‘What a glorious night!’ Caspar exclaimed, ‘it’s as if the whole sky was singing!’ ‘I hear nothing,’ said Balthasar.
‘For younger readers: Balthasar’s Cloak’, by Geoffrey Weeden, from December 22, 1972
‘Balthasar’s pride had made him wear his best cloak.’
In a church in Ravenna in Italy there is a very old mosaic picture. It shows the three Wise Men, Melchior, Caspar and Balthasar, carrying their gifts to Bethlehem. Balthasar wears a rich purple cloak with a gold hem and a jewelled clasp. This story is about Balthasar’s cloak.
It was warm in the stable, warm with hay and the bodies of the cattle. Balthasar’s face shone in the lantern-light. He felt stifled in the close air, and loosened the clasp of his cloak.
He wished now that he hadn’t worn it, for its richness seemed out of place in the stable of an inn. He should have taken Melchior’s advice and worn a plain brown travelling-cloak.
‘I don’t trust Herod,’ Melchior had said. ‘We shouldn’t draw attention to ourselves or where we are going. Clothes could give us away, and camel-drivers can never hold their tongues.’
Melchior and Caspar were simply dressed, but Balthasar’s pride had made him wear his best cloak; though he’d grudgingly agreed to leave the camels and walk the last few miles of their journey in the strange starlight. Balthasar glanced beside him at Melchior, whose face was glowing as much from happiness as heat, and asked: ‘Is this what we should have expected? What does it mean, a king born in a stable?’
‘Aren’t you happy? Can’t you feel a new power on earth tonight – something our gods have never given us?’ asked Melchior in his turn. Balthasar shook his head, and Melchior’s eye travelled over his companion’s clothes. ‘Perhaps it is more difficult if you are rich,’ he said, for Balthasar was far richer than the others. The gift of gold was his idea, and now it lay glinting beside Melchior’s gift of incense and Caspar’s box of myrrh, and Balthasar’s heart was like lead.
Kneeling at the hay-sweet manger was a young shepherd from the hills. He got to his feet and came over to Balthasar. ‘The others came down here yesterday,’ he said, ‘while I stayed to guard the flock. They’ve not stopped talking about it since, so I had to come and see for myself. It’s wonderful, but I wish I had brought a present. I wish that I could afford gold, like you.’
Balthasar sighed. ‘It is because I can afford gold that it doesn’t seem to mean much, I think.’ He paused, and then said with a rush: ‘Would you take my cloak and give me your sheepskin coat in exchange? Would you do that?’
The boy gave a puzzled laugh and nodded. Balthasar put on the sheepskin coat, and went out into the cold night to join the others. The shepherd swirled the purple cloak about his shoulders and flapped his arms inside it, admiring the effect. Then he took out the jewelled clasp and placed it carefully beside the golden casket that Balthasar had brought. Hugging the cloak round himself he left the stable and hurried off towards the hills.
Melchior, Caspar and Balthasar were already walking in the opposite direction back to where the camels waited, three unremarkable travellers passing through the town. ‘What a glorious night!’ Caspar exclaimed, ‘it’s as if the whole sky was singing!’
‘I hear nothing,’ said Balthasar.
In the morning came soldiers, a troop of Herod’s cavalry clattering up the street. ‘Has anyone seen strangers round here lately? Richly dressed strangers?’ asked the captain of the troop.
‘Yes,’ someone said, ‘there was a young man in a splendid cloak with a gold hem, went off last night, towards the hills.’
‘Ah!’ said the captain, and then to his men he shouted ‘Forward!’ and the troop rode off on the path to the hills.
‘Why Joel!’ called the tall shepherd, ‘wherever did you get that cloak?’ The young shepherd climbed the last few yards to the camp. ‘I was given it,’ he replied.
‘A likely tale! Who’d give away an expensive cloak like that? Are you sure you didn’t steal it?’
