Snow had fallen twice since Martinmas, but not yet with conviction. It clung stubbornly in hollows and along the shaded eaves of the gatehouse, white as ash but thin as a monk’s worn robe. The air on Christmas Eve was damp and sharp, heavy with the scent of cold pine and distant hearthfires. Smoke drifted low across the fields like a pilgrim's prayer, caught between earth and sky. From the high watch at the gatehouse, Halward surveyed the scene with a soldier's detachment.
Carpenters from Nottingham labored under the bleached gray sky, their cheeks raw from the wind, their hands cracked despite rough woolen gloves. Timber groaned as beams were hoisted into place. Ropes strained against pulleys. The steady rhythm of hammers filled the morning, each strike reverberating off stone walls like the slow toll of a monastery bell. It was the most life Woodgate had seen in years.
For the first time in many seasons, the barracks roof gleamed with new thatch. The kitchen door no longer hung crooked on one hinge, and even the goat shed boasted a new crossbeam. All of it paid for by the new tolls — a tax not only on goods but on movement itself. Names were written down, papers inspected, tolls collected. Travelers without writs were turned back into the forest. Those without coin vanished into the mist. The gate, once a silent witness to passage and prayer, had become a sieve.
Halward noted each repair with a careful, spare hand in the ledger. He said little to the workers, though he heard their muttered conversations: about rising levies, about coins weighed thinner each year, about forest shadows that grew heavier with each season. One carpenter joked that Woodgate looked more like a grave marker than a fort. Another said it was a place that seemed to watch the past more keenly than the road ahead. Halward made no reply. Let them talk. The work was sound.
Wilmot, for his part, threw himself into the day’s labors with boyish enthusiasm. His boots, too large and poorly laced, were soon soaked and caked with mud. Flour from the morning’s bread still powdered his cheeks, and his hair stuck out at impossible angles. Yet there was a grace in his energy, an unpolished devotion. He fetched hammers, hoisted pails of nails, and tripped only twice. Arrow, the raven, flitted after him from rafter to post, the healed wing permitting short, uncertain flights. In the thin light, Arrow’s black feathers shimmered like ink stirred through water.
By midday, Oswin emerged from Saint Hubert’s Chapel, his mantle pulled close against the biting wind. His beard was frosted at the edges, and his walking stick thudded softly against the packed earth. He surveyed the bustle with a wry eye.
"That ladder," he said, pointing to a crooked scaffold lashed against the stable, "is more liability than aid. You’ll have a monk’s back before you’re thirty, boy."
Wilmot grinned through chattering teeth. "I’m stronger than I look, Os."
"Then learn to lift with your legs, not your pride."
Halward, hearing the exchange, closed the ledger with a decisive snap. "Enough," he called. "It’s Christmas Eve. The work is done."
One of the carpenters, a bald man with blue-stained fingers, leaned against his mallet and squinted at him. "You’ll hold Mass here?"
"If a priest crosses our path," Halward said. "And if Providence is kind."
As if summoned by the jest, a lone rider crested the bend beyond the gate. His pace was steady, neither hurried nor hesitant. His cloak was monastic black, dulled by road-dust and ash, the hem frayed from countless miles. A battered staff was slung across his back, and a satchel hung at his side. The hood was drawn low, shadowing his face against the gathering gloom. Yet the gate swung inward of its own accord, slow and solemn, as though recognizing the weight of his purpose.
Halward descended from the watch and approached the traveler with measured steps.
"Name and business?" he asked.
"Aelered," the man replied, voice low and calm. "Benedictine. From Rufford, by way of Blyth Priory. I seek passage to Nottingham."
Oswin came forward, studying the man with narrowed eyes. "You carry the road’s dust and something more."
The monk lowered his hood, revealing a face weathered by the long road but suffused with a quiet certainty. "I had a dream," he said simply. "A gate flanked by ash trees and crowned in frost. Beyond it, a chapel lit by the breath of a stag."
At those words, Oswin’s face changed. He stepped forward, arms open in solemn welcome. "Then you have found the place you sought. This is Woodgate. And there," he nodded toward the chapel half veiled by mist, "stands the house you saw."
Father Aelered inclined his head, humility plain. "Then Providence has led me rightly."
"Will you stay?" Oswin asked.
"If there is need, and if I am welcome," the monk answered.
"You are both," Oswin said, the words carrying the weight of ceremony. "And if your strength allows, will you celebrate the Mass tonight? Christmas Mass."
