ways than one; disillusioned by the death of his closest friend, beaten by the realities of Richard’s holy war, and defeated by life in general. His was a terrible existence. But those two women hissing about a sister who refused to marry had caught his attention.

  Perhaps it had been a message from God.

  Perhaps God was trying to tell him something in that hissed conversation. Perhaps it was an instruction he was not to ignore; listen, Ren! Did you hear the opportunity I placed before you? An heiress in need of a husband! You were charming once – perhaps her sisters are correct. Perhaps you can be the man she dreams about! You have spent the last few years miserable and searching. Perhaps this is what you were searching for!

  Sitting up, the knight noticed that the women had dropped something near the bough they had plundered. Rising to his feet, he made his way over to the spot they had occupied to discover that one of them had dropped a silk kerchief. Picking it up, he noticed some embroidery in the corner around a crest that was a shield with a book and a rosary. Or at least, that’s what it looked like. There was also some wording embroidered on it.

  Officium Firmus.

  Steadfast to duty. He knew Latin like he knew his native tongue. With all of the time he’d spent being faithful to the church and in being educated as a proper knight, it was little wonder that he didn’t speak Latin above all. As he stood there looking at the silk, a priest moved past him, carrying a lit bank of tallow candles away from the altar, as Matins had passed. The knight put out a hand to stop him.

  “Brother,” he said, holding up the delicate kerchief. “Two women were standing here and one of them dropped this. Would you recognize this crest?”

  The priest was dressed in heavy brown woolen robes, the entire bottom portion of the garments wet and stained. It looked as if he’d been traipsing through the slushy snow outside. The man was thin, and pale, and squinted at the insignia on the kerchief.

  “I cannot read it, my lord,” he said after a moment.

  The knight held it up so he could see it better in the light. “It says ‘Officium Firmus’,” he said. “The crest is a shield with a rosary and some kind of book. Mayhap a bible.”

  The priest suddenly nodded. “Ah,” he said confidently. “That is St. Maur. They are a local family.”

  The knight was pleased that the priest seemed to know of them. “Is that so?” he said. “Where do they live? I… I should like to return this to the ladies.”

  The priest was more than happy to tell him. “Their father is Perot St. Maur,” he said. “The family lives in a large manor south of Derby called Thulston. If you take the road south from town, you can see it to the east just as you leave the outskirts. It is not far.”

  The knight nodded, his attention moving back to the kerchief. “What do you know of the family?” he asked, then abruptly realized that it sounded like he was fishing for information. He made haste to clarify. “When I return this to the ladies, I should not like for them to think I stole it. Are they of reasonable temperament?”

  The priest cocked his head thoughtfully. “Perot is a pious man and generous to the poor,” he said. “I only saw two of the daughters here this morning, but there are three.”

  “Is he a knight?”

  “Aye, my lord. He served Henry in his younger years.”

  So the man was more than likely not a supporter of Richard. That might make things a bit awkward. The knight didn’t press any more information; he didn’t want to seem too curious.

  Thanking the priest for the information, he returned to his belongings still clutching the silken kerchief. Now, more than ever, he was coming to believe that that the visit from the sisters this morning was, indeed, a message from God and the little bit of angel’s wing in his hand with the embroidery on it was meant for him and him alone.

  That piece of cloth was going to make him a rich man.

  PART TWO: THAT MY DAYS HAVE BEEN A DREAM...

  THULSTON

  THE NEXT DAY

  The covering of snow overnight had been enough to collapse a corner of the barn on the Thulston estate and the servants were hurrying to move some of the livestock and repair the breach. The morning had dawned without snow falling from the sky but the sky was still overcast with clouds the color of pewter, and a cold wind blew in from the east.

  Still, the clouds and cold weather and snow didn’t stop the guests from arriving for Perot St. Maur’s feast that would be a prelude to Christmastide. He always had a great gathering this time of year because of the holiday and also because of his eldest daughter’s birth celebration, and this year promised to be the biggest feast yet because rumor had it that Perot had expanded his invitation to several northern houses with eligible sons. Therefore, the women attending the feast made sure to bring their very best to wear. This event was to be a feast for the belly as well as a feast for the eyes.

