Mon, February 06 2012
| TITLE: | A Winter's Tale |
|---|---|
| AUTHOR: | Odensdisir |
| CATEGORY/TYPE: | |
| RATING/WARNINGS: | List the story rating (G, PG-13, R) and if it's Gen, Adult-Het or Adult-Slash |
| MAIN CHARACTERS: | List any main characters or adult relationships |
| DESCRIPTION: | not a Christmas story. |
| STATUS: | Complete |
It is worth consideration that the traditional Yule celebrations in England are in many cases older than those delightful customs imported from the Continent at the behest of the Prince Consort. While many English men and women the length and breadth of Great Britain have embraced these new observances -- adding them to more traditional English rituals of the Yule log and the wassail bowl -- in some places, especially where history has touched only lightly, sometimes echoes of considerably more primitive times can be detected amongst the boughs of holly and the sprigs of mistletoe (themselves very ancient survivals).
In this instance, social archeologists have documented a survival of more than two hundred years' provenance observed in a small manor and its estate in the shire of ________ in ________, England.
We are indebted to the private journals of Mr. J____ V____ for this material, which has been released for scientific use only on the grounds that names and other uniquely identifying features be suitably concealed for the protection of the parties involved.
A Winter's Tale not a Christmas story
The English were peculiar, and never so peculiar as at Christmas- time. The entire country appeared to have gone mad for the importation of German celebrations whose pagan sources were almost distressingly obvious. If the English were dissatisfied with their own cultural heritage -- Jules asked himself -- why had they not imported a more gentle and civilized way of celebrating the blessed birth, from France, for instance? But he knew the answer to that question. The English were more German than French. Even the Conqueror had been French only by default, and then only by three generations or so, when he had come to England, if Jules remembered his history.
Other questions Jules was at a complete loss to answer.
He had had the cable from Fogg; it had found him in Nantes. Urgently request presence Verne stop. Please come at once if possible explain later stop. It hadn't sounded quite like other cables he'd had in the past; the word "urgent" aside, it did not seem to communicate the urgency Fogg could put into few words -- Problem requires your eye stop; Need your analysis at earliest possible opportunity stop; and of course the seemingly innocuous and ultimately almost heart-wrenching Ducklings gone missing welcome your company stop.
Needless to say he'd made for Calais with dispatch and been in the station at B_____, as close as he could get to Shillingworth Magna by train, with a day and a half. He hadn't slept; and he'd assumed that that was the reason McIver, who had met him at the station with a young nephew or somebody in tow, had insisted he take a room and rest a bit rather than leaving for Shillingworth immediately. McIver hadn't seemed to be worried about anything, though there had been something peculiar about McIver's demeanor. Jules had been a little punch-drunk. He'd let McIver take him to an inn and hurry him into an upper room and go away, promising to return "as soon as it could be done, Mr. Verne."
Yes, the whole thing had been odd.
It had been a small upper room, immaculately clean but very close up under the eaves. The inn was very busy with travelers, that had to be the reason, because they were clearly running short of tableware as well; the meal that had been set out for him -- wine and cold roast and bread -- was on worn old pewter that had emphatically seen better days.
Very old worn pewter.
But Jules had been tired, and had laid down on the bed and pulled the coverlet over him, and before he knew it the fire had died away and the moon had risen to shine through the tiny scrap of a window and McIver was at the door with a cloak to hurry him down the back stairs.
"It'll be this way, Mr. Verne, come along, then. Hurry."
The inn was busy, and yet there wasn't a single soul on the narrow staircase that McIver showed him. They didn't emerge from the inn at the front on the street, there was no Fogg equipage waiting for them; it was dark in the alleyway -- there was still light in the sky, but the shadows were deep --- and there was a cart with hay and burlap sacks. McIver settled him in to the back of the cart while the child McIver had with him tucked a warming-brick up in the burlap sacks. Jules couldn't tell if it was the same child that McIver had had with him when he'd met Jules at the station; whoever the boy was, he wasn't talking.