The corners of Aelered’s mouth lifted in a smile—not broad, but luminous with quiet joy. "Gladly."
Oswin turned to the assembled workers. "The day is done. Your hands have honored the season well. Go home now to your hearths and families."
The carpenters gathered their tools with murmured thanks and disappeared down the forest road, their breath steaming like incense in the cold air. Snow began to fall—not a blizzard, but a steady sifting, fine as sifted flour, covering the tracks of men and beast alike.
Wilmot swept the path to the chapel clean twice over, though the snow reclaimed it almost immediately. Arrow perched atop the lantern post near the gate, his head tucked beneath one wing, dreaming perhaps of farther skies.
Halward stood at the threshold of the gatehouse, hands clasped behind his back, watching the final preparations unfold. The world seemed to hold its breath, balanced on the edge of something unseen. In the gathering dusk, Woodgate was cloaked anew, not in decay or duty, but in expectancy—as if it too awaited the arrival of something sacred.
By the time the last nail was hammered, the last broom set aside, and the last shadow stretched long against the stone, all was ready.
***
The snow had ceased by the ninth hour, and by midnight, the sky had opened above Sherwood with a clarity rare even in the dead of winter. Stars glittered like spilled salt on dark velvet, and the air held a sacred stillness, a silence so profound it seemed that the whole earth held its breath. The trees stood as frozen sentinels, their limbs crusted in hoarfrost, and between them glimmered the faint, welcoming light of Saint Hubert’s Chapel, its humble windows casting fractured halos upon the packed snow.
Inside, Oswin moved with solemn purpose, lighting each taper with a flame borne from a single enduring coal saved from the chapel hearth. Each candle he touched sprang to life with a breath of golden light, a quiet testimony against the vast and creeping darkness. The mingled scents of beeswax, pine resin, and rosemary steeped the air until the chapel seemed less a place of stone and timber than a living prayer.
Father Aelered stood before the altar, arranging the sacred vessels with a careful, almost reverent precision—the paten, the chalice, the folded linen. His whispered prayers, half-heard, braided Latin invocations with the deeper silence, weaving an unseen tapestry of hope. He wore a plain black cloak beneath his vestments, the mark of a Benedictine brother who had walked many hard miles to arrive here.
Outside, Halward made his slow, deliberate rounds. His boots left shallow prints in the snow, and his breath rose in measured clouds. His hand rested near the hilt of his sword, though more in devotion than in readiness; here, the watch was not against men, but against despair. He moved with the ritualized grace of a guardian between worlds.
Wilmot, wrapped in a patched cloak two sizes too large, swept the last stubborn dustings of snow from the chapel’s threshold. Each breath he exhaled shimmered and vanished, as fleeting as a whispered Amen. Above him, Arrow perched in the crook of the chapel arch, a black sentinel against the stars, his dark eyes gleaming with strange intelligence, as if already sensing the holiness gathering around them.
And then they came.
From the winding forest paths, from hollows and ruined cottages, from camps hidden beneath ancient oaks, the folk of Sherwood gathered. They came not in great number but with great purpose: a bent widow clutching a rosary of worn wood, two soot-stained boys whose thin arms clung together in brotherhood, a tinker whose hands bore the scars of countless winters, a midwife bearing a satchel of dried herbs, a woodsman draped in a patched cloak the color of moss, a veiled woman moving with unnatural grace, a limping veteran who leaned on a staff marked with carved prayers.
And among them, unnoticed save by Wilmot’s fleeting glance, walked a tall man in a plain gray cloak, whose step stirred neither snow nor sound, whose face, when glimpsed, seemed alight with a glow not born of stars or fire.
They entered the chapel without ceremony, crossing themselves or bowing their heads, their movements whispering old, half-remembered devotions. They filled the benches and the stones before the altar, some kneeling, others simply sitting in patient expectation. It was a congregation of the poor, the broken, the forsaken—those to whom heaven still bent low to touch.
When the last had entered and settled, Oswin pulled shut the heavy chapel doors, and the night was sealed out.
Father Aelered approached the altar and raised his hands. His voice, soft yet strong, filled the space: "Dominus vobiscum."
A murmur rose in answer: "Et cum spiritu tuo."
The Kyrie followed, a ripple of entreaty among the assembled:
"Kyrie eleison. Christe eleison. Kyrie eleison."
