A Cosmic Christmas

by Hank Davis

  Claudius did not go with them. The Procurator rested late that morning, and there were routine matters to engage his time when he had finished at the bath. The sun was several hours high when a scrivener from the secretariat came into the officium with the titulus the Governor dictated, engrossed on stiffened parchment. Pilate smiled with grim amusement as he passed the scroll to Claudius.

  “Take thou this unto the place of execution, and with thy own hand fix it over the young Prophet’s head,” he ordered. “ ’Twill give Caiaphas and his plate-lickers something fresh to whine about.”

  The centurion glanced down at the scroll. In letters large enough for those who walked to read yet not be forced to stop or strain their eyes, it proclaimed:

  IESVS NAZARENVS

  REX IVDAEORVM

  Which was to say: “This is Jesus” (for such was the forename that the Prophet bore) “King of the Jews.” Not only in Latin, but in Hebrew and in Greek, as well, was the legend writ, that all who passed the place of crucifixion, whatever tongue they spake, might read and understand.

  “They have prated long about a king who should sweep away the power of Rome,” the Procurator smiled. “Let them look upon him now, gibbeted upon a cross. By Jupiter, I would that I could see that fat priest’s face when he reads the superscription!”

  Three crosses crowned the bald-topped hill when Claudius reached the place of execution. On two of them hung burly robbers, nailed by hands and feet, supported by the wooden peg, or sedule, set like a dowel in the upright beam between their legs, that their bodies might not sag too much. In the center, spiked upon the tallest cross, hung the young Prophet, his frailer body already beginning to give way beneath the dreadful torment it endured. A decurion set a ladder up beside the cross, and armed with nail and hammer Claudius mounted quickly and fixed the placard to the upright beam above the bowed head of the dying man.

  A high, thin wailing cry of astonishment and rage sounded as the legend on the card appeared. “Not that!” screamed Caiaphas as he put his hand up to his throat and rent his splendid priestly robe. —Not that, centurion! Yon superscription labels this blasphemer with the very title that he claimed, and for claiming which he now hangs on the gallows. Take down the card and change it so it reads that he is not our king, but that he claimed the kingly title in spite of Cæsar!”

  There was something almost comic in the priests’ malevolence as they fairly gnashed their teeth with rage, and Claudius, with the fighting-man’s instinctive contempt for politicians, grinned openly as he replied, “’Twere best you made complaint to Pilate, priest. What he has written he has written, nor do I think he will change yon title for all your whining and complaints.”

  “Cæsar shall he told of this!” the wrathful high priest snarled. “He shall hear how Pilate mocked our people and incited them to riot by labeling a malefactor as our king—”

  Claudius turned abruptly to the centurion commanding the execution squad. “Clear away this rabble,” he directed. “Must we be pestered by their mouthings?”

  From the figure on the central cross a low moan came: “I thirst.”

  Claudius took a sponge and dipped it in the jar of sour wine and myrrh that stood beside him on the ground. He put it on a lance and held it to the sufferer’s lips, but the poor, weak body was too far spent to drink. A shudder ran through it, and with a final flash of strength the Prophet murmured: “It is finished. Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit.” A last convulsive spasm, and the thorn-crowned head fell forward. All was over.

  “We had best be finishing our work,” the execution guard’s commander said phlegmatically. “These priests are set on mischief, and we’ll have a riot on our hands if one of these should live until the sundown.” He motioned to a burly executioner who picked up a sledge and methodically went about the task of smashing the suspended felons’ arm- and leg-bones.

  “Now, by Father Odin’s ravens, thou shalt not break the Prophet’s legs,” Claudius declared as he snatched a guardsman’s spear. “Let him die a man’s death!” With the precision taught by years of training in the arena and on the battlefield, he poised the lance and drove the long bronze spearhead between the Prophet’s ribs, sinking it deep into the heart. As he withdrew the point a stream of water mixed with blood gushed forth, and Claudius returned the soldier’s spear. “’Tis long since I have done that favor to a helpless man,” he muttered as his memory flew back to his days in the arena when the blood-mad mob withheld the mercy sign and he had thrust his sword or lance through his defeated adversary—often the man with whom he’d drunk and diced the night before. “By Frigga’s eyes,” he added as he looked at the pale body stretched upon the cross, “he’s beautiful! I’ve heard he called himself the son of God, nor is that hard to credit. ’Tis no man, but a god who hangs on yonder gallows—Baldur the Beautiful, slain by foul treacheries!”

