The Reincarnationist (16 page)

G
lancing at her watch, Gabriella was surprised that it was 11:20 p.m. Only fifteen minutes had passed since the last time she'd called the hospital. She wanted to call again and find out if there'd been any change, but last time the night nurse had promised that if the professor took a turn for the worse, she'd phone Gabriella.

Except she was going crazy. The longer she paced the more she thought about the tragedies of the past two days: the professor's life hanging in the balance, the robbery and Tony's death. He had been such a presence at the dig, was always there in the morning when she arrived at the site with his big grin and boisterous hello. Several times when she'd worked through lunch he'd call down to tell her he was going off duty and ask if she wanted him to get her something before he went home. He'd even bought her a toy for Quinn. A doll of a Vatican guard with his high hat and yellow-and-black tights.

Tears threatened, but she fought them back. Gabriella had learned, first when her mother died and then when her husband had been asphyxiated, tears didn't do a damn bit of good. Emotions were something to be endured, not
indulged. Sometimes when she thought about Quinn she bit down on the inside of her mouth until the pain distracted her from the overwhelming fear—the floating fear, she called it—that she could not control what would happen to her baby.

Gabriella had spent her life with the dead, and she wasn't scared of joining them, but she couldn't bear any more loss in her life. Especially not her precious child. And yet, tragedy was too accommodating. Accidents were always waiting. A runaway car careened down a street. An errant germ passed from child to child at school. An internal time bomb was transmitted from parent to child through DNA.

No, no, no. She wasn't going to fall prey to this perverse, masochistic indulgence. If horrors were going to come, her worrying now wouldn't stop them. She should get out of there. Take a walk. Stop at a café. Have a glass of wine. Anything but sitting, waiting and thinking or, worse, obsessing.

She brushed her hair, picked up her bag and walked toward the door, and then her cell phone rang.

Mrs. Rudolfo was crying. The professor was worse. His fever had spiked and he was delirious. The medicine wasn't controlling the infection. Would she come?

Yes, Gabriella said. Yes, of course, she was on her way.

The man in the gray sedan watched Professor Chase come out of her apartment, run to her car and get in. He turned on his ignition, and twenty seconds after she pulled out, he did, too, driving far enough behind her so he wouldn't be too obvious.

The man in the black SUV who had parked much farther down the block saw Gabriella drive away, too, but he didn't follow her. All he did was punch a number in on his cell phone and wait for someone to pick up.

Across the street, inside the apartment building that
Gabriella had just left, her landlady sat in the living room of her ground-floor apartment, knitting a sweater for one of her grandchildren and watching an old Fellini movie on television. She was close enough to the telephone so that when it rang, Camilla Volpe picked it up on the second ring. She said hello, listened, nodded, said,
sì, sì, sì,
began to say something else and then heard the man she was speaking to hang up. Reaching for a key ring that sat in a green glass bowl on her entry table, the landlady went out her front door.

Her knees hurt as she climbed the stairs. Her arthritis was acting up, but she was tired of going to doctors and waiting in sitting rooms. There wasn't any miracle cure for getting older. She remembered her grandmother's hands when she reached her nineties, gnarled and spotted with heavy ropes of veins in bas-relief.

Reaching apartment 2B, Signora Volpe opened the door as if it was her right to do that. And it was, wasn't it? If someone she had rented one of her apartments to was doing something illegal, it was her duty to help the police catch her, no?

There were always stories in the papers about archeologists raping Rome—finding ancient artwork and smuggling it out of the country where it rightfully belonged. If the American woman was doing that, it was her responsibility to help the police.

The detective on the phone had told her the proof he needed would be in the black notebooks Gabriella Chase wrote in and in the photographs of the site.

That was what she was supposed to look for: black notebooks and photographs. That was all they wanted.

Methodically, Signora Volpe went through the piles of papers on the desk. She could feel her heart beating. She was like one of those actors in the movies her husband
liked to watch when he was alive, sneaking around, spying on people. She was sixty-two years old and she had never set foot in a police station. Now she was cooperating with a detective and playing private eye. As scared as she was, she was also a little excited. Exhilarated, really. After all, she was helping to prevent the theft of a national treasure.