"Apologize for the inconvenience, sir, there's no help for it. You should stay warm enough."
Jules had been half-buried in straw and burlap by that point. He couldn't see his luggage, but he hadn't brought more than a bag. He was warm enough, McIver had been right about that, and tried to set his mind at rest by gazing up at the stars as twilight faded into clear cold night, and the cart bumped down the road to its destination.
Not to Shillingworth Magna.
In the middle of nowhere the cart stopped and McIver got out; not for what Jules supposed to be the expected reason, but to meet some people by the side of the track. The vicar, Bodkin. One of the other people Jules had met that were associated with the church, though he wasn't sure if the man was a rector or a beadle or what, the English church confused him so. Two children, solemnly dressed in dark clothing with their faces smudged, staring up at him with their blue English eyes as wide as the moon itself in awed wonder.
"Here's our man," McIver had said, as Jules brushed straw from his trousers and tried to get his bearings. "And I'll see you up at the house. Get along with you. You know what to do."
Then McIver, oddly enough, had jumped back up onto the cart and slapped the reins over the backs of the horses to hurry them, and left.
Jules had found himself standing in the middle of what appeared to be a very overgrown track, in the middle of the night, with no idea of where he was or what he was doing there. There was still no hint of danger or peril in the air; there were children, after all, no English would ever endanger a child any more than any French would. Very quiet and serious children, but they seemed to be excited, and it was all so strange that Jules simply went along as he was bidden when the vicar said "This way."
It was cold, and they seemed to walk for a long time, but Jules knew how easy it was to lose track of time when a person was completely lost. They came to a break in the road; Jules was startled to see the normally sedate -- even timid -- Bodkin plunge into the deep brush on the side of the road, more startled yet to be politely invited to follow him. A cave, a close and damp run in the earth, no light, Jules felt his way along the walls and followed after Bodkin; after a few minutes' stumbling in the narrow passageway it changed, the surface underfoot was stone rather than dirt, and Bodkin paused to light a small and shaded lantern.
It didn't show much.
They were in a tunnel, and one of what appeared to be considerable antiquity, from the rough dressing of the stones in the walls. Jules had long since filed so many questions in his mind that there was no room for any more, so he'd been quiet. Someone would explain, sooner or later, he was sure of it. There had to be an explanation. If these were anybody else than Fogg's English Jules would have been terrified, but these were Fogg's people, and he felt safe, no matter what the unreason of the evening's events.
They'd led him to a little room barred by a solid door of ancient oak, and let him in. There was no fire, it was a very little room, but there were bearskins piled in one corner, and Bodkin lit the candle on the table while the beadle or the rector or whoever he was shook out one of the furs to wrap it around Jules' body where he sat at the table.
"Not too long now, Mr. Verne," Bodkin had said. "I must say, we are glad you could come. It's ever so important to us. Really. Have a glass of sherry, I'm sorry about the damp, we'll be back soon."
Nothing made sense.
They'd gone away, leaving Jules in the tiny stone cell, wondering. He'd looked around, trying to make sense of what he saw. A pallet on the floor at the back of the cell, all of two paces from the table. Niches in the walls -- a cheese entire in a thick wax rind; some unlabeled bottles; a dish, a knife, a glass, a lead box on the table, and most unreasonable of all a needlepoint motto on the wall next to the door.
Jules had taken the candle to examine the motto; somebody's sampler, but if the sampler itself was to be believed it had been worked by none other than Miss Rebecca Fogg, Aged Twelve, and in a language Jules did not think he recognized.
If it was English it was primitive; there were letters he was sure were not in use in standard orthography, a sign that looked like a "v" stuck in the middle of a stick, another one that looked a bit like a composite epsilon and "g." If he read it correctly the v- stick was a rune of sorts for a "th," because there was a word that could be "the" if what the motto said was that often came the something-or-another in some sort of fashion Jules could not decipher.
