by Aiden James
“Will you look at this, Rod—it’s truly gorgeous!”
Beatrice pointed to a secretary made of cherry, which was exactly what she had hoped to find. Though it wasn’t a Chippendale piece, the store’s proprietor told us it was made in the early 1840s and had once belonged to Jefferson Davis, the one-time president of the Confederate States of America. I was prepared to call the man’s bluff, but he soon produced documents supporting the claim of prior ownership by Mr. Davis, along with a pair of old photographs showing the stately furniture piece in the Brierfield Plantation near Vicksburg, which was owned by Davis’ brother, Joseph.
“So it was used by Jefferson Davis and actually owned by Joseph Davis,” I told the proprietor, who immediately flinched. At first I couldn’t tell if he was surprised, angry, or both.
“William, leave the poor man alone!” Beatrice chided me. “It doesn’t matter who owned it or used it... the piece is perfect for the east parlor that Rod is letting me redecorate.”
She mimicked an affectionate kiss to me and turned her attention to the store’s owner.
“We’ll take it,” she told him.
“I’ll prepare it for delivery to your home, Mrs. Barrow,” said the owner, casting a dubious glance my way.
“That won’t be necessary.... We can take it back with us to Virginia,” she advised, and when finished with her business with the storeowner she turned her attention to me again. “Jeremy and Roderick say it will fit in back of the Escalade.”
“Really?” I couldn’t hide my disbelief
“It shouldn’t be too bad in terms of being cramped,” said Jeremy. “And if it gets that way, I have already volunteered to occupy the rear bench seat and keep an eye on it. It will look great in Rod’s house.”
He smiled to sell his confidence in the deal, and Roderick joined in offering his support for my wife’s twelve grand purchase. Not that money means much to Roderick or me, as it would take a few centuries of daily extravagant purchases to make a slight dent in our combined fortunes. The biggest factor to swing my vote, though, was Beatrice’s joy at finally owning a piece like this. Seeing her childlike excitement, which simmered to a blissful glow at the realization the fancy desk was hers, warmed my heart about the purchase—despite the inconvenience of hauling it from Corinth to Abingdon.
We arranged to pick up Beatrice’s prize Sunday morning, and the rest of the day proved to be anticlimactic. I wish I was a better sport for this sort of thing, since most of the stores we visited blended into one very long boring experience that didn’t improve until we dined at the pizza place.... Except The Pizza Grocery wasn’t just a pizza place. With a full menu of Italian delicacies prepared to perfection, by the time dinner ended all of us agreed that the restaurant’s cuisine was as wonderful as advertised.
So the night ended on a high note of enjoying one another’s company until one by one we all retired for the night. Even Roderick called it quits by ten o’clock, nearly an hour after Amy and Jeremy had retired and Beatrice and I shared a passionate goodnight kiss.
“I probably should’ve gone light on the sangria tonight,” said Roderick, as he took leave of my presence downstairs. “Sometimes I forget that the sweeter alcoholic beverages often throw off my metabolism for a few hours. I’ll be fine to drive tomorrow if I get a few hours of sleep tonight.”
“I wondered if you were paying attention to how many glasses you consumed,” I teased. I should mention that Roderick’s perpetual youth comes from a slightly slower regeneration process than my own. We regenerate cells similarly, but my body’s restoration can happen in a manner of minutes and the druid’s can take several hours to attain the same state. “Go ahead and get some rest. Goodnight, Rod.”
“Don’t linger too long tonight in your thoughts, Judas.”
It was the last thing he said before disappearing on the upstairs landing, I wondered how much he had picked up from the swirling chaos floating in the forefront of my mind. As far as I was concerned, I had no choice but to stay up that night. Despite successfully keeping my head clear of worries about Kaslow and the kidnapping of two prominent historians in Europe, the nagging doubts about our continued safety were much harder to push from my awareness. Now that I was alone in this grand house, I could begin sorting through it all.
Something wasn’t right, something unfinished... as danger lurked nearby. While everyone else in the General Johnson House slept soundly, I armed myself with Kaslow’s letter and the charcoal-marked linen piece. Then I set out to find the pieces of a puzzle that we were missing... pieces I hoped would help me understand what we were overlooking before it was too late.
