Seeker of Stars: A Novel (4 page)

Part Two

~ 7 ~

S
tar

The torches had long been lit on the city walls by the time I walked home, the route that had become so familiar to me after a dozen years of living among the astronomers. But everything appeared new to my eyes now that we had discovered the star. I thought of my wife waiting for me, and once again I recalled the shock that had come when I married Reta. Since we found the star, there were days when I awoke with a sense of disorientation, wondering where I was and who was beside me.

“A new star?” Reta said, frowning at the news that burst from me as soon as I entered our house. “I didn’t think that happened.”

“It doesn’t.”

Reta shook her head as she walked back into the kitchen to fetch my supper. When she returned, she was still frowning. “Why would a star appear?” she asked.

“Caspar says it means something. A portent. A sign. Something big.”

“Something good?” My wife’s hands instinctively covered her growing belly.

“It’s not an omen. Balzar says it may signal a new order. Do you want to see it?”

Reta’s hungry eyes betrayed her. With a sense of shame, I realized I had not invited her to look at the stars with me since we had married. I offered her a robe, but she shook her head.

“It’s late. Let’s just go up on the roof the way we used to.”

I put on my own robe and followed my wife up the stairs. As I climbed, my eyes instinctively sought the unmoving star to orient myself in the dance of the night. I realized I had not been to the roof of my own home in months, maybe years. Then, looking around, I realized someone else had. “Who—?” I asked.

“Sometimes when you are out, I steal up here for a look.”

I stole a quick glance at her just then, though I said nothing. I thought of the chief astronomer’s wife, who sat sewing and gossiping. That was what wives did, I had assumed. I had little opportunity to find out otherwise. Every clear evening, I carried the water clocks out of the city to observe and calculate the stars’ positions. When I returned, Reta was always asleep. When it was cloudy, I came home in the evenings, but I always felt I was disrupting Reta’s peace with my presence and rarely knew how to respond. Reta gazed at me from the pools of her eyes. This wife of mine surprised me with depths like the jet blackness of the space between the stars.

I had begun to think quite a bit about that blackness since it had been pierced by a new and moving star. Before, I had only noticed my beauties and measured their positions. Now I began, for the first time, to wonder what was behind them. The new star reminded me that all was not fixed.

My father’s death had rocked my sense of stability. Daria and Salvi’s wife running my father’s workshop had stretched my understanding. Reta’s pregnancy after we had spent years hoping for a child was a new but strange joy. I knew it in the way Reta smoothed her robes over her belly and the way she crooned Hebrew songs as she went about her routines. I knew it in the pride I felt. But we never discussed it. We lived together, ate, slept, and loved together, but we were also silent together.

Standing together under the naked sky, I felt almost shy as I put my hands on my wife’s shoulders to turn her in the direction of the new star.

“Oh!” she exclaimed softly. “It
is
a new one. But it isn’t moving, is it?”

“Slowly,” I said. “Not like the regular stars in their courses, but little by little each night.”

“When did it appear?”

“Three weeks ago.”

“And it isn’t a comet?”

“No.”

Reta shivered—with cold or fear I did not know. I placed my cloak around her shoulders and guided her downstairs to safety and warmth.

When we lay in bed a short while later, I knew from her breathing that she was still awake. I wondered what she thought about and how I might ask. In my studies, I had learned that when a bird hatched from an egg, it would follow any other creature that happened to be in the nest as it would normally imitate its mother. Our marriage was like that—the behavior of our wedding night printed indelibly on our future. Both were characterized by mutual courtesy, if not pleasure or intimacy. We were silent, circling each other, perhaps afraid to nest. I was nearly asleep when her hand found mine.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

~ 8 ~

Q
uestions

Reta joined me several times to view the new star—or, rather, I joined her. Several nights when I came home from my meetings with the other magi, I found Reta curled up on a chair on the roof. I had given her one of my cloaks to use for this purpose, and she was always careful to avoid getting a chill. On one such occasion, I remarked to her that our encounters reminded me of our old meetings back in the village.

“Except for Omar,” she said. “Yes. Poor Omar.”

