Cautionary Tales (4 page)

But he claimed to be too weak to carry the heavy cross. This annoyed Cartaphilus. “How come your god doesn't give you strength, you damned weakling?” he asked the man. “Any self-respecting god would support his followers in their hour of need.”

Jesus did not respond to the baiting. Neither did he manage to carry his cross. It had to be carried for him. The faker was getting away with it.

Halfway up the hill, Jesus tried to pause to rest. “Don't stop,” Cartaphilus snapped. “You don't rest until you're hanging on the cross.” He threatened the man with his spear, making him get on with it.

Now Jesus looked directly at him for the first time. His gaze was uncannily penetrating, not with anger or pain, but with seeming pity. That was aggravating as hell. “But thou shalt tarry till I come,” he said.

Cartaphilus laughed. “I will tarry long after you're dead, faker. Now keep moving.”

But it wasn't over yet. The man dragged his feet the rest of the way up the hill to Calvary, stalling as long as possible. Then, once they had nailed his hands to the arms of the cross and hoisted the thing erect, Jesus had the temerity to look at him, again with the seeming pity. “Keep your eyes to yourself!” Cartaphilus snapped, and stabbed his spear into the man's side so that blood and water flowed out.

Not too long after that the man gave a cry and expired. He should have lasted hours longer. A weakling through and through.

Cartaphilus' chore was done. He returned to his barracks for the night. Yet those words and that look remained in his awareness. He tried to banish them; it was ridiculous to let a routine crucifixion get to him. He had seen hundreds. Yet somehow they lingered. What business did Jesus have haunting his memory?

In the course of the following days the memories gradually faded. There were after all many crucifixions, and it was hard to separate one from another; only the brief words lingered, and the look. Strange how they bothered him.

Two years later he got in a bad fight. Some kind of insult, and he tackled the guy. But it was a trap, and another stabbed him from behind, killing him. They robbed him and took his clothing, then buried him in a shallow grave by a deserted garden, food for the flowers.

It was when he woke in the chill of the night and sat up in the dirt, spitting out sand, that he realized he had been dead. He had not been left to die, he had been dead, because otherwise they would not have bothered to bury him. To hide the body. Fights happened, but murder remained a crime, and no Roman soldier was killed with impunity. Yet he had recovered.

Well, flukes happened. Maybe he had merely looked dead. Still, the matter annoyed him. So he did what he normally did when annoyed, and set about getting even.

The man he had fought with was half drunk at a tavern bar, but not so far gone as not to recognize the dead returned from the grave. He died with his eyes still staring in horror. But before he did, he told what he had not wanted to: the identity of his accomplice, the back-stabber. That man also died, in due course.

Then it was not healthy for Cartaphilus to remain in the area, murder being considered a crime even when the victims weren't Romans, so he moved on. He could no longer enlist with the Romans, lest they do a background check and discover those he had killed outside the line of duty, so he wandered as a free-lance warrior, signing up with whatever semi-bandit band would take him. There often was not much difference between legitimate police and outlaw bands, in the wilder hinterlands. He fought and killed without remorse.

It was the second time he was killed, and revived, that he realized it had not been a fluke. He could not die.

Now the gaze and words of that crucified man, Jesus, returned to him. “Thou wilt tarry till I come.” That man had died, but now Cartaphilus remembered that his followers had claimed he would return, even from death. He hadn't believed it, of course, but his own experience suggested that it was possible. He was tarrying in life, after all.

Till when? That question became more important as the years passed. He traveled widely, in part because he tended to get into fracases that required him to move on, but also in part because he was trying to escape the memory. He seemed to have been cursed to live until the dead man returned.

It didn't work. Even age did not give him reprieve. It turned out that every time he died, he revived at a man aged thirty; that had been his age at the time of the Jesus incident. He hadn't noticed at first because he had not aged significantly the first time he died. But when he lived to fifty, then died, and revived as thirty, he understood the full power of the curse.

