THE GEMINI FACTOR

So Maria is giving birth ... but who to?

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. Though, if asked, he would have replied what did it matter what gender of child the girl had as long as both were healthy? It was not so popular a view in those days, but one the he subscribed to.

Therefore the old cripple was away from the stable with its manger when the baby girl had been born. Maria was holding her daughter nervously, and the child’s voice filled the small stable with a new born cry. The father was there, though he didn’t call himself the father knowing that he wasn’t, and the Innkeeper’s wife or midwife, whichever role she chose to be called by, looked on, smiling thoughtfully.

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 when I told him that I was in the family way. He said … he said that his seed was too strong to make feeble little girls. He wanted a man like himself, strong, a commander of others, and rampant lover with a great length to him...”

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. But in an era like the one he lived in that was all that important. An artist would have been scorned and yet a man who took a scourge to his wife would have been praised for his manliness.

And using his seduction prowess with blunt promises and a smirk is how he’d treated Maria " and Maria had been put with child. But then, he’d been the same with her mother, nine months before the poor woman had died in childbirth. He was a proper man, all right. The world has long been full of them.

“It doesn't work like that!” snapped the Inn-keeper's wife, referring to the man’s claim for his seed. “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 for womenfolk, you trollop!” snapped the Inn-keeper's wife, her matronly demeanour momentarily deserting her. She had a good and sensible view on life and knew that a healthy daughter would always be preferable to a sickly son.

“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 too!” 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. “There’s a great need for soldiers, what with the Roman scum ruling the roost.”

“Please take her away,” whispered Maria. “Give her to someone, a wet-nurse, anyone, 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 Magdaline. Maria Magdaline. 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 Magdaline. 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 in a sorry world. 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. It’s a common enough name in these parts. Jesu. That'll do very well indeed!”

© Peter Rogerson 20.11.12, revised 26.11.16