A Cosmic Christmas

by Hank Davis

  “We are beholden to you, sir,” the man thanked Klaus with simple courtesy. “Those men were seeking our son’s life. Only last night the Angel of the Lord forewarned me in a dream to take the young child and its mother and flee from Nazareth to Egypt, lest the soldiers of King Herod come upon us unawares. I hear that they have murdered many little ones whose parents had not warning from the Lord.”

  “Thou heard’st aright, old man,” Klaus answered grimly, thinking of the widow-woman’s son. “Back in the village yonder is the sound of lamentation; Rachel weeps for her dead and will not be comforted. Howbeit,” he looked disdainfully upon the bodies in the road, “meseemeth I have somewhat paid the debt your kinsmen owed these murdering dogs.”

  “Alas!” the traveler returned; “you have put your life in jeopardy for us, sir. After this there is a price upon your head, and Herod will not rest until he nails you to a cross for all to see the vengeance of the King.”

  Klaus laughed, but not with mirth. “Methinks the sword will sing its song, and many more like these will journey to the storm-land ere they hang me on the doom tree,” he answered as he leant to pick his sword up from the roadside turf.

  The blue eyes of the woman were on his as he spoke, and he stopped abashed. Never in the score and two years of wild life which had been his had Klaus the Northman, Klaus the champion of gladiators, felt a gaze like hers.

  “Your baby, mistress,” he said awkwardly, “may I see its face before I go my ways? ’Tis something to have saved a little child from murderers’ steel—pity ’tis I was not in the village to save the widow Rachel’s child from them, as well.”

  The woman raised the infant in her arms, and the little boy’s blue eyes were fixed on Klaus. The Northman took a forward step to stroke the smooth, pink cheek, then, as if it had been a stone wall that stopped him, halted where he stood. For a voice was speaking to him, or, rather, it was no mortal voice that spake, but a sound that touched his ears, yet seemed to come from nowhere.

  “Klaus, Klaus,” the softly-modulated voice proclaimed, “because thou hast done this for me, and risked thy life and freedom for a little child, I say to thee that never shall thou taste of death until thy work for me is finished.”

  Now, though the infant’s lips moved not, Klaus knew the words proceeded from him. At first he was astonished, even frightened; for the world he knew was peopled with strange spirit-beings, all of whom were enemies to men. Yet as he looked into the little boy’s blue eyes, so calm, so knowing for an infant’s, he felt his courage coming back, and made answer as is fitting when addressing a magician of more than usual power.

  “Lord Jarl,” he said, “I would not live alway. There comes the time when arms grow weak and sight is dim, however strong and brave the heart may be, and a man is no more able to take part in the man’s game. Say, rather, Lord, that I may die with sword and ax in hand, in full vigor of my manhood and while the crimson tide of battle runs full-spate. Let it be that Odin’s beauteous daughters deem me worthy to be taken from the battlefield and borne aloft to that Valhalla where the heroes play the sword game evermore.”

  “Not so, my Klaus. Thou who hast put thy life in forfeit for the safety of a little child hast better things than that in store for thee. When the name of Odin is forgot, and in all the world there is no man to do him reverence at his altars, thy name and fame shall live; and laughing, happy children shall praise thy goodness and thy loving-kindness. Thou shalt live immortally in every childish heart so long as men shall celebrate my birthday.”

  “I shall live past Götterdämmerung?”

  “So long as gleeful children praise thy name at the period of winter solstice.”

  “Then I shall be a mighty hero?”

  “A hero to be held in loving memory by every man who ever was a child.”

  “Lord Jarlkin, I think thou art mistaken. Rather would I die with the swordsong in my ears and the din of battle for a dirge, but if thou speakest sooth, why, then, a man follows his star, and where mine leads I go.”

  Then Klaus unsheathed his sword and flourished it three times above his head, and finally brought its point to rest upon the road, for thus did heroes of the Northland pay respect to their liege lords.

