by Simon Rumney
The doctor looked down at Julii's feet. "You plan on walking back to the road and ten miles to Savannah?"
Julii refused to look down. She had been ignoring the pain for two days and she needed to keep ignoring it for at least one more, so she told the doctor, "My feet are not important."
Ignoring Julii's objections, the doctor insisted on patching her up before she left. Placing a very well-used, multiple tooth-marked, raw hide bit between her teeth, he sat her down then burst and cleaned her blisters. After that agony, he caused even more pain by washing away the bloody mess with a little of his “precious” medicinal brandy. He then used discarded uniform jackets, torn into strips, to bandage her feet and then bind them into what was left of her ruined shoes. They would not last the ten mile walk to Savannah, but Julii promised him she could jump onto the horse’s back if the pain grew too much to handle.
After taking care of Julii's feet, the doctor arranged for three stretchers to be carried by six walking wounded. These six men were ordered to carry the stretchers for the two miles along the lines to Julii's horse and buggy and then walk behind the buggy to Savannah. Once these arrangements were made, the doctor selected the two incapacitated soldiers who would be carried on the second and third stretchers. Finding men with head wounds who could sit upright in the buggy took no time because men with head wounds lay in every tent.
As she set-off with her peculiar band of survivors, Julii promised to bring back as many flatbed wagons as could be found in Savannah. She also told the doctor she would bribe and threaten and bully and blackmail the cowardly people who would be required to drive them because, having seen and smelled the suffering, she was determined to rescue even the men who could only be transported laying down flat.
With six barely-able men carrying three stretchers along the lines, progress was slow. Julii stayed close by her Robert's side as they passed hundreds of dejected soldiers sitting by their ramshackle defenses. Although the men carrying the stretchers were wounded and in horrible pain, Julii could see envy on the faces of the “healthy” soldiers. They knew the wounded men would soon be in a safe place while they had to remain behind and wait for a vastly-superior enemy to find them and cause them nothing but hurt.
As the little group of stretchers passed the place where the pointed stakes were being hammered into the ground, Julii noticed the angry man with the dirty face and the badly-laundered, threadbare, bloody, patched uniform. His white eyes still peered out at her from his darkness. Julii had thought him angry before, but now he was seething and there could be no doubt it was directed at her personally.
'Was he jealous of her ability to come and go as she pleased while he had to stay here and face death?' Then it occurred to her, 'The last time she had seen anyone in such terrible shape was in Savannah when she confronted the disgusting slave catcher.' 'Had Paul killed the wrong man in the alley beside the saloon?' 'Had the slave catcher survived and did he recognize her now?' 'Did he somehow blame her for who he had become?'
Turning away from the infuriated man, Julii no longer wanted to face the bad things she had done back when she had been so angry. Things were changing for her now. Life was about to get back to normal for her and her Robert and baby Helen.
She took hold of Robert's hand and let herself drift into fantastic thoughts of the wonderful, normal place they were going called Rome. Even the first sounds of a commotion growing behind her was not allowed to interrupt her fantasy. She didn't even turn to look, because looking may bring her back to the reality of her evil past and this truly horrible present.
Even when an unfamiliar voice shouted, "Where do you think you're going, Private?" Julii refused to break free of her denial-driven fantasy.
Keeping her eyes forward, she heard another voice shout. "What the hell do you think you're gonna do with that, Private?"
Her curiosity was piqued, but Julii remained locked within her fantasy of normal Rome, when another voice called out: "Stop that man!"
The urge to turn was almost overwhelming, but Julii still refused to look at anything but her Robert. As the commotion behind her reached a crescendo, Julii's curiosity could no longer be denied. Her decision to turn was already made when she felt the odd, hard thump on her back.
It was like nothing she had experienced before. She was winded for no apparent reason. She tried to turn to see what had hit her, but she was fixed in this position. She could not turn her body to the right or to the left. Looking down, she saw something quite unbelievable. 'It made no sense.' A great length of a bloody bayonet was protruding from her chest. 'How?'
Then the pain came. Then her legs gave way. Then the bayonet was twisted and wrenched from her body and she fell to the ground in an uncontrolled heap.
The officer closest to the attacker lunged at the man, who still held the rifle with the bayonet covered in Julii's blood, and smashed the assailant in the face with his fist. The man with the bayonet went down hard but it was too late, his damage had already been done.
Julii's head lay on the ground next to her Robert's. Her eyes were fixed on his good eye, but she was losing focus with every labored breath. As her life ebbed away, she heard her attacker shouting, "I met with Jefferson Davies! I met with General Lee! I was employed in a role essential to the Confederate war effort until you came along and ruined everything!"
In her last moment of consciousness, Julii understood who the disturbed dirty-faced soldier with the poorly-laundered, badly-patched uniform actually was. Her last word before passing into a twilight state of oblivion was "Max."
