Author: P. Molnar, Word Count: 2,072
Featured in Midwinter Archaeological Story Moot: Live Stream – Twixtmas 2025
The thing he had feared the most had come to pass. A whiteout. And early evening was setting in.
In the current conditions, he could barely see where he was headed. But he kept pulling his smaller sled, defiantly. The sled was filled with dry branches and boughs he had gathered as firewood in one of the monastery-owned bits of woodland. In the winter countryside, not far from Leles, not far from its old and well-known monastery.
Worse yet were the strong, freezing, biting winds. Enveloping him from all sides, slowing him down, chilling him down to the bone.
It was the year of the Lord 1424, the 23rd of December, a day before Christmas Eve.
He felt so close, yet so far away from the village and the monastery.
Though he considered himself a pious enough man, perhaps he had pushed his luck a few hours ago. He now felt foolish for setting off to gather firewood so late in the afternoon. The dark blue and reddish-pink clouds in the winter sky warned of potential snows and winds. He felt he was swift-footed enough to drag the sled to the nearby woodland, stock up on some dry wood, then return back to the monastery before nightfall. The snow was largely ankle-deep, so it seemed a simple enough task.
Now it seemed a daft idea instead. About the only advantage he had was that he was on a lowland.Â
Aside from the snow under his feet, and the snowflakes wildly billowing in the cold, ruthless wind, against an ever darker evening sky, he saw very little. He didn’t even have a lantern with him, so great had been his confidence of returning back in time. Once he’ll become engulfed by the night time darkness, what hope will he have, in this snowstorm?
For a moment, he raised his head upward and exhaled, the mist of freezing breath leaving his mouth…
…and he saw a bright light in the sky. It wasn’t particularly big or strong, but it was bright.
Strange. The entire sky was dark, save for that one point of light. Having nothing else to lose, he decided to follow that light.
As he walked roughly towards the light in the sky, still stubbornly pulling his sled, snow crunching underneath his warm, fur-lined boots, he soon noticed another light. Even smaller. This time, low on the horizon. It lay in the same direction as the mysterious light above.
Could it be ? A light at the monastery ? Maybe even the lantern at the Nativity scene ?
—-
About two months ago, the monastery was visited by a wandering Franciscan. He met with the abbot, and in one of their conversations, mentioned the idea of a Nativity scene. An idea invented by the founder of his order, Francis. An idea that other orders in the Church and various laypeople have since embraced, with depictions of the Nativity starting to occur at churches, monasteries, even town squares.
Many of the brothers at the Leles monastery, as well as the laypeople there, the conversi and the donati like him, were rather surprised by the suggestion. Some were even quite resistant to it.
Though there was a sense of camaraderie between the monastic orders of the Church, there was no doubt always some sense of loyalty and preference for one’s own order. A wandering Franciscan suggesting a Nativity scene, to a monastery of Norbertine monks ? Rather bold. Some referred to it explicitly as a daft idea. Why bother depicting the birth of the Saviour three-dimensionally ?
Nevertheless, the abbot liked the thought, and it seemed to grow on him. He leaned ever closer to approving the idea, and had apparently convinced the prior and other higher-ups of the monastery as well. By the beginning of the previous month, the abbot had sent out word to local craftsmen and woodcarvers. In a few weeks, at the beginning of Advent, the Nativity scene was displayed in front of the monastery, on the road to its main gate.
Some had wondered why it was displayed outside, and not within the monastery, but as the abbot noted, it should be outside. To remind every local and wayfarer of the events in Bethlehem. Perhaps to even bring them some courage in the winter cold.
—-
He struggled forward. It had not escaped his notice that the brighter light in the sky had now vanished, disappearing as suddenly as it had appeared. It was all down to the smaller light on the horizon. The biting, gnawing cold wind was still overwhelming, but as he approached the smaller light somewhere ahead, his willpower to endure the ordeal grew.
He could’ve left the sled there and then, and just walked forward to the light in order to save himself, to ensure he wouldn’t collapse in the snow and freeze to death. But he was determined to complete his task, determined to bring that firewood home, as he had promised.
Soon, the light was close. Despite the dark and the snowstorm, on a hillock ahead of him, he could see the faint silhouette of the monastery, including that of the Church of the Discovery of the Holy Cross. The village of Leles, just a bit down the road from the monastery, was also faintly visible.
Passing by the Nativity scene, exhausted, he stopped for a moment and observed its artwork. The simple wooden sculptures, of the Child in the manger, Mary, Joseph, an ox, a donkey, some shepherds with sheep, brought him a moment of relief and comfort. Above the scene was a wooden Star of Bethlehem, and in the background, stood a simple wooden lantern with a rawhide shroud, placed there to provide light for the Nativity.
Was… Was this the light that had guided him back ? He wondered. It wasn’t that strong a light.
Whatever the case, a few more steps, and he’ll finally be at the monastery.
He clenched his weary hand into a fist and beat on the thick wooden gate of the monastery. Waited, knocked his fist against the wood again, loudly. Footsteps approached, a small hatch on the entrance door opened, revealing two eyes, then promptly shut. The door opened carefully. One of the monks of the Premonstratensian order peered out, holding up a wooden lantern, not unlike the one at the Nativity scene. His habit was as white as the snow outside, albeit a bit worn by years of use.
