t is the custom in this part of England to play Hide-and-Seek on Christmas Eve. Some say the custom comes from Italy, where the party draws lots to decide who will be the Devil and who will be the Pope. When this is decided, all the others in the party run away to hide themselves as well as they can. Then the Devil and the Pope search the house looking for sinners. Some are damned and some are saved. Then each must offer a forfeit to the Devil and the Pope. Usually a kiss.
Tonight my husband declares we will play Hunter-and-Hart. The ladies shall hide. The gentlemen shall hunt them.
My husband sits me on his knee, fondly, and kisses me. I am his caught thing but he has not had me yet. There is time for that.
It is my wedding night. It is the custom in these parts to marry on Christmas Eve. It is a holy time, but glowing with strange lights. It is not yet Christ’s day; it is still the day of unexpected visits and mummery.
I come from elsewhere. I come from a wild country, though I am gentle-born. My new husband is twice my age at thirty-four. He tells me I am as near a bird as a creature without wings can be. He means it kindly. I am light-boned and fall without a mark. My footsteps leave no print. My husband loves my waist, slender as a rope. He says my hands and feet are delicate as a web. He calls me his spun thing. When we met he gently unwound my hair and kissed me.
‘You will learn to love me,’ he said.
I am my father’s youngest daughter. My dowry is small and I had expected to be sent to the convent. But my new husband is rich and cares nothing for his wife’s jewels. I am his jewel. He would rather I shine beside him than glint dully behind the convent walls.
It is the custom here that the husband provides the wedding dress; white, but with a small red stain placed where he chooses to mark the loss of a maidenhead. The maid came to dress me for the wedding. She wished me happiness and health.
‘Is he a good man, my husband?’ I asked as she fastened the dress tight.
‘He is a man,’ she said. ‘The rest you must decide for yourself.’
I was dressed and I looked at myself in the silver mirror. The maid had a vial of blood. ‘For the stain,’ she said.
She dabbed the blood over my heart.
My soon-husband and I had travelled from my father’s house on horseback. The roads are too rough for a coach. The land is white-covered, bedded down under snow. My horse’s bridle is traced with frost.
‘Purity,’ said my husband. ‘This white world is for your wedding day.’
My breath was thick. I fancied I could read the shapes that flew from my mouth. It was as though I was talking to myself in a vaporous language no one else understood. My breath formed words:
LOVE. BEWARE. COURAGE. UNSEEN.
This game amused me through the long icicle of our journey. As we rode through Bowland Forest, my soon-husband stood up in his stirrups and cut a low branch of mistletoe from an oak tree. He twisted it into a coronet and hung it on the pommel of his saddle. It was for me, he said, when we married. I would be his mistletoe bride.
I looked sideways at him; so confident and sure he is. I am shy and gentle. I like his certainty and ease.
‘She’s nervous as a hare,’ my father said. ‘Nervous as a hare bolted from cover.’ My husband said he would cover me. All his men laughed, and my father too. I blushed. But he is not unkind.
As we rode along I fancied that my childhood self rode with me a while. Then, at the first crossroads, she turned her little pony and waved goodbye. For all those miles I had thought only of my home and what I was leaving. I was leaving a part of myself.
There were other selves, too, who disappeared on that bleak road. My free, careless, unconsidered self, the one I am when I am alone on the moors, or reading head down in the dark night by candle-light – she could not come with me, though she tried.
The more my soon-husband talked amiably of my duties as his lady, the more I felt myself caught in a long day of orders to give and people to receive. It would not be fitting for the wife of the lord of the hall to throw a cloak over her shoulders and run out in the rain.
But this was only growing up, and surely nothing to fear? A new self would be waiting to meet me.
Trumpets. Flags. Running feet. Flares.
My Lady, this is your home.
Yes. Here. The castle. Old and walled. His family built it centuries ago. It is as though we are living inside them.
And at the drawbridge – there she is, waiting for me. The self I will become; older, graver, darker. She nodded as I rode over the tongue of the drawbridge. She did not smile.
Trumpets. Flags. Bowed heads. Flares. Music.
We are married.
My new husband held my hand and whispered to me that he would always find me, wherever I hid. He told me he could scent me. He buried his face in my neck as I sat on his knees. He told me he was my gentle hunter, that I should have the run of the house as I pleased. No harm could come to me here.
While he was nuzzling me there was a tremendous knocking at the door. It is the custom on Christmas Eve that a stranger may come unexpected and unannounced, and must be let in with pomp and ceremony.
But it is my wedding day.
