Read by Tony Bell
It is December, the death-rattle of the year, and the weather grim and wild, as two bone-chilled travellers stumble into a lonely village tavern in search of rest, ale, and cheer. The Holly Inn is warm and dry, but also ancient and near-empty; a solitary old man mutters to himself beside the great open hearth. One traveller remarks quietly to the other that this would be a splendid place to set a ghost-story ...
“A ghost-story?” says he. “Well, if you’ve a mind to hear one, good sirs, the gentleman sat by the fire has always a mind to tell one. Go over, try him: he’ll be glad of the company. Gets lonely in here of a night. Take a spiced wine and sit by the hearth, why don’t you?”
The travellers exchange glances: why, indeed, should they not? Their clothes will be at least an hour a-drying, and they’ve nowhere else particular to be.
Settling themselves, they nod at the old man and he nods back vaguely. A lidded tankard sits on the table before him and beside his chair, steaming in the flames’ heat, is his overcoat, thrown over a large bundle which he pats occasionally, reassuring himself of its presence, as if it were a pet, or no – a talisman. They make conversation, smile wanly at his withered pleasantries, wonder whether he really has a story to tell. The old fellow’s in his dotage, his speech a wilderness of reminiscent ramblings; but the listeners listen.
What else, on so wild a night, the rain plashing and the wind grieving in the chimney, are they to do?
“A tale, eh?” says he meditatively, eyeing them beneath beetling white brows. “Ay, I’ve one. ‘Tis a tale of a sinner, mind, a thief! Cautionary, d’ye see?” They nod, and he begins.
“One night, a lifetime and a deathtime ago, an unhappy man was staggering back home through a churchyard. He was unhappy because he was bad, and he was bad because he was unhappy: or at least, so he felt at that time. He was also drunk. In truth, he was unhappy mostly because he felt unequal to the responsibilities the world had laid upon him, which he had once worn proudly like a laurel-wreath.
“He had a pretty young wife, a neat little house, and a child on the way; and these three things, which had once lifted his head in pride, now cast him down into a miserable pit, for he stood in danger of losing all three. That very day he’d lost his job at the nearby mill: a good job, too, and he’d worked hard to earn it.
He was a decent man, not as bad as he thought himself certainly, but he’d a weakness for drink. After celebrating a friend’s birthday the night before, he’d arrived late one too many times, and the foreman had given him notice.
“In vain had he pled that it was but a fortnight before Christmas; that he’d a wife with a baby coming; that the neat little house would not long cover their heads with no wages to pay rent: the foreman was adamant. No man to come in the worse for drink, night or morning. He’d been given his money owed, and sent away.
“Naturally, for solace, the first thing he did with his wages was find the nearest inn and get thoroughly drunk. He even spent the few extra coins in his pocket, which his wife had saved from her piecework to buy them a fine Christmas wreath for the front-door. She wanted one she could see from the seat at their parlour-window where she sat sewing all day; for her time was near, she was heavy with their child, and she could do little else.
“Thus, wretched with brandy and soaked in guilt, as well as by the freezing sleet which drove across his eyes and down his upturned collar, he was stumbling home. And only now did he recall his promise to buy his wife a wreath, and sway against a nearby tomb, close to weeping, as he realised what a bad fellow he really was. Tears of overdue remorse drowned his vision; but as it cleared, he found himself staring straight at the answer to his unoffered prayers.
“It was a wreath, large and round and miraculous beneath the moon. Glossy, dark-green ivy-leaves interwove with holly, studded with bright berries like beads of blood; and through it all that pretty parasite, mistletoe, silvery-sheened with berries pearl-white, was wound. ‘Twas the finest wreath he’d ever seen: two foot across at least, and looking fresh as new-fallen snow.
“It was only a shame that despite its seasonal cheer, it was a funeral wreath, reverently hung over the simple wooden cross marking a newly-dug grave. Yet this barely gave the fellow pause, for his reason and morals both were drowned in brandy like the French songbird. Lurching closer, he examined the wreath, casting shrewd, blurred looks about the graveyard to ensure no witnesses on this foul-weathered, marrow-freezing night …
“After all, thought he, who would miss it? Not the deceased, for they were beyond earthly cares. Nor the layer, for having placed their funeral tribute upon the grave, they had no doubt departed and would not soon return. Besides, why should such a fine wreath wither and droop in an empty graveyard, when it could hang on his door and cheer not only his wife, but all who passed by?
“So reasoning, he grasped the wreath, not even troubling to wipe away the snow that obscured the name of the one for whom it was laid. He’d the devil’s own job getting it off, for the wreath became tangled, and stuck on the wooden arms, till he felt he was wrestling the cross itself. But at last he hooked it over his shoulder like a great hoopla-ring, and carried on his merry way, whistling drunkenly and mighty pleased with himself for remembering his promise to his wife.
“Perhaps he was rather a bad man after all.
“His wife rejoiced to see him home at last, and was delighted with the wreath he had brought; so happy indeed, that he could not bear to tell her of his dismissal, and that they might spend Christmas in penury. He told himself there was no merit in worrying her, for surely he would soon find another job.
