Kate Sedley: The Christmas Wassail

‘Oh, here you are at last, Roger,’ my wife remarked on seeing me. ‘Supper’s ready, and has been this half hour and more. As you see, you’re too late to hang the kissing bush. Richard has done it for me.’

I swung round, almost fell over, and steadied myself by grasping at the nearest support. This turned out to be the stocky, red-haired bulk of Richard Manifold, Sheriff’s Officer, sometime suitor of Adela before she wed her first husband, Owen Juett, and a permanent thorn in my side. He was still unmarried and consequently always in need of company, particularly, it seemed, my wife’s. I won’t go so far as to say that he haunted the Small Street house, but he was far too frequent a visitor for my peace of mind. The three older children regarded him with long-suffering tolerance born of familiarity, while I was never quite sure what Adela’s feelings for him were. Only my half-nephew, eleven-month-old Luke, but recently fostered by us after the death of his mother, was as yet unconscious of Richard Manifold’s (to my mind) disruptive presence in our lives.

Richard smirked at me, and I could have sworn that I caught the glimpse of a halo round his head.

‘You knew that I was going to do it. That I enjoy doing it,’ I said aggressively, and not altogether truthfully, turning back to my wife. That third beaker of ale was beginning to talk. ‘Why did you ask him to do it?’

‘You weren’t here,’ Adela pointed out, keeping her tone reasonable, ‘and you know it should be hung up before nightfall on the eve of Christmas Eve. Don’t you think it’s pretty? Bess and I worked practically all day on it. You have a very talented daughter, my love. She cut out those paper figures using only my working scissors.’

‘Yes, I did,’ Elizabeth confirmed, ‘and you haven’t even said anything about them.’ Her lower lip trembled. ‘I think you’re horrid.’

I took a menacing step towards her and she retreated in alarm. ‘Don’t you dare speak to me like that, my girl,’ I threatened, then totally undermined my own authority by adding, ‘at least, not in front of strangers.’

Nicholas, flying as always to his stepsister’s defence, said truculently, ‘Richard’s not a stranger.’

‘Sergeant Manifold to you, my lad!’ I shouted furiously. ‘And that goes for the rest of you!’

Hercules, who had just made his way in from the kitchen, hearing my angry tones and considering it his duty, as my four-legged protector, to come to my assistance, began barking ferociously on a high, insistent note. I yelled at him to be quiet; the baby, sat on the floor among the rushes and, unused to such a cacophony, started to scream, while Elizabeth burst into tears and fled upstairs.

So much for a peaceful Christmas! I had been home for less than ten minutes and the place was in uproar. And it was all my fault.

Or the fault of the ale I had consumed. I took a deep breath and apologized all round. My daughter was persuaded to come downstairs again and, between sniffs, reluctantly forgave me; Luke was picked up and pacified, bestowing on me a beaming smile when I ruffled his copper-coloured curls; Nicholas frowned at me reprovingly, while Adam gave me three or four sharp kicks on the ankles and considered honour satisfied. Richard and Adela continued as if nothing had happened, such behaviour being, they implied, beneath their notice and thus putting me, very properly, in my place. (It did cross my mind to wonder why I was never master in my own house, as other men were, but the answer eluded me.)

Adela held out her hand. ‘A kiss under the mistletoe,’ she said.

I knew what was in her mind.

After the death of our four-day-old daughter, three years before, she had not conceived again, and it seemed possible that Adam would remain our only child. She was a natural mother, a woman who enjoyed motherhood in spite of all its attendant restraints and vexations, which was the chief reason, I felt sure, why she had agreed with such ease to foster Luke, who had no claim on her affection whatsoever. Adam was now five years old, growing up and away from her and leaving a void in her life that cried out to be filled.

‘I’m a man,’ was our son’s frequently voiced assertion, and indeed his sturdy independence had come, I think, as something of a surprise to both of us. It shouldn’t have done. His birth had been greeted with resentment by his older half-brother and half-sister who, with a mere fortnight in age between them, had been fast friends from the moment that Adela and I were married. As a baby, they had tried to give Adam away to the mad wife of Baker Overbeck, so he had been very much his own man since he was small. The arrival of young Luke within the past few weeks had strengthened this sense of independence, making him no longer the youngest member of the household and bolstering his self-reliance. He had ceased to need his mother in the way he had done before.

Adela was therefore pining for another child of her own. Mistletoe was supposed to have aphrodisiac properties and kissing beneath it to aid fertility. I didn’t think that I had been showing any lack of enthusiasm for my marital duties lately — in fact, it was too often Adela who pleaded tiredness — but if that was the way the wind was blowing, I was perfectly ready to comply. I embraced her warmly and gave her a lingering kiss. She reached up, broke a sprig of the plant from the kissing bush and stuck it in my hair just behind my left ear.

Harmony now being fully restored and Christmas, as it were, back on course, we all repaired to the kitchen to have supper, Richard Manifold included. I suppose it was foolish of me to have expected otherwise.

Tonight it was simply the same stew, reheated, that had provided dinner for Adela and the children, but all around me I could see that preparations were underway for the festive meals of the next few days. Assembled on a side table were the dried plums that would make the plum porridge; the eggs, spices and milk, together with a bowl of boiled wheat, which would turn into frumenty; the butcher’s leftovers from the bigger joints of meat sold to the gentry which, with apples and dried raisins, would be encased in pastry to make the minced pies; and a rather small, somewhat withered-looking capon, carefully budgeted for over the past month, which would grace our board on the day of Christ’s birth itself.

I could see Richard Manifold eyeing these signs of delights to come as he shared our pottage, and I wondered how long it would be before he made some remark. But it was not until the older children had left the table and Adela, with Luke on her lap, was spooning some of the broth into his ever open little mouth, that Richard could no longer refrain from comment.

‘You’re well advanced in your preparations, I see, Adela. Are you — er — expecting guests?’

‘Only my cousin, Margaret Walker,’ my wife replied tranquilly. ‘She is Elizabeth’s grandmother, after all, and naturally wishes to see her only grandchild on Christmas Day. Do you have any plans, dear Richard?’

I could have screamed at her not to be such a fool. The man was obviously angling for an invitation.

I was wrong, however.

‘I shall be eating at the mayor’s table,’ he said gloomily. ‘The sheriff and his assistants have been invited. But I shall be surprised if the other sergeant, Tom Merryweather, and I get through the meal without interruption. The mummers arrive in Bristol tomorrow afternoon, ready to start their plays on Saint Stephen’s Day, and that is invariably the signal for all the young idiots in the town to dress up in masks and go rioting through the streets, making a damn nuisance of themselves and frightening the old biddies half to death. Even Our Lord’s birthday’s not sacred to them. I don’t know what the youth of today is coming to.’