The Reincarnationist (11 page)

Rome, Italy—Tuesday, 4:50 p.m.

N
ever having been incarcerated before, Josh would have imagined that every hour spent waiting to know what was going to happen would be interminable. But the time went by even more slowly than that. If not for the church bells, he wouldn't have any idea how long he'd been in jail.

He'd been interrogated for at least an hour when he first arrived, giving a detailed physical description of the thief, glad that there was something he could tell the police that might help them find the man. But no matter how much he
was
able to tell Tatti, it was what he couldn't tell him that angered the detective.

“I still don't understand too many things, so I think it would be wise to keep you here, Mr. Ryder. Maybe you'll
think of something you've forgotten or at least decide to explain why you were at the scene when you had no reason to be there.”

“Am I being held as a suspect?”

The detective ignored the question. “You know that if you are telling the truth and you saw the guard, then you are in danger. Maybe mortal danger.” He spoke like a movie character again, and it was infuriating Josh. “This may not be the most comfortable bed in Rome tonight, but it is the safest.”

“What are my rights here, as an American? Can I talk to a lawyer? Make a phone call?”

“Yes, of course. All in due time. Absolutely, you can.”

That had been two hours ago.

Fatigue, frustration and fear mixed together in an unholy combination that left Josh nervous and exhausted and unable to sleep on the least comfortable cot he'd ever sat on. He remembered every news story he had ever read about foreigners being detained unfairly and for long periods of time for crimes they did not commit as well as the entire plots of several movies that started out with just that premise: an innocent man is imprisoned in a country other than his own.

In his case, what made it worse was that Josh knew that he'd never be able to completely exonerate himself if it meant explaining to the Italian police how he'd wound up inside the tomb at the same time that it was robbed. The lurch that sent him walking through the streets of the city before daybreak was suspicious all on its own. But to try to rationalize how he had known where to go based on some innate intuition? No. The best choice was not to say anything and sit it out, because surely by now Malachai had gone to the American embassy and asked for their help. Or he'd called Beryl and she was in
the process of making arrangements to have Josh released. One way or the other, someone would be there soon. Any minute.

He stared at the four walls of the windowless, grimy cell and his mind went back to Sabina's burial site, that square underground cell that was also windowless and also a jail. Josh wished he could access his past at will. That would pass the time while he was here. He had so many questions about what he'd found out since the morning. About the tomb. About the past. Especially Julius's loyalty to a religion that punished a nun who broke her vows of chastity by death when he could instead align himself with the emperor and save both of their lives. What was it like to be so devoted? To be willing to sacrifice so much rather than betray his beliefs?

Josh thought of the image of the young priest in the gutter with his guts cut open and his eyes cut out. What proof had there been for Julius that the new religion would offer sanctuary to him or Sabina? Was it as simple as going with the devil he knew? It just didn't make sense.

The bells tolled another three hours but still no one came for him. Questions of another kind plagued him now. What kind of court system did they have here? Were you innocent until proven guilty in Italy? Without any proof, could they continue to hold him just for being at the scene? And what about a motive?

He looked around the stinking cell, the stained walls, felt the hard cot. He heard the sounds of other prisoners yelling and phones ringing. He knew he'd never sleep because if Tatti did any real investigating, he'd find out that Josh did have a motive for stealing those stones.

* * *

The next morning, it wasn't Malachai who came to bail Josh out, but Gabriella. While she watched, the po
liceman on duty gave him back his camera, pillbox, watch and the money he'd been carrying—everything but his passport. This he held on to. He told him in Italian, which Gabriella translated, that Josh would need to stay in Rome until they had completely ruled him out as a suspect.

“And there's another thing,” Gabriella said, translating.

“Yes?”

“He wants you to know you could be in danger because you saw the man who committed this crime. You're a stranger here in Rome, you should be careful.”

Gabriella grimaced, spooked by the warning.

“Let's get out of here,” Josh said, turning his back on the policeman.

Stiff and sore from his workout the day before in the tomb's tunnel, as well as eighteen hours spent in the cell, he followed her out into the sunshine and was amazed at how sweet the air smelled, until he realized it was Gabriella's perfume.

“My car is a few blocks from here—parking is impossible in Rome. So if you don't mind walking, I can drive you back to your hotel,” she said. “Unless you think you should stay inside and let me go get the car and pull it up. If what the
carabiniere
said is true, maybe—”

“I'll walk. No one is going to come after me in broad daylight, especially a man already wanted by the police. Now, tell me, how is the professor?” There were other questions he wanted to ask, but none was as important.

