by Aiden James
“How is Juan?” I enquired anxiously.
“He’s much better. In fact, you’ll be surprised at the turn of events in only a matter of hours.”
“Really?” I prayed it wasn’t anything too extreme. “By the way, this is Campala; I bought her from Captain Chivers.”
“I’m shocked you brought a slave girl to my door. What are you expecting me to do, buy her? Let’s go inside and talk, shall we?”
I followed, smiling sheepishly. Campala tried to stay back, but I grabbed her hand and pulled her inside.
“Why did you purchase a slave?” he demanded.
“Because I wasn’t thinking clearly enough,” I said. “I saw her as a sound investment knowing how in demand she’d be. Look at her… she’s beautiful. I could sell her at profit with great speed, there’s not a man alive who wouldn’t pay double.”
“That’s where you’re wrong; there are many men who would balk at the idea. This poor girl needs to be sent home immediately!”
I didn’t reply. Instead, I had become the chastised son lectured by a judgmental father. My usual reaction would have been to argue fiercely back. But I had tremendous respect for John and his hospitality, so I restrained myself.
“What’s the point?” I replied in earnest. “She’ll be taken by slave traders again and shipped straight off to Europe, maybe even bound for America.”
Juan suddenly appeared, smiling and back to normal, with Rachel firmly attached to his arm. Fearing the worse, I looked into their love struck eyes. They were together.
“I’ve been gone one day, just enough time for you to get your hooks firmly in!” I said to Rachel. She ignored me, keeping her gaze locked on Juan. “You’re very good at getting what you want girl, but you won’t have Juan, I will make sure of it.”
“He’s a man with a mind of his own,” she said. “Besides, I’ve changed. Ask John.”
Before I could respond, Juan, who’d taken great offence at my remarks, hurtled toward me, pushing me hard down onto the floor.
“I’m stronger and smarter than you know. In fact, what do you know of me? Most of the time you’re too wrapped up in yourself to know anyone. Rachel and I are staying on in Madagascar and there’s nothing you can do about it!” he said, keeping one foot firmly on my chest.
I could have grabbed it and brought him down but decided not to. The last thing he needed was to lose face in front of a woman, especially Rachel.
“There’s nothing for us to go back to,” he continued, firmly. “Rachel and I have purchased a parcel of land from John to build a house on. You can go back to Europe alone. I can’t and won’t be swayed.”
There I was, not a moment earlier assuring the Captain that Rachel was harmless. How wrong could I have been? Juan released his foot and pulled me up, our friendship changed forever.
“It eats away, doesn’t it?” she slyly commented. “That you’re still convinced I stole the coin. I expect you’d be appeased if I had it and handed it over.”
“I’d be on my way, bothering you no more,” I replied.
“I don’t have it.”
Of course, I didn’t believe her. “If you desire not to be chased and hunted down for the rest of your life, Rachel, you’d… be wise to hand over my coin.”
I wanted to strangle Juan for his stupidity and with my patience gone, I dragged her out of John’s hut. “Let me go… my God Emmanuel… stop!” she screamed, as I took her with great force. Juan’s face was no more than a blur as his attempts to physically stop me failed. “I’ll curse you Judas, you won’t get away with treating me this way!” She kicked and struggled, but my strength far exceeded hers.
“I warn you,” Juan growled. “Let go of her or… I will challenge you.”
“Challenge me to what?” I retorted. “To a duel? We both would likely survive, but why chose to fight over this girl? If you do, then you’re more of an idiot than I thought!”
“Judas, stop!” he shouted
“No! Leave us be,” I rebuked him, angrily. “I need to get the truth from this evil bitch if it’s the last thing I do on earth. Stay here by the house. If you have any sense, you’ll think twice about following me.”
I hoped my dire warning registered long enough for me to get Rachel away. My plan? To put her in a horrible situation where she’d be forced to confess all. Ignoring her screams, and the pleas from John urging me to stop, I continued to take her further away from the house and into the forest.
“I want you to die and be condemned to a fiery hell! I hate you!” she screamed. “Do you think it was mere coincidence we met? No, you were guided to me by Jesus Christ Himself. He speaks to me through the stigmata. He wants you to suffer on and on. I know!”
I continued to ignore her as we moved deeper into the forest. Bats flew overhead and the sound of singing insects was near deafening. Damp leaves slipped against my skin as Rachel continued to squirm within my grip. I was only slightly distracted by the faint sounds of Juan, who tried to follow and was calling out in anger. The air had become thick and stagnant, made warmer by the large leafed trees acting as a blanket and making conditions deceptive. I wiped the sweat from my brow, refusing to let go of Rachel’s sweat soaked arm. What I was doing and where I was taking her, I didn’t know… such was my rage.
Without warning and before I had a chance to react, we both fell into a deep mud filled swamp disguised by a blanket of leaves. Holding my breath, I came to the surface but the weight of the mud pressed hard against my body causing me to struggle. In the darkness, I called out to Rachel with a mouth full of mud and slime as I madly paddled to stay afloat. A full moon filtered through the vegetation, affording definitive shadows and a soft white light. It acted as a beacon, guiding me to a large branch hanging over the swamp. Rachel grabbed hard onto my shoulders from behind.
