Melchior gave a sharp cry, as though someone had stabbed him. He came forward to the table and spread his thin shaking hands over his treasures; they fluttered like distressed parent birds over a threatened nest.
“No! No!” he cried in his native tongue.
“They are all I have. All that are left to me. To you they would be useless.”
He looked at them, the pitiable remnants of that great fortune, which would have kept any ordinary man in comfort and happiness all his life.
The slow, difficult tears of an old, usually well-controlled man, rose to his eyes and stood there, unspilled, between the scanty lashes. Nobody, not the best, the most celebrated actor in Rome, however schooled, however bribed, could have put on such an act, Vatinius thought.
He said shortly, “You may go!”
“We may go,” Balthazar said to Melchior: Melchior said to Balthazar, “We go.” Then he looked from his possessions to Vatinius, and Vatinius answered with a nod. In furious haste Melchior gathered his things, stuffing them into the front of his robe, holding the cane case in his hand, as though it were a wand of office.
For a second the knife lay there. A beautiful knife with a keen, bright blade and a handle of gold shaped to the hand, and with, between blade and hilt, a hand shield, curiously worked. Nobody saw it as a symbol, the knife between the barbarian and the towering might of Rome.
Then Caspar, thinking that if Melchior could take his gear, he could claim what was his, snatched it up, asking no one’s permission.
Balthazar was the only one to take civil leave. Bowing his head, bending his knees, he said in his beautiful Latin :
“Sirs, we thank you.”
He was grateful to them because they had been instrumental in restoring some trace of his self-esteem; he couldn’t read the stars, he couldn’t kill robbers; his dreams seemed to come to nothing; but apparently he could tell, on the spur of the moment, and with no help from anyone, an acceptable tale.
“Come along, come along,” Melchior said, now in a frenzy of impatience.
“We haven’t a moment to lose.“FOURTEEN
JOURNEY’S END
“This,” Melchior said, ‘is the place.” Exhaustion, varied emotions, and that desperate need for haste made his voice shake a little, but he spoke with complete confidence.
The dying star, hanging like a luminous apricot, was now so low that it was possible to pick out from the uneven huddle of roofs, exactly the one which he had crossed a continent to find. The whole inn yard was awash in mellow light; and looking round he was inclined to hope that, despite all his fears, he might still be in time—but only just.
The end of the long journey appeared to be a shed or a stable; very low, built of clods and roofed with mud and boughs. That a journey planned at the top of a stone and glass tower which had cost a fortune should have ended in this humble place neither surprised nor troubled him. His business was with the child and its parents; the surroundings were quite irrelevant.
He tapped his camel’s neck and it knelt willingly. He alighted briskly, defying his weariness; one more effort, the greatest and the last, then he could lie down and sleep; he felt as though he could sleep for ever.
Caspar and Balthazar also alighted, less briskly; they also were pent.
“Now,” Melchior said, addressing Caspar first.
“I want no interruptions from you. You will not understand anything that is said, so stand quietly and do not bother us with any foolish questions.”
Caspar grunted. The place where he had hit his head when he fell was beginning to ache and throb, but he ignored the pain, as he had been bred to do and fixed his mind once again on the extremely satisfactory way in which he had thrown that great hulking Roman. He also thought about his plans for the future and began to wonder how best to place his proposals before Melchior and Balthazar, and how long, if they bought fresh camels, it would take them to ride back to Jexal.
Balthazar was now dazed by hunger and fatigue and the speed at which so much had happened, and all so inexplicable; but when Melchior, moving towards the low doorway, said, “Balthazar’ his lifetime of slavery, of pushing himself and his thoughts into the background and of concentrating on other people’s business, enabled him to say, brightly and attentively, “Yes?”
“Now this is most important. It is unlikely that anyone here will understand me, so you must speak and you must say exactly what I say. You must repeat it word for word, and watch their faces. If they look confused, or ask a question, or make a protest, stop me at once. Do you understand? I rely upon you absolutely.”
“I will do my best,” Balthazar said. Melchior opened the door which moved silently because Joseph had re-hung it and oiled its hinges.
It was, as the old man had thought, a stable. A lantern hung on the wall, but compared with the light of the star outside the illumination it gave was poor and dim, and he was obliged to close his eyes for a second or two, screwing them up, to accustom them. Then he looked around and all the vital organs in his body seemed to fall away, leaving him hollow. The disappointment was not to be borne; he would die here of sheer misery, of the knowledge that he had been completely fooled. For there was no child.
There was a heap of straw and on it two people lay asleep. One was a girl, very young with what even Melchior’s old eye recognised as a virginal look. The other was a man, much older. Father? Brother? He was wrapped in a brown cloak, and he was not sleeping peacefully; he tossed and muttered. There was a long manger, occupied at its farther end by a cow and two donkeys. No child!
“But this is impossible,” Melchior said aloud, in a voice shrill with incredulity.
Then the man awoke and with a movement as swift as any even Caspar had
ever seen, was on his feet, between them and the woman, alert, defensive; he had a chisel in his hand.
Balthazar said hastily, “We come in peace.”
The woman woke then, raised herself and looked anxiously towards the unoccupied end of the manger; Melchior’s gaze, following hers, found what it sought; there, wrapped like a cocoon, lay a baby, fast asleep.
“Then you are welcome,” Joseph said; but he still looked wary.
Melchior acknowledged this with his most formal bow; and Caspar gave his salute, because he respected a man who could be asleep, awake, armed and ready all in the same breath space. He approved of the brown, sinewy hand. This was a man more like those legendary men-of-the-hills than any he had yet seen: and he must be some sort of outlaw, if this was the best place he could find for his woman to give birth in.
Balthazar bent his head and flexed his knees.
The girl on the straw acknowledged each salutation with a smile and a curiously dignified movement of her head. She looked very pale and very frail, and Melchior regretted that the message he carried would compel her into instant action. Still, it must be done; and there was no time to lose.
“Who are you, and what do you want?” Joseph asked.
“Balthazar, say this. I have come to congratulate you upon the birth of a wonderful child. A child of great destiny. And I have come to warn you.” He spoke slowly, and paused to give Balthazar time to put the sentences into Aramaic; but there was no need. As soon as he had begun to speak the man had poised his head as though listening to some distant, just recognisable sound; he frowned in concentration, and at the word ‘warn’ shot Melchior a glance which, though startled, was not surprised. It was almost as though the word confirmed something that he had suspected. And before Balthazar could begin to speak he asked quietly, in bad Greek:
“What is the warning?”
“I can speak to you direct? Good. That will save time. I have come to tell you that this is a very special child.”
Joseph said cautiously, “To their parents all children are special.” He had just wakened from a terrifying dream; and though these men said they came in peace, and looked harmless—at least two of them looked harmless, he felt it best to be careful.
“But this is different,” Melchior said.
“I am an astronomer and I read his destiny in the stars, nine months and some days ago, at the time of his conception. I was astounded. You can have no idea of the importance of this child. If he lives, he will govern all the world we know, and places as yet unmarked on any map.”