Greetings of the Season and Other Stories (23 page)

’Twould be a miracle if lightning didn’t strike the little church during Christmas Eve services. And bring the rotting roof right down on the bishop’s bald head.

*

With two good deeds accomplished, the boys were stymied. They couldn’t think of anyone else who needed their help, and Christmas was coming. Bad enough their mother was injured; her holiday would be ruined beyond hope if the vicar told her about the broken window. She’d feel obliged to pay for the replacement, and the trustees would never deem that a necessary expense, the old nipcheeses. Heaven only knew where she’d get the money.

“Maybe we could teach Chocolate to count like that horse at the fair last summer.” Benjy was taking his turn riding the old pony while his brothers walked alongside. They were on their way to Espinham Forest to finish gathering the deadwood for the poor. “Everyone paid tuppence to see him add.”

“We can hardly teach you to count, gudgeon. How are we going to teach Chocolate?”

“The viscount is richer’n Golden Ball,” Jasper pointed out. “I heard Molly telling the egg man.”

“So? We can’t ask him to lend us the money, ’cause we couldn’t pay him back. That’s not honorable.”

They each got to thinking on the rest of the walk, about good deeds, good incomes, and their good-as-gold mother. No one wanted to be the first to voice the obvious connection, for fear the others would only laugh.

There was no laughter when they reached the meadow, where Wilfred Snavely was supposed to have his donkey cart ready for loading. Wilfred and his son were there, and the cart, but the donkey had fallen over, dead. Old Wilfred and Young Wilfred were cursing and shouting at the beast, cracking the whip over her head, but she was beyond caring. The Snavelys cared, for they’d have to pull the cart all the way back to the village themselves. And the donkey foal, nuzzling its dead mother, cared. The baby donkey was braying for all it was worth, trying to waken its mother. Young Wilfred kicked out at the thigh-high creature, which ran, still shrilling its distress, into the woods.

“Good riddance to it,” the elder Snavely snarled. “Damned noisy nuisance’ll be no use to me for over a year, eating its ugly head off at my expense. Bad enough I’ll have to come back with the cart and a winch to haul the mother off. I ain’t feeding and cleaning up after some useless creature. I already got my boy for that.” He cuffed his son on the ear and laughed.

“You mean you’re just going to leave the baby out here alone?” Martin wanted to know.

“At night?” Benjy asked, jumping off Chocolate. “In the dark?”

“With nothing to eat or drink?” Jasper peered into the woods.

Snavely eyed Chocolate, and the empty traces of his laden cart. He calculated the odds of the viscount killing him if he took the boys’ pony, then shook his head. It was a sure bet. “Makes no difference. The beastie’ll be dead by morning anyway less’n it learns to eat grass quick-like. Ain’t weaned yet, and I ain’t wet-nursing no ass.”

Jasper said, “We’ll take him, Mr. Snavely.”

Both of his brothers turned to him. “We will?”

“We can’t just let him die, can we?”

Benjy shook his head. So did Martin, after a momentary hesitation. “We’ll take him home with us, then. Mama will know what to do for him.”

“If not, Viscount Royce is sure to. He knows everything about horses, and donkeys can’t be all that different.”

“Hold on, Carrot-top. Afore you go making plans for the spawn, what are you going to give me for it?”

Martin tried to be reasonable. “Why should we pay you for something you were throwing away? If you wanted the baby, you’d put it in the cart and take it home with you.”

“’Sides, you said it was going to die,” Jasper added.

Snavely scratched his armpit. “But the little bugger just might surprise us all and learn to eat grass and stuff. It’s mine till it dies or I say different, understand? So how about we makes us a bargain, eh? How about if I trade you the asslet for use of your pony there? It’ll just be for a few days so I can deliver the wood for the reverend, and get the jenny out of here. His Grace won’t like no dead animal littering his property.”

Benjy started sniffling, and Jasper said, “He’ll never give Chocolate back, I know it.”

Martin eyed the heavily loaded wagon, the whip in Snavely’s dirty hand, and the dead donkey. “No, sir. We can’t let you have Chocolate, even for a day. Our Mama wouldn’t let us, even if we wanted to. But we can find the viscount and tell him how you beat your poor donkey to death and left its baby in his woods. He was calling on us this afternoon, wasn’t he, Jas?”

