Unholy Night

children. But Sela had never had any use for them. Not until tonight.

Darkness had only just begun to fall outside, but most of the fugitives had excused themselves and disappeared upstairs for the night, eager to be rid of the strained silence that had hung over the house since their arrival. Balthazar sulked alone in one of the bedrooms, nursing wounds of the face and ego and quietly cursing all those giddy and erotic and perfect memories that had flooded into his rattled mind after their extended absence. He lay on his back, staring at the ceiling through a pair of black eyes. He could hear Gaspar and Melchyor’s muffled whispers through the wall on his right and Joseph’s deep, rhythmic snores on his left. He didn’t know which sound he hated more. Or if he hated them at all. Or if he just hated everything.

I shouldn’t have come. I should’ve known she’d react like this.

It was all so stupid, so juvenile. He was a killer. A thief. The Scourge of Rome. And look at him now. Caring for a baby and a couple of zealots. Beaten bloody by a woman. A hole in his chest. The Roman Army on his heels.

Of the six fugitives, only Mary and the baby remained downstairs after sunset. Sela sat with them at the table in the common area, watching the fifteen-year-old girl across from her — not much older than I was when I met him — bathe the tiny, wrinkled creature in a bowl of warm water. His blue eyes were wide open, darting around, looking at everything without really looking at anything. His head was propped against one shoulder to relieve the burden of his tiny neck, and the remnants of his umbilical cord had blackened and shriveled over his belly button, threatening to fall off at any moment.

Sela sat in silent fascination, watching him. Listening to the involuntary little hics and coos come out of his body as his mother gently washed the dust of the desert off his fragile scalp. She’d never had a sibling, never had cousins to care for. She’d never even held a baby, best as she could recall. Abdi was the closest thing I ever —

“Do you take boarders?” asked Mary.

It was a reasonable question, given that the house was much bigger than most single women would need or be able to afford without some form of income.

“No,” said Sela. “But I work. Down here… in one of the rooms.”

Mary was suddenly embarrassed that she’d brought it up. Of course. She knew what line of “work” Sela was in. A beautiful woman with no husband, no children? A beautiful, sophisticated woman who seems to have plenty of mon —

“I’m not a whore, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“What?” said Mary. “No! No, I didn’t think… I didn’t think that.”

Sela watched the girl’s cheeks turn bright red. No… of course you didn’t — that’s why you’re blushing and indignant.

“I read fortunes,” said Sela.

“Oh… ”

“Farmers pay me to predict the weather; women pay me to tell them how many children they’ll have. We sit, I conjure, they pay. Though business has been a little slow since the locusts came. Nobody needs a fortune- teller to tell them things in Beersheba are going to be bad for a long, long time.”

“And you… know these things? These answers they’re looking for?”

“I know what people want to hear.”

The blush drained out of Mary’s cheeks, and she tried to keep her face from betraying her disappointment. Fortune-telling wasn’t much better than prostitution, especially when the “telling” part was outright lying. Religiously speaking, it was worse. The Scriptures expressly forbade such things. In the eyes of God, Sela was a false prophet. And false prophets are heretics. And heretics, well —

“Are you all right?” asked Sela. “You look troubled.”

Mary continued to wash the baby’s skin, staring vacantly off into a dark corner of the room as Sela’s eternal damnation played out in her mind. She suddenly felt as though she were standing across the table from a leper. As if Sela’s sin was contagious. There was a palpable urge to snatch her baby up, to protect him from that sin. To wash it off his body. Given the circumstances, the least offensive thing she could think to say was, “It’s just… I couldn’t lie to people, I guess.”

“Why not? You lied to me.”

Mary looked up sharply. Visions of damnation gone in a flash.

“I did not.”

“Sure you did.”

“Why would you say — ”

“When I told you I wasn’t a whore, that’s exactly what you’d been thinking. But you insisted it wasn’t. ‘No, no, no — I would never think that!’”

Mary blushed again.

“Look at me and tell me I’m wrong.”

“I… I was trying to be polite.”

“Uh-huh. You do it to be polite. I do it to give hopeless people a little hope and make a little money while I’m at it. Either way, we’re both liars.”

Mary didn’t like this woman. She didn’t like being here. She didn’t like any of this. For the thousandth time since she and Joseph had left Nazareth, she felt the pangs of homesickness. She longed for the familiar faces of the village, the foods and sounds and smells. She longed for the comfort of family. For the spiritual lift that came with being surrounded by the fellow faithful. She and her husband were alone in the great big world. A terrible world, filled with murderers and heathens and famine, with bullying thieves and contagious sin. They were alone, and they were the bearers of an impossible burden: to protect the most important thing that had ever lived from the most powerful men in the world. And, God, he was so small.…

IV

Herod looked down at the deathly white body beneath him. Silent and still. Her eyes open and bulging. Spit drying on the corners of her mouth.

It wasn’t your fault, he thought. You were simply in the wrong place when the news reached me. You were simply there when I needed something to kill.

Herod supposed he regretted killing her, if only because he wouldn’t get to enjoy her again. Her wetness and warmth. But he’d done her a service, in a way. Think of all the misery she would be spared. Even if she didn’t eventually grow sick from his touch, think of all the disappointing years that lay ahead. Years of growing older, of taking a husband. Bearing his children. Her body betraying her, her beauty leaving her as she aged. But she would be spared all of that. This little one would be beautiful for all time.

Besides, who could blame him for reacting the way he did? It had been unwelcome news. They’d had them. The Romans had surrounded the Antioch Ghost and the child in Hebron, Herod had been told. They’d had archers lying in wait on the Street of Palms and men hidden on adjacent streets. But when the ambush was sprung, a riot had broken out. Zealots and pilgrims had attacked the Romans as they flooded in, holding them off before they could reach their targets.

Why didn’t they just take them in the open desert? Or arrest them quietly once they entered the city walls? Why do the Romans always have to make such a show of everything?

But as unwelcome as these developments were — as angry as they’d made him — they hadn’t made him kill. No. It was fear, not anger, that had cost this little girl her life. Fear that had summoned Herod’s hands to her throat and made them squeeze the life out, until her bulging eyes glazed over and foam ran red from her mouth. Herod had killed her because for the first time since these troubles began, he was frightened.

To any rational mind, the facts demanded fear. The Romans had been close enough to touch the Antioch Ghost. Close enough to touch the baby’s belly with the tip of their swords. All the might of the empire had descended on a single street, with a single purpose: to kill a wretched little thief and the helpless little infant he harbored. And what had happened? The impossible. One man — one injured, exhausted man — had slipped