THE LIGHT GOES OUT.

Jo-jo is warned of danger....

The stable was quiet. For once the baby had stopped its crying, which had seemed to be an endless cacophony of demand for feeding and general squawking. Maria was tired almost beyond endurance, which is the burden of womenfolk, and Jo-Jo was bored, which is far from a burden suffered by men. It is he thought, no fun being a man at times like this when everyone wants to look at the baby and tell the mother how clever she is … I think clever! It's the man who provides the vital seed, all she does is moan about how it makes her look and what it's like to feel so fat and how her newborn drains her...

“Watch Jesu, Jo-Jo,” asked Maria. “I just need to get some shut-eye. I've never been as tired as this. I was on the go all night while you were snoring fit to waken the dead!”

“Who do you think you are, ordering me about!” snapped Jo-Jo. “I'm the man round here and I say what goes, and don't you forget it!”

She looked at him wearily, tellingly, and let her eyes close. A little whisper in her head suggested it might be a great deal better to be born a man, like her baby, rather than a woman who knows only slavery at the hands of her man, and she started to drift off to sleep.

But the baby chose that moment to start clamouring for yet another feed and Jo-Jo realised that he was ill-equipped to do anything about it. He nudged Maria, but she was exhausted and however hard he pushed her she wouldn't wake up.

“Sodding females, lazy b*****s!” he moaned, looking for an excuse to wander off, and not finding one.

And the three visitors in their splendid regalia, emissaries from the mysterious East, chose that moment to arrive.

“Damn and blast you, you little twerp!” Jo-Jo was saying, giving the baby in its unstable manger a good rocking. “It's your damned mother who’s got the tits! What do you expect me to do?”

“May we help?” said Melchior from the doorway. Jo-Jo almost jumped out of his skin. The last thing he was expecting was a fresh retinue of visitors. They'd had the shepherds the day before, had been given a marvellous fleece that Jesu was, at that moment, soiling with the contents of his juvenile bowel, and that had already been more visitors than he, a stranger in those parts, had expected.

“It's the baby...” he explained, weakly.

“I know about babies, darling,” murmured Balthazar. “Here: let me hold him. I'll tell him a thing or two! I have a way with babies...”

Without any more ado he picked the child up and held him close to his royal face. “Well, darling, we are making a fuss,” he whispered. “I'll tell you what, if you're a good boy and give mummikins a bit of peace " she needs it, look " I'll give you this precious myrrh!” He held a small golden box in front of the baby's face, and it stopped its crying and seemed to focus its eyes on the small but hugely precious object as if it guessed its fragrant contents.

“And I'll give you frankincense,” purred Caspar, not wanting to be left out.

“Are you the father?” Melchior, grabbing Jo-Jo by one shoulder.

To most proud fathers that would have been a simple enough question to answer, but to this one it wasn't. Technically and biologically he was nobody's father and according to the story he was supposed to be telling anyone who asked, an angel had come down to Earth from the Lord on high and had his wicked way with Maria whilst she was doing the ironing or whatever it was young women did during the day. Then there was that Roman Army captain he'd suspected had an eye on his Maria for some time " and what about the old cripple that hung around where Maria lived in Nazareth? He'd never liked the look of him! So the question are you the father was far from an easy one to answer.

“I suppose so,” he mumbled.

“Then hearken, and hearken well,” said Melchior. “There is danger in the world, danger for you and danger, in particular, for your baby. Somehow your King Herod, a cruel man at the best of times, has got it in his head that this baby here, this little lad who even as we speak is pooing into that nice fluffy fleece he's got wrapped around him, is a threat. He thinks he's a king in waiting! I know it's nonsense, you know it's nonsense, but Herod has his mind made up and will be sending his best men out to get him sooner than soon.”

“For Jesu?” gasped Jo-Jo. “What’s he done? He’s just a tiny baby…?”

“His future is written in the stars, so Herod’ll send for the very same infant to stop the future happening,” nodded Melchior. “And for that reason, young man, and you can listen hard to this, for that reason I am giving you this gold coin...” he held a splendid coin towards Jo-Jo, one that glittered with a polished yellow sheen.

“Gold?” asked Jo-Jo. He had never seen anything wrought from gold before and it amazed him that a metal so precious should be finding its way into his own workaday hands.

“Gold indeed,” nodded Melchior. “You must flee! This gold can be exchanged for quite a lot of lesser coin and you will find that it will cushion your escape.”

“You must take your son to Egypt,” put in Caspar. “There are good people in Egypt who will help you. Take him there, today or sooner, while you have time. For if the cruel Herod gets his hands on your son he will be done for, and it may cross the mad king's mind that if the child is a threat to his own imagined dynasty, so would the father of that child be!”

“Coochie coochie coo,” burbled Balthazar into the baby's ear.

“Fly to Egypt,” confirmed Melchior. “Wake your spouse up and the three of you go while you still can!”

“But...” began Jo-Jo. But his words were cut short by sounds from not so far away.

And then they heard it. A shouting, rough and cruel, the clash of metal on something hard, brazen voices, coarse and foul.

“Where's that baby prince? Where is he? And if anyone else tells us to look in a bloody stable I'll run 'em through! Princes are never born in stables, so help me God!”

And as the harsh voices cut through the air the light above the stable door withered and died as its well of oil ran out, and the place was plunged into sudden darkness.

© Peter Rogerson 27.11.12, revised 30.11.16

Author's Note

I know that I'm posting several episodes together, but my problem has been to do with the fact that when I first wrote this a few years ago I seem to have saved the chapters in the wrong order. Oh woes is me! But here they're now arranged, I hope, correctly.