The Christmas Wassail Read Online Free PDF Page A

oak and the apple.’
    â€˜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.
    â€˜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 …’
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜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.
    â€˜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.’
    Adela stared at me for a moment or two, her breast heaving, then she quite suddenly burst into tears. ‘I hate you!’ she sobbed and rushed from the room.
    Adam and I stared at one another in consternation.
    Of course, she didn’t really hate me.
    I put Adam to bed in the little room he shared with Nicholas, then went in search of Adela in our own bedchamber, where she always took refuge when upset. It took all my well-known tact and charm to win her round – plus a solemn promise never again to tell the children ‘pagan legends’ as she called them – and in the end we decided to go to bed ourselves and make up in the usual way. It was pitch dark outside and a fine snow was still falling. As my wife pointed out, it would save candles and more logs for the parlour fire; but as I couldn’t help reflecting, rather sadly, there had been a time, not that far distant, when such a mundane consideration would not even have entered our heads.
    I woke after some hours with a raging thirst, the result of three beakers of ale and two bowlfuls of rabbit stew, and went downstairs to the water barrel in the kitchen to slake it. The snow had stopped now, as a peep out of the back door into our little yard confirmed. In the distance, I could hear the rattle of the night-soilers’ carts as they went about their filthy, stinking business, cleaning out the public latrines and cesspits as well as the private privies of anyone who was willing to pay for their services. Occasionally, I did so myself