Unholy Night (17 page)

“They shoot from ambush at the innocent; they shoot suddenly, without fear.”

—Psalm 64:4

H
erod was feeling much better.

Though it was nearly midday, he was still in his bedchamber, his head propped up on silk cushions, his chest shining with scented oils. He was awake, but his eyes remained peacefully closed as he breathed deeply of the healing vapors, just as his physicians had instructed him to do. Herod was usually loath to follow their advice. They’d proven useless in ridding him of his cursed disease, after all. Despite all of their so-called remedies and potions and rituals, his skin remained covered in oozing lesions, and his ribs stuck out of his emaciated chest like dunes in the desert sand. Even so, Herod had to admit that his physicians had done well in ridding him of the raw throat he’d given himself while screaming. He was feeling so good, in fact, that he’d decided to stay in bed on the “pleasure” side of his twin palace today. His “business” palace, with all its duplicitous courtesans, unsettled disputes, and ceaseless bad news, would wait. Today would be a day of rest. Of pleasure. He deserved it. He deserved something new.

And here she was.

Sitting on the bed beside him. A girl he’d never seen before. A girl of twelve, thirteen at the most, her body not yet a womanly shape. Here she was, sitting beside her sickly king, dropping dried figs into his mouth, one at a time. Herod savored each sweet specimen, chewing them slowly, loudly between his blackened teeth—his eyes closed all the while. He’d stolen a glance at this nameless little beauty when she’d entered, carrying her basket of foods and ointments. She’d been fully clothed then. Now her robes sat in a heap around her waist, her bare breasts red from where Herod had playfully pinched them between his fingers. He continued to feel his way around her body, his eyes closed. Chewing his figs with a faint smile on his lips. But it wasn’t the feel of her young, warm secrets that made him smile. It was knowing that he had Augustus Caesar, the world’s most powerful man, right where he wanted him.

Herod’s instincts had proven themselves once again. Only days after his messenger had left for Rome, letter in hand, no fewer than 10,000 Roman soldiers had landed on Judea’s shores. This in itself was something of a miracle. Even Herod couldn’t have imagined such a quick response. But that was Rome. Decisive. Overwhelming. You had to hand it to them—right or wrong, they were never perfunctory.

Herod wasn’t stupid. He’d known that the emperor didn’t like or trust him. Just as he’d known that Augustus wouldn’t be able to resist his letter and the chance it gave him to make a show of his might.
He’ll want to frighten me
, Herod had thought before sending the letter.
Remind me that I’m nothing more than a sniveling little puppet king who’s lucky to have his throne.
But far from feeling frightened or inferior, Herod now found himself filled with a deep sense of accomplishment and pride.

He’d killed two birds with one stone: He’d flattered Augustus, and at the same time, he’d turned the Ghost and the infant into Rome’s problem. Let the emperor think what he wanted to think. What mattered were facts. And the fact was, Herod was sitting here in bed, being hand-fed by a naked girl while the Romans were dragging themselves through the desert looking for his fugitives. He couldn’t help but smile at the thought. A legion of the emperor’s best troops, running Judea’s errands.

Your little “puppet” has outsmarted you, Augustus.

There was, however, one little piece of the puzzle that Herod hadn’t anticipated: this “dark priest.” There were rumors of a soothsayer traveling with the Romans, a magician of some kind. Rumors of a ritual in the desert. A bloody sacrifice, a brass snake. Herod’s advisors had come to him with these rumors. They’d warned him that the Romans had brought something strange across the sea. Something that had frightened many of the men who’d witnessed it. And while Herod had been surprised to hear of Romans appealing to the gods for anything, he 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.

She wants me…I can feel it.…

Herod opened his yellowed eyes and took her in. The fear on her face. The tears.
Why do they cry, even when their bodies are joyous at my touch?

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
ius primae noctis
—“law of the first night.”

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.

A
n 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.