Chapter Five
Sitting in the front parlor inspired nothing.... Nothing but memories of a few unfortunate trysts that took place in similar houses, in New Orleans and Savannah, during the early twentieth century before World War I broke out. So, I relocated to the front porch, where the evening calls of crickets, cicadas, and the occasional comment from a barn owl kept me company until well after midnight. Yet, no matter how much I scanned the poem or ran my fingers over the charcoaled strip of linen, nothing new came to me.
No sudden epiphanies or intuitive insights. Not a damned thing that would allow me to uncover a hidden message my heart told me was there... encoded in the words Kaslow had given us....
The lot of a soldier... Driven by pride and love of home.
Tit For Tat....
Yet fate does fool and underscore... The lies where truth once was known.
Tit For TAT!
“Christ, I could be sitting here all night!” I mumbled disgustedly, tossing both items into the air. “And, for what?”
Of course, no answer came to me as I watched the linen reach the painted porch floorboards long before the letter landed nearby. But maybe an answer did arrive.... As I watched the piece of fabric alight softly next to the parchment page containing the poem, I was struck by the cloth’s identity, or lack thereof. Without its prior contents it was indefinable, as if it now lacked purpose.
“Purpose? That’s so frigging absurd.”
Perhaps Roderick was right and I should give up what had turned into a pointless debate. A rare desire for sleep began to beckon me to return to Beatrice’s side, though my body wasn’t tired. Then an idea hit me, and despite my initial reluctance to consider it, I felt compelled from the depths of my soul to do so anyway....
Careful to not awaken anyone, I crept back upstairs, pausing to make sure that Beatrice, Amy, and Jeremy were asleep in their rooms. Gentle snores from my wife and the soft rumble from Amy and Jeremy’s floor fan made it an easier decision to move down the hall to Roderick’s room.
I expected my druid pal to pick up on my presence, or at least stir from the intrusion of someone stepping into his room uninvited. Not since I had roused him from sleep inside a buckskin tent, while he was recovering from an errant musket shot during the early days of the French-American War, had I invaded his space like this.
To my surprise, Roderick was sound asleep. No snores, as some might expect from a giant of a man—and an ornery Celt at that. Just a steady rise and fall in his chest from the smooth pace that either indicated the deepest level of restfulness or one damned enjoyable dream was going on at that very moment.
Meanwhile, my heart raced from nervousness of being caught, and the worry worsened once I located the likely location for the Stutthof-Auschwitz Coin. A slight blue glow emanated from the middle drawer of an antique dresser. Frankly, this surprised me, and I was half tempted to upbraid my sleeping buddy for not finding a more protected location to leave the coin. Then again, my indignation would melt into profound embarrassment if he were to awaken with me creeping about the room like an amateur burglar.
I set out to quietly pull on the drawer and remove my blood coin, hissing under my breath when the ancient drawer squeaked slightly upon opening. The shekel’s brilliant blue sheen was deeper than for most of my coins, and I wondered if it was a byproduct of the terrible violen
ce that had followed this one. Holding my breath while keeping a watchful eye on Roderick’s bed, I used the same linen piece we found the coin in to pick it up now.
Lord...please don’t let me drop it!
Careful to make sure the coin didn’t touch my skin, I wrapped the fabric tightly around it, and then painstakingly retraced my steps out of Roderick’s room. Once back in the hallway, I tiptoed past the bedrooms and didn’t ease up until I returned downstairs and was outside on the porch.
It was a strange feeling to be holding a coin that I stole from my truest friend other than Beatrice. Albeit, the coin was mine and would always be associated with my ancient crime. But that knowledge did little for the immediate guilt... I intended to confess my intrusion to Roderick at daybreak. In the meantime, I braced myself for the experience that had become more and more excruciating over the years. Hearing or reading about Jesus of Nazareth’s intense suffering after being sentenced to execution by crucifixion has never done justice to witnessing the actual event. And, being pulled back in time to re-experience everything fresh whenever I recovered one of my coins was almost too much to bear. I daresay if I were fully human, instead of carrying my immortal curse, I surely would’ve died long ago from overwhelming grief.