  A ringing sounded in his ears like the humming of innumerable bees, and through it he heard words, words in a voice he had not heard in more than thirty years, but which he recognized instantly. “Klaus, thou took pity on a little child attacked by murderers in days agone; this day thy pity bade thee save a dying man from brutish violence. According to thy lights thou dealtest mercifully when thou thrust the spear into my side. Knowest thou not me, Klaus?”

  “Lord Jarlkin!” Klaus turned round and gazed in wonder at the slight, wilted body. “The little child whom I assisted on his way to Egypt land! What wouldst thou with thy liegeman, Lord? Did not my mercy-stroke drive true—is my work unfinished?” He stretched his hand out for the soldier’s spear again, but:

  “Thy work is not yet started, Klaus. I will call and thou wilt know my voice when I have need of thee.”

  The soldiers of the guard and the crowd of hang-jawed watchers at the execution ground were wonderstruck to see the Procurator’s chief centurion draw himself up and salute the body pendent on the cross as though it were a tribune, or the Governor himself.

  Dark clouds obscured the sun, and menacing thunder mingled with the stabbing spears of lightning as Klaus hurried through the Street of David on his way back to the Governor’s palace. Once or twice there came a rumbling in the bowels of the earth, and the solid ground reeled drunkenly beneath his feet.

  “Siguna goes to drain her cup, and Loki writhes beneath the sting of serpent-venom,” Klaus muttered as he dug his heels into his horse’s sides. It would not be comfortable in that narrow street when the fury of the earthquake began to shake the buildings down. A temblor shook the riven earth afresh, and an avalanche of broken tile and rubble slid into the street, almost blocking it. Klaus leaped down from his saddle and gave his horse a smart blow on the flank.

  “Go thou, good beast, and Thor see thee safely to thy stable,” he bade, then took shelter by the blank-walled houses, dashing forward a few steps, then shrinking back again as spates of failing masonry cataracted overhead and fell crashing on the cobbles of the roadway.

  “Ai—ai—ahee!” a woman’s scream came thin-edged with terror. “Help, for the love of God—save me or I die! Have mercy, Master!”

  The flicker of a lightning-flash lit up the pitch-black night-in-day that flooded through the street, and by its quivering light Klaus saw a woman’s body lying in the roadway. A timber from a broken house had fallen on her foot, pinioning her to the cobbles, and even as she screamed, a fresh convulsion of the earth shook down a barrow-load of broken brick and tile, scattering brash and limedust over her. A stone fell clanging on his helmet as he rushed across the gloom-choked street, and a parapet-fragment crashed behind his heels as he leant to prize the timber off her ankle. She lay as limp as death within his arms as he dashed back to the shelter of the wall, and for a moment he thought he had risked his life in rescuing one beyond the need of succor; but as he laid her down upon the flagstones her great eyes opened and her little hands crept up to clasp themselves about his neck. “Art safe, my lord?” she asked tremulously.

  “Aye, for the nonce,” he answered, �
�but we tempt the gods by staying here. Canst walk?”

  “I’ll try.” She drew herself erect and took a step, then sank down with a moan. “My foot—’tis broke, I fear,” she gasped. “Do thou go on, my lord; thou hast done thy duty to the full already. ’Twould not be meet to stay and risk thy life for me—”

  “Be silent, woman,” he commanded gruffly. “Raise thy arms.”

  Obediently she put her arms about his shoulders and he lifted her as though she were a child. Then, his cloak about her head to fend off falling fragments of the buildings, he darted from house to house until the narrow street was cleared and they came at length into a little open space.