Patience, Joseph…God will provide.…

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.
Admit it, Joseph, she’s a liar. Admit it, Joseph, this was a mistake. Admit it, Joseph, he’s not the Messiah.
And yes, in times of weakness and fatigue—times like now—these voices had a way of growing louder. But then they’d crested the hill and spotted the walls of Hebron in the distance, and Joseph had breathed fully of the desert air. He’d never seen anything so beautiful in all his life. His desert mantra had never rung truer.

God will provide.…

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.

Almost like they were looking at us.

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 pilgrims swarmed toward a massive square monument in the distance—a clean, windowless cube of white stone blocks, with walls eighty feet high and six feet thick. Joseph had never seen it before, but he knew at once what it was.

“The Cave of the Patriarchs,” he whispered.

It was one of the holiest sites in all of Judea. Second only to the Great Temple to some. For as plain as its white stone walls were, those walls protected something extraordinary beneath: the final resting place of Abraham. The father of Judaism.

Legend held that Abraham and his wife, Sarah, had asked to be entombed in a cave beneath Hebron. For thousands of years, the faithful had come to the cave’s sealed mouth to offer their prayers to the man who’d communed with God, the woman who’d borne Isaac and Ishmael.

Herod had ordered a monument built over the site—another selfless gift to his Jewish subjects. And while many felt the monument defaced Abraham’s grave, men still traveled days to offer their prayers at its walls. To pray over the bones of the man from whom all Jews were descended, from Isaac to Moses to David. Joseph had often thought of making the pilgrimage himself, but the opportunity had never arisen, until now.

Here he was, cave in sight. And in spite of the troubles that had led him here, Joseph couldn’t resist the urge to join those pilgrims he watched streaming toward its wall, off to commune with the Lord. He said as much to the others.

“Are you crazy?” asked Balthazar. “We don’t have time to stop and pray. We have to resupply and get out of Hebron as quickly as we can.”

“If ever we needed God’s ear,” said Joseph, “it’s now. Besides, to be so close and not pay my respects…it would be a sin.”

“Sin or no sin, I’m not going to watch you pray in front of a wall. End of discussion.”

“Then don’t go,” said Mary. “My husband and I will go by ourselves while you get supplies.”

“We’re not splitting up,” said Balthazar. “Not when we’ve got the whole world looking for us.”

“And who are they looking for?” asked Mary. “Four men, a woman, and a baby. If we stick together, we’ll only draw more attention to ourselves.”

Balthazar felt his jaw clench. He hated this woman. The way she looked, the way she talked, as if she knew everything. But what he really hated was the fact that—in this case, anyway—she was right. They would attract less attention if they split up.
But I’ll sit here and glare at you a moment longer, just so we’re clear on how much I despise you.

“Fine,” he said at last. “We meet at the south gate in an hour. You’re not there, we leave without you.”

Mary glared back at Balthazar.
Just so we’re clear that I’m not afraid of you.

“South gate,” she said. “One hour.”

After tying their camels up along the Street of Palms, the fellowship went their separate ways.

The wise men headed left toward the bazaar, where Gaspar and Melchyor would trade the last of their stolen gold for whatever it would buy, and Balthazar would work on stealing
more
gold. Joseph, Mary, and the baby went right, toward the Cave of the Patriarchs, braving a sea of faithful pilgrims to pay their respects to the ancient founder of their faith.

Joseph held on to Mary for dear life, fearful that she and the baby would be swept away in the current of bodies if he let go. The area around the monument was even worse than it’d looked—packed with bodies and filled with unrelenting noise. Musicians clanging their cymbals and plucking their harps. Merchants enticing the faithful to buy all manner of souvenirs. There were sacrificial goats and oxen braying and bleating, money changers pouring coins. Above it all, the din of a thousand voices muttering a thousand prayers.

And then there were the prophets. The screaming prophets, who could be found holding court on all sides of the monument, issuing dire warnings of God’s wrath, of Herod’s—even Rome’s overthrow from atop their makeshift platforms. Proclaiming the day of the Messiah was at hand—the day that would see the children of Israel freed from bondage. The same thing they’d been proclaiming for thousands of years.