The Reincarnationist

by M. J. Rose

  His head ached. The information, present and past, crashed in waves of pain. He needed to focus on either then or now. Couldn’t afford a migraine.

  He shut his eyes.

  Connect to the present, connect to who you know you are.

  Josh. Ryder. Josh. Ryder. Josh Ryder.

  This was what Dr. Talmage taught him to do to stop an episode from overwhelming him. The pain began subsiding.

  “She teases you with her secrets, no?”

  Josh’s “yes” was barely audible.

  The professor stared at him, trying to take his mental temperature. Thinking—Josh could see it in the man’s eyes—that he might be crazy, he resumed his lecturing. “We believe Bella was a Vestal Virgin. Holy and revered, they were both protected and privileged. Tending the fire and cleaning the hearth was a woman’s job in ancient times. Not all that different nowadays, no matter how hard women have tried to get us men to change.” The professor laughed. “In ancient Rome, that flame, which was entirely practical and necessary for the survival of society, eventually took on a spiritual significance.

  “According to what is written, tending the state hearth required sprinkling it daily with the holy water of Egeria and making sure the fire didn’t go out, which would bring bad luck to the city—and was an unpardonable sin. That was the primary job of the Vestals, but…”

  As the professor continued to explain, Josh felt as if he were racing ahead, knowing what he was going to say next, not as actual information, but as vague recollections.

  “Each Virgin was chosen at a very young age—only six or seven—from among the finest of Rome’s families. We cannot imagine such a thing now, but it was a great honor then. Many girls were presented to the head priest, the Pontifex Maximus, by anxious fathers and mothers, each hoping their daughter would be picked. After the novitiate was chosen, the girl was escorted to the building where she would live for the next three decades: the large white marble villa directly behind the Temple of Vesta. Immediately, in a private ritual witnessed only by the other five Vestals, she’d be bathed, her hair would be arranged in the style brides wore, a white robe would be lowered over her head and then her education would begin.”

  Josh nodded, almost seeing the scene play out in his mind, not quite sure why he was able to picture it so precisely: the young, anxious faces, the crowd’s excitement, the solemnity of the day. The professor’s question broke through the dreamscape and jolted Josh back to the present.

  “I’m sorry, what did you say?” Josh asked.

  “I was requesting that you not discuss anything I am telling you or that you will see with the press. They were here all of yesterday trying to get us to reveal information we aren’t ready to. And not just the Italian press. Your press, too. Dozens of them, following us. Like hungry dogs, they are. One man especially, I can’t remember his name…. Oh, yes. Charlie Billings.”

  Josh knew Charlie. They’d been on assignment together a few years before. He was a good reporter and they’d stayed friends. But if he was in Rome it wouldn’t be good for the dig: it was hard to keep a story away from Charlie.

  “This Billings hounded me and Gabriella until she talked to him. What is that expression? On the record? So the story ran and the crowds came. Students of pagan religions, some academics, but mostly those who belong to modern-day cults devoted to resurrecting the ancient rituals and religion. They were very quiet and reverential. Behaving as if this was a still sacred site. They didn’t bother us. It was the traditional churchgoers who started the small riot and all the problems. Stomping around and protesting and shouting out silly things such as we are doing the devil’s work and that we would be punished for our sins. They misunderstand Gabby and me. We are scientists, no? Then, last night, I received a call from Cardinal Bironi in Vatican City who offered me an obscene amount of money to sell him what we’ve found here and not make it public. Based on what he offered, he—or the people who have put up the money—are very afraid of what we might have found. That’s what happens when the word pagan is whispered in the Holy City.”

  “But why? They’re the ones with all the power.”

  “Bella could add to the existing controversy over the trivial role women now play in the church compared to ancient times. It is a very popular argument and a big problem that modern religion gives women less of a role than ancient religion.” The professor shook his head. “And then,” he said softly, “there is the other issue. Any artifact that doesn’t have a cross on it can be viewed as a threat. Especially if these artifacts have something to do with reincarnation, as Gabriella and your bosses believe.”

  “Why reincarnation? Because of the absolution problem?”

  “Yes, imagine if man believed he alone bore responsibility for his eternal rest, that it is within his own control to get to heaven. No Father, no Son, no Holy Ghost. What would happen to the power the Church holds over our souls? Imagine the worldwide confusion and rebellion and exodus from the Church if reincarnation were ever proved.”

  Josh nodded. In the past few months, he’d heard variations on this theme from Dr. Talmage. His eyes returned to Bella. Even as a corpse, her intensity was like a strong wind on a beach—there was nowhere to go to escape its force. He took a step closer to her.

  “Are you curious how we have certified Bella as a Vestal?” the professor asked.

  “There’s no question she was a Vestal,” Josh answered too quickly, and then worried that Rudolfo had picked up on his slip.

  From the professor’s curious glance, he had. “How do you know that?”

  He must be more careful. “I misunderstood what you said, I’m sorry. Professor, please, how can you certify that she was a Vestal?”

