Susan Fletcher - Alphabet of Dreams

by Susan Fletcher

  Pacorus could not stand still. He tapped one foot against the floor, paced back and forth, then stood beside me again, the restless foot thumping out its quick tattoo. And from that foot I knew there was something inside him, some news aquiver to get out—something he knew I would not wish to hear.

  At last it came. Gaspar, Pacorus said, had offered to take him as an apprentice, despite his impure blood. They would go to the fortress near Sava, where Gaspar would school him in the portents of the sky, train him as a priest. Melchior had agreed to let him go. Pacorus’s eyes burned with his dreams as he spoke of the trajectories of the stars, of the secrets of the heavens.

  I smiled at him—I did!—though I knew the smile did not reach my eyes. It was a smile that reached only lip-deep, with kingdoms of disappointment behind it. I called to mind the night we had sailed across the face of the moon, on the great, wide stream of the Euphrates. I recalled the story I had secretly conjured from that moment—that one day I would tell him I was no boy, but a woman, and he would offer to take me as his wife. In this story, I gave up all my old dreams for him.

  Now I saw there was no use in the telling. If he had been willing to read the secrets of my heart, he would have seen it long ago.

  Koosha—he had seen me. But I had striven to push him from my mind, and now he seemed little more than the memory of a dream. Had he really appeared to us out of the darkness of that qanat? Had he sat with us by the fire and told us of his home?

  And that stillness I had felt …

  Tell your brother, he had said. I have eyes to see.

  And so Pacorus and I said our good-byes, embracing as brothers. I came out on the gallery as he mounted his camel—with a lean grace that I had learned by heart and would know again if I saw it a thousand years hence—and watched him ride with Gaspar’s archers out through the caravansary gates.

  We had a third visitor that morning. Balthazaar knocked to announce himself, then came to sit cross-legged upon the carpet beside Babak. I waited for him to tell me why he had come, but he only moved his fingertips, in that way of his, across the wasted planes of Babak’s face.

  “I have many questions,” I said at last.

  He nodded, inviting them.

  “Will Babak die?”

  He seemed about to say something, drew it back within himself, then lay his long, knobby hands in his lap and rested the whole weight of his attention upon my face. “It is likely,” he said. “Unless …”

  I took in a deep breath, expelled it. “Unless what?”

  “It is a sickness of the spirit that afflicts him. These sicknesses … they do sometimes heal of themselves, for no reason that any can discern. He has not walked in his sleep for a day or two?”

  I shook my head.

  “That is a good sign. Is he ever lucid? Does he have moments when he speaks to you as he used to?”

  “Not many. When he told of his dream of that king. And he was clear eyed for a moment this morning.”

  “Clear eyed? Lucid?”

  I nodded. “And earlier he sat up and drank some broth. I did not have to force it down.”

  Balthazaar made a thoughtful umm in his throat. “Well, perhaps there will be more of those moments, and then … At worst, food and water will keep him with us for a while yet. Pray to the Wise God—that is my counsel. Though his plans for us may not be what we wish, prayer can lead us into his light.”

  It seemed a hollow comfort. Long ago I had prayed every day—prayed to the Wise God, prayed to my mother’s gods—but the gods did not reply. Return us to our mother, to our father, to our kin. Restore us to our rightful place of honor. Deliver us to Palmyra. What was the use in praying if prayers were never answered?

  And yet, from time to time of late, prayers just seemed to float up from within me.

  “I thought you would take us to Palmyra,” I said, “and now Melchior says he will instead. Will he? Can I trust him?”

  “He has given his word on this to Gaspar and to me. I do not think he will break it.”

  “He broke it before,” I said bitterly.

  “True. But Melchior seems changed to me. Or no—not changed, precisely, but on the cusp of change. Unbalanced, teetering between his old ways and something new. No longer so certain of himself.”

  “He seemed certain enough last night. Arguing with Gaspar. Saying he had saved that baby’s life!” Still, I had to admit, this morning he had been strangely subdued.

