The baron crawled into town around noon.
First came his retainers, shackled in sores; then his long-toothed guardsmen, lurching and leaning on their polearms; then finally him, his candlewax-faced chef and his chef’s-mate, the latter two tending to the giant glutinous cauldron he dragged behind his scabrous bulk.
“He is coming to town,” called the retainers. “Make way, make way, make way for the baron, whose blessed mass has succumbed to this place! Make a way away!”
Folks made it away, but a few sickos came to watch and wait and praise his lumpened lesions, hands trembling with joy and palsy and joy and fear and joy.
“Hurrah!” they cheered as the blisters popped under their palms and anointed them with startlingly clear and watery fluids. “He blesses us! The baron blesses us! HURRAH!” Their cheers made the baron shudder and cringe until the chef’s-mate could beat them back with his long-handled ladle, patriotic fervor blinding them to the pain. “Hurrah!”
There was no time for this sort of thing. The feast was already prepared and boiling fierce. Mistletoe, deadly and delicious, a humid fog arising from the jellied bowl. The steam alone could stagger a healthy human; the taste would kill small animals; the colours were unspeakable and unguessable and probably unknowable in general and it poured down the baron’s pleading throat even as he whimpered and cringed at its searing heat.
“Kiss!” chanted the retainers, slapping their palsied palms together. “Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!” and indeed the baron extended his tongue and lips and uvula into the cauldron and cleaned it clearly from top to bottom and all around the rim until not one drop of the deadly brew remained.
“Bring the bread!” shouted the chef, eyes perspiring under the weight of his beard. “Bring the bread!” roared the guards as they bashed in doors and kicked down barricades and crawled through windows and down chimneys. “We have no bread!” squealed and lied and pled the townsfolk, but they were merely lies for the sake of lies and nobody believed them or heard them as the bread was extracted and carried to the chef’s-mate for sprinkling with the scalding spice and bright gewgaws and grubs before it was held aloft to the baron’s maw for the ceremonial One Big Bite. One big bite per loaf per household; that was the rule, the truth, the lie that sealed the pact.
“HE IS OURS!” screamed the retainers.
“WE ARE HIS!” shouted the patriotic maniac sickos, who were already being handed the bells and chains and bright-eyed illnesses to initiate themselves into his flock. They had far to travel tonight to reach all towns in his domain, and little left to do. “BRINGER OF GIFTS! THE LIE THAT IS REAL! THE SPIRIT OF THE SEASONS! HAIL!”
“HAIL!”
“HAIL!”
“HAIL!”
“HAIL!” and with the last repetition a true hail descended from the baron’s mouth, not of vomit but of precious treasure; stones and shells and small dead things from his gut polished and spun and shined by the mistletoe-and-gingered-bread slurry into bright things of beauty that would adorn many a wrist and neck and finger for years. The retainers brought them door to door, forced them through cracks and hurled them into dwellings, dumped them into drawers and ppoured them into socks.
“GIFTS!” they shrieked as they swarmed and scurried. “GIFTS! GIFTS!” until the ground was clear again but for the muddy and fouled boot-prints of the baron’s groaning and wobbling single leg where it clawed in the slush and snow and muck.
“Say fare well to the baron Sant Antanta!” screamed the chef atop the cauldron, his eyes alight and the candles on his face melting into a red blaze. “We bid you farewell, but do not weep! HE SHALL BE BACK AGAIN ONE DAY!”
And so he would, and so he left for another year, for another long winter’s eve.