It had been more than Jules could parse, and he'd gone back to the table to look into the lead box. There had been a little book. Latin. Psalms, and the Gospels, he thought, but it was an old book and he'd been afraid to look at it too closely for fear of damaging it, and though he was almost certain it was Latin he couldn't read the Latin of it very well.
Then Bodkin had come back for him, as he had promised, and McIver of all people with him; Jules thought he counted three or four children, now, in the shadows beyond. Bodkin and McIver hurried Jules through stone tunnels -- different stone tunnels -- in the almost pitch- darkness of wherever they were.
There had to be an end to this insanity.
It had to be soon, Jules thought, standing in front of a blank wood- paneled wall while McIver showed one of the children how to work some sort of a mechanism and Bodkin helped the other children pull.
The paneled wall swung slowly into the stone corridor on what seemed to be seldom-used hinges, but it didn't make a sound. Warmth and light flooded the corridor; Jules could see into the room beyond. He knew the room. It was Fogg's sitting-room at Shillingworth Magna, warm and bright and decorated with greenery and ribbon. Fogg was there, sitting in his chair near to the fire reading his paper, and Rebecca sat opposite him with some needlepoint in her lap. Fogg looked up, Fogg and Rebecca alike looked right at Jules where he stood, but neither of them gave any sign of recognition; when Fogg spoke his voice was clear and measured, but mildly upbraiding, and if it hadn't been for a quick wink from Rebecca Jules would have been convinced that he'd gone mad.
"Here, now, what is the meaning of this intrusion? Explain yourself at once."
Jules looked to McIver, then to Bodkin, but neither man moved. Instead one of the children pushed forward between Jules and McIver and cleared her through nervously. Jules was startled to realize that it was a little girl.
"Very sorry, sir, but there's a man come, a fugitive, needing shelter."
He wasn't a man come needing shelter. He was Jules Verne, he had money in his pockets, he could purchase shelter in any inn in England, but it was clear by now that whatever was happening he was deep into some insane English ritual and his role was to stand there and keep shut. Rebecca's wink had said so.
Fogg gave no clues. "We harbor no man-slayers here. What is his crime?"
Child number two. "No crime against persons or property, sir, but he's hunted by the King's men."
Fogg folded his newspaper and stood up. "Take him down to the kitchen, then, and give him food and drink, and let him warm himself. I will come down. Hurry. Hurry."
Fogg didn't sound in much of a hurry. But the children scurried to push the wooden paneled door back flush with the wall of Fogg's sitting-room. Jules stared up at McIver, irritation almost completely submerged beneath confusion; McIver smiled and nodded and put a hand to Jules' shoulder to encourage him. Then the little girl took Jules' right hand and one of the other children took his left, and they were off through narrow corridors once more.
It was warmer, that was a plus.
When they came out again they were in the kitchen. It was full of people. Full. Mrs. Betty was there in a huge starched apron, there was a blazing fire on the hearth, and the kitchen work-table had been set with linen and boughs and citrus fruit piled in abundance. Mrs. Betty turned around when the children led Jules into the room and eyed them sternly.
"See here, what's this?" Mrs. Betty demanded, sounding very much like Mr. Phileas Fogg. One of the children answered as before.
"Master says we're to receive him as our guest --
The child hesitated a little on the phrase; Mrs. Betty smiled and nodded encouragingly, and the rest came out in a rush.
"-- And give him food and drink."
Mrs. Betty beamed, and the maids and the under-cooks and the grooms made approving and encouraging noises. Mrs. Betty's young niece Annie came forward and took Jules' hand from the little girl who had been holding it, and the children melted into the crowd as their parents and older siblings called for them and praised them.
"You come and sit down by the fire," Annie said. "We'll bring you bread. Our master says you are our guest, you'll be safe here."