Omar had been dead nearly ten years, yet the reminder of his death never ceased to amaze me. How could someone so full of life cease to be? There were those in the cabal who would have answers to such questions. Though I had been a magus for many years and was responsible for forecasting, I found it hard to believe that my beauties could explain the loss of a friend. But now, beginnings and ends were among my cosmic thoughts as I studied the motions of the new star.

One evening when I came home, I found Reta on the roof in her usual posture with her eyes closed. They flew open at my arrival.

“I’m sorry to wake you,” I said.

“I wasn’t asleep. I was praying.”

Another depth of this wife was suddenly illuminated.

“You pray?”

“Of course.”

“To your god.”

“I often pray here. The heavens declare the glory of God.”

“What … may I ask … if you can tell me, do you pray about?” The question hung in the air until I wished I had not asked it.

Reta spoke quietly. “I pray for you, my husband, and your work. And for this little one. And for the Savior of my people.”

“Who’s that?” I asked quickly, wanting to move the conversation to safer ground.

“The Lord knows! He will be the fulfilment of promises.”

“Like what?”

“Oh, husband, it has been a hundred years since I sat in the synagogue.”

“But you pray for me?” The question escaped unbidden from a place I did not know.

“Always, dear husband.” She kissed my cheek and went down to bed, leaving me to ponder.

The next time I sat with Reta on the roof, she seemed to feel freer to speak of her people and her faith than she had before.

“I wonder …” she began.

“Wonder what?”

Her eyes were intent upon the new star. “Someday, my people say, a Messiah will be born.”

“So you said.”

“And that a star will herald his birth. Perhaps …”

“Perhaps this star is for our own son’s birth,” I joked.

“Or our daughter’s,” Reta replied, though the one thing we had discussed was our certainty that the child would be a boy. Salvi had four boys already, and Daria seemed the only exception in generations of my family.

I persisted in asking Reta questions about her people’s understanding of a herald star and their savior. To my surprise, Reta had kept the worn scroll Omar had brought me so many years before; she brought it out now from some hidden place and found the prophecies of a star and Israel’s future king.

One night, Reta ventured a tentative question without looking at me. “My husband, you do believe in your gods, don’t you?”

I shrugged. I made the ritual sacrifices each year, as my father had, and I had even made a few secret sacrifices to the gods years before, asking for a child, but that was all. The stars had never moved me to wonder about spiritual matters. I was interested in their beauty. In my school, many were mathematicians who delighted in measuring and calculating the angles and positions of the stars, watching them echo the records of years past. Others were gamblers, trying to outwit the charts with predictions of unforeseen portents. Some were explorers by nature, always restless to discover and conquer. One or two were aesthetes like me who simply gloried in the beauty of the stars. Most simply wanted to gain an audience with the king. Still, some shared my wife’s metaphysical interest.

Among these was my friend Balzar. Balzar was one of the few astronomers who had not inherited his position in the school, so for an outsider like me, he was a natural ally. Even forty years after he had been accepted, and despite his mystical abilities to dream and interpret dreams, Balzar was not as respected as his wisdom deserved. It was Balzar who had kept me from returning home to my father’s contempt when I had been scorned by the others, and who had been a refuge for me another time. Though he did not have the title, to me, Balzar was chief among the astronomers. And it was Balzar’s belief, and Reta’s, that made me begin to wonder how to interpret the new star.

A concern was growing among us to understand the new star. The king had sent urgent, anxious messages, requiring us to determine its meaning. Our usual scribing was put aside for this more pressing matter. Shaz, my oldest enemy in the magi—who now served at the king’s court—sent a message requiring a formal assembly to consider this star so the king could take appropriate action. The very tone of his letter gritted me like sand in the teeth in a storm. If Balzar was above all in the matter of dreams, Shaz was the master of commanding people to serve his own interests. Too well did I remember him once claiming my calculations as his own. I was nearly discredited for deception. I would never forget Shaz’s gilded smile as the others cackled at my work. The ranks were closing me out, and it was only when I caught a small slip in Shaz’s copying and corrected it that my position was saved.

But nothing had changed. Shaz glittered with success and was now returning, a carrion bird, to gather our wisdom.

