MEN grew old and grayed and died in the service of Imperial Rome, but neither death nor old age came to Claus. His ruddy hair retained its sheen, and when men who had joined the legions as mere beardless youths laid by the sword and sate them in the ingle-nook to tell brave tales of battles fought and won on field and sea he was still instinct with youthful vigor. For years he followed Pilate’s fortunes, acting as his aide-de-camp and confidant, and when the aging Governor went from Palestine to Helvetia it was Claus who went with him as commander of his soldiery. When death at last came to his patron, Claus stood among the mourners and watched the funeral flames mount crackling from the pyre, then turned his face toward Rome, where men of valor still were in demand. As a tribune he went with Agricola to Britain and helped beat back the Picts and Scots and lay the first foundations of the great wall that still endures. He followed Aurelian to Palmyra, and, disdainful of the flaming pitch and Greek fire hurled down by the defenders, led the assaults on the city walls.

When the Emperor returned to Rome and rode in splendid triumph through the streets Claus walked behind the chariot drawn by four white stags in which the conqueror rode and helped Zenobia, the captive Palmyrene Queen, bear the golden fetters fixed upon her wrists and neck, for she was fainting from their burden, and it irked him to see the great-hearted woman who had dared dispute the might and majesty of Rome borne down beneath the weight of chains, though they were solid gold.

As commander of a legion he stood with Constantine the Great at Malvian Bridge when, beneath the emblem of the once despised Cross, Maximian’s youthful son defeated old Maxentius and won the purple toga of the Caesars. With Constantine he sailed across the Bosphorus and helped to found the world’s new capital at Byzantium.

Emperors came and went. The kingdom of the Ostrogoths arose in Italy and strange bearded men who spoke barbarian tongues ruled in the Caesars’ stead. But though the olden land of Latium no longer offered reverence to the Empire, it owed allegiance to the name of Him the priests had crucified so long ago in Palestine; for nowhere, save in the frozen fjords and forests of the farthest North and in the sun-smit deserts of the South, did men fail to offer prayer and praise and sacrifice to the Prophet who had come to save His people from their sins and had been scornfully rejected by their priests and leaders.

And now a mighty conflict arose between the Christians of the West and the followers of Mahound in the East; and Claus who knew the country round about Jerusalem as he knew the lines that marked his palms rode forth with Tancred and Count Raymond and Godfrey of Bouillon to take the Holy City from the Paynim’s hands. With him rode the ever-faithful, thrice-beloved Unna, armed and mounted as a squire. Never since the morning of their marriage had they been out of voice-call of each other; for she had shared his life in camp and field, marching with the legions dressed in armor like a man, going to Byzantium when the New Empire was founded, riding at his side across the troubled continent of Europe when the Old Empire broke to pieces and little kings and dukes and princes set their puny courts up in the midst of their walled towns. Sometimes she cut her long hair and went forth in male garb; again, in those brief intervals of peace when they dwelt at their ease in some walled city, she let her tresses grow and assumed woman’s attire and ruled his house with gentleness and skill as became the mate of one who rated the esteem of prince and governor, for her husband’s fame at weaponry and sagacity in war had won him great standing among those who had need of strong arms and wise heads to lead their soldiery and beat their foemen back.

Now Claus, with Unna fighting at his elbow as his squire, had assailed the walls when Godfrey and Count Eustace and Baldwin of the Mount leaped from the flaming tower and held the Paynim back till Tancred and Duke Robert broke Saint Stephen’s Gate and forced their way into the Holy City; but when the mailed men rode with martial clangor through the streets and massacred the populace they took no part. In the half darkness of the mosque that stood hard by the ancient Street of David where aforetime the young Prophet had trod the Via Dolorosa they saw old Moslems with calm features watch their sons’ heads beaten in with axe or mace and then in their turn submit to slaughter; it was the will of Allah, and fi amam ’llah — we are all in His protection. They heard the Paynim women beg and plead for mercy, saw Christian sword and pike rip open their soft bodies till their cries were stilled. They tried to stop the wanton killing and begged the men-at-arms and knights to stay their hands and show their helpless foemen clemency, whereat the wearers of the Cross turned on them with curses and swore they were no true and loyal lovers of the Prince of Peace.

