by Jeff Guinn
But there was nothing boring about Myra, which had so many buildings you could actually see them hundreds of yards ahead before you even entered the city! People milled about, and animals added moos and bleats to the general cacophony, and the market in the center of the city must have had a hundred different stalls. Uncle Silas left Aunt Lodi and me at the market, telling us to look around for good bargains on new cloaks while he found a stable for the mule and an inn for us to sleep in that night—we would be staying for several days. Aunt Lodi was eager to begin shopping, but I wanted to do something else.
“Please, let’s go right away to see the tomb of Bishop Nicholas,” I pleaded. “The cloaks will still be for sale in the morning.”
“The tomb will be there in the morning, too,” Aunt Lodi replied. “Why are you so anxious to see it?”
I didn’t know. I just felt I had to go there. It took several minutes, but I convinced my aunt that it would be all right for me to find the tomb by myself while she shopped. Aunt Lodi made me promise that I would take only a brief look at the tomb, then rejoin her at the market.
“You and Silas and I can go take a long look at it tomorrow,” she said. “Be certain you meet me right back here by sunset. I don’t want you walking the streets of a strange city all alone after dark.”
I promised I would, and hurried off. It wasn’t hard to find the tomb. The first woman I asked knew exactly where it was, though she warned me I might not be able to get a very good look at it.
“The cripples, you know, gather around it before dawn and spend all day praying to be healed,” she said. “Bishop Nicholas, of course, is given credit for granting such miracles, and perhaps he does. My hands get very swollen and sore sometimes; I’m thinking of going to the tomb and praying to him myself.”
And she was right. The tomb was actually inside the church, and a magnificent thing it was, higher all by itself than any structure I had ever seen before, with the date of Bishop Nicholas’s death carved into the stone—December 6, 343, it was—as well as his likeness. He had been, apparently, a striking-looking man, with long hair and a beard. He appeared a bit stouter than most, but then bishops also ate better (and, apparently, more) than the rest of us. I wanted to look closer at the carving of the bishop, but dozens of cripples surrounded the tomb and I didn’t want to push them aside. Some were blind, others couldn’t walk, and their crutches lay beside them as they prayed, silently or out loud, to be healed. As I stood behind them, I also noticed in the shadows to the side of the tomb a number of other people, all ragged and hungry looking, quietly waiting, though I had no idea for what.
“Who are they?” I asked a reasonably well-dressed man who was standing beside me.
“It’s an odd thing,” he said. “Ever since this tomb was built, poor people passing through Myra seem to get comfort from just being near it.”
As I stood as close to the tomb as I could, a strange feeling came over me. It wasn’t sadness, though I felt very badly for the crippled and poor people, and wanted with all my heart to do something to help them. And it wasn’t exactly excitement, either, though I was thrilled to be in a large city for the first time in my life. If I had to describe it, I would say I felt inspired. My eyes moved from the poor people to the carving of Bishop Nicholas’s kind face, back and forth between them while time passed and I didn’t notice the afternoon shadows growing long and deep. Finally, as night fell, everyone began to leave. I felt as though I was being jostled awake from a wonderful dream. Then I realized it was nighttime, and I remembered Aunt Lodi waiting back at the market.
She was very angry with me when I finally returned, a bit out of breath because I’d run all the way from the tomb.
“If Silas knew you’d been out gallivanting until after dark, he’d pack up the cart and have us back on the road to Niobrara at dawn. What was there about the bishop’s tomb that made you forget your promise to come right back?”
I don’t recall my answer, though I do remember she didn’t tell Uncle Silas about how I had disobeyed. The three of us stayed in Myra for four days. We bought clothes and ate wonderful food and wandered around the city marveling at its size and all the people who lived there. Twice, we went to see the bishop’s tomb. Both times, I was overcome by the same sense of inspiration. I did not tell my uncle and aunt about it, but afterward when we were back home in Niobrara I found myself having the same dream almost every night. I would be in a different place in each dream, but in the company of the same man. He was older than me and somewhat overweight. His hair and beard were white. No one who looked like him lived in Niobrara, yet his face was very familiar.
The first dog kept barking, and several more joined in the thunderous chorus. There was nothing for me to do but turn and run. As I did, I dropped the loaves of bread, which were long and thin, and then I lost my grip on the blankets as I dashed madly through the darkness back toward the city.
CHAPTER Two
I was twenty-four when first my aunt, and then my uncle, passed away. Though I mourned them, it was hardly a surprise when they died. Aunt Lodi was fifty-seven, and Uncle Silas was fifty-nine. By the standards of the day, each had reached great old age. And, in a way, it was merciful that Uncle Silas quickly followed Aunt Lodi to heaven, because in the days after she was gone he was simply lost without her. The wheat in his fields remained un-harvested. He sat in our hut staring into the fire, saying very little. I did the best I could to comfort him, but it soon became obvious he was not long for life, either.
“Marry, Layla,” he said during our last conversation. His voice was quite weak. “Find a good husband.”
“I promise,” I replied, and felt somehow I was telling the truth, even though I was no more willing than ever to marry a man from Niobrara and become a farmer’s wife.