Under a pile of papers and magazines, Signora Volpe found a notebook. And, yes, it was black. She picked it up. What luck to have found it so fast! Underneath that was a pile of photographs. Glancing at the one on top, she saw a small, cavernous room. Old and dusty, but with the most glorious painting of flowers on the wall. Could they steal a wall painting, she wondered?

Taking a plastic bag from the pocket of her housedress, she shook it out and carefully put the photos and the notebook inside.

Detective Metzo had told her to look on the bookshelves, too, and in the bedroom. She hurried through the task. She'd been inside the apartment for several minutes. What if the American woman came home suddenly? She'd need to make up a story that someone complained about, what? Not noise. Maybe a gas leak. Yes, a gas leak. That would be perfect. But she wouldn't get caught. Detective Metzo had given his word that he'd honk his horn if he saw her tenant. Three times. Quickly. That would be her signal. So far it had been quiet.

No, there was nothing in the bedroom. The search was over. She'd found what he wanted in the living room. A dozen photographs and a notebook.

Now for the next part.

“Why can't I just come downstairs and give you what I find,” she'd argued with him when he'd explained what he wanted her to do.

“It has to look like a break-in, Signora Volpe. Please.” Metzo had started losing patience.

She did understand. She and her husband, dear Jesus, keep his soul safe, had worked so hard to restore this building. It hurt her to do this, even this one small thing. But she was protecting a national treasure—possibly, the detective had said, a treasure of importance to the church and the Holy Father. Pride was a sin. She would have to confess on Sunday that she had hesitated over this small act.

She took off her shoe and held it.

She couldn't do it.

She had to.

Inhaling, then holding her breath, Signora Volpe smacked her shoe against the window, the one that looked down on the alleyway. The glass shattered and, a few seconds later, hit the pavement below with a sound that reminded her of church bells. That gave her courage. It was a sign. But the next part was going to be more difficult. It was one thing to break glass that was simple to replace. It was much more upsetting to hit, hit, hit the wooden frame until it split and fell apart. And then hit it from the outside, while she leaned out the window, trying not to look down on the alley, not to see the glass shimmering in the moonlight.

When she was done it looked just like a robber had broken in. That's what it was supposed to look like, Metzo had told her.

When she asked him why, he'd put his fingers to his lips in a mock hushing gesture and told her that he wasn't at liberty just yet to discuss police procedure. And then he had given her double what it would cost to replace the window and the wooden frame and had promised a nice bonus if she found what he was looking for.

She tried not to think about the wood being more than
a hundred years old and that she'd never be able to replace the frame exactly. But, she thought as she dropped the plastic bag out of the window as instructed, she
was
doing her job, helping the police. What was some old wood if she could save that lovely flower wall in the photograph or a precious relic? Leaving the apartment, the worst of it behind her, she felt a little righteous.

After all, she'd made a noble sacrifice.

J
osh heard the gunshot. Saw the blood. Smelled the iron and smoke. He watched the man he recognized as the thief tumbling toward him, eyes wide with surprise, lips pulled back from his teeth in a silent scream.

The body fell on top of Josh, pushing him to the ground, spilling blood on him, wetting his clothes, the stink of it getting into his nose.

Hearing footsteps, Josh lifted his head and, in the distance, saw the back of a man, the shooter, retreating into the darkness, disappearing into the night.

What had happened? He couldn't remember it all. Yes, yes, he could, he'd been running in the present and had run right into the past, his past. Or so it seemed.

Josh looked down at the body of a man who had wanted him dead, who was now dead himself, and then up, up at the sky. Up at the moon. Sixteen hundred years ago, the same moon might have been hanging just as low, illuminating these same marble buildings and making them gleam the same way. But then they were intact, not stumps. Stars shone for millions of years. It was the
people—the transients, and the corruptibles and what they created—that changed.

Shaky, he rose to his feet and started to walk away from the man, away from the blood. He needed to get back to the hotel so he could call the police, tell them where they could find the body. But first he had to find a way out of the wreckage that stretched on and on, reminders of the people who'd lived and died and left nothing but this rubble—and their memories that lived like tapeworms inside him and the other poor suckers. He was, they all were, just hosts for uninvited guests. Wandering through the deserted, emptied-out world, all he could do was keep walking, shaky and stinking and bloody, until he could find the perimeter of this ancient wasteland.

