A REWORKED NATIVITY

Parts 1 and 2 have already been posted, and here is the rest.

You will find the first two parts, "The Expectant Virgin" and "The Weeping Child" amongst my recent posts

3 -A REALLY BRIGHT IDEA

The old soldier, outcast from the Roman Army on duty in the grotty Eastern town of Nazareth - grotty was his word because the locals had been responsible for his many handicaps in an attack of unparalleled viciousness on his person when nobody important had been looking - sighed to himself.

He was worried. It had been he who'd suggested that the silly young Maria go to an Inn he knew of where the inn-keeper's wife would “see to” her pregnancy while there was still time, but that had been weeks ago and he guessed that time was up and it was already too late. He'd heard rows from her home, between her and Jo-jo, her promised future husband, and he wasn't surprised. There aren't, he reasoned, too many men who would willingly accept responsibility for the consequences of another man's carnal escapades with his betrothed. Most men, indeed, would have fled and never returned. In fact, Jo-Jo went up in his estimation when he heard some of the things the young carpenter had said. Though his opinion didn't rise too far when he remembered how the youth had accepted coin from the girl, knowing perfectly well how she obtained it.

In the end it had all come down to Maria's father who firstly beat her (not too hard, thankfully, he wasn't a sadist) for getting in the condition she was in and secondly ordered her to go to the Inn that the old crippled soldier had told her about, and get seen to.

“Get rid of the little swine before you soil my doorstep again!” he had growled as she left. “I don't want to see hide nor hair of you until the job's done, you sorry little s**t! And let's have no more stories of blokes with wings shagging ya!”

And the two young people had left, a pathetic sight with the girl, not yet fifteen years old, already swelling whilst the youth, hardly any older, lagged behind in shame. After all, he knew the problem wasn't his.

The old soldier watched and there was moisture in his eyes when he decided, completely out of character, to find his way ahead of them and prepare some kind of welcome for them. So he called in a favour, borrowed an elderly and extremely weary horse, and set out for Bethlehem himself, going by a different route.

But the distance was great " eighty miles or so by road" for him with his damaged limbs and sad old nag, and he guessed that, although the youngsters should be able to make such a journey in four or five days, the girl was far from fit and anything could happen.

And there would be dangers on the way. Bands of robbers lurked in the wilderness between towns and cities, ready to waylay unwary travellers, and it wasn't uncommon for them to leave their victims dead or dying. The wilds, he knew, were unruly places without proper law or any semblance of genuine order. So he prayed to Saturn, God of Time, that they might have time to make the journey safely and without hindrance. Saturn, he knew, might cast an aura of protection over them. That's what the gods could do. But he still worried. He wasn't too convinced in the power of those same gods. They hadn't helped him when he'd needed the assistance of a deity.

As for himself, he had the wary eye of an old campaigner and knew that he had a fair chance of taking care of himself even if trouble did spring from the shadows.

So it was that after only three days he arrived in Bethlehem and sought out the Inn. He'd stayed there before and knew the Inn-keeper and his wife well enough to be looked on as an old friend.

“There are two young folks coming this way,” he said after a jug of wine had washed away the worst debris from his travels and he had begun feeling almost human again.

“Oh yes?” muttered the Inn-keeper's wife, knowing that trouble was on the way. What other reason, she thought, would an injured old soldier have for travelling so many miles on a useless old horse?

“The girl's in trouble,” he told them, bluntly.

“You been up to your tricks?” asked the Inn-keeper, “You always did have an eye for the ladies!”

“Look at me!” growled the old soldier. “I'm lucky if I can find my willy these days, let alone use it!”

“Then what's it to you?”

“I was privy to it happening, on my own, watching the world go by from my position on the street, and I saw it all happen. It was an army Captain, brutal fellow with the wenches, and he's gone and left her with a stomach full of trouble.”

“She can't stay here!” said the Inn-keeper bluntly. “This is a decent house and if words get round that it's something else then my trade'll drop through the floor!”

“But I suggested...” the soldier said quietly. “I thought your missus might be able to do something for the girl, though in my opinion it might well be too late.”

“There's a stable, temporary, the one where you put your nag,” muttered the Inn-keeper. “I suppose they can stay there: it's out of sight. But I said temporary and I meant temporary.”

“OK, keep your hair on!” It had been a long journey, and the old soldier was feeling irritable. It hadn't taken long for the effects of the jug of wine to wear off. Then: “I'll fix a light on the roof, one that can be seen from afar, so they know which stable. It'll give me summat to do. I'll get a good wick and burn it day and night until they're here. It'll stop them getting lost. If that's okay with you, that is!”

“Do what you want!”

“It'll help them,” sighed the old Soldier. “It'll look fair like a star: a guiding star. You have got a good oil lamp going spare, I suppose.”

“Might have.”

“Then I'll borrow it if you don't mind. I feel sorry for the poor blighters, at their age, still kids really, having to make a journey like that. It's a long way from Nazareth! But a warming light over the stable will soothe their hearts, it will: a star to guide them on their way!”

“You ought to have been a poet,” muttered the Inn-keeper. “Now have a drop more wine and shut up!”

4 ... THE LONG AND WINDING ROAD...

The crippled old soldier, reject from the Roman Army on account of injuries piled upon him in a vicious attack by locals in Nazareth, gazed at the light he'd erected high above the door to the almost tumbledown stable where Maria and Jo-jo were to stay whilst their baby was born, and nodded with satisfaction.

They'll see that, he thought, anyone will see that, even from miles away! It's a good light, is that, and that crystal I put in front of it helps cast the light even further! It's like a star, it is, a guiding star.

