Unholy Night

I

For a moment, it seemed like Herod was done screaming. Then he began again.

What came out of his diseased mouth was less a collection of words and more a series of sharp, anguished notes. Tired lungs forcing bursts of air through bloodied vocal cords. Sounds with no shape or rhythm. The improvisations of a madman. Herod’s courtesans had taken refuge behind their pillars once again. His advisors and servants pressed their backs against the walls of the sunlit throne room, trying to make themselves as small as possible as their king circled, tearing and kicking at any object that dared cross his path, spewing those frightening, senseless sounds.

A body lay in the center of Herod’s harried orbit — the body of a giant whose legs had been shredded by the enemy in Bethlehem and whose throat had more recently been cut by friends in Jerusalem.

It was the body of the soldier Balthazar had spared.

He’d been led in to see his king only moments before, two fellow soldiers helping him along as he limped down the length of the throne room, helping him down as he knelt before Herod on broken knees. With his head bowed and his body shaking from fright, the giant had delivered the news: They’d failed to kill all the male children of Bethlehem. His captain was dead, and many men with him.

“Did the men of the village rise up against you?” asked Herod. There was a faint hope behind this question. An uprising could be forgiven. Better yet, it could be crushed. He would simply send more men.

“No, Your Highness.”

“Then why does one of my soldiers come crawling back to me with his head hung low, spilling his blood on my floor? Who did this to you?”

The soldier paused, ashamed of what he was about to say. He’d considered lying to the king, saying it was thirty or even fifty men who’d defeated them in Bethlehem, making up some story about a band of mysterious fighters who came out of nowhere. Mercenaries from some nearby kingdom. But lying was pointless. Sooner or later, Herod would learn the truth. Shameful as it was, it had to be told.

“Three men, Your Highness,” he said at last.

Herod stood and walked slowly, slowly down the steps from his throne.

“Three men?”

“Three men… dressed in the robes of nobles.”

Somewhere at the ends of his arms, Herod’s spindly fingers were balling into fists.

“They… killed our captain and… escaped with one of the children. One of them gave me a message. I’m… supposed to deliver it to you.”

Herod was directly in front of the soldier now, his small frame rendered almost comically frail next to the giant kneeling before him.

“Then,” said Herod, “I suppose you’d better deliver it.”

The soldier swallowed hard. All things being equal, he would’ve preferred being left to bleed on the streets of Bethlehem. But this duty had fallen to him, and it must be done.

“He said ‘the Antioch Ghost is laughing at you.’ He said he’ll… ‘stand over your grave.’”

The words took a moment to register. When they did, Herod lost the last of himself that was sane and ordered the soldier’s throat cut at once. Even repeating such a thing was an act of treason. And so the two soldiers who’d helped their battered comrade kneel now drew their blades from behind. The giant, for his part, didn’t resist. Not as his brothers dragged their daggers along his neck. Not even as he saw a spray of red cover their arms or felt the warmth of blood running over his chest. He’d known. He’d known the moment the Antioch Ghost had chosen him as his messenger. He’d known he would never leave Herod’s throne room alive. The giant fell forward, feeling as if his head were full of wine. A moment later, he couldn’t remember his own name. A moment after that, he was gone, and Herod was screaming, “The child will die! The child will die, and the Antioch Ghost with him!”

There were no political considerations to be made. No discussions to be had or advisors consulted. These things would simply come to pass, no matter the cost in men or treasure. They would come to pass, even if he had to kill all the sons in all of the villages of Judea.

Not even the sight of that treasonous blood spilling on his floor, of that treasonous mouth hanging stupidly open, could assuage the effect of what the giant had said. Of how the Antioch Ghost was mocking him. And so Herod circled, spewing those strange, disconnected noises with his raw throat while his advisors waited in silence. Waiting for his rage to subside — for they could no more hasten the end of their king’s tantrum than make a storm blow itself out before its time. All they could do was take shelter and wait for the clouds to part. When at last they did, Herod slumped into his throne. He was shaking from exhaustion, wincing from the pain in his throat… but he was smiling. Smiling, because the storm had left a seedling in its wake. An idea.

Herod smiled, for here again was proof that he was blessed with the greatest gift a leader could possess:

Vision.

Where others saw arid wastelands, he saw future cities. Where others mourned the ashes, he harnessed the flames. Even now, slumped over in his throne, weak with rage, he saw an opportunity. A way to slay the child and the Ghost in one stroke, and achieve something even greater in the process.