He didn't understand why he was still alive. Had the mastermind behind the robbery decided that the thief was the greater liability? Had the robber threatened his boss, blackmailed him, made new demands? Or did Josh know something that was important to the unraveling of the puzzle that surrounded the stones? If they really were the ancient memory tools, was he the one who could unlock their secret based on information hidden in his deeper memories? Was that why he'd been spared?

But what if the stones were never found? They'd been a last hope, a promise—albeit a far-fetched one—of a possible path to discoveries. If he could compile histories for Julius and Percy, and of the other ghosts he saw in flashes, he'd be able to do the necessary research to prove beyond any doubt that he'd lived those lives.

In the sky among the stars, Josh imagined he saw the emeralds, sapphires and that one ruby he'd glimpsed in Gabriella's photographs. They gleamed and twinkled, teasing him about a quest that now seemed farther away than those pulsars and quasars.

No, he was being naive. They were merely gems men had imbued with mythical attributes: legends, not actual conduits. There was no way they could connect him to his previous incarnations—if there really were such things as previous incarnations

It was illogical and absurd. It was magical thinking. It had to be.

But then, why was it happening again? And it was—he could smell it.

Powerless to stop it, he wasn't sure he even wanted to. Josh had too many questions, and far too few answers.

Julius and Sabina
Rome—391 A.D
.

T
he scent of acrid fumes roused him. In the distance, lit by the moon, a winding plume of black-gray smoke rose up, reaching toward the stars. He got up and began to walk, then run, toward the fire, but by the time he reached its source, it didn't matter. He was too late. The damage to yet another temple had been done, and the structure was destroyed. With the awful scent in his nostrils, Julius turned away and started back, pushing himself to hurry despite the sudden exhaustion that had overcome him while he stood there staring at the charred and blackened mess. Their world was turning to ash.

He had an assignation to keep, and even if he hurried now he was still going to be late. He hoped Lucas wouldn't worry.

Passing through the area of ancient ruins, he turned to the left. With each step there were fewer and fewer crumbling walls around him and more new marble structures.
And then, out of breath, he reached the small grove of cypress, olive and oak trees.

Entering the cool, green copse, Julius inhaled the woody scent. Even here, this far away, it was tinged with the stench of fire. For another five minutes he walked through the thicket and emerged on the other side, at the edge of a well-tended cemetery, where his mentor, Lucas, the Pontifex Maximus, waited.

They exchanged greetings, spoke of the fire, and then began to stroll, heading down the center aisle, passing elaborate funeral monuments to their most illustrious citizens.

They were walking with the dead. It was what they had been doing every night for years. Late, when everyone else slept, Lucas and Julius met by the entrance to the Campus Martius near the Tiber and set off together. With everything changing around them, there was something comforting about being in a place where nothing could ever change. Long ago these souls had moved on, and all that was left were stone-cold monuments to remind those still living of who they had been and what they had done.

It was easier to be in the past than to imagine the future. But that was what the two men had to do. It was their responsibility, their holy mandate. They arrived at the mausoleum where Augustus was buried and, as they always did, both stopped and stood silently, honoring the statesman.

The structure was a wonder of rising concrete concentric circles faced with white marble. Between each two circles a perfectly shaped cypress was planted. Two Egyptian-style obelisks stood sentry at the entrance. In the center was a circular burial chamber where a bronzed Augustus, forever strong and powerful, rose on a column. There were other funerary urns inside, too, housing not only Augustus's remains but those of his relatives and friends: the remnants and debris their souls had left behind.

From that spot, several tree-lined paths radiated out toward gardens and the rest of the cemetery. Each night that they walked there, Lucas and Julius took a different direction. By now they knew them all but still alternated.

“There is news from Milan,” Lucas said over the sounds of the rushing river.

Julius nodded, waiting for him to continue. Reports from Milan were never good. He breathed in and tried to force himself to take some pleasure from the clean scent of the evergreen shrubs that adorned this space while he prepared himself for the news.

“The night air is good for my cough…you don't mind walking farther, do you?” Lucas asked.

That was code that the elder priest was concerned about spies and that they should wait to talk until they reached the temple that stood in the clearing, where no one would be able to get close enough to hear them.