“Well! Next day he hung the wreath upon their front-door and set out as usual for the mill. Instead, though, he spent the day tramping the snowy streets, seeking work where there was none; not for so unreliable a worker as he. Frozen to the core, he entered an inn to warm himself by the fire, and ended up warming himself inside as well as out with a tot or two of brandy. And so it went day after day; each morning’s job-seeking followed each afternoon by pouring their little remaining money down his throat to numb his unhappiness.
“And each evening when he returned home, the wreath greeted him: beautiful, splendid and really far too grand for their humble home. Once or twice he nearly pulled it off the door through guilt and shame, but each time stopped himself. His wife, you see, wouldn’t let him take it down before Christmas because it would be unlucky. Besides, she loved to look on it from her window-seat, and she was ailing now, in her final month; growing wan and pale and breathless, and he’d do anything to please her. Yet the wreath meanwhile had not withered, not one leaf: if anything, it was brighter and glossier and fresher-looking now, than the day he first stole it.
“Daily, he seeks. Daily, disappointed, he drinks. And nightly he returns empty-handed. He’s down to his last few shillings now, and Christmas is almost upon them. His wife, who never before knew an hour of illness, is sicker than ever. The neighbour-women mutter of calling a doctor, of danger to the babe, and one night as he blunders through the front-door, mazed again with drink, he hears her coughing, wheezing like she is being choked ...
“Within, he finds her lying in the window-seat in a dead faint, her skin sheened a ghastly silver-white, the handkerchief she was embroidering scarlet with blood.
“In terror, he rushes outside and presses his last coins into the hand of the neighbour-woman, sends her hurrying for the doctor. Waiting by the door, he glares at the mistletoe wound through the wreath; that pretty parasite, so innocent-seeming! At the holly-berries bright as blood, at the ivy, still a deep, glossy serpent-green. His brandied brain flames: why should this thing thrive, when his wife sickens? It’s like it’s draining the life from her!
“Maddened, he pulls it off the door, or tries to, for ‘tis as though the wreath has grown into the very wood. The questing ivy-roots and the prying suckers of the mistletoe hold on like tiny hairlike fingers as he wrenches at it with all his might. Needle-sharp holly-leaves claw at his face and hands, drawing blood, till at last, with an immense effort, he tears the thing off and staggers away into the white, whirling darkness.
“The snow’s a blind blizzard and the wind wild, and he hardly knows where he’s taking the evil thing, heavy as a headstone in his arms, till his feet find their way to the churchyard. At last he understands what any wise man would always have known: that he must return it to the grave from which he first stole it. Yet he can barely see an inch before him to find the place. Despairing he wanders, crying aloud in the teeth of the tearing storm, when at last a root trips him and he sprawls headlong.
“Groping the frozen ground, he finds a simple wooden cross, entwined by a thin ivy branch. With shaking, numbed fingers he clears the snow to read not one, but two names and dates: a young woman his wife’s own age, and her child, born and died upon the same day. All his terrors rush into his heart, and weeping, he realises the terrible thing he’s done.
“O, doubly a thief, doubly a sinner! He imagines his own wife lying cold in the ground and his child stillborn, and begins praying: begging, finally, for forgiveness.
“He becomes lost many times on his way home, but as he approaches the little house, he hears wailing and shrieking over the howl of the storm, and his soul trembles. Did his repentance come too late? Do mourners weep for his wife already?
“Wrenching open the door, he finds chaos within the parlour, the doctor and neighbour-woman bloody and sweating. Yet before the glowing hearth, bloody too but alive, lies his wife wrapped in blankets, holding a wailing babe. She’d laboured long and all had seemed lost, the doctor said, but then all of a sudden she’d rallied her strength, as if given new life, and almost at once the baby was born safe and well.
“Christmas is the season of forgiveness, gentlemen, and though you will never now see a Yuletide wreath on the door of that neat little house in that snowy little village, every year a very sober, very upright man (not so young now, white-bearded, and father and grandfather to many) lays a magnificent fresh wreath of holly, ivy and mistletoe upon a modest and little-visited grave.”
*
So saying, the old man lifts and drains his tankard, which after all contains only cocoa, not a drop of hot wine (let alone brandy), and stands up straight. His beard is white and his eye and voice are sharper now, when he bids them farewell.
And as he lifts his fire-warmed overcoat off the bundle beside him, to venture once more into the frozen night, they see what it hid: serpent-green ivy and silver-sheened mistletoe, with its berries pearl-white, wound about a wreath of holly, bright as blood.
(c) Amy Eddings
Amy Eddings has a PhD in Georgian poetry from the University of Nottingham, so naturally spends most of her time tutoring English A-level students online. She writes short stories for light relief, & when she’s lucky they get published – or even performed.
Tony Bell has been an actor for 40 years, notably in Propeller Shakespeare company, touring the globe. His recent one-man show, Man in the Rain, written for his MA in Scriptwriting at UEA, garnered him an Offies nomination for Best Solo Performance in a Play, & he is Joint MVP (Acting) for Liars’ League in 2024!
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