The emperor…

Herod, like all provincial kings, only ruled because he enjoyed the backing of Rome. But his relationship with the empire had been strained ever since Rome’s civil war, from which Augustus Caesar emerged the ultimate victor. Unfortunately, Herod had been a supporter of Augustus’s chief rival, Marc Antony. And while he’d been quick to pledge his everlasting and unwavering loyalty to the new Caesar, Augustus had viewed Judea’s puppet king with suspicion ever since. But here was a chance to change all of that. A chance to improve relations with Rome and protect his dynasty in Judea. Here was a chance to flatter the emperor, while using him at the same time.

With the last of his voice, Herod summoned a scribe and dictated a letter. It began:

Mighty Augustus, Master of the World,

I humble myself before your glory, and beg you condescend to advise me in a matter most dire. A matter of great consequence, not only for Judea, but for all the empire…

II

A fellowship of six fugitives rode south from Emmaus, divided among the backs of three camels: Gaspar alone in front, Melchyor and Joseph in the middle, and Balthazar, Mary, and the child in back. They moved slowly over the sand, far from the roads and the prying eyes of soldiers, their mouths dry and canteens nearly empty. There were no debts of honor binding them together. No pledges of friendship or shared beliefs. Balthazar had saved the lives of his companions, and they’d saved his in return. They were square in the eyes of the desert. All that united them now was a common need to escape Herod’s grasp.

As the heat of the day reached full bloom on their backs, the child woke and began to cry, and Balthazar realized this was the first time he’d heard his voice since they’d escaped Bethlehem. Given everything he had been through in the last few days, the infant had remained strangely calm, strangely silent. Now his sharp, short wails rang in his ears, waking the headache he’d almost managed to forget. He was parched, fatigued, and half starved. Sharp pain pulsed from his stitches and through his body with each of the camel’s footfalls. And now a baby was screaming at the back of his throbbing head.

“We have to stop,” said Mary.

“We can’t,” said Balthazar.

“But he’s hungry.”

“We’re all hungry.”

“I have to feed him.”

“Then feed him while we ride. I won’t look.”

“I can’t. Not with the camel moving up and down like this.”

“Then I guess he’ll starve.”

How could he say that so dispassionately?

“You would deny a hungry baby his mother’s milk?” she asked.

“No, I’d deny Herod’s men a better chance of catching us. We find food or water? That’s when we stop. Otherwise, you’re the woman — you figure it out.”

“But — ”

“Look, I’ll gladly let you climb down and feed him, but I won’t wait behind while you do.”

Mary thought about appealing to Gaspar or Melchyor, but it was useless. They’d simply tell her the same thing. She thought about calling ahead to her husband and begging his help in convincing Balthazar to stop. But she knew it wouldn’t make any difference what Joseph said. She felt tears welling up in her eyes and hated herself for it. Who were these men they’d entrusted with their lives? With their child’s life? But her frustration gave way to dread when she realized the baby had stopped crying.

Maybe he’s too exhausted to cry. Too dehydrated. Too hungry and weak. Maybe this is how the end begins. Maybe I have no idea what I’m doing. Maybe we should never have left Emmaus. Maybe this was all a —

“Look!”

The voice had come from up ahead. Gaspar had stopped his camel and was pointing at something on the ground. Something in the sand, catching the sunlight. It was a stream — a tiny sliver of life trickling across the desert, a foot in width and only a few inches deep. It ran from left to right, as far as the eye could see in both directions, and from what they could tell, it was almost perfectly straight.

Balthazar had traveled this section of desert many times before, but he had no recollection of there ever being a stream. In fact, he had no recollection of ever seeing water move over the sand in such a way, flowing over it, without being absorbed into the grains. He would have thought it impossible. Yet here it was, running clear and cool, from horizon to horizon.

“What do we do?” asked Gaspar.

Balthazar took in the strange sight a moment longer, then turned back to Mary.

“We stop.”

III

The young Roman officer knew an opportunity when he saw it.

It was one of his gifts. The gift of being able to sit, and watch, and wait — letting others pick the low-hanging fruit, until the right, ripe opportunity presented itself. The gift of knowing when to get aggressive. And when aggressive wasn’t enough, knowing when to get ruthless.

This self-discipline was a skill in its own right. But when coupled with naked ambition, it became a thing of beauty, a weapon, which had seen this particular officer rise through the ranks faster than almost any in Rome’s history. Rising through lieutenant, then captain, until he was made imperator at the age of twenty-two. Most of the recruits under his command were older than he was, but this didn’t bother the officer in the least. He was comfortable with power. He’d been born to wield it.