And indeed, even by daylight it shone brightly, tucked away as it was in the shadows above the stable entrance. Anyone approaching along the road from Jerusalem (and hence from Nazareth) would see it quite clearly even in the light of day. It was a triumph of the wick-maker's art, and the lamp's huge reservoir contained enough animal oil to burn for days. It was indeed a light to guide the strangers from a strange land to the comforts of a crude bed for childbirth. He'd done the best he could. It was up to them, now. But maybe he should keep an eye on them for a little while. Maybe there were still ways he might help them.

Why am I doing this? he asked himself, and because it was all the work of that damned army Captain, he replied.

Then he decided to make his way quietly and as unobtrusively as he could on his old horse down the road that led back towards Nazareth, keeping out of sight of the road itself. Not that you could call it a road, not a proper one, It was little more than a track left by caravans of traders who occasionally came this way, and off the road was little worse than being on it. So he ambled on that old nag of his far enough away from the track to be safe from being seen from it. He wanted to watch the young couple, make sure they were all right and making for the right direction, but for reasons he couldn't properly explain to himself he didn't want them to know he was there.

They were still a good day away from Bethlehem when he found them. At first he spotted them in the distance and breathed a sigh of relief when he noted that they'd somehow got the use of a donkey (as old as his own horse, by the look of it, and with four sturdy legs), and the girl was riding it. She looked pale and it was clear to him that her pregnancy was well advanced.

He tethered his own steed and painfully struggled across the rough terrain on his mutilated legs, keeping in the shadows of boulders and the odd straggly tree, until he was within earshot of the two youngsters. He didn't know why, just that he needed to sure that all was well with them before he returned to his old piece of wall where he wiled his life away, in Nazareth.

"Just because you couldn't keep your legs shut," Jo-jo was moaning. "I don't know why I'm sticking by you, I truly don't."

"Could it be because you love me?" suggested Maria. "Could it have anything to do with the feelings we share for each other?"

"Me love you?" almost sneered the young man, "I might have once, if I knew what love was, when I thought you were innocent and still a child, but since this happened..." he indicated her growing bump, "I've lost ever feeling I ever had for you. As far as I'm concerned you're no better than a common prostitute!"

"And you're no better than a pimp because I gave you most of the gifts my visitors left for me! You did well by me, which is more than you can say for your carpentry!" snapped Maria. "A girl doesn't get rich being honest and decent and innocent, you know!"

"You never got rich!"

"But then I was never anywhere near as bad as you think I was," almost sobbed the teenage girl. "It was only that Captain, and he only went all the way once! And it hurt! You've no idea how much it hurt! All the rest of the time he was happy with ... you know, other stuff."

"Yet you concocted that angel-from-Heaven story between you," snarled Jo-Jo. "Why do that if you're oh, so innocent, eh?

The girl paused,. Then: "Have you any idea what it's like to be a girl!" she flashed at him. "You lads, you go off, sow your wild oats or whatever you call it, even somehow do stuff to yourselves ... and us girls have to behave ourselves, stay chaste and innocent and be eternal virgins... it isn't fair! It just isn't fair!"

"Who said life had to be fair!" snapped back Jo-Jo.

"Nobody..." That last word was sobbed, and the argument was over. The boy had won, of course. The old soldier felt sadder that moment than he'd ever felt before. I'll see you're all right, my dear, he muttered to himself as, as silently as he could, he made his way back to his ancient steed, still keeping out of their sight.

And he trailed them, always invisibly, until, in the distance, he saw the glimmer of his lamp.

"Look at that!" whispered Maria, pointing. "What is it?"

"It's a light, burning by day. That's wasteful!" replied Jo-Jo, forgetting, for a moment, their argument.

"I wonder why it's there?" queried the girl.

"Maybe it's to guide us," mused the young man. "Maybe it's a light from the gods..."

"The god, you mean," said Maria. "There's only one god, remember."

"Not according to the Romans, and they know lots of stuff," retorted Jo-Jo.

"Oh, shut up!" she sighed. Then: "I don't care how many gods there are! Get me to that light, and quickly. I think my baby's coming!"

5 … THE TROUBLE WITH GENDER

Childbirth, thought the Roman crippled soldier, staring towards the stable where Maria and Jo-Jo had sought refuge, childbirth is such a wretchedly painful affair.

And that's what it seemed to be. Maria was crying out from time to time, her voice filled with pain.

She's too young to have to go through this, he thought.

The light from his oil-lamp beacon flickered dimly into the stable, and Maria was lying on the floor, screaming. Jo-Jo stood helplessly by, not wanting to look.

He was a young innocent and in his mind he thought he might go blind or suffer an equally life-changing affliction if he let his eyes fall on those parts of a woman that were sacred to their sex. Even though he was old enough to have crossed the eighty dangerous miles between Nazareth and Bethlehem, guiding the heavily pregnant Maria on her borrowed donkey, he had been so indoctrinated with concepts of decency and honour that he had, as yet, no real notion of what the girl's body was like. After all, he was painfully aware that he wasn't the father of the illegitimate child being born in front of his eyes, and that only added to his ignorance.

Yet he couldn't help himself. He had to look, the odd swift sideways glance followed by a longer stare of total fascination as the head appeared. He'd seen animals born, but never human babies and he was shocked by the similarity. He looked again, and, to his surprise, he retained his eyesight.

The Inn-keeper's wife appeared through the gloom, carrying some cloths and hot water. She was a bustling kind of woman, a little on the plump side, though it looked right on her, and with eyes that smiled along with her mouth when she was amused.

“There, there, dear,” she murmured. “Baby's nearly here.”

Maria gave a loud screech as she pushed, and the Inn-keeper's wife moved in to help, blocking the view so that the old soldier was left with just the sounds of childbirth. Jo-Jo staggered slightly, and leaned on the door frame. He knew two things: that he might pass out and that he must not, at any costs, pass out. The contradiction helped him pull himself together, and he remained, thankfully, vertical.