But when the killing and the rapine ceased and men went forth to worship at the Holy Places Claus and Unna walked the city hand in hand, and their eyes were soft with memories. “’Twas here we met, my love, doest thou remember?” Claus asked as they walked through David’s Street, and Unna answered never a word, but her arms crept up around his neck as they had been the tendrils of a vine, and drew his face down to hers till her lips found his and clung as if they would weld flesh to flesh and never more be severed.

“And here He raised His hand and blessed them who did persecute Him,” Unna told a group of gentlewomen who had come to make the pilgrimage to Calvary upon their knees. “And here He fainted underneath the burden of His gallows….” But when the Frankish women heard her they would not heed, but hooted her away, for their chaplains who until that time had never seen Jerusalem had shown them where the Master trod, and sooth, the learned holy men knew more of sacred things than this wild woman of the camps who wore her hair at shoulder length and fared forth dight in hose and doublet like a man and swaggered it among the men-at-arms with a long sword at her thigh.

But when she told them that she knelt upon those very stones and watched Him bear the cross to Golgotha they shrank from her and named her witch and crossed themselves and called on every saint they knew for succor. And presently men came to take her. She fought like any leopardess and more than one armed man felt the sting of her steel. But they were twenty, she was one, so afterwhiles they bound her arms with cords and took her to the prison-house beneath the Templars’ stables and swore that on the morrow they would burn her at a stake that all might see what fate befell a woman who spake blasphemy within the very confines of Jerusalem.

When she came not to their dwelling-place that night Claus was like a man made mad by those foul drugs the Paynims use to give them courage in the fight. And he went to the prison-house and smote the warders where they stood, so that they fled from him as from a thing accursed, and with his mighty axe he brake the heavy doors that shut her in, and they went forth from that place and took horse and rode until they reached the sea, where they took ship and sailed away. And no man durst stand in their way, for the flame of Northern lightnings burned in Claus’s eyes, and he raged like a wild berserker if any bade them stand and give account of whence they came and where their mission led them.

 

The years slipped swiftly by like rapid rivers running in their courses, and Claus and Unna rode the paths of high adventure. Sometimes they rested in the cities, but more often they were on the open road, or fighting in the armies of some prince or duke or baron, and always fame and fortune came to them. But they could not abide in any one place long, for betimes they came in conflict with the theologians, for when these heard them speak of the Great Teacher as though they had beheld Him in the flesh they sought to have them adjudged witch and warlock, and so great was these men’s power that had they not been fleet of foot and strong of arm they were like to have been burnt a dozen times and more.

As they passed through Genève on their way to Italy where Claus had business with the duke of a city, they saw a great throng gathered as for holidaying, and presently they saw a man led forth to die by fire. It was no roaring holocaust they kindled at his feet, but a small fire of faggots, so that the flames licked slowly at his searing flesh and stripped it from his bones as great cat-beasts lap meat with roughened tongues. As the victim’s screams were mingled with the crackling of the flames and jeers of the multitude Unna hid her face against her husband’s arm, and Claus swore underneath his breath as soldiers have at needless suffering since time was young. But the crowd drank in the spectacle avidly, and he was minded of another mob that gathered round a cross on Golgotha in days gone by.

“Who was that one, friend, and what was his great crime that he should die thus painfully?” Claus asked a lean man in the drab stuff gown and shovel hat that marked him as a pastor of the Reformed Faith.

“He was the Spaniard Serveto,” answered the ecclesiastic. “He was denounced by our good leader, Maître Jean Calvin, for blaspheming the truth, and richly hath he deserved death at the stake.”

Now Claus remembered Pilate’s question asked so long ago, and in his turn repeated: “What is truth?”

Whereat the other told him, “Truth is as we preach it; all else is heresy and lies, and merits death in this world and damnation in the next!”

