Johnny Black, Soul Chaser: The Complete Series (Johnny Black, Soul Chaser Series)

by JJ Zep

  There was a yellowish tint to the pool that I didn’t entirely care for, but I stepped in nonetheless. I felt myself falling and then had that weird sensation where everything reverses and suddenly I was ascending.

  Unlike in Lake Michigan I didn’t linger at the bottom. I was immediately pulled upward and as I broke the surface I felt the sun on my face and the tug of the current. I struck out for the riverbank and reached the shallows, noticing as I did, a body floating face-up in the water.

  A strange magnetism seemed to draw me towards the corpse and I felt my substance begin to liquefy, to lose its shape and to merge with the body. For a brief moment I had a vision of being in some kind of stadium, of the cheer of the crowd and then of something colliding with my abdomen and of blackness. Then it was gone and all I could feel was the tepid water of the Tiber and the mud squishing around my sandaled feet.

  I waded the last few steps towards the riverbank, crawled out and lay on my back, taking in huge gasps of air. I gradually became aware of an acute itchiness in my side and when I lifted the rough tunic I was wearing, I saw a deep gash there, blanched white by the water, but now beginning to ooze thick blood. That got my attention. I needed to have the wound seen to, so I rolled over onto my stomach, got my knees under me and pushed up. I felt myself sway slightly, whether from the wound, or from the eight Red Imp lagers I’d consumed at the Bucket of Blood, I wasn’t sure. I took a moment to steady myself, then started walking along the riverbank towards Rome.

  Up ahead I could see the walls of the city and some fishermen casting nets into the water. I headed towards the men, who paid no attention to my approach at first. One of them stood apart from the others and as I walked towards him he looked at me and his eyes widened so much I thought they might plop right out of his head.

  “By Jupiter and all the gods,” he stammered, “Fabius Negritis, I thought you were dead. No, you were dead. I saw you killed in the arena. Saw it with my own two eyes.”

  “Fabius who?

  “Fabius Negritis. Don’t you recognize me? I’m your neighbor Marius Publus.”

  “You have me confused with someone else,” I said, “I’m Marcus Flaminicus, second spear centurion to…”

  “No you’re not, you’re Fabius Negritis, fishmonger on the Aventine. The only thing is, you’re dead, or at least you should be. Yet it appears the gods have favored you with immortality, either that or…”

  “I’m Fabius Negritis?” I said.

  “Now, you getting it.” Marius Publus said. He turned towards the other fishermen, “Hey, fellers, look who’s here, back from the dead!”

  The other men had now dropped their nets and were running towards us. The biggest of them, a swarthy man with long black locks, drew his sword. “What dark sorcery is this?” he demanded. He raised his weapon but one of the other men stopped him.

  “Put it away, you Nubian fool. This man might be a god, or at least a favorite of the gods. You wouldn’t want to piss off the gods would you?”

  “A devil more like,” the Nubian said.

  “A god, I say.”

  “Why don’t we just ask him?” someone else suggested.

  “Go on then,” his companions urged.

  “Sire,” the man said, “Good day to you and welcome to our humble riverbank. We are fishermen of the Aventine here casting our nets on this fine spring morning…”

  “Get on with it,” one of his companions grumbled.

  “What we’d like to know sir, begging your indulgence, is be you a god or a devil? If the former, how goes my sainted mother, if the latter, is my father well?”

  “Oh, do shut up,” another man said, then addressed me directly. “Brother Negritis,” he said, “It is I, Titus Pesce. You will remember me as an honest and forthright fisherman…”

  “Honest and forthright…” someone snorted.

  “An honest and forthright fisherman,” Titus Pesce continued, “from whom you purchase eels and plaice and such. A question Negritis, if you please, we all saw you skewered in the arena. Killed by a javelin. We heard that you were thrown into the river, yet here you are right as rain among us. How is this possible? Are you a god?”

  “An ordinary man I assure you. Perhaps the javelin did not go as deep as you might have thought.”

  “Went clear through,” one of the men insisted, “Saw it myself.”

