WINE, AND A MEETING

The shepherds and the philosophers meet in a bar....

Wine can be exhilarating stuff as it warms the spirit, but when it overheats the brain it can be disastrous. It always has been so. It has been responsible for great peace and the most bloody of wars. It has a lot to answer for!

The three travellers in Bethlehem, strangers from the east and when in their own lands renowned for wisdom and learning, were sitting in a snug little room of the Inn, enjoying a jug of excellent wine (from the vineyards of Italy and widely regarded as the best anywhere in the world) when two ruffians walked in.

From their ill-fitting and somewhat soiled clothing it appeared they were shepherds, and as far as Caspar and Melchior were concerned there's nothing so reprehensible as a shepherd. For a start, they almost always stink of sheep, and secondly they tend to be very loud mouthed on account of having spent a great deal of every day bellowing at their mind-numbingly stupid flocks. Balthazar, on the other hand, was fortunately able to see the best in all men and found shepherds fascinating rather than reprehensible �" especially naked shepherds, though these men were far from being naked, much to his regret.

But back to the wine. Melchior's brain was beginning to reach the overheated phase of wine consumption that he loved and hated in equal measure, and although he was still only aware of his environment in terms of there still only being one of everything, he decided that enough was enough and it was about time the two shepherds, having just walked in, walked out again. They offended his sense of order, and more importantly the aroma rising from them offended his nostrils.

“Friends,” he said in a loud voice to his comrades, “can you smell a stink like no other? Have all the sheep turds in this fair land descended onto this very establishment and cursed us with their foetid stench?”

The two shepherds who had, as you will recall if you interpreted earlier episodes of this saga correctly, already consumed a more than adequate quantity of the nectar of the vine, took one step towards him and hiccuped in unison. Their faces, underneath the dust from the fields, were swarthy and scarred by life.

“You talking about us, squire?” asked one of them.

“He is! I swear he is!” almost squeaked the other.

Melchior looked down his fine nose at them and sniffed. “If you are a malodorous wretch then it is you I'm talking about,” he grated.

“Two jugs of wine, Inn-Keeper,” ordered the other shepherd, “then you can come and sort this toff out! I'll bet you,” he added when the Inn-Keeper started attending to his order, “I'll bet you this toff ain't done a day's work in his natural! And he has the cheek to say as we stink!”

“You are a bit whiffy,” murmured the Inn-Keeper, aware that over time the shepherds put more into his cash-box than a brief visit from three eastern potentates ever would. “But that all comes with the job, I dared say.”

“That it does, squire, that it does,” agreed the second shepherd. “It comes from honest toil in the fields. And I dared say, if you'll forgive me, that the gentleman who calls me and my mate a malodorous whatever-it-was, him over there, has a smell of his own. Like the rotting flesh of dead men he's trodden down until they could live no longer for the weight of his purse on them, or the foetid aroma of the flesh of infants who've starved so's he can be rich!”

“I say! Good for you, darling,” grinned Balthazar. “I mean, we all pick up this or that little pong in life and me, if I was to state a preference, would be picking you up right now, darling, and addressing a few words to your heavenly bottom!”

“We might only be shepherds, the lowliest of shepherds at that, for we're the sorry wretches as has to do the night duty, and there are wolves about, you know, big and bad with bright yellow fangs, but we have been to see the baby!”

Caspar sat up. “The baby?” he asked. “What baby might that be? Me and my friends here, we're going to see a baby. We bear gifts.”

“So did we, mate, so did we,” said the first shepherd, sitting down judging that the prospect of fisticuffs had receded. “We took a nice clean fleece! Shorn from the purest of sheep, it was, and washed by the gentle rains from Heaven until it shone! That's what we've taken to the little lad, and glad we are that we did it!”

Melchior sat down too. “Is that all, you sad little man?” he asked. “A wretched fleece from a beast's back? What can that buy? Eh? As for me, I have gold coin, and on the morrow when we call at the infant's grand boudoir I will offer it some of it! Such wealth will see the young prince on his way to a life of luxury and richness!”

“And I will bestow the finest and purest frankincense,” put in Caspar. “With that he will be able to exchange the smallest fragment for riches you turds would never understand.”

“Us what?” almost exploded the first shepherd, standing up again.

“Calm down, gents, calm down,” called the Inn-Keeper. “We'll have no rowdiness in here!”

“Darling, I will offer myrrh,” whispered Balthazar. “There are dark days ahead, the stories in the stars tell me that, and the infant prince may die before his proper time. Myrrh will embalm him, and it is so costly he might otherwise not afford it.”

“So where stands a fleece against all that richness?” sneered Melchior. “We have gold and frankincense and myrrh, and what do you have, eh? A tragic fleece!”

The Inn-Keeper coughed discreetly.

“The lads have brought a fleece, which is all they have,” he said, almost apologetically. “Whereas you fine fellows will offer but the least part of your wealth. Judge from that if you will.

“And drink up! I need to shut up shop, for there's work to be done tomorrow and my missus has adopted a baby out of the blue, so I'll probably get no sleep tonight!”

© Peter Rogerson 26.11.12, revised 30.11.16