Christmas Eve
I still find it a little bewildering, writing that year on a piece of paper. Or even seeing it. Of course, having spend a not insignificant number of years living in and traversing some of the remotest reaches of the Nevernever, I’m used to losing a few years here and there. My current circumstances I’m still adjusting to. Maybe I never will. I reflect on what I left behind more than I’ll likely ever admit to anyone.
Like I did tonight.
It started out nice enough. More than nice, really. Eden invited me to share dinner with her at her little apartment inside of the city, something special between friends before Christmas was fully upon us. I imagine, despite her family being literally worlds away, she has more than a few friends, plus her fellow, to be their proxy. Me, I would likely pay a visit to Father Quincy for Mass and then share a meal, and some new battle of wits after. But until then, it was a quiet evening in a humble little apartment, opulent if only for the care and pride put into it by its owner. Eden made a fine stew and even packed up some to send home with me. We exchanged gifts, small handmade tokens of affection, the best kind, and then did what we often did when we weren’t training or taking a meal together. We talked. And talked. Then we talked some more. If you can fight your way past those dimples and what seems to be a very rural, sheltered upbringing, that woman is pretty darned sharp. A mind as sharp as her heart is big. And those dimples…
Moving on.
When the hour grew late, she offered me the comfort of her couch. It wasn’t the first time. It probably wouldn’t be the last. I begged off this time, if only to spare her the little bit of holiday melancholy I never like admitting to, and when I left it was with the promise that I’d reach out to her tomorrow. Maybe for another dinner if she ended up not as busy as I assumed she’d be and if Father Quincy’s sermon put me off of attending service for a while. I’m not a Christian, so it’s happened before.
It is a fairly long trek from Eden’s place in the city to my place outside. I could have made it shorter by less mundane means, but my questionable history with holidays aside, they were almost over and there was something heartening about soaking up all of the good from them as I trudged through the cold towards the northern gates. There was something about all of it I could appreciate, because while both Christmas and Yule were steeped deeply in religious origins and observances, there was something about the short festive season that reminded me of what I like most about sunrises: that sense of renewal, and new possibilities, only on a grander scale. People were a little more generous, maybe a little more likely to put aside grievances, if only for a little while. There’s a lot more of that ephemeral H-word floating around and I have moments where I feel that maybe I wasn’t quite so inadequate. So I admired the lights. The decorations. The minute hustle of last minute shopping and the raucous sound of merry carousing as bar doors opened and closed. Around the soft curve of a street corner, I heard beautiful guitar music.
The singer was bundled up in ratty looking clothes but had layered up enough to mostly appear warm, save for bare fingers which plucked at the strings of a guitar that looked as though it was only being held together with duct tape (which I think may be the greatest discovery of the 20th century). Despite it, the melody was beautiful. So were the words, which tied together to tell a beautiful, inspiring details about a Christmas from historical event. The words plucked at my own heartstrings.
Even if the event being memorialized didn’t happen that way.
I would know. I was there.
“It didn’t happen like that, you know.” I waited until the end of the song to say so, as I leaned over to scatter a handful of silver coins into the open guitar case. The performer was a young fellow (not that I’m all that old but my circumstances put a weird skew on things) in heavy workman’s boots, threadbare denim pants (jeans, they call them jeans), and heavy flannel. With that beard, he could have been a lumberjack, and he gave me the strangest look.
“It’s true,” I told him. “The Battle of Belleau Wood was early in the summer of 1918, three and a half years after the event you’re singin’ about. Early in December of 1914, Pope Benedict pled with the involved powers, human powers, for a break in the war for the sake of Christmas. Of course, it being a war, none of the sides wanted to listen. But come Christmas Eve, the strangest thing happened…”
Just before dusk, December 24th. 1914
Saint-Yves, Belgium
Silent Night.
The night didn’t start that way, of course. In the waning hours of daylight on Christmas Eve, Nat had found himself trying to repeatedly dodge incoming fire from German Minenwerfer, devastating mortars that lit up the sky and ruined the land wherever they touched. It was roughly fifteen miles from where he exited the Way behind Saint Sixtus Abbey to the western front. None of the monks spoke a word of english but the Abbey had been converted into a field hospital for the Allied wounded, affording him hurried directions from a bewildered British sergeant who hadn’t expected to see what he would later refer to as ‘a well-dressed cowboy on a dappled white and silver horse’. So great was the Pull, the wanderer would have found his way on his own and, as always, right at the time he was needed but it was the wily one who always tried to seize what advantages he could when something terrible loomed.