The great doors were unbarred. The sound of hooves ricocheted round the vast stone hall as though it were full of invisible horses and invisible riders.
Riding into the hall on a black mare came a lady veiled and dressed in green. She reined in the horse. She did not dismount. My husband went to her, offered his hand, lifted her down. He kissed her hand and welcomed her. He led her to me. I could not see her face but her lips were red and her hair was black.
‘My wife,’ he said, presenting me to the lady, and yet it seemed to me that those words, hanging in mid-air like my dictionary of frost, would have puzzled a stranger to know which of us that wife was.
The lady inclined her head.
Music struck up. He danced with her, his eyes on her, while I watched in white and waited. Presently he returned and, bowing to me, said, ‘A custom – the Uninvited Guest.’
‘You do not know her, then,’ I said.
‘Know her?’ he said, and smiled. ‘It is Christmas Eve.’
The lady was dancing with another now. The hall was bright and the dancing swift and happy. I drank wine. Ate food. All the guests wished to honour me. I was happy too. The hours went by.
And then . . .
My husband took his dagger from his belt and banged the table hard with the hilt. The music paused.
‘And now for the Hunt!’ he said, and there was general laughter.
From his pocket he took a white mask and gave it to me. The ladies began to put on their masks, and the gentlemen also. My husband had a leopard-face, pulled low like a visor. He began his counting.
Now it was time for the ladies, time for me, to run giggling and chattering down the grey corridors as long as a dream.
I knew none of the ways. The tall, heavy candles in the mullion windows stood still and silent as servants, but they hardly lit up the stone passageways. I chased alongside a young girl of my own age, who seemed to follow every twist and stair.
As she ran ahead of me, I noticed a pair of doors that opened into a high chamber. She ran on. I hesitated and went inside.
The bed was carved with a pair of swans. There were petals thrown on the pillows from winter roses kept in hotbeds and grown for the Christmas wedding.
The tapers in the room were not lit. Only the light of the blazing fire showed me the scene.
I knew without knowing that this was the bridal chamber. This is where he would bring me when he found me. This is where we would begin our life together.
Laid on the gold coverlet, laid like sleeping knights, were two garments, both white, though his was embroidered with leopards and mine with harts.
It made me smile to see our images at peace and asleep, and I wondered for how many years we would lie side by side, until time claimed us. On the pillow was the coronet of mistletoe; mysterious, poisonous, white as death, green as hope.
Impulsively I took the pendant from my neck, my father’s parting gift to me. I kissed it and laid it on my husband’s garment. By this, I gave myself to him. He had no need to hunt me.
Full of happiness, I ran out of the room, light as a shadow. I was deep in the house. I paused to look around and then I heard footsteps, a little way off, echoing on the stone stairs. Quick! Hide! I felt sure it was he.
Under the window at the end of the passage there was a big old chest. I could barely lift the lid. I struggled. Voices now, round and round the turret stair. I heaved open the lid and jumped inside. The chest was empty, and deeper than expected. I could sit quite comfortably while I waited.
Yes. His voice. His footsteps. Soon he would lift the lid and carry me into our chamber. I had to try not to laugh with happiness and anticipation. Perhaps he had instructed the girl to lead me this way.
And then I heard the voice of a woman. I heard her laugh and ask, ‘In here?’
He answered, ‘Not in there.’
She said, ‘Where, then? Or perhaps you have changed your mind?’
It was his turn to laugh. Then silence. Or something like silence, if kissing and touching are silence. I pushed up the lid of the chest just enough to see out.
Against the wall was the lady in green. The Uninvited Guest. In honour of Christmas-tide.
Her dress was undone to the waist and my husband had his hands on her breasts. Her hands were on his back and lower, eagerly, dragging his shirt out of his breeches. He stood back, pulled off his jacket and shirt, heedless of the cold. He was handsome. Strong. Slim. Never taking her eyes from his face, she unbuttoned the flap of his breeches where he sprang and then she was on her knees.
I wanted to stop looking. I had seen this before. In daylight and in my dreams. I had seen the grooms with the servant girls. Now I was watching my own husband. I felt desire, excitement, fear and the fishy taste of vomit in my throat. I was a second away from throwing back the lid of the trunk and confronting them. But my husband pulled the lady to her feet, turned her round and pushed her, frontwards onto and over the trunk. I heard the click of the lid, the rustle of her skirts, then the noise of them at their pleasure.
The box withstood the assault. I put my hand up, right under her belly, an inch of wood separating us. I slid my hand along the underside of the lid to the place where he had entered her. I breathed with them both and waited.
This was my wedding night.