Annie did lead Jules to the fire, and sat him down, and stood up on her tip-toes to kiss his cheek very solemnly. There were more children in the kitchen of Shillingworth Magna than Jules thought he'd ever seen at the manor house in all his visits here before. One of them brought him bread on a tray, one of them brought a jug of wine and poured him a pewter cup, one of them brought a slice of cheese. Annie came back with an apple, and handed it to him, then stood back behind the chair as Fogg came through the door from the inner house with Rebecca and Passepartout behind him.
"And have you tended to our guest, as you should do?" Fogg asked. Annie's little hand trembled a bit on the back of the chair, Jules could see it; but she answered proudly.
"We dare not do less for our master's guest but shelter him and keep him safe, as Christian charity demands."
He was in a Christmas pageant. That was it. It was the unlikeliest Christmas play Jules could imagine, but that had to be the explanation.
The door to the kitchen-garden burst open; another boy ran in. "The constable! Master! The constable is searching for a man!"
Rebecca stepped forward, her face very solemn, but her whole body seemed to be alive with fun and joy. She nodded to Jules, very gently, very slightly, and turned her back on him. She was wearing an apron as well.
"Quick, Mistress, we must hide this man," one of the children said. Fogg stood silent at the door, watching; Rebecca nodded her head very firmly, almost theatrically.
"Hide him beneath my skirts. We will not fail."
What?
She couldn't mean --
She didn't.
Annie and another child took Jules by the elbows and guided him down to the floor, while some third child covered him with a table-cloth and Rebecca folded the top hems in her arms across her waist, like a shawl. Maybe that was what the apron was for.
Jules heard a voice.
It was the constable.
"We have report, sir, of a fugitive, within these grounds. And we must search."
Fogg replied; he was the "sir" in the room, after all. "Search as you must, constable, and welcome."
But the constable didn't seem to be moving; Jules heard no sound of steps, no doors opening. "We have now searched, sir, and we have found nothing. We will go, and search again elsewhere."
"Take a glass of cheer before you go, good sergeant, and God save all good men and women from misfortune and despair."
The children to either side of Jules burst out clapping, jumping up and down. Rejoicing became general.
Rebecca loosed her grip on the table-cloth and spun around to take Jules by the shoulders as he rose awkwardly to his feet and embrace him, kissing him on both cheeks. "Oh, Jules, you did beautifully. Didn't he do beautifully, children? Tell him how proud you are."
Fogg was behind Rebecca, reaching out his hand as Rebecca moved aside and the children surrounded Jules to give him hugs. "Well done, Verne, very well done." Jules had to reach over the shoulders of children to take Fogg's hand, and he did so with some confusion.
"Thanks, Fogg, but what's this all about? Why did you need me?"
"Explain later, Verne, for now you have to sit down and eat. The children will all give you a bite, do try to accommodate them, it's traditional. I'll tell you the entire story. Later."
Gleeful children led Jules to the table and made him sit, and brought him pieces of bread, pieces of cheese, slices of apple, sips of apple cider. Each of the girls kissed him on the cheek, and each of the boys shook his hand very solemnly before they went away. There were other things to eat beside bread and cheese and apples, Jules noticed, it was a children's feast of sweets and nuts and oranges, but he was just as glad that he wasn't expected to eat some of everything. There had to have been ten, perhaps as many as fifteen children there. The dishes that they brought him were all small, almost symbolic in their portion size, but ten or fifteen small dishes were still ten or fifteen dishes, and he got quite full.
The party went on, and Jules was tired. He had traveled hard to get here, and the unreason of these events while not exactly fear- inspiring had been disturbing in their pure unreason. Slowly Jules fell asleep at the table by the fire; and hardly bothered to wake up when McIver carried him upstairs and Passepartout put him to bed.
+ + + +
"Well, we've used and used Passepartout," Fogg explained, at breakfast. "You do fit the requirement, Jules, it should be a stranger, and it should be -- please pardon the personal remark -- a Catholic. That's where it all started, after all."
