The Immortal Nicholas

by Glenn Beck

  “Let go!” the angry soldier spat. “I’ll have your head! Absalom, help me deal with this fool!” He tried to bring his sword up, but Agios kept him in too tight a grip, and he had no room, no chance to stab.

  The second, younger soldier dismounted and strode forward, drawing his own sword, and danced as Agios spun the other man. The younger soldier’s face showed his confusion and distress.

  His commander shouted, “Kill him!” as he twisted savagely in Agios’s grip. Agios put a foot against the man’s left heel, pivoted, and swung, and the younger man’s sword chopped into the back of his senior’s neck with a sickening sound.

  The body went limp, the spine severed, and the man, his eyes wide in anger and shock, did not even cry out. Something invisible left his body, and suddenly Agios held dead weight.

  Agios feinted, avoiding another sword blow, and then thrust the body forward, using him as a shield. The second man panicked at the sight of the dead soldier, tried to push the bleeding body away from him, forgetting about the sword in his hand.

  And then Krampus stepped from the shadows and seized the man’s sword arm, immobilizing him. Agios landed a solid blow in his face, one that cut his forehead and sent him stumbling backward. He tried to rise—

  But Krampus hauled him up instead, grasping the straps of his breastplate, and he lifted him as easily as Mary would have picked up her child. The frightened young soldier squeaked, his heels dangling.

  Agios said in a language the man could understand, “You’ve killed your captain. For that they’ll cut your guts out! These people and their baby are nothing to you. And look—no villager has come to help you. They don’t like you here, you know? I’m taking your weapon—do you understand me? Ships pass this way all the time. If I were you, I’d board one of them heading to Greece or to Rome. Better that than to face the anger of your king Herod! Krampus, put this man down.”

  Krampus did, and the soldier looked up into the big man’s twisted face, the mouth agape, eyes glaring. The soldier screamed.

  “Shush,” Agios said. “When you wake up, think over what I told you.”

  He struck one more sudden blow, one that sent the second man into a sleep from which he’d wake with an aching head—and maybe a wiser one. Mary and Joseph were already out of sight. Agios collected both swords, tied them into place on his mule’s burden, and mounted one of the soldiers’ two horses.

  With Krampus leading the other horse and the mule, they hurried after the family they were guarding, but when they came within sight of the sea they stopped. Agios dismounted and slapped both horses on the haunches to send them running, and then waded into knee-deep water and threw both swords spinning as far as he could. They splashed into the Mediterranean and sank.

  He had blood on his hands, broken skin on his knuckles. The salt water burned as it washed the traces away. Agios wondered what Caspar might think of this. He had killed one of Herod’s men— or at the very least had been present at his death, which would amount to the same thing if he were caught.

  He was committed now. He could not go back, not through Judea. Nor could Krampus, who would, in Roman eyes and those of the king of Judea, share his guilt.

  They hurried on their way and soon came within sight of a distant Joseph and Mary. When they reached the frontier, they saw none of Herod’s men. Only Romans guarded the way. If they’d had any orders from the Jewish king Herod, they didn’t seem to think they were serious enough to worry about. They waved the travelers through.

  One moment they were on the fringe of Herod’s realm, the next they had stepped beyond his reach. Agios gave a sigh of relief.

  It was still a long way to Egypt, but now, Agios thought, they had at least a good chance of making it there safe and alive.

  Neither Joseph nor Mary knew of the soldiers. Let it be my burden, Agios thought. They have more than enough trouble of their own.

  He and Krampus drew ahead of the family. They entered the land of Egypt on a burning hot day that made the air shimmer so that the buildings and palm trees ahead seemed to writhe and dance. The people’s language was strange, but Agios was able to understand and be understood. Balthasar had said that Joseph and Mary were to find a man in Alexandria, the port city founded by and named for Alexander the Great. He would have received letters and money by now, and he would be able to help them.

