were clogged. It was the calling, apparently, of a census, despite it being the worst time of the year. Not an auspicious moment, either, Balthazar couldn’t help thinking, for a woman to travel if she was heavy with child. He discussed again with Melchior as they pushed with the crowds and the sleeting rain past the camps of centurions and lines of crucified criminals. Remind me again—is this child supposed to be a man, or a god? But the answer he got from his friend remained meaningless. For how can the answer be both yes, and yes? How can something be both? Difficulties, then, with finding somewhere to reside, for all the documents of passage Herod had so kindly given them, and Gaspar’s navigation was no longer so sure. For all that this star glowed out at them like a jewel set in the firmaments both day and night, no one could offer guidance on their quest, and none bar a few wandering shepherds seemed to notice that the star was even there.
Then they came at last to a small town by the name of Bethlehem, and it was already night, and it was clear that whatever this strange light in the heavens signalled had happened here. They enquired at the inns. They spoke once again to the so-called local wise men, although this time, more warily. They made no mention of gods or kings. At the start of this journey, Balthasar had imagined himself—although he had never believed it would truly happen—being led to some glowing presence which would rip down the puny veils of this world. But he realised now that whatever it was that they sought would be painfully humble, and all three magi had began to fear for the fate of the family involved.
It was a stable, at the back of the cheapest and most overcrowded of all the inns. They would have been sent away entirely had not Melchior known to ask as the door was being slammed in their faces about a family from a town called Nazareth. So they had reached the place toward which the star and the prophecies long been leading them, on the darkest and most hopeless of nights, and in coldest time of the year. There was mud, of course, and there was the ordure. There was little shelter. Precious little warmth, as well, apart from that which came from the fartings and breathings of the animals. The woman was still exhausted from birth, and she had laid the baby amid the straw in a feeding trough, and the man seemed…not, it struck Balthasar, the way any proud husband would. He was dumbstruck, and in awe.
They should, by rights, have simply turned and left. Offered their apologies for the disturbance, perhaps, and maybe a little money to help see this impoverished family toward their next meal. Balthasar thought at first that that was all Melchior planned to do when he stepped forward with a small bag of gold. But then he had fallen to his knees on this filthy floor before the child in that crude cot. And Gaspar, bearing a bowl of incense, did the same. These were the gifts, Balthasar now remembered, that his two friends had always talked of bearing. Now, he felt he had no choice but to prostrate himself as well, and offer the gift which he had never imagined he would be called to present. Gold, for a king, and frankincense, for a man of God—yes, those gifts were understandable, if the prophecies were remotely true. But myrrh symbolised death, if it symbolised anything at all. Then the baby had stirred, and for a moment, Balthasar had felt he was part of something. And that something had lingered in his mind and his dreams through all the years since.
He had spoken about that moment as Melchior lay on his deathbed back in Persia. Yes, his old friend agreed in dry whisper, perhaps a god really had chosen to manifest itself in that strange way, and in that strange place. Perhaps he had even moved the heavens so that they could make that long journey bearing those particular gifts. But Melchior was fading rapidly by then, falling into pain and stinking incontinence which the castings of spells and prayers could not longer assuage. As his friend spasmed in rank gasps, Balthasar couldn’t bring himself to frame the other question which had robbed him of so many nights of sleep. For if that baby really