  Rudolfo grinned as if he had not just pleaded with Josh to ask this very question. His warm eyes twinkled and he launched into his explanation with gusto. “We have written records about the Vestals that describe certain details, each of which we see here. Although this tomb does not conform to the barren type of pressed-dirt enclosure most often used when Vestals were put to death, this woman was buried alive—the punishment reserved for those nuns who broke their vows—not to starve to death but to suffocate. That’s the reason for those jugs. One for water, the other for milk—” He pointed to the roughhewn earthenware. “The very presence of the bed confirms it. You don’t bury a dead man or woman with a bed. Or an oil lamp, for that matter.”

  “Why do you think she was over there in the corner, though? Not sleeping on the cot? As the oxygen ran out it would have made her tired. Wouldn’t she have gone to sleep where it was comfortable?”

  “Very good, that’s one of our questions, too. It’s also very confusing why sacred objects were buried with her, because ancient Romans weren’t like the Egyptians. Their dead were not outfitted for the afterlife. Other than the lamp and the water and the milk, we didn’t expect to find anything else here.”

  Josh’s head pounded again. “What kind of objects did you find?”

  The professor pointed to a wooden box in the mummy’s hands. “She has been holding on to that for sixteen hundred years. Exciting, no?”

  Josh instantly recognized it. No, that was impossible. He must have seen a photograph of a similar box in a museum. Even more confusing, despite its familiarity, he had no idea what it was. “Have you opened it yet?”

  The professor nodded. “To come across a fine carved fruitwood box like that and not open it? I don’t know many archaeologists who could resist. It’s much older than Bella. Gabby and I think it dates back to before 2000 B.C., maybe as far back as 3000 B.C., and it doesn’t appear to be Roman at all, but Indian. We need to wait for the carbon dating.”

  “And inside? What is inside?” Pinpricks of excitement ran up and down Josh’s arms.

  “We can’t be certain until we do more work and take many tests, but we think they are the Memory Stones of the legendary Lost Memory Tools that your own Trevor Talmage wrote about.”

  “What are you basing that on?
”

  “The words carved here and here.” He pointed to the border running around the perimeter of the box. “We believe these are the same lines found on an ancient Egyptian papyrus currently in the British Museum. The same lines Trevor Talmage translated in 1884. Do you know about that?”

  Josh nodded. Talmage was the founder of the Phoenix Club—what was now the Phoenix Foundation. And Josh had read the entire “Lost Memory Tools” folder of original notes and translations that had been found behind a row of books in the library during the 1999 renovation at the Foundation.

  He was given the gift of a great bird who rose from fire to show him the way to the stones so he could pray upon them with song and lo! All of his past would be shown unto him.

  As Josh recited the words, a voice inside his head spoke them in another language that sounded alien and archaic.

  “That’s the same translation that Wallace Neely used,” Rudolfo said.

  “Who?” The name tickled Josh’s consciousness.

  “Wallace Neely was an archeologist who worked here in Rome in the late 1800s. Several of his digs were financed by your Phoenix Club. He found the original text that Talmage was in the process of translating at the time of his death….”

  He continued talking as Josh recalled a flashback he’d had six months ago, on the first day he’d walked into the Phoenix Foundation.

  Percy Talmage, home for the summer break from Yale, was in the dining room, listening to his uncle Davenport talk about protecting the club’s archeological investments in Rome. His uncle mentioned the archeologist they’d been financing. His name was Wallace Neely and he was searching for the Lost Memory Tools.

  And now, here in this ancient tomb, sitting beside the professor, another memory surfaced, but not one that belonged to him; Josh was remembering for someone in the past. He was remembering for Percy.

  Percy was just eight years old the first time he’d heard about the tools. His father had shown him the ancient manuscript he was translating. It had been written by a scribe who said the tools were not just a legend. They existed. The scribe had seen them and given a full description of each of the amulets, ornaments and stones.

  “The tools are important,” Trevor said to his son, “because history is important. He who knows the past controls the future. If the tools exist and if they can help people rediscover their past lives, you, me—and every member of the Phoenix Club—need to ensure this power is used for the good of all men, not selfishly exploited.”

  Percy didn’t understand just how important it was for years. And years.

  Was it possible that Josh had traveled halfway around the world to come back to where he’d started? Like so many things, this couldn’t be a coincidence. He needed time to work out the connections, but that time wasn’t now; the professor was still talking.

  “In the 1880s Neely purchased several sites in and around this area, a practice that was very common then,” the professor explained. “People bought the land they wanted to excavate so they could own the spoils outright. The club went into partnership with Neely and helped pay for the excavations, which could explain why the same inscription appears in both his journal and Talmage’s notes.”

  Josh peered down at the intricately carved wooden box clasped in the mummy’s hand. In its center was a bird rising out of a fire, a sword in its talons. It was almost identical to the coat of arms carved into the Phoenix Foundation’s front door. In the border, around the perimeter, he saw the markings that Rudolfo had pointed out.

  “Do you know what language this is?”

  “Gabriella has plans to be in touch with experts in the field. She believes they could be an ancient form of Sanskrit.”

  “I thought she was an expert?”

  “She is. In ancient Greek and Latin. This is neither.”

  Josh was confused about something. “You said this tomb was intact when you found it?”

  “Yes.”

  “So how could Neely have been here?”

