How Mrs. Claus Saved Christmas (5 page)

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 ends 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.

My reconnaissance yielded other useful information. I counted five children in the group. All were barefoot, a painful state in a time when roads were strewn with rocks. I returned to the market to claim the bread, dried fruit, and blankets I hadn't been able to carry the day before—they still comprised quite an armful—but I also added five child-sized pairs of sandals to the load.

That night, I went out again, and this time things went smoothly. I found the camp, quietly made my way to the tents, and left bread and fruit by the sleeping mats of the snoring adults. Two of the older ones shivered in the cool night air, because they had nothing to cover themselves with. I left a blanket for each. Finally, I left a pair of sandals by the side of each sleeping child. I took a moment to study their faces, which were streaked with dirt. How hard their lives must be, I thought, constantly moving from place to place, often required to do the same hard fieldwork as grown-ups, always worried about whether, at night, there would be any supper at all. Well, they would have one very special morning, at least.

I made my empty-handed way back to the inn and lay down, but I simply couldn't sleep. I was too excited. As soon as it was dawn, I hurried back toward the nomad camp, and there by the light of the still-rising sun I saw five little figures dancing with glee, twirling in the dust on their new, treasured sandals even as their parents called for them to come to the fire and enjoy a tasty, nourishing breakfast of bread and fruit.

It was a wonderful moment for me, too, and in the next years I was blessed to have many, many more of them. We learn in the Bible that it is better to give than to receive, and I was reminded of the truth in this every time I did my gift-giving. The satisfaction I felt, and the joy that washed over me, when I left food or clothing or blankets for those in need more than made up for the frustrations that continued to plague me.

The main problem was that each wonderful moment of gift-giving required whole days and weeks of preparation. I had known from the start that I would have to keep moving about, traveling as far as I could between the places where I left the gifts. To stay in one place too long would be to invite discovery of who I was and what I was doing. My intention had been to divide my time between big cities and small villages, enjoying diversity in my happy task. There were plenty of poor folk everywhere. But I discovered it was difficult to make my way to country villages and impossible to properly carry out my mission once I was in them. In small towns, strange single women were objects of scorn, pity, or a combination of both. There was no way for me to quietly blend into the population, watching to learn where the poorest people lived, what food or clothing they needed most, and then purchasing these things before quietly leaving them beside the right sleeping mats during the night. Just the act of a lone woman buying many loaves of bread or pairs of sandals would set all the residents of small towns to gossiping, and when these very same things were left in the night for the poorest people in the village to enjoy, well, it would be no mystery who had done the gift-giving. A few times I tried buying these things in big cities, then transporting them with me to the country communities, but that proved much too difficult. If anything drew more attention than a lone woman arriving in a hamlet, it was a lone woman arriving with great packs of provisions and clothing.

That was one reason I mostly had to keep to the cities. The other involved transportation. It might take me several weeks just to find some way to get from one place to another, let alone make the journey. I didn't mind walking, but, as my former Niobrara neighbors had told me, that was too dangerous. Bandits lurked along every road, waiting to prey on travelers foolish enough to be on their own. I thought about buying a mule and wagon, but their price would have substantially reduced the money I had to purchase gifts. The only economical, and safe, way for me to get from one place to the next was to find caravans heading to the same places I wished to go. Usually, it would not cost much for me to rent a place on one of the wagons or carts in the caravan. Then, along with dozens or even hundreds of others I would make my slow, bumpy way to another major city. At the very least, every trip would take days, and some took weeks. If roads were bad or wagons broke down, the caravan might make only a few miles' progress between dawn and dark.