The crippled soldier, painfully, slowly, moved away, to his horse. He'd seen enough: the baby was going to be born any moment and the parents should at least have more than an Inn-keeper's wife and her husband to show their baby off to. New parents wanted to tell the world what they'd done, and he, handicapped as he was, wanted to help them.

The night was dark and the light above the stable of little help as he moved off into the black shadows of a starless night. But he found his old horse, patted it affectionately and wearily forced his broken body to climb onto its back. The horse looked at him and nodded as if it understood the cripple's pain, and gently walked away, carrying him towards some distant fields where the soldier knew shepherds were watching their sheep both day and night, ready to ward off any wolves that came to steal young lambs.

Back in the stable the Inn-keeper's wife smiled encouragingly at Maria.

“Nearly here,” she said, “One more push and you'll have a new baby. What do you want?” She asked this last question of Jo-Jo. He didn't care " the infant, when it was born, would have nothing to do with him, but he rattled out the expected answer.

“A boy,” he said. And it shocked him when he realised that was the truth. It might be a b*****d, but if it was going to be born at all it would be better if the b*****d was a boy.

“A good choice,” approved the Inn-keeper's wife. “He'll grow up in his father's footsteps and be a crutch for you when you grow older. My son's a good boy. When the Inn's too much for my man and me he'll take over. He's twelve already, so just about a man. He already does some of the chores. I'm proud of him just as you'll be proud of your little one " if he's a boy.”

“He'll be a … boy …” gasped Maria. “The angel said...”

“Angel, dearie?” asked the older woman. “What angel?”

“Oh, nothing,” mumbled the mother-to-be. “A dream I had, that's all.”

“It's just a story you made up,” muttered Jo-Jo, spitefully.

“That's no way to talk to your wife!” snapped the Inn-keeper's wife. “You men are all the same when it comes to difficult things like childbirth! It's be best if you kept out of the way!”

“Stay, Jo-Jo,” gasped Maria.

“I'm not going anywhere,” he muttered, sullenly.

“You're baby's here!” almost shouted the Inn-keeper's wife. “Here, let me help you! Jo-Jo, stop being useless and hand me one of those swaddling bands! It needs wrapping up good and warm or it'll catch it's death, and then when you've looked at it and said hello you can lay it in that manger!”

She lifted the new baby from between it's mother's legs, and smiled at Maria.

“Here you are, dear,” she said, and she glanced sideways at Jo-Jo. “It's a girl!” she said.

6 ... THE GEMINI FACTOR

So the scene is a stable, dimly illuminated by an oil lamp erected on its tumbledown roof by the crippled soldier who has taken himself off to look for some shepherds. Maybe he was right when he had the idea that ordinary workaday men might form a decent welcoming committee to greet the new baby, though he wasn't aware that Maria had given birth to a daughter.

So the old cripple was away from the stable with its manger when the baby girl had been born. Maria was holding it nervously, and its voice filled the small stable with a new born cry.

But Maria was weeping.

“I didn't … I didn't want a girl,” she sobbed. “I thought it was going to be a boy … the Captain swore that's what it would be. He said … he said that his seed was too strong to make feeble little girls.” The Captain was a Roman army officer and seducer of the young woman as well as the absent biological father of her new baby. A powerful man he may have been, but he was no respecter of women, treating them as playthings and then casting them aside when he had no further use for them. That's what he had done to Maria " and Maria had been with child.

“It doesn't work like that!” snapped the Inn-keeper's wife. “Nobody knows how it does work, not properly, but I'm sure it's not like that! Strong seed indeed!”

“It's not fair...” wept the girl.

“Nothing in life's fair, you trollop!” snapped the Inn-keeper's wife, her matronly demeanour momentarily deserting her.

“I... I'm sorry,” mumbled the girl, little more than a child and looking it, holding the baby she didn't want, her eyes red and lined.

“I should think so!” The older woman relaxed and her mouth, made for smiling rather than blaming, twitched.

“What's wrong with Maria?” demanded Jo-Jo, pointing.

Maria was doubled with a sudden pain and her face was contorted into a grimace as she shouted a new agony into the night.

“It'll be the afterbirth,” decided the Inn-keeper's wife. “They say it's best to cook it lightly and eat it. It's got a lot of goodness in it and she'll get better all the more swiftly with that inside her.”

She started attending once more to the new mother, and after a few moments she exclaimed, “What have we here, then?”

Jo-Jo, still afraid of looking too closely at the young girl's more intimate parts, couldn't help himself shuffling slightly towards her.

A new sound hit the air inside that stable, a new cry, a baby, yes, but a different baby with a different cry.

“Twins...” breathed the Inn-keeper's wife-cum-midwife. “You've got twins, you lucky girl " and this time it's a boy!”

“Twins...” murmured Maria. “And a boy?”

“A boy,” smiled the older woman.

“I know what I'm to call him,” whispered Maria, “I know his name. The Captain told me.”

“So how shall we greet the little fellow?” asked the Inn-keeper's wife. “What name is he to be given?”

“David,” declared Maria. “He's to be called David!”

“That he's not!” shouted Jo-Jo. “We had a David in the family years ago, a great man, a noble man, the founder of my family, and I don't want his name sullied by having to share it with a b*****d!”

“And the girl,” interrupted the midwife, “what are you going to call her?”

“I don't care,” said Maria, determinedly. “I don't want her. I hate her. I hate everything about her. Girls are useless: I should know that, for I am one myself! You call her something. I don't want to know.”

“But she's your child, dear,”

“I hate her! Can't you understand? I don't want a girl! They're no use, no use at all unless they're playthings for men and mothers of brave soldiers!”

“That's mighty useful,” muttered Jo-Jo.