“Now, by the Iron Gloves of Thor,” swore Claus when he heard this, “meseems the very milk of human kindness hath been curdled into clabber by these men. ’Twas Caiaphas and Annas and their ilk who hanged the Master on the cross because they said He blasphemed truth; today the men who call themselves His ministers and servants roast their fellows at the stake for the same reason! It matters not at whose altar he serves, the priest is still a priest and changeth not.”

 

One Yuletide Claus and Unna lodged in a small city by the Rhine. The harvest was not plentiful that year, and want and famine stalked the streets as if an enemy laid siege to the town. The feast of Christmas neared, but in the burghers’ houses there was little merriment. Scarce food had they to keep starvation from their bellies, and none at all to make brave holiday upon the Birthday of the Lord.

And as they sate within their house Claus thought him of the cheerless faces of the children of the town, and as he thought he took a knife and block of wood and carved the semblance of a sleigh the like of which the people used for travel when the snows made roads impassable for wheels or horsemen.

When Unna saw his handiwork she laughed aloud and clipt him in her arms and said, “My husband, make thou more of those, as many as the time ’twixt now and Christmas Eve permits! We have good store of sweetmeats in our vaults, and even figs from Smyrna and sweet dried grapes from Cyprus, Sicily and Africa, besides some quantity of barley sugar. Do thou carve out the little sleighs and I will fill them to the brim with comfits; then on the Eve of Christ His Birthday we’ll go amongst the poorest of the townsfolk and leave little gifts upon their doorsteps, that on the morrow when the children wake they shall not have to make their Christmas feast on moldy bread and thin meat broth.”

The little sleighs piled up right swiftly, for it seemed to Claus his fingers had a nimbleness and skill they never had before, and he whittled out the toys so fast that Unna was amazed and swore his skill at wood-carving was great as with the sword and axe; whereat he laughed and whittled all the faster.

It was bitter cold on Christmas Eve, and the members of the night watch hid themselves in doorways or crept into cellars to shield them from the snow that rode upon the storm wind’s howling blast; so none saw Claus and Unna as they made their rounds, leaving on each doorstep of the poor a little sleigh piled high with fruits and sweets the like of which those children of that northern clime had never seen before. But one small lad whose empty belly would not let him sleep looked from his garret window and espied the scarlet cloak Claus wore, for Claus went bravely dressed as became a mighty man of valor, and one who walked in confidence with princes. And the urchin marveled much that Claus the mighty captain of whose feats men spoke with bated breath should stop before his doorstep. But anon he slept, and when he waked he knew not if it were a dream he dreamt, or if he had seen Claus pass through the storm all muffled in his crimson cloak.

But when the church bells called the folk to prayer and praise next morning and the house doors were unbarred, the people found the sleighs all freighted with their loads of comfits on their thresholds, and great and loud was the rejoicing, and children who had thought that Christmas was to be another day of fasting clapped their hands and raised their voices in wild shouts of glee. And Claus and Unna who went privily about the streets saw their work and knew that it was good, and their hearts beat quicker and their eyes shone with the tears of happiness, for that they had brought joy where sorrow was before, and they clasped each other by the hand and exchanged a kiss like lovers when their vows are new, and each swore that the other had conceived the scheme and each denied it; so in sweet argument they got them to the minster, and then went to their house where their Christmas feast of plump roast goose was sweeter for the thought of joy they had brought to the children of the town.

But when the clergy of the town were told about the miracle of fruits and sweets that came unmarked upon the doorsteps of the poor they were right wroth, and swore this was no Christian act, but the foul design of some fell fiend who sought to buy men’s souls away by bribing them with Satan’s sweetmeats.

The lad whose waking eyes had seen Claus in his scarlet mantle told his tale, and all the poor folk praised him mightily as one who had compassion on the sufferings of childhood, but the churchmen went to the Burggraf of the city saying, “Go to, this man and his wife foment rebellion; they have sought to buy the people’s loyalty away by little gifts made to their children.”

“Why, as to that,” the Burggraf answered, “meseems it is a good and kindly thing they did. Indeed, they have put shame on us, sith we of our abundance gave no alms to those who hungered. These be stern times for poor men, good your reverences.”

