Unholy Night

“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 naive.”

“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 naive because I believe the Scriptures?”

“No… you’re naive 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