‘I certainly did not!’ cried Joel indignantly. ‘Well, if anyone sees you in it, they’ll think so,’ said the older man. ‘It’s no garment for a shepherd, anyway. Take it off, and I’ll lend you an old coat of mine.’
Joel sadly took off the purple cloak and rolled it in his pack. He was trying on the old sheepskin coat he had been lent when a troop of cavalry soldiers rode up. The captain barely glanced at the shepherds before riding on. ‘No sign of him hereabouts,’ he remarked, ‘we’d better report back to Herod.’
Some weeks later on a cold afternoon Joel watched a trading caravan winding slowly up the road from the south. Camel after camel passed, laden with bulging sacks and roped boxes. The merchants laughed and chatted as they swayed past on their camels, and the servants shouted as they urged the beasts forward. Last of all came a string of slaves roped neck to neck, on their way from Nubia to the slave markets of Persia.
The smallest of the slaves was a girl younger than Joel, whose eyes rolled white with terror in her dark face as she was hurried along. She was nearly naked and shivering with cold and fright.
Joel watched until they were out of sight, and all the rest of the day he kept thinking about the little slave-girl.
When it was dark he took the purple cloak from his pack and slipped quietly away from the camp fire. ‘I’ll get a beating for going off without telling anyone,’ he thought, and decided that was a problem he’d face later. He set off at a steady trot through the dark, and in an hour he could see ahead the camp fires of the merchants.
Joel quietly circled the camp until he found where the slaves were tethered, far from the fires and huddled together for warmth. There was only one sleepy, nodding guard, and Joel approached without raising any alarm.
He soon found the slave-girl, and managed somehow to calm her and show her the cloak. By mime he warned her to wear it inside-out to hide its richness, or someone would take it from her, and probably cut her throat as well for the sake of the gold hem. The little slave-girl seemed to understand. She put an arm round Joel’s neck and rubbed her nose against his cheek. Then she sat clutching the cloak as Joel disappeared into the darkness.
Joel began the journey back to the shepherd’s camp and a beating. ‘I wonder if it was worth it?’, he thought.
Balthasar pulled the sheepskin coat closer round himself, trying to keep out the cold that found its way through his threadbare clothes, and looked round the market-place. Melchior should be here, he thought; this is the town where he lives. At last he saw the old man, and hurried towards him. They greeted each other warmly. ‘I never thought to see you again, my friend,’ said Melchior. ‘What brings you here?’
‘I have wandered from town to town for twelve long months,’ Balthasar replied. ‘For you and Caspar the search ended at Bethlehem but I could not share the joy that you both found there.
‘Wherever in my travels I have found learned men, I have told them of our journey, how we were sent to look for a king and found a baby in a stable. l have asked them all what such a thing could mean, but none of them gave an answer. Now I shall have to end my search. All my money is gone, all but a few pieces of gold. I must go home.’
Melchior studies his friend’s worn clothes, and his thin, tired face. ‘Come home with me,’ he said, ‘and perhaps…’ – but he got no further, for Balthasar gripped his arm and pointed. A line of slaves was passing on their way to the selling place. ‘Look Melchior, look!’
The purple cloak was torn and dirty, and the gold hem gone. But by some miracle the little slave-girl still wore it, and Balthasar knew it straight away as his.
Abandoning Melchior in his excitement, Balthasar ran off, following the slaves to the sale.
Some hours later, Melchior answered a knock at his door. Beside a smiling Balthasar stood the little girl, a slave no longer.
‘Now we shall both have to walk home,’ said Balthasar happily, ‘for I bought her freedom with the last of my money.’
The next evening, after resting at Melchior’s house, Balthasar and the girl set off on their journey to their homes far away to the south.
‘What a night!’ exclaimed Balthasar, looking up at the stars. ‘It’s as if the whole sky was singing!’
Melchior smiled, and watched and waved, until the two figures were lost to sight.
Geoffrey was a Quaker poet. He died in 2021.
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