“He made it through the surgery, but he'd lost so much blood…he's still getting transfusions. At least he's stable. We'll know more in the next twelve hours.”

“I wish I'd been able to prevent what happened, but I was just too far away. I'm so sorry, Gabriella.”

She didn't say anything and Josh didn't doubt that she blamed him. Hell, he blamed himself. He felt awful. A
man might die because he hadn't been able to get to him fast enough. And by failing him, he'd let her down. No. That didn't make sense. He didn't know Gabriella.

Except he couldn't shake the feeling that this was history repeating itself.

They walked half a block more, and he checked again over his shoulder, wondering whether, if anyone was following him, he would spot him. “They'll get whoever did this,” he said, hoping it was true without having any reason to believe it.

“You think so?” her voice was laced with sarcasm. “And will he still have what he stole? You know he won't. That treasure is long, long gone. Sold, probably on the black market—damn it! I just can't believe this happened. That was the whole reason for having those guards. I knew them all. I can't believe any one of them was capable of doing this.”

“For money? Come on, for money you can always find someone who's for sale.”

She looked up toward the heavens as if there might be an answer there, or as if someone looking down would relieve her of her anger. The highlights in her hair glinted gold.

A few seconds went by. “Why were you in that tunnel? Why weren't you in the tomb with the professor, where you could have stopped that man, whoever he was, from taking my stones?”

She wasn't just asking, she was pleading for an answer that would explain and justify what had happened.

He looked at her. In the sun, her eyes glittered with that same golden light. “I tried, Gabriella.” He opened his hands in a gesture of impotence. The cross-hatched threads of blood and small puncture wounds had dried into dark maroon scabs.

“But you didn't get there fast enough. If you had, you might have stopped him.”

You didn't get there fast enough.

Her words echoed in a crease in his mind. This
had
happened to him before. Here. In this city. Here with this woman. Or was he crazy? No, just overtired. He'd been in jail too many hours. He was starving, splattered with blood and he needed a shower.

You didn't get there fast enough.

His mind was playing tricks. He was too sensitive now to the suggestion of déjà vu. “If you think this is all my fault, why did you come get me?” He hadn't meant to sound so prickly, but he left it at that.

“Because while I was at the hospital last night, the professor woke up for a little while and I got to talk to him. He told me I should trust you. That you would help me. He said you'd talked to him—”

“Not about anything important.” In the past twenty-four hours Josh had denied so many things it was becoming second nature. But he couldn't tell her what he'd confessed to the professor just before he'd found the tunnel. The time wasn't right. She wouldn't believe him. He didn't need, on top of everything else, for her to think he was a freak.

Gabriella sighed. “I know that's not true. Rudolfo told me that you confided in him and he believed what you said. He told me you saved his life. That's what the paramedics told me yesterday, too. You didn't leave his side and you were the one who stopped him from bleeding out. Like the police, I wondered if you had something to do with the robbery, and I told him that. But he said that if you had, you never would have stayed. You would have run. You would have let him die.”

They had reached the end of a long block. She nodded
at the church across the street. “Do you mind a detour? I'd just like to light a candle. It won't take long. Although the professor has left the formal church, he's a deeply religious man. Maybe his god is listening.”

“Isn't he your god, too?”

“There's a good chance he is. It's just hard for me to settle on any one god or any one religion. I've spent my life studying different cultures, digging up burial sites, trying to understand the methods and rituals of how other civilizations honored their dead and helped them make the journey to the next life. Sometimes I think I'm a heathen according to modern-day standards and believe more deeply in some of the ancient gods I've come to know.”

“But you do believe?” It wasn't like Josh to ask such an intimate question, but she didn't seem bothered by it.

“In something that's bigger than us, yes.”

Despite the warm temperature, when they got to the front door, Josh felt an icy-blue mist surround him and literally push him away. The opposite of the way that the darkness in the tunnel in the tomb had embraced him and pulled him forward.

A memory dart exploded and a burst of pain crossed his forehead and circled around and back. He was sure that before this church had been consecrated in the name of Jesus Christ, it had been a different kind of holy place.

Julius and Sabina
Rome—391 A.D.