“Please take her away,” whispered Maria. “Give her to someone, a wet-nurse, or leave her out in the wilds to live or die as the Good Lord intends … but take her away from me!”

“If that's what you want,” murmured the Inn-keeper's wife. “I'll give her a name for you. She ought to have a name, and you ought to know it. I'll call her after you, Maria. I'll call her Maria. And she can be the strength of all women, a fortress, so I'll call her Magdalene. Maria Magdalene. That's her name, and may she live long and rejoice in it!”

“Not Maria!” begged the mother, “Not that! Call her Mary if you must, but not Maria!”

“Mary, then,” sighed the older woman. “Mary Magdalene. That can be who she is, from now on. And who knows: in the years to come she may meet her twin, and they may get to know each other. That would be a goodness. Well, come on, my little precious. It's a tragic fact of life that we females, the fragile, weaker sex, are of so little use in this world even though we work as hard as our menfolk, and also bring them forth into the world in pain and risk of death. But at the end of the day we are accounted useless.”

“And my baby boy,” whispered Maria, “if he cannot be David he will be Jesu. That's his name, and let no man take it from him.”

“That'll do,” nodded Jo-Jo. “Jesu. That'll do very well indeed!”

7 ... WHILE SHEPHERDS WATCHED...

The crippled Roman Soldier winced as he climbed off his old horse, leaned against a stunted tree and stared across the open plain North of Bethlehem. He could just about make out the slowly moving dots of sheep munching their way across the sparse grassland and, closer to him, a huddled group of shepherds, three in all, to whom had fallen the unenviable task of watching for predators such as wolves that might fancy a nice leg of tender young lamb during the hours of darkness.

A reasonable distance away was a lean-to tent, a shelter in which their comrades who had done the day shift, slept, tossing and turning and occasionally grunting in their sleep.

He knew men like this. They were young, brutish and unreliable, but they did know when they were on to a good thing because the work, if you removed predatory beasts from the equation, was hardly onerous even when you counted the unsociable hours it involved.

Night was well under way and they, having no fear of supervision by the bad-tempered Shepherd whose snores could be heard emanating loudly from the tent, were intent on enjoying a large jug of wine, and they'd already savoured a fair quantity of the stuff because their mannerisms and slurred voices were those of drunken men who are trying to appear sober.

“'S good stuff this,” leered one of them, indicating the jug and hiccuping audibly.

“Shurrup!” snarled a second. “The boss'll hear and then we'll all be for it.” He stood up and swayed slightly, and then grinned. “But 's good,” he confirmed, and aimed his penis towards a clump of weeds and urinated with a satisfying “Ahhh!”

“Dirty pig!” grinned the third shepherd watchman.

“I'll take a piss if I wan' to,”

“And the angels'll see ya!”

“What bleeding angels?”

“Those in th' scriptures. Warriors in the big fight in Heaven against the devil. Those angels.”

“What they wanna peek at my willy for? You reckon they're gay?”

“Y' shouldn't talk like that. Not about angels.”

“Mebbe they are gay.”

“And mebbe you'll be struck down dead!”

“Angels aren't bloody gay! Not them!”

“Soldiers o' the one true god.”

“D'you reckon there are such things as angels?” asked the first shepherd, tucking his penis out of sight cautiously.

“It says so, don't it, in th' good book.”

“You reckon it's true?”

“Are you doubtin' what the ancients wrote on their parchment?”

“I was jus' wonderin'.”

“The Rabbi says there's angels, so there must be.”

The crippled soldier grinned to himself. He knew all about men like this, young, no comforts of home while they were at work at the most menial task on the planet, just lives to be lived, a crust to be earned and wine to be supped.

“Hey!” he called from his place by the stunted tree.

“What! What's that?”

“Who's there?”

“What you want?”

The crippled soldier remained in the shadows. He was going to enjoy himself.

“You want angels?” he called. His accent was far from local but they could easily make sense of his words. “I know angels,” he added.

“Ya what?”

“Down there...” He pointed back down the road to |Bethlehem, but they couldn't see, which rather spoilt the gesture. “Back t' the town … there's a new baby...”

“There's allus babies bein' born!” scoffed the first Shepherd. “Loads o' them, all th' time.”

“Ah, but this one's special,” murmured the soldier. “This one's different. I heard, only heard mark you, that it's daddy was an angel! I heard that its mother was met by an angel and that she's still a virgin! Think of that: a virgin giving birth!”

“Imposs … ible.”

“That no man's been near her, just an angel. Gabriel, they called him, Gabriel from the stars!”

“I've 'eard of 'im!”

“One of our lord's top min...min...mini... sters. Tha's it. Ministers.”

“That's what I heard,” confirmed the soldier. “And I'll tell you what. You go down there, to the town, and seek out a bright and shining light, and there you'll find the baby from your god. That's what you'll find. The baby from your god fathered by an angel.”

“Dirty b*****d,” muttered the second shepherd.

“Let's go!” decided the first shepherd.

“What all of us?”

“All of us!”

“What about the sheep?”

“Sod the sheep! This might be the chance o' a lifetime! T' meet a baby whose daddy was an angel! I'm game.”

The second shepherd paused.

“I'll stay an' watch,” he volunteered. “I'm not into angels. You two go, an' I'll stay and watch.”

The crippled soldier was back on his old horse and it was slowly walking away, its hooves silent on the sparse grass.

“Take a gift,” he called. “Take a gift for the angel's baby!”

“A fleece!” suggested the first shepherd. “A nice clean fleece!”

“Good thinkin!”

And two drunken shepherds, carrying a fluffy fleece between them, started staggering down the road to Bethlehem.

In the distance a light shone above a stable, a flickering light that smelt of burning oil.

8 ... SIGNS FROM THE STARS

The three astrologers had set up camp for the night. It was dark, so dark they couldn't even see their own jewelled hands in front of their faces.