  Down by the damaged barn, however, no one was speaking of feasts. They were trying to shore up the collapsed corner and cover it with thatching that had been stored in that very same barn. Fortunately, the collapse hadn’t really hurt anything below it but a little calf and its mother had been dusted with snow and the pair was cold when the breach had been discovered.

  Even now, the little calf was wrapped up in a woolen blanket and held in the arms of a young woman who had come down from the manor to oversee the repairs. Her dark hair was pulled into a braid that she had pinned at the nape of her neck and her deep blue eyes reflected the gray color of the woolen dress she wore, giving them a silver cast. A scarf of soft lamb’s wool was tight around her neck, keeping out the chill, as she stood there with the calf in her arms to warm the little creature.

  “Olaf?” she called to a tall, lanky man who had been hustling in and out of the barn. “How much of the hay was damaged?”

  The man paused by the open barn door, a shovel in his hand. “All of the hay in the stall, my lady,” he replied. “I am cleaning it out now.”

  The woman nodded her head, hugging the little creature in her arms as they both waited for the barn to be fixed. The wind was picking up a bit and she glanced up to the sky, seeing the clouds rolling along and knowing that another storm was coming. She could smell it in the air. Their only hope was to get the roof fixed before more snow fell or the little calf would be sleeping in her bed.

  Not that she minded; he was rather sweet. More than that, it would probably be the only male who slept in her bed, ever.

  “Lady Holly?”

  The woman turned at the sound of her name to see a house servant approaching. The man was one of her father’s personal servants, men who had been trained in France as personal servants of the body. Her father had a servant for everything – bathing, dressing, privy, and he even had a man whose sole purpose was to brush her father’s teeth. She and her sisters had long called this group of men The Unholy Army, simply because they did everything but speak and eat for her father.

  It was rather embarrassing, or at least the daughters of Perot St. Maur thought so. A man shouldn’t have so many servants that he could not even remember how to wipe his own arse. Not that Holly or her sisters had ever asked that of their father, but Holly was fairly certain his answer would not have surprised her.

  “What is it?” she asked the servant, disinterested.

  The servant was a thin man with a hooked nose. He was already dressed for the coming feast, in silks the colors of the St. Maur crest of red and yellow. He made his way to the edge of the barnyard but wouldn’t come any further, clearly uncomfortable with the dirt he’d already managed to acquire on his shoes.

  “Your father requests that you return to the house and dress, as
your guests are beginning to arrive,” he said with a tinge of disapproval for what she was doing. “He says that Olaf or one of the other servants can oversee the roof repair.”

  Lady Hollen Noëlle Christiana St. Maur, otherwise known as Holly, looked at the servant with limited patience. “You mean that he does not want any of his guests to see me out here in the barnyard.”

  The servant smiled thinly. “I was merely sent to relay the message, my lady.”

  “You have done your duty.”

  “Shall I give your father a message, my lady?”

  There were several messages Holly could think of sending her father but most of them would result in his extreme displeasure. So she mocked the feigned smile that the servant was giving her, sneering in return.

  “Nay,” she said. “If I have anything to say to my father, I shall tell him myself.”

  The servant backed away from the barnyard, trying not to step in the muddy snow. “Very good, my lady.”

  Holly turned her back on the man as he made his way back to the house. It was a lovely house, built by her father back before she was born. Papa had been a favored knight of King Henry in those days and the king had lavished money and property upon her father, including the title of Lord Elvaston.

  But the years passed, children were born, all daughters, and a new king had come to the throne several years ago who had taken back many of the properties Henry had given Perot. Richard didn’t much like Perot St. Maur but he left the man with Thulston, the massive manor house that was quite prosperous.

  A manor house that would someday be Holly’s.

  It was her home and, with the death of her mother, she was chatelaine. Perot was convinced that his eldest was the best chatelaine in the country – she was smart, diligent, and able to keep track of the even smallest details. She was also beautiful and educated, qualities that would make her the perfect wife for some lucky man. But in Holly’s opinion, she had already loved and lost the perfect man. There would never be another.