Uncle Silas’s death created a very difficult situation for me. As his only heir, his farm became mine. But no woman in Niobrara, or anywhere else that anyone in Niobrara knew of, lived alone and managed a farm by herself. This was supposed to be done on her behalf by a husband or son or uncle or cousin, or at least a close male friend. I had none of these.
“Choose a man and get on with your life,” people told me over and over. When I tried to hire workers to harvest the grain, they all refused to work for a woman. A year after my uncle had passed I was still unmarried, and even the other women in the village began to act uncomfortable around me. Once, several of them pulled me aside and told me I was acting “unnatural.”
Layla
I knew better. I had spent the year making plans. Never forgetting Aunt Lodi’s words, I was not only keeping my dreams, I was going to try to make them come true.
Besides the farm, which was worth something itself, Uncle Silas had bequeathed me some money. It wasn’t a fortune by any means, but the small pile of coins he’d accumulated over the years amounted to enough for what I needed—a sum sufficient to keep me in simple food and clothing for a long time, with quite a bit left over. And I knew what I wanted to do with the money that was left.
The mysterious gift-giver of local legend might be magical, or might not. I could not be that person—I certainly had no special powers—but I could do some of the same things. I would take my money and use it to buy blankets and cloaks and food for people in need. During the year between my uncle’s death and the time I left Niobrara, I thought long and hard about how best to do this. Gradually, I realized several things.
First, as a giver I, too, must remain anonymous. Even the very poorest people still had pride and might be insulted by a strange woman simply handing them gifts. The legendary gift-giver, whoever that was or might have been, was right to leave presents at night and in secret.
Second, I must distribute my gifts as widely as possible. There were poor, deserving people everywhere. To stay in one place for too long would also cause another problem. After a while, people in the area would begin to stay awake at night in the hope that they could find out who the gift-giver might be. Besides, I wanted b
adly to travel.
Third, it would be impossible to give anyone in need all that he or she might require. If I helped a few in a substantial way, all my money would soon be gone and I would have nothing left for anyone else. But if I did something small but important for each one, then hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of good if impoverished men, women, and children would at least know that, in a hard world, someone had cared enough about them to leave tokens of respect and assistance. In a very real sense, my gift to them would be hope.
There was, of course, another inevitable dilemma. Even if I was very frugal regarding my own needs, and kept the gifts I gave small and inexpensive, the money I had would only last for so long. In seven or eight years, ten at the most, it would all be gone. I had only one farm to sell, only one accumulation of coins to spend. When they were used up, I would have no way to get any more. It was possible, even probable, that when my final gifts were given I would then become exactly the same as those I’d done my best to help—an impoverished person who would have to depend on the charity of others. Starvation might be my eventual fate.
I accepted this. It didn’t frighten me, perhaps because I did not expect something like that to happen. I believed—somehow, actually, I knew—my future held something different, something wonderful. At night I still dreamed of being in many places with the white-bearded man, and the inspiration I felt that first afternoon at the tomb of St. Nicholas had remained with me ever since.
So it was just after my twenty-fifth birthday that I walked into Niobrara and announced to the men gathered near the well there that I was selling my uncle’s farm. Did anyone want to buy it at a fair price?
Oh, the men made a fuss, and told me I shouldn’t sell, that I should marry and let my husband run the farm instead, but I knew that they were already making calculations in their heads. What was the lowest price they could offer to a woman who, by reason of her gender, certainly wouldn’t have the intelligence to recognize the amount wasn’t nearly enough? So over the next few days, one by one they came to my hut and made their bids, and every time went home shaking their heads and muttering about this extremely unfeminine woman who drove such a hard bargain. But it was a good farm, certainly a profitable one, and after a week or so I made a very fine sale indeed. I collected the money, got together the few belongings I wanted to take with me, and prepared to leave Niobrara and embark on my great adventure.
This was when I began to understand the extent of my challenge.
I had a good-sized pouch of coins strapped inside my cloak, with cotton mixed in with the coins to keep them from jingling. I hadn’t yet been out much in the world, but I knew well enough that thieves lurked everywhere, and any of them would be eager to rob a female traveler with money. Still, I could afford to rent a cart and mule—my plan was to return to Myra, pray at Bishop Nicholas’s tomb myself, and then begin my own gift-giving mission wherever whim and fate might take me.
But no one in Niobrara would rent me a mule and cart. Everyone said it was simply too dangerous for a woman to travel to Myra all by herself. I was certain I would be safe, so long as I was careful, but no one would hear of it. When I said I would walk to Myra instead, they said they could not allow it and would restrain me if necessary. I had to wait impatiently for almost three days before a farm family from town set off to Myra, and allowed me to ride along with them in their wagon. It was a very frustrating trip. The whole way, the husband and wife kept telling me how foolish I was to be leaving such a nice, safe place—surely I would rather marry and settle down instead of risking my life on some dangerous, lonely trip.
They dropped me off in the market at Myra with many final recommendations that I should come to my senses. I managed not to reply that I was being quite sensible, thank you very much. Then I found that things would be just as difficult for me in Myra as they were in Niobrara, if not more so.
