bodiesmingling with that of food. He must have air, he thought. He stepped over and around the recumbent forms on the floor of the public room and went to the wine store and poured himself not a cup but a jug of wine, and carrying it in his hand went to the door. He’d had some intention of sitting on the bench under the trees for a few minutes; but the wind was too bitter and snow was still falling; so he stood in the shelter of the doorway, braced against the jamb, staring into the night and lifting the jug to his lips every now and again.
There were lanterns on the two posts which he had set up at each side of the entry, and another hanging from a hook over the door. Each had a faint golden halo of light in which the slow, spiralling flakes were visible. Like life, he reflected, his thoughts as idle and aimless as the snow; out of the dark, a brief space in the light, and into the dark again. No permanence, and no point.
From the kitchen, where one of the shutters was open, he could hear Eunice’s voice, railing away. He could catch no words, but he knew her tirades so well that he could have repeated them perfectly. She was an ill-done-by woman who worked her fingers to the bone and had no consideration from anybody, nor a word of thanks. Customers were demanding and greedy and prepared to be dishonest if given half a chance; the slaves were idle and clumsy. Why she should be expected to work herself to death, she really didn’t know and she swore that tomorrow she’d sit down, fold her hands in her lap and see what happened then.
She was capable of expressing these few simple statements in such a variety of ways that she could grumble on for an hour.
He could hear, too, the clatter of dishes and bowls being washed and stacked; once something fell with a thud and that sound was immediately followed by that of a good smart slap.
He shivered, huddling in the doorway and lifted the jug, He’d wait a little longer; then he could go in and help arrange the beds, and Eunice, exhausted, would fall asleep. That would be another day done.
Then, on the edge of the forecourt, the darkness between the two lanterns took on solidity, and shape, and movement. Silhouetted against the grey and the shift of the snow-filled air the figures showed up black, surprisingly clear. A man and a woman, their heads bowed against the blizzard, and a donkey, limping so badly that only the man pulling at its head-rope kept it in motion at all. The woman had her hand on its flank, whether to support herself, or to help its sagging progress it was impossible to say.
They stopped. The donkey dropped his head and looked as though it would never move again. The woman walked to the end of the bench and sat down as though she, too, had expended her last bit of strength. The man came towards the door, walking with a step that told of weariness and haste.
He was quite near the door when he realised that Ephorus was standing in its shelter.
He asked, in a deep, pleasant voice, “This is the inn?”
“It is. But you’re too late. Not an inch left.”
It occurred to him that he had never seen a more worried-looking man; no ship’s master, in the most hazardous situation, had ever looked more anxious, more eaten up by fearful concern.
“Oh, please,” the man said.
“Just room for one. For my wife.
That’s all I ask. I know we’re late; the donkey went lame. But you could find room just for one surely.”
“We’re full,” Ephorus said.
“Packed like fish in a barrel.” He saw the expression of sheer despair wrench the man’s face and in a laconic, wine-muffled way he was sorry for him; but he thought—We all have our troubles. Still, he roused himself enough to say :
“There’s another inn on the other side of the town.”
“I tried there. We came in that way. They were full. They suggested a private dwelling. I’ve tried dozens. All full. My wife…” He looked at the woman on the bench, and back, pleadingly, at Ephorus.
“She can’t go farther. She must have a bed. I can pay. I’ll pay anything.” He was prepared, tomorrow, to go and sell himself into slavery; anything so that Mary should have shelter and a bed tonight.
His insistence exasperated Ephorus.
He said, “Well, I’m sorry; but I tell you, we’re full. No roomfor a dwarf. We’ve been turning people away.”
The man said, “Oh God! God!” It sounded as though he were praying; and Ephorus thought sardonically that he was wasting his breath; it’d puzzle even the Jews’ God, that powerful Jehovah, to find a spare bed in Bethlehem at this time of night, on such a night. With that thought he turned himself and took the handle of the door in his free hand, which was his infirm, left hand, so he fumbled and was about to shift the jug and lift the handle with his good hand, when the woman stood up and came forward.
She said, “Joseph’ and the man turned and said in a defeated voice:
“There’s no room here, either.”
She said, “Don’t fret. I’m rested now. We’ll find a place….”
And by that time she was within the radius of light cast by the lantern over the doorway; and Ephorus’ heart, quiescent for so long, gave a great jump, and seemed to stop. He had to put out his right hand and catch at the door-jamb to save himself from falling, and the wine-jug, entrusted to his untrustworthy left hand, did fall, and broke.
The face inside the blue hood was so like that of Dorcas—not the Dorcas he had known, but a younger Dorcas, untouched, unsullied, the girl whose existence he had always sensed, under the paint and the fine clothes.
It seemed a long time before he could find breath to speak. Then he said:
“Wait here. I’ll see what I can do.”
In the kitchen the dish-washing was finished; the slave girls were laying out the makeshift beds; Eunice, having talked herself to a standstill, was rubbing her mixture of honey and rose-water into her hands. She looked hot and flushed and formidable.
He said: “Eunice. There’s a woman wanting a bed. Do you mind if she has my place?” Before she could protest he added cajolingly, “That way you’d be all females together. Better so.”
“And where,” Eunice asked, ‘do you propose to sleep?”
He had not given that a thought, but he scrambled about in his mind and found an answer..
“In the stable,” he said.
“Her husband’s with her. We’ll sleep in the stable.”
“Alongside the donkey!” Eunice’s voice took on its sharpest cutting edge.
“Very right and proper. You and a fellow with a wife, hunting a bed at this time of night. You and him and the donkey—and the donkey with more sense than either of you. Well, if you don’t mind, why should I? They’ll pay. But I want to take a look at her first.”
They went to the door. The man and the woman stood under its shelter, the donkey had hobbled forward and joined them.
“The best we can manage .. .” Eunice began, and then she rounded upon Ephorus.
“You great fool! I knew you were a fool, but I didn’t know you were blind! It isn’t a bed she needs, it’s a place to give birth in. And you’d have landed me with her, in my kitchen! You daft drunken sot!” She drew in her breath with the peculiar hissing sound that punctuated her worst tirades.
“We have no room here. No room at all!”
Ephorus began to shake. Amongst all the other thoughts that battered him at that moment, a horrible memory came. Once, at Byblos, there’d been a beggar woman, one of those who came, purely to beg, when a ship was about to sail. Women who met an incoming ship were all intent to sell themselves; those who begged from an outgoing ship were old, with no shadow of attractiveness left; they simply hoped that men with a few remaining coins, men who had just left wives, sweethearts, mothers behind, would be generous. This particular woman, holding out her hand with an imploring, ingratiating smile, had suddenly taken on an agonised expression, bent over, groaning, and dropped to the gutter. Most of the other women had drawn aside, but two old hags had gone to her aid, and there in the gutter she had given birth. Ephorus, fifteen years old and safely aboard his ship, had watched it all; and it was that experience as much as anything else that had made him glad when Dorcas had said that she was unlikely to bear a child. If Eunice, on the other hand, had ever fallen pregnant he would have been pleased. But how a man could knowingly doom a woman he loved to such agony he could never understand.