“You’ve come back. We were worried you’d get lost in this harsh weather.”
“As was I. Luckily, there was something that guided me back”, he noted, and gestured in the rough direction of the wooden Nativity. “Thank you for opening.”
The monk nodded and helped him drag the sled with the firewood inside, behind the gate.
However, as the layman turned to walk inside the monastery, he suddenly felt something small and light slipping from his belt… he then heard a quiet clanking sound, as if something tiny had hit a metal grate. He looked down towards the cobbled floor and realized… his rosary had slipped from his belt and fell down a narrow metal grate in the floor. A grate that led down a very thin chute. A chute running deep below into the cellars of the monastery, providing fresh air.
“Arg, bother !” he exclaimed under his breath, but quickly covered his mouth. He was tired and this little mishap had caused his frustration to rise to the forefront, but swearing at the monastery felt inappropriate.
“What is it ? Something wrong ?” asked the monk, quietly and kindly.
“Oh, nothing,” replied the layman. “I dropped something. Maybe I’ll find it later. For now, I am looking forward to sitting by the fireplace in the kitchen and eating some nice, hot food.”
The monk did a silent little nod and both of them began walking to the kitchen and refectory wing.
The layman was certain he’d look for the rosary down in the cellars. Perhaps after the holidays.
—-
Increasingly, she felt that she had underestimated the worsening weather outside.
Sitting snuggly in the warm interior of her car, things were looking ever more worrying beyond the windshield. She had just turned off the radio, after the old 1980s mainstay by Chris Rea had concluded, followed by the latest weather forecast. The 80s song’s optimism seemed misplaced.
Driving slowly and carefully, the hum of the car and heating her only companions now, she wasn’t enamoured with the fact that the road and surrounding landscape was ever harder to see clearly. There was the partly snowed-in road, the snow on the ground, snow in the air, even snow streaming just above the road… and what visibility the car headlights could offer.
The weather forecasts warned of heavier snowfall even down here in the lowlands, exacerbated by strong winds. Winds carrying snowflakes throughout the landscape, packing it into snow drifts, even over the main roads. Not every field and meadow along the road had or could have portable barriers set up, against the formation of snow drifts on the roadway.
And it was already dark outside. The last evening before tomorrow’s Christmas Eve had set in.
She was stuck in her car, the snowstorm intensifying, the darkness covering the whole world around her, save for the front of the car and the bit of road ahead, illuminated by the headlights. Perhaps it was a daft idea to ignore the forecasts’ warnings on the weather this evening posing a potential risk to traffic. Coulda woulda shoulda. She was here, in the here and now, she had to focus on getting out of this situation.
In about three minutes, she suddenly noticed something around the upper right corner of the windshield. A light ? It was fairly bright, but not too big. A star ? The ISS in orbit, overhead ? Who knows. The rest of the sky was completely dark. That point of light reminded her of something, but she wasn’t quite sure… She shooed away a strange thought that had occurred in her mind.
Following the light in the sky for a few minutes, her headlights suddenly revealed the silhouette of a stone bridge east of the main road, not far from it. And just a few metres ahead, a crossroad, with a local road, to the right, connecting to the main road. She had reached the crossroad at Leles.
Looking to her right, eastward, she now saw the electric streetlamps and Christmas lights of the village, including some lights around the nearby monastery. The same monastery whose cellars she and her colleagues were to explore in a few months, come spring.
She steered the car onto the road leading into the village and proceeded slowly onward, the wind ceaselessly blowing snow onto the road. She had a cousin living in Leles. If worse comes to worst, even though she didn’t like the idea of pestering her, she could spend the night at her house.
Once she stopped the car at her cousin’s house and shut the door, she had an inkling to look up. Strange. The sky was wholly dark again. Whatever the light was, it was nowhere to be seen.
—-
Winter had departed some months ago, and the new archaeological survey at the monastery in Leles had continued apace. Arriving that morning, the fourth day of the new research phase, she was surprised when a colleague called her down into the cellars. Into a previously inaccessible area, that was only reopened or rediscovered yesterday.
“We’ve found a well-preserved item in that narrow space. Possibly some remnant of the medieval ventilation system for the cellars, later walled off.” he explained, led her to a portable table with finds and turned on a lamp. “Nice little find, don’t you think ?”
She picked up the small object. Weathered, but not decomposed, still holding together… it was a wooden rosary, a set of rosary beads on a thread, with a small, simple wooden cross at one end.
It seemed quite possible it was many centuries old.
“Looks old, doesn’t it ?”
“Definitely.”
“Wonder what century it’s from ?” asked her colleague. “The space we found it in was isolated for a fairly long time.”
“You have to wonder how it got there. Maybe someone dropped it by accident ?”
“We’ll leave the speculation for later.”
Later analysis showed the rosary was between five hundred and six hundred years old.
She felt that who originally owned the rosary would likely remain a mystery, possibly forever.
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