3

3

It was 9:00.

One of the few among those in the House of Bread who saw the Dog Star that had aligned itself with them was at the moment in far too much pain and stress to so much as think of it. Every now and then she would look up at it and it would give her comfort, warmth spreading down through the winter air from it as though it were a fire nearby; though her mind, still dark and full of fear, worried that it was an ill portent, or a fireball sent by Yahweh to crash into the Earth and destroy them all for their sins. She did not speak of it. She ignored it when it had fully aligned itself, as it waited for the call of its destiny patiently and stiller than even the other stars. She had to come back down to Earth; she could not rely on comfort from a stone-still sign of the apocalypse.

The man she traveled with, her husband, was in the same situation in regard to the world below and the skies above. He too could see it, and he too had more important things to think about. Not for himself, but for his wife.

Mary or Miriam the daughter of Joachim was pregnant. And just as her condition had reached its final stage she and her husband had been sent to Bethlehem because of the census. They had been put on the road, and since she was pregnant they had been the slowest in reaching the town – so by the time they got there on Horus Eve, December 24th, they had no place in town to stay.

As I have said, the House of Bread was a house of birth. Because of this when it came time for a census, there were too few houses and inns for too many people. Already they saw several sleeping on the streets, staying close to inns to keep near the heat, building their own fire or even in some extreme cases sleeping among the stray dogs in cold abandoned farm fields. Mary and Joseph were as poor as many of these men and women; they could have stood to sleep one night on the streets, even such a cold winter night, huddled up together in a hidden, overlooked place and sharing each other's warmth, were it not so evident that Mary was going to give birth to a child tonight.

Joseph turned and fumed, uttering curses under his breath, as another window of warmth slammed shut, and he was turned down from another inn, which was once again full. This was one of the less pretentious inns, but there were as many poor returning to Bethlehem as there were rich, and the poor were in an even greater hurry to arrive first as they could not merely buy their way in.

"MY WIFE'S PREGNANT!" he yelled.

"You've said it before, I said we're full. What am I, a genie to make room appear out of thin air?"

"If we were rich you'd let us in!!"

"Why don't you have money then? If you care so much about her you could go out and do some work to pay for the treatment you think you deserve. I shouldn't have to make your sacrifice. I, unlike you, have a business to run."

"I have a business and I had to leave it thanks to this bloody census. You seem to be running your business just fine. You're packing several people in each room, don't act as if your inn is at financial risk," Joseph growled.

"How would you know that?"

"I can plainly see through the windows."

"What are you, a spy? People can see out the windows too and you're causing a fuss. It's embarrassing for my business. Be off now. I'm locking the door."

The innkeeper swung the door closed as Joseph started to yell something. By the time he finished the first word it was locked and the innkeeper was probably far inside attending to some business.

"This one too. There's half the town left to search, at least."

"We may not even have time for…"

"Yahweh! Woman, our situation is dire enough! Look, some inn is going to have room. The city can't be this crowded and this greedy."

Of course, it could. Joseph knew that. But it was hard to believe, and Joseph wasn't good at believing things like that. That gift was the only thing that kept them going. Had he not been who he was, this story could not be told.

They kept going, this time not bothering at inns that looked too high-class and expensive; the kinds that were the least likely to let them in. There were no free houses for the poor or hungry or desperate; Bethlehem in 1 AD was not that sort of place. It was extremely capitalist. The conquering Romans liked it this way. People concentrating on advancing in life, on 'winning', could not band together with their rivals and start to think of driving the occupying forces out, which were stretched thin with new parts of the Empire being added every day and in some places occupied with an increasing number of barbarian stirrings.

As the star made its way over the town so did they; the star always hovering right over their heads, although they did not quite notice, and neither did anyone else. In fact, very few saw the star at all.

If the Romans had not picked such a time for a census, we would not be in such a mess, thought Joseph resentfully. Every man, woman and child had to return to the home town of the head of the family. The normally jovial, easygoing welcome of the inns became calculating and selective to avoid being overwhelmed by the crowd; and the humble search for hospitality became a vicious survival of the fittest. Joseph, Mary, and the unborn child in Mary's womb were at the low end of the ladder, it seemed.

Mary was in too much pain to feel any resentment. She felt worry, but her thoughts were broken up; occasionally she looked up at the star for relief, and found less and less.