  “We don’t believe he—or anyone else—ever worked on this site. The pages we have from his journal indicate he excavated two sites nearby but found nothing. He’d gone to work on a third site, but we don’t know what happened there. His journal abruptly ended while he was in the middle of that dig.”

  “Abruptly?”

  “He was killed. There’s very little known about the circumstances.”

  “But you have the journal?”

  “We have some pages.”

  “Where did you get them?”

  “Ask Gabby. She brought them to me along with the grant to take up where Neely stopped.”

  “And now you think you’ve found what he and the men who belonged to the Phoenix Club were looking for.”

  The professor nodded. “We think so. At least some of it, but there are so many unknowns still.” He pointed to a slightly discolored area on the wall near where the mummy crouched. “That was hidden by a tapestry and we don’t know why. Or why we found a knife beside Bella, because typically Roman women were never buried with weapons. And why is the knife broken? What was she doing?”

  Taking a long breath, Rudolfo looked down at the creature. “Oh, Bella. What secrets do you have?” The professor got down on his knees and leaned toward her.

  “Talk to me, my Belladonna,” he whispered in an intimate voice.

  Josh experienced a flash of a completely unfounded and unexpected emotion: a white-hot surge of jealousy unlike anything he’d ever felt for any lover he’d ever had. He wanted to rush over and pull Rudolfo away, to tell him he had no business leaning in so close, no right to get so near to her. Josh hadn’t known that this corpse even existed an hour before, but his recollections had taken over and in his mind he saw muscles appearing, then being covered by flesh, the flesh plumping out her face, neck, hands, breasts, hips, thighs and feet, all coming to life, her lips pinking, her eyes being colored a deep blue. The remnants of her coppery cotton robe turned white as they’d been years before. Only her long and wavy red hair remained the same—parted in the middle and braided into two ropes that hung past her shoulders.

  She was a corpse now, skin like leather and brittle bones, but once…once…she’d been beautiful. A million images crashed inside his head. Centuries of words he’d never heard before. One louder than the rest. He snatched it out from the cacophony.

  Sabina.

  Her name.

  Chapter 4

  “I’m not sure you believe the story you just told me, but I believe it,” the professor said after Josh told an abbreviated version of what had happened to him in the past sixteen months and how he had come to be there so early that morning. “Every time you looked at her, I could tell there was something else you were seeing. I knew there was some connection more than just curiosity.” He seemed inordinately pleased with himself.

  Yes, in the gloomy light, if Josh squinted, the mummy was almost a living woman crouched there in the corner, not a sixteen-hundred-year-old shell whose sleep had recently been disturbed.

  A breeze from the opening to the tomb whooshed through the space, and a single wisp of a curl escaped from her braids.

  She’d always been so proud of how she looked, of being well kept; how she’d hate that her hair had come undone. He could see her unbraiding it, turning it into a glorious jasmine-and-sandalwood-perfumed silk tent that covered them both as they kissed in the dark, in secret, under the trees. Her hair fell on his cheeks, his lips and twisted in and out of his fingers: it was the thread that wove them together, that would keep them from ever separating.

  He didn’t think about what he was doing, it happened too fast, he simply reached out and grasped the curl and—

  “No,” the professor shouted as he pulled Josh’s arm away. “She is fragile. That she is still intact is a miracle. If you touch her, she might break. Do you understand?”

  The sensation of her hair on his fingers was almost more than Josh could bear. Turning away, rubbing his hands together, he found and
then focused on the ancient oil lamp, blackened with soot on the ground. It looked as if she’d pushed it as close as she could get it to the alcove in the wall, at that discolored patch of earth.

  The gates in his mind opened an inch wider. Josh’s head throbbed with the new rush of information. He needed to go deeper into the lurches instead of skimming them, but he could only be in one place at a time. Then or now. Not both.

  Give in to it. Concentrate on what happened. Long ago. Long ago, right here. What happened here?

  Josh, oblivious to the professor’s warnings that he might be defiling the dig, fell to his knees and clawed at the dirt wall with his bare hands. He had something to prove. To her. To himself. He didn’t know what it was—only that something that lay behind this partition would vindicate him.

  “What are you doing?” the professor asked, horrified. “Stop!”

  As if the dream had become reality and the reality had slipped away, Josh only vaguely heard the professor cautioning him to stop, barely felt the man’s hands trying to pull him back. The man’s protestations didn’t matter. Not anymore.

  The dirt was packed tightly, but once he dug the first few handfuls out the rest was easier to break through. The wall, which was only four or five inches thick, three-and-a-half-feet tall and three feet wide, broke apart in chunks, revealing what appeared to be the opening of a tunnel. A piece of rock ripped the skin on his left palm, but he couldn’t stop, he was almost there.

  A gush of cool, stale air rushed toward him.

  Ancient air.

  Sixteen-hundred-year-old molecules and particles filled his lungs, along with the scents of jasmine and sandalwood. He climbed in, despite the claustrophobia that reached out and grabbed hold of him and the out-of-control panic that threatened his progress. Sweating suddenly, now gasping for breath, he desperately wanted to turn around, but the pull of the tunnel was more powerful than the paranoia.