The sun was bright, the room was warm, and there were kippers. Passepartout had made coffee; a special mark of favor, Jules knew, for his benefit, because Mrs. Betty did not often let any man handle the sacred equipment of her craft. Jules had slept late, and in the light of day the entire adventure seemed even more unreal than it had while he had been living it.
"That's why it's children, then." He thought he understood. "Teaching the next generation. But the English Civil War, it's been over for more than two centuries, Fogg. Why keep it up?"
"Well, Phileas and I have a long-standing argument on whether it actually started in the sixteen-hundreds," Rebecca noted, calmly, buttering her toast. "My own interpretation of the play is that it's rather older than that. That motto one does to hang in the trove- room, after all. Rather older than the Conquest, really, so I'm told."
"And Rebecca is, as always, wrong, when she is disagreeing with me." There was no rancor in Fogg's voice, nor any particular conviction either. "I grant you the antiquity of the motto, Rebecca, but the historical context is clearly specific to Father Connollan."
A Cavalier priest hunted by Round-heads, and hidden away at Shillingworth Magna to keep him safe from harm. But Fogg was an Anglican, and until now Jules had assumed that the family had been since the Reformation. "I wouldn't have thought to find any sympathy for the Roman rite here in the heart of old England, Fogg." There wasn't a Catholic church for miles, not that Jules knew of. Nor that Passepartout knew of, either, and if Passepartout didn't know of one there probably wasn't one.
Fogg shook his head. "That's not the point, Verne, it's not the point at all. No, it's got nothing to do with the fact that Connollan turned out to be a good card-player. Adelbard Fogg didn't like bullies. He didn't care what sort of bullies they were."
Jules had had a good night's sleep; he had had the leading role in Shillingworth Magna's winter pageant, even if it hadn't been a Christmas play. The breakfast table had been carefully laid with Verne-treats. How could he feel resentful? "I don't understand why you have to do the cart and the hiding, though." He wasn't resentful. He was just confused. There was still something here that he wasn't quite understanding. "Couldn't we have just had the kitchen scene and have done with it?"
Fogg seemed moderately surprised; and a little more serious than Jules would have expected. "Absolutely not," Fogg said. "That's not the point at all, Verne, it's not just a play. It's practice. It only looks like play until you need it."
Children, learning how to smuggle people out of inns.
"It'll be my ducklings, when they're old enough," Fogg added, as if an afterthought. "A little too young to be traipsing around in the woods at night. And I'm not sure whether Rebecca is going to let lady-duck Becs do needlepoint, she rather resented it herself, if I remember."
"I did not `rather resent' it," Rebecca said, firmly. "I hated every moment of the horrid thing. And it will last. The one I was replacing was at least seventy years old, and still almost as good as new. I have it. For a keepsake."
Children, learning how to hide people in old secret places, how to work the catches of hidden doors, learning that people who fled from bullies had a right to be protected, learning how to grant that protection. Co-conspirators on the side of human charity in a conflict centuries old between conscience and the State. Jules liked it. It wasn't a Christmas story, in so many words, but it would do just as well. The Holy Family had fled to Egypt in the story, after all, and somebody had to have hidden them along the way.
"We do it again next year?"
Rebecca answered a little quickly, as though she had been anxious. "That would be very kind of you, Jules, we haven't yet apologized to you for throwing you in to the midst of this. Very kind. Thank you."
The Fogg ducklings, in the woods, learning how to do the right thing when justice was in conflict with the law. And get away with it. Himself as mysterious stranger in need of shelter, doing his part to raise the Fogg's ducklings decent and true. It was an honor, if an unusual one.
"Wouldn't miss it," Jules said, reaching for the toast. "Passepartout. May I have another cup of coffee?"
+ + + +
Afterword/explanation
There's an old Scandinavian poem about greeting a traveler at the gate, bringing him in, warming him by the fire, giving him food and drink, entertaining him with music; because "Often, often Christ comes in the stranger's guise." It's a reminder that in the north countries, as in many places around the world, hospitality is a sacred duty that transcends creed. At least that's how I'm taking it for this story.