While Shepherds Watched Their Locks By Night

This was the winning fiction entry in the Stanley Ratteray Memorial Prize for festive short stories, 2025.

Bermuda, Christmas Eve 1930

It burned, the drink, but it wasn’t a bad sort of burn. Not the kind you got from being too eager to grab a chicken leg from the grill or even if you sat too long in the sun after church in August. Eldon fought to turn his splutter into a defiant smile. His father laughed and clapped him on the back, raising his own cup, and the other Shepherds joined in. Even the dogs barked, and before he knew it, Eldon’s glass was full again, and this time when he sipped it didn’t singe his throat so much.

“A fine night for a first taste of rum, and an even better one for a second. But no kind of night for a third,” said Eldon’s father, to the boy’s relief. The 4am service was still several hours away, and it wouldn’t do to get drunk. Not just because it was a long way to St George’s, or because drunk didn’t seem the right thing to be in God’s house, but because they had another task. There was a thief around, and he was not going to steal old Agnes’ turkey or her cassava pie or anything else. Not for a second year in a row.

Tonight, the Loyal Order of Ancient Shepherds was on the lookout. And Eldon was going to keep his most weather eye on the horizon. The Shepherds helped good people, which made him feel warm, a bit like the rum though without all the spluttering. Mother said it was nice to help bad people too, but Eldon hadn’t quite got his head around that one.

Father winced, dragging his bad leg into place. He gripped his crook in one hand and a box in the other. Eldon had spent hours examining the crook. It wasn’t quite perfect, straighter in some parts than others, and there were scratches on the handle that creased your palm when you held it. But it was golden enough to shine under a bright moon. One day he would wield a staff just like that.

“Time for another circuit.” Father pointed to a couple of the older men “You two take the road.” Then he gestured at Eldon. “And we’ll take the woods.”  With that he limped off. Eldon patrolled alongside, controlling his pace as they climbed the little slope that led into the wood behind Agnes’ house. The crook wasn’t shining any more, the moon barely able to pierce the tangle of branches.

“Father, what happened to your leg?” Eldon regretted the question immediately. He’d asked plenty of times before. It always made Father’s brow furrow and his mouth reply that Eldon was too young.

Father didn’t stop or speak. He pushed deeper into the wood, his left foot dragging out a scratchy melody, his staff drumming out every step. The rhythm was jazzy; uneven and spontaneous.

He shouldn’t have asked–wouldn’t have if the rum hadn’t let his curiosity break over its reef. It had been such a good night, being with the Shepherds for the first time at Christmas. He’d looked forward to it all year. And now he’d ruined it. He kicked up a knot of casuarina needles.

As they were about to emerge into Agnes’ garden, Father’s staff flicked across Eldon’s chest, pressing on his sternum to block his path. Just enough light penetrated the wood for Eldon to see that Father was gesturing at a fallen cedar. He sat, and Father gingerly lowered himself, balancing on the staff and Eldon’s arm.

“You were born in 1918.” Father’s words spilled out in one big exhalation. “My leg is a little better now, but back then I was still recovering. I could only walk a few steps, couldn’t carry you from one room to another, not even in church to be baptised.” His voice cracked.

“It was the war, wasn’t it?” asked Eldon. He’d learned about it in school, the brave men who had gone overseas to help. “Was it really bad?”

Father’s sigh was so prodigious it could have felled a neighbouring tree. “I wouldn’t know. I wasn’t there.” Silence lurched into the wood. “But I should have been.”

Eldon didn’t understand.

“They were in Belgium,” Father whispered. “And yes, to answer your question it was bad.” His voice thickened. “They died in hell. They called it Passchendaele.”

The words were familiar, but something niggled Eldon. He was sure it was I not they when he’d had to memorise Sassoon’s poem and recite it to the class.

“The kid who tackled me was in that hell,” Father continued. “And I lay on a comfortable bed, my leg splinted, worrying about whether I’d be able to play next season. I was still there when his coffin came home.”

           Eldon found he was holding his breath.

“I don’t think he meant it. It was a 50/50. He might even have got the ball. But he got plenty of my leg too. He vomited when he saw the bone. The ref didn’t even send him off. He had to ask to be substituted. So that was that. I couldn’t go to Europe with the regiment, and he volunteered instead. Agnes had her eldest boy stolen in Passchendaele. No thief is going to take her turkey tonight.”

So many people had things taken from them, by war or whatever else. It made it even more important, thought Eldon, to give where you could. Especially at Christmas.

A cloud of silence hovered for a while, until footsteps clopped along the road.

“Any sign?” cried Father.

“Nothin’ Joe”

“Too bad. We got a little something for him.” They laughed, worrying Eldon. Surely, they wouldn’t hurt the thief, merely scare him off or take him to the police?

A rustle to their right. The Shepherds’ dogs barked. And then Eldon saw something–someone–scrambling through the trees. He tripped right at Eldon’s feet. The barks closed in, and the man scuttled backwards. He screamed.

And then stopped as the dogs began only to lick and nuzzle him.

“Down.” The dogs obeyed Father’s command.

The man sprang upright, brushing clumps of mud off his shirt. No, Eldon realised, not a man, a boy. The boy, who must have been about Eldon’s own age, spun, seeking an escape route, but the other Shepherds had formed a tight circle.

“What’s your name”, asked Father.

The boy mumbled something.

“I didn’t hear that.”

“Michael.”

“Michael?”

“Michael Thomas.”

“You’re here for the turkey, aren’t you, Michael Thomas?”

“I…sir…I didn’t mean…”

Father let him stumble through his words. A tree frog croaked.

“They made me,” spluttered the boy, “Promised they’d give me something for my mother at Christmas if I did it.”

Eldon wondered who “they” were, but Father only nodded calmly, as if the words confirmed something he already knew.

“The people who put you up to this. They’ve made you take stuff before?”

The boy’s forlorn nod was nothing like Father’s.

“And if they asked you to throw yourself off the rocks tomorrow, you’d do that too?”

  “You don’t understand,” the boy snapped.

“That’s true enough,” Father acknowledged. “But I do understand that nobody ever got satisfaction from taking things that belong to others. Not real satisfaction. Not the kind that lasts. You different?”  

The shepherds stared at the boy, and though nobody spoke, not one of their faces was unkind.

“N-n-no, sir.”

“Giving though. That’ll satisfy a man.” Murmurs of assent rippled round the circle.

The boy burst into tears. “I’m s-s-sorry.”

“I’m pleased to hear that. So, you’ll leave this good Christian woman’s house well alone? And other houses too?”

“Yes, sir. I-I promise, sir.” A deep sniff punctuated each word.

“In that case, we have a gift for you. From our order.”

The boy’s head jerked up, and he wiped his nose on a muddy sleeve.

“If I were a shepherd, I would give a lamb,” father continued. “Well, we don’t have any lambs, but we do have some real nice cassava pie my wife baked. Think that would make your mother happy?”

“I do sir. Thank you.”

“Eldon, grab that box.”

Eldon did and trotted back, and when father nodded, he handed it over. The boy gawked as if an angel had appeared.

“Now there’ll be no need for us to tell the police this time, nor your mother,” Father said. “But I’ll be listening for your name, and if I find out you’ve been stealing even a piece of corn off someone’s plate, I will tell them. You hear me?”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. And Merry Christmas to you.”

“And to you. Now off home, and no detours.”

The boy vanished in a flash of heels. Father smiled. “Come on, lads,” he boomed, “time for church.”