  When Joseph and Mary crossed a wide river, they did not seem to notice Krampus and Agios watching on the far shore. But the two men didn’t stop following the couple and their baby until they had found the man Balthasar had told them of. From there the little family traveled south to Memphis, a city filled with great temples and brightly painted tombs dating back into the earliest memories of mankind. Though Agios couldn’t take full credit for their escape, he took some solace in knowing that Jesus would have a chance to grow into a boy and then a man.

  Caspar had hinted that in helping the family Agios would find solace.

  He felt none of it. True, he had seen the infant Jesus to a place of safety, but he felt no relief in the fact.

  For what he had done for another child was more than he had done for his own son.

  Chapter 10

  With Mary and Joseph safely in Egypt, Agios found himself at a loose end. It was hard to believe the path his life had taken, and even more incredible to imagine going forward. He had no home, no wife, and no son. And any fledgling hope that had sparked in the light of the star they had followed for so many sleepless nights was already pale and fading.

  However, he had Krampus.

  The simple man wanted to stay close to Jesus, but Agios wouldn’t hear of it. Instead, he found a place away from the city where they could settle for a time to get their feet beneath them while Agios decided where they would go from here. Whether he liked it or not, his days would be filled with the burden of Krampus. Their lives were bound together.

  Some distance away from the broad river that Mary and Joseph had crossed lay a wide, shallow valley surrounded by sandstone cliffs. Here and there the rock had been worked, carved by ancient hands: bas-relief gods or kings gazed out toward the Nile. In other places, water trickling for eons had worn caves into the stone. A cluster of these gave home to lepers, outcasts who suffered from a terrible disease that ate through flesh like slow fire.

  Hermits occupied other caves, men who contemplated the stars or the gods and who seized time alone to do their thinking. A half-day’s walk south from the city of Memphis, near a village of boatmen and farmers, Agios had found one empty cave, not a very impressive one, that served as shelter for him and for Krampus. With money that Caspar had given them, Agios bought some goats. Krampus delighted in them. He learned the simple tasks of leading them out to pasture and later returning them to the cave, where Agios had built a pen for them.

  The days blended into one another until a full year passed. Then one day in the village marketplace, Agios overheard an agitated man’s voice: “It’s true! It’s terrible, but it’s true. All of them! Scores, maybe hundreds!”

  A woman asked, “Herod killed children?”

  Agios shouldered through the crowd. A cluster, mostly women and a few men, stood around a man dressed in the clothing of Judea, his expression grim. “Yes!” the man, short and scrawny, said. “He was afraid of some prophecy—one of the children was to grow up and overthrow Herod or something. Herod sent his soldiers in and they hacked them to pieces, every single boy born in Bethlehem for two years past!”

  Some of the women were sobbing. One of the Egyptian men said, “The Romans won’t let him remain king. They can’t. That’s the act of a madman, a barbarian!”

  Sick at heart, Agios turned away. Scores, maybe hundreds.

  Every victim a child, a boy. Like Philos. Like Jesus.

  Agios felt his heart grow stone-heavy. For many days he did not return to the village but stayed in the cave, staring out toward the Nile, though seeing nothing. His hands, as if working on their own, carved at a small piece of sandalwood. He
hardly even glanced down. The knife shaved the wood tenderly, as though it were a living thing, as if the knife itself knew what must be taken, what had to remain.

  The figure that his blade released from the bit of wood was not much bigger than his thumb, but it grew perfect: a tiny sleeping baby, curled up in a manger. A symbol. Perhaps it represented one of the children who had suffered and died, one of the victims of evil.

  He will be King of Kings.

  Agios closed his eyes, though his hands did not cease their work. If only it were possible for a king to offer mankind the way out of such cruelty, such wickedness. The three scholars had believed it would be so. They had faith.

  No, Agios thought. I can’t share their confidence, their belief. I’ve seen too much of men and know too much of their twisted hearts. What can one small child offer against such hopelessness?

  Agios had no appetite and neglected to prepare meals, so each day Krampus cooked, after a clumsy fashion, and brought Agios scorched meats that he ignored. The big man tried to comfort him, even cutting the meat into bite-sized pieces. To placate him, Agios occasionally ate a mouthful or two.