We prepared for the assembly. I wrote a translation of the prophecies Reta read to me from Omar’s scroll and waited.

Shaz arrived on the appointed day, borne on a litter by slaves. For solidarity’s sake, he had donned the black robe, but colorful glints of silk beneath set him apart from his peers. If anything, Shaz had grown more imperious in his manner since our time studying together. I was reminded how much I despised him, and for the hundredth time, I wondered how his wife could bear his touch.

I was disappointed when, early in the discussion, someone else mentioned the idea of a Jewish Messiah, and several heads nodded familiarity with the idea. My careful piece of research was common knowledge.

Shaz, however, sneered at this. “Some uncle’s feeble recollection is not what I have been sent here to find. The king seeks proof. Does anyone have anything else to offer?”

After such an opening to the council, no one felt free to speak. Shaz noted any ideas ventured with a skeptical eye. My gaze fell upon the notes I had transcribed. Was it worth Shaz’s withering commentary to share them? I looked at Balzar’s earnest face with its long white beard. Balzar often inspired me with his lifelong dedication to seeking the truth. I recalled the vow I had made when I joined the magi—to seek truth and to share it freely. All these years I had been diligent and content in my studies, but my vow had never before been challenged. I swallowed my pride, accepted the inevitable experience of being belittled yet again by Shaz, and rose to my feet.

“When I was a boy,” I began, “a Hebrew book of stars discovered by a trader became mine. In these last weeks as we have pondered this new star, I have read in this book of Hebrew prophecies that fit our situation aptly.”

I could see Shaz was interested, almost against his will.

“Do you have these Hebrew prophecies?” he asked.

“I do. Here is the original, and here is the translation a friend helped me to do.”

Reta had begged me to keep her identity as a Hebrew secret. Insecure enough among the wealthy wives of the astronomers, Reta was worried old racial tensions would surface if her origins were widely known.

A few more outlandish interpretations were offered and rejected while my little Jewish scroll was passed around and copied by the astronomers. Balzar, who read more widely than most, appeared deeply moved by the Hebrew poetry. Shaz dismissed us all to our tasks for the evening, demanding our presence the next week for a decision.

I picked up the water clocks and the measuring sticks and carried them to our usual place outside the city. The star had moved farther to the west. I found myself straining my ears for a message from the star, and though it radiated beauty and mystery, the skies were silent. When we finished making our calculations and recording all we observed, we headed back to the city. With his stiff joints, Balzar was, as usual, the slowest. As I carried the equipment, I fell into step with him, my arm supporting his, his thoughts lifting my own.

“‘The heavens declare the glory of God,’” he quoted, as Reta had. “It’s true, Melchi, isn’t it?” He beamed at the beauties around him.

“How do you do it?” I asked. “How do you cultivate this interest in the gods?”

“What do you mean?”

“For me, the stars are like jewels—lovely, fascinating, but that’s all. Perhaps they reflect what is happening here, but the idea that they can be messages from a god—it’s unsettling.”

“Why is that?” Balzar asked.

“It changes everything if there is something beyond what you can see. Or Someone. This god of my wife’s—” I stopped.

“Your wife?”

“Reta is a Hebrew. She is Jewish.” I knew I could trust Balzar, but for Reta’s sake I explained her desire for secrecy.

“My first wife was half-Jewish. Jewish. People were not always kind. I will protect this truth about your wife. Tell me more of your questions, Melchior.”

I shrugged. Did I have questions? I wasn’t sure. All I knew was that belief in a god reoriented everything. My father’s death, Omar’s, the new star, the spaces between the stars—all these had shaken me, revealing space beyond my view of beauty, but it was an uncomfortable place to be, nothing like the happy worship Balzar quoted.

“What is the deepest desire of your heart?” Balzar asked me.

I hesitated, though I knew my answer immediately. I considered the conventional answer: my wife was expecting a child, and desire for a safe delivery was certainly one I held. My thoughts of truth, however, convinced me to be honest with him.

“All my life, I have dreamed of reaching up and grasping the unmoving star,” I said.

Balzar nodded seriously. Then, as we reached the doorway of his house, he patted my arm. “You may be closer to God than you think.”