  The father cried out in affright when he heard the gray sword-blade whistle in the air, but the mother looked on calmly, nor did she seem to marvel that the Northling spake in heathen language to her infant, as though he answered to unspoken words.

  So Klaus bade them safe faring on their way to Egypt land, and turned to face him toward the North Star and the road that led toward home.

  The Road to Calvary

  Lucius Pontius Pilate, Procurator of Judea, leant across the parapet and looked down at the night-bound city. Lights blossomed here and there among the flat-roofed houses; now and then the clatter of nailed hooves was heard upon the cobblestones; almost incessantly came the roar of jostling, fractious crowds. Jerusalem was crowded to the bursting point; for days the people had been streaming through the Joppa gate, for a great feast was in preparation—these Jews were always celebrating either feast or fast—and the police power of his legionaries had been put upon its mettle.

  “A turbulent and stiff-necked people, these, my Claudius,” the Governor addressed the tall, blond-bearded man who stood three paces to his left and rear. “Ever disputing, always arguing and bickering, everlastingly in tumult of some sort. But yesterday, when the troops marched from the citadel with the Eagles of the Legion at their head, a band of townsmen stoned them, crying out that they bore idols through the Holy City’s streets. It seems they hold it sin to make an image in the likeness of anything that walks or flies or swims. A stubborn, narrow-minded lot, methinks.”

  “Aye, Excellence, a stubborn and rebellious lot,” the first centurion agreed.

  The Procurator laughed. “None knows it better than myself, my Claudius. Thou wert here amongst them aforetimes, in the days of the great Herod, I’ve been told. How comes it that thou’rt here again? Dost like the odor of this sacred city of the Hebrews?”

  The bearded soldier smiled sardonically. “I served King Herod as a gladiator a triennium ago,” he answered. “When my period of service was expired I found myself without scar or wound, and with a wallet filled with gold. I told the prætor I would fight no more for hire, and set out for my northern home, but on the way—” he stopped and muttered something which the Procurator failed to catch.

  “Yes, on the way?” the Roman prompted.

  “I became embroiled with certain soldiers of the King who sought to do a little family violence. Herod swore a vengeance on me, and I was hunted like a beast from wood to desert and from desert to mountain. At last I sought the shelter which so many hunted men have found, and joined the legions. Since then I’ve followed where my star—and army orders—led, and now once more I stand within these city walls, safe from the vengeance of King Herod’s heirs.”

  “And right glad am I that thou art here,” the Governor declared. “This is no sinecure I hold, my Claudius. I have but a single legion to police this seething country, and treason and rebellion lift their heads on every side. Do I do one thing? The Jews cry out against me for violating some one of their sacred rights or customs. Do I do the other? Again they howl to heaven that the iron heel of Rome oppresses them. By Jupiter, had I a dozen legions more—nay, had I but a single legion more of men like thee, my Claudius—I’d drive this mutinous rabble at the lance-point till they howled like beaten dogs for mercy!” He gazed down at the city for a time in moody silence; then:

  “What talk is this I hear of one who comes from Galilee claiming to be king of the Jews? Think ye that it bodes sedition? Had they but a leader they could rally to, I doubt not we should soon be fighting for our lives against these pestilent Judeans.”

  “I do not think we need fear insurrection from that point, your Excellence,” the soldier answered. “I saw this teacher when he came into the city but four days agone. Mild of mien is he, and very meek and
humble, riding on an ass’s colt and preaching in the temple, bidding all men live as brothers, fear God, honor the King, and render unto Cæsar that which is his.”

  “Ha, sayest thou? I had thought otherwise. Caiaphas, the chief priest, tells me he foments sedition, and urges that I throw him into prison or give him over to be crucified as one who preaches treason to the Empire.”

  “Caiaphas!” the big centurion pursed his lips as though to spit. “That fatted swine! No wonder his religion bids him to refrain from pigs’ flesh. If he ate of it he would be a cannibal!”

