Gaudete by Amy Rae Durreson

2013
     
    I T WAS the scent of mulled wine and roasting chestnuts that finally drew Jonah out of the cathedral library. The smell wasn’t constant, of course, not in this climate-controlled environment, but every time the doors opened to let in another group of tourists, he caught a faint whiff of it, along with the sound of the choristers practicing, their young voices clear and sweet. This close to Christmas, their lives would be all music, from the moment the boarding bell rang to wake them for morning practice until evensong or the special services. He smiled a little at the memory, some combination of the sound and smell lifting his heart so that he felt ten years younger. It was a week until Christmas, and suddenly, out of nowhere, he was excited in a way he hadn’t been since he got old enough to be cynical.
    Then the door opened again, bringing with it the tang of cinnamon and cloves, and he asked impulsively, “Where is that smell coming from?”
    Janice, the archivist working with him, looked up with an amused smile. “It’s the Christmas market in the close. You must have walked past it on the way in.”
    He’d been so lost in memories that he hadn’t really been paying attention to anything other than the cathedral itself. Shrugging, he asked, “Is it still going? I went to the first one.”
    “From strength to strength,” she said, looking a little curious. “You a local boy, then?”
    “Not really,” Jonah said, ducking his head down to adjust the scanner. Then he remembered this was one of the few places where it wouldn’t be seen as weird, and added, “I was a chorister.”
    She nodded in recognition. “Jonah… Jonah Lennox, was it? You were Bishop’s Chorister—ten years ago?”
    “About that.”
    “It was the year I first started. Lovely voice, you had. Do you still sing?”
    “Not properly,” he said, shrugging, and waved at the manuscripts of old music they were scanning in to be digitized. “I got into the history and traditions more, after my voice broke.”
    “Our gain and music’s loss,” Janice said, and leaned back, rolling her shoulders out with a groan. “Ready for a lunch stop? My back’s killing me, and you’ve got me thinking about food now. Did they have a food court in the market in your day?”
    “Just a couple of stalls. More the last few years, but it was never huge. They’ve become a bit more of a craze recently, I think.”
    “Go and enjoy yourself, then,” she said. “Done your Christmas shopping yet?”
    “It’s only the eighteenth,” he protested, and then added awkwardly, “I know, typical bloke.”
    “Doesn’t matter how well educated you are,” she joked, wrapping the manuscript up with gentle hands.
    After a morning in the dim, curtained alcove they were using to scan the manuscripts, even the shady main library made him blink. There was a small group of tourists in there, gathered around the cathedral’s prized copy of the Piae Cantiones , listening to a volunteer explain how Victorian carol writers had recycled the medieval tunes to create what were now seen as the “traditional” English Christmas carols.
    “Are any of the original versions still sung?” someone asked.
    “Some are certainly sung here in Latin, and some of the English lyrics are close in meaning. ‘Unto us is born a son’ is a direct translation. Others are very different—our ‘Good King Wenceslas’is actually set to a springtime carol. The only one commonly still sung in Latin, which many of you will know, especially if you can remember the seventies, is ‘ Gaudete ’….”
    “I always liked that one,” Jonah remarked to Janice as they headed down the ornate wooden stairs into the main cathedral.
    “Me, I like ‘God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen.’ Nice and jolly.”
    “So’s ‘Gaudete,’ if you speak Latin.”
    She laughed at him and paused before they left the transept. “I need to drop some paperwork off. Meet you back in the library at