  “Never seen so much blood,” another added.

  “He’s a god, I tell you,” someone said in an awestruck tone.

  “Can you fire thunderbolts from your eyes?” someone else asked.

  “And what of the future? Will I be wealthy?”

  “Look, I’m not who you all think I am…”

  “All hail, Negritis, defier of Morta and Mantus,” Marius Publus said, falling to his knees.

  “Hail Negritis, who sits at the right hand of Jupiter.”

  “Hail Negritis, who laughs in the face of death.”

  “Negritis! Negritis! Negritis!” they chanted.

  This was quickly getting out of hand and I had to put a stop to it. “Look, I said, “I’m not a god. I’m just a humble fishmonger as you say, and I just want to get home. Where do I stay?”

  “On the Aventine of course, close to the Navalis Gate.”

  “All hail, Negritis, lord of the Aventine.”

  “I’m not lord of anything, I’m not immortal and I’m not a god. I just want to go home.”

  “Your wife will be pissed,” Titus Pesce said. “She has a funeral wake planned with over a hundred guests.”

  VIII

  By the time I reached the Navalis Gate, word of my resurrection had spread. I still wasn’t sure what exactly had happened, I was supposed to be a second spear centurion and bodyguard to General Bacchus, instead it appeared I was a fishmonger named Fabius Negritis.

  “Greetings citizen,” the sentry at the gate sniggered. “You’ll be Fabius Negritis, the immortal.”

  “How could you know that?”

  “Oh, it’s all over the Aventine,” the soldier laughed, “You’re quite the celebrity. Move along now, your public awaits.”

  I entered the gate and found myself in a huge ghetto, extending around the foot of a hill and up its sides. There were narrow, cobbled roads winding between the buildings and various common spaces where all manner of goods were on sale. The stench was quite something but the streets seemed remarkably quiet given the number of people that were milling around. I had no idea where the house of Fabius Negritis was, so I set of along one of the cobbled streets. As I passed people on the streets stared and pointed and whispered behind hands. Some took my hands and kissed them, while others fell to their knees and tugged at my tunic. There were calls of, “Bless us, Negritis.” and “Remember us in your prayers, Negritis.”

  After a while I looked back and saw that a large crowd was following me. Some of them knelt when I looked at them. It was all very bizarre, and also problematic. Getting close to Bacchus as his personal body guard was easy, getting to him as a fishmonger who half of Rome thought was a god, was going to be a lot more difficult.

  When I could take it no more I turned and faced the crowd. “Look,” I said, will you stop following me around?”

  “We’re not following you around,” someone shouted back. “We’re following the path of a god. All hail, Fabius Negritis, god made flesh!”

  “Negritis! Negritis! Negritis!”

  “I am not a god! I am a fishmonger!”

  “All hail Fabius Negritis, son of Neptune!”

  “I am not a god!”

  “You are!”

  “Am not!”

  Suddenly the crowd fell silent and an attractive woman in an expensive-looking, turquoise dress stepped forward. “Husband,” she said, “Why are you standing in the middle of the road in that bloody tunic. You’re making a spectacle of yourself. Come, home with you.”

  I followed the woman up a winding road to a well-appointed apartment that had an excellent view over the city. Fabius Negritis had
obviously been a very successful fishmonger. The house had furnishings that looked way too expensive for a working class neighborhood. There were also four slaves, one of whom the woman now summoned.

  “Pecunio,” she said. “Run and fetch the doctor. Tell him my husband is unwell.”

  Once the slave had gone the woman looked at me disapprovingly. “Well,” she said, “can’t say I expected to see you again so soon. Most inconvenient too, after I’ve hired a tuba player and paid a priest to deliver a eulogy at your funeral, not to mention the Novendailis. A hundred guests I invited, now I’ll have to haggle to get my deposit back. The embarrassment of it all, I’ll be laughed at in the streets. Well, what do you have to say for yourself?”

  “Who are you exactly?”

  “Don’t even attempt levity with me Fabius, you know full well that I’m your wife Olivia. Bad enough to leave me destitute and debt-ridden, but to feign your own death, and now claim amnesia. Shameful.” She started sobbing.

