THE LAST LORD OF MISRULE

The old Don was fed up with Christmas before it had even begun. The colleges were closed, the porter's retired for the holiday and the cathedral bells were peeling their excited news all too raucously for his ancient ears. The Medievalist in him had darkened his indulgent heart.

Stooped under the eves of the public house he'd just frequented for a half stout the aging professor wrapped his overcoat tighter round his frame and headed out into the sleet of that December's Christmas storm.

"No newspapers, no new tomes, it's a waste of valuable time!" he grumbled as the shops' lights went out one by one for the start of Christmas Eve night.

With no great hurry he shambled like a tramp through the frightful wind, now dashed with snow, ambling towards his rooms in the old quarter near the Bishop's palace.

"I hope he melts! I can't wait to get home to my books and forget your modern Christmas!" the peevish soul remonstrated with a group of loud children constructing a snow man in their front garden. The reflection of the fairy lights of their gorgeous tree painted his twisted face in reds, blues and yellows.

"Look! A funny old goblin!" they shouted at the crooked man, "A Christmas devil!"

"A devil eh! I'll give you devils! Damn you and your snowman!" the bitter old fool bellowed as the children's mother came out to see what was going on.

The ancient scholar shuffled quickly away tutting to himself and casting all and sundry whom he passed curses and misfortunes.

At the corner of the square, one usually draped in shadow, a small shop remained brightly lit when all the others were now dark and closed for the holiest of nights. The old man had never noticed it before and paused to take a look before the final push through the ice and snow to his quarters.

The window was stuffed with curios and junk from every corner of the world and every age of man. There were spears, drums, toy trains, vases, silver teapots, rusty keys, gilt trays, doubloons, a lilting milk churn and countless more objects rejected by times gone by and accumulating here in this cobwebbed depository.

Experiencing an uncommon urge to look closer the old don entered the establishment. He stamped his shoes on the mat ridding them of filthy snow and shook his mohair hat. There was no proprietor evident so he walked right in and began to browse the piles of bric a brac. 

Suddenly he saw something. Something vaguely familiar. It grabbed his whole attention and he stared with fascination at an object standing at the back of a dusty dresser. It was a ceramic figurine of two boys stood next to each other, one older and taller dressed in dashing garb, wide velvet cap and tights with a huge halberd in his hand  and a smaller child adorned in similar but less extravagant attire. The old fellow was mesmerised.

"A fine and unusual piece isn't it!" said a crackly voice from behind him.

He turned face an old crone with a warty nose and a hairy chin. She smiled a toothy smile revealing alternate blackened teeth.

"What is it?" asked the professor, half-knowing the answer already.

"Ah! Curiosity has the better of you I see! It's a rare thing called the Last Lord of Misrule and his Page".

"How much?"

"To you Sir, thirteen pounds".

"I'll take it!"

The old crone wrapped the figure carefully is some fading newspaper and handed it across the counter.

"How old is it, the figure?" asked the Don as he opened the door to leave.

"At least five hundred years old to this very day!" she cackled and closed the shop turning out the lights.

Intrigued the don retired to his rooms and fingered the figurine with growing fascination. He had something like it already, a large ancient statue of the medieval, gigantic and deformed Pope of Fools.

"I can't believe my luck! Another one!"

He poured himself a sherry and stared at his purchase as it glinted in the firelight from his hearth.

Suddenly starving, he took a wrinkling apple from the bowl and began to peel it with a sharp kitchen knife. He stood over the figure immersed in its ancient glaze.

He suddenly cut his thumb deeply.

"Damn it!"

Blood bubbled out and trickled down his hand and dripped onto the figurine below, where it filled a small depression at the feet of the two boys. 

All at once there was a loud crack and a blast of light blinded the old man. The statue appeared to explode and the room convulsed in a dense rank fog, which stunk to high heaven.

The don retched clutching his throbbing thumb, blood steeping from his wound.

As the mist receded two huge figures stepped out of the murk, the two boys from the figurine, now life-size and very much alive.

The professor cowered as the taller of the two hefted his halberd and jabbed it at the throat of the old man.

"Who be you?" the boy bellowed.

"I'm the professor"

"Where is this? And When? Speak!"

"It's the old City. It's Christmas, 2021."

"Tis Christmas after all! D'ya hear that lad! We've landed on our bastard feet!"

The smaller of the two boys stepped forward. He wore a long jester's hat and carried a bore's head under his arm.

"Tis my Lord! Five hundred year we've slept. Our time has surely come again!"

The old scholar shivered but plucked up the courage to ask the apparition a question.

" And who are you Sir?"

"Why I am Lefwinus, the last of the glorious Lords of Misrule and this be here Odelgarde my faithful page."

"What do you want with me?"

"We want nought from thee old codger, you gave us life! But be warned, t'will be the bloodiest Yule you can envision, a festival of death, an orgy of anatomy but whence we're done you can be King of Reason and rule those cunts we've left!" roared the Lord of Misrule as the two figures smashed through the window and flew into the night.

The old man ran to the shattered pane and peered into the dark.

"God Almighty! What have I done!" he moaned into the infinity of Christmas Eve's sacred sky.

At the end of the road the Bishop's Palace was in full swing for the grand masked ball, a witty nod to the hoary past of the City and a fulsome fecund feast for the present incumbents of high office in the burgh.