They'd only met the day before having bumped into one another as a consequence of one of those coincidences that speckle history. Their very bearing shouted that they were, indeed, all learned men, and after discussion they discovered that not only were all three of them scholars in their different countries, but they'd all been drawn this way by similar interpretations of patterns in the night sky.

“Darlings, I am convinced a royal birth has lit the world with joy,” purred Balthazar, an Arabian scholar with sodomist tendencies.

“There's no need to call me darling!” muttered the Persian, Melchior. “I've met your sort before and you'll get nowhere near my pert bottom, so be warned.”

“Darling!” protested Balthazar. “So you've made your temperament quite plain, and for your information I merely use the word darling as an excuse for forgetting names! I can't remember what dear people are called, not half the time anyway, so I call them all darling. Not that I would object if … if … you understand?”

“Well I don't!” snapped the irritable Indian Caspar. “All this talk of bottoms, and all I want to do is greet the little one foretold by Venus in conjunction with Jupiter...”

“I spied that too!” exclaimed Melchior. “It has long been foretold amongst the scribes and scholars of Persia that such a conjunction foretells the birth of a mighty warrior!”

“The King in these parts doesn't seem to know anything about it,” purred Balthazar. “I went to him, darlings, and he was rude to my face until I mentioned the words powerful king. Then he was a little more … sweet … and told me to have an extra glass of his divine plonk and stay the night with the sweetest little soldier I ever did see... but never mind about him! When I left the next morning...”

“He asked you to return?” grinned Melchior.

“That he did, darling!”

“He was the same with me,” sighed the Persian. “I got the distinct feeling that his intentions are not as honourable as they might be. I decided to go nowhere near his palace again when I return to my own land.”

“Wise thoughts,” sighed Caspar. “So what do our collective brains make of what we have seen in the Heavens?”

“Darling, a child has been born...” began Balthazar.

“Children are always being born,” pointed out Melchior.

“But kings?” asked Caspar, “especially kings that the local puppet knows nothing about? I have studied these parts and I know that many deep thinkers and philosophers are predicting a great warrior who will rescue them from the agony of Roman domination.”

“Sweetheart, how butch!” purred Balthazar.

“Don't you bloody sweetheart me!” growled Caspar.

“But it is there in the stars,” sighed Melchior. “Now, fellow seekers after the truth, I'm going to settle down for the night if the Arab in our midst promises to keep his hands to himself!”

“You need have no fear of me,” sighed Balthazar. “I will sleep like an infant myself, lost in my own dreams.”

It was at that point that all three of them heard the sound of hooves approaching, slowly, almost wearily. It was a strange sound to hear at the dead of a black night like this.

“What's that?” asked Caspar, sitting up.

“A horse...” breathed Melchior.

“Maybe my soldier boy...” hissed Balthazar.

“Anyone there?” demanded a fresh voice. “Who do I hear whispering and plotting in the night? Speak now, or I will run you through with my blade!”

“Darling!” squeaked Balthazar, “that is no way to address three philosophers and astrologers!”

“We come from our own warlike nations in search of a new born king!” added Caspar. “We bear gifts for him!”

“A golden coin,” squeaked Melchior.

“Sweet Frankincense in a silken pouch,” added Caspar.

“And Myrrh, a balm to aid sinners find their Heavens,” purred Balthazar, and “darling,” he added.

There was a moment's silence, then: “You will find an infant in a humble stable, lit by a great light, and being attended by shepherds,” said the voice. “I, soldier of the mighty Roman empire know this! Go, come the morning, to the town of Bethlehem and you will find him there. I cannot say whether he is destined to be a king or not, but strange tales have been mooted, about angels and virgins, and they must mean something.”

“Mighty omens indeed,” muttered Caspar.

“Signs from the gods,” agreed Melchior.

“Do you need a cot for the night, stranger, darling?” asked Balthazar.

The strange voice laughed. “Not this night,” it said, “but maybe some other, when the moon shines brightly and I can see to whom I speak and with whom I will lie!”

“That's a date, darling!”

“Will you great thinkers visit the stable, then?” asked the voice.

There was a general assent, and it was followed, to Balthazar's regret, by the sound of hooves fading into the distance as an ancient steed carried the crippled Roman soldier away, into the darkness of night.

9 ... THE LOVELY MAGDELINE

“Twins!” muttered the Inn-Keeper's wife, she who had attended Maria in the stable as midwife and helper during the birth of her two infants.

“What's that?” demanded the Inn-Keeper, busy with a flagon of red wine that seemed to have gone off, trying to rescue it using a special formula of his own. If his customers had known the effectiveness of horse dung in this regard he might have had fewer of them. As it was they didn't, and his business flourished.

“The tart's had twins,” continued the Inn-Keeper's wife. “One of each. And not only that, but the little trollop doesn't want the girl. Says girls are nowt but trouble and no good comes of 'em.”

“She's not far wrong,” grinned her husband. “I'm glad we only had a boy. He's got broad shoulders and an eye for business, but I'd guess here and now that a girl would be neither use nor ornament. Or if she had looks, she might be a bit of an ornament, but still no use!”

“I'd thank you to know I was born a girl,” growled his wife. “And you can't say as I haven't been useful!”

“I beat you into shape when you were nowt but a trollop!” he growled.

“Aye, you took the switch to me a few times when I was a kid, you b*****d!” she growled. “But that's not the point.”

“What is the point, then?” He sipped some of the spoiled wine from a wooden goblet, and pulled a wry face. “Tastes like puke,” he grumbled.

“The point, Mr Inn-Keeper, is that I've been lumbered with this!”

She held a bundle towards her husband, and the bundle, detecting a change in position, squawked.

“What's that, then?” he asked, alarm touching the already grim corners of his mouth.