  It was lighter here, and he could see his salvage. She was a pretty thing, scarce larger than a half-grown child, and little past her girlhood. Slender she was, yet with the softly rounded curves of budding womanhood. Her skin, deep sun-kissed olive, showed every violet vein through its veil of lustrous tan. Her hands, dimpled like a child’s, were tipped with long and pointed nails on which a sheathing of bright goldleaf had been laid, so they shone like tiny mirrors. Her little feet, gilt-nailed like her hands, were innocent of sandals and painted bright with henna on the soles. On ankles, wrists and arms hung bangles of rose-gold studded thick with lapis-lazuli, topaz and bright garnet, while rings of the same precious metal hung from each ear almost to her creamy shoulders. A diadem of gold thick-set with gems was circled round her brow, binding back the curling black locks which lay clustering round her face. Her small, firm breasts were bare, their nipples stained with henna, and beneath her bosom was a zone of woven golden wire from which a robe of sheerest gauze was hung, bound round the hips with a shawl of brilliant orange silk embroidered with pink shells and roses. Ground antimony had been rubbed upon her eyelids, and her full, voluptuous lips were stained a brilliant red with powdered cinnabar.

  Klaus recognized her: one of the hetæræ from the house of love kept by the courtezan of Magdala before she left her harlotry to follow after the young Prophet they had crucified that morning. Her mistress gone, the girl had taken service as a dancer at Agrippa’s court. He drew away a little. His clean-bred northern flesh revolted at the thought of contact with the pretty little strumpet.

  “What didst thou in the street?” he asked. “Were there so few buyers of thy wares within the palace that thou must seek them in the highways?”

  “I—I came to see the Master,” she sobbed softly. “I had the dreadful malady, and I sought His cure.”

  “Aye? And did thou find it?”

  “Yea, that did I. As He went by, all burdened with his gibbet, I called to Him and asked His mercy, and He did but raise the fingers of one hand and look on me, and behold—I am clean and whole again. See, is not my skin as fresh and clean as any maiden’s?”

  Klaus moved a little farther from her, but she crept toward him, holding out her hands for him to touch. “Behold me, I am clean!” she whispered rapturously. “No more will I be shunned of men—”

  “By this one thou wilt be,” he broke in grimly. “What have I to do with thee and thy kind, girl? The earthquake passes; it is safe for thee to walk the streets. Get thee gone.”

  “But my broken foot—I cannot walk. Wilt thou not help me to my place—”

  “Not I, by Thor. Let scented darlings of the palace see to that.” He shook her clinging hands away and half rose to his feet when a voice—the well-remembered voice his inward ear had heard before—came to him:

  “Despise her not. I have had mercy on her, and thou—and I—have need of her. Klaus, take her to thee.”

  He stood irresolute a moment; then: “I hear and obey, Lord,” he answered softly and sank down again upon the turf. “How art thou called?” he asked the girl.

  “Erinna.”

  “A Greek?”

  “Tyrian, my lord.” She moved closer to him and rubbed her supple body against his breastplate with a gentle, coaxing gesture. “They brought me over the bright water whilst I was still a child, and schooled me in the arts of love, and I am very beautiful and much desired, but now I am all thine.” She bowed her head submissively and put his hand upon it. “Thou didst battle with the earthquake for me, and rived me from his clutches; now am I thine by right of capture.”

  Klaus smiled, a trifle grimly. “What need have I, a plain, blunt soldier, of such as thee?”

  “I am very subtle in the dance, and can sing and play sweet music, even on the harp and flute and cymbals. Also I am skilled at cookery, and when thou hast grown tired of me thou canst sell me for much gold—”

  “Men of my race sell not their wives—”

  “Wife? Saidst thou wife, my lord?” She breathed the word incredulously.

  “Am I a Greek or Arab to have slave girls travel in my wake? Come, rouse thee up; we must to the palace, where quarters can be found for thee until I take thee to mine own.”

  Tears streamed down her face, cutting little rivers in the rouge with which her cheeks were smeared, but her smile looked through the tear-drops as the sun in April shines through showers of rain. “In very truth, He told my future better than I knew!” she cried ecstatically, and, to Klaus’s utter consternation, bent suddenly and pressed a fervid kiss upon his buskin.

  “What charlatan foretold thy fortune?” he demanded, raising the girl and crooking an arm beneath her knees, for her broken foot was swelling fast, and walking was for her impossible.