He marched down the central corridor of the emperor’s palace, flanked by two of his lieutenants. Heels clopping against the marble floor, helmets held firmly on their hips, swords rattling against their sides. In his hand, the young officer held the letter that had been delivered by a rider from the East that very morning. A letter that bore the seal of Judea’s king.

In that letter was one of those juicy pieces of fruit. The young officer had known the moment he’d read it. A piece worth getting aggressive over. Here was a chance to catch someone called “the Antioch Ghost.” A middling pest who’d caused the Roman Army no shortage of headaches over the past decade. More important, here was a chance to further impress his beloved emperor and further secure his future. He would be a general, of course. There could be no doubt. And before his thirtieth birthday, at this rate. After that? A senator, perhaps. Or a provincial governor. But those pieces of fruit were still ripening on the vine. He would pick them all in due time.

The young officer reached the large double doors at the end of the corridor, each of them twenty feet high, plated with silver and decorated with gold embellishments. A golden eagle, the symbol of Rome’s military might, dominated these adornments — its outstretched wings spanning the entire width of both closed doors. The officer and his lieutenants saluted the guards who stood on either side of it. The guards saluted in return and stepped aside, ready to open the doors to the throne room. But the officer held up a hand: Not yet.

He paused a moment. Took a breath, composed himself. He wanted to make this entrance count. After all, he was about to ask the ruler of the world to go to war with an infant and a thief. When he felt sufficiently prepared, the young officer addressed one of the guards: “Tell the emperor that Pontius Pilate is here to see him… ”

Augustus Caesar was the most powerful human being who had ever drawn breath, though he was only “human” in the strictest sense of the word.

To his subjects, he was a god. It was reflected in the way they revered him. Feared him and worshipped his likeness, whether it was stamped on the face of a gold coin or chiseled into marble. He was in his sixties, twice the average life expectancy. But he’d aged gracefully and still projected a stately, if graying sense of power. The very name his subjects had bestowed on him, Augustus, meant “Illustrious One,” and when he appeared in public, protocol demanded that he be introduced with a number of platitudes, which included:

He who is beyond the reach of the gods! He before whom all kings kneel! Before whom even the mountains bow their heads!

His kingdom reached every corner of the known world: from Hispania in the west to Syria in the east, from the tip of Africa below to northernmost Gaul above. At his command were the greatest army and navy the world had ever known. The best-prepared soldiers, with the finest weaponry the collective taxes of the earth could buy.

But all that power was nothing without vision.

It was lack of vision that had doomed his uncle, Julius. For all his military prowess, all his strategic genius, Julius Caesar had lacked vision.

Fate had delivered the world into the palm of his hand, but he hadn’t been man enough to wrap his fist around it, to take it all for himself. He’d tried to be a man of the people. He’d tried to share his power with the senate. And for his troubles, he’d been stabbed twenty-three times by the very senators he’d reached out to. Stabbed in the back as he slipped on his own blood, trying to flee. Left to rot on the steps of the senate for three hours before anyone even bothered to cover his body. That had been his reward for being a man of the people.

To think he could have stopped it all, if only he’d been willing to use the weapon…

The world knew that Julius Caesar had transformed Rome from a republic to an empire. They knew that he was a skilled orator and general. But of those closest to Julius, only a few — including his beloved nephew, Augustus — knew the dark secret behind his power. The weapon that had given him the confidence to march on Rome and seize the empire for himself:

The magi.

Julius had come to possess this weapon during his conquest of Gaul, but not by stealing it from another ruler or by constructing it from his own blueprints. He’d come to possess it because the weapon had chosen him. As Julius explained in a letter to fellow general and confidant Pompey:

The campaign had been going badly. The Gauls had beaten us into retreat. One night, as I conferred with my officers, the guards presented a visitor. A short, frail man in a black robe, with a gray beard, sunken eyes, and bald head. He looked some fifty years in age, though he walked with the wooden staff of a much older man, topped with a coiled brass snake. Clearly he was some kind of priest, though I had never seen a priest who looked quite like this one. His skin was covered with strange designs rendered in black ink, and his arms bore the scars of many burns, both old and new.

“I have foreseen that the name ‘Caesar’ shall ring through the ages,” he said. “That he shall be worshipped as the gods are worshipped. I come to offer him my talents. My loyalty and protection. In return, I ask only a modest share of his spoils.”