“It's the girl,” she said. “The silly b***h didn't want her.”

“What silly b***h?” He was clearly displaying the kind of inattention he was famed for.

“Her in the stable. Her with the soldier and his crooked legs looking after her.”

“Oh, her. What about her?”

“The kid, husband of mine, the kid: it's hers.”

“Then best give it back to her.”

“She don't want it.”

“She's got to have it, if it's hers.”

“It's a girl and she don't want it, and, tell the truth, she's got her hands full with the boy.”

“What boy?”

“Don't you ever listen to a word I say to you? The twin boy, this little mite's brother!”

“Oh, him.”

“Yes: him.”

“So what are you going to do with her, woman, and don't say you'll keep it 'cause if you do I'll remember where I put that switch you used to be so fond of when you displeased me.”

The Inn-Keeper's wife put her nose to within an inch of her husband's and scowled.

“You'll not beat me again,” she growled. “'Cause if you do we'll be forced to find out who's the strongest between us, and I'll tell you this for a fact: it ain't you!”

“A woman should obey her man!” The Inn-Keeper raised his voice, frowning. “A man's in charge in his own home, and what he says goes! And if I say no babies then I mean no babies, 'specially girl ones, and if I say I'll beat you then I'll beat you. It's the law!”

“I'm keeping her,” spat his wife. “I wasn't going to, I wasn't going to do anything with it but hand it over to Mistress Varmint in the end house, but Mistress Varmint can get hung! I'm keeping it, and you want to know why? No, shurrup! I'll tell you for why. It's because you're a b*****d! There, I've said it: you're a b*****d who don't ever listen to what's said to him and don't think one kind thought about the woman who's kept his bed warm this last too many years, and brought his boy into the world, and suckled him with her tits!”

“You're not keeping her, then!”

“That I am, and I'd like to see you try and stop me! I'll get milk from the goat, and you'll not get in my way!”

The argument might have carried on, but there was a polite cough from the doorway, which was, as ever, open.

It was the crippled Roman soldier, the one who had been attacked by a gang in Nazareth and left for dead. He'd survived, but his legs had been bent out of shape, and when the bones had healed they had healed badly.

“I hope I'm not interrupting a domestic,” he said.

“Domestic phooey!” snarled the Inn-Keeper. “What the hell do you want? Haven't you brought us enough trouble?”

“I've come to warn you,” grinned the soldier, enjoying himself. “There's some foreign toffs on the way, toffs with money, three of them, with gold and spices and stuff, and they'll be looking for somewhere to stable their camels and a bed for at least one night! How about that, then? Foreign toffs in your grubby little Inn, but you've got time to tidy up a bit, and break out your finest wine!”

“Gold, you say?”

“Aye, coin. I've seen it. So look to.”

The Inn-Keeper's wife vanished into another room, taking the baby with her.

“Come on, Mary my dear Magdeline,” she whispered, “we'll get out of the b*****d's way. He'll come round. Of course he will: he knows he can't win this one. The last thing he wants to be seen with when he's out and about is a black eye administered by your new mummy!”

She smiled wickedly, and sang:

“Dearest, sweet dearest

and infant of mine,

suckle your fill, angel,

of the milkiest wine

and the stars they will twinkle

at the end of the day

while our hearts will be beating

as we bend down to pray....”

10 ... EYES ON A HOLIDAY

The problem with being a conquered people, thought the crippled Roman soldier as he watched a trickle of Jews making their way to the synagogue for morning prayers, the problem with being a conquered people is you have all these soldiers and civil servants wandering through your land, looking down on you and thinking your religion is nuts and poo-pooing you for believing it. Of course, it is nuts: I know that, but then even though I was a proud Roman soldier I was never actually a proper Roman, but came from the West where we worshipped much more sensible gods....

It was the Sabbath. The trickle of people became a torrent and he watched as the Inn-Keeper and his wife, complete with teenage son and babe in arms, joined it.

When the streets were empty and the sounds of worship whispered out of the synagogue, he wandered towards the Inn.

“Why, hello darling,” enthused Balthazar, “You not joining in the mass worship of our jolly hosts in their Holy House?”

“Synagogue,” grunted the soldier, wincing at the pain as he tried to look less crippled, and failed.

“We've been to see the baby,” grunted Melchior. “Have you taken a peek?”

“Parents haven't got two sesterce to rub together,” grunted Caspar. “It seems gifts were expected. Silly habit if you ask me: one baby looks very much like another baby, that's my opinion. Still I left a pouch of frankincense. Just a little pouch, mark you. Paupers like that wouldn't know what to do with a cartful! You leave a gift?”

“I left the light,” nodded the soldier. “And as you can see from my poor legs it cost me a great deal of effort raising it so high! Pity it'll be going out soon.”

“I met some darling little shepherds,” sighed Balthazar. “They really were the sweetest of men, if not a little rough and drunk! They bore a nice white fleece. But the baby: I gave him myrrh, just a little, for I foretell he is not to enjoy a long life...”

“Nah,” muttered the soldier, “there's talk of an uprising against our lot, the Romans, you know, and if there is he'll no doubt bear arms and be dead by the time he's thirty!”

“That's the way of men,” sighed Melchior. “So, my friend Balthazar, myrrh was a well considered gift. I gave a gold coin, for I see they must flee for their lives before this year is out!”

Balthazor nodded, serious for a moment.“I spoke to Herod, the darling little man, and I mean little most specially: he knew nothing of a new king being born and I got the feeling that there might be a night of the long knives before long if he decides there is one. He hopes to be the father of a mighty dynasty, and when the Romans are deposed in battle, to form a Jewish empire of his own. So that baby, if his destiny is to be a king, must be polished off.”

“I see that too,” nodded Caspar.

