Another Christmas Tale

There was a great king, a ring-giver, a man-wielder, who ruled from his great hall where the the fire was never put out.  The foundations of his rule were two.  First, when he sat in his great chair in his great hall with his sword Life-and-Death laid across his lap, his judgments never erred and he never turned away a true petition.  Second, his war-band were all heroes and lords every one, from his mighty son the Prince to all the rest.  They were bound to him and he to them by great oaths.  They loved him deeply but he loved them even more, and rewarded them often.    Silver and gold and rings and treasures flowed from his hands.

Now it so happened that each hero of that band had a peculiar strength that belonged to him alone.  There was Bear, whose anger shook mountains.  The Fear-giver made foes tremble and flee.  The Cunning Man had riddled with a dragon three days and three nights at the end of which the dragon repented his sins and died.  The Truth-teller was terrible in war.  But among the greatest heroes was the one known as the Lord of Merry.  The very rumor of his jollity quelled disturbances.  He could make even gray days and iron-cold nights seem festive and a lone candle in a drafty steading-hall like a haven of warmth and light.  Perhaps for this reason he went dressed in the red and white of snow and and late sunrises and holly and winter flowers and delighted in winter sights such as sun on dripping icicles.  He was strong and quick.  His metal mace was called the Dasher.  He laughed in the war dance.

One winter, at the dark of the year, a petitioner came to the hall.  The logs were blazing into a huge fire, the food and drink were flowing, songs were being sung, but the King was on his throne, sword on lap, for even at that season of the year when travelers were few, he maintained an hour and an hour of the day when he would do  judgment to those who sought it.

The petitioner was a humble man though fitly attired for a long journey in the cold.  After the usual courtesies and genealogies, the man said he came from a place that was being ravaged by a gruesome monster.  He had been sent by the ruler of that place to ask the aid of the Merry Lord, he said, but only him.  His own ruler, he said, had asked specifically that the king’s son, whose most distinguishing characteristic was peace, not come.  Because, he said, peace was not useful in the face of such a threat.  The man spoke with evident sincerity but the King’s eyes narrowed and the man quelled, he knew not why, under the King’s long considering glance.  The Truth-teller rose to speak but the King waved him back down.  After studying the flickering of the firelight on his sword in his lap the King said that he would grant the request.

The hero in red (with plenty of furs, it being that season) and the petitioner sat out for the long cold journey to the hall in the mountain where he came from.  When they arrived at the hall, the two of them half-frozen and half-starved, the merry man chuckled.  “Now we’ll have a good time,” he said, “logs for warmth and fat meats on the board, drinks a plenty, and maybe a kiss or two stolen from a pretty maid, eh?”  But the man by his side seemed less sure of a bright welcome.  Indeed, there was not one.  The hall was cold and barely lit.  The ruler and the people of the hall huddled under robes near the edges in sullen quiet.  When the hero announced himself, the ruler of that place barely responded.  Finally he said, surly, “I suppose you will want the usual reward here, won’t you?  Well, you won’t get one.  We are too poor after the ravages of this monster.  It wouldn’t make sense.”

“Getting no reward I have come to expect,” the jolly hero said.  “But, come, at least stoke up the fire.”  “We are too poor for fire,” the ruler grumbled.  “That wouldn’t  make sense either.”  So the jolly man grabbed a woodsman’s axe and soon brought back a great pine which he made into a huge bonfire in the  middle of the hall.  The ruler moved as if to stop him, but the hero’s eyes twinkled, and at that the ruler fell back into his seat.

“And now,” the hero said, “let’s feast and you tell me all about this gruesome beast.  Full stomachs make for open ears!”  “Slaughter what little we have left?” the ruler said, “In our poverty?  It wouldn’t make sense.”

So the merry man went out again into the night, but this time with another implement,  one meant for war-play.  Soon they heard the sounds of a wild struggle and deep laughter, but far off, like the rumbling of thunder.  The lord came back in dragging a slain great bear, which he butchered and skinned then and there and roasted the fat pieces on a board he set near his great blazing pine fire.  He was very at ease, but the rest sat watching him stiffly.  The only movement was from the petitioner who looked around nervously, unsure what all this meant.