“And why do I need the protection of a priest?” I asked. “I have four legions under my command.”

“Because,” he said, “for all your legions, you find yourself on the brink of defeat. Chased off by farmers armed only with rocks and sticks.”

My officers rose and drew their swords. To speak to a general in such a way was unthinkable. Punishable by death.

“Are you mad?” I asked.

A strange smile came across the priest’s face, as if he had intended such a reaction. As if he had wanted such a question asked.

“I am a magus,” he said.

The magi were an ancient cult. Masters of a magic that had all but vanished from the earth. They’d come to power in the Age of the Scriptures, back when angels and mystical beasts had walked side by side with man, when the battles of heaven and hell had been waged on the plains of Galilee and in the hills of Hebron. The world had been different then. Time had barely begun, and the gods still mingled freely with man, whether they were the many gods of Mount Olympus or the lonely God of Abraham. And while most men lived in fear and reverence of their gods, a few sought to wield that power for themselves.

At their height, they’d numbered in the thousands, hidden away in monasteries, studying the higher forces that ordinary men feared. The dark forces. Learning how to control them, master them, exploit them. It was said that a magus could summon fire from thin air. Turn statues into living men, and living men into stone. It was said they could see things that had not yet come to pass, and influence the thoughts of men half a world away. For thousands of years, they were treated as living gods — revered, feared, and rarely seen outside their monastery walls.

But over the centuries, the Age of Miracles had given way to the Age of Man, and their numbers had dwindled, until — more than 10,000 years after the first man had called himself “magus” — only one remained, wandering a world ruled not by gods but by Romans. The last of his kind, the bearer of a forgotten gift that no longer had any use.

But Julius Caesar found a use for it.

With the last of the magi at his side, he’d turned his campaign in Gaul around. And when he was finished, he’d turned against his allies and taken all of Rome’s glory for himself.

As emperor, Julius learned to rely on the dark priest’s ability to see into the future. In his ability to uncover an enemy’s secrets through a kind of deep meditation and summon nature to Rome’s aid, conjuring wind and lightning to drive out surrounding armies, commanding beasts to betray their masters. Even invading the minds of senators and influencing their votes. With the magus at his side, Julius had been elevated from a general to a god. But over time, he’d begun to fear his secret weapon. In another letter to Pompey, he wrote:

There is a darkness about him that unnerves me. If he is able to read the thoughts of others, what is to stop him from reading mine? If he can summon bolts of lightning from the heavens, what is to stop him from using one to strike me down? What good is a weapon if one cannot command it without fear?

Paranoid, Caesar ordered his “weapon” sent away in 44 BC. But before his exile, the magus gave him one last piece of advice: “The Ides of March,” he’d said. “Beware the Ides of March.”

Caesar ignored the warning. And that very year, on the fifteenth day of the third month, he was stabbed to death on the senate floor. In the end, he’d been too afraid to wield the weapon that had sought him out. Too weak.

But this was a weakness Augustus didn’t share. On learning of his uncle’s murder, Augustus had summoned the magus at once and demanded his loyalty. Slowly, deliberately, he’d consolidated his power in the empire — using the magus’s insight and influence to battle his rival, Marc Antony, and the Egyptian whore, Cleopatra. Using the magus’s power to beat them back, until they had no choice but to take their own lives in shame. And to make sure that no further challenges to his supremacy emerged, Augustus had ordered their children put to death.

With vision and cunning, he’d succeeded where his uncle had failed. He’d taken all of Rome’s glory for himself. And so long as the magus remained sequestered in Rome, Augustus Caesar knew that the empire would never fall.

But that was all in the past now, and the past was where small minds dwelled.

The future had just walked into Augustus’s throne room. Here was Pontius Pilate, kneeling before him, his bowed head reflected in the polished marble of his floor.

Handsome Pilate. Loyal, beloved Pilate, bearing the request of a sickly, traitorous old king.

Herod “the Great.” The name had always elicited a sneer from Augustus, even before he’d become master of the world. Who was this “great” man but a servant of Rome? A torturer of his own people and murderer of his own children? Yes, Augustus had ordered children put to death. But they were the children of his enemies. To murder one’s own children? It was barbaric.

He listened as Pilate relayed the message. Something about a baby. A prophecy. Someone called “the Antioch Ghost.” When Pilate was finished, Augustus considered it all for a moment, then said, “He wants me to send an army across the water… to kill a child?”

