“I can go across country,” Melchior said and began to edge his camel towards the bank which divided the tilled land from the road.
“That is cultivated land.”
“Nothing grows in midwinter.”
“I was thinking of fences and irrigation ditches, and hard going over the ploughland.”
“And I am thinking how little time is left.” He struck his camel, which baulked at being asked to mount such an obstacle, but, guided inexorably, gave in and scrambled awkwardly up the bank, balanced at the top of it for a precarious second and then plunged down. The others followed.
Caspar had understood no word of the talk, but its tone hat been argumentative and he guessed that his companions well once again
wrangling over direction. He was indifferent. He’dcome out to see what was to be seen and though his observations had been impeded by Melchior’s impatience, and by the need to have every question, every answer twice translated, he had learned a lot. He would have been willing to have turned back towards Jexal upon leaving Jerusalem; but two things held him fast to Melchior. One was that without him he would have been as helpless as a stray dog; in this country he could not ask for a bite of bread or a cup of water, he the leader of the Five Hundred, the ruler of Jexal. His second reason for sticking to Melchior was that he had been impressed by the old man’s powers of navigating; far away in Jexal he had spoken of Jerusalem as a possible destination, and with a few tools and his charts, he had found Jerusalem, grumbling all the time that the city was not in truth, his destination, and in that he seemed to have been right. In Jexal he had said that he was seeking a child, and if—as Caspar was now inclined to believe—there was a child at the end of the journey, he would know that Melchior had the ability to use the stars in two ways. Such a man could be vastly useful to a ruler. Melchior was penniless, and far from home; it was reasonable to suppose that he would welcome an offer of honourable employment. Nonetheless the proposition would have to be put tactfully; the old man had a tough character. Caspar remembered how, when the robbers came, he had shown no fear for himself; he hadn’t cried “Save me’ he had said “Save the camels.” The members of the Five Hundred wouldn’t laugh and jeer at him, as they did at the scholars and so-called wise men of Jexal.
The black fellow could be useful too. Amongst other things that this trip had taught Caspar was the disadvantage of knowing only one language in a multi-lingual world. Suppose the worst came to the worst, and Rome by supporting Pella, provoked him to strike first, if he could, and he came this way again, with his Five Hundred, strings of spare horses and an abundance of arms and tried to make contact with the men-in-the-hills. (He still had faith in them; and if Herod, the fop, admitted to the existence of six hundred you could safely double the number.) What use would it be if nobody could speak to them? He wanted Balthazar to go back to Jexal with him too, and give lessons. The lessons should be compulsory for the young; older men could please themselves, but he himself would set an example by trying to learn, and he knew that every man of the Five Hundred who valued his good opinion-which meant five hundred—would follow.
Balthazar was keeping close to Melchior because it never occurred to him to do otherwise. Events in Jerusalem had disappointed him, and he was conscious of a great gulf between what the star meant to him and what it meant to Melchior; what connection could there be between a flashing vision of a whole new world and a child, however famous that child might live to be? Yet behind all the confusion something glimmered. His insistence upon entering Jerusalem had proved useful; muddled as things seemed some pattern might yet emerge. And even without this hope he could not have left the pair who without him couldn’t have managed; Melchior often spoke sharply to him, Caspar, he knew, despised him, but a lifetime’s slavery had inured him to sharp speaking and disesteem.
So they rode close; and presently as Balthazar had foreseen they came to a thickset thorn fence, a living wall, as high as a man. As far as they could see in the bright starlight it stretched across their path. Melchior said, “To the right,” and they skirted the fence which presently, at a corner, ended. From somewhere within the closed space a dog barked, geese cackled and a man’s voice shouted.
They rode on, and there was a drystone wall, built of stones picked from the fields it divided. In many places it was bound and reinforced by leafless brambles.
“Right again!” Melchior cried, and they followed the wall until presently they reached an opening, closed by a stout hurdle held in place by ropes tied to the thickly thorned bramble stems.
Without hesitation Balthazar made his camel kneel, and while the other two were struggling to keep their animals on their feet, he untied the rope, scratching his hands, opened the makeshift gate, held it while Melchior and Caspar rode through, led his own camel through, and tied the hurdle in place again. After that they came, in quick succession,
to two irrigationditches, one narrow enough to be crossed by a camel’s stride, the other wide. But the camels were unaccustomed to water except as something to drink. At the first ditch they drank, against Melchior’s wishes, but Caspar said, “Be reasonable; a drink will keep them going.” At the second ditch the camels sidled and danced grotesquely and had to be cajoled and forced into crossing.
But after that it was remarkably easy going, a flat, hard, uninterrupted space at the far edge of which there were lights.
“There, you see. We have saved time. There is the star and there are the lights of Bethlehem I’ But Balthazar had his doubts. The lights were indisputable but he had never yet seen a village where every lighted window was exactly in line with its neighbour and exactly the same shape and size. Village lights were haphazard; poor men had low houses, rich men higher ones; on the ground floor women cooked supper at about this time, on upper floor ladies dressed their hair.
He said, tentatively, “This might not be a village. Only Romans build so straight. And it’s all one building, I think. It could be a barracks. We should do well to avoid it.”
“Look how low the star is now. We have no time to make a detour. Even if it is a barracks we can ride past it.”
“Not if we are on their ground,” Balthazar said, arguing as he had argued about fences and irrigation ditches, from his greater knowledge of the country.
“I think we are already trespassing. This flat ground is where they march and exercise. We had better turn back to the ditch and seek another path.”
“I am not going back,” Melchior said stubbornly.
“I have come from Pyangyong to deliver a message and I have hardly any time in which to do it.”
“What is it now?” Caspar asked.
“He thinks it is a barracks, a place for soldiers. Romans.”
“Oh,” Caspar said, his interest quickening, ‘that I should like to see.”
“By the grave of my fathers,” Melchior said, forgetting absolutely that Caspar had paid for his journey from Jexal and dealt with the robbers, and that Balthazar’s insistence upon entering Jerusalem had enabled him to pinpoint the source of the threatened treachery, “I am tired of you both! I care nothing for his caution, or for your wish to see things. I go where the star leads and you can please yourselves whether you come with me or not…,” He slapped his camel and rode headlong into a sentry who cried, “Ho. Who goes there?”
It was Latin, it meant nothing; no more to Melchior than the voice of the man shouting above the noise of the dog’s barking and the geese cackling inside the thorn fence. With one hand he guided his camel to avoid the man who shouted, with his other he slapped it, to hasten its pace. But the sentry had resources that the old man hadn’t dreamed of. He let out another, louder, roaring shout and suddenly the night was full of men, of bobbing lights, noise.
After that it was all confusion. Balthazar was prudent enough to make his camel kneel immediately, so he escaped rough handling; but his heart sank. Romans had a passion for law and order; they’d ask who you were and where you came from, they’d inspect your papers, if you had any.
Caspar thought—They’re alert, which is as it should be; and we have done nothing wrong; this will enable me to see them at really close quarters.