Everyone was there; the Mayor, the Aldermen, the Council Men, the Minister, the Duke, The Duchess, the clergy, the Bishop, the deacons, the dons, the industrial greats, the titans, the illustrious and positioned from across the proud metropole.

They thronged and pulsed in magnificently expensive guises, milling round each other like automatons sipping flutes of even more expensive champagne. The rarefied air was filled with the bellicose laughter of the satiated and the titled.

It was outside this caviared scrum that Lefwinus and Odelgarde landed. 

"Ah! Smell that lad! Tis the noisome stench of fattened fuckwits. No matter when it is, they're all the same swine!"

The Head Usher came out to greet the pair. He eyed their shifty looks with suspicion and his nose rankled at the foul aroma coming off their ancient clothes.

"Could I please see your invitations!" he commanded snootily.

"Hear that Odelgarde! This swill-monkey wants our invitations!" laughed Lefwinus.

The page-boy howled and leapt onto the usher growling like a mad dog. In one fell swoop he'd sliced off his head with a huge cutlass.

The bloodied boy turned and looked at his Master with the man's severed head under his arm, the boar in the other.

"Two invites!" 

They both roared with laughter and booted open the crystal double-doors of the Bishop's palace.

Odelgarde threw the two heads high in the air and Lefwinus quartered them with his halberd with inhuman speed spattering thick blood over the assembled elite.

Masked men and women screamed as the two aliens from the Dark Age skewered and chopped their way through the crowd sending limbs and entrails flailing through the air.

A particularly rotund chicken planted himself in front of the murderous pair.

"What the hell do you think you're doing you stinking scoundrels? I'm the Palace Sheriff and this is my watch!" he yelled.

"Sheriff Chicken eh! I am Lefwinus, Lord of Misrule, at thy personal servitude. Odelgarde, my good man, please if you will, give the Chicken our warmest introductions!"

"Yes Lord!" smiled the page, whereupon he gathered a heap of sleeved arms and pantalooned legs and set it alight. The Sheriff turned to stare at it in abject horror.

Lefwinus spun his halberd and with a flourish rammed the sharp end forcefully up the Sheriff's backside and continued to push.

"That's quite the entrance Master Chicken!" howled the Misruler.

Finally through, the Sheriff was lowered, impaled on the halberd, crossways onto two tall severed legs stood upright at the sides of the crackling bonfire of limbs.

Odelgarde rotated the halberd and the official screamed in agony as his poultry costume burned away and the taut skin on his belly began to crisp and peel away revealing wetter things beneath dropping into the flames.

"One good turn deserves another!" quipped the page and they both cried with laughter.

Taking out his cat-o-nine-tails the Lord of Misrule leapt onto the chandelier above and peering round the gored company he proclaimed:

"Where is this Time's Bishop, that mitred guzzling twat! Where is he?"

"I am here Lefwinus you dribbling ass!" came the belligerent reply.

The Lord of Misrule and his page both gawped to see the source of the impudence and found it.

Sat upon the palatial throne was a huge figure resplendent in cream raiment and topped with the sacred Mitre of the episcopal seat. Her face was young and angelic, her hair long and falling in curled tresses over her massively broad shoulders. She smiled.

"Who the fuck are't thou?" asked the Misruler as he and his ward strode toward the dais.

"Why I'm surprised thou dost not know me Lord Drooler! I'm the mitred guzzled twat who vanquished you to the gutter from whence you crawled the last time we crossed!"

Lefwinus squinted to focus on the speaker. He shuddered.

"Gregoria! Tis you, our old enemy, the papal piss-flap!"

"Tis I Misrule, Yes, Gregoria, the Pope of Fools and I trump your scratty arse when'ere we meet. Alas, I fear, you cretinous wanker, this time too!"

"I know not how you comest here you shit-stain Pope but I care not. Odelgarde and I shall mount your crooked seat and lance your foolish arse till the angels die of boredom!"

At this the two boys began to sprint, shrieking loudly with cutlass and cat-o-nine-tails wind-milling lethally through the air.

"Let us draw and quarter this fat partridge in a piss pot!" yelled Lefwinus as he leapt high into the air, Odelgarde following at his heels.

Gregoria stood slowly, her gargantuan frame casting a shadow on the reredos. Her massively overgrown hand reached down and clasped a mammoth gold crozier lying next to the throne. She wielded it with immense power into an angled position in front of her as the chintz of her vestments released a blinding light.

She heard Lefwinus and Odelgarde descend through the haze and stood like a rock as they realised too late that they would be pierced by the Fool's golden pike.

The two boys screamed in agony as they slid down the crozier all the way to the Fool Pope's fists, where they stared near death into the girl's huge eyes.

"Till next we meet Grego-r-i-a..." whispered the Lord of the Misrule as he and his page bled out.

"I fear not Leftwinus, you are the last, as am I" smiled the Pope of Fools.

The three denizens of a darker age all began to fade and crumble to powder, the dust rising in the warm air to the high rotunda, where they coalesced into a single smudge on the fresco of raging angels.

On the dais a lonely crooked figure emerged from behind the throne, in his hands his two ancient figurines, both with blood-filled wells. The old professor placed them on the floor and stamped on them forcefully crushing them to a fine bone ash.

He staggered backwards and sat exhausted on the throne, both his thumbs deeply cut, a reluctant king of the Christmas gore and carnage his dark heart had made.