“Viscount Royce said he was bringing Mama some medicine. They’re old friends, don’t you know, Mama and Viscount Royce,” Jasper contributed, deciding it couldn’t hurt to invoke their powerful protector’s name a few times.

“The jenny died of old age, and don’t you go spreading no tales, hear? And the viscount’s too busy to get himself in a swivet over no orphan ass, so we’ll leave him out of this. Iffen you won’t lend your pony, I figure I’ll have Young Wilfred go put the spat out of its misery. You got the axe there, son?”

“We’ve got some money. You can have all we’ve got,” Martin offered in a rush.

Snavely rubbed his chin. “Well, that’s more like. You brats cost me’ some wages, so it’s only right you hand over some blunt. How much’ve you got?”

The boys did not have enough for a church window, and not enough for a dress length, but it seemed they had just the right amount for a useless, dying baby ass. Snavely took all of the boys’ coins, along with Jasper’s pocketknife and Martin’s handkerchief, which was of finer fabric than any he owned. And if you held the thing upside down, the embroidered
M
could be a
W
for Wilfred.

“Better’n nothing, I guess,” he said. “Enjoy your purchase, brats, while you can.” He gestured to his son to hoist the wagon pole, and they started off, leaving three pale-faced boys in the meadow, with no coins, and no little donkey, either.

The boys dove into the woods where they’d seen the baby run. Jasper tripped over a protruding root and landed in a mud puddle. Benjamin thought he’d climb a tree to get a better view, and tore his pants. Martin listened quietly till he heard the baby’s whickers, then he located the beastie where it was all tangled in briers, panting. He took off his jacket, remembering Mama’s laments over their clothes, and pushed through the prickers to free the infant. His shirt, of course, was torn to shreds, but he got the donkey. The small creature was shivering, so he wrapped his jacket around it and tugged it back to the clearing.

Chocolate took offense at the baby’s nuzzling attempt to find milk, and was not having any hoofed creature ride on her back, either. The baby was too heavy for the boys to carry, and protested too much anyway, so all three removed their belts, cinched them together to make a collar and lead, and half carried, half dragged the donkey along the path toward home.

With such slow going, they had time to reflect on their new acquisition.

“Do you think this counts as a good deed?” Jasper wanted to know.

“We couldn’t let them kill him!” Benjy wailed.

Having looked beneath the donkey, Martin reported that Baby, as they were calling the donkey to encourage it along the trail, was a girl. “And the reverend always said we are all God’s creatures, big and small.”

The three boys looked at the sorry specimen, all big ears and sad brown eyes and skinny legs.

“God must have been getting tired by the day He created donkeys,” Jasper pronounced. “But I suppose we just helped the Lord out a little, right, Martin?”

“Right. Now all we have to do is keep Baby alive.” Benjy’s toothless grin faded. “Mama will know how.”

Which reminded the others of the further consequence of Baby’s purchase. “Now we’ll never be able to buy Mama the velvet for Christmas.”

Jasper sighed and expressed the thought none of them had wanted to put into words, for fear of jinxing the wondrous notion: “And the viscount is used to fancy ladies in satin and lace. That’s what Molly said.” They glumly marched on. Then Benjy asked, “Do you think he’ll take up with Miss Viola?”

Martin squared his shoulders. “If he does, then he’s not the man for Mama anyway.”

They put Chocolate in her stall next to their mother’s gelding, and tried to get the donkey to take some water. Soon they were all sopping wet. They gave up and sent Benjy to sneak the trim from the wreath Sabina had placed on the front gate. In a few minutes they all trooped in to the little parlor, three bedraggled, dripping boys and one ribbon-bedecked, dazed, and half-dead donkey.

“Here, Mama. Look what we bought you for Christmas. Her name is Velvet.”

7

Sabina used to wish her husband’s cottage wasn’t so isolated, being nearer to the castle than the village. That evening she was relieved no neighbors were kept up long into the night the way she was, listening to the new arrival’s complaints. Her own babies hadn’t set up such a racket. They hadn’t cried
ee-aw
either.