  “Domina, the doctor,” one of the slaves said and a stooped grey haired man carrying a leather satchel entered the room.

  “Ah, the man become god, he said. “Let’s have a look at you. Go on, off with that tunic and lie down on the bed.”

  “Not on my clean bed linens,” Olivia said. “To the kitchen with you, the table will do.”

  I followed her and the doctor into the kitchen with the four slaves bringing up the rear. The doctor instructed me to remove my tunic and lie down of the table, all of which was quite disconcerting with a woman I’d never seen before, not to mention four slaves, looking on.

  The doctor cleaned up the wound then prodded and pressed at it, muttering and murmuring to himself.

  “Does this hurt?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “And this?”

  “No.”

  “This then.”

  “Not at all.”

  “Most extraordinary,” the doctor said. “Clear through the liver. By rights you should be in Elysium by now. Perhaps what they’re saying about you is true.”

  “And what’s that?” Olivia asked.

  “That your husband is a favorite of the gods, or perhaps even a god himself.”

  “I’m not a god,” I insisted. “Can I get dressed now?”

  “Right after I stitch you up,” the doctor said. “Although I’m not sure you need it. Most extraordinary thing I’ve ever seen.”

  The doctor got to work stitching up the wound punctuating his labor with words like ‘miracle’ and ‘marvel’ and asking me numerous times whether or not this or that hurt. When he was done he refused payment asking instead for a blessing.

  “I’m just a mortal man and any blessing I give will mean nothing,” I said.

  “Oh, go on,” Olivia said. “It’s the least you can do after the doctor saved your life.”

  “Oh, very well,” I said eventually. At that point I would have said anything for a bit of peace and quiet. “Though you walk through the valley of the shadow of death, fear no evil.”

  “Most profound,” the doctor said.

  From outside I could now here the babble of voices and I walked through the bedroom and pushed through the double doors and onto the balcony. There was a large crowd gathered outside, some of them carrying candles. A gasp went up from the crowd and somebody shouted, “It’s Fabius Negritis!”

  “All hail, Negritis!”

  “Negritis! Negritis! Negritis!” they chanted.

  “Look,” I said. “I’ve had just about enough of this! Go home all of you!”

  “Give us your blessing!”

  “Right you want a blessing from a fishmonger do you? Okay then, here it is. Blessed be. Now piss off!”

  IX

  I stomped back into the bedroom where I found Olivia reclining on the bed with a mischievous smile on her face. “Come and lie with me a while, husband,” she said. “You must be tired. And shut the door, it’s gotten all smoky in here. You haven’t been burning incense have you?”

  I was tired. In fact, I was bushed and more than a little annoyed with all this god stuff. But even so, I had to wonder about Olivia’s sudden change of heart. Up to now, my being alive had seemed to be a major point of irritation to her. Now suddenly it looked like she was inviting me to fool around.

  “What about your bed linens?” I asked.

  “Oh, I could care a fig for the bed linens. I have my Fabius back, that’s all that matters.”

  Now, I had a mission to complete, but with half of Rome camping outside my door, I wasn’t going anywhere for a while so I figured, why not. I mean if I had to be married to a bitch I may as well enjoy my matrimonial privileges. I joined Olivia on the bed.

  Afterwards she cuddled up to me, “Do I please you, husband?” she asked.

  “Yes, very much,” I said, and I wasn’t kidding. Olivia certainly knew her way around the bedroom. She was what Jitterbug would have called a hotsy-totsy dame.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Olivia said. “We saved ourselves four denari today, simply by you giving the doctor that silly blessing.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “And there must be a hundred people outside chanting your name.”

  “So?” I could see where this was going.

  “So let’s just say, just saying mind, that you were to give each of them a blessing at four denari a head. Why that would be 400 denari, just for saying a few silly words.”

  “Ah ha.”

  “And that’s just for starters. There are a million people in Rome and we could expand to written blessings on tablets, sacred artifacts and the like. You’d be richer than Crassus, and we’d been out of the stinking fishmongering business forever. What do you say?”

