“Enough… ”
He ran his fingers through his hair, massaging the scalp beneath. His head was still killing him, and this wasn’t helping. All he wanted to do was close his eyes for a minute.
“Look, I’m sure everything you’re saying is true. I’m sure the angels came down from heaven and told you whatever it was they told you. Whatever you say, we believe it, okay? But the three of us? We have better things to do than listen to a couple of zealots tell stories. Namely, sleep for a few hours.”
There was that look in the carpenter’s eyes again. But in the interest of resolving this thing and getting some rest, Balthazar chose to ignore it.
“Now… I’m afraid we can’t let you leave,” said Balthazar.
Joseph spoke up. “But Herod’s men are — ”
“I don’t care. I can’t risk having you go off and tell some soldier where to find three sleeping escaped criminals.”
“Why would we go to the same soldiers who are looking for our baby?” asked Mary.
“As soon we’re gone, you’re free to go. But if I open my eyes and find you trying to sneak out of here, or if I see him reaching for that pitchfork again, some very bad things are going to happen in here. And that’s how it’s going to be.”
Balthazar didn’t wait for a response. He didn’t care. All he cared about was closing his eyes. He sat down. Gaspar and Melchyor followed suit. Joseph led his wife back to their side of the stable and helped her to the ground.
“You should be ashamed of yourselves,” she said.
“I’m sure you’re right,” said Balthazar, rolling onto his side. “Now stop talking.”
“All of you should be ashamed of yourselves. Any man who would turn his back on — ”
“I said ENOUGH!” Balthazar lifted his head and stared her down, this time with a look that couldn’t be mistaken for anything other than a warning.
Satisfied she understood, Balthazar rolled over again and shut his eyes. There was nothing to do now but grab a few hours of sleep and hope they didn’t wake up to the pounding of hooves.
For the next three hours, three wise men slept in a cramped stable beside their gold and frankincense, their wounds dressed with myrrh. Joseph, Mary, and the infant across from them. Silent.
All of them beneath the star of Bethlehem.
5
The Black Creature
“When Herod realized that he had been outwitted… he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under.”
I
The thieving wise men rose before dawn, unhitched their camels, and led them into the bitter cold. The sky was just waking up to the first hints of deepest blue, but the sun was still a good half hour from revealing itself behind the eastern hills. Stars could still be seen shining clearly between the dark outlines of clouds. But not the star of Bethlehem. Sometime during the past few hours, it had simply vanished. Snuffed out by the desert wind. Balthazar wasn’t surprised. Nothing that bright burned for very long.
Joseph and Mary hadn’t said a word when the men woke, hadn’t so much as looked at them as they left, not even when Melchyor had wished them well in his affably stupid way. Balthazar didn’t blame them for the lack of civility. In the space of a few cramped hours, they’d managed to beat the carpenter bloody, insult his wife’s honor, hold them both hostage, and denounce everything they believed in as a joke. All the same, he was happy to be rid of them. Let them babble about their paranoid fantasies to someone else.
The wise men mounted their camels and looked south into Bethlehem. The village was already alive, smoke rising from cooking fires and clay ovens, young girls shaking the dust off sleeping mats in the streets. The shepherds had risen before the first hint of blue and taken their flocks out to pasture, their sons in tow. The women had risen to cook for them. And now, with the men gone for the day, they and their daughters busied themselves with housework and tended to the younger children. The ones who were too small to help.
It was a village almost entirely devoted to goats, but not all the men of Bethlehem were shepherds. A few of them could be seen leading their small herds north along the road that passed by the wise men’s stable. They were almost certainly headed to Jerusalem to sell their animals for meat or as sacrifices at the Great Temple. Dragging their goats up and down the road in bare feet, five miles each way. Day after miserable day. Up before sunrise, home after dark. All in the hopes of selling a single, stinking animal. All in the hopes of making enough to put a crust of bread in their children’s bellies. When life was that hard, anyone who didn’t steal for a living was crazy.
The sight of three noblemen riding at this early hour was unusual but not strange enough to warrant a second look from the goat draggers they passed on the road to Jerusalem. It was best to avoid staring at noblemen too long, anyway. There was always the chance they’d take offense and have you lashed, or worse.
Though the wise men wanted to get as far away from Herod as possible, they were headed back in the direction of his palace. Their plan was to take the road north toward Jerusalem, then, a mile or so before the South Gate, make a hard right and cut fifteen miles east through the desert to Qumran — a tiny settlement on the shores of the Dead Sea.
Qumran was home to a small sect of Jewish monks who called themselves the Essenes. But while the word monk evoked an image of clean, quiet reverence, the Essenes were more like mad hermits — men who shunned material wealth, carnal pleasure, and regular bathing in order to devote themselves to their beliefs. From what Balthazar could tell, those beliefs amounted to scribbling ancient nonsense on scrolls and then hiding those scrolls in the caves that dotted the surrounding mountains of the northern Dead Sea. Why they hid them, or who they hid them from, were mysteries.
Balthazar had taken refuge in those caves on several occasions, and he’d made some handsome donations to the monks in return for their hospitality. While they didn’t particularly care about material wealth, they loved the things it bought: rugs for their floors, clothes for their bodies, parchment and ink for their mysterious musings. Balthazar knew many of the Essenes by name. He also knew they could be trusted to keep his whereabouts a secret. Most important of all, he knew that Herod’s men wouldn’t dare disturb such a sacred Jewish settlement. That was one of the great things about the Judean Army. It was made up almost entirely of Jews.
After the trail was sufficiently cold, Balthazar would cut his loyal servants loose and disappear with the seven winds. He didn’t like traveling companions. It was one of the reasons he never worked with partners. Partners couldn’t be trusted to do the right thing a hundred percent of the time. They slowed you down. They had differing opinions. When you enlisted them to help you pick pockets, they screwed up spilling wine on your targets and got you chased across aqueducts. Partners were bad news, even when they were in your debt.
The wise men were less than a mile from Bethlehem when the first whispers of trouble reached their ears. A faint rumble from the half-darkness ahead. A growing rumble, like the beating of hooves against earth. With it, the clanging of armor growing sharper against the air.
“What is that?” asked Gaspar.
Balthazar knew at once. Even before he saw the first shapes crest the hill on the road ahead, before he saw the outlines of swords and spears against the faint desert sky, he knew. They were finished.