“Help me!” she gasped, grabbing at my hand, but slipping through my fingers.
It occurred to me, as I tried to grab her hand, that my efforts to get her to confess to where my coin was hidden were largely folly, continuing to fail and lead to more frustration.
“Don’t let go,” I told her, needing to find the physical strength for two as I ploughed through rotting vegetation and slime-ridden mud, determined to keep hold of the one branch within my reach. No matter what, I was going to pull myself up, hopefully with Rachel clinging on. I didn’t relish the thought of having to dive back into the gore find her. But my new mission was to have us both reach the bank safely. Hating her smug smile from earlier, I loathed being responsible for her possible death even more.
Leeches were sucking the blood from my face, frogs croaked loudly nearby, and bats swooped so low I could have touched them if my hands were free. Suddenly, I felt her hands grasp my breeches and then my waist. She was pulling on me to help herself climb up.
“Rachel?”
“Help!”
Regardless of personal feelings, I pulled her up, but then she slipped again from my grasp. This time she completely disappeared. Now desperate to save her, I submerged myself back into the slime. I couldn’t find her. Despite being sucked down into the disgusting muck, I knew I couldn’t perish. But my tolerance of such conditions was being put to the test.
I stayed under the mud long enough to know it would be impossible for a mortal to survive this long. Even so, I continued to search, while being sucked lower and lower until I came across what felt like a foot. I attempted to grab it, but it slipped from my grasp. Worse, I couldn’t find it again… or any other part of her body.
Mosquitoes swarmed in their thousands as I returned to the surface, mud dripping from my head. There wasn’t anything more I could do. No sign of Rachel, my calls to her went unanswered. Other than insects and a lone frog, which jumped and croaked its way across the swamp, there were no other signs of life.
achel dying a slow agonizing death weighed upon my heart—much more profoundly than I expected. Not to mention, the loss of a precious coin’s whereabouts accompanied her demise. My red
emption felt less attainable than ever, and an hour or more passed before I decided to move on, wondering how I was going to explain what happened to Juan and John. I convinced myself God had taken Rachel to punish me.
A heavy downpour managed to wash most of the mud by the time I reached John’s home. The first person to greet me was Juan, who having failed to find us waited in vain for our safe return, possessing a face of thunder.
“What in God’s name has happened, you son of a whore? Where’s Rachel? What did you do to her?!” he demanded, running toward me.
“It was an accident, we didn’t see the leaves and fell in. That’s the honest truth. I swear by God’s hand, I tried to save her and failed….”
My voice trailed off, and I was surprised at how vulnerable I felt.
“I hope your punishment will be to always search for this missing coin, so your immortality lasts even longer!” said Juan, his voice shaking. His eyes filled with tears. “I also hope they hate you more in the next century and you have even greater misery in the one after!”
Juan was in shock, angrily blaming me for the death of his newly betrothed. He had forgotten how Rachel and I were both to blame when he franticly explained what I had done to John. I remained quiet.
No one spoke to me, not even Campala, who looked at me with disgust when John translated the news. I’d been ostracized while Rachel was elevated to sainthood on a heat-ridden, disease-infested island, where she’d have been lucky to live to thirty. Juan also understood mortals died off fairly quickly with no exceptions for those we love the most, especially is such harsh tropical conditions.
I couldn’t get him to listen.
“Emmanuel, come with me.” John requested I join him for a private conversation in his study room. I complied. “Juan is far too sentimental for what I am about to offer to you.” he said. ‘Some may judge your ability to get through life with a keen sense of smartness, and your detached perspective. But I admire it, and would like to offer you membership in our society.”
“What society? I’m not one to join any groups, preferring my independence.”
“This one will benefit you greatly, much more than anything you’ve been involved with before. Riches beyond your dreams, the ultimate power and the chance to create a new Atlantis in a foreign land under the wing of the Rosicrucians.”
The moment he mentioned the name I recalled a hedonistic Alexandrian named Ormus who was under a spell of the disciple Mark. He along with six other associates formed the Rosicrucians. It was the year 46 AD; I had just began my journey as an immortal, suspicious of any clandestine orders.
“I’ll think about it,” I replied, knowing full well I’d never join.
I found Juan being gently consoled by Campala. When I requested to talk with Juan, she left us alone.
“I’m remorseful for what happened, truly I am,” I said in earnest. “From the moment I set eyes on Rachel, my existence became a torture. She used the death of her father and the missing coin as a weapon to taunt and goad me constantly. A solid test of my patience. But… I swear on the soul of Jesus, it was an accident, we both fell in,” I prayed he would at least try to believe me.
“What did you do to try and save her then?”
“I dived into the thick mud… more than once.”
“I find it hard to believe you let her slip away… how could you?”
“I’m sorry… so sorry.”
“No, you’re not!” he replied evenly.
“Believe what you want,” I said, wishing to be a thousand miles away from there. “What did you find out from her? Seeing as you became a couple, did she not confess the truth?”
“The man Isaac was not her father. He was someone who took care of her, one of many. Rachel was no shepherd’s daughter; she was a very traveled young woman.”
