How Mrs. Claus Saved Christmas

by Jeff Guinn

  “We have to protect everyone else if we can,” Arthur whispered. “I believe Janie only identified the four of us. With luck, all our captains and other supporters might be spared.”

  “Perhaps they’ll march anyway, even though we’ve been taken prisoner,” Alan said hopefully.

  “That would surprise me,” I replied. “You saw how everyone remained silent when we were pulled down High Street in chains. An effective protest needs leaders, so even if some of them do try to march without us on Christmas Day, they’ll be confused and easily dispersed by Sabine and the Trained Band.” As soon as I spoke these gloomy words, I regretted them. Our situation was bad enough without adding to it. So I didn’t say anything more, and neither did the others. After a while I began thinking about my husband. I knew Nicholas was far across the ocean, preoccupied with bringing Christmas gifts to colonial children in the New World. How many more months would it take before he noticed there had been no letters from Arthur or me, and what would he do when he learned of our fate, whatever it might turn out to be?

  I suppose all of us slept a little, though afterward it seemed to me I hadn’t closed my eyes at all when the rattle of boots on stone steps indicated another day had passed. A new torch flared its light into our cell, and when the heavy door was unlocked and swung open, there stood Blue Richard Culmer.

  “How are my guests this fine morning?” he jeered. “How wonderful you all look.” This, of course, was sarcasm. All four of us were dirty from sprawling on the cell floor, and smelly from not bathing. After so many hours spent in darkness, even the feeble torchlight made us blink and rub our eyes.

  “What do you mean to do with us, Culmer?” Arthur demanded. “You can’t keep us prisoners without telling us what we’re charged with and allowing us a fair trial on those charges.”

  Culmer emitted his usual odd cackle. “You don’t understand our special new laws. In emergency situations dealing with obvious traitors, we can keep prisoners as long as we like without going through the usual motions of charges and trials. We decent English people are at war with sinners like you, and so you have no legal rights. But of this, you may be certain—for planning a violent riot in support of the illegal Christmas holiday, your punishment will be quite severe. Well, I’ll leave you to wonder what will happen to you. Now that you’re in custody, I’m off to London. We’ve heard rumors of Christmas plotters there. Please continue to make yourselves at home. Bread and water will be served soon.”

  As Culmer turned to go, Elizabeth cried, “What about my daughter? Where is Sara?”

  He paused, then replied, “Someone mentioned that girl to me. You’ll have to ask the Sabines about her.”

  “Then let me speak to the Sabines,” Elizabeth pleaded. “She is only thirteen years old!”

  “As far as I’m concerned, children of traitors should be treated like traitors as well,” Culmer snarled. “I’ve got more important things to think about than your brat. Take it up with the Sabines, if they decide to waste time talking to you. And a Merry Christmas to all.” He stalked out of the cell, the door was slammed shut and locked, and Elizabeth spent most of the next few hours sobbing uncontrollably.

  Eventually there were more footsteps on the stone stairs. Unlike Culmer, Margaret Sabine did not come into our cell. Instead, she stayed outside the thick door, calling through the barred window for Elizabeth to stand up and speak to her.

  “You, girl,” she called. “Come over here at once! Are you ready to offer an apology?”

  “What do you mean, an apology?” Elizabeth asked as she stumbled to her feet and over to our side of the door.

  “You have betrayed my trust, and showed no gratitude for my years of kindness to you,” Margaret Sabine declared. “I gave you work. My money, paid to you in salary, bought your family’s food. In return, you planned to participate in, even help lead, a hateful, violent act that, had it been successful, would have destroyed my husband’s career. Well, now you’re caught, and I don’t feel sorry for you. But I do expect you to at least ask my forgiveness.”

  “Mrs. Sabine, what about Sara?” Elizabeth pleaded. “Is she with you? Is she safe?”

  “The apology first,” Margaret Sabine demanded.

  “I’ll apologize for anything you like, but please tell me about my daughter!” Elizabeth cried.