Fast like a raging river, Rio’s hooves ate up the miles with a preternatural endurance before a close call during the final mile spooked the great river spirit right out of its disguise. A mortar round landed hard against the already blackened earth, sending up a spray of dirt and other unidentifiable debris. Something in the latter sent Rio bucking sideways hard, throwing its rider clear of the saddle and into a trench full of surprised frenchmen. The spirit itself disappeared with a splash in a muddy puddle nearby, leaving its companion in a tangle of thrashing limbs and the cry of “Sacré bleu!” in varying tones amidst the continued roar of mortar shells landing all around. What followed was the longest thirty seconds ever involving Nat trying to protect his face and hands, all the while trying to calm the french soldiers down with the steady, breathless cadence of “I’m an American! American!” In the end, the harried hero was saved when, by pure chance (it was never pure chance in this line of work, was it?), when they were happened upon by a rather stout British Army courier, who helped break the whole thing up with a few stout cuffs on some head.
“Wot’s this now? Wot’s a bloody Yank doin’ way out ‘ere?” The big Brit hauled Nat up and over into a crouch within the trench with disconcerting ease, holding him by a shoulder and giving him a wary look as he spoke through a lull in the bombardment. “You’re on the wrong side of the pond here, mate. What’s yer business?”
The muddy wanderer grimaced and while his response rang of truth, it just wasn’t the whole truth. It was a fine line for one such as him to skirt, but he desperately needed to be here, even if he didn’t know why. “I was sent! I came by way of the Abbey up yonder to help. I can stitch wounds and run water if you’ll have me, until I’m needed for something bigger. I’m here to help.”
The Brit, a sergeant by the look of the stripes on his dirty uniform, gave Nat a dubious, speculative stare, looking him over one more time before hunching one burly shoulder in a shrug. “All right, kid. Let’s us crawl our soggy arses over to the Leftenant and see what he has to say ‘bout all this. My gut says you’re all right but the decision ain’t moin. Come on then, off with us.”
There was a brief exchange with the chagrined frenchmen before the pair were off, moving at a fast crouch and then a crawl through the labyrinth of trench works that made up the northwestern front. They were terrible minutes, from the sting of falling dirt and debris from the detonation of falling mortar shells, to the terrified and agonized screams of men muted by the ear-ringing explosions. Eventually Nat found himself standing before a gaunt looking man with a thick mustache and a week’s growth of beard, who eventually looked up from the consultation of a muddy map shared with two other men who looked just as frayed around the edges. There was a brief sidelong conference with the sergeant and all the while the Lieutenant studied the newcomer, partly with wary suspicion and with annoyance, as if Nat was just another burden he didn’t need. “Right then,” the gaunt Lieutenant said in a crisp, proper accent that was remarkably different than the sergeant’s less educated sounding brogue. “Sergeant Axtell’s told me you came from the Saint Sixt--”
He was interrupted when the area around them shook from the rapid succession of blasts from three enemy mortars, causing more than one man to slip on the uneven terrain of the trench floor before wet earth rained down on them in a fleeting torrent. Nat noted with equal parts respect and sadness that the Lieutenant, despite his exhaustion, didn’t seem overly perturbed by the event. Something like this was all too common in the war.
“--to help,” the other man finished once we got his bearings again. “I’m somewhat dubious about accepting, but I trust Sergeant Axtell’s judgement. For all of his lowbrow humor, the Sergeant has top notch instincts and, to be quite honest, I don’t know what I can turn away a pair of willing hands. I need my men fighting, on bloody damned Christmas of all days. One would think we could put aside all of this blimey absurdity and share one day of peace!”
“Well, Mister…” Nat had started to say.
“Leftenant, boy.” The Lieutenant corrected him. “Leftenant Ravenscroft. And you are?”
“Nat Candle, Lieutenant.”
“Leftenant.”
“Leftenant.” Despite it all, Nat suppressed a smile and tried not to chuckle. “Nat Candle, Leftenant. I’m just here to help. I imagine I’ll prove useful before long.”
“That, Nat Candle, remains to be seen.” The Lieutenant sighed.
“I hear that a lot, Leftenant.” The wanderer smiled and turned to follow the Sergeant, who was beckoning him towards a sheltered area in the trenches.
“Nat,” the Lieutenant stopped him with heavy emphasis on the name, suddenly struck with an idle curiosity. “Is that short for Nathaniel?”
“No. Ignatius.” It was admitted with a pained smile over one muddy shoulder when he was only a dozen feet into his departure.
“Ignatius? That sounds monastic. Are you a monk?”
“No. A Knight.”
“A knight?” The Lieutenant gave a derisive snort. “What monarch would knight some scrubby looking American boy?”
“God.” It was said simply.
“Oh, Heaven help me,” came the reply through a disgusted sound.
“Exactly.”
“You’re a bloody lunatic!”
“I hear that a lot too, Leftenant.” The smile he gave the gaunt man was a sad one. “It comes with the profession.”