  At nights Agios lay sleepless, afraid to give in to the darkness of his dreams. Still, time began to wear away at his fears, as the Nile had carved itself a bed over unimaginable centuries. Gradually he began to recover, and he and Krampus resumed their quiet way of life.

  One evening when Krampus returned with the goats, Agios gave him dinner. The big man ate gratefully. Afterward, as they had done over the past months, Agios encouraged Krampus to talk.

  That evening Krampus surprised him. “You sad,” he said. “Who you miss? Who die?”

  “My wife. My son,” Agios said quietly. Tears came to his eyes.

  Krampus watched him and then said, “My father—I not know. Dead. My mother bake bread. To sell, to live. One day Romans come. They—” He broke off with a sob.

  “You don’t have to talk about it,” Agios said.

  Krampus wiped his tears with his big palm. “They—hold her down, tear off clothes. They—hurt her. And kill her. And take me from her. I would have—” he mimed stabbing. “They beat me. Every day. Then—” he imitated pulling an oar. “Chains. Slave. I want to die. Try to die. Then you come.” His big hands fumbled in the air. “Don’t know the words. You—me—we sorrow. But easier together.”

  He had never spoken so much all at one time. Agios repeated, “Easier together.” Somehow it felt true.

  And so as far as it could, Agios’s grief slackened. A day even came when he renewed his trips to Memphis—half a day there, half a day back—and his trading. He heard nothing of Herod’s being punished for his murder of the children. Perhaps the Romans did not care enough about these people on the fringes of their empire to concern themselves with such a small matter as the deaths of children.

  One late afternoon as Agios was returning from Memphis and nearing their cave, he heard Krampus shouting from near the river. Agios ran there, and when he saw what was going on, fury rose within him.

  Three laughing young boatmen ware dancing around Krampus, shouting at him, making fun of his ugliness. They held boat poles, ten feet long, and kept swinging them, sweeping Krampus’s legs from under him, or running up and prodding him with them, wielding the poles like blunt spears. A shattered earthenware jug told Agios that Krampus had just come to the river for water. The boatmen must have pulled over for a meal or a rest—their reed boat had been moored to a palm tree on the bank.

  Agios shouted, and they spun to face him. Krampus, bloody and scratched, scrambled away on all fours before rising to his feet. One of the three dodged toward him, raising his boat pole, and Krampus roared in anger.

  “Leave him alone!” Agios bellowed. “He wasn’t hurting you!”

  “Look how ugly he is,” another one of the three men jeered. “He’s hurting our eyes!”

  Snarling, Agios strode forward. The three turned on him, menacing him with their poles. “Back away, old man!” the one who seemed to be their leader warned.

  When Agios didn’t retreat, the three charged him. Agios ducked a blow—the boy swinging the pole gasped at his unexpected speed—then snatched up a fist-sized rock and sent it whistling into the second one’s stomach, sending him flailing backward until he fell into the river.

  He had dropped his pole, and Agios grabbed it. He parried a blow from the third, then cracked him over the head. Now only one boy stood, and he looked fearful and uncertain.

  “Stop!” Krampus begged. “Not kill.”

  “They might have killed you!” Agios roared, his voice furious.

  “Not evil for evil,” Krampus said.

  The three had retreated a few steps. Agios drew his bronze knife and strode to the tethered boat. With one swipe he cut the rope, then used the pole to send the craft into the river, where the current took it. “If you want it, go get it!” Agios said. “And never come here again.”

  The three boys cursed, but went splashing into the river, half-wading and half-swimming. Agios threw the pole after them. “Probably the boat belongs to their father,” he growled. “They’ll be in trouble if they don’t—”

  He broke off as he realized that Krampus had fallen to his knees, head bent, one fist against the rocky ground and the other hand clutched over his chest.

  “Krampus!” Agios caught him about the shoulders and lowered him carefully to the sand. The muscles in Krampus’s arms were hard as stones, his knuckles white in their iron grip. “Where are you injured?”