'This end was not fair.' 'Things were just coming together.' 'Life was just getting back to normal.' Then it occurred to Julii, 'Life was never supposed to be something predictable and safe or “normal”.' 'Life is a series of uncontrollable and unfinished events.' 'Longing for the day when everything returns to normal was simply a vain hope.' 'Normal was chaos and the only way to find happiness within chaos was to accept it.' 'To surrender to it, to live amongst it.' 'To let it take its course.' 'To allow events to be unfinished.'
As these realizations and this life let go of Julii, she was being allowed to see who she truly was and who she had been and why she had been. She was allowed to know why beauty had always been so unkind to her and love so toxic. She was being allowed to understand why she had lived so many pain-filled times before and allowed to understand why she was going to live so many pain-filled times again.
She was being allowed to understand the recurring dream and the eternal curse that propelled her through endless suffering and, only during this brief moment between death and new life, she was allowed to understand why she must suffer.
She was also being allowed to understand why she could never remember any of her previous lives while enduring this one, but this time she was determined to remember. This time she fought to retain the memory of who she was and had been. Who Robert was and had been. Who her mother and father were and had been. Who Ringwind was and had been. Who Max was, and who Count Anton was, and who Cecilia was, and who Robert's mother was, and who General Hardee was, and who General Sherman was, and who everyone else who played their roles in her many lives were and had been. But, fight as she may, she could already feel those memories being drawn away from her.
She could hear that familiar pounding in the darkness. She knew what was about to happen, but she did not know where or when it was about to take her. Then the familiar bright light came. Then the familiar feeling of being expelled from a safe and warm place came rushing towards her. Then the old familiar feeling of being held in a stranger’s arms came.
Suddenly she was no longer Julii. She was “Robard”, a son born to Afrikaner parents in the vast open country of the Orange Free State in Zuid Afrikaanse Republiek in the year of 1864.
While taking his first breaths in this life, Julii could see the tiny birthmark around her wrist and she knew it was the key to everything. She knew it was the answer. She knew it would grow with her body to eventually fit the lion amulet that someh
ow always found her. She fought to hang on to her memories by concentrating on the brown patch of skin. 'If only she could hang onto that one thing!' She focused hard and tried not to let go of her memories, but like all of her past transitions, she was destined to fail.
As all memories of Julii were wiped clean, they were replaced with the fresh clear mind of a newborn child who would have absolutely no idea why his innocent life was destined to be marred by an ancient and eternal curse.
Another life in another place and another time
Baby Robard's mother and father were of good “Voortrekker” stock, and this proud epithet told everyone they were made of truly tough stuff. Simply being a Voortrekker meant they had suffered years of persecution at the hands of the greedy British Empire simply because they were of Dutch origin.
Being a Voortrekker meant their God-given, wonderful, fertile land, that had been broken in by their own Boer forefathers, had been stolen from under them by those British.
Being a Voortrekker meant they had survived many months of burning heat and freezing cold while living in the uncomfortable, unreliable and slow-trundling ox wagons to get far away from those British.
Being a Voortrekker meant they had watched helplessly while their future breeding livestock perished by the thousands on the trek.
Being a Voortrekker meant they had regularly circled their ox wagons into “laagers” while fighting their way through the ferocious Ndebele tribal lands.
Being a Voortrekker meant they had survived terrible loss of life during the fierce and disciplined Zulu attacks at the battle of Blood River.
Being a Voortrekker meant they had survived excruciating torments while watching mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles and grandmothers and grandfathers being pierced by deadly assegais wielded by savage Zulu warriors. But, even more remarkable, Robard's parents had endured all of these atrocities as mere children.
To the many thousands of Boer people who followed the brave “first Voortrekkers”, simply being in the presence of such a hero was sacred. But to the very stoic survivors themselves, being a Voortrekker was simply the price that had to be paid in order to permanently free themselves and their descendants from persecution.
Much time had passed since the sacrifices made on the great trek. It could be said that, while the new farms in the ZAR were not as fertile as their wonderful farms in the Cape, Boers had made the best of what their God had given them. For most of Robard's parent’s life, a happy peace had come to those surviving Voortrekkers.
Over time, small trading posts in their new land grew into towns that grew into small cities. The constantly growing Boer communities eventually built civilized things like schools and burgeoning universities.
By the time of Robard's birth, Boers were, by and large, a happy people living in an exclusively Boer nation under the love and care of the 'one true God', their God, the Protestant God of the Dutch Reformed Church.
They believed they had forged an unbreakable Boer-controlled nation whose people spoke only their “one true God's” language.
The “Doppers” who oversaw their church told them their “one true God” had provided vast numbers of submissive black people called “Kaffirs” to toil exclusively on their behalf. The Doppers even found ways to interpret the Bible in ways that confirmed this belief.
The Doppers also told the Boers that their “one true God” was going to keep their ZAR nation forever free of British influence. For many years that's exactly what he did but, unfortunately for the Doppers, their “one true God” chose not to keep “their” promise. In his wisdom, their one true God had placed vast numbers of very high-quality diamonds just under their sacred land and one single diamond just lying on the surface.
Some of the backpedaling Doppers were going to say that the diamond was exposed by nothing more than natural erosion caused by wind and rain. Some of the Doppers were going to say their God exposed the diamond to bring wealth to the Boer people. And some of the Doppers were going to say their “one true God” had exposed the diamond to punish the Boers for not praying hard enough.