The wanderer jogged to catch up with the burly Sergeant and eventually disappeared from view, leaving the Lieutenant to shake his head before more urgent matters called his attention back down to the map.
The following hours passed in a haze that blurred into a cacophony of rifle fire, explosions, and screams. The mud and the blood were hard to distinguish, even against the backdrop of a fresh layer of snow. Nat had long since passed the point of exhaustion. Running canteens of water. Running fresh bandages. Carrying messages and stretchers with injured men. He didn’t complain. Every quick step bought the wounded that much closer to much needed help. He had lost his favored trail hat in a close call with a mortar blast had had little time to consider his lamentation of the loss, not until he had suddenly notice an eerie silence that had fallen over the battlefield. Absently reaching for his hat to clean it off with a slap on his knee, he realized it was gone and heaved a sigh, casting a weary glance around at the soldiers in the immediate area. The men, just as tired as he, were sharing dubious looks and risking nervous glances up over the top of the trench with a carefulness that implied they expected a fresh assault. It never came.
Ten minutes passed in near silence, save for the hushed mutter of speculation along the Allied lines.
Then twenty minutes passed.
That was when they heard it. It was barely audible at first but eventually it arrived over the battlefield in a soft echo. Singing. The words were German and precious few along the Allied lines understood the words, Nat included. But that melody? It was familiar. Familiar enough that after a few minutes the soldiers, French and British alike, were joining to sing the words in their own languages, catching time with the Germans and filling the night with their collective voices.
Silent night, holy night. All is calm, all is bright…
And for the rest of the night, there was no war. No anger or agony. No violence or death. All of the pain and fear flooded away, giving all of the men on the front a renewed vigor for the moment. They sang through the night, the chorus quieting some as men slept only to lift in volume again as they awoke in a pre-dawn Christmas morning where no one was trying to end their lives. The first light of dawn saw unarmed German soldiers crossing the enemy line shouting out ‘Merry Christmas!’ in broken english and french. It didn’t take much after that before the Allied soldiers reciprocated and, even as the first slivers real sunlight fought through overcast gray, men were exchanging gifts of cigarettes and contraband food items. For a time, men were just allowed to be men again, in their simplest, best forms.
Nat Candle had watched it all from a lone, half-uprooted tree behind the Allied lines, as wary as he was weary, but smiling all the same for what he was seeing. It was that H-word again. He sat on his rock, a half finished tin of soup going cold next to him. The wanderer had never picked up the habit of smoking cigarettes but as was a custom from his birthplace, he had lit a pipe of sweet smelling tobacco from his bag to commemorate the moment being witnessed. It was baffling to him that he would be Pulled to a place like this, at a time like this, and be needed for little more than he had. It made him pensive, but not enough to ruin the moment. It was worth revisiting later, maybe when he was elsewhere.
The heavy winter cloud cover kept most of the sun at bay, with the threat of more snow soon, but it hadn’t stopped the men on the battlefield from starting a rousing game of soccer. Before long there were a dozen games going, with thousands of spectator roaring joyously in encouragement for their fellows. It almost made it impossible to hear the despairing cry from somewhere off to his right.
Almost.
His attention was drawn to a thick, ugly copse of tree a few hundred yards east of the battlefield, leafless with age and bowed in on each other with age and brutal weather. Another cry from that direction brought him to his feet and drew him towards the trees, which looked like something from a story meant to terrify children the closer he grew. In a moment of distraction, Nat lamented the loss of his hat. Hats instilled confidence in the wearer, after all, and tended to command a little respect, if not intimidation, with the onlooker. A good hat, anyway. Close enough to hear voices, he murmured a subtle incantation, something that had become almost second nature to him and rolled of his tongue in near inaudible words foreign to a place such as Europe. The veil that rolled over him was subtle, less about being invisible and more about feeling like he was just part of the background. Beneath notice. It allowed him to get closer and revealed to him a pair of figured beneath the heavy shadow cast by the winter withered trees.
The first man was clearly a soldier, pale and gaunt with poor nourishment and in a tattered uniform that marked him as a British regular. His rifle lay in the muddy snow beside him when he sagged impotently against the gray bole of an elm, weeping and looking away from the dark figure looming over him. The other presence, his tormentor, loomed over him as he wept, cloaked in liquid night that disappeared now again in the natural darkness case by the thick copse of trees. Now and then a gnarled, mottled limb became visible as it was thrust at the weeping man in time with harshly spoken words that Nat could only hear when he had finally slipped within the shadows of the sad arboreal giants.