  “I say, no.”

  Olivia looked at me as though I’d just slapped her. “But husband,” she said. “You have a gift. Why not share it with the world.”

  “To turn a profit you mean.”

  “That too, but think about the hope and joy you’d bring to their miserable, meaningless little lives.”

  “Not to mention you purse.”

  “I am your wife, after all,” Olivia pouted. “Quite entitled to share in your good fortune.”

  “First of all,“ I said. “I have no good fortune. I’m a humble fishmonger thrown in the river before they checked properly that I was dead. I’m not a god and the sooner people around here realize that, the better.”

  “You’re also up to your neck in hock to Numero, and once he hears you’re back from the dead, he’ll be coming for the money you owe him. If you can’t pay he’ll have you sold to a Lanista again and thrown back into the arena. Maybe this time they won’t be so careless before throwing you into the drink.”

  “Who the hell is Numero?”

  “Don’t tell me you don’t remember all the debts you left for me to take care of.”

  “Debts for what?”

  “This apartment, the fine bed linens you’re laying on, the furnishings, the slaves…”

  “…the fine dress you were wearing earlier.”

  “I’m the wife of a respected merchant,” she said. “I have to keep up appearances.”

  One of the slaves entered the room, “I’m sorry Domina, the moneylender, Numero, he’s here to see you.”

  “You see!” Olivia said, “I told you he’d be along sooner or later. Sooner it seems.”

  “I’ll deal with this,” I said.

  X

  “Citizen Negritis,” Numero said. “So the rumors are true, back from the dead, by Jupiter!” Numero was a short, stocky man with tightly curled black hair, an olive complexion and a flat face. He wore a blue toga, copious amounts of gold jewelry and had two ferocious looking bodyguards with him.

  “Numero,” I said. “Welcome to my humble abode.”

  “Hardly humble,” he chuckled. “And I should know, I paid for it.” He suddenly became more serious. “You owe me three hundred denari, brother. I’m here to collect.”

  “Three hundred denari for wha
t?” I said.

  “Look around you,” Numero laughed. “Your wife has expensive tastes. And a word to the wise, brother, it’s not just me she’s been borrowing from, she owes money all over town, including to Acturio for your funeral wake.”

  “Ah, yes, my funeral wake. Tell me Numero how you plan on collecting money from a dead man?”

  “A dead man? Numero said. “Unless I’ve been staring too deeply into my wine goblet, I see you clear as day, in front of me?”

  “So you do, and yet thousands saw me slain in the arena.”

  “Some say he’s a god,” one of the bodyguards said.

  “Silence fool!” Numero cut in. “He’s no more a god than I am. He bribed some corrupt officials they gave him a flesh wound and threw him in the Tiber. I didn’t get to the top in this business by believing every cock and bull story that a debtor ever spun me.”

  “So what now?” I said.

  “Now you pay me my money or you end up back among the damnati. Ah, here’s the lady of the house now. Good evening, Olivia.”

  “Citizen Numero,” Olivia said, sounding like she was greeting Caesar himself. “A profound honor. Pardon my husband’s manners, will you take honey water, a little wine perhaps.”

  “I won’t, thank you,” Numero said. “The gout’s playing me up something terrible. I’m just consulting with your husband here on certain pecuniary matters. Now where were we?”

  “You were saying that if I don’t pay the money my wife borrowed you’ll throw me into the arena to be flayed and skewered again.”

  “Bravo! You have it in one. So what’s it to be?”

  “Well, I don’t have the money you want, so I’m afraid you’re going to have to throw me to the wolves, so to speak.”

  “You grieve me citizen, but okay then. Tulio, Primus, seize him.”

  The two goons stepped forward, took an arm each and hoisted me to my feet.

  “Wait!” I said, “You do realize that manhandling a god may constitute a capital offence.”

  “You’re no god,” Numero scoffed, “My mother-in-law is more godly than you. Besides who in his right mind would abscond from Elysium. If you are a god you must be the god of stupidity.”