It was 10:00.

They traveled all the way across the city and found a poor-looking inn; it was a small, squatting building with the loud noises of many people inside. It was not the sort of place that would be the best for them, but it would be better than outdoors. Money would not be a barrier to enter in this place. Joseph spotted a coolly lit attic window, that looked calmer than the rest of the place. It had no advertisement for its beer or its soft beds; it looked to be a mere hostelry. Perhaps they would let them stay for free; Joseph was willing, however, to pay all the little money he had out of sheer gratitude.

There were few people in the street now; Joseph let Mary sit down to the side of the street while he went up and knocked on the door. Mary hugged her knees, watched, waited.

Joseph waited at the door for quite some time, but no-one came to the door.

He knocked, and waited. The sounds of rowdiness and the sounds of poverty quieted, and there where some particularly ambiguous footsteps and shufflings, and a few ambiguous shouts, as the other sounds slowly and subtly resumed. Shadows shifted in the dim light cast from under the door (which was slightly broken, at an angle and off a hinge).

He knocked again. Mary called: "What's happening?"

"You know," he called back, "I really have no idea."

Someone shouted something behind the door, and Joseph thought it might have been directed at him; he as the invisible shadow cast from under the lopsided door, the disembodied knockings. But why, why didn't anyone come to the door?

"Hello?" he called back inside.

This time someone ran to the door. A shadow grew from underneath it. For the first time it completely blotted out the telltale sprawl of random light; and then the door swung outwards. Joseph leapt back as it swung right into his face, stumbling off the wooden doorstep and looked up. Finally a man stood before him in an open doorway.

"I'm sorry, we're full."

Joseph could not believe his ears, and knew far too well that he should have been able to. They were more often repelled from inns because they were full than because they could not pay. An inn couldn't just cast people out who had paid to get in, even if someone who needed shelter more came.

Before Joseph had to think of a reply the man spoke again. "There is another hostel for the poor on Market Street. I don't think it'll be as full; it's smaller and doesn't have food; it doesn't even have a sign, I'm pretty sure, which would be why everyone overlooks it. But it's a peaceful place and you can sleep well there."

Joseph thanked him even as he casually and briskly slammed the door.

Looking out his window, another man saw the star.

He was probably the only other in the city. But then again, perhaps not. There were many more who could have seen it but were, of course, just too busy to notice.

It was like that all over the world. Most of the types who noticed it were shepherds out in their fields, people with simple lives that didn't distract themselves from things like the sky on a winter's night. In the city, the only who noticed it were those who did so by chance – such as Joseph, Mary, and this man (though in their cases, perhaps it was not chance so much as destiny; but was there destiny? The Patch in the Americas said that not even the great spirit could predict the future; but was there no destiny on a night whose very nature matched the constant patterns of the stars?) – and of course, the astrologers. And thus the astrologers – Herod's triad, and royal advisors of kingdoms across the world – made themselves out to be something quite exceptional, while those with the gift were much more common than they could allow the kings who hung on their every baffled word to believe.

He had watched it through his window, studying its course like one of those astrologers. It had flown through the sky, skipping across constellations and the moon; it had first appeared far off on the edge of the horizon making its way to the House of Bread on the day of midwinter, along the same invisible, astrological road in the desert by which the onmyouji had come; though this man knew nothing of the onmyouji. It may yet have still been in the sky somewhere else around the curve of the Earth before. 22, 23, 24. The three days of December it had been visible from Bethlehem; the three nights. It drew in quickly, he thought, for it to take so long; but every evening he saw it in the same point it had disappeared in the morning, as if it slept by day; as if it were a mirage of the darkness.

Stargazing had been his hobby since he had seen so abnormal a star. He was an innkeeper, himself. Few came to his inn, though tonight there were many and it was full. But that also meant he had a lot of work to do and little time to go to his window and watch the star. And tonight was the third night. Three was a magical number. He could tell by intuition that for three days the star would light the night, as for three days Jonah had been in the belly of the whale. And this holy third night landed on Horus Eve.

I introduce this man because of what he was to do, which was because of what he discovered. He discovered that the star was still moving – in ways that no astrology could account for, no geometry of the heavens or cycles of time. It was moving like a person, like one of the people wandering the streets without a home.

