The Second Christmas Megapack: 29 Modern and Classic Yuletide Stories

by Robert Reginald

  “A great day, my lord,” said the Bishop. “Peace over the land. The end of a plentiful year—”

  “Bah!”

  “The end of a plentiful year,” repeated the Bishop tranquilly, “this day of His birth, a day for thanksgiving and for—good-will.”

  “Bah!” said the overlord again, and struck the grey a heavy blow. So massive was the beast, so terrific the pace at which it charged down the hill that the villagers scattered. He watched them with his lip curling.

  “See,” he said, “brave men and true! Watch, father, how they rally to the charge!” And when the creature was caught, and a swaying figure clung to the bridle:

  “By the cross, the Fool has him! A fine heritage for my cousin Philip, a village with its bravest man a simpleton!”

  The Fool held on swinging. His arms were very strong, and as is the way with fools and those that drown, many things went through his mind. The horse was his. He would go adventuring along the winter roads, adventuring and singing. The townspeople gathered about him with sheepish praise. From a dolt he had become a hero. Many have taken the same step in the same space of moments, the line being but a line and easy to cross.

  The dénouement suited the grim mood of the overlord. It pleased him to see the smug villagers stand by while the Fool mounted his steed. Side by side from the parapet he and the Bishop looked down into the town.

  “The birthday of our Lord, Bishop,” he said, “with fools on blooded horses and the courage of the townspeople in their stomachs.”

  “The birthday of our Lord,” said the Bishop tranquilly, “with a lad mounted who has heretofore trudged afoot, and with the hungry fed in the market place.”

  Now it had been in the mind of the Bishop that the day would soften Charles’ grim humor and that he might speak to him as man to man. But Charles was not softened.

  So the Bishop gathered up his courage. His hand was still on the cross on the donkey’s back.

  “You are young, my son, and have been grievously disappointed. I, who am old, have seen many things, and this I have learned. Two things there are that, next to the love of God, must be greatest in a man’s life—not war nor slothful peace, nor pride, nor yet a will that would bend all things to its end.”

  The overlord scowled. He had found the girl Joan in the Market Square, and his eyes were on her.

  “One,” said the Bishop, “is the love of a woman. The other is—a child.”

  The donkey stood meekly, with hanging head.

  “A woman,” repeated the Bishop. “You grow rough up here on your hillside. Only a few months since the lady your wife went away, and already order has forsaken you. The child, your daughter, runs like a wild thing, without control. Our Holy Church deplores these things.”

  “Will Holy Church grant me another wife?”

  “Holy Church,” replied the Bishop gravely, “would have you take back, my lord, the wife whom your hardness drove away.”

  The seigneur’s gaze turned to the east, where lay the Castle of Philip, his cousin. Then he dropped brooding eyes to the Square below, where the girl Joan assisted her father by the fire, and moved like a mother of kings.

  “You wish a woman for the castle, father,” he said. “Then a woman we shall have. Holy Church may not give me another wife, but I shall take one. And I shall have a son.”

  * * * *

  The child Clotilde had watched it all from a window. Because she was very high the thing she saw most plainly was the cross on the donkey’s back. Far out over the plain was a moving figure which might or might not have been the Jew. She chose to think it was.

  “One of Your people,” she said toward the crucifix. “I have done the good deed.”

  She was a little frightened, for all her high head.

  Other Christmases she and the lady her mother had sat hand in hand, and listened to the roystering.

  “They are drunk,” Clotilde would say.

  But her mother would stroke her hand and reply:

  “They but rejoice that our Lord is born.”

  So the child Clotilde stood at her window and gazed to where the plain stretched as far as she could see and as far again. And there was her mother. She would go to her and bring her back, or perhaps failing that, she might be allowed to stay.

  Here no one would miss her. The odor of cooking food filled the great house, loud laughter, the clatter of mug on board. Her old nurse was below, decorating a boar’s head with berries and a crown.

