The Saint and the Spool
From a 3 word prompt on Instagram by @thehorrornovelnut76. The three words were: "Twinkie, Donkey, Yo-yo."
The first time I told my son about the courage and bravery of Saint Elizabeth, the Martyr of Droske, he had to have been around three years old. It was then nearing the end of the long winter of 1555. A winter when the pox came through our village, and took with it a tenth of our people. Young Michal, so bright and curious in those days, had caught the pox, all of us had, and by some miracle we’d all come through it alive. Roman, my oldest son, had barely had a sniffle. While young Michal had gotten the full force of the fever and the rash. He was still bed-ridden from it.
He was healing, thank Almighty God, but still unable to move much during the days. Barely mattered though, Janina was around the home all day, having just given birth to Ewa, our sixth child and second daughter. She cared for the boy while I took Roman out for the hunt.
But when we were back, I spent every moment I could with the boy. I’d heard tales of so many men in the village who had lost their young to the sickness. I did not know why God saw fit to bless my family. But I knew that I wanted to treasure each moment I had from now until the end.
So I sat with my child at night and during the days. I cared for him—as best I knew how, there were still many things that his mother had to do, as I myself was so inexperienced with the intricacies of child-rearing. But there was always one thing that I was the master of in our parenting: telling stories.
I’d built a long tradition of telling all of the children wild tales. Either on the nights of Feast Days or Holy Days, as they all sat around the hearth together. Or on long storming nights, or the nights when the cold was bitter and the winds howled against our home. When the children could not sleep, I would tell them a tale. Usually one of my own history, with a bit of myth and legend thrown in, to make things a bit more exciting.
I would tell them about the time that I had once been chased by a pack of wolves when I was out hunting as a young man. (Only in the story they were a pack of hell hounds conjured up by the witch of the wood...and I escaped by fighting the hounds off with my bare hands and my Faith in God—instead of climbing up a tree and waiting until they’d left!)
Sometimes I would tell them stories of the history of the land. Of the great people who have brought peace and freedom to our land and our time. The heroes of our past...the ones that demonstrated through their lives, the very essence of courage and faith. For those stories, I always change the ending. I give it a happy one, if I need to. The goal, after all, was to lull the children to sleep with tales, not to frighten them even more. And then, only if the true ending of the tale is dark enough. For I still believe, that in even the most gruesome stories of our Saints and heroes, the Lord still shows His absolute Love for His children.
“Father?” Michal said one night as I lay with him in the deep of that long cold winter.
This night the winds blew harsh and the whining howls that it made as it buffetted our house had the boy frightened. The boy was still on the mend from his bout with the pox, and his bedroom was fiercely cold, so I’d made up a bedroll on the ground near the hearth and lay with him in it for warmth. All the while trying desperately to get the dear boy to sleep as I was myself near exhaustion from a day of gathering wood for the home in the midst of the winter storm. My body ached from the labor. And it was late enough that the rest of the house was soundly asleep. Even baby Ewa.
“Yes, Michal?” I said, my eyes closed and my head rested on the feather pillow that we shared.
“One more?” he said, in a pleading tone. The kind that I can never refuse (a fact the boy had learned and used to his advantage more and more).
“I’ve already told you three stories tonight,” I said.
“Please, Father? Just one more!”
“And then you promise to fall asleep?”
“I promise!”
I lifted my head and looked at him through one tired eye, my eyelid only half-open. He looked back, a pleading expression on his fair child’s face. His blonde hair was long and so weighed down with the sweat of his many nights spent in fever the last few moons. It had been too cold to bathe him. I looked at him trying my best to keep my expression blank, though that face of his made me want to smile.
“I really really promise! I really do! Just one more???”
“Alright, alright,” I said, groaning as I lifted myself up to sit. “You lay down now. No...all the way down, head on the pillow. And when your eyes are tired, you close them, you here? It’s even better that way, because you can see the story in your mind when you have your eyes closed.”
“Okay Father.”
“What story shall I tell now?” I asked, more to myself than to him.
I was planning on telling him about the time that his old Father had once wrestled a bear to save his friends on a long summer hunt. In the true version, the bear had been but a cub with no mother around. And had given up the fight quite quickly and ran back into the woods. But in the version I told my children, it had been a huge black bear with jaws so wide they could bite a full-grown man in half with a single chomp.