  But Krampus couldn’t respond. He gasped for breath. His eyes were wide and full of panic, his mouth open in a grimace of pain and fear. Frantic, Agios ran his fingertips over his friend’s body, assessing the scratches and bruises that the boys from the boat had inflicted. The wounds were nothing that could cause such distress. The big man’s lips were turning blue, and as Agios watched he squeezed his eyes shut. A single tear escaped and slid down his broad cheek.

  Gripped by dread, Agios knelt beside Krampus. “Help my friend,” he said—though the boatmen were gone, far out in the river, and no one else was around to hear. “Don’t let my friend die.”

  I’m . . . praying, Agios thought. He had seen the three kings pray often, but it wasn’t something he had ever done before, and he didn’t know to which god he was muttering. “Hear me,” he murmured. “If there is anything good and holy in the light that led us to the place where Jesus lay in his mother’s arms, let it help us now.”

  Then he felt a hand cover his own. His eyes flew open to find Krampus staring at him. His hand trembled, but there was a small smile on his tear-stained face.

  “What happened?” Agios croaked.

  Krampus took Agios’s hand and held it over his chest. His heart was pounding furiously. But even as he feared for his friend’s life, Agios could feel the beats beginning to slow. He kept his hand over the place until the pace nearly matched his own and the color began to seep back into Krampus’s pale cheeks.

  “Has this happened before?” Agios asked.

  Krampus nodded. “When . . . sometimes. When Romans beat me,” he whispered.

  “Are you better? Are you well?” But of course he wasn’t well. Why hadn’t Agios realized it before? Whatever had touched Krampus’s body and face had clearly marked him inside, too. Who could know how Krampus suffered? How broken he really was?

  “I’m sorry,” Agios said, because there was nothing else to say.

  “Better,” Krampus grunted. Carefully, Krampus sat up and Agios helped him to his feet. Together they hobbled back to their cave, where Agios bandaged Krampus’s cuts. There was nothing he could do for the wound in his heart.

  So Agios and Krampus lived day to day, month to month, year to year, almost like a man and his over-large, ungainly son. From then on, though, when Agios made his trips into Memphis he cautioned Krampus to remain alone and quiet in the cave—and he made sure that the water urns were filled before he left.

  On rare occasions, no more th
an once a year if that, messengers came and found Agios, bringing letters from Caspar or from Melchior, inscribed on tablets of wax in the Roman way. They wrote simply, for though Caspar had taught Agios the art of reading and writing, his grasp of educated language was weak. Melchior told him of how Balthasar fared. All three men held within them an eagerness to share word of the holy child born to become the King of Kings—but all agreed to hold back from telling the world of their secret, because, as Melchior wrote, “His time has not yet come, but I pray that I live to see it.”

  Then one day, a message arrived that turned their simple world upside down.

  Herod is dead, Melchior had written. I am sending word to Joseph that it is safe for him, Mary, and Jesus to return to their homeland now. My friend, will you accompany them home?

  It didn’t even cross Agios’s mind to say no.

  They had little to pack. Agios had carved dozens of tiny figures over the years. They all fit in one large goatskin sack. When they went into the town to sell their herd, Agios carried the sack slung over his shoulder, and as they traveled, every time they saw a child, he left one of the little carvings for him or her to find. Krampus once tried to retrieve one of the carvings from a jeering ten-year-old, pointing and saying, “Bad boy!”

  His voice scared the boy, who ran away. “What did he do?” Agios asked.

  “Laugh at me,” growled Krampus. For all his size and fierce appearance, he really was like a child, with feelings that could easily be hurt.

  With a sudden inspiration, Agios handed Krampus the little baby he had sculpted. “Here,” he said. “This one is yours. You keep it forever.”

  Krampus stooped over and cradled the tiny figurine in his huge palm. “Oh,” he said. “Oh.” He looked up. Tears streamed down his cheeks. “Oh.”

  “I didn’t mean to make you sad,” Agios said gently.

  “Him,” Krampus said. “It is him. I see.” He raised his cupped palm and held the little carving close to his heart. “He take Krampus home.”

  Agios shook his head. Krampus had ways of thinking that—well, that no one could really follow. At least, he couldn’t.