  “Well,” the mayor’s wife said, “I have very little to tell. When news reached me of your arrest, and that of your husband and this other woman, Layla, who also has repaid my kindness with betrayal, I sent some of my people to your cottage to fetch Sara. You are, of course, an unfit mother, since you recklessly threw in with these plotters without a care in the world about what might happen to your child. Angry as I am with you, I’m a Christian woman and would not let the girl suffer because of her parents’ sinfulness. But they reported back to me that the cottage was empty. Sara was not there.”

  “Then, where is she?” Elizabeth asked in horror.

  “I’m sure I don’t know,” Margaret Sabine replied. “It had been my intention all along to bring Sara with us when our family moved to London. You could not have objected. Being Sophia’s lady-in-waiting would have been a far better life than you and your sailor husband could ever have given to her. But now that won’t happen. Sara is gone, and I haven’t time to spare seeking her further. After my husband makes clear on Christmas Day how he foiled your plot, Sophia and I are moving to our new London home, where Mr. Sabine will soon join us after a grateful Parliament names him to some very high government position.”

  “But Sara—” Elizabeth pleaded.

  “Speak no more to me of her,” Margaret Sabine said. “I was becoming somewhat annoyed with her, in fact. This is how people of my class are rewarded for trying to be generous to our inferiors. Your daughter, a peasant girl, too often seemed to think she was the equal of my little darling, a child of much higher breeding. Well, now I know where she got the idea. Her mother and father thought they could somehow challenge their social betters, and look where it got you!”

  “Please find Sara,” Elizabeth pleaded. “You’re a mother, just like me.”

  “Oh, I’m nothing at all like you,” the mayor’s wife replied. She seemed about to say more when there was much thudding on the steps, and Mayor Avery Sabine stumbled outside the cell door.

  “Come away, Margaret,” he said impatiently. “Don’t waste your time on these pathetic traitors.”

  “Mayor Sabine, please find my daughter!” Alan shouted from the back of the cell. “Sara can’t be left out there all alone.”

  Sabine drew himself up and peered through the barred cell window. “You’d best worry about yourself, fellow. As for your daughter, well, there’s always room on the streets for one more homeless girl.”

  Despite our rule against violence, Alan threw himself at the mayor. But his shoulder bounced off the locked, heavy door between them, and he sprawled on the cell floor. He lay there pounding his fist in frustration while Sabine, roaring with laughter, guided his stout wife back up the stairs and out into the sunlight it seemed that we four prisoners might never see again.

  The last few days before Christmas passed in an agony of combined tedium and worry. Much of the time we had no light and had to sit in the dark. The hours crept by. Every so often, we’d be given bread and water. This poor diet sapped our strength. We worried about Sara, about the rest of the Christmas protestors, and, I admit, about what would finally happen to us. Culmer had made it clear we could be held without trial for as long as he wanted. We could be whipped, have our ears “notched,” or even be executed. The longer we sat in the darkness, the more we couldn’t help imagining various horrible fates. No one came to speak to us. Culmer had apparently gone back to London. Mayor Sabine had other things to do. By the third day, we’d mostly stopped talking among ourselves, because there was really nothing left to say. Sara might be anywhere. Every so often, I would think that it was my fault all this had happened to her, and to Elizabeth and Alan and Arthur.
If I had just joined my husband in the New World, or if I had followed Arthur’s advice and at least moved to the toy factory in Nuremberg instead of stubbornly insisting on staying in England and trying to save Christmas . . . I had never felt so terrible, or so helpless. And yet, deep inside I still believed that there was no coincidence in our Christmas mission and that I had remained in Canterbury for some great purpose.

  On what we reckoned must be December 24, the day before Christmas, there were more footsteps on the stone. Two guards unlocked the door, and one called, “Layla Nicholas, come forward.” I stood up with some difficulty. My legs were stiff from sitting on the floor for so long.

  “What do you want with me?” I asked, trying to sound brave.