  “The Master whom they crucified—may dogs defile their mothers’ graves! When I bowed me in the dust and begged Him to have pity on me, He looked at me and smiled, e’en though He trod the way to torture and to death, and was borne down with the gallows’ weight, and He told me, ‘Woman, thy desire shall be unto thee.’ I thought He meant that I was healed, but—” She flung both arms about her bearer’s neck and crushed his face against her bosom as she sighed ecstatically.

  “But what, wench?”

  “I have seen thee from afar, my Claudius. Long have I watched thee and had pleasure in thy manly beauty. At night I used to dream that thou wouldst notice me, perchance come unto me, or even buy me for thy slave; but that ever I should bear the name of wife”—again her voice broke on a sigh, but it was a sigh of utter happiness—“that I, Erinna the hetæra—”

  “Thy Greek name likes me not,” he interrupted.

  “What’s in a name, my lord? I’ll bear whatever name thou givest me, and be happy in it, since ’tis given me by you. By Aphrodite’s brows, I’ll come like any dog whene’er thou callest me by such name as you choose to give—”

  “Let be this talk of dogs and slaves,” he broke in sharply. “Thou’lt he a wife and equal—aye, by Thor’s iron gauntlets, and whoso fails to do thee honor shall be shorter by a head!”

  Pilate’s legion was recruited largely from Germanic tribes, and enough of his own people could be found to enable Klaus to have a marriage ceremony shaped on Northern custom. Erinna’s name was changed to Unna, and on the day they wed she sat in the high bride’s seat robed in modest white with a worked head-dress on her clustering black ringlets, a golden clasp about her waist and gold rings on her arms and fingers. And the Northlings raised their drinking-horns aloft and shouted “Skoal!” and “Waes heal!” to the bride and bridegroom, and when the feast was finished and the bride’s-cup had been drunk, because her broken foot was not yet mended, Klaus bore Unna in his arms unto the bride’s-bed. Thus did Claudius the centurion, who was also Klaus the Northling, wed a woman out of Tyre in the fashion of the Northmen.

  * * *

  Now talk ran through the city of Jerusalem that the Prophet whom the priests had done to death was risen from the tomb. Men said that while His sepulcher was watched by full-armed guards an angel came and rolled the stone away, and He came forth, all bright and glorious. And many were the ones who testified that they had seen Him in the flesh.

  The priests and temple hangers-on cast doubt upon the story, and swore that whilst the guardsmen slept the Prophet’s followers had come and stolen Him awa
y, but Klaus and Unna both believed. “Said I not He was a god, e’en as He hanged upon the gallows tree?” asked Klaus. “Baldur the Beautiful is He; Baldur the Fair cannot be holden by the gates of Hel; He is raised up again in their despite.”

  “He is in truth the Son of God, as Mary Magdalene said,” Unna answered as she laid her cheek against her husband’s breast. “He healed me of my malady and gave me that which I desired above all things.”

  Klaus kissed his new-made wife upon the mouth. “He said that I had need of thee, my sweetling,” he whispered softly. “I knew it not, but He spake sooth. And,” he added even lower, “He said that He likewise had need of thee. We shall hear His call and answer Him whenever He shall please to summon us, though the summons come from lowest Niflheim.”

  The Long, Long Road

  Men grew old and grayed and died in the service of Imperial Rome, but neither death nor old age came to Klaus. His ruddy hair retained its sheen, and when the men who joined the legions as mere beardless youths laid their swords aside and sat them in the inglenook to tell brave tales of battles fought and won upon the sea or field he was still instinct with youthful vigor. For years he followed Pilate’s fortunes, acting as his aide-de-camp and confidant, and when the aging Governor went from Palestine to Helvetia it was Klaus who went with him as commander of his soldiery. When death at last came to his patron, Klaus stood among the mourners and watched the funeral flames mount crackling from the pyre, then turned his face toward Rome, where men of valor still were in demand. With the rank of a tribune he fought Arminius under Varus, and though the legions suffered such defeat as they had never known before when the German tribesmen swept down on them in Teutoburg Forest, the soldiers under his command made an orderly retreat.