Kate Sedley: The Christmas Wassail

Adela laughed. ‘Richard, you make yourself sound like some old greybeard. The young will be young — it’s only to be expected. But I didn’t know we were to have mummers this year, did you, Roger?’

I shook my head. ‘Where are they performing?’

‘In the outer ward of Bristol Castle, I believe.’ The sergeant rubbed his nose. ‘I heard they’re to be given accommodation there, as well. It’s only a small troupe. Not more than five or six of them, I’ve been told.’

‘The children will be pleased,’ Adela said, wiping Luke’s mouth on a corner of her apron. She regarded it with dismay. ‘Oh dear! Look at that! Now I’ll have to wash it again. He really is a messy eater.’ She dropped a kiss on the top of the child’s curly head. ‘You’re looking very pensive, Roger. Is something bothering you?’

‘Not really.’ I chewed my thumbnail. ‘It’s just that I thought I saw someone in the Green Lattis whom I know. But I can’t place him. Which reminds me. Something else rather odd happened. Burl and I-’

‘Oh, Burl Hodge, was it!’ exclaimed my wife. ‘I might have known!’

I ignored this interruption. ‘Burl and I,’ I continued, ‘saw a woman going into the Lattis just as we were leaving. You’ll never guess who it was.’

‘Tell us, then,’ my wife invited, setting Luke down among the floor rushes, where he sat happily subjecting his toes to close scrutiny.

‘I have to admit that I didn’t actually see her face,’ I confessed reluctantly. ‘She was wearing a cloak with the hood pulled well forward. But Burl swears it was Lady Marvell.’

There was a moment’s silence before Richard Manifold threw back his head and gave a loud guffaw. ‘The fool was drunk,’ he said. He didn’t add, ‘like you’, but I knew very well it was what he was thinking. In any case, he didn’t need to. Adela said it for him.

‘You were both in your cups,’ she accused me. ‘Patience Marvell wouldn’t be out alone after dark, let alone entering a place like the Green Lattis.’

I sighed. ‘That’s what I told Burl, but he would have it that he was right. Said he caught a glimpse of her face under the hood in the light from the lantern in All Saints’ porch.’

Richard laughed again and got up. ‘I wouldn’t believe anything that guzzler thought he saw when he’s had a few beakers of ale. Adela, I must be off. Thank you for supper, and I’m glad I could be of use with the kissing bush. If I don’t see you again before Our Blessed Lord’s birthday, I wish you all the blessings and joy of the season.’ He nodded at me. ‘Goodnight, Roger.’

Adela saw him to the door. When she returned, I asked irritably, ‘And when did Sergeant Manifold become “dear” Richard?’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Roger!’ Her irritation was as palpable as mine. ‘It was simply an expression.’

‘Not one that I approve of,’ I snapped.

She resumed her place at the table and gave me a wan smile. ‘Are we going to go on like this? Quarrelling with one another all Christmas?’

She looked weary and suddenly rather frail. I was immediately contrite.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Of course not.’

But I was too sanguine. While she washed the supper dishes, I went into the parlour where a fire burned low on the hearth, sank into my armchair, with its embroidered seat and cushions (all done by Adela’s clever fingers), and stretched my legs towards the warmth, expecting, after my busy day and three beakers of ale, to fall asleep immediately.

Chance would have been a fine thing.

I heard the parlour door creak open and the next moment Adam, ready for bed in his little nightshirt, had climbed on to my lap.

‘Story,’ he demanded imperatively.

I sighed. ‘I don’t know any more stories. I’ve told you all the ones I know.’

‘Tell again.’ He settled himself into the crook of my arm. ‘Tell about Balder and Loki.’

I hesitated. ‘Sweetheart, you know your mother doesn’t approve of my telling you these pagan legends.’

‘She won’t know,’ he answered simply. ‘I shan’t tell her.’ He wriggled a bit, swinging his legs and watching the shadows they made on the hearthstones. The tallow candle, placed near my chair, guttered and went out. My son and I were left in the dancing firelight. ‘Balder and Loki,’ he repeated.

‘Oh, very well,’ I said, giving in. ‘Balder, who was called the Beautiful-’

‘I’m beautiful,’ Adam said. He was never one to hide his light under a bushel.

I gave him a kiss and a hug. ‘Yes, you are,’ I agreed, ‘but don’t interrupt. Balder the Beautiful was the second son of the god Odin — or Woden as he’s sometimes called — and his wife Frigga, or Freya, the mother of the gods. Balder was the god of the sun, of light and peace, and all the other gods loved him.’

‘Except Loki,’ Adam said with relish.

It was obvious who, to him, was the hero of this story. Perhaps it should have worried me, but I remembered myself at his age. Heroes had always been boring: villains were so much more entertaining.

‘I’m coming to that. I told you, don’t interrupt. Well, Balder was so beautiful and so beloved that Odin-’

‘Or Woden.’

‘All right. Odin, or Woden, decreed that nothing which sprang from air, fire, water or earth should ever be able to harm him. So all the gods thought that Balder was quite safe from Loki, the god of earth and strife and darkness, who hated him.’

‘But Loki was too clever for them,’ my son said, wriggling again in anticipation.

‘Much too clever. He fashioned an arrow made from a branch of mistletoe because mistletoe doesn’t grow from the earth. It only grows on other trees.’

‘The oak and the apple.’

‘Yes. And if it grew on an oak, it was especially sacred to the druids, the priests of the old religion. It could only be cut with a knife of pure gold and had to be caught in an equally pure white cloth because it must never touch the ground.’

Adam wasn’t interested in this. ‘Go on about Loki,’ he commanded.

‘Where was I? Oh, I know. Well, Loki made an arrow from mistletoe, but he was much too wily to fire it himself. Instead, he gave it to the blind god of war, Hoder, and whispered to him in which direction to aim it …’

‘And Hoder shot the arrow and it killed Balder,’ my son finished excitedly, bouncing up and down on my knee. ‘And that was the end of Balder.’

‘We-ell, not quite,’ I said. ‘You know the ending to this story as well as I do. You’ve heard it before. The other gods and goddesses all missed Balder so much that they begged Odin to bring him back to life. So he did.’

Adam nodded, then said thoughtfully, ‘Like Our Lord, Jesus Christ.’

I don’t know how long Adela had been standing in the parlour doorway, left open by Adam, or just how much she had heard, but our son’s unconscious blasphemy set the seal on her wrath. He was seized from my lap and, to his utter astonishment, given a resounding slap where it hurt the most before his mother turned on me.

‘Don’t ever,’ she raged, ‘let me hear you telling him, or any of the children, stories like that again. I won’t have you corrupting their minds with such evil, irreligious nonsense.’ She turned back to Adam and shook him hard. ‘And don’t let me hear you repeating it, either. You’re to put such wickedness out of your mind. Do you understand me, Adam? Men only made up those stories when they didn’t know any better. But we do! There is only One God and Our Lord Jesus Christ is His Son. I don’t ever want to hear those pagan names on your lips again.’

I was by now in as much of a temper as she was. ‘That’s just plain stupid,’ I rasped. ‘If he can’t mention Tue, Woden, Thor and Frig, how is he going to pronounce the days of the week? You perhaps don’t realize it, my dear’ — there is nothing like a ‘my dear’ to emphasize how angry you are when arguing with your wife — ‘but we talk about them all the time.’