“I am interested,” Caspar said, ‘in your having a message to deliver to some unknown destination. How can that be?”
“Ah yes. I am an astronomer. I read the stars in their courses; and I
read this message plain and clear. It is just possible thatothers have read it and are now on their way, I can only hope that that is so. But I was better equipped, I think, than most of my kind, so it seemed to me essential that I should take action. Perhaps you are one of those to whom astronomy is foolishness. In that case I will not bother you with details.”
“In the desert,” Caspar said, and he felt a pang of the old homesick feeling, ‘the stars are a reliable guide. That is all I know of them.”
“In the desert, as on the sea, for navigational purposes, certainly, they have their uses. And the star I follow has never failed me. But the stars have other purposes. There are combinations, movements .. . things which, if you will excuse me, can only be properly discussed by those who understand. What I cannot understand,” some petulance crept into his voice, ‘is my position. To this study I gave my life and a considerable fortune and I read the message. But it looks as though it would have been better had I spent my time studying what it costs to feed a camel or to charter a ferry boat, and why it is that in one place a coin will buy a whole sheep and in the next, only a few miles away, a mere bowl of weak mutton broth. It is ignorance of such things that has defeated me, not lack of will or weariness, frustrating as the latter can be at times.” He gave a great sigh.
“You said that your destination might be Jerusalem,” Caspar said. He recognised it as the home of Benjamin the Jew; the place which the Romans had taken as he had taken Jexal, but the Jews had not settled down tamely as the Jexalians had done; they were, by all account, still rebellious, and he thought of diem as a potential weak spot in the defences of a potential enemy.
“Do you know it?”
“Only by word of mouth.”
“Who rules there?”
“A King named Herod; but I understand that he is a hollow man. A tool of the Emperor of Rome.”
“Emperor,” Melchior repeated thoughtfully.
“It is possible, then, that my errand concerned him and his family. Does he live in Jerusalem?”
“He does not. He lives in Rome, and from what I hear he is a rogue.”
“Indeed?” Melchior sighed again, “Oh well, no matter. Whoever was concerned, in whatever place, will have no warning from me. I have done what I could, I have spent all I had, I have begged, I have starved, all to no avail.” But even as he said it the small quantity of wine he had drunk, the food he had eaten had revived him and he was willing to snatch at the faintest hope. He looked at Caspar with a calculating eye, and then took note of his surroundings, hitherto ignored.
“You are a man of wealth and power; if you could bring yourself to believe in the importance of my errand and help me on … The child’s family would surely repay you, since part of my errand is to warn them against his death by treachery before he is weaned. If I could be there in time, I would tell diem to whom they owed the child’s life and I would ask them to reward you––’ He broke off, deterred by the inscrutability of the hard young face of the man with whom he was pleading.
“I am unaccustomed to begging,” he said with great dignity, ‘and, believe me, for myself I would never do it. But for the sake of a child with such a destiny, and in such danger, I humble myself and ask you, sir, to lend me a camel and enough money to take me to Jerusalem! , That word again!
“Eat, while I think,” Caspar said and leaned his chin on his hand.
His thinking was simple and direct; he had little imagination and was incapable of visualising anything not related in some way to his own experiences. When he thought of the Roman army, said to be a great one, he saw, in his mind’s eye the old Jexalian army, a great mass of strutting men with plumes and banners and silver trumpets, and remembered how easily it had gone down before the charge of his Five Hundred. And when he thought of the guerrillas in the hills of Judea of whom old Benjamin had spoken, he saw them as men like those of his own Five Hundred in the days before the great battle, skulking, watchful, hard men awaiting the chance to strike.
One of the first rules of fighting that he had ever learned was that one should attack before one could be attacked, and that the battle should take place in the enemy’s terrain, so that his tents, his flocks, his womenfolk and children suffered. Another thing he knew was that of all weapons surprise is the most deadly.
He sat there and remembered how, in the months before he swooped down, he had come, on this pretence or that, into Jexal, mingling with its people, marking the strengths and the weaknesses. What he had done once he could do again: and what better disguise could he adopt than that of travelling companion to this star-bemused old man?
And deep under all these thoughts, so deep that he need not trouble to face it, was another—that by absenting himself, by moving about and making plans, he would escape from the spell which the girl Ilya had cast upon him. Finally he lifted his chin from his hand and said: “I am minded to come with you.”
“You do not trust me?” Melchior asked haughtily.
“What? With one camel and twenty gold pieces in a bag? Do you think that of me … ?” He had been about to tell .Melchior who he was and what he owned.
“No,” he said, “I have a fancy to see this city of Jerusalem. And I think that you would travel faster and more safely in the company of a practical man like me.”
“That is indisputable,” Melchior admitted. Hope was now lively in him; the food and the wine had had their full restorative effect, his plea for aid had not been rejected; he was himself again.
“When can you be ready to go?”
“Tomorrow morning,” Caspar said, thinking of what he must first do. Melchior shook his head.
“Oh no! Haste is of the utmost importance. I have lost time already, with Senya so lame.”
“This,” Caspar said, ‘is a thing I do not understand. You say that according to the stars this child has a destiny, and yet according to the same stars, he may die before he is weaned. One or the other may be true, but not both.”
“Ah, that is what is so difficult to explain to one like you. The stars indicate: they do not rule. They say what may happen, not what will. There are indications, and counter-indications, always, and in this case both are very clear. It is—how shall I put it simply? A woman goes to market and buys a length of woollen cloth. Let that cloth represent what the stars indicate. Now of that” cloth the woman may make a gown for herself, breeches for her husband, a blanket for the bed. She cannot, of woollen cloth, make a silk robe or a muslin veil, but within limits the choice is hers, and her choice can represent the counter-indications. Have I made that plain ?”
“As plain as it ever will be, to me,” Caspar said, giving up.
“So, haste is of importance; but we shall make good speed. We shall travel on swift.. .” He had almost said ‘horses’, but hastily substituted ‘camels, riding camels’. It would never do to ride one of his horses, if he wished to pass unnoticed; everyone who ever came to Jexal noticed and commented upon the beauty, the strength, the spirit and docility of the horses. His tribe had brought with them from their remote Mongolian homeland all the rules governing the treatment of horses, and had preserved them strictly. It was an offence to strike one except on the rump and then only with a rod as thick as a woman’s smallest finger. And if water were scarce and of horse or man only one could drink, the horse drank, which was sense, since the horse could carry the man; and a man could suck a pebble and reflect that privation toughened him.
It was an irony, Caspar reflected, that because his horses were so good he must ride a camel.
“Even so,” Melchior said doggedly, “I should prefer to move on today. I am already late.” If they were to travel together, on camels, and with money provided by this man it was important that from the first he should understand the urgency of the errand. It was not a question of whose will should be paramount—or at least that was not how it appeared to Melchior’s dedicated mind; but it was his errand, his responsibility, therefore his must be the authority. He was grateful, in a fashion, but gratitude was irrelevant.