Looking at the wandering of people down on the street and then up at the wandering of the star, he recognized a symmetry more perfect than any symmetry of magic star and Sirius or of Bethlehem and the House of Bread. A far more humble symmetry, that no astrologer would have realized, wrapped up as they were in the grand cycles of things, blinded by the light of too many heavenly bodies by night.

In a sudden flash of what in an animal would be called instinct, but in a human had no name other than calling or destiny, he left his inn, leaving customers waiting at the door – setting off into the town of Bethlehem to discover who the star was following.

It was 11:00.

Mary was not sure if she could make it.

Joseph was cursing himself every second for having overlooked the inn in search of something better. And so Mary weighed down had to lead the way, Joseph weighed down far more with guilt. Mary had to supply the precious hope, which was not strong in her; and the more of it she gave away to Joseph the less there was in herself; and he only absorbed it like a void, like it was being dropped down a hole with no bottom.

"God, Yahweh, Jehovah, I will accept your damnation, there is no longer anything I could do in my life to atone for causing my own wife such pain," he mumbled. He was pretty sure she wouldn't hear him through her pain and through the mess of voices and footsteps in the street, except there was no longer any mess of voices or footsteps in the street, but Joseph did not know, he thought the silence around him was only a punishment so his thoughts, the curses and damnations he imagined himself hearing from the lord above, could echo; so Mary's pain could echo and be pounded into him, so he would understand what he had done.

But Mary heard, even through her pain, and told him, "Joseph, while you are speaking to our lord above, do not cast yourself down, but pray. Pray for my child."

"You pray, for your soul is pure; but he will not hear my prayers as he would not hear the prayers of a soul already in hell."

"Your only hell is of your own making, not the Lord's. What harm will it do to pray?"

"You're… you're right. What will be worth more than to pray, though, will be to move. I am sorry that we stopped. Can you keep going?"

"No…" whimpered Mary, and he had not noticed the weakness and pain in her voice before – not at this level, not approaching this level. How could he not have noticed it? Had he been that self-centred? Or had it only now, suddenly set on? "No, I can't go on."

She dropped to her knees, and Joseph dropped to his knees beside her. None of the few still in the streets around them gave either a second glance; except a robber, sensing weakness like a shark sensing blood in the water, but nevertheless ignoring them. "Oh God. Oh God. Oh God. Please send aid. Please send someone." Joseph slid from using the Lord's name in shock to a prayer, so smoothly that no divine entity could have sensed the transition; ending in "don't let this be the end. Don't let it happen here. Not in the street. And don't let her die. Amen." He started to begin again.

"No," said Mary. "Don't talk about it. Not now."

"But didn't you just tell me to pray?" he burst out.

"Do not speak of what would happen if the Lord doesn't give us his blessing. Just pray for safety." She began to pray herself, and having no better ideas, he followed her words; but she could not speak clearly, and there were long pauses where it pained her to speak at all. So Joseph took over, and could not tell whether or not she followed.

It was only because of the star that the shadow could be cast; but the star's favour in foreshadowing what was to come was of no use, for they neither of them noticed as a shadow fell over both of them; a human shadow, cast by the strange gold flickering light. Neither had they noticed how the footsteps had approached them; how the sound had not started to die away as if someone was evading them, as it always did; every passerby staying away from their grief, afraid of the suffering they could not do anything to help – or could they?

The innkeeper had found the people the star had been following.

He had stayed back for a while. The first thing he had noticed was that at least one of them was in great pain; but he could not tell from what or why. He tried to determine it from a distance, but realized he could not; he was not sure whether or not to approach further. Finally he decided too. As he approached he saw the bulge of the young woman's belly and the heaving of her body; he realized what was she was going through.

And he realized he could do something about this.

Could he?

He was speaking before he could answer the half-question he had asked himself.

"Strangers, I can give you shelter. Please come with me."

They looked up at him. Their prayers had been answered! "Thank you. Thank you!" Joseph smiled, and Mary smiled through her pain. Joseph lifted her up but she was already getting back up onto her feel almost on her own; the stranger was helping them too.

"Where?"

"I have an inn just down the street." But the question echoed in the man's head after he had replied instinctively; where? The inn, he remembered, was full. It was that which had given him the opportunity to go out and search; there were no more visitors to show to their rooms.

But as they walked down the street, they were suddenly aware that the star was no longer directly over them; and the innkeeper saw that it had shown him his answer.