“The Antioch Ghost is the true prize, Caesar. He’s stolen untold riches from your provinces. Killed untold numbers of your men. If we — ”

Augustus held up a hand. Stop.

“You said the people of Judea think this ‘Ghost’ is already dead, did you not?”

“Yes, Caesar.”

“Pilate… what good is it to kill a man who is already dead? Where is the glory for Rome?”

Pilate couldn’t help but smile. He knew his emperor well. After pausing for effect, he uttered the sentence he’d carefully crafted on his way to the palace. The one he knew he’d have to utter after being challenged on this point:

“With all respect, Caesar, this is less about Rome’s glory and more about sending a message to Judea’s king.”

Augustus shifted on his throne, thinking. He didn’t like the idea of all this fuss over a thief and a baby.

But Pilate is right… there is an opportunity in this.

“Very well,” said Augustus. “I will catch Herod’s infant and his thief. But not because Herod requests it, and not because they have wronged Rome. I will catch them because Herod cannot. And in doing so, I will remind our sickly friend how small he really is.”

An ordinary emperor would have sent troops and left it at that. But Augustus had no interest in being ordinary. He would do more than send troops. He would make a real show of his power. Put the fear of death in the puppet king of Judea.

He would send the magus.

IV

Melchyor and Joseph watered the camels and filled the canteens in the desert stream, while Mary sat on the sand with the child under her robes. Balthazar knelt a ways downstream, cupping handfuls of water — first to his mouth, then over his face and chest, washing away the blood that continued to seep through his stitches.

“This is madness,” said Gaspar, who’d come to kneel beside him. “We have the entire Judean Army after us, yet we play wet nurse to a baby. We could have been halfway to Egypt by now if we were not dragging them with us. It is too dangerous, Balthazar. We must think of ourselves.”

“I am thinking of myself. I was thirsty. We found water. I stopped.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I know,” he said, cupping another handful to his wound. “I also know what I saw in Bethlehem. What all of us saw. You want to leave them to Herod’s men?”

“Yes, I saw. And the same will happen to us if we are captured. I did not escape certain death to throw my life away for strangers.”

“I don’t like it either, okay? But I didn’t go back for that baby just to dump him in the desert to rot. Once we cross the border, we go our separate ways. Until then, we play wet nurse.”

Balthazar stood, shook the water from his hands, and dried them on his robes.

“Why does the Antioch Ghost care if an infant lives or dies?” asked Gaspar.

It was a stupid question, of course. The obvious answer was, “Because I still have a shred of decency,” or “The real question is, why don’t you care?” But Balthazar didn’t say either of these things, because as obvious as those answers were, they weren’t the real answers.

Go on, tell him, Balthazar. Tell him why you care so much. Why you hate so much, kill so much, search so much, as if any of it will bring him —

“Ask yourself,” said Gaspar, shaking Balthazar out of his trance, “would you give your life to protect theirs?”

Balthazar looked back at Joseph and Melchyor wrestling with their camels. At Mary sitting on the ground, feeding the baby beneath her robes.

“Not if I can help it,” he said, and walked away.

Pontius Pilate stared ahead at the open water of the Mediterranean. Only hours after kneeling in the emperor’s throne room, he found himself standing on the bow of the Heptares — a heavy warship carrying over 1,000 men, leading an armada of smaller triremes from Rome. He’d never seen water rush by a bow so fast or known a sail to be fuller than the one above him. Normally, the hundreds of men sitting belowdecks would be rowing across the sea one stroke at a time. But today they could only sit with their oars on their laps, as a steady tailwind sped them along faster than mortals could ever hope to row.

Pilate wasn’t sure, but he had a good idea of where this strange, steady wind was coming from. The magus was onboard the Heptares with them, tucked comfortably in his private quarters below. And though his cabin door was closed, he could be heard muttering to himself on the other side. Praying in some strange mix of Latin and other languages, repeating the same phrases over and over like a chant. Pilate hadn’t been able to make all of it out, but as he’d pressed his ear curiously to the magus’s door, he’d heard one word repeated among the others: ventus.

Wind.

The emperor had taken Pilate into his confidence in Rome, sharing the secret history of the Caesars and the magi, his powers and the role they’d played in creating the present-day empire, and what was known of their cult’s origins and demise. And when he’d finished, Augustus had summoned the magus to his palace and introduced him to the young officer.

