He was amazed because the man’s face betrayed no astonishment. Surely this was—to put it mildly—an unusual destiny that he was foretelling.
Perhaps after all the man did not fully understand.
“Do you understand what I am saying?” he asked.
Joseph nodded.
“I travelled a bit when I was younger, and Greek worked anywhere. I know what you’re saying.”
I will astound you yet! Melchior thought. It was essential to make the man understand the importance of the child before issuing the warning. So he tried again:
“Kings,” he said, ‘will bow down before him. Great armies will march behind his banners—occasionally defeated, but in the end triumphant. He will rule an Empire compared with which that of Alexander was nothing, for his will reach to north and south, to east and west.” All innocently, anxious only to inspire belief in a future which present circumstances made almost unbelievable, he moved his thin hand as he named the compass points.
Mary, watching and listening, understanding nothing of what was said, had thought that with his grave dignity, his outlandish garb, his glittering eyes and impressive way of talking, the old man was very much as she had always pictured the prophets to be. When he made his gesture she knew that he was making a prophecy; and he had drawn on the air the sign of the cross. Despite all her faith, all her acceptance, in her heart she cried, Oh no! No! Not that lovely little body, flesh of my flesh, nursed at my breast. But begotten of God, she reminded herself; with every day of his life planned and foreseen, a man of
sorrows, and acquainted with grief.. ..She thought again that no other woman had ever been called upon to bear what she must bear. She looked back upon that moment amongst the flowers, when Elisabeth had hailed her as blessed among women, and she had answered that her soul magnified the Lord. A moment of ecstasy, and such came all too rarely. However, God had chosen her, and would give her strength to face what must be faced; but even that thought could not prevent her being sorrowful.
Even the mention of Alexander had not, Melchior observed, moved this father to giving any sign of excitement or surprise. Such words, spoken of a royal baby, lying in a golden cradle in a palace of marble, would have aroused some wonder, surely.
“People who know nothing of him but his name,” he said, ‘will hold it in awe. And his Empire will not split up at his death; if anything his death will consolidate it. He will die young—I regret to be obliged to tell you that—thirty-two or three years will be his life-span. If he survives now. And here I come to my warning. There were very strong counter indications, with influences of the utmost malignancy. Unless precautions are taken he will die by treachery before he is weaned.”
Maybe the man’s face changed a little then, the anxiety becoming more marked; but still no surprise.
“Until this afternoon,” Melchior went on, “I did not, of course, know from what direction danger threatened. Now I am suspicious of a man called Herod, a King in Jerusalem. Most misguidedly I mentioned something of my errand to him, and he knows my destination.”
Now he had made an impression. The man’s face was that of a man who knows that his worst fears are confirmed; it lost colour and every line in it stood out darkly as though drawn by one of Melchior’s sharp chalk sticks.
Melchior said quickly, “But we have a full day. I was not followed, or forestalled, and I think he is depending upon me to go back and tell him where the child is. Tomorrow, when he realises that I have tricked him, he will act, and swiftly. By that time you should be as far away as possible.”
There, he had now said it all. His mind presented him with the kind of picture—the whole lifetime in a flash which drowning men were said to see. (But who could know that he had asked himself when first he heard that theory, since no drowned man had ever been able to relate his final experience?) He saw himself, as a young man, knowing that astronomy was the only thing he cared about, he saw the long years devoted to the study, the fortune spent upon it, the decision taken on a cold spring night at the top of the tower, and then the journey, probably the longest journey any man had ever yet made. Now it was done; and he was an old, incredibly tired man; and he knew that unless he sat down quickly his legs would give way under him and he would fall. He looked about and saw the stool.
It was the one which Eunice had allowed Ephorus to borrow from the house in order that Mary might sit on it and the more easily nurse her child. Once long ago, it had been a fine piece of furniture, with a cover of crimson silk and legs inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Now the cover was shredding and many pieces of the inlay were missing, but Eunice treasured it, and had said, “Even to please you, Ephorus, I wouldn’t lend my stool to just anyone. But I know courage when I see it, and that slip of a girl is brave. I could see she was in for a hard time and I told her to yell if she wanted’ to, there would be nobody to hear her but me. Yet when the time came, and she had good cause for yelling, she remembered that this was an inn and it was night, with people asleep all around. So she stuffed her sleeve into her mouth and bit on it hard. She can have my stool.” So there it was, and Melchior sat on it.
Joseph stood for a moment, thinking about his dream. In it the same angel had come to him again, bringing not comfort this time, but a warning. He was to take the young child and his mother and flee into Egypt because Herod was planning murder. The dream had been so real that Joseph had thought how small his resources were. Fleeing he would not dare to stop, look for work and earn money. He had been on the very point of asking the angel’s advice, asking how this was to be done, when these men had arrived and he had wakened.
Now here was this old man, first confirming all the prophecies about
the child being the Messiah, and then issuingexactly the same warning as the angel had done; naming the same enemy; setting safety’s limit.
Mary, seeing the trouble on his face, said, “What is it, Joseph? What did he tell you?”
He crouched down in the straw beside her and told her, softening everything, trying not to alarm her, yet unable to conceal his mounting anxiety.
Then the three men watching saw her put out her hand and lay it on Joseph’s shoulder in what was recognisably a comforting and sustaining gesture.
It reminded Melchior, oddly enough, of old Senya. Not that she had ever touched him; but she had a way of knowing when something in his work, all a mystery to her, had gone wrong; at such times she would put his food bowl before him in a special way, a way that said—Don’t worry; you’ll manage. This woman’s hand on the man’s shoulder said just that.
Caspar noticed the gesture and he stared at the girl who made it with fierce attention. Her hand was small, finely boned, though the skin of the fingers showed that it was the hand of a working woman. The wrist was delicate. So was the girl’s neck. She was a pale, frail creature, with great shadowy eyes, in no one way measuring up to his ideal of womanhood. Yet the movement of her hand had not signified weakness or dependence; on the contrary it was strong and heartening, conveying exactly the reassurance which even the most self-sufficient man felt the need of at times. And she had borne a wonderful, strong-looking, beautiful baby, in circumstances as comfortless as any desert woman ever knew.
He thought of Ilya, but in a different fashion from the way in which, at the back of his mind, he had thought of her since the moment when, in the Balcony room, their eyes had met; not with yearning lust, strictly governed, not with defensive scorn, but with love. The last rational barrier between him and what he wanted went down. Melchior had weakened it, by proving that when necessary a frail body could be indomitable; this girl, with a movement of her hand had demolished it altogether. It had been his last defence, the thought that a delicate creature must needs be a bad breeder and a clog on a man. It wasn’t true; and he knew, with a great up rush of joy that he would go back to Jexal and stand up in the Sun’s eye and mingle his blood with that which in his bigoted folly he had called dregs. And what, he thought, would Lakma say to that? He knew that he would say—You great fool, I wanted her for myself, all along. Probably they’d fight again, and Lakma would break another finger for him, and he’d give Lakma another crack over the skull. And it wasn’t by any means all sentimental nonsense either; there’d been some truth in what the boy, Malchus, had said; this marriage would unite the old and the new, so that if trouble came Jexal would stand undivided. He could hardly wait for the moment when they would head back for home. He said to Melchior : “Have you said all that you came to say?”