  Because it was the Truce of God and a festival, the gates stood open. She reached the foot of the hill safely. Stragglers going up and down the steep way regarded her without suspicion. So she went through the Square past the roasting steer, and by a twisting street into the open country.

  When she stopped to rest it was to look back with wistful eyes toward the frowning castle on the cliff. For a divided allegiance was hers. Passionately as she loved her mother, her indomitable spirit was her father’s heritage, his fierceness was her courage, and she loved him as the small may love the great.

  The Fool found her at the edge of the river. She had forgotten that there was a river. He was on his great horse, and he rode up by the child and looked down at her.

  “It was I who captured him,” he boasted. “The others ran, but I caught him, so.” He dismounted to illustrate.

  “It is not because you were brave that you captured him.”

  “Then why?” He stood with his feet wide apart, looking down at her.

  “It is because you have slept in a manger on a Holy Eve.”

  “Aye,” he responded, “but that was a matter of courage, too. There were many strange noises. Also, in the middle of the night came Our Lady herself and said to me: ‘Hereafter thou shalt sing with the voice of an angel.’”

  “I should like to see Our Lady,” said the child wistfully.

  “Also,” pursued the Fool, “She gave me power over great beasts. See! He fears me, while he loves me.”

  And indeed there seemed some curious kinship between the horse and the lad, perhaps because the barrier of keen human mind was not between them.

  “Think you,” said the little maid, “if I slept where you did She would appear to me? I would not ask much, only to be made a lad like you, and, perhaps, to sing.”

  “But I am a simpleton. Instead of wit I have but a voice and now—a horse.”

  “A lad like you,” she persisted, “so that my father would love me and my mother might come back again?”

  “Better stay as you are,” said the Fool. “Also, there will be no Holy Eve again for a long time. It comes but once a year. Also it is hard times for men who must either fight or work in the fields. I—” He struck his chest. “I shall do neither. And I shall cut no more wood. I go adventuring.”

  Clotilde rose and drew her grey cloak around her.

  “I am adventuring, too,” she said. “Only I have no voice and no horse. May I go with you?”

  The boy was doubtful. He had that innate love and tenderness that is given to his kind instead of other things. But a child!

  “I will take you,” he said at last, rather heavily. “But where, little lady?”

  “To my mother at the castle of Black Philip.” And when his face fell—for Philip was not named The Black only for his beard—

  “She loves singing. I will ask you to sing before her.”

  That decided him. He took her before him on the grey horse and they set off, two valiant adventurers, a troubadour and a lady, without food or sufficient clothing, but with high courage and a song.

  And because it was the Truce of God the children went unharmed, encountering no greater adventure than hunger and cold and aching muscles. Robbers sulked in their fastnesses, and their horses pawed the ground. Murder, rapine and pillage slept that Christmas day, under the shelter of the cross.

  The Fool, who ached for adventure, rather resented the peace.

  “Wait until Monday,” he said from behind her on the horse. “I shall show
you great things.”

  But the little maid was cold by that time and beginning to be frightened. “Monday you may fight,” she said. “Now I wish you would sing.”

  So he sang until his voice cracked in his throat. Because it was Christmas, and because it was freshest in his heart, he sang mostly what he and the blacksmith and the crockery-seller had sung in the castle yard:

  “The Light of Light Divine, True Brightness undefiled, He bears for us the shame of sin, A holy, spotless Child.”

  They lay that night in a ruined barn with a roof of earth and stones. Clotilde eyed the manger wistfully, but the Holy Eve was past, and the day of miracles would not come for a year.

  Toward morning, however, she roused the boy with a touch.

  “She may have forgotten me,” she said. “She has been gone since the spring. She may not love me now.”

  “She will love you. It is the way of a mother to keep on loving.”

  “I am still a girl.”

  “You are still her child.”

  But seeing that she trembled, he put his ragged cloak about her and talked to comfort her, although his muscles ached for sleep.