When they heard this the clerics murmured one to another, and finally put forth the saintly pastor of the High Minster to make answer for them all. He was a very learned man and skilled in disputation. He knew how many angels could dance on the point of a needle, and whether angels traveling from one place to another passed through intervening space. Moreover, he was deeply versed in demonology, and could smell wizardry or witchcraft featly as the beagle scents the cony, so when he spake he spake with great authority, and thus he spake to the Burggraf:

“The poor we have with us alway. Did not the blessed Master say as much, aye, and wrathfully rebuke His disciples who would have had Mary Magdalene’s embrocation sold to buy bread for them? It is no work of merit to give bread unto the poor. If it were Heaven’s will that all men should be fed then we should have no poor, but it is stated most explicitly that the poor we shall have with us alway. It is the well-considered thought of this most reverend company that it is little less than a defiance of divine purpose to alleviate their condition. If wise all-seeing Heaven had not willed them to be poor they had not been so, but sith their poverty is obviously by divine decree, whoso maketh them less poor, even though it be by giving them no more than a dry crust, thwarts Heaven’s will, and is therefore no better than a contemnor of the Holy Gospel. And as all wizardry is a species of heresy, it follows as the night the day that heresy is also a form of witchcraft, and Holy Scripture saith expressly, ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.’

“Look ye to it, then. If you permit this man and woman, who are no better than a witch and warlock, to remain at large you are no friend of true religion, nor of the Landgrave from whom you hold this city as a fief. Dixi.”

“Amen,” said all the others. “Our reverend brother speaketh most sound doctrinal advice, which you will take to heart if you be truly righteous.”

So the Burggraf would have put them into prison on a charge of witchcraft and treason, but the townsmen came to them and warned them of the net the churchmen wove; so they escaped before the men-at-arms came clamoring at their door and fled across the winter snows. Behind them swept a raving tempest, so that those who sought to follow were engulfed in drifting snows and lost their tracks upon the road, and finally turned round and fought their way back to the city with the tidings they had surely perished in the storm.

 

Now presently their travels took them to the Baltic shores, and as they passed across the country of the Lappmen they came to a small valley ringed round with nine low hills, and no man durst go to that place, for ’twas said the little brown men of the land beneath the earth had power there and whoso met them face to face was doomed to be their servant always, and to slave and toil beneath the ground for evermore, because these people had no souls, but were natheless gifted with a sort of immortality so that they should live until the Judgment Day when they and all the great host of the olden gods should stand before the awful throne of the Most High and hear sentence of eternal torment.

But Claus and Unna had no fear of the aelf people or of any harm that they might do, for both of them wore crosses round their necks, and in addition each was girt with a long sword, and the great axe that had aforetime laid the mightiest foemen in the dust was hanged from Claus’s saddle-bow.

So they bent their way among the haunted Nine Hills, and behold, as they rode toward the sea there came a great procession of the aelfmen bearing packs upon their backs and singing dolefully. “Waes hael to thee, small aelfmen,” Claus made challenge, “why go ye sadly thus with chant of dole and drearihead?”

“Alack and well-a-day,” the aelf King answereth, “we take our way to Niflheim, there to abide until the time shall come when we are sent to torment everlasting, for the folk whom we did help aforetime now cry out upon us and say we are devils and set no pan of milk or loaf of barley bread beside their doorstep for us; nor do they tell the tales their fathers told of kindly deeds done by the Little People, but only tales of terror and wickedness. For this we are no longer able to come out and play upon the earth’s good face, neither dance and sing by moonlight in the glades, and, worst of all, our human neighbors have no use for our good offices, but drive us hence with curse and chant and bell and book and candle.”

Now Claus laughed long and loud mirthlessly when he heard this, for well was he reminded of the time when he and Unna had to flee for very life because they had done kindness to the poor, so he made answer: “Would ye then find it happiness to serve your human neighbors an ye could?”

“Aye, marry, that would we,” the aelf King told him. “We be great artificers in both wood and stone and metal. There are no smiths like unto us, nor any who can fashion better things of crockery, and much would it delight our hearts to shape things for men’s service and bestow them on the goodmen of the farms and villages and towns, but now they will have none of us or of our gifts. Why, to say a present is a fairy gift is to insult the giver in these days!”

