Curse of Stigmata (The Judas Reflections) (17 page)

“I use the name Mercer on account of my former trade as a fine cloth merchant and importer. Like my father before me… only I merely dabbled. I prefer to write and discover more of the world unseen than to do business. I arrived here ten years ago by a twist of fate and didn’t leave. So, what brings you to the fair shores of Madagascar?”

“Destiny has brought me to this faraway land also, but I’m not staying.”

“Oh, I can see that,” he replied with certainty. “You’re a man on a mission.”

I was slightly unnerved by Doctor John Dee and his strange, almost eccentric, world. Perhaps this island, like many others, had its share of secret practices rubbing off on new settlers. Voodoo and an assortment of island spells. I needed to return to the dock f I was to have an evening meal on the ship, after paying handsomely for my passage. I wasn’t intending to be shortchanged.

“You’re welcome to come and see me anytime,” John Dee remarked kindly. “My door is always open.”

I thanked him, and with Robert’s guidance, found my way easily back. As we walked and talked, I couldn’t take my eyes off the daughter who ran around his feet. Her striking mix of hair and skin color would be scandalous in Europe where she’d be outcast. Here, it was nothing unusual and largely ignored.

Back on board, I discovered Juan and Rachel sitting together eating. She’d managed to worm her way out of banishment with the Captain, who, in a jovial mood knocked back copious amounts of rum.

“I’ll be setting sail in three days for a short trip. There’s a friend who runs a boarding house close to the dock, she’ll see to your needs till I return,” he explained. A firm message to let us know he’d be off pirating and we weren’t welcome.

Rachel was disappointed. “Let me come with you.”

“Stupid wench, know your place. When I say you stay here, you do so without question or you’ll meet a ropes end!”

There was no insolent backchat or smart comment this time. Instead, with her head bowed in fear, she remained silent. Bad enough she’d followed my path and sniped at me with every turn. It was good to see the wheel of karma turn in my favor. A little more and maybe she’d grow weak enough to slip and reveal the whereabouts of the coin.

If a pirate could put her in her place, then I could do the same in another way. A tenuous truce could make her believe her world was calmer and more protected. Then, when she began to think I’d let go of the coin I would reclaim it easily. I would pretend to be her knight and savior, preventing her from being exploited by the rough seamen who floundered in abundance. From what I’d seen so far, the inns and guesthouses were respectable by day, at night they transformed into debauched dens aimed at sex-starved sailors. Rachel, with her wild black hair and seductive brown eyes, would be quite an attraction to the drunk and aggressive who didn’t take no for an answer. Her arrogant and flirty attitude could easily land her in deep waters if I didn’t watch out for her welfare. I expected her to be suspicious at first, but she’d soon be grateful. I would play it well by being attentive.

Stage one of my plan was to be instigated on our departure from the ship.

“I’ll help you with your trunk,” I offered, knowing how heavy it was with the amount of new goods she’d acquired on our travels.

“I can manage. I don’t need your help. I’m more than capable.”

“I’d like to see you carry it from ship to shore. I doubt the crew will help, they’re busy preparing to set sail.”

“Then I’ll drag it ashore!” she retorted.

“I don’t want you to pull a muscle or hurt your back… easily done.”

She was extremely stubborn, making it excruciatingly difficult for me to remain in control. I wanted to pick her up and put her over my knee, perhaps a spanking would show her who’s the boss. But I couldn’t bring myself to do such a thing. Instead, I went to my cabin to pack.

The boarding house wasn’t quite what the Captain made it out to be. It was filthy.

“What’s this?” I asked the woman who showed me a room. The sight of a broken lumpy bed surrounded by layers of dust and crawling lizards didn’t exactly inspire joy.

“This is our best room,” she answered with pride. “The others are basic.”

“If this is your best, I can’t bear to think of what the others are like,” I replied.

Juan was clearly not amused, and there was a strange smell.

“I think we’ll look in the area before we make a decision,” I concluded.

Juan was clearly not going to spent one night in there; Rachel was used to poor conditions and said nothing, so it was clearly down to me what to do next.

“Doctor John Dee,” I whispered to myself, with his name came hope. “He’ll help, I’m sure.”

We were in the right place to find a man with a horse and cart willing to take us inland. The dock was filled with locals all looking to make money. With a little bartering, we found a chirpy driver who knew of “The Mercer man,” as he affectionately called him, informing us he was also known as the mad Scottish scientist and a religious fanatic.