“The silly man,” scoffed the crippled soldier, “has he any idea how mighty the Roman army is? Can he conceive of the force commanded by one Centurion, and multiply it by a thousand? If your baby is to be a soldier against that unbeatable force I fear he will be massacred!”

“I whispered to the father, an insignificant little worm called Jo-Jo, that he might well spend the coin I gave for the baby to finance a holiday. Egypt's nice at this time of year, and being part of the great Empire he should have no trouble with borders.” nodded Melchior.

“I heard rumour that Herod is such a b*****d he might even order the slaughter of all infants in order to get the one,” murmured Caspar.

Balthazar shook his head. “I doubt he'll go so far, darling,” he said. “As I see it he intends to make it known that he could do that. Such knowledge would reach the ears of the parents in that dreadful stable, and without the dire king actually doing anything they'll flee. Once in Egypt " for that is the logical place for them to go ... they're hardly likely to return whilst this king still reigns. So your gold coin could save the child, darling.”

“That is what I whispered to the carpenter,” nodded Melchior.

“I wonder...” muttered the crippled soldier.

“You wonder what?” asked Caspar.

“The child had a twin, born before it in that same stable.”

“What of it, darling?”

“Will the same threat fall on her? Will the king fear that a queen might arise from this sorry little town?”

Melchior laughed. “A queen? Never! The girl will become a woman and hence a drudge! She will bear sons, maybe, for that is the function of all women everywhere: the only true function!”

“Never was a truer word said, darling...” muttered Balthazar.

“And therein lies the frailty of our species,” muttered the old soldier. “It is the men who fight and die and the women who dress their wounds. Something is awry, somewhere. Sometimes I ask myself why it is we fight.”

Caspar looked surprised.

“For glory!” he said. “At least, that's why the fighting class fight! For the glory of their masters!”

“And the sorrow of their women,” muttered the crippled old soldier.

11 ... THE LIGHT GOES OUT.

The stable was quiet. For once the baby had stopped its crying, which had seemed to be an endless cacophony of demand for feeding and general squawking. Maria was tired almost beyond endurance and Jo-Jo was bored. It is, he thought, no fun being a man at times like this when everyone wants to look at the baby and tell the mother how clever she is … I think clever! It's the man who provides the vital seed, all the does is moan about how it makes her look and what it's like to feel so fat..

“Watch Jesu, Jo-Jo,” asked Maria. “I just need to get some shut-eye. I've never been as tired as this. I was on the go all night!”

“Who do you think you are, ordering me about!” snapped Jo-Jo. “I'm the man round here and I say what goes, and don't you forget it!”

She looked at him wearily, tellingly, and let her eyes close.

The baby chose that moment to start clamouring for yet another feed and Jo-Jo realised that he was ill-equipped to do anything about it. He nudged Maria, but she was exhausted and however hard he pushed her she wouldn't wake up.

“Sodding females!” he moaned, looking for an excuse to wander off, and not finding one.

And the three visitors in their splendid regalia, emissaries from the mysterious East, chose that moment to arrive.

“Damn and blast you, you little twerp!” Jo-Jo was saying, giving the baby in its unstable manger a good rocking. “It's your damned mother with the tits! What do you expect me to do?”

“May we help?” said Melchior from the doorway. Jo-Jo almost jumped out of his skin. The last thing he was expecting was a fresh retinue of visitors. They'd had the shepherds the day before, had been given a marvellous fleece that Jesu was, at that moment, soiling with the contents of his juvenile bowel, and that had already been more visitors than he, a stranger in those parts, had expected.

“It's the baby...” he explained, weakly.

“I know about babies, darling,” murmured Balthazar. “Here: let me hold him. I'll tell him a thing or two! I have a way with babies...”

Without any more ado he picked the child up and held him close to his royal face. “Well, darling, we are making a fuss,” he whispered. “I'll tell you what, if you're a good boy and give mummikins a bit of peace " she needs it, look " I'll give you this precious myrrh!” He held a small golden box in front of the baby's face, and it stopped its crying and seemed to focus its eyes on the small but hugely precious object as if it guessed its fragrant contents.

“And I'll give you frankincense,” purred Caspar, not wanting to be left out.

“Are you the father?” Melchior, grabbing Jo-Jo by one shoulder.

To most proud fathers that would have been a simple enough question to answer, but to this one it wasn't. Technically and biologically he was nobody's father and according to the story he was supposed to be telling anyone who asked, an angel had come down to Earth from the Lord on high and had his wicked way with Maria whilst she was doing the ironing or whatever it was young women did during the day. Then there was that Roman Army captain he'd suspected had an eye on his Maria for some time " and what about the old cripple that hung around where Maria lived in Nazareth? He'd never liked the look of him! So the question are you the father was far from an easy one to answer.

“I suppose so,” he mumbled.

“Then hearken, and hearken well,” said Melchior. “There is danger in the world, danger for you and danger, in particular, for your baby. Somehow your King Herod, a cruel man at the best of times, has got it in his head that this baby here, this little lad who even as we speak is pooing into that nice fluffy fleece he's got wrapped around him, is a threat. He thinks he's a king in waiting! I know it's nonsense, you know it's nonsense, but Herod has his mind made up and will be sending his best men out to get him sooner than soon.”

“For Jesu?” gasped Jo-Jo.

“For the very same infant,” nodded Melchior. “And for that reason, young man, and you can listen hard to this, for that reason I am giving you this gold coin...” he held a splendid coin towards Jo-Jo, one that glittered with a polished yellow sheen.

“Gold?” asked Jo-Jo. He had never seen anything wrought from gold before and it amazed him that a metal so precious should be finding its way into his own workaday hands.

“Gold indeed,” nodded Melchior. “You must flee! This gold can be exchanged for quite a lot of lesser coin and you will find that it will cushion your escape.”