At midnight, while the logs were still burning but were partly a great heap of coals and the hero was finishing his second greasy haunch of bear, tossed off with snow melt, there came a scrabbling and a howling like the wind at the door.  The ruler nodded grimly.  Two of his men by the door opened it.

In slouched the gruesome beast.  It was gaunt and great and horrible.  But the merry man did not quell.  He stood with the Dasher to meet it.    In the now well-lit hall he could see that men of the ruler huddled around the edges of the hall were now picking up weapons.  He could also see their eyes were on him, not on the beast.  “Treachery,” the hero boomed.

“The beast made it known to us,” the ruler said, “that it would spare us if we could bring you to feed it.  It made no sense not to.”

But where the ruler expected the hero to cry out in fear, or perhaps in rage, or if he was very  noble to begin his death song, the hero laughed.  It started out as the merriest laugh that ever a man heard, bells ringing and children singing and joy in the morning, trumpets and heralds and homecomings, and went on from there.  It became merrier.  It became like stars, like a laugh only heaven could hold.  And when it reached that point, beyond what any  mortal ever had or ever could do, it was only then that the Lord of Merry’s eyes wrinkled, his belly shook and only then did he really begin to laugh.  The traitor ruler and his traitor band fell back as if transfixed.  Swords fell from their nerveless grasps.

Then, laughing, the great hero went at the gruesome towering beast.  They began their war play and their war dance.  Dark Dasher shone in the firelight.  The monster’s teeth gleamed but more dully.  The blows flashed in and out.  When the beast pressed him too closely, the hero snatched up the bear skin and held it in his hand as a shield and an entanglement.  And when the beast breathed out a fetid, noxious exhalation that blistered and burned anyone it touched, the hero snatched up bear fat and smearing it on his face was left unharmed.  Still the war dance went on and on, and still the hero laughed.

After some time, with the beast and the King’s merry warrior trampling and thrashing and marring and striking all over the hall, the ruler huddled behind his seat recovered himself enough to call out, “you may as well lay down your arms, hero.  Know that this beast can only be defeated by the Prince, not by you.  The wight is proof against all except peace.”  Then the hero’s laugh boomed out, like thunder, like the iron song of the forge, like stones rumbling in the mountain streams in the spring flood.  “Know this,” he cried, “that no man can be as merry as I unless great peace is with him.  Wherever I go, the Prince of Peace is with me.  I see now why the King sent me.  The judgment was not just on this beast, but on you.”

And then stretching his arms up wide to heaven he cried aloud three times.  And so great was the noise of him that the fire flared up and reached the roof of the hall and the whole hall was ablaze and through a hole burnt in the roof the stars appeared and one streaked down until it rested on the Merry Man.  When it did, he was transformed.  The red of his garb was no longer the red of holly but of blood.  The white was  no longer the white of snow but of intolerable holiness.  He staggered then stood, and when he stood the Merry Man was no longer in front of them in that hall.  It was the Prince of Peace himself.  He stretched forth his hand, the peace of Him blazed out, and the beast and every  man or woman in that hall with treachery in their heart was consumed with fire in that very hour and in that very moment.

And when it was done, the Merry Man was standing before them again, those few who were left, the petitioner and a few shamefaced others.

The Merry Man set the place to order before he left, and put the maiden daughter of the ruler in charge of those still living, though he told her he would come back to guide her until she was fully of age.  Come back he did after he he reported to the King and when the maiden was of age to rule and wise enough she wisely chose to be ruled as well as to rule.  She married the Merry Man and they ruled that land together.  The name of the place was Winter, and indeed it was very much like winter there always.  She was called the Lady Winter and so he became the Lord of Winter, and of their doings and comings and goings and of the great and endless merriment of that land many books could be written and have.