“Well?” in the stern tone he had cultivated for use with the Lady’s tenants.
The girl is clumsy and is always crying, the innkeeper reflected, and Ophelia does nothing but grumble about her. The next one may not be so very unattractive and maybe when Ophelia is angry with me, and bars me from her bed, I could … “It is a bargain,” he said, and stretched out his hand, itching for the touch of the two rose jekkals.
“You must write the girl her paper of manumission,” Balthazar said.
“But there is the difficulty. I shall need the services of a scribe.I myself cannot write,”
“I can,” Balthazar said.
“You, I presume, can make your mark.”
“I make a good mark; it is recognised and given credit as far away as Antioch,” the innkeeper said, with some pride.
“That is well. Now, we will have the camel tethered alongside those of the lords with whom I leave in the morning; my bath will be prepared, and these clothes brought to its side. When I am reclad I will write the paper and you shall make your mark thereon,” “It shall be done. You wish to take the girl with you?” The innkeeper was prepared to believe almost anything by this time; for to a man who had seen two, two rose jekkals in the palm of a filthy, sore-ridden beggar, nothing, but nothing, could come as a surprise.
“No. Once free, she will make her own way to where she wants to go,” Balthazar said.
“Now, what about my bath?”
When he was dressed he wished that he had a silver mirror, as large as the one on the Lady’s dressing-table, in which to behold himself, but there was none; however the way in which the woman herbalist received him assured him that he looked respectable and well-to-do. He smiled a little sardonically as he reflected that had he arrived at her door little more than an hour ago, begging a crust, she would have bolted it against him in terror.
She made ointments of all kinds she said; he asked for the best, and she said the best ointment deserved the best jar. She had a number of little pots on a shelf, most of them made of the coarsest, thickest clay, one or two of fine, almost translucent alabaster. As she turned to take one of these down he stopped her indicating the ordinary jars.
“What a pity,” the old woman said, fretfully, “The clay pots break easily; these,” she laid her gnarled finger almost caressingly upon an alabaster one, ‘last forever, for all they look so fragile.”
“But once my sores are healed and the ointment used I shall have no use for so small a pot.”
“This is my best ointment—smell for yourself; full of myrrh, my own. A smear tonight and another in the morning and you’ll never know you had a sore. And it keeps, in fact it improves with keeping. Are you sure you won’t change your mind?”
“I am sure.”
She was grieved, and spooned the ointment into the little clay pot almost reluctantly.
He went back to the inn and anointed the broken blisters on his heels and the inflamed bite on his arm and then wrote out a paper of manumission worded exactly like his own. The innkeeper made his mark gladly; his Ophelia was delighted at the prospect of wearing a rose jekkal in the middle of her forehead and had said that for such a coin she would give six slaves, had she six to give. He was anxious to get to bed with her while she was in such a good mood.
“There you are. Now you are free, child,” Balthazar said.
“You can go and find your family in Antioch. Never lose this; never part with it. It is your freedom.”
“Even if it meant nothing,” the little girl said, clutching it to her flat chest, “I would keep it to remember you by. It smells of you.”
He had written it after using the ointment, without washing his hands.
In the morning another and less favourable comment was made upon the ointment odour.
“Yesterday,” Caspar said, ‘he stank of dirt and rotting flesh; today he stinks like a harlot.” As he said that he became aware that for several days he had not been conscious of the scent of the frankincense which Melchior carried at the bottom of his camel-fodder bag. When he had caught occasional whiffs of the fragrance he had blamed them for the way in which his mind reverted to Ilya. Yet now, with the scent forgotten, he still thought of her. This realisation made him annoyed, so he regarded Balthazar with disfavour.
“Come along, come along,” he said irritably.
“I thought we were in a hurry!”
“It was you,” Melchior reminded him mildly, ‘who warned me against pushing a camel too hard early in the day.”
Yet although he regarded Balthazar as his protege, to beprotected from criticism and in an oblique way spoken up for, he watched the black man’s fumbling mounting and inept management of the camel with some dismay. With money, with language, he would be a valuable companion; but if he slowed down progress he must be jettisoned at once. Nothing, nothing in the world, must be allowed to delay them now.
Balthazar was aware that he was on approbation. Melchior, so considerate overnight, seemed different this morning, preoccupied and remote; in Caspar he sensed a latent hostility—perhaps he felt that his money had been wasted upon fine clothing. If he could have spoken to Caspar direct he would have explained that the clothes were not new, that he had driven the shrewdest possible bargain. But he did not dare disturb Melchior’s thoughtful intensity by asking him to translate; and he could see that he must give all his mind to the problem of managing this animal—he had never ridden a camel before. He must also, for as long as they were together, endeavour to be of service, to make himself indispensable.
Caspar wished that he were on horseback. A good horse could out-run a man’s thoughts.On the other hand, any man worthy of the name should be able to govern his thoughts and prevent them from dwelling on the charms of a pale, frail, entirely unsuitable girl.
“Ask him,” he said, jerking his head towards Balthazar, ‘whether he knows anything about the Romans.”
“Yes, indeed,” Balthazar said, when this question had been translated.
“For many years I lived in the household of a Roman lawyer—as an accountant. I speak Latin. My Latin is very good; superior to my Greek or my Aramaic.”
Melchior gave this information to Caspar, hoping that it would cheer him. He attributed the younger man’s mood to his having been compelled to rise so early. He was a rich young man, and rich young men were not accustomed to rising at dawn. He told Caspar what Balthazar had said, and added:
“Is it not fortunate that we should fall in with one who knows so much about the people in whom you are so interested?” Thinking of Ilya again, Caspar said, shortly, “Very fortunate.”
SEVEN
NAZARETH 90 miles The announcement about the new taxes came as a shock to everybody. It was made in typical, sly, Roman fashion. Probably notices were put up in public places, probably the tax-farmers, already informed, had begun to spread the news; but in Nazareth, and hundreds of other small country places, it was left to the local Rabbi to make sure that everyone understood.
Harvest was over, the heat of the summer was past when Hilliel the baker, wearing his prayer shawl, stood up to break the news. The Torah had been taken out, read and solemnly replaced; the whole congregation had joined in the last chanted praise and people were preparing to disperse when Hilliel, at the raised reading desk spoke, not in his formal, synagogue voice, but as though making a remark across his bake house floor.
“I have been asked,” he said, ‘to tell you something. It is not a thing I wish to speak of in this dedicated place, so would you, please, go out and wait under the sycamore tree. It is,” he added, ‘something of importance. Please wait.”
In the synagogue women and men sat separately; at the doorway Joseph, joining Mary, slipped his hand under her elbow and said:
“Would you rather go home? Your father or your mother can tell us whatever it is this evening.”
Anne came every evening, whether or not she had seen Mary during the day. She had been delighted, transported to learn that her daughter was to have a baby.
“So soon!” she had said to Joachim.
“To tell you the truth I always thought Joseph was just a mite old. But no youngster could have done better.” Then, immediately she had fallen
into the ambivalent state of mind of women in her position; there was nothing to having a baby,nothing at all, no need to fuss. If you were sick, you were sick and you ran off to be sick in some private place; and if your back ached, it ached and you bore it without complaint. Bearing children was what women were put into the world for, a pregnant woman was a fulfilled woman and she should be joyful. But, there was another, a darker side to this whole business. There were women—Anne could have named three or four-who had been careless, who had pushed or pulled or heaved things and lost the baby in a welter of blood and pain; and there were women who had craved things out of season and either not mentioned their craving or been denied what they craved, and their babies had been born too early, too late, ailing, deformed, even blind.