Pilate had done his best to hide his dread at meeting such a strange, dangerous little man. He’d been prepared for the oddity of the magus’s appearance, but nothing had prepared him for the feeling of seeing those piercing black eyes for himself. He’d felt those eyes look right through him, felt as if they were peeking into his head. His thoughts. Most unnerving was the fact that the magus looked just as Julius Caesar had described him in his letter forty years earlier.

That he hadn’t aged a day in all that time only unnerved Pilate more.

“He doesn’t speak,” Augustus had said, “but he will tell you everything you need to know. Listen to him, Pilate, and return him to me unharmed. I’m trusting you with my most prized possession.”

And here he was, alone on the bow of Heptares, the sole commander of 10,000 men and one mystic. Pilate could feel himself getting closer with every mile. Closer to his prize, his destiny. That’s all this was, after all — just destiny, playing itself out, mile by mile. There were no accidents in this life. Pilate believed that the gods had a plan for all of us. And no matter which turns he took, he believed that his life would intersect greatness sooner or later. His name would ring through the ages, immortal.

Usually, if the sea smiled on you, it took seven days for a ship to sail from Rome to Judea. At this rate, Pilate would intersect his greatness in less than two.

Mary rode behind a terrible man. Yes, he’d come back for them, saved them from Herod’s men, and she was grateful for that. Grateful enough to risk everything to save his life in return. But Mary was eager to reach Egypt and be rid of him forever.

The sun was growing blessedly lower in the sky, though the heat still radiated off the sand, baking them from the bottoms of their feet to the tops of their headdresses. At least the baby seemed full and happy for the moment, his blue eyes blinking up at her, the lids above them growing heavy. She poured water from her canteen onto her hand and ran it over the baby’s scalp to keep it cool. She adjusted her robes, trying to keep the sun off of his face, while whispering one of her favorite stories from the Scriptures to nudge her son closer to the sleep his body craved:

And a great cry went up to Moses. “Why have you led us here?” they said. “Were there no more graves in Egypt? Have you brought us into the desert to wither and die?” And Moses said, “I was commanded by the Lord to lead you here, for you were the slaves of a cruel pharaoh — and it is better to die in the desert than die a slave.”

When she was little, Mary had whispered these stories to herself at night — a way to quiet her restless mind, to comfort herself when she was frightened or anxious. She envisioned the Scriptures as a bottomless well of these stories. A place from which she could always draw nourishment, even here in the desert.

As a woman, she was forbidden from studying the scrolls on which they were written. But she was permitted to sit in the rear of the synagogue, listening to the men read them aloud. She’d been transported by those stories as a young girl: Jonah in the belly of the whale, the folly of building a tower to heaven, Noah’s test of faith before the Great Flood. And though she would never say so aloud, she prided herself on being able to quote these passages better than many of the men who fanned themselves in the heat of the synagogue and stole naps beneath their shawls. This one had popped into her head out of nowhere.

“Do not be afraid,” said Moses. “Stand firm, and the Lord will stand with you. Be still, and he will fight for you.”

“What are you muttering about back there?” asked Balthazar.

“I’m not muttering. I’m reciting a story to help him sleep.”

“Well… recite quieter.”

Mary bit her lip in frustration. Miserable soul! Uncaring, dispassionate wretch! She sat in silence for few moments, reminding herself that every step of the camel beneath her was one step closer to Egypt. But in the absence of his mother’s soothing voice, the baby began to fuss again. Soon he would begin to cry, and the insufferable man in front of her would only grow more insufferable. Fine. If you won’t let me whisper, you’ll just have to talk to me.

“Do you know the Scriptures?” she asked.

Balthazar rolled his eyes. Here we go. What was it about these people? Why couldn’t they just keep their delusions to themselves?

“This may come as a shock,” he said, “but not everyone in the world is a Jew.”

“No… but even the Romans have their sacred stories. Surely your people do as well.”

“Ancient nonsense, written by dead fools. Just like your Scriptures.”

“How can you say that, when God has spoken to you?”

“God’s never ‘spoken’ to me. In fact, I’d love it if you tried to be more like him.”

“What about your dream? Zachariah said he chose you.”

“He didn’t choose anything.”

“But how do you kn — ”

“Because there is no ‘he.’”

Mary couldn’t believe a man would say such a thing. It was one thing to be cruel and uncaring. But to be blasphemous?

“But… that’s ridiculous. Who sent the plagues to Egypt? Who created the earth beneath us? The stars above us? Who created man?”

“It’s too hot to argue. Especially with a woman.”

“I’m not trying to argue. I just… I’ve never met a man who didn’t believe in God.”