Its suffering will end it if does what it is told, the ugly voice spilled from the shadow cowl like slop into a pigs trough, wet and heavy and gross. When it spoke, the cowering man flinched and looked away again, muttering terrified defiance to the demand being made of him. It will do what is is told, it will. All it must do is creep in amongst its fellows and unleash one of the big weapons into the revelry. So many deaths. So much outrage and fighting on his day. We will feast on the fear, the anguish like a pudding, we will. A special pudding on this day of days… Do this for us and we will let it live. Refuse us again and we will hang it from this tree by its entrails. You will do this…
“No! Nooo!” The terrified man was wild-eyed and pleading to the sky. “Please no! God Help Me!”
Your God won’t help you. Your God doesn’t care!
“Weeeeeeell,” Nat’s soft voice broke the illusion, revealing him to the unfortunate man and his tormentor. The wanderer looked very young in clothes that might have been a size or two too large for him, like a dapper young man of modest means who couldn’t afford a tailor… and liked to play in the mud. He was lean but wiry, a touch over or under six feet tall with a sincere smile and a determined, intelligent stare. His winter coat had been pushed open to reveal the polished wooden revolver grips inlaid with runes. “I beg to differ, friend. I would take it as a personal kindness if you let this fellow be on his way and moved on for a spell.”
The pale faced soldier and cowl filled with jagged teeth whipped in his direction sharply, the former with a sudden look of hope on his face and the latter with a rictus snarl.
Another plaything for us, it snarled. Another morsel before the feast of feasts! We will have you and feast on the sweet betrayal!
A shiver went through the wanderer at that, making his ears tingle and gooseflesh rise on his skin as a tremor started at the base of his skull and rode down his spine. Carefully, he rest his palms on the hilts of his revolvers, sighing through a hardening stare.
“I can’t change tomorrow. I can, however, change today. You don’t get him. Or them. Not today. Today I’m offering you the same as those fellows out there are getting. Peace. Just for today. Just let them have today. Let them have hope. One day. All I’m askin’ for. Please.”
The cowled horror let loose with a peal of grotesque laughter.
We do not fear your man made devices of powder and fire, fool! Draw them! Use them on us! They will do a pittance of pain and break your peace! We still win! We will get your pain! We still get our feast! Nothing will stop this coming to pass! Now di--
“Agree to disagree.” It wasn’t the pistols that Nat reached for.
Instead, he reached for the well-wrapped sword hilt that jutted out from over his right shoulder, the scabbard shielded by the bulk of his winter coat. The worn pad of a thumb lightly brushed over a blackened nail that had been worked into the base of the blade near the handguard of the heavy saber as he drew it, and when the blade came free of its home, it did so with a ringing like a church bell that elicited a gutteral gasp from the cowled horror. Nat’s hand fell back to his side, pointing the blade’s point directly at the demon-spawn. The air smelled of ozone as he took a deep breath, Saint Elmo’s Fire dancing down the length of curved, sharpened steel. The cowled horror’s mouth full of crooked deep gaped wide open in growing shock and fear.
“Merry Christmas, all the same.”
The Knight launched himself at the demon-spawn as it tried to flee.
The soccer game was interrupted some moments later by a piercing wail from the dense copse of trees to the east, causing a great many of the soldiers to briefly turn their attention towards it. It wasn’t until later in the afternoon that the battered British regular was found, in the same spot he had been before, babbling about the oddest of things and clearly in shock. The men who discovered him chalked it up to the horrors of war and saw him safely taken to the Abbey at Saint Sixtus with the other wounded.
None of them men recalled seeing the odd American youth after that. Some thought he had fled from the conflict out of cowardice. Others thought him perished, his body lost in the tumult of battle. Lieutenant Ravenscroft and Sergeant Axtell? They weren’t so sure…
* * * * * *
An hour and several miles later, Nat found himself bundled up against the cold as he trudged down a muddy road that turned south and west. A crooked sign in the ground told him he was on the road towards the town of Lille and that it was still many kilometers off. He had procured a mostly dry scarf from a soldier who hadn’t needed it anymore, which made for a sad, silent ache in his chest. He had curled his best pocket square into the man’s fingers, thanked him for letting him come out the better in such a fine trade, and wished him well on his new journey before his boots had carried him to where he now stood.
A hard winter wind pushed hard against his back and whipped his hair around, ridding it of the many errant flakes of fresh fallen snow that had made a home there only a short time before. It reminded him again of what he was missing and, for a minute, Nat considered turning the scarf into a head kerchief out of necessity. The wind whipped again and something slapped against his boot, causing him to look down at the ground at his feet.
It was a hat. A very familiar one at that, caked with a little dried mud but not as damp as it should have been.
“Ha,” the wanderer gave a quiet little crow and grinned as he picked it up. It was the first time he had smiled since before the unfortunate business in the trees. “I was wondering where you’d gotten off to. It’s really hard to get the forces of evil to take you seriously without a good hat.”