“You must take your son to Egypt,” put in Caspar. “There are good people in Egypt who will help you. Take him there, today or sooner, while you have time. For if the cruel Herod gets his hands on your son he will be done for, and it may cross the mad king's mind that if the child is a threat to his own imagined dynasty, so would the father of that child be!”

“Coochie coochie coo,” burbled Balthazar into the baby's ear.

“Fly to Egypt,” confirmed Melchior. “Wake your spouse up and the three of you go while you still can!”

“But...” began Jo-Jo.

And then they heard it. A shouting, rough and cruel, the clash of metal on something hard, brazen voices, coarse and foul.

“Where's that baby prince? Where is he? And if anyone else tells us to look in a bloody stable I'll run 'em through! Princes are never born in stables!”

And as the harsh voices cut through the air the light above the stable door withered and died, it's wick black and parched, and the place was flung into sudden darkness.

12 ... THE OTHER TWIN

When your old nag's dead, thought the crippled old soldier, and your legs no longer work then it's time to think of hitching a lift.

And he stood by the side of the beaten old track, and waited. Someone would come along, and that someone might offer him a way out of Bethlehem and he would end up back in Nazareth and his comfortably familiar piece of wall to huddle against and watch the world go by.

He had noticed secretly as the small family left the stable. Maria had ridden on her donkey, holding Jesu, the baby, and Jo-Jo had boldly walked in front, guiding the steed. The image had been heart-warming, a family slowly weaving its way across a desert.

The crippled old soldier, still carefully out of sight, had felt that warm feeling a man gets when he knows his guidance has been right. It had been he (and he alone) who had suggested the journey in the first place, and he who had erected the huge oil lamp so that it guided the youngsters to the safety of the stable. It had been he who, admittedly through good fortune rather than the outcome of a devious plan, had nudged the three rich travellers from the East towards the stable. It had been he who had manipulated the drunken shepherds to donate a fine fleece to the fledgling king (aren't all babies kings, he thought) and it had been he who had diverted Herod's men away from any idea that a prince would be born in as lowly a place as a stable.

Now they were on their way out of his tale and, he hoped, would arrive in Egypt safely and with enough coin to buy their stay there. Now it was time for him to forget about the little episode that had held his attention for so long, and seek other events in the endless story of the folk of Nazareth.

If I get a lift, that is, he thought wryly.

The tiny boy-child would be safe enough. He was with his mother and a rather useless carpenter who would make a decent enough father over the coming years, It was the other baby that still troubled him. The girl, the one the Inn-keeper's wife was caring for.

I must keep an eye on her, he thought, and, much to his own surprise, he found himself walking slowly and painfully down the crooked track back into Bethlehem, and to the Inn, instead of returning to Nazareth.

“I need a room,” he said, bluntly when he got there.

“You have coin?” asked the Inn-keeper.

“I gambled with the Eastern princes, and won,” he retorted. “I have coin enough for this dump!”

“Then you can have their room,” mumbled the Inn-keeper. “Guests are few and far between these days.”

“It's the town,” grumbled the crippled soldier, “it's a grotty little place, and there's precious little reason for any traveller to pass this way.”

“And now we have a baby to scare the punters off,” growled the Inn-keeper. “And a girl baby at that. Squawk, squawk, squawk all the time! Girls are useless, unless they learn to scrub and have babies of their own!”

“A girl can be a delight,” muttered the old soldier, wincing at the pain in his leg. All the exercise had not been good for him. “But this girl, the one in your bed, may well be special. Mary Magdalene, they called her, and Mary Magdalene she will be. Remember that. For I have seen, in a dream I had but the other night when the moon shone brightest, that she has yet a part to play in the affairs of the world.”

“That's nonsense,” growled the Inn-keeper. “Tell that to the fairies, but don't try to convince me! There never was a child born without a willy who was anything but trouble. It's that organ, the one that signifies man rather than woman, that makes all the difference. It gives, when the child is older, a deep and manly voice and helps him father a tribe in his own likeness! Women are merely the chariots in which our sons ride towards life!”

“I've seen the bloody side of life and know that damned willy creates arrogance and wars,” growled the old soldier. “I fought in wars, remember, and I was always on the winning side until Nazareth yobbos set about me one dark night. I saw some of them off to their promised land before they smashed my legs! But before then, when I was soldiering and conquering and making my masters great I saw what the bad men do.”

“There will always be wars,” nodded the Inn-keeper. “It keeps our race pure and true.”

“You Jews are all the same,” scowled the soldier. “Fight and conquer, that's all you know, you're as bad as my Roman masters! But that is not what I came to debate. When your new girl-child is older I will tell her about herself...”

“You're not going to be here that long, surely!”

“Who says? I'll be here for as long as it takes! The boy is on his way to Egypt and may well stay there. But the girl-child, she may fall by the wayside if she doesn't have an old fool like me to tell her the story of her life.”

“And what story may that be?”

“She is half of a whole.”

“Now you're talking in riddles!”

“Not at all. She is half of the birth the other night. The boy is with his parents and the girl is here. They say the boy is the son of their god, but that's nonsense.”

“It is?” The Inn-keeper was curious.

“It is. For the light of my star first shone on the girl child, not the boy: he came second. Your god, old fool had much more than a son.”

The distant sound of a baby clamouring for food swept into the tiny room.

“He had a daughter, and I hear that daughter crying now, even as we speak!

“And that daughter is the issue of your god. The son in Egypt ... men may remember him down the years if he achieves anything ... but the daughter: she's the one that matters!”

THE END

Author's Note

I'm very fond of thinking about the number of views I get and it seems that this story, a retelling of the Christian Nativity, isn't so popular - so having already posted the first two parts I thought I'd cram the last large part together in a single post and then get on with my life!!!