Balthazar turned and glared at her. Mary was surprised by the contempt on his furrowed face.

“Of course you haven’t,” he said. “You’re a stupid little girl from a stupid little village of zealots. This is the real world.”

“But a life without God is… ”

“Is what? What’s so great about your God? You tell me what’s so great about a God that does nothing while infants get run through with swords. Swords held by his devoted followers, by the way. You tell me what kind of God that is.”

Mary had no answer.

“Either I’m right,” he continued, “and he doesn’t exist, or you’re right, and he’s the kind of God who watches children die. The kind of God who sits around while men like Herod build palaces and good people starve. Either way, he’s not worth worshipping.”

Mary sat in silence. She’d never heard anyone denounce the Lord. Of course he existed. To think otherwise would be to admit that everything she believed was a lie. Worse, it would mean that she was crazy. But Balthazar’s words were confusing.

“All men need something to believe in,” she said at last.

Without looking, Balthazar reached down and pulled his sword out of its sheath.

“Well… you have your weapon,” said Mary, “and I have mine.”

Balthazar put the sword away and turned back to the desert ahead.

“I like mine better,” he said.

V

Night had come to the desert.

Ten thousand Roman soldiers stood in formation, flames reflected in their polished helmets and shields, all of them facing a makeshift altar of piled stones. As Pilate predicted, they’d reached the shores of Judea in less than two days. Faster than most of the assembled men thought possible. Some were calling it a miracle. But it was only a taste of the extraordinary things to come.

Two great pyres burned before them — one on either side of the altar, where the magus stood over the body of a sacrificial lamb. Its throat had been cut and its blood drained into a bowl. As the men watched, the magus dipped his finger in the blood and used it to draw a line across his own forehead. He dipped a second time and traced it along the brass serpent that topped his walking staff.

“Nehushtan… ,” he whispered.

To the Romans, it was nothing more than a strange word. They wouldn’t have recognized it from the Book of Exodus, nor known that the brass serpent they were looking upon — the Nehushtan — had been cast by Moses himself. Created to adorn the walking stick he’d used to guide his people through the desert. It was a relic of untold age and power. How the magus came to possess it was a mystery.

He raised the bowl to his lips and drank a mouthful of the lamb’s blood, then walked to the pyre on his right, so close to the flames that his robes billowed in the heated air. He held the staff out in front of his body, until the snake was fully enveloped in fire. The lamb’s blood on its surface blackened, then burned away. The magus chanted to himself, his words growing faster, as Pilate and his fellow officers looked on from the side of the altar.

Did the snake just… move?

At first, the men thought it was a trick of the light. Until, to their amazement, the brass snake slowly uncoiled itself and wound its way onto the magus’s arm. A few of the enlisted men broke ranks and fled, terrified by what they saw. What darkness is this? What gods are at work? But Pilate stood his ground, even as the Nehushtan wound its way down the magus’s body and onto the desert floor. He didn’t know how it was possible. He didn’t care. He only knew he was one step closer to his prize.

The magus stood before the altar with his eyes closed, reciting an ancient incantation over and over, guiding the beast at it slithered off into the desert…

Hunting.

Balthazar sat near the mouth of a cramped cave, keeping watch over the vast expanse of desert. The others were sleeping behind him. All except one.

“Get some sleep,” said Joseph, who’d come to join him. “It’s more important you be rested than me. I can keep watch for a while.”

Balthazar considered the faint, moonlit outline of Joseph’s face. The young, bearded face of a village woodworker. They were about the same age, but they couldn’t have been more different.

“I’ll stay,” said Balthazar. “No offense, but I wouldn’t be able to sleep knowing it was you keeping watch.”

Joseph smiled and sat beside him.

“You think I’m weak.”

“I think you’re naïve.”

“And what have I done to make you think this?”

“You believe the impossible.”

Ah… this again. The man who mocks others for believing the word of God.

“So I’m naïve because I believe the Scriptures?”

“No… you’re naïve because you believe her.”

It took a moment for Joseph to untangle what Balthazar had said and get his meaning. When he did, his face darkened, and his mind wandered back to what had been the hardest few days of his life. The days back in Nazareth, when his happiness had been shattered and his faith tested to its limit. And all because his young bride-to-be had come to him with a tearful confession.

“I didn’t, you know,” Joseph said at last.

“Didn’t what?”

“Believe her. Not when she first told me, anyway. I wanted to, of course. Desperately. But… ”

“But?”

“I’m a patient man, but to believe such a thing… like you said… it was impossible.”

“What did she tell you?”

Joseph thought about it for a moment. What was it she’d said again?

“She told me,” said Joseph, “that she had woken to the whispering voice of a man.”

“Not a promising start.”

“She told me that she’d followed the voice outside, only to find that the night had turned bright as day. And yet the streets of Nazareth were barren. There was no sound. No rustling of olive trees or birdsong.”

“A dream.”

“But as real as any dream she’d ever had. As real as the two of us sitting here in this cave. Mary told me that she’d seen a man approaching. A shimmering, radiant man who seemed to step out of the sun itself and walk toward her. A man not of this earth… a man with wings.”

Balthazar tried to hide the chill that touched his spine on hearing those words.

“And before he even opened his mouth,” said Joseph, “Mary told me that she knew — knew with absolute certainty — that his name was Gabriel, archangel of the Lord.”

“Gabriel?”

“‘Rejoice, you highly favored one,’ he told her. ‘The Lord is with you. Blessed are you among women. Behold, you will conceive in your womb, and bring forth a son. And the holy one who is born from you will be called the son of God.’”

“That’s it? That’s what she told you?”

“I knew it was a lie. I knew. I thought, ‘No, it’s worse than a lie. A lie could be forgiven. This was blasphemy! God born of a woman!’ I could see only two possibilities: one, that Mary had known another man, whether by her choice or not, and invented the story to explain her condition. Or two, that she suddenly dreaded the idea of being my wife and was trying to scare me off. But I thought, if she dreaded me that much, why has she seemed so happy until now? It didn’t make sense.”

“Women never do.”

“But then I realized that there was a third possibility: that Mary had gone mad. That she actually believed what she’d told me. And the more I thought about it, the more I felt in my heart that this was the real answer. She’d told her story with such conviction. Her face had never wavered; her eyes had never lied, even as her lips did. Maybe it was just that I wanted to believe anything other than the thought of, you know… ”

“I know.”

“But what could I do? If I turned my back on her, I knew exactly what would happen. I’d seen it before: adulterous women dragged out of their homes, made to stand against a wall as the men gathered up stones. I’d seen those women with their skulls cracked open, with their brains dashed out, left to die alone. As much as I refused to believe Mary, I couldn’t condemn her to death. I thought, ‘I could always tell them that I was the father.’ But to admit that we’d been together before marriage? We would’ve been exiled from the only home we’d ever known. Shunned by the people we loved.”

“So you married her anyway.”

“No. I mourned. I mourned the life that could’ve been. Everything had been perfect, you understand. But in the space of one cursed day, my future had been narrowed down to three possibilities: either I would be the husband of an adulteress, the keeper of an unwilling bride, or the guardian of a madwoman. Three possibilities — each one worse than the last. But then? A miracle.”

This time, Balthazar had to consciously keep himself from rolling his eyes.

“That night,” said Joseph, “as I wrestled with these three possibilities, the angel Gabriel visited me and showed me a fourth possibility: that what Mary had told me was true. That the Messiah was growing in her womb and that I was to be his guardian.”

Balthazar sat in silence for a good deal of time. Clearly, the carpenter was also out of his mind. Yes, he’d probably had some kind of vision — a vivid dream brought on by desperation. A desperation to believe anything but the painful truth. Balthazar had experienced visions of his own. Things he would’ve sworn were real at the time. It had happened to him as a boy, when he’d dug up bodies on the far side of the Orontes. It had happened to him while he suffered through his recent surgery. The difference was, he had the ability to discern dreams from reality. Visions presented themselves all the time. Dreams came, fully formed. But they were just that — dreams. Nothing more. And the carpenter was naïve for thinking otherwise.

“Well,” said Joseph, “let me know if you change your mind about getting some sleep.”

With that, he excused himself and retreated farther into the cramped cave — disappearing into the darkness. Balthazar flirted with the idea of calling after him. Of keeping him close by so he could spend some more time mocking him for his stupidity. But what was the use? No… leave the little man to his little delusions. It wasn’t worth the energy.

Balthazar sat alone at the mouth of the cave, searching the darkness with his eyes and ears. Looking for the low stars of far-off torches. Listening for the distant beating of hooves and the clanging of armor.

But not the slithering of a brass snake rendered living by an ancient darkness.

If Balthazar had, by chance, turned his attention to the desert floor, he might have seen the Nehushtan slither past him, then off into the black desert with its message:

I’ve found them.…