Why was I doing this, then—especially when I had avoided it the day before at Shiloh? In truth, it was an instinctive response... and until I crept upstairs to reclaim the coin I had urged Roderick to retrieve for me less than thirty-two hours earlier, I didn’t know for sure if I would go through with it or not.
But I had no choice—that was what my gut told me now. The mystery of what Krontos was up to would never be solved for us until I took care of my personal coin business as usual. Avoiding this step had made us blind to the Russian’s schemes—I was certain of it. The recurring thought that had come back to me all night long as I studied the ragged linen strip and the poem was that my perspective was off—diluted by my refusal to accept my responsibility before The Almighty.
It was time to remedy that issue, and to do it before my beloved wife and the Golden Eagle kids arose from their beds. The terrible dread seizing more and more of my being since the previous afternoon forced me now to do something about it. Maybe Roderick would chide me at daybreak, and perhaps no one else would understand why I changed my mind about holding the Stutthof-Auschwitz Coin with my bare hands. But it simply had to be done, and preferably without an audience to watch my physical body either convulse or faint while my spirit traveled back in time to that fateful moment.
I unwrapped the coin and took a deep breath as its sapphire aura stretched toward my chest and face. The pain in my bones that becomes a dull ache when in the presence of any of these coins began to intensify when my mind wavered in panic for a brief instant, and fell away when my conviction to go through with it returned and strengthened.
Without further delay, I grabbed onto the coin with my left hand, clasping it shut with my right.... Then my spirit began the painful journey back to where the Lord’s imploring eyes and heartrending agony could torment me once again....
Every time I have taken this unfortunate trek it seems worse than before. This instance was no exception, although for the first time I stood alongside a centurion, whose troops were present to keep order in regard to the mob screaming for Jesus’ death. Flanked by a pair of bodyguards, I expected for this man to be stoic while calmly surveying the audience for the worst offenders to tip his soldiers to quell in order to keep potential riots at bay.
But he wasn’t stoic at all. The centurion’s eyes met Jesus’ blood-streaked gaze more than once as the Lord looked out onto the crowd, who were demanding His violent exit from this world. I could only see the man’s profile from where we were boxed in by the thousands of Jerusalem’s citizens trying to push their way to where Jesus was being whipped, and where the heavy cross He would later be sacrificed upon waited nearby. But, the centurion’s right eye was filled with tears, and a single stream coursed down the side of his face.
The scene of crazy hatred had touched him! Here I had thought all the Romans patrolling Jerusalem hated every one of us—whether disciples of Jesus and other self-proclaimed ‘messiahs’, or the religious rank of the Sadducees and Pharisees—hell, even the Essenes who were the most apt to egg on the Italian occupiers of our Holy Land to brutal aggression. The man’s troops certainly hated the local citizenry, or at least a quick glance around me showed the meanness I was quite familiar with.
My brief survey of the tense gathering revealed much more than this, and the first clue that it was going to be a completely new experience for me came when one of the troops looked at me and nodded, wearing a slight smile.
What in the hell?!
It wasn’t until I looked away that I caught a glint of the armor I was wearing....
I’m dressed as a Roman officer? Shit, you’ve got to be kidding me!
But it was true. I lifted my hand that still clung to the glowing coin—which was another thing I rarely encountered. Most often, I simply visited this wretched place, forced to watch the terrible event from inside my old self. And, as the mortal Judas disguised as a woman, I still possessed nearly the entire bag of cursed coins. This time, however, my arm was presently adorned with a segmented protector—a manica—and my blood-red cloak, the sagum, covered much of my shoulder and bicep. I noticed also the weight of my helmet and the septum protector as it rubbed uncomfortably against my nose.
Greatly alarmed by this development, I increased the tightness of my grip on the coin to where it dug into my left palm. I worried it would fall out of my grasp somehow, and then I’d be stuck in the past forever as a Hebrew persecutor.
“Brutus, I have seen enough,” the centurion said, as he turned to regard me. “I hope you and Pilate are happy now... but this had better work in keeping the Hebrews quiet. Otherwise, this man’s blood is on your hands, and his.”
