The sky was just waking up to the first hints of deepest blue, but the sun was still a good half hour from revealing itself behind the eastern hills. Stars could still be seen shining clearly between the dark outlines of clouds. But not the star of Bethlehem. Sometime during the past few hours, it had simply vanished. Snuffed out by the desert wind. Balthazar wasn’t surprised. Nothing that bright burned for very long. Joseph and Mary hadn’t said a word when the men woke, hadn’t so much as looked at them as they left, not even when Melchyor had wished them well in his affably stupid way. Balthazar didn’t blame them for the lack of civility. In the space of a few cramped hours, they’d managed to beat the carpenter bloody, insult his wife’s honor, hold them both hostage, and denounce everything they believed in as a joke. All the same, he was happy to be rid of them. Let them babble about their paranoid fantasies to someone else. The wise men mounted their camels and looked south into Bethlehem.