The words hung in the air, joined by the flutter of candlelight against ancient stone. Then, lifting their hearts, they sang—though many barely knew the words, though many mouths moved in silence—the Gloria:
"Gloria in excelsis Deo, et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis. Laudamus te, benedicimus te, adoramus te, glorificamus te..."
The hymn rose in stumbling beauty, a patchwork of sound stitched together by longing and the deep ache for joy.
At the peak of the Gloria, as if stirred by a signal only he could hear, Arrow stirred from his perch. With a sudden lift of his dark wings, he took flight, circling once around the rafters of the chapel. His shadow passed across the faces of the gathered, and none cried out; instead, they lowered their heads, as if recognizing a blessing moving among them. The black shape of the raven cut a single, slow arc through the flickering candlelight and returned to rest above the door, silent and still.
The people exhaled together, a breathless hush falling over the chapel.
Oswin stepped forward with a worn Psalter, his voice rough but resonant as he read from the appointed psalm for the Nativity:
"Cantate Domino canticum novum; cantate Domino, omnis terra. Annuntiate de die in diem salutare eius."
The words, though many did not grasp their fullness, settled into the bones of those gathered, a lullaby as old as the stones.
Father Aelered then opened the Gospel and began to read, the Latin flowing like a slow river:
"Et pastores erant in regione eadem vigilantes et custodientes vigilias noctis super gregem suum..."
The story of the shepherds' vigil, the angel’s song, the infant in the manger, unfurled like a woven tapestry before them.
When he finished, he closed the Gospel with reverence and lifted his eyes to those before him.
"This night," Father Aelered said, his English plain and deliberate, "an angel spoke to shepherds—to men who owned little but their cloaks. To men forgotten by kings and priests alike. Yet it was to them the tidings were given: 'Fear not; for behold, I bring you good news of great joy.'"
He let the words settle.
"Christ was born not among silk and gold but in a manger, among beasts, beneath a roof of rough timber. His first breath was drawn not in a throne room, but beneath the watching eyes of ox and ass."
He swept his gaze gently across the gathered—the laborers, the widows, the forsaken.
"You who labor beneath the yoke of seasons and sorrow—you are nearer to that manger than any lord. You who know the long nights, the hunger of hope. You are the ones to whom the angels still sing."
His voice dropped, rich with feeling.
"So tonight we keep watch—not with arms, but with hearts. Not for kings, but for the Light that is come into the world. And even here, between stone and tree, the Christ is born anew."
The silence that followed was deep and whole.
Then came the Offertory.
Father Aelered lifted the paten and the chalice.
"Benedic, Domine, creaturam istam panis, sicut benedixisti quinque panes in deserto..."
He raised the bread.
"Benedic, Domine, creaturam istam vini, quam ex vite processisse dignatus es..."
He raised the wine.
The Sanctus followed, low and trembling:
"Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus Dominus Deus Sabaoth. Pleni sunt caeli et terra gloria tua."
Then came the Pater Noster.
"Pater noster, qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum..."
Few spoke it aloud, but all felt its weight.
Bread was consecrated, and wine was blessed upon the altar. As was customary in such humble gatherings, only Father Aelered partook of the Sacrament, consuming the bread and wine with solemn reverence. The gathered folk, though they did not receive, watched with yearning eyes—not out of exclusion, but out of reverence—for to see the Eucharist raised and blessed was to touch, however distantly, the mystery of the Incarnation they had come to honor.
The final blessing fell like a benediction of snow.
"Ite, missa est."
The people rose and departed, some leaving behind tokens: a sprig of holly, a carved bit of bone, a rough wooden coin.
Halward waited at the gate. As Wilmot passed, Halward touched his shoulder and handed him a leather-wrapped bundle.
Wilmot unwrapped it to find a small Book of Hours, worn by countless hands. Within the cover, Halward had written:
"Dominus custodit introitum tuum et exitum tuum."
Wilmot blinked down at the words.
"I can’t read all of it," he murmured.
"You will," Halward said. "The prayers keep watch, as we must."
Oswin called from the doorway, his voice low and sure.
"Come, lad. The fire still waits."
Arrow descended, his wings brushing the air like a whispered Amen, and settled on Wilmot’s shoulder.
Together they stepped back into the chapel's glow, bearing the fragile, burning light of hope.
And beyond them, unseen but surely present, an angel watched and kept his ancient vigil.