Now as Claus listened to this plaint there came a ringing as of many bells within his ears and once again the voice he knew spake to him and he heard: “Claus, thou hast need of these small men. Take them with thee on the road that shall be opened to thy feet.”

So Claus bespake the aelfmen’s King and said: “Wouldst go with me unto a place of safety, and there work diligently to make things that children joy to have? If thou wilt do it I’ll see that thy gifts are put into the hands of those who will take joy in them and praise thy name for making them.”

“My lord, if thou wilt do this thing for us I am thy true and loyal vassal, now and ever, both I and all my people,” swore the aelfmen’s King. So on the fresh green turf he kneeled him down upon his knees and swore an oath of fealty unto Claus, acknowledging himself his vassal and vowing to bear true and faithful service unto him. Both he and all his host of tiny men pronounced the vow, and when they rose from off their knees they hailed Claus as their lord and leader.

Then from their treasure-store they brought a little sleigh no larger than the helm a soldier wears to shield his skull from sword-blows, and so cunningly contrived it was that it could stretch and grow until it had room for them all, both the aelf King and his host and Claus and Unna and their steeds as well.

And when they had ensconced them in the magic sleigh they harnessed to it four span of tiny reindeer no larger than the timid squeaking mice that steal forth in the night to forage in the farmer’s kitchen, and at once these grew until they were as large as war-steeds, and with a shout the aelf King bade them go, and straightway they rose up into the air and drew the sleigh behind them, high above the heaving billows of the Baltic.

“Bid them ride until they have the will to stop,” Claus ordered, and the aelf King did as he commanded, and presently, far in the frozen North where the light of the bridge Bifrost bears upon the earth the reindeer came to rest. And there they builded them a house, strong-timbered and thick-walled, with lofty chimneys and great hearths where mighty fires roared ceaselessly. And in the rooms about the great hall they set their forges up, and their kilns for baking earthenware and benches for wood-turning. And the air was filled with sounds of metal striking metal as cunning dwarfs beat toys of metal out while others of their company plied saw and knife and chisel, making toys of wood, and others still made dolls of plaster and chinaware and clothed them in small garments which artful aelfmen under Unna’s teaching fashioned at the great looms they had built. And in the castle garth they set out groves of holly trees and oaks on which the mistletoe grew thick, for the holly’s ruddy berry is the symbol of the drops of precious blood Christ shed for our redemption, and the pearly fruit of mistletoe is emblematic of His tears of compassion for our weakness, so both of them are fitting garniture for Christian homes at Yuletide.

When Christmas Eve was come again there was a heap of toys raised mountain-high, and Claus put them into the magic sleigh with wreaths of gleaming holly and white boughs of mistletoe and whistled to the magic reindeer and called them each by name, and off they sped across the bridge Bifrost where in the olden days men said the gods had crossed to Asgard. And so swiftly sped his eight small steeds, and so well his sleigh was stocked with toys that before the light of Christmas morning dawned there was a gift to joy the heart of every child laid on each hearth, and Claus came cloud-riding again unto his Northern home and there his company of cunning dwarfs and Unna the beloved waited.

Then they made a mighty feast and heaped the tables till they groaned beneath the weight of venison and salmon and fat goose, and the mead horns frothed and foamed, and song and laughter echoed from the high walls of the castle as they bid each other skoal and waes hael while they drank and drank again to childhood’s happiness.

 

Long years ago Claus laid aside his sword, and his great axe gathers rust upon the castle wall; for he has no need of weapons as he speeds on his way to do the work foretold for him that night so long ago upon the road to Bethlehem.

Odin’s name is but a memory, and in all the world none serves his altars, but Claus is very real today, and every year ten thousand times ten thousand gleeful children wait his coming; for he is neither Claudius the gladiator nor Claus the mighty man of war, but Santa Claus, the very patron saint of little children. His is the work his Master chose for him that night two thousand years ago; his the long, long road that has no turning so long as men keep festival upon the anniversary of the Saviour’s birth.