  Pilate nodded gloomily. His quarrel with the high priest was an old one, and one in which the victories were even. Caiaphas had on occasion sent appeal to Rome, subtly intimating that unless the Governor yielded there was danger of rebellion. Word came back to Pilate that the Cæsar held him personally responsible for conditions in Judea, and that in case of revolution his would be the blame. Thus the high priest triumphed. On the other hand, the Governor had advantage in that appeal in criminal cases and matters of taxation lay with him, and by making use of this authority he could often bend the prelate to his will.

  “I would we had another pontifex,” he mused, “one more pliant to suggestion than this sacerdotal fool who rules their priestly council.”

  The jingling clink of metal swordsheath on mailed kilts was heard as a legionary hurried out upon the roof, halted and saluted, then handed Claudius a scroll. The centurion returned the military salutation and, in turn, delivered the rolled missive to the Procurator.

  “By Pluto’s beard,” swore Pilate as he broke the seal and read the message by the light of a small lantern set upon the parapet, “it comes sooner than we thought, my Claudius! Caiaphas has taken custody of this self-styled King of Jews, tried him before the Sanhedrin and judged him worthy to be crucified. Now he brings the case to me on high petition. What are we to do?”

  “Why, bid the fat pig get him back unto his sty, your Excellence. None but Rome has jurisdiction in such cases. Caiaphas can no more condemn a man to death than he can don the toga of imperial authority—”

  “Aye, but therein lies the danger. I alone, as Procurator, can mete out sentence of death, but if these priests and their paid underlings should rouse the louse-bit rabble to rebellion we have not troops enough to put it down. Furthermore, should insurrection come, Rome is like to have my life. I am sent out here to govern and to rule, but chiefly to collect the tax. A people in rebellion pays no tribute to the throne. Come, Claudius, my toga. Let us hear what harm this uncrowned king has done the state.

  * * *

  A murmur like a storm-wind in the treetops filled the hall of audience. In the brilliant light of flambeaux double files of pretorian guardsmen stood at stiff attention as the Procurator took his seat upon the ivory and purple chair of state. Well forward in the hall, before the dais, stood Caiaphas with Simeon and Annas to his right and left. A knot of temple guards—tawdry imitations of the Roman legions—grouped about their prisoner, a tall young man in white, bearded in the Jewish fashion, but so fair of skin and light of hair that he seemed to bear no racial kinship to the swarthy men surrounding him.

  “Hail, Procurator!” Meticulously Caiaphas raised his right hand in the Roman fashion, then bowed low with almost fawning oriental courtesy. “We come to you for confirmation of the sentence we have passed upon this blasphemer and traitor to the Empire.”

  Pilate’s salutation was a merest lifting of the hand. “The blasphemy is your affair,” he answered shortly. “What treason hath he wrought?”

  “He hath proclaimed himself a king, and if you do not find that treason, then thou art not Cæsar’s friend!”

  “Art thou in very truth King of the Jews?” the Governor turned curious eyes upon the prisoner.

  “Sayest thou this thing of me, or did others tell thee of it?” the young man answered.

  “Am I a Jew?” the Procurator asked. “Thy own nation and thy chief priests have brought thee unto me for judgment. What hast thou done?”

  There came no answer from the prisoner, but the murmuring outside the gates grew ominous. A mob was gathered at the entrance, and the guards were having trouble holding them in check.

  Again the Procurator challenged: “Art thou in truth a king, and if so, of what kingdom?”

  “Thou hast said it. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world that I should bear witness unto the truth . . .”

  “What is truth?” the Governor mused. “I myself have heard the sages argue long about it, but never have I found two who agreed on it. Claudius!” he turned to the centurion who stood behind his chair.

  “Excellence!”

  “I am minded to put these people to the test. Go thou to the dungeons and bring the greatest malefactor thou canst find into the hall. We shall see how far this bigotry can go.”

  As Claudius turned to execute the order, the Governor faced the chief priest and his satellites.

  “I will have him scourged, then turn him free,” he pronounced. “If he has transgressed your laws the scourging will be punishment enough; as to your charge of treason, I find no fault in him.”