Whatever his reason, their “one true God” was going to let it be found by a hated “Englander”, and worse, he was going to let news of that single discovery be conveyed throughout the British Empire. Once their “one true God” had allowed that, even the Doppers would understand it was only a question of time before every low-life adventurer, cut-throat and murderous member of his flock would show up on their land.
It seemed so unfair, but in his mysterious way, their “one true God” was going to draw the hated British northwards like the greedy, violent parasites they were. The Boers who had given so much in his name for freedom would do nothing but watch as they slipped inexorably back towards the dark days of British persecution.
In time, the inevitable violence would break out between British prospectors and Boer farmers who didn't want them on their land. The British being the British would use a few beaten-up prospectors as their justification to build forts in each of the major Boer cities in order to “keep the peace”.
After just a few years of the uneducated British redcoat soldiers abusing and maltreating the locals, the tensions between the Afrikaner and the British would bubble back to the surface. By the time Robard would reach manhood, the first of the Boer Wars would be tearing South Africa and his life apart, but that was still a while in the future.
Robard
All things considered, 1864 was not such a bad year to be born the son of a successful and respected Boer 'Voortrekker' farmer in the Orange Free State.
1864 was one of those rare years when the Zulus were not inflicting war on the settlers, the British seemed content to remain in the South exploiting the farms they had stolen from the Boers, and the influx of thousands of ruthless diamond minors like the brutal Cecil Rhodes had not yet started in earnest.
Robard's mother used this peaceful time to make Robard's entry into the world happy, stable and loving. Like all Boers, she was a racist and a bigot, but she was a calm, openly-affectionate woman who always sought peace in her household.
Robard's father, on the other hand, was like many of the psychologically-damaged men who were born a few years before the terrifying chaos and uncertainty of the “great trek north”. For no apparent reason, he could become cold and removed and Robard's mother would have to employ increasingly subtle methods to calm his spontaneous outbursts of unpredictable temper.
The nanny, who spent her days “tip-toeing” through the “minefield” that was her white master’s unstable emotions, created a steady environment and took very good care of little Robard.
To her white masters she had no name other than “Nanny”, but in a time before the “Boer invasion”, she had been endowed with a long complicated name because she had been born a royal princess revered by the people of her tribe. Now she was just “a well-liked friendly kaffir woman” who had had been plucked from the workers on their farm because Robard's mother and father liked the affectionate way she was raising her own children.
Of course, the irony of causing a loving mother to neglect her three young children in order to raise their one child was completely missed by Robard's parents. In private, Nanny cried for her loss, but she had no rights, or recourse, so she hid her pain well and grew to love little Robard's naturally-compassionate nature and took very special care of her master's first born.
Robard's father, who never trusted “kaffirs”, called Nanny “the Good Kaffir”. He felt he had done her a great favor by removing her from the communal huts full of “bad kaffirs” to let her live “almost among the white people”, albeit at the very back of the big house.
Almost from the moment he could walk outside, in the gardens of the big house, Robard spent his time with the Good Kaffir's three boys. Their first meeting had been a little awkward because they were not supposed to be hiding outside the back door.
All three cowered when Robard bumped into them, but
what else could they do? They were all far too small to do anything but wait for their mother. Much to their surprise, Robard introduced himself instead of telling them off, and this was the beginning of lifelong friendships.
The three brown boys and Robard ran together, hunted for butterflies together, collected bird's eggs together, and learned about the world together. Robard could speak their Bantu language and they could speak his Dutch Afrikaans.
As long as they ran free on the land and in the streams, chasing giant ostriches and tiny little fish, they were as brothers, but within the gardens of Robard's home, he returned to master and they returned to farm kaffir's
Neither Robard nor his three brown friends ever questioned why Robard could approach the house from the front but they could not. If they wanted to see Robard or their own mother, they had to respectfully approach the back door and wait to be spoken to. If their mother was busy or Robard was being home-schooled by his mother, the three little kaffirs would have to weed the vegetable garden until their own mother was free or Robard was finished with his book reading.
Once again, neither Robard, the Good Kaffir, nor the three little kaffirs ever questioned why he leaned how to read and they did not. Only when Robard reached the age of five did he even wonder why they could not live in the big house with him. There were so many empty rooms that could have easily accommodated all of his friends, but when he asked his mother about it, the answer she gave referred to skin color and that made no sense.
Because of their mother's royal lineage, the three little kaffirs had noble names. But Robard's mother did not like what she called the “godless clicks” required to say them in their own language, so she had arbitrarily decided to call them letters from her God's alphabet. She declared that “A”, “B” and “C” would be easier for everyone.
None of the little kaffirs understood the derogatory nature of their offhand baptism, just as none of them knew what the letters of the alphabet were, so their name became a kind of phonetic Afrikaans hybrid. Even their mother had to refer to her much-loved children as “Ahh”, “Beeya” and “Ceeya” while cooking, cleaning, laundering and caring for Robard in the master's home.