  “I don’t want anything,” the guard said. “There’s someone to see you, so come on up. I’ve been told not to tie your hands, but don’t get any ideas about trying to escape. There are men with guns upstairs, and they wouldn’t mind shooting a violent traitor like you.”

  “I’m not violent, and I’m not a traitor,” I said.

  “That’s not how Mr. Culmer and the mayor tell it,” he replied, and gestured for me to come out of the cell.

  I slowly made my way up the stairs. When I reached the main floor I had to shield my face with my hands to block out the sunlight coming through the windows, because the glare hurt my eyes. When I lowered my hands again I saw someone familiar. Oliver Cromwell, dressed in plain Puritan black, looked at me sorrowfully.

  “You can leave us alone,” he told the guards. “Missus Nicholas will not attack me or attempt to escape.”

  “Our orders from the mayor are not to leave her,” one of the guards said. “She’s a nasty one, she is.”

  “My orders outrank the mayor’s,” Cromwell said. “Go.” The guards did. He turned back to me and said, “I thought you’d be hungry, missus. There is cheese here on the table, and clean water in a cup. Refresh yourself.”

  It was a kind gesture, and I grabbed a hunk of cheese and began eating it. I was sorry I had to touch the food with my filthy hands; in the light of day I could see the dirt caked under my fingernails. I was sure I smelled very bad, but Cromwell was enough of a gentleman not to mention it or to wrinkle his nose at my odor.

  “Missus Nicholas, I regret very much to find you in this situation,” Cromwell said. “I did my best to warn you. Now, you must have the sense to cooperate fully with the mayor tomorrow on the so-called Christmas Day, so that we can end your suffering and all get on with our lives.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked suspiciously.

  “Christmas is gone from England, and your plot to save it has failed,” Cromwell said. “You must surely realize that. We can’t have any more Christmas riots like the one you helped organize for the apprentices in London two years ago. If the people think they can have their holiday just by demanding it, then they next might decide to demand the restoration of the king. He, of course, has greatly disappointed me. He never intended to bargain in good faith, and give Parliament its proper influence. Well, a bad end is coming for him. But it doesn’t have to be that way for you. Tomorrow, Mayor Sabine expects you and your three friends to stand up in front of this prison and call out to everyone that you renounce Christmas Day and all of its sinfulness. Do it, and afterward you’ll be set free.”

  “Does Blue Richard Culmer know about this?” I asked. I knew there was no use trying to convince Cromwell I had nothing to do with the Apprentice Protest.

  Cromwell sighed. “He didn’t like it, but it was not his decision. I have consulted with Mayor Sabine. If Culmer had his way, the four of you would already have been executed. But the vast majority of us now in power are not bloodthirsty, missus. Be reasonable. You cannot save Christmas, so save yourself.”

  “And if I don’t do as you and the mayor want?”

  “Then you and your friends will be placed in the Canterbury stocks for all of Christmas Day, and afterward you will be taken to London for trial before Parliament. The charge will be treason. After you’re found guilty, and of course you will be, all four of you will be thrown into the Tower of London and kept there forever. Don’t let that happen. Speak against Christmas tomorrow, and I myself will take you to the London docks and pay your passage on a ship to the New World and your husband.”

  “I can’t renounce Christmas,” I said. “I love all the good things it stands for. I disagree with some of your beliefs, Mr. Cromwell, but I would never tell you to renounce them or be judged a traitor. That, I suppose, is the difference between us. And I promise you this: You will never successfully ban Christmas. You can’t imprison everyone who supports the holiday. There wouldn’t be a thousand people left free in England if you did. It may happen gradually rather than immediately, but all you believe you have accomplished—removing the king, giving full power to Parliament, creating a country that abides by your beliefs and no others—will be undone because you tried to take away the most wonderful celebration of the year. I don’t want my freedom lost, but I want people to have Christmas more.”

  “So you refuse.”

  “I do.”