He pointed up to where Pontius Pilate stood, addressing the mob to wild cheering at whatever he was telling them. Odd that I could scarcely understand Pilate, who was speaking in Hebrew, or so I assumed, and yet I understood the centurion’s Latin tongue perfectly.
I could only make out the bottom edge of the Prefect’s ceremonial gown in the gallery above, and briefly felt a familiar revulsion toward the corrupt Roman serving Tiberius as governor of Judea. Yes, I understood the depth of the man’s sleaziness... but I also felt confused. A war waged within me as a result of my spirit taking over the body of an apparently equally corrupt Roman military officer. The centurion huffed at me when I didn’t respond, and I understood then that he and I must’ve shared similar rank for him to be so cavalier with comments that could’ve landed his ass on a cross, too.
“Nothing to say, Brutus?” he asked, when I continued to say nothing in response. “May the god of the Hebrews show you better mercy than you’ve shown this man—this Jesus—who has done nothing worse than all the others who claim to be saviors to this miserable people and their land.... I do believe I shall take the reassignment offer to Syria... so should you.”
I nodded while making sure my facial expression matched his in its solemnity. He motioned for one of the bodyguards to turn and follow him as he exited the throng, patting my shoulder as he left. It was a safe bet that the guy I was supposed to be and this officer were on friendly terms despite our present disagreement about Jesus of Nazareth. I dreaded being called to speak—much less having to address this cohort by name.
Even worse was the fact that the bodyguard left behind was apparently mine. My heart froze as he turned toward me, and I was terrified I would soon be engaged to speak to him. But like the other soldier from earlier, he merely nodded and smiled, before turning his attention to the agonizing screams of Jesus having His back torn open by the cat-of-nine-tails. Some people in the world are blissfully ignorant of the fact that Jesus was beaten and whipped to the point of debilitating agony before He tried to unsuccessfully pick up the cross on His own. And, yes, the punishment would con
tinue all the way to Golgotha.
I hated this experience worse than any other—including being inside my mortal self and forced to relive Jesus’ eyes meeting mine in the crowd, my usual penance in a coin re-visitation. Jesus suddenly looked over at me, and I was struck by the odd timing of my loathing this event and His head deliberately turning specifically toward me, as if He could feel my detestation of having to go through this for the thirtieth time—if one counted my presence when alive as a mortal at the inaugural Passion Play.
I half-expected Him to force a wry smile and say something surreal along the lines of “Gotcha!” But it didn’t happen, thankfully. What did happen, though, was He turned His attention from me to a familiar face in the crowd. The real ‘me’ back then.
I remembered from my last visit to this place that I discovered my mortal body of two thousand years ago carried an infirmity that caused me to walk with a limp. When I was sentenced to an immortal existence, I was completely healed and allowed to be the very best ‘Judas’ possible, as far as my inherited genes would allow. Fortunately, that meant favoring my mother, who was quite beautiful; instead of my father, who was an average looking man prone to deep frown lines on account of his innate callousness.
Yet, unfortunately, that seemingly desirable status had turned into a wretched existence as the centuries wore on, and the thrill of surviving a ‘death’ by being reincarnated again and again in the prime of adulthood had grown tiresome at best....
Most of you are familiar with what I’m talking about by now, so I won’t rehash the details of my immortality any further than what I’ve mentioned here. My point to all of this is that the infirm version of me wasn’t someone to be proud of—especially when Jesus’ sorrowful but forgiving gaze met my partially hidden, stone face dressed in a black sari. I had thought of myself for centuries as a man who had always felt remorse for my horrible deed against God Almighty. However, as the Roman officer watching my reaction to Jesus’ telling ‘me’ that He forgave what I had done—while wracked in incredibly horrific pain, mind you—well it broke my heart... as the Roman. But I saw nothing in my ‘real’ countenance that hinted at remorse. Like the other Roman soldiers watching the crowd with contempt, the chicken-shit version of myself returned the Lord’s offer of forgiveness with an emotionless stare, as if Jesus was in fact a heinous criminal worth punishing by death.