Saint Nicholas
Ursula was downstairs stoking up the fire while her aunt finished up the day’s knitting when a knock came at the door. It was getting late for customers, but this close to Christmas, you never knew, so Ursula rubbed the soot from her hands on her apron and went to answer.
“Oh ho ho! Have you been good, my child?”
Ursula grinned in spite of the fact that she was exhausted from a long day’s spinning and no longer a child, to boot. It was the baker from across the alleyway, Herr Hanselmann, dressed in a long white robe with a red tabard over top and a pointed white hat. He carried a white shepherd’s crook and a basket of stutenkerl, little sweet breads baked into the shape of men. He was playing Saint Nicholas, the patron saint of bakers, as he did every year, going round the neighborhood handing out treats to children. He winked at Ursula as he handed her a stutenkerl. “Of course you have, my dear.”
She thanked him and shut the door just as her aunt came downstairs to see who it was. When the older woman saw the little bread man in Ursula’s hand, she snorted and rolled her eyes. “That old fool. Why, you’re old enough to have babies of your own now, if any man would have you.” She pulled her knit cap down around her ears and plopped down in the chair by the fire with a vehemence that forced a protest from the poor, old piece of furniture.
Ursula bit the head off the stutenkerl and chewed to keep herself from saying what she was thinking: You’re one to talk–you ran off the last two men who came courting because you didn’t want to have to pay for a spinning girl, and cook, and housekeeper…. But truth be told, Ursula hadn’t any interest in marrying the boys she knew in Kiefersheim. They talked about the prospect of a wife the way they talked about a new dairy cow. Meanwhile, Ursula’s father had actually taught her to read, and to figure, and a bit about the world beyond the town walls. So, she found herself a bit overqualified for the position.
Ursula watched her aunt warm her arthritic hands at the fire and tried to imagine her as a mother, with some tender feelings for someone. And in fact, Ursula’s mother had told her that Aunt Elisabeth had, many years ago, both a boy and a girl. But each had died in turn in infancy, and then she had lost her husband as well in the First Hussite Crusade. So, she had reason to be bitter at the world. Ursula stuffed the rest of the stutenkerl in her apron pocket and went to the fire, put her hand on her aunt’s shoulder. “Dinner’s almost ready, Auntie. Would you like a little mulled wine while we’re waiting? I put apple in it.”
Her aunt sighed. “I don’t suppose it would hurt.” Ursula smiled and got two mugs of glühwein and handed her aunt one and sat down on the bench on the other side of the fire with the other. She took a sip, and the heady, spicy warmth settled in her stomach and lifted the tired ache from her shoulders. Out through the chimney, she could just hear Herr Hanselmann’s loud, merry “Oh ho ho” as he went down the street with his basket of Christmas treats.
The Rookery 