In Thy Tender Care

The first I heard of the King’s plan was from an Eastern magi one silent night, him garbed in fine apparel and telling of strange tales. Of the nature of the plan, he was unsure, but he told me in no uncertain terms that returning to the King was ill-advised. A visitor in a dream had warned him, he said, just two days back somewhere over the plains.

After consideration, it seemed wise to ignore the magi’s tidings. From his speakings and claims he seemed quite mad, and so I travelled twelve days and twelve nights heedless of the wind and weather, to bring myself to kneel before the King.

Certainly as the magi had told it, for all his finery the Great King was raging, and mad with a fear. He spoke of a threat that would decay the earthly realms, and take them away. Fortunately, I was deemed mighty enough to help him defend his kingdom, if I would bear a ruthless sword and a hard heart he said, and take the charge of slaying the young.

The decree seemed senseless at first, but greater prophecies had been told before, and greater still would be, and the King was known to be merciless to those whom opposed him. And so I parted without a word, and traversed the mount and crag on that calm, bright night.

The odyssey took me to a little town nearby, where my foul undertaking was to be done. I waited on the fall of night, to conceal my worldly sin, and whilst mortals slept I stole the dark streets alone.

The Great King’s ordain was a terrible one, and the first mother Rachel, a finer lady I had not seen, wept and lamented with despair the loss of her first and only son, whom I sorely deprived of life. After her, eleven more lives I passed to death that night, and I bore my remorse amid the sorrowing and sighing, the bleeding and dying that I brought on my hands in the Great King’s name.

It was then, after the twelfth had been slain, that I heard what one could only describe as a sweet singing on high. For a moment, I might have sworn the stars sang together, a radiant light streamed from heaven afar. And in their chorus was a choir of drums, of pipes and harp and violin. I took pause from my macabre task, for no longer could my lips stay silent and I too sang then with a joyful tongue.

I knew no such words, but yet sang of a beacon with royal beauty bright, of a newborn King free from the taint of wickedness. I sang of an odyssey to the south, of a father’s warning dream. I knew then, in my joyous strains, of the Great King’s folly, and the deaths of the innocents stopped at once.

Like the wise magi before me, I did not return to the King, nor did I speak of the child that fled his impious wrath. Instead I began upon a passage of mine, to cleanse and be cleansed, my own soul now to purify with the new dawn of redeeming grace.