T
he soldier hit the marble altar with a rod made of wrought iron and smashed it. A shower of fragments hit the floor. One sailed through the air and came down on Julius's foot, slicing it open. He didn't notice. His eyes were riveted on the sacrificial stone.

What had stood for thousands of years stood no longer. For a few seconds no one moved. Not the seven soldiers who had charged this temple or the six priests who were now trying to defend it. Everyone was stunned. The nexus of prayer, for hundreds of centuries, was gone. Julius looked at Lucas, the most senior priest, and saw on his face the reality they all had to accept: no place was safe. This was the tenth temple that had been destroyed in the last six weeks.

Behind him, Julius heard loud and raucous laughter. He spun around and jumped the soldier, who, caught off guard, stumbled and fell backward. Another soldier saw what had happened and punched Julius in the face. He
fell to his knees in pain so intense it made him vomit, right there in the most holy of places.

Around them shouts of anger rang out. Some men grunted, others groaned, bones broke and cartilage crumbled. Julius tried to clear his head and open his eyes, but he couldn't. He put his hands up to his face.

His fingers came away wet. He couldn't see but he knew its slickness, he recognized its sweet scent.

To his left someone screamed, “Get out. Get out now. Haven't you done enough?”

Taunts from the other side. “Heathens. You will all go to hell.”

Julius tasted blood in his mouth. He rolled away, trying to get to the wall so he could use it to lean against and stand up.

“Where are the temple whores?” one of the soldiers cried out, laughing coarsely.

“The virgin whores. Bring us the virgin whores.”

“
Never
.”

Julius was surprised that the voice came from him. Surprised that he was on his feet. But despite the throbbing pain, he was. Two soldiers came at Julius at the same time. But he knew if he ducked their fists they would miss him and hit the stone.

They lunged.

Julius dropped to his knees. Above his head, he heard their bones crack and their screams. Taking advantage of the distraction, he charged another intruder from behind and pushed his fingers into his eyes.

Yelling, the soldier spun, finally falling against one of his own who also toppled over, hitting his head on one of the sharp edges of broken marble their mallets had destroyed. With four soldiers down, Julius and the other priests had a chance.

They fought fiercely and won, but when it was over, the floors were a sea of blood and bodies. There was no satisfaction, no sense of calm. There had only been seven of them today. Tomorrow others would come. And after that there would be more. The priests knew they would never win if they tried to fight them one on one. There were thousands on the emperor's side but only hundreds of defenders.

An hour later, Sabina bathed and bandaged his wounds. This was allowed—for her to go to him and administer healing salves. What wasn't was the secret that she still kept hidden under her robes. She had taken to wearing a cloak now all the time so no one noticed the small bulge, but how much longer would that work?

They'd met so infrequently in the woods, they'd been able to figure out that she was ten weeks pregnant now, and her fate tortured him. He had pledged himself to her and vowed he'd save her and their unborn child even if it meant dying in the process. The bandaging finished, Sabina gave Julius a brew of herbs to help relieve the pain.

“Maybe you should brew some for yourself,” he said suggestively as he handed her the empty cup. “It's still early, they're very effective at this stage, aren't they?”

They both had been so careful. Like all women of Rome, Sabina knew how to avoid the times of the month when she was most fertile and conception most likely to occur. Plus there were the unguents and washes that she used right after they were together. But sometimes precautions failed. Then, for the wealthy who jealously guarded their estates, not always wanting to share holdings with too many offspring, or the poor who often simply couldn't afford to feed too many mouths, or unhappily married women who wanted divorces, not
children, there were alternatives: either a drink made from a distillation of herbs or surgery. Although Julius and Sabina lived in an era when termination of pregnancy was without stigma, not only allowed but in certain circumstances encouraged, she wouldn't consider it.

“No. Our baby has to be born, Julius. Through her we'll always be together.”

“You're wrong. The baby will only ensure we'll both be killed. What if we can't convince the priests and nuns that the laws are outdated? I know we've all been talking about making changes, but what if no one is ready by the time we are? What if I can't save you? Do you know what it will be like to suffocate, slowly, gasping for air? You can't die. Not over a child that isn't born yet.”

“There are other laws, too, that matter. Laws of nature.”

“You might be committing suicide by keeping this baby, Sabina,” he whispered, lest anyone outside hear them.

She shook her head and put her finger on his mouth, preventing him from saying anything else.