Time passed inexorably. No one he had known in youth remained alive; all had died of accident or age. Cartaphilus passed the century mark, as a man in his thirties. That was a third reason to travel: to avoid others noticing. How could he explain, if questioned on this point?

When would Jesus return? The man was taking an interminable time about it. His followers had thought it would be a matter of days, or at least very soon. His followers were dead. Meanwhile Cartaphilus was stuck in a meaningless life.

After several centuries scholars gathered together several accounts of the life of Jesus Christ, as they called him, the Son of God. Cartaphilus didn't know about that, but sure as hell the man could throw a good curse. Cartaphilus was tired of life and wanted it to end, so was eager for Jesus to come back and let him stop tarrying.

More centuries passed, and his secret leaked a bit. Cartaphilus became known in some regions as The Wandering Jew, and was considered very wise. He didn't feel wise, but he had to play along. He had a single message for those who queried him: he had treated Jesus unkindly and was utterly sorry for it. “Do not you do the same, even in your heart as well as your words.” But he knew even as he spoke that the people were not heeding his advice of experience. Too many were hypocrites, professing a belief for political or economic or social advantage that they did not hold in their cynical hearts. He had once been like that himself, swearing allegiance to a Rome he held in private contempt.

And the worst of these hypocrites, he concluded, were in the Church founded in Jesus' name. Especially the Templars. It was ironic that he who had scorned Jesus now believed in him far more fervently than those who claimed to worship him. Cartaphilus didn't worship Jesus; he hated him. But he believed.

The longer it went, the more the curse grated. When the hell was Jesus coming back? The years had become centuries, and the centuries millennia. Two thousand years later the damned laggard still hadn't made his appearance. Was Cartaphilus stuck in life forever? That hardly seemed like a proper part of the deal. Jesus was supposed to come again, and release him from tarrying. The jerk was reneging.

It drove him crazy. Literally. Cartaphilus had a right to die sometime, and it was way overdue. It wasn't fair for Jesus to curse him, then go away and forget about that loose end. Jesus didn't care about him; why should he care about anybody? So he did what he did, living only for the moment, heedless of the effect on others. And continued to travel, because mortal jails were not fun places to tarry.

His life was pointless. He cared about nothing and nobody. Why should he? No one cared about
him
. In fact they abhorred him the moment they learned his nature. He had hurt the man they (supposedly) worshiped.

“Until I met you,” Cartaphilus concluded. He wasn't trying to flatter Leyla; he was merely telling the truth. She was the first woman to truly intrigue him in centuries, of the hundreds, nay thousands he had encountered. “So now you know my history. Are you going to ditch me?”

She considered. “This was not a story I anticipated,” she said candidly. “I do believe in Jesus. In fact I believe that my magic power derives from Him.”

This was new. She was a Jesus worshiper? She referred to his name capitalized? He could hear it in her speech. “How so?”

“When Jesus knew that His mortal end was near, He divided His power among His disciples, into twelve parts, keeping only a remnant for Himself. These twelve fragments passed down along the generations, largely hidden, not recognized for what they were. Those of us who inherited them are known as witches.”

“You!” he exclaimed, appalled. “You're part of Jesus?”

“No. We merely carry His power. Some of us can heal. Some of us can see a bit of the future. I can avoid personal injury, usually. There are those who think we derive our power from Satan, but that's false. They are our bits of divinity. This may also account for our health and form; we tend to be physically appealing.

He had noticed. “But he wasn't invulnerable! I stabbed him with my spear! His blood and water flowed out. I saw it. He was a wretch who soon died.”

“He had given up His invulnerability,” she said evenly. “To the line of people that produced me and the other witches, male and female. It was part of the sacrifice He made.”

Cartaphilus was taken aback. “What about my own invulnerability? I can be stabbed, I can bleed, I can even die, but I can't stay injured or dead. I am immortal—till he comes again.”