“I want to hear about the woman on the wall,” Michal said.
I knew instantly of the woman. A small tapestry that hung in my room. The woman was a Christian Saint. And her story was known by almost all in our land. As she had truly been among the greatest of heroes in the dark times of the Pagan King.
“You want to hear that one?” I said. “Are you sure? It is a frightening tale. But also one of incredible courage, and faith.”
The boy nodded his head.
“Very well,” I said. “Lay your head down and listen.
“The woman on the wall is Saint Elizabeth. She is remembered as a fearless woman of unbreakable faith. A woman who saved the lives of many thousands of Christians and some even say that she should be credited with ending the reign of King Gerard, the Pagan King of Droske. A king who is sometimes called The Scourge of Orthodoxy. (And sometimes called the Antichrist by your Uncle Hugo.)
“But she was not Saint Elizabeth when she entered the torture chambers of King Gerard. She was just Elizabeth. A fair and young woman. A wife. And soon to be a mother. A few more months and the baby in her womb would soon be in her arms.
“There was nothing else in the whole world that Elizabeth looked forward to more than meeting her baby. It would be her firstborn. And she did not know yet whether it would be a baby girl, or a baby boy. But she had dreamed one night, when she had first learned that she was with child, that an angel of the Lord had come to her and told her that she was baring a son. And that the Lord had great plans for her son.
“The angel told Elizabeth not to be afraid of the pain that should would soon go through. (The pains of childbirth, the young mother-to-be had assumed.) The angel told her that the Lord had blessed her pregnancy, and that if Elizabeth agreed to submit herself and her son to the Lord’s will, then he would be able to work great miracles through them both.
“‘If you submit yourself to the Lord,’ said the angel, ‘then through you both, He shall be able to bring about an Age of Peace and of flourishing Christendom in these lands.’
“Elizabeth did not need to think even for an instant. She had been born to devout Christian parents who had taught her the Gospels all her life. In her dream, Elizabeth immediately bowed her head to the angel, and said the same words that the Mother of our Lord had once said to Gabriel: ‘Behold I am the handmaid of the Lord.’
“The angel departed and when Elizabeth woke up, she loved the baby in her womb more and more, and loved the Lord for choosing them both to be the instruments of His will. And it was this memory she held tight in her mind many moons later when she entered into that torture chamber of King Gerard.”
“Father?” Michal spoke up.
The boy had yet to close his eyes...I could tell that he was hooked on the story already. And I was thinking that perhaps I should’ve refused this request tonight, and instead told him a less gripping tale. But it was too late to turn back now.
“Yes?” I said.
“What is a torture chamber?” he said.
“You will see,” I said. “You will see. Just listen to the story. I shall explain it all very soon.”
“Okay...”
“Now lay your head back down, boy. Close your eyes.”
He did so.
The fire in the hearth began to die down and the winds continued to rush and howl outside. A chill started to creep in, so I gathered several more logs and added them to the fire. They crackled and popped as the ice and snow on them melted away. I gathered my pipe, filled it, and lit it using a small twig from the fire. I sat on the bricks and continued the tale.
“You see, King Gerard was a wicked man. As evil as they come. He was no man of God, as our good King Piotr is. No...King Gerard was such an evil man that he feared God. And he feared those who worshipped God even more.”
“He did?” Michal said.
“He did,” I said, blowing a smoke ring. “He persecuted any Christian in the land. He would make them feel great pain—that’s what it means to torture someone—in hopes that he could get them to renounce their faith in God. And if they would not deny their religion, he would have them killed.
“King Gerard was not liked. Not even by those closest to him; his advisers and his court, even his own son, they all despised him because he was wicked and cruel. It is said that the only one in all of the land that liked the King even a little, was the baker who lived in the castle.
“You see, King Gerard was not only known for his great cruelty towards the people that he was supposed to rule and guide, he was also known for his great size.”
“He was a giant?”
“No,” I said. “Not a giant. But a man so fat that the masons had to widen the doorways throughout the entire castle, just so that he could get through them.
“And you’re supposed to be laying there with your eyes closed, remember?”
“Sorry...”
“Now where was I?” I said, and blew another ring of smoke. I saw Michael peak out of one eye, watching me. “Ah yes, the baker.
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