  Balthazaar’s eyes crinkled in a smile. “Sometimes, I have observed, we put on the greatest show of refusing to change … just as the changing has begun. In any case, I’m certain you can trust him to take you to Palmyra.”

  We sat for a moment in silence. I thought Balthazaar would rise to go, as he was a great and busy man and must have much to do to prepare for the long journey home. And yet it was a comfortable silence, sitting here with him, both of us attending to the rise and fall of Babak’s breath.

  “Did you …” I began.

  He turned to me, waiting.

  “Did you find what you sought? Is that baby … a king?”

  “A king?” He furrowed his brow. “I don’t know if he is or ever will be a king. Or at least a king such as the world acknowledges. But …” The furrows eased, and he smiled to himself. “There was something of the light about that child, something that filled this old man’s heart. Yes, I found what I was seeking, but I don’t yet comprehend the meaning of it.”

  From below, in the courtyard, came the roar of a camel and then a shouted command. Balthazaar looked about him and began to gather up his robes, as if the world had intruded upon us and he must go to meet it.

  “Wait, my lord,” I said. “One question more?”

  He nodded.

  “What happened in that house? Can you tell me? Or is it a matter only for priests?”

  “No, not just for priests!” he said. “I think that may be part of what we are meant to understand. But what happened …” He shrugged, opening out his hands, palms up. “Well, we saw an infant and his parents, we heard the story of his birth. That is all. It does not seem much to tell, does it? It does not seem much to show for our long journey—and the price your brother has paid. But it was a remarkable story, with angels in it, and prophetic dreams.” He looked down at Babak. “Dreams even more astonishing and perplexing than the ones we already knew of. Dreams that gave us to know that we had come to the right place. That the omens in the sky had not led us astray.”

  “But might it be,” I ventured, “that he is a king—or will be when he is grown? Might it be that these people are not his rightful parents, that he was separated from his true kin? Might it be that they are in exile, and—”

  “Do you set so much store by kings,” Balthazaar interrupted gently, “knowing what you know of them? Kings have not been kind to you, nor to your brother.”

  “But my father—”

  “Craved to be king. Sacrificed all for that.”

  I bowed my head, stung.

  “You ought to have seen their faces when they looked upon those gifts we brought. They were perplexed. Almost afraid. Useless gifts! Except, perhaps, the gold. What would you have done, when you lived in Rhagae, if someone had given you caskets of holy frankincense and precious myrrh? You can’t eat them, they won’t shed light to see by or keep you warm—”

  “I would have traded them for passage to Palmyra!”

  Balthazaar threw his head back and laughed, a warm, comforting sound. “Well, perhaps they will be as clever as you. They will need passage; their old donkey won’t take them far.”

  He looked at me, still smiling, nodding his head. “If you were mistaken, my child, in thinking we would find an earthly king, then so were we all. Those gifts, chosen to impress and gratify the highborn and powerful, were the badge of our error. So tell me: Why would the Wise God send so many signs in his heavenly lexicon to herald the birth of a lowly carpenter’s son? What do you think?”

  I shook my head.

  �
�Surely you can hazard a guess?”

  “No, I cannot!”

  “I keep musing upon paradise and the way to attain it. Of the Prophet’s admonition that greatness comes neither from wealth nor knowledge nor nobility of birth, but from our own good thoughts, good words, and good deeds. By these lights, he tells us, even a slave can cross to paradise, while many a king plunges into the abyss. The highborn and the lowly are as one.

  “And yet I can’t but wonder if any of us would have undertaken this journey had we known we would find no king, nor even the son of a great priest, but only a carpenter’s baby in a tiny limestone dwelling in a backwater village of Judea.”

  Balthazaar sighed. “I confess I am mystified as to how to decipher God’s alphabet writ across the heavens. But when I ask myself, What is the inner meaning of all of the outward signs we have witnessed? I wonder if the humbleness of this birth may be the very crux of the matter.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said.