Since I planned to stay for several days, buying and then distributing gifts to the very poorest people in Myra I could find, I first needed to take a room at an inn. I wanted the inn to be clean but inexpensive. Every coin I spent on my own comfort would be one less I had for gifts. But I must have gone to a dozen inns where I was turned away. In the big cities, it seemed, unmarried adult women traveling by themselves were assumed to be of very bad character. How could they be otherwise, if no men were willing to marry them? It was almost dark when I finally found a place to stay. The innkeeper grudgingly took my money and warned me to behave myself.
“I run a nice place here,” he said, waving a hand at a very dirty collection of bug-ridden rooms.
“And a very expensive place, too,” I replied, handing over more coins than I’d intended to pay for a few nights’ shelter.
“If you don’t like the price, feel free to go elsewhere,” he said, his tone quite insulting. “My guess is, no one would have you, and you’d have to sleep in the street.”
“Is this the same price you would charge a single man for a room?”
“It’s what I’m charging you.”
I hoped that he would be unique in my travels, but, sadly, he wasn’t. No matter where I went, people always seemed to look with disdain on me for being a woman who traveled alone, and I knew I was often charged more than what was fair for rooms. And, as I would soon discover, unfair costs of lodging were to be among the very least of my problems.
Still, that night in Myra I could hardly sleep, as much for being excited as for the nasty bedbugs that crawled everywhere along the floor and walls. In the morning I would visit Bishop Nicholas’s tomb, pray, and then make my way to the market. There I would buy bread and dried fruit and some blankets, and spend much of the next few nights quietly distributing them by the sleeping mats of the poor.
Only the first part of my plan went as expected. I was up with the sun and hurried to the tomb, which was already surrounded by cripples and other pilgrims. That was all right. I simply bowed my head and asked God to bless me as I tried to do good works. I raised my head and found myself looking again at the carving of Bishop Nicholas, focusing on his strong, kind face. Though I knew it was impossible, it seemed as though his eyes, carved in stone to look straight ahead, somehow briefly turned to gaze at me—and did that stone mouth momentarily widen into a smile? How odd!
But I had no time to spare on further speculation. Before leaving the inn, I had carefully removed several coins from the pouch sewed into the lining of my cloak—enough money to buy a dozen loaves of bread, some containers of dried dates, and several blankets. At the market, I lined up and bought these things, only to find that I had too much to comfortably carry. I had to leave some of my purchases in the stalls where I bought them, promising to retrieve them the next day. Even so, it was an awkward walk back to the inn with bread loaves tucked under my arms, and the blankets I was balancing on one shoulder spilling over in front of my face. Several people I passed pointed at me and laughed.
After making a simple supper from a bit of the bread and two of the dates, I waited impatiently in my nasty little room for night to come. During the day, I had seen several ragged nomads in the city. I knew some of them were camped just outside Myra; I’d noticed their patched tents set up by the side of the road when I arrived with the farm family in their wagon. These wanderers, surely, were just like the ones I’d known back in Niobrara—poor, honest families who had no permanent homes because they could not afford them. Instead, they moved from place to place, finding temporary work and never certain which nights there would be food for themselves and their children.
Finally it got dark. I put on my cloak and gathered up some bread, fruit, and two blankets. I was just able to carry everything. My heart pounded as I slipped out into the street, where I immediately realized I had no idea how to find the nomad tents outside town. There were no streetlights. There were many more buildings than I was used to. Clouds kept me from seeing the stars, which would at least have let me figure out north and south. It took several hours of wrong turns and unexpected dead end
s before I finally stumbled out of the city and into the countryside, where I found myself on a road that might or might not have been the one to Niobrara.
No matter; the clouds shifted and there was enough moonlight for me to see tents, tattered ones, and I knew the people sleeping in them must be desperately poor. Stealthily, I approached the nomad camp. My gift-giving was about to begin!
Then a dog started barking. I’d forgotten that many of these wanderers kept canine pets, as much for protection as for companionship. This dog had caught my scent, and, of course, did not understand I was coming to give his owners presents rather than rob them. People who’d been sleeping in the tents jumped up, many of them shouting. The first dog kept barking, and several more joined in the thunderous chorus. There was nothing for me to do but turn and run. As I did, I dropped the loaves of bread, which were long and thin, and then I lost my grip on the blankets as I dashed madly through the darkness back toward the city. I arrived at the inn without the gifts I had meant to deliver, and without the satisfaction of actually giving them. My sleep during the few hours left before dawn, though, was curiously refreshing. The bearded man I had been dreaming about—how familiar his features seemed; where had I seen him before?—appeared to me again, and this time he winked and said, “You’ll learn, and it will get better.”
Well, my dream-friend was right about that. I had learned how important it was to scout out during the day those places where I planned to leave my gifts at night. It was, for instance, important to know where watchdogs might prowl. So on my second day in Myra I spent the morning locating another nomad camp just outside the city, making certain no one in that group had a dog, and carefully studying the best route between the camp and the inn, so I would know my way even in the pitch dark.