She’d done what she could for the poor thing, mixing up some mash and trying to teach Velvet to eat from a dish. More of the concoction was on her, Sabina knew, than in the donkey. Then, with the boys’ help, she’d made a warm nest of straw in the corner of the little stable, with bales of hay to keep the creature penned. She’d tried barricading their old hound, Beau, in with Velvet, but after licking up the spilled mash, Beau headed back to his warm blanket next to the kitchen stove. Sabina couldn’t blame him; she felt too old for this, too.

Now she lay awake, wondering how she was going to feed this new mouth—and clean up after it. In a few years, she supposed, she might teach Velvet to pull her light rig, so the boys could ride her gelding. Martin was ready for a full-size horse now, and Jasper would be by then. They should each have their own mount, she believed, angry all over again at the miserly trustees and her dead husband for not deeming her capable of knowing what was best for their sons. Connor Hamilton would never make his children share one old pony. Whatever else his faults, he was generous and kind, offering to take her sons skating as soon as the pond froze over, if he was still here. He remembered that childhood should be fun. He’d likely spoil his progeny dreadfully, Sabina thought, especially if he had a little girl, a dainty little charmer with dimples—and red hair.

Now that kind of thinking would never do, Sabina told herself. The donkey’s plaintive braying was bad enough without her own maudlin musings. Then she realized that the noise from the barn had stopped. Velvet had exhausted herself, finally. Unless she was too weak to cry anymore. Perhaps she was sick, or worse. Good heavens, the boys would be distraught. Sabina put on her heavy robe, then her cloak over that. She pulled on her boots, awkwardly wrapped a scarf over her head with her bandaged hand, and lit the lantern by the kitchen door. She had no idea what she could do if the little jenny was expiring, nor what she could tell the boys. If ever there was a time she wished for another to share the burdens of life, this was it. Someone who knew about horses and such, and wouldn’t mind leaving a warm bed to go traipsing across the yard in frigid December temperatures. Instead, old Beau wasn’t even around to accompany her on the dire mission.

Sabina hurried to the barn as fast as she could without jeopardizing the lantern’s light. She pushed open the door, dreading what she might find, and held the light aloft, so she could inspect the makeshift enclosure. She couldn’t even see the donkey, surrounded as Velvet was by three sleeping boys, two barn cats, and one comfort-seeking hound. Her sons were tumbled together in the straw with quilts from their beds and, yes, that was her old shawl that she saved for cleaning stalls. She straightened the covers as best she could, feeling her throat tighten at the sight of her beautiful, big-hearted boys. They were perfect, no matter what anyone in the village said, or what certain toplofty aristocrats accused them of. She wouldn’t change a hair on their red heads.

Beau lifted his muzzle from the pile of arms, legs, and donkey, then went back to snoring. All was right with the world.

*

Some women could stay up all night, worrying over donkeys and bank deposits, and still look beautiful in the morning. Sabina was not one of them. She looked haggard, in fact, with her complexion as dull and gray as the faded, shapeless gown she wore. A limp cap covered every inch of the red hair that would have enlivened her appearance, but she hadn’t had the energy to brush it out and pin it up on her aching head. Her hand was paining her, and Benjamin was covered with a rash from the straw. At least she hoped it was a rash and not flea bites from the barn cats.

Since she did not have to work on the pageant costumes, Sabina had taken up her mending again this morning, trying to see what she could salvage of her sons’ adventures yesterday. Not much. At this rate, they’d be running around like half-naked savages by spring. At least the weather would be warmer. Sabina moved her chair closer to the fire and huddled into her shawl, hoping she wasn’t sickening for something. Who would look after the boys then, or the baby jenny? Her thoughts were as dismal as her dress.

Altogether, she was not pleased to see Viscount Royce that next morning. He was looking bang up to the mark, as Martin would say, with his Hessians shining brighter than any surface in her house. Not a dog hair clung to his burgundy coat, not a scratch or worn spot marred his buckskin breeches. Well, she thought, ten minutes here, and Connor would be embarrassed to be seen at his clubs, since that was about how long clean clothes seemed to last in her household.

Connor’s first words were not what a female wanted to hear from an attractive, affluent, aristocratic gentleman. “Gads, you look like last week’s laundry. What has you so blue-deviled?”

“The ass,” she snapped back.