  Cromwell reached for his wide-brimmed black hat. “Then, Missus Layla Nicholas, I will see you next in the halls of Parliament, perhaps in a week. And I will take no pleasure in what happens to you there.”

  I was returned to the cell, where Arthur, Alan, and Elizabeth asked me what had happened. I told them, and added I thought they could each save themselves if they would stand up the next day and renounce Christmas as Cromwell and Sabine wanted.

  “But you won’t do that?” Alan asked.

  “No,” I said. “Perhaps outrage over what Parliament does to me will rouse public spirit and help save Christmas after all. There will be no disgrace if any of you makes a different choice.”

  But they didn’t. I spent the rest of the day thinking about what I had told Sara—that great achievement always requires great sacrifice and how we each must decide how much we are willing to risk for our beliefs.

  It was just dawn on December 25, 1647, when a troop of armed guards came to the cell and roughly pulled us up the steps. We were brought outside into the cold morning light. Our appearances, I knew, were appalling. Our clothes were nasty and torn, our exposed skin was filthy, and our legs were so weak we could barely stand as we were locked into the stocks. The guards hung holly and green boughs and signs saying “Christmas Criminals” in front of us. Town criers began to stroll up and down High Street, calling out that Mayor Sabine expected all shops to be open and business conducted as usual. Then they shouted that anyone defying these orders would join the Christmas criminals in the stocks. A dozen black-cloaked Puritans gathered in front of us and called out insults. A few tossed handfuls of dirt and pebbles in our faces, but we were already so grimy the added filth made little difference. The rest of the townspeople tried to hurry by without staring. After an hour the criers changed messages. Now they informed everyone that at high noon, Mayor Sabine would come to the stocks to make a public address.

  Alan, Elizabeth, Arthur, and I remained hunched over in the stocks. We didn’t talk. It took all our strength to keep our legs from collapsing, which would have been even more painful since we would then have hung from the stocks by our necks and wrists. About noon, as the winter sun shone weakly overhead, we sensed movement behind us, and Mayor Sabine appeared, surrounded by members of the Trained Band. He had a long, written speech in his hand and maneuvered in front of the stocks as a crowd began to gather. I waited almost numbly for him to begin what I knew would be a tirade against Christmas and a reminder to look hard at the traitors, because their fate would be shared by anyone who continued to support the sinful holiday.

  Sabine turned and gave the four of us in stocks a long, disgusted look, turned back toward the crowd, held his speech in front of him, cleared his throat loudly, and proclaimed, “Good people of Canterbury, it is pleasant to see you going about an ordinary day instead of indulging in unlawful Christmas activities. As
a sign of its love for godly people, your Parliament has condemned Christmas as illegal, and all those who continue to celebrate it are criminals. You see before you four evildoers who intended to terrorize you today at the head of a mob, burning shops and beating people in an attempt to force you to engage in drunken, evil acts that insult Jesus rather than indicate thanks for his birth. But we have saved you from them! I find great pleasure in announcing that tomorrow they will be taken in chains to London, where they will be tried by Parliament and—”

  My head was held in place by the stocks, so I couldn’t be sure what Mayor Sabine saw, only that, whatever it was, it caused him to stop talking, drop the pages of his speech, and motion for the dozen soldiers from the Trained Band to raise their muskets. Elizabeth, in stocks to my left, had a better view toward the West Gate and the beginning of High Street, and suddenly she gasped, “Is it really possible?” Then there was the thudding of footsteps from every direction, and a great procession swept in front of me, and I saw that, yes, it was.

  Sara, John Mason, and the blacksmith named Clark made certain they led the group at the West Gate, since it was their intention to rescue the four “Christmas criminals” from the stocks. As the town bell tower tolled noon, the marchers surged forward from six different directions.

  CHAPTER Twenty-two

  We learned later what happened to Sara after her parents and I were arrested. On the night that Culmer captured us, she sat up waiting for our return until well after midnight. Then, overcome with weariness and sure that our meeting at the barn was just taking longer than expected, she went up to her loft bed and slept.