  He smiled sadly. “Nor do I, child. But I suspect that this birth has less to do with kingly power and priestly knowledge, and more to do here”—he placed an outspread hand upon his chest—“with the heart.”

  CHAPTER 50

  THE BABIES

  Soon our time came to depart. I woke Babak, who seemed clear eyed again, awake enough to pull on his cloak and boots. As we climbed upon Ziba, I looked about for Giv but did not see him. Upon asking, I found that he had returned before dawn, and Melchior had dispatched him ahead to hire a desert guide who lived in Bethany. He would meet with us later, on the Jericho road. I looked about as well for any men Melchior had charged with guarding Babak and me. There had been none on the gallery this morning. And now again, in the caravan: no guards.

  No call to guard against our escape, when they were taking us where we wanted to go.

  Or perhaps it was that Melchior no longer needed Babak.

  When we had traveled a short way on the road east from Bethlehem, Babak began to tug at one of his boots. “My toes pain me,” he said.

  I leaned to one side to look at him; his eyes were still alert. His gaze shifted; he pointed back over my shoulder. “Look,” he said.

  I turned round to see a great plume of dust in the distance, on the road that threaded among the hills toward Jerusalem. Amid the dust, a troop of red-cloaked, metal-helmed riders, coming this way.

  Soldiers.

  And it was upon me again, the old memory: the rumbling of the earth beneath the horses’ hooves, the flash of sunlight on swords, the crying, the women crying …

  I pulled Ziba to the side of the road and brought her to a halt. She cropped a tuft of dry grass as the caravan streamed past. My hands, I saw, were trembling. I tried to still them, my hands, but they had a will of their own; they began to infect my arms with their trembling; they began to infect my legs.

  The soldiers. Coming fast, coming at full gallop. I stared at them, transfixed, as they disappeared behind a ridge.

  “The babies,” Babak said. He looked up at me, worried.

  I hugged myself to stop the trembling, clenched my hands into fists. “The baby, you mean,” I said. “His father and mother have been warned. Surely they’re well away from here by now. Baby—not babies.”

  “No!” He was indignant. “Babies. I saw them in my dream.”

  “When? Did you dream again last night? Or—”

  “No, before! When I dreamed of the soldiers before. They …” He swallowed, blinked.

  Something cold came to rest on my heart. They bring death with them. “What happened to the babies?” I asked him.

  He shook his head, turned his face from me.

  “Babak! What did the soldiers do?”

  “There was blood on their swords,” he said. “The babies …”

  Babies. Oh, Lord …

  But why babies? Why not just the one?

  Now the leading soldiers began to reappear from behind the distant hill. Sun glinted off their helmets, shot sharp spurs of light into my eyes. I looked round for the others in our caravan; nearly all had passed me by. “Wait!” I called. I urged Ziba forward. “Look! The soldiers—”

  Heads turned round to look, and then a shout went out—“Soldiers!”—echoing from man to man to man, and then the neat file of camels began to bunch up, jiggle into a trot, and pull away ahead.

  “Wait!” I cried again. But they did not wait. They surged down the road ahead of us, a tumult of jostling camels, bellowing men. Ziba, seeing that she was to be parted from the others, let out a mournful bawl and lunged forward. But no matter how she strained to keep up, she lagged farther and farther behind, until the gap was so wide I knew I could not overcome it to explain that the soldiers did not come for us.

  The babies.

  Ziba jogged to a halt, moaning long and loud at the loss of her companions. I, too, watched our caravan shrink and pale in the distance. Palmyra. There went Palmyra before us, with all my old hopes and dreams. I tried to call to mind the faces I had longed to find there—my father and my aunts and uncles. My mother …

  But my memories, once knife-edged and clear, had come apart in trickles and runnels, had collapsed and dissolved and shifted in the winds of these past years, until the whole of the landscape was transformed. And the face that emerged in memory now was that of a kindly young woman in Bethlehem, with a baby in her arms.