“What in the hell are you talking about?”
“Rachel was one of us. An immortal from Judea who died almost 2000 years before Christ was born. How she found her way to France is a mystery. I believe, after much traveling, she arrived there sometime in the early 16th century. She told me she’d seen you centuries before in a market place in Judea when you were mortal. You passed each other without a word and she thought you very handsome. She also claimed to have watched Jesus die on the cross.”
“And when exactly did she tell you this tall tale?”
“She wasn’t lying.”
“Juan, you are a fool, nothing more, if you believed this story,” I replied in disbelief. “We don’t die in mud filled swamps, certainly not an immortal who’s walked the earth thousands of years longer than I. It’s very suspicious, with all the marks of a Rachel fantasy.”
“It does sound comical, and would be, if it wasn’t the truth,” said a familiar voice from behind me. “They say mud is good for the skin. In Roman times, mud baths were considered healthy. Personally, I prefer milk, with two or three handmaidens in attendance. Those were the days. I adored the craziness of Nero and the apostle Matthew was terrible in bed. I never had Jesus, he was too pious.”
“The Lord Jesus would never stoop to touch one such as you, a Babylonian whore!”
Rachel was back from the dead, half covered in mud, and looking very much alive. A nightmare like no other, she was indeed immortal.
“I’m a seeker of knowledge. The past and future is my fascination and concern, as is Rachel’s prophecy,” John announced putting a protective arm around her. “Yes, I knew of her immortality, too.”
I had heard a hundred or more prophecies over the centuries, none of them yet to come to fruition. Unless, of course, I was dead and didn’t know it. The world was still here. Now I was being forced to listen to another ‘pie in the sky’ quote for the future, made worse by being back in the company of someone I abhorred.
“So, Rachel, if that’s your name, do you plan on telling me who you really are? It appears everyone knows, but me,” I said.
“She only confessed to me the night you left. When you returned, I had no time to tell you before you dragged her away,” Juan said.
“I knew the moment I set eyes on her, she was special, my crystal confirming it as true. She asked me not to inform you until the moment was right. Go on, Rachel, tell him,” John urged her.
“I was born in the region of Judea. Like you, my early years were spent in dishonesty. I stole clay figurines from the local potter, which I sold for a good profit. But my luck ran out when the village elders learned of my crime. One of them forced himself on me, and afterward, he ordered his son to stake me by my hands and feet to a post. I was left to die a slow lingering death in the boiling sun with no dignity of a burial. I was surprised to wake from death, dazed and confused with no understanding of my immortality. I ran as far away as I could from everyone I had ever known.”
It made some sense. If this was the truth, Rachel had become obsessed with her own agonizing death and later the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Her suffering was to recreate these events over and over, just as I searched on and on for the bounty paid to me for Jesus’s betrayal. But if she truly was a stigmatic, what did it fulfill?
“So, what will bring an end to your immortality?” I asked.
“With John’s help, the future destruction of a powerful new Atlantis which will fester in the New World and its alliances. You and your counterpart, Roderick Cooley, can be part of something very important in the future.”
“You mean the end of the world?”
“It will come, mark my words. My destiny was to come to Madagascar and meet John. Juan and I are meant to be together, and by the way, Emmanuel, thank you for disposing of Isaac. He only gave me a roof over my head in exchange for personal favors. So shamed was he, lying to everyone I was his daughter.”
“I’m not going to be responsible for world destruction. Besides, I expect my immortality to be over by then. Why are you asking me? I’m the last person to be in control of worlds end.”
She laughed smugly, as if what I said was irrelevant.
“Come on, Emmanuel, you and I both know our immortality will end. Centuries from now, it will all be over. One stupid little coin doesn’t amount to anything compared to what’s coming. The world as we know it will fall apart, bit by bit, country by country, its war mongering hatred eating away like a rabid poison.”
“Truly?”
“If you think me amusing, wait and see what happens when Mother Nature says it’s enough. There will be waves as big as mountains, the sun will burn people alive and the ice caps will melt into the oceans. This comes on top of men annihilating themselves and taking millions of innocents with them. Hellfire and brimstone… you’ll see,” she said.
“How do you know all this?”
“The day I saw you in the market centuries before you were immortal, I told myself we would meet again. You see I was right. I came from a family who knew things beyond the comprehension of others, and like John, we saw the future.”
“Rest assured, Rachel speaks the truth, as do I,” added John. “Your reasons for being here are not to be taken lightly. Just before you returned with Campala, Rachel gave me this,” he said handing me an intricately embroidered bag. “I was instructed to give it only to you and not to open it,” he sighed, reluctantly handing to me.
Inside the bag was a strange mix of items. Old jewelry, an odd shaped stone, another empty bag inside. I didn’t understand what was even significant as I dug deeper, hoping to be surprised by my coin. Exasperated, I tipped out the remaining contents to reveal a ceramic ring, much too large for her dainty fingers. There was a very battered inscription on the inside, which had become so unreadable I barely recognized the ancient Aramaic words.
“You’re holding the ring of your friend, Jesus of Nazareth, I know everything from Rachel and Juan, there are no secrets here,” John said
