Merlin's Wood (Mythago Wood) by Robert Holdstock Page A

having heard all about snow from the poem ‘Night of Old Christmas’. As far as Martin was concerned, it was too damned cold anyway, but they spent Christmas Eve in traditional style, with Jacques and Suzanne. The priest came by for an hour or so, taking a little supper and several glasses of the spiced wine that every house would have in abundance.
    Daniel ran around the warm kitchen, a bat with outstretched wings, guided by sound, flawless in his negotiation of obstacles, such as the inebriated adults who sat around the wide table, the remains of Eve Goose spread before them. Christmas day itself was a day of fasting, not that anyone ever took much notice of that particular tradition.
    ‘Night of Old Christmas! Night of Old Christmas!’ Daniel chanted, as he realised Rebecca was trying to get him into his nightshirt, to put him to bed.
    He was allowed to sit with the adults a while longer, warm, wrapped in a blanket. Martin read the long poem by the heir to the British throne, a parody of the Victorian classic by Clement Moore, watching the enthralled boy curled against his mother and feeling the shivers of his own childhood as some of the stanzas brought back memories of Christmas past …
    ‘The Deep of the Winter was now in the past,
    And the snow that had fallen looked fair set to last,
    And deep in the heartwood a cairn of grey stones
    Was shifting and stirring and full of strange groans
    For down in the earth, all wrapped up and snug
    Old Provider was waking, his mind in a fug.
    The black dog was barking, away in the wood,
    And the children were quarrelling, who had been good?
    And whose head was forfeit, that dread time of dark
    If the fish and the fowl should fall short of the mark
    And the man in his rags, with his good gleaming eye
    Should bring gifts for the three, but the fourth child should die?’
    Before he went to bed, Daniel reached to the big bowl of chicken and trout that was put out for the Odinesque Old Provider. ‘Feel plump enough?’ Martin asked.
    ‘I’m good!’ Daniel said emphatically, adding, ‘Is Old Provider … hungry?’
    ‘Very hungry. But there’s enough fish and fowl here to feed him, his dog,
and
his wailing daughter.’
    ‘Why? Wailing?’
    ‘Enough questions, young man. Daughters wail because daughters wail, and presents come at dawn, because that’s the way it works.’
    A simple way of saying he had no idea.
    ‘Head in sack, slung on his back,’ Daniel murmured, and shuddered, making a chilled sound as he curled into Martin’s arms and was lifted from the cold flagstones of the porch.
    ‘But you’ve been good. There’ll be no head in a sack on the end of
my
bed tomorrow –
or
on Old Provider’s back. Just lots of fun toys, and funny songs. But only ifyou sleep, now, and don’t make any noise during the night …’
    He used his foot to open the door to the stairs, and glanced back at the group around the table, where Father Gualzator was using a teaspoon to scoop the last of the mulled cider from the copper tureen into his glass.
    ‘Do we have any more holy water?’ Martin asked with a grin, and Rebecca grasped the signal, went to the wood stove and uncorked another flagon of the apple.
    In his arms, Daniel murmured, ‘Rest of my bones, under grey stones.’
    ‘Why? Wailing? Uncle Jacques. Why?
’
    ‘Because she was Old Provider’s eldest child and favourite child, but she wanted gifts without earning them, and she wanted gifts that he couldn’t give. So he took away everything that she had, except her sorrow, and made her run blindly after the dog, to pick up every gift that fell from his sack, especially the heads that he gathered from the greedy and the evil and the pretenders, and you know how many pretenders there are among the children of the world, so his sack was full of heads with their tongues sticking out, and their eyes crossed, even some still with their fingers stuck up their noses. Sometimes he put the head in a flour sack and left it on