  CHAPTER 51

  SOLDIERS

  By the time Babak and I reached Bethlehem—turning our backs on the others and retracing our path along the road—the soldiers had disappeared again behind the curve of a hill. I cried out, “Soldiers!” as we went jogging through the town gates; I pointed back in the direction from whence they came. A cluster of townsfolk, neither seeing what I pointed at nor comprehending my meaning, gaped at me as if I were mad. “Soldiers!” I called louder, knowing that wouldn’t help, but what else could I do? Two men exchanged a wary glance. They advanced down the narrow street toward us; I drove Ziba right between them, forcing them to leap apart and press themselves against walls on either side of the street, scattering a group of boys playing catch-ball, startling a pack of chickens, which squawked and flapped and filled the air with a cloud of black-and-white feathers. I urged Ziba ahead, clutched Babak tight against me. I could feel from the alertness in his body that he was still awake. My hands had ceased with their shaking. It felt good to do something for once, not just sit helplessly by.

  A lane split off to the right, winding steeply up. One lane looked just like another here, all hedged about with limestone walls and houses, yet this one seemed familiar. Ziba lurched around the corner and shuffled up the hill. People came to stand in doorways as we passed. A boy darted out toward us, but his mother snatched at him and dragged him back. “Soldiers!” I cried again. Surely someone here would understand the Persian tongue.

  And now, just ahead, I saw the well I remembered, and the houses that backed into the steep hillside behind. Which one had the Magi visited? They looked so much alike, huddled all together. But there. Wasn’t it the one just across from the well? And the other house, the one of the woman with the baby. Where had that been? I turned to look for it, and there she was, adjusting her mantle in her doorway, her hands dusty with ground meal, her baby on her hip.

  I wheeled Ziba round, stopped before her. “You must …” I gestured toward her baby. I tried to think how to convey hiding, but couldn’t. “Soldiers! They’re coming. You must …”

  I could see from her face that she was straining to comprehend me, but how could you explain such a thing? Even to someone who spoke your own language, you couldn’t explain it.

  Something caught her eye; she turned and looked behind me, and there was a man advancing quickly up the street, a knot of others trailing behind. The young woman called out to the leader; he hastened his step. “What is your business here?” he asked me. “What do you want?”

  Persian. He spoke Persian.

  “You must hide your babies,” I said, “hide them all! T
hat king of yours, that king you have in Jerusalem, he’s sending soldiers to kill them. I saw them on the road; they’re coming now.”

  The man knit his brow, puzzled.

  “Hide your babies! My brother sees things in dreams; he has seen blood, he has seen death!”

  I could tell that I had said too much, too fast. I took a deep breath. “You must take the babies away from here,” I said, forcing myself to speak slowly. “You must hide them. Your baby”—I pointed to the kindly woman—“and the baby the Magi visited, if he’s still here, and all the other little babies, every one in Bethlehem.”

  The man motioned for me to stop, then began to translate. People had emerged from nearby houses to listen, men and women and children. I tried to read their faces, tried to see if they comprehended my meaning, or if they believed me. Some seemed doubtful, still others, afraid. The kindly woman said something, pointing in the direction of the house the Magi had visited, then the translator turned to me.

  “They are gone, Joseph and his family. When the man from your caravan came looking to warn them, they had already left. But what cause would Herod have to kill this woman’s son, or any of our children?” the man asked. “He might send to raise our taxes; he has done that before. He might murder the babes of the powerful; he has done that as well. But—”

  All at once from below we heard a rumbling in the earth, a shout, and then a wild confusion of noise: a clangor of metal, a clattering of hooves on stone, bleatings of sheep and goats, children’s screams, men’s shouts, women’s piercing wails.

  Soldiers through the gates.

  The translator flung me a wild look, a look that encompassed, it seemed, terror and urgency and gratitude. Then he and his group of followers fled back the way they had come. Others collected their children; some disappeared within their homes; a few, clutching babies, dashed into a nearby lane.

  “Please,” I said, leaning down and holding out my hands for the kindly woman’s baby. Something wet on my cheeks. I swiped impatiently at my face, then held out my hands again. “Please.”