  He told her a fable of the countryside, of that Abbot who, having duly served his God, died and appeared at the heavenly gates for admission. “A slave of the Lord,” he replied, when asked his name. But he was refused. So he went away and labored seven years again at good deeds and returned. “A servant of the Lord,” he called himself, and again he was refused. Yet another seven years he labored and came in all humility to the gate. “A child of the Lord,” said the Abbot, who had gained both wisdom and humility. And the gates opened.

  III.

  All that day came peasants up the hill with their Christmas dues, of one fowl out of eight, of barley and wheat. The courtyard had assumed the appearance of a great warehouse. Those that were prosperous came a-riding, hissing geese and chickens and grain in bags across the saddle. The poorer trudged afoot.

  Among the latter came the girl Joan of the Market Square. She brought no grain, but fowls only, and of these but two. She took the steep ascent like a thoroughbred, muscles working clean under glowing skin, her deep bosom rising evenly, treading like a queen among that clutter of peasants.

  And when she was brought into the great hall her head went yet higher. It pleased the young seigneur to be gracious. But he eyed her much as he had eyed the great horse that morning before he cut it with the whip. She was but a means to an end. Such love and tenderness as were in him had gone out to the gentle wife he had put away from him, and had died—of Clotilde.

  So Charles appraised her and found her, although but a means, very beautiful. Only the Bishop turned away his head.

  “Joan,” said Charles, “do you know why I have sent for you?”

  The girl looked down. But, although she quivered, it was not with fright.

  “I do, sire.”

  Something of a sardonic smile played around the seigneur’s mouth. The butterfly came too quietly to the net.

  “We are but gloomy folk here, rough soldiers and few women. It has been in my mind—” Here he saw the Bishop’s averted head, and scowled. What had been in his mind he forgot. He said: “I would have you come willingly, or not at all.”

  At that she lifted her head and looked at him. “You know I will come,” she said. “I can do nothing else, but I do not come willingly, my lord. You are asking too much.”

  The Bishop turned his head hopefully.

  “Why?”

  “You are a hard man, my lord.”

  If she meant to anger him, she failed. They were not soft days. A man hid such tenderness as he had under grimness, and prayed in the churches for phlegm.

  “I am a fighting man. I have no gentle ways.” Then a belated memory came to him. “I give no tenderness and ask none. But such kindness as you have, lavish on the child Clotilde. She is much alone.”

  With the mention of Clotilde’s name came a vision: instead of this splendid peasant wench he seemed to see the graceful and drooping figure of the woman he had put away because she had not borne him a son. He closed his eyes, and the girl, taking it for dismissal, went away.

  When he opened them there were only the fire and the dogs about it, and the Bishop, who was preparing to depart.

  “I shall not stay, my lord,” said the Bishop. “The thing is desecration. No good can come from such a bond. It is Christmas and the Truce of God, and yet you do this evil thing.”

  So the Bishop went, muffled in a cloak, and mantled with displeasure. And with him, now that Clotilde had fled, went all that was good and open to the sun, from the grey castle of Charles the Fair.

  At evening Joan came again, still afoot, but now clad in her best. She came alone, and the men at the gates, instructed, let her in. She gazed around the courtyard with its burden of grain that had been crushed out of her people below, with its loitering soldiers and cackling fowls, and she shivered as the gates closed behind her.

  She was a good girl, as the times went, and she knew well that she had been brought up the hill as the stallion that morning had been driven down. She remembered the cut of the whip, and in the twilight of the courtyard she stretched out her arms toward the little town below, where the old man, her father, lived in semi-darkness, and where on that Christmas evening the women were gathered in the churches to pray.

  * * * *

  Having no seasonable merriment in himself, Charles surrounded himself that night with cheer. A band of wandering minstrels had arrived to sing, the great fire blazed, the dogs around it gnawed the bones of the Christmas feast. But when the troubadours would have sung of the Nativity, he bade them in a great voice to have done. So they sang of war, and, remembering his cousin Philip, his eyes blazed.