There were too many trees here for them to take any chances. Branches heavy with foliage were good hiding places at night. It would be so simple for the emperor's men to be waiting, listening, trying to learn their plans so they could foil them.

If anyone was watching, they were just two priests who were enjoying their sojourn just as they always had. For years they'd taken late-night expeditions, discussing religion and politics, trying to solve the world's problems. Now that world was losing all semblance of order and small familiar rituals like this one were greatly comforting.

In the far distance, both men heard a scream, followed by shouts. They searched the night sky, looking out into the darkness. Nothing at first. And then flames shot up, tingeing the horizon with their orange glow.

Somewhere yet another inferno was consuming a
midnight meal. The fires were hungry in Rome that summer. More buildings were destroyed than in the last six years combined. And not just to arson. It was all part of the changes. People were uncomfortable and scared, and so the men drank too much wine each night and the women were not as cautious with the hearth fires as they needed to be. Accidents happened.

But not at the house of the Vestals or at their temple. Sabina had been proactive, cutting back all the foliage near the house, keeping guards on duty at night, having buckets of water at the ready at all hours of the day and night.

Watching the illumination light up the sky, Julius remembered the night five years before when he thought Sabina had died in the fire. He shivered although it was warm out. Since then, she'd freed the priestesses from many archaic rules, modernizing several rituals in an effort to help the nuns be perceived less as “others” and blend into society with greater ease.

No matter what strides she had made, though, she hadn't done enough. One law, very much still in place, was soon going to prove her destruction.

And his.

Julius blamed himself. He should have been stronger. Should have cut it off before this happened. But he'd become too arrogant, tempted fate one too many times and finally lost—it was a lesson in hubris, but one he was learning too late.

What is it about man that he is so drawn to exactly what he is not supposed to have been?

Rome was not a provincial town. Like all men, priests were allowed carnal pleasures. There were brothels to visit and lusty sexual games to play. He could revel in the perfumed body of any woman he met or luxuriate with any man of his liking.

The only person he'd ever desperately wanted was the one forbidden to him. How could he have been so bold as to take the chances he took when the punishment for their coming together was death?

He knew the answer. It would be a worse death for them to be alive and not to be together. To walk the same earth and never touch, never whisper about what mattered to them, never sink into the ecstasy that their bodies offered them.

The long, silent part of the walk over, Lucas and Julius came out of the far end of the cemetery and into the clearing. A temple, with a rounded dome supported by a dozen fluted columns, stood in the center of a field of flat grass, surrounded by a garden that contained only low-lying plants. There were no trees within earshot.

Nevertheless, they circled the temple.

“I don't think we've been followed,” Julius said.

“We have plans to make,” Lucas said once they settled down under the temple's tiled dome. “And soon. The rumors are that the emperor has a new initiative.”

“A harsher one?”

He nodded. “The bishop from Milan has been here and they have worked out the next phase of the cleansing.”

“Do you know what this one will include?”

“All forms of pagan worship will be completely banned, including private religious rites, though we know there's no way to enforce this. The emperor will decree that no sacrifice will be permitted anywhere in the city, including inside our own homes. We won't be allowed to light votive candles, burn lamps, offer wine or incense, or hang wreaths to our genius or to our household gods—Lars and Penates. All of these will be treasonable offenses, like the divining of entrails or burnt offerings.

“Even tying a ribbon around a tree or adoration of a
statue will be outlawed and, I was told, will be punishable by property loss. And worse. This decree will sanctify our destruction in the name of their god.”

“How much longer before all this is written into law?”

“A month? Two? I'm afraid that in less than a year there won't be any temples standing. There won't be any of our priests left.”

Neither of them spoke for several minutes—Julius because he was stunned by the enormity of the changes; Lucas because he was depleted by repeating them.

“We can't give in,” Julius said. “We need to fight back.”

“We're outnumbered by thousands.”

“You're giving up?”

“I'm talking to you. I'm trying to figure it out. I just don't think we have any chance of taking them on in hand-to-hand combat.”

“Outsmarting them, then?” Julius asked.

“If there is a way.”

“At least we can protect our relics from the looters. Safeguard them so that once this is over and we are back in power we can restore them to where they belong. Then we can leave.”

