There was something else, also, that troubled Melchior. Gas-par’s curiosity and interest in people that he himself would have passed without a second glance.
“Are they soldiers? Roman soldiers?” Caspar had asked once, with some excitement.
“Ask. Find out.” And he had checked his camel, and Melchior’s had immediately slowed down too. The men had been Roman soldiers–and Melchior admitted that it was clever of Caspar to have guessed so shrewdly; but what of it? What did Roman soldiers matter? You could waste time, most valuable time, on things like that. And some of the soldiers, not understanding what Melchior said,made gestures that even he understood, rude…. On the whole the standard of manners and of hospitality declined as they moved westwards, and, unless they were being grossly cheated, prices were still rising steeply. Melchior had
realised before reaching Jexal that he had no skillas a bargainer; Caspar had never bargained in his life and was, in addition, unused to handling money, and seemed not to notice prices at all.
The strain, the haste and fatigue, differences in character and in objective, even the sense of being so dependent upon one another, would have resulted in bickering had Melchior not been so naturally courteous and Caspar the heir of a long tradition of respect towards elders: but on the day when their path converged towards that of Balthazar they had almost quarrelled.
Caspar, who had always believed that he could out-ride and out-fast any of the Five Hundred, which meant any man alive, was galled to find that this old man, skeleton thin, was not only prepared to stay on the jolting camel for at least an hour after he himself was reeling with fatigue, but that he was also more indifferent towards food. On the morning of that day, having slept in the open, they had eaten the last scrap of food that they carried, Melchior insisting that Caspar should take the larger share; “You are young,” he said, ‘and accustomed to feeling well.” But he had waited, with obvious impatience as Caspar gulped down the stale bread, the bit of stinking cheese. His overnight calculations had been very unsatisfactory.
“We shall be late,” he said, with dismal certainty, “This child will be born, at latest, four days after the winter solstice, and after that there are a few days’ grace. Then, if I am not there, all my efforts will be wasted. We must press on today.”
They had pressed on and just as the sun was setting had reached a point where the road sloped steeply down towards a huddle of roofs that indicated a sizeable town. Caspar pointed to it and said:
“We stay there for the night.”
“Oh no. We shall be there before it is full dark. We must travel until moonset, at least.”
“Our food is exhausted, our water-bags are empty, our camels are spent. To go farther would be folly. Tonight we seek an inn and have a meal of cooked meat. We buy stores for tomorrow. The camels restore their strength. Tomorrow we shall travel faster.”
“I have no time to waste upon meat or stores or camels,” Melchior said stubbornly.
“I told you from the first that my errand was urgent. Nothing else matters. I must press on.”
“Then you go alone,” Caspar said, and as soon as he had said it, realised his folly. It was now a long time since anything he said had been understood by any save Melchior; difficult as it was to find in these parts people who comprehended the old man’s other language, such people were to be found, and they constituted the sole hope of making contact. Melchior, equally dismayed, remembered that Caspar had the money in his pouch.
He said, “This country is more thickly inhabited; if we ride on until moonset we shall reach another town.”
“That I wouldn’t count on. Unless you show some sense, Melchior, you will arrive at the place after this,” he jerked his head towards the little town, ‘in worse case than you arrived at Jexal.”
“There was nothing wrong with me when I arrived there,” Melchior said petulantly.
“My camel was lame, that was all.”
“You have a short memory! You were so nearly starving that I was obliged to warn you to eat little and slowly.”
“Very well, I was starving and I am prepared to starve again. A man with his mind set can endure a little starvation and take no harm!”
That was the kind of thing which Caspar was accustomed to saying, not to hearing said, and it irked him.
“Camels can’t live on their thoughts,” he said.
“Go ahead, if you wish to be stubborn, and see how far “you get!”
Melchior thought that over. Something of the despair he had felt as he limped into Jexal returned and made itself felt again. From that despair Caspar had saved him.
“You have been very good, very generous,” he admitted.
“You are hungry and you are weary, and part of my mind tells me that you are sensible. Particularly as regarding the camel. It occurs to me that Senya may have gone lame because of an empty belly. An empty belly shows no symptoms, gains no sympathy; lameness does both. If we halt here …” the first houses of the town were now alongside, ‘will you agree to start out very early in the morning?”
“Very early,” Caspar said.So, when they reached the inn, they had turned into the yard, and had been immediately accosted by a beggar of exactly the kind that Caspar most deplored, the kind he had banished from the streets of Jexal.
Ignoring him, he nudged his camel forward, Melchior, more courteous, even to a dirty stinking beggar, said in his rusty Greek, “I am sorry, I have nothing.” And to that Balthazar replied in the Greek of the counting house at Tyre.
“I ask nothing, except that you should take me with you as you follow the star.”
“Star! Did you say star? What do you know of the star?” He gave his camel the signal to kneel and dismounted with stiff haste. He was ready to think that this was a fellow-astronomer from some far, far place, who having done work similar to his own had reached the same conclusion, and the thought set his heart pounding from excitement.
Two lengths ahead, farther into the yard, Caspar’s camel in some extraordinary way had sensed that its companion had knelt and been dismounted, and since what was right for one was right for both it knelt without waiting for the signal. The innkeeper, watching from his doorway, saw two men, not impressively clad, and a third whose appearance was a disgrace, and two wilting camels, obviously in the last state of exhaustion; so before Balthazar could answer Melchior the man rushed out, crying in Aramaic: “Not there! You block the entrance!”
Neither Melchior nor Caspar understood a word he said, but they realised that they were being shouted at; Melchior turned upon the man a look of dignified inquiry, Caspar one of a ferocious hauteur. The combination silenced him. Balthazar said to Melchior: “He says we block the entrance to the yard.”
“Only for a moment,” Melchior said.
“Would you tell him that we wish these beasts taken to the enclosure, watered and fed, as much as they can eat? For ourselves a supper, with meat, and a room inside the house.”
While Balthazar was obligingly translating these orders Melchior watched him, taking more fully into account his poor condition: he’d share his supper with him, he thought, though it was unlikely that he would be welcome inside the house, either by the innkeeper or by Caspar, with his so-sensitive nose. But all that could wait. They must first discuss the star.
His first reaction to Balthazar’s blurted tale was one of deep disappointment.
“Ah,” he said, ‘a clairvoyant! Not that I decry clairvoyance, but unlike astronomy it is an inexact science, if indeed it can be called a science at all. Still you are here, and you recognised us; and you are the only person I have met in many months who seemed to have an awareness of this star at all.” He pondered the significance of this.
“You will take me with you? I beg of you. I will serve you, wait upon you, be your slave,” Balthazar said, willingly putting his head back into the yoke from which he had so recently freed it.
Melchior thought of Caspar and his money pouch; he looked back to the time when he had been rich and independent, and to the time when he had been poor but independent, and he gave a sigh that came from his heart.
“That is not easy. And it is not for me to say. I have nothing of my own. All I ever had was spent in the pursuit of knowledge. To accompany us you would need a camel, a good camel…. But wait here. I will speak to my companion.”