“He gave to you most of the remnant of power He retained, a tiny sliver of the whole. It hints at the magnitude of His complete power as the Son of God.”

“My curse?”

“It wasn't a curse, I think. It was an assignment. So that you could be there when He needed you.”

“Why the hell would he give it to me and not to a disciple?”

“I don't know,” she said. “I can only conjecture. The disciples must have had other assignments. Also they were marked men. He must have needed an anonymous man, or at least one whose true purpose would not be evident. One without conscience, who could to what needed to be done when the time came. One who remembered Him from personal experience.” Her lips quirked. “He may not have had a lot of choices at the time, and you were available.”

“I'm going to help him come again? I hate him!”

“But you do believe in Him.”

“Yeah. Now.” Cartaphilus shook his head. “I'll tell you this: put him up on a cross again, and I'll happily stab him again. Just so long as I can finally die and stay dead.”

“Maybe He counts on that. I couldn't kill Him. It's not really religion. It's truth. Jesus will come again. Soon, we believe.”

“Yeah. I count on that.”

“Maybe by some chance that will turn out to be your role. To save Him, though you hate Him. We don't want to kill Him at all; we want Him to return and exercise His will on Earth. Face it, Cart—he doesn't need to die again, to free you. He just needs to return.”

She had a point. But Cartaphilus was tired of this dialogue. “Let's fuck.”

“Gladly,” she said, accommodating him with a will. She was a lusty creature; he remembered again how that was unusual in beautiful woman, albeit not in witches.

“Our meeting,” he said, after. “That wasn't coincidence.”

“Apparently not. Emmanuel suggested that I attend this party. He said I might find something interesting here. But I don't think even he knew it was about you, just that there was something we needed to check out. He has a feel for such things; it's why he's a coven leader. So I came, obeying his directive, and also because I have a certain taste for danger.”

“I'm a dangerous man.”

“You are. You turn me on.”

He knew by now that she wasn't fooling. She was definitely the woman for him, even if she was hung up on religion. “That bat on your back—how come?”

She smiled. “Well, I could tell you that my name means black-as-night, and the bat is a creature of the night.”

“You won't let me lie to you. Are you going to lie to me?”

“Merely teasing. But it's true, just not the whole truth. Early in my life when my ability started showing—little boys discovered I was one little girl they couldn't pick on—someone likened it to the bat. The bat can fly in darkness through the most devious caves and never crash. It has echolocation, using high-pitched sound to bounce off objects and give it a special kind of ‘vision.' I could avoid things similarly, in darkness or daylight, without even looking. So they nicknamed me ‘the bat' and I went along with it, and finally it became my mascot. It seemed only fair to give it a place on my body. Does that turn you off?”

“Everything about you turns me on.”

“Before we separate, there is one other thing I should mention.”

“Oh, shit! You're married?”

She laughed. “No. Would it make a difference?”

“Sure. I'd have to kill your husband, and then you might be annoyed. I don't want you mad at me.”

“I am not married. And I'm not talking about any permanent separation. It is merely that we can't stay constantly together, lest we attract attention neither of us wants. We'll get together often enough for what counts.”

“Hot sex.”

She laughed again. “That too. The other thing I need to be sure you understand is that Jesus may not return in the form you knew. What counts is not His form, but His spirit, whatever its vessel. He may assume the body of another person, or simply infuse that person, making him become the new Messiah. He could even take the form of a woman. We don't know. We need you to understand that so that you don't mess it up.”

“Mess it up?”

“By killing the wrong person. There may be one who looks like Jesus, but isn't, so you will need our guidance. Are you prepared for that?”

“I don't kill anybody you don't tell me to.”

“That's about the case.”

“How about the Templars?”

She laughed once more. “Open season on them, I think. Especially if they catch me, damp out my magic, and try to burn me at the stake. My five seconds' foresight won't help me then; they'll cover my escape for fifteen minutes each way.”

“They try that, I kill them all.”