The Advent Calendar (25 page)

But no, they went straight past the door, then darted down an alleyway. There was a strong animal smell mixing with the town’s drains and the beer from inside.

Both Alice and Sam saw them at the same time. They had looked at them often enough over the last few weeks. There round the back of the inn was a life-sized version of the doors in the centre of the calendar. One of the shepherds they had been following took hold of each door and pulled them backwards. Inside there was only the dimmest light from a dozen small lamps.

Alice and Sam crept nearer, behind the shepherds who were moving more slowly now, faces still full of joy and fear combined. Alice pushed her way through the cattle to the very back. Her feet brushed against the straw on the floor. The warm bodies of the animals made the small stable feel warm and comfortable but the smells were strong. All she and Sam saw next were the shepherds in a line, hats off, heads bowed and eyes down. Then someone said something and the line of shepherds parted.

And there was Mary, sitting in the centre of all those rough men, exhausted yet smiling. Her eyes met Alice’s at once and there was understanding and joy and love and a challenge too – then the same for Sam.

And there he was, the tiny child, sleeping in his mother’s arms, wrapped in rough blankets: the one she had learned to call by so many names, the one at the centre of the whole story.

There was no need for words. Time stood still. There was silence in the stable and great peace. Sam and Alice had reached their destination. With one mind with the shepherds, both of them knelt in the rough stable floor and gazed and wondered and wanted to stay there for ever.

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If you asked Sam, in later years, what he remembered about that moment, he would stop and think for a while, savouring it again, returning to the scene captured so vividly in his mind’s eye.

‘The silence,’ he would say. ‘The silence was awesome. In that one moment, I swear, earth and heaven held their breath. In that one instant in all of time, everything changed.’

‘I’ve been very blessed,’ he loved to say. ‘So much has gone right for me.’ He would point you, then, to the pictures he carries of Josie and the twin boys and the two girls who followed on.

‘But that moment is beyond words, beyond describing. To be there. To be so close. To be changed, completed almost.’

And Alice? Alice grew up to be beautiful and strong and wise, a source of life to all who knew her. In later years she had a smile to lighten any burden, a listening ear to unravel the most twisted pathway, love and strength in abundance for those who needed care.

And in those years, when she poured tea and offered strength to the many who came, you would sometimes catch her looking over the shoulder of her visitors, especially if the tale they told was particularly dark or sad. Her eyes would rest on a curious and ancient calendar made from olive wood in the shadows in the corner of the room. She would hardly ever show it to her guests. Some of our inner stories, you see, even the happiest ones, can never be fully told.

But she would say, if you asked her, that the best part of the adventure was not that she once lived in the story and visited for a while (although she never, ever forgot the events of that December). She would tell you, if you asked her, that the best part of the story was that for ever and for ever and for evermore, the story lived in you.

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