It was not long before I heard them moving away. Their laughter and low voices. Then their footsteps back down the dark stone stairs.
My hands were shaking and damp and had no strength, so I turned on all fours and pushed up at the lid of the chest with my back.
Nothing happened. I was trapped.
My body was sweating. My heart was over-beating. I took a breath of what air was left, and managed to lie on my back to attack the lid with both feet.
The box was yielding but it wouldn’t give. The little click I had heard when he pushed her down – that had been the lock, unused for years, and now jammed into its rusty keep.
I shouted. He would hear me. Someone would come. Someone. Breathe. Listen. Breathe. No air. All I could hear was emptiness. Why would he come to his bridal chamber without his bride?
Did I faint? I seemed to be sitting at home on the riverbank waiting for the sun to rise. Had I been there all night? Then I realised in terror that I would never see the sun rising again. My body was like a mist evaporating.
LOVE. BEWARE. COURAGE. UNSEEN.
The words filled the smaller and smaller space of the chest. The smaller and smaller space of my chest. With my last breath I . . . with my last breath I . . .
Did not die.
I found myself lying on the floor beside the chest, the maid standing over me.
‘I saw what you did,’ she said. ‘I saw what they did.’
‘I will confront him,’ I said to her, but she shook her head. ‘That lady is his cousin. He is forbidden to marry her by the bishop. He must produce an heir. When you have done that for him he will do away with you and marry her as he wishes.’
‘Do away with me?’
‘He will poison you with berry of mistletoe. Next Christmas-tide the child you will conceive tonight will be weaned. Your business will be done. And she will come for him as surely as she came for him tonight.’
‘Who knows this?’ I said.
‘We all know this,’ she said.
‘Then will you help me to escape?’
She did. She found me clothes from his closet. Too big for me but my body was safe inside them.
I threw off my wedding dress and put it inside the chest. I took some gold and silver from his room, and gave the maid the only coins I had brought from home. I left the necklace where it was, on his nightshirt, to remember me by.
The maid led me down a stairwell that took me to a door at the foot of the castle.
The dark and hooded figure I had seen when I first entered still waited, motionless, at the drawbridge. The figure turned to me. I stared, defiant, and shook my head. The future is not fixed unless we allow it to be so.
I walked away from the lit-up castle into the dark of Christmas. I walked through the night as though night were a country I could cross, and at dawn on Christmas Day I came to a convent some miles away and rang the bell and rang the bell, fierce as the beginning of the world.
The nuns came running to the gate and took me in.
At Christmas-tide, they said, always comes some miracle or some mystery that cannot be explained.
They asked for no explanation and I gave none.
And so I remained at the Convent of the First Miracle. I am the brewer here. It is my work to turn water into wine.
Two years later, on the shortest day of the year, at the winter solstice, a steward from the castle came to wheel and deal for some barrels of my mead. The lord of the hall was to be married again.
‘He is unlucky,’ said the steward. ‘Only last New Year he married a girl. They were so happy. She had a child, a boy, and then she fell into the moat. Her ghost is seen often, haunting the frosty battlements overlooking the moat where she slipped under the water and felt the ice close about her head.’
I had not heard that he had married. Or so soon. I gave the steward more wine.
‘I thought the lord had married already,’ I said. ‘They called her the Mistletoe Bride.’
‘Ah, yes,’ said the steward, ‘I said he is unlucky. That particular lady disappeared on their wedding night, two Christmases gone. No one knows what became of her.’
Then he leaned forward confidentially, and whispered that there was another story too. The bride’s wedding dress had been found in an old chest, her body utterly decayed. When the servants lifted out the dress, there was no trace of a body at all, nothing but dust.
‘It is a strange tale,’ I said to the steward, ‘and, as you say, the lord of the hall is unlucky in love. Who is it that he shall marry now? A young girl from a good family?’
The steward’s face reddened, and not with the steam from the mulled wine.
‘The lord of the hall has a son and heir now, but no wife, and so the bishop has granted him permission to marry his cousin . . . ’
‘Dark hair, a red mouth and a green dress,’ I said, almost to myself. The steward looked surprised.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘People say they are lovers already.’
‘Gossip,’ I said. ‘No doubt.’
‘No doubt.’
I had the barrels loaded onto his cart, but before he left I gave him one especially, a small cask for the bride and groom and their Loving Cup. I wove a coronet of mistletoe around it like a wedding band.
‘A gift from the convent,’ I said.
I did not say that I had added a distillation of mistletoe berries to the brew. There is no taste. Only the sleep from which there is no waking.
