HOW FAR TO BETHLEHEM
BY
NORAH LOFTS
FROM THE COVER:
How Far To Bethlehem?
From the remote corners of the ancient world came a strange and ill-assorted band of travellers … Melchior, the ascetic scholar from Asia-Caspar, the barbarian, more accustomed to horses than to people… and Balthazar, the eunuch slave who had escaped from a cruel and vicious mistress. Through hazardous and violent country they journeyed on, led by the visionary Melchior, each of them consumed with their private torments.
And not until they reached Judea a turbulent land where Greek, Jew and Roman lived together in an uneasy peace were their dreams and fears resolved…
With backgrounds varying from the simple village life of Nazareth, to the barbarian court of Caspar in Jexal, Norah Lofts has created a fascinating and compassionate story of Israel in the year of the Nativity. Here, retold, is the story of Mary and Joseph, of the innkeeper and shepherds, of the turmoil and passion that was the Holy Land under Roman domination.
And here, above all, is the story of the three travellers from the east—men in conflict with each other, and with themselves—each searching for something—something they would only discover on a starry
night in Bethlehem…HOW FAR TO BETHLEHEM?
This book is dedicated with admiration and gratitude to
EDWARD WAGENKNECHT
who suggested the theme ONE NAZARETH 90 miles At some time, too long ago for even the oldest people to remember, the well in the village had failed. The heaviest rains in winter could not replenish it, so it was abandoned, and for at least three generations water had been fetched from a spring which broke out from the rocks on the other side of the hill. This meant that the water-carriers, always women and children, must walk for half a mile, uphill, then down, with empty jars, and half a mile, uphill and down, with full ones.
Women, practical and short of time, had soon found a way to shorten and to ease that journey. Avoiding the road and the hill they cut through the fields that girdled the base of the rising ground, and over the years had trodden a path which halved the length of the journey and was all on the level. In the rainy season the path was muddy and the daily procession of feet churned the mud until it was as sticky as porridge; and for that, too, the women had found a remedy. Certain days in Spring and again in Autumn were marked as stone-carrying days when everyone using the path in either direction brought a stone, dropped it and trod it in. This custom was older than any memory, but it was still faithfully observed, with the result that between his humble village and its water supply ran a path as hard and firm and flat as the new roads that the Romans were beginning to lay to link city with city.
The solidity of the path had served the women in another way—and not so long ago. Former owners of the land had respected the path as an established right-of-way, one of those ancient things protected by tradition. Seven or eight years ago the field had changed hands and the new owner had questioned the right of people to use part of his land as a public footpath. He intended, he said, to plough up the path
and sow corn right up to the base of the hill. The stones, layer upon layer of them, dropped by hands long dead, had defied the ploughshare and the straining oxen. He had then, in a fury, declared that he would fence the path off at both ends. But before he had time to do so his wife had been brought to bed with a child, and several of the village women, pitying her because she was a stranger-and married to such a churl!—had shown her small kindnesses. And apparently even a churl could feel gratitude for nothing more was said about closing the path; indeed the right-of-way was tacitly acknowledged by the placing of large boulders, smeared with ochre, at intervals between the path and the arable land.
Nowadays not only women used the path; horsemen and the drivers of pack animals were glad to take the short cut and avoid the sharp incline; but they could only use it in winter when the field was bare. The packs were often wider than the path and would have brushed against the standing corn, bruising and breaking it; also the animals would snatch a mouthful in passing. So every Spring, early or late according to the clemency or otherwise of the season, on a day decided by the Rabbi and village elders, posts were planted at each end of the path and bits of red rag tied to them. And there they remained, gradually losing colour in the fierce summer sun until the harvest was in and the field gleaned.
The daily journey for water though time-consuming, and on days when one did not feel vigorous, tiring, had its happy aspect. It was a social occasion, a daily, communal outing. Women mustered all along the village street in little groups, greeting one another, calling exhortations to haste, sorting out their children, sending those who were old enough to do so running ahead so that their behaviour could be overlooked and their ears out of hearing of the gossip. There was little chance that any woman could be sick or in trouble of any kind and stay alone and neglected. If she didn’t come out, either to join the group to which she belonged or to give some excuse for not doing so, something was wrong and must be investigated. On the path and at the spring every bit of gossip was exchanged and repeated; there was a good deal of laughter over homely, very parochial little jokes, and a good deal of tongue clucking, some outbursts of sympathetic indignation, sly eloquent glances, some nudging of elbows. Every one of them at some time or another had grumbled, to herself, at least, about the daily trudge and wished that she had a well in her own yard, or access to this mysterious piped water that was said to be available in cities like Sepphoris; but there was not one who would willingly have foregone, even in the worst of weather, this daily women’s hour.
There was no acknowledged rule about it, but on the whole women walked in groups according to age and status, it being unseemly for unmarried girls to listen to talk about marital or obstetrical problems, and boring for settled married women to be obliged to listen to the chatter of the young and frivolous.
On this particular March morning everyone was unusually gay because, at last, after a lingering winter, Spring had come. Overnight the wind had died down, the clouds had vanished and the sun was shining in a sky the colour of hyacinths. Soon, of course, they would all be tired of the sun, would shrink from it and the all-pervading dust, would hide from it in their little thick-walled, mud-roofed, vine-shaded houses and long for clouds and cool breezes: but nobody thought of that on this morning. Spring had come and everybody welcomed it. Especially the young.
Four young women walked together; two and two because the path was narrow. They did not quite conform to pattern because one of them was married, the mother of one child and pregnant again. Rachel walked with her friends for several reasons. One was practical. They could be trusted to carry Joshua, turn and turn about. He was a fat, handsome, lazy little boy, nineteen months old, and he could walk but preferred to be carried. Married women had no patience with her; they said she spoiled him: they said, set him down and walk away, he’ll follow quick enough: they issued really horrid warnings about what would happen to the unborn child if she insisted upon lifting and
carrying that great lump of idleness. Not one of them seemed to realise that if she spoiled Joshua it was because he was the only joy her marriage had brought her. There was her other reason for wishing to walk with the girls. She’d had no wish to be married; she disliked the man her parents had chosen for her. Despite Joshua and the bulge below her girdle, she still felt unmarried, wished that she were, sometimes dreamed that she was, and on the daily exodus to the spring liked to pretend that she was.
On this morning they were talking—as girls tend to do in Spring—about clothes. Not new ones, new clothes were rare in their lives, but about the light-weight summer clothes now to be brought out and refurbished; turned perhaps, or dyed, embellished by a few stitches of simple embroidery.
Susannah, shifting Joshua from one hip to the other—really the naughty little boy grew heavier from one day to the next—said: