Unholy Night

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.