hadn’t allowed himself to share in their concern. So what? The Jews had their prophets. The Greeks had their oracles. Let the Romans have their priests.
Herod opened his yellowed eyes and took her in. The fear on her face. The tears.
In some kingdoms, it was customary for young girls to lie with their king. In some kingdoms — and Herod had heard these stories firsthand, so he had no doubts as to their veracity — all girls were sent to live in the royal harem when they came of childbearing age. They were forbidden from returning home or taking husbands until they’d first given themselves to their king. The Romans called it
Herod knew the Jews would never stand for such a custom. Even if they did, Judea was a big kingdom. There were too many girls, and he was only one king. So he’d been selective instead, sending his men into the city streets, into the villages to find the most fetching creatures, to bestow upon them the honor of serving their king. And here was one of the honored now, feeding him on his silken bed.
He ran his spindly fingers through her brown hair, then pulled her close. Closer, until he could feel her hurried breath against his face. He could feel her trembling. They usually did. But that fear was good. It was normal for a common girl to fear her king. To be excited by his touch. Honored by his attention. She held a fig to Herod’s lips, but he pushed it away.
“Enough of that,” he said.
He drew her in. Kissed her deeply. He could feel her pulling away as his tongue felt its way around her mouth. Felt her struggling against his grasp. This was the part he enjoyed most. The resistance. They all resisted. They all tried to run.
But in the end, they were all his.
II
An ibex looked up, mindlessly gnashing the dry grass in its teeth — the flavorless blades it was somehow compelled to seek out and pull from the hot earth, from morning until night. Something was wrong. It’d caught another glint in the corner of its eye, felt another tiny, almost imperceptible vibration beneath it. And now it watched — its eyes unblinking, its body tense and ready — as three camels passed the herd, a hundred yards distant. Close enough to raise concern but not close enough to send them scattering. Not yet.
The ibex had no memory of ever seeing a camel before, although it had, on countless occasions. It watched as the larger beasts moved from left to right across its field of view — five humans on their backs, one of them carrying something small in its arms. They moved slowly, purposefully in the direction of what the ibex, for lack of knowing the proper term, called “the thing over there.” The big, smooth thing that all the humans hid behind. The one it and its herd mates dare not approach.
Confident there was no danger from the camels or their passengers, the ibex lowered its head and resumed the hunt for dry blades. The hunt that it had been compelled to begin the moment it had emerged on wet, rickety legs and would continue until its dying breath. By the time it pulled another flavorless patch of grass from the desert floor, it had forgotten the camels were ever there.
Just as it’d forgotten the thousands of Romans who’d marched past an hour before.
Joseph stared back at the ibex. A large herd had taken note of them, watching closely as they passed, their curled horns held high, their mouths mindlessly chewing cud. They were stupid little creatures, to be sure. But they were a welcome sign of life in a desert that had enveloped them for hours, empty and eternal.
Hebron was finally in their sights, though there were a few miserable miles to go before they reached its smooth outer walls. They would be silent miles, for Joseph, Mary, and the others had hardly passed a word for hours. They were all stiff from a night spent tossing and turning on the floor of a cave, all weak for lack of food and water and sick from the unrelenting heat. And the baby — the baby had grown eerily quiet again. Too dehydrated to cry for his mother’s milk.
God knows how long they’d ridden. Eight hours straight? Ten? They’d set out before dawn, and while the sun finally seemed to be falling toward its western cradle, its rays were still murderous as they beat down from the heavens, baking their faces and the tops of their feet, turning their skin a painful pink.
It’d become his desert mantra. The only thing keeping doubt outside the walls of his mind, where it had laid siege months ago, waiting oh so patiently to starve him out and slaughter his sanity. Joseph felt the presence of doubt all around him, just as he had when Mary first told him about her dream. Its sabers rattling outside his city walls, ready to accept his offer of surrender.
Hebron had suddenly and completely revealed itself before them — a walled oasis in the desert. Not quite big enough to be called a city, but too substantial to be called a village. It was surrounded by almost perfectly square walls of beige brick. Behind those walls, there would be markets where they could resupply. Baths where they could wash the dust from their faces. Beds where they could spend the night, restful and replenished. God, as always, had provided.
A few silent miles later, as they neared Hebron’s north gate, the fellowship passed a small hill on their left. On its peak, a dozen wooden posts had been driven deeply, permanently into the earth at even intervals. To the unknowing eye, they looked like the naked anchors of some unfinished structure. But to Balthazar and his fellow thieves, they seemed like claws reaching out of the earth, ready to grab them if they strayed too close.
Crucifixion was among the bloodier innovations the Romans had brought from the West, and it had quickly become a favorite method of execution throughout this part of the empire. The condemned were attached to beams by having spikes driven through their palms and into the wood. After those beams were hoisted up, men simply hung in agony for hours, sometimes days, humiliated by their nakedness, covered in the remnants of their own filth. As hunger and thirst set in, they were taunted with unkept promises of food and water. Pelted with stones and poked at with spears.
Some had their legs shattered by the clubs of earthbound soldiers. Sometimes this was done to hasten death. More often, it was done to make their final hours even more wretched. When at last they did die — usually from blood loss, exposure, shock, starvation, or infection — their stinking, discolored bodies were left to wither in the heat for weeks… a warning to men thinking of committing similar crimes. A warning to men like Balthazar.
Thankfully, there were no men affixed to those posts today. Balthazar had witnessed the suffering of crucifixion before, and he never wished to see it again. Still, as he left the hill behind and led the others through the north gate, he couldn’t help but feel a chill swim through his blood. There was something about those posts. Something about how they’d looked. Naked, and eager for company. Hungry.
Something was wrong. Balthazar suddenly had that feeling. The feeling of eyes on him. It was undefined and instinctual, but it was real. Maybe he’d caught a glint of something in the corner of his eye; maybe he’d felt some tiny, almost imperceptible change in his surroundings. Whatever it was, Balthazar decided, silently, that they wouldn’t be spending the night in Hebron.
Through the gate and into the bustle they went. Directly in front of them, a wide, central street ran straight and clear to the other side of the village, packed with people and lined with tall palm trees on either side. To their left, a bazaar rang with the blended noise of merchants, customers, and animals. To their right, dozens of Jewish