“When this is over and we are back in power? You're optimistic. I'm not so sure, Julius.”

“Then we'll start over somewhere else and wait. This emperor won't live forever. His successor can snap his fingers and reinstate our religion as quickly as Theodosius has made the new religion the law. This isn't about lofty ideals. This is politics, and politics are capricious.”

The Pontifex nodded at the younger priest in a way that made Julius think of and remember his father. “Of course you're right. There's always a chance. But when you're smart enough to combine politics and religion in
the way the emperor has, you don't just change laws. You change people's minds. Theodosius is playing on our citizens' fear of the unknown. In each new speech he reminds them that only by honoring him and his new religion will they be ensured a place in the afterlife. That if they don't, they will be damned to hell—a hell he describes as more horrific each time he speaks of it. He's succeeding in terrorizing everyone. Every citizen is frightened, not just for what will happen to them when they are alive, but what's going to happen to them and their loved ones after they die. People are afraid to disobey him. By combining the new religion with the secular law he has increased his power tenfold.”

A warm breeze wafted over them. Julius wished they could use it to blow away the changes that were threatening their way of life. He took in the familiar landscape, wondering if the future would be kind to this place of peace or if the cemetery would befall the same fate that some of the temples had already endured.

There was some movement in one of the cypresses in the distance. But the wind had died down. Julius touched the Pontifex's arm and nodded his head toward what he'd seen.

A few seconds later, the branches moved again.

And then, in another tree, a branch swayed.

In whispers, Julius and Lucas assessed the situation.

How many spies were there, waiting for them to leave the safety of the temple? What was their mission? Were they prepared to attack, or was this just a sortie to find out what they could about the priests' plans?

“Should we risk it?” Lucas asked, nodding toward the escape hatch that was all but invisible in the complicated tile floor unless you knew where to look for it.

“If they already know we're here and then we disappear, they might discover our underground tunnels. We
can't risk that. We're going to need those tunnels to get out of Rome if it comes to that.”

“You're right. We'll wait. Even if it means staying here till morning. There will be enough people out and around then that we'll be safe. Our city is still not at the point where it's acceptable to murder two high priests in broad daylight. At least, I hope not.”

The rest of the night passed slowly. Even after there was no obvious movement, the two men were too cautious to leave the safety of the temple until daybreak, so, in whispers, they strategized.

As a plan evolved, it became obvious that if they were cautious and quick, there was a possibility they could save what was precious to them to rebuild their religion in another land—and perhaps, one day, resurrect it in Rome.

Each sacred treasure must be entrusted to one priest or one Vestal as befitted his or her rank, who would, when the time came, sneak it out of Rome. Traveling alone or, at the most, in pairs, they would all rendezvous at a central location far outside the city and then, as a group, find a safe haven.

“Who should we entrust the Palladium to?” Julius asked. “It has to be a priest.” The sculpture of Athena, her right hand carrying a raised lance, her left a distaff and spindle, was over three feet high. “It's too heavy for any of the Vestals.”

Carved from wood, colored with paint made from powdered lapis lazuli and malachite, and decorated with gold leaf, she astounded everyone who looked upon her. The artist had somehow been able to imbue the immobile face with both compassion and strength. That and the history of the statue made it one of their most historic treasures: the powerful replica had been rescued from
Troy by Aeneas and was purported to assure the ongoing safety of Rome. She was their luck. Without her blessing on their journey, the superstitious among them would fear for their success

“I think Drago should take it,” Lucas said, naming Julius's brother.

“He'd be honored.”

Next, the Pontifex assigned the two other wooden statues in the repository along with the provisions for the household gods, the Penates—ashes of unborn calves, mixed with the blood of horses from chariot races.

A half hour later, they had reached the end of the list. There was only one treasure left, and there was no question that Lucas himself would be responsible for that. Why hadn't his mentor delegated any of the objects to Julius? Despite his efforts not to be, he was disappointed. Why had he been shunned? There was only one reason he could think of.

Somehow, Lucas had found out about Sabina and knew that Julius might not live many days after his lover if it was discovered he was the father of her child. Law dictated that the man who committed the crime of taking a Vestal's virginity also be punished by death. Right now, though, dying was an abstraction. Not being given one of the sacred objects to save was a real humiliation.