  When Joan came he motioned her to a seat beside him, not on his right, but on his left, and there he let her sit without speech. But his mind was working busily. He would have a son and the King would legitimize him. Then let Philip go hang. These lands of his as far as the eye could reach and as far again would never go to him.

  The minstrels sang of war, and of his own great deeds, but there was no one of them with so beautiful a voice as that of the Fool, who could sing only of peace. And the Fool was missing.

  However, their songs soothed his hurt pride. This was he; these things he had done. If the Bishop had not turned sour and gone, he would have heard what they sang. He might have understood, too, the craving of a man’s warrior soul for a warrior son, for one to hold what he had gathered at such cost. Back always to this burning hope of his!

  Joan sat on his left hand, and went hot and cold, hot with shame and cold with fear.

  So now, his own glory as a warrior commencing to pall on him, Charles would have more tribute, this time as lord of peace. He would celebrate this day of days, and at the same time throw a sop to Providence.

  He would release the Jew.

  The troubadours sang louder; fresh liquor was passed about. Charles waited for the Jew to be brought.

  He remembered Clotilde then. She should see him do this noble thing. Since her mother had gone she had shrunk from him. Now let her see how magnanimous he could be. He, the seigneur, who held life and death in his hands, would this day give, not death, but life.

  Being not displeased with himself, he turned at last toward Joan and put a hand over hers.

  “You see,” he said, “I am not so hard a man. By this Christian act shall I celebrate your arrival.”

  But the Jew did not come. The singers learned the truth, and sang with watchful eyes. The seigneur’s anger was known to be mighty, and to strike close at hand.

  Guillem, the jailer, had been waiting for the summons.

  News had come to him late in the afternoon that had made him indifferent to his fate. The girl Joan, whom he loved, had come up the hill at the overlord’s summons. So, instead of raising an alarm, Guillem had waited sullenly. Death, which yesterday he would have blenched to behold, now beckoned him. Whe
n he was brought in, he stood with folded arms and asked no mercy.

  “He is gone, my lord,” said Guillem, and waited. He did not glance at the girl.

  “Gone?” said Charles. Then he laughed, such laughter as turned the girl cold.

  “Gone, earth-clod? How now? Perhaps you, too, wished to give a hostage to fortune, to forestall me in mercy?”

  He turned to the girl beside him.

  “You see,” he said, “to what lengths this spirit of the Holy Day extends itself. Our friend here—” Then he saw her face and knew the truth.

  The smile set a little on his lips.

  “Why, then,” he said to the jailer, “such mercy should have its reward.” He turned to Joan. “What say you? Shall I station him at your door, sweet lady, as a guard of honor?”

  Things went merrily after that, for Guillem drew a knife and made, not for the seigneur, but for Joan. The troubadours feared to stop singing without a signal, so they sang through white lips. The dogs gnawed at their bones and the seigneur sat and smiled, showing his teeth.

  Guillem, finally unhanded, stood with folded arms and waited for death.

  “It is the time of the Truce of God,” said the seigneur softly, and, knowing that death would be a boon, sent him off unhurt.

  * * * *

  The village, which had eaten full, slept early that night. Down the hill at nine o’clock came half a dozen men-at-arms on horseback and clattered through the streets. Word went about quickly. Great oaken doors were unbarred to the news:

  “The child Clotilde is gone!” they cried through the streets. “Up and arm. The child Clotilde is gone.”

  Joan, deserted, sat alone in the great hall. For the seigneur was off, riding like a madman. Flying through the Market Square, he took the remains of the great fire at a leap. He had but one thought. The Jew had stolen the child; therefore, to find the Jew.

  In the blackest of the night he found him, sitting by the road, bent over his staff. The eyes he raised to Charles were haggard and weary. Charles reined his horse back on his haunches, his men-at-arms behind him.

  “What have you done with the child?”

  “The child?”

  “Out with it,” cried Charles and flung himself from his horse. If the Jew were haggard, Charles was more so, hard-bitten of terror, pallid to the lips.