  Docilely the prisoner followed a decurion to the barrack-room where the soldiers stripped his garments off and lashed him to a pillar, then laid a tracery of forty stripes upon his naked back.

  “The King of Jews, is he?” laughed the decurion. “Why, by the eyes of Juno, every king should have a crown to call his own; yet this one has no crown at all. Ho, there, someone, make a fitting crown for Jewry’s king?”

  A chaplet of thorn-branch was quickly plaited and thrust upon the prisoner’s head, and the long, sharp spines bit deeply in his tender flesh, so that a jewel-like diadem of ruby droplets dewed his brow. Then another found a frayed and tattered purple robe which they laid upon his bleeding shoulders. Finally, a reed torn from a hearth-broom was thrust between his tight-bound wrists for scepter, and thus regaled they set him on a table and bowed the knee to him in mock humility, what time they hailed him as Judea’s new king. At length they tired of the cruel sport, and grinning broadly, brought him back and stood him in the hall before the Governor and the priests.

  “Behold the man!” the Procurator bade as they brought the figure of humiliation to the hall. “Behold your king!”

  “We have no king but Cæsar!” answered Caiaphas self-righteously. “This one has declared himself a king, and whoso calls himself a king speaketh against Cæsar.”

  Meanwhile Claudius was hastening to the judgment hall with a miserable object. The man was of great stature, but so bowed with fetters that he could not stand erect. His clothing hung in tatters, no second glance was needed to know he was a walking vermin-pasture; the members of the guard shrank from him, fending him away with spear-butts lest the lice which swarmed upon his hair and garments get on them.

  Then Pilate bade the prisoner from the dungeons stand before the priests, and motioned from him to the bound and thorn-crowned captive.

  “It is your custom, men of Judea, that at the Passover I release to ye a prisoner,” Pilate said. “Whom will ye therefore, that I set at liberty, this convicted robber, doomed to die upon the gallows tree, or this one ye have called your king?”

  “We have no king but Caesar!” shouted Caiaphas in rage. “Away with this one. Crucify him!”

  And outside the great bronze grilles that barred the hall the rabble took the cry up: “Away with him! Crucify him; crucify him!”

  “What, crucify your king?” the Procurator asked in mock astonishment.

  The carefully rehearsed mob of temple hangers-on who swarmed about the gates thundered back once more: “Crucify him! Crucify him!”

  “Water in a ewer, and a napkin, Claudius,” ordered Pilate, and when his aide returned he set the silver basin down before him, and laved his hands in water, then dried them on the linen napkin. “I am innocent of the blood of this just man. See ye to it!” cried the Procurator as he handed ewer and napkin back to Claudius.
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br />   “His blood be on our heads and on our children’s heads!” responded Caiaphas, and the chorus massed outside the judgment hall took up the savage pæan of blood-guiltiness: “On our heads and on our children’s! Crucify him!”

  Lucius Pontius Pilate shrugged his shoulders. “I have done the best I could, my Claudius,” he said. “Let him be led away to prison, and on the morrow have him taken with the other adjudged malefactors and crucified. My guard will have no part in it, but I would that you go with the execution party to make sure all is regularly done and”—his thin lips parted in a mocking, mirthless smile—“to put my superscription on the cross to which they hang him. The same nails that pierce his members are like to prick the vanity of Caiaphas, methinks,” he added, chuckling to himself as though he relished some keen jest.

  The procession to the execution hill, or “Place of Skulls,” began at dawn, for crucifixion was a slow death, and the morrow being Shabbath it was not lawful that the malefactors he left alive to profane the sacred day with their expiring groans. The crowds assembled in the city to keep Passover lined the Street of David and gathered in the alley-heads to watch the march of the condemned, making carnival of the occasion. Sweetmeat vendors and water-sellers did a thriving trade among the merrymakers, and one or two far-sighted merchants who had come with panniers of rotten fruit and vegetables found their wares in great demand; for everyone enjoyed the sport of heaving offal at the convicts as they struggled past beneath the burden of their crosses.