Rachel didn’t argue when I asked her to join us, even letting Juan load her trunk into the cart with a smile. The three of us clung to the edge of a cart as we bumped our way down a rocky path led by a donkey prone to stopping without warning. It jolted my very being and added to the discomfort. Juan’s quietness of character served him well. Unlike me, he took the journey in his stride by laughing and joking all the way. Though I healed instantaneously, the blistering rays from the sun left my shoulders slightly reddened.

“You should have worn more than your vest,” Juan remarked.

“Here, take my shawl, I have my shoulders covered,” Rachel said.

“Thank you,” I replied in surprise,
the tide was turning.

Without my doing anything she’d offered protection. I took it, of course, needing to show her I was grateful and cooperating. The plan was to have her settle in the peaceful surroundings of John’s spiritual home, sure to weaken any woman’s defense.

We arrived to find him tending his vegetable garden with a beautiful young island woman by his side.

“Well, what do we have here?” he asked.

I explained our situation, doing my best to play up the danger Rachel would face as a young girl. To be sure of our stay, I offered a fair remuneration.

“All donations are gratefully accepted,” he replied.

The hut had been enlarged at the back, although sparse on furnishings, it was comfortable enough and cleaner than the boarding house. Another young woman brought what appeared to be fresh sheets for the mattresses, it mattered not they were on the floor, I was happy to be away from the rough dock and its tiresome, drunken sailors.

“Why are you being so nice to Rachel all of sudden? What are you planning?” Juan confronted me.

“I want the second coin she’s stolen. I know she has it and lies when she says she hasn’t. If I can show her I mean no harm, unlike Captain Chivers who threatens to hang her, she might give in and hand it over.”

“Sometimes, Emmanuel, you underestimate the hidden powers of women. I know you find their strength intolerable and Rachel is smarter than you think. She threatens your male ego.”

“What in the hell are you talking about?”

“Don’t make a mistake here,” he said bluntly. “She’s not the stupid girl you think she is.”

John Dee was a gracious host who made sure we had plenty to eat and drink while showing his gratitude for the donation. He explained how it would go toward building materials for his most important project, the Church. Meanwhile, Juan was bemused by the fact John had two common law wives, Leah and Cecile, who attended to our every need as we sat under a shady tree on the terrace and talked. John explained he’d been married twice before and had fathered eight children in Scotland who never answer his letters.

“They don’t like my dabbling in things they don’t understand,” he said. “Even my former wife, Jane, who was twenty three when I married her, became a heap of trouble. I’m eighty-two years old now and, I’ve never felt better.”

Eighty-two…
I’d never met anyone who’d reached such an age in Western civilization. He looked to be around fifty years. Juan and I chuckled at his comment, both of us doubting his claim.

“If you’re eighty two then I’m one hundred,” Juan joked.

“I don’t ask you to believe me,” he replied. “But I would like to do your astrology chart young man. How old are you, thirty, thirty-five?”

“No, I’m not interested. Ask someone else,” Juan said suspiciously.

“Mine, you can do mine!” Rachel remarked with excitement.

John enthusiastically took her to somewhere private. Who was this man, I wondered? What really brought him to complete estrangement from his children, and a nomadic life on the other side of the world? Perhaps, there was more to John Dee than he was revealing and the more time I spent with him the more I’d know. Leah came and handed me a piece of paper.
I know who you are
was written with a neat controlled quill, no evidence of the writer being rushed while he or she probably wrote it in a clandestine corner. Juan’s ability to write was limited, he was not, nor would ever be, a scholar. Rachel was the same, uneducated in academics. Whoever wanted to scare me, or send me into a “who is this” frenzy didn’t succeed. I read it to Juan, who had his suspicions.

“I expect it’s John Dee. Look how perfect the writing is.”

Upon his return, I confronted him, boldly. “Why did you have this note passed to me?”

“Because I thought it better than saying it outright,” he replied.

“So, who am I then?”

“An immortal, like me. Although your chart tells of you walking the earth far longer than my seventy nine years, just a little longer than you Juan who I also know to be one of us.”

I looked closely at the man, searching for a sign I must have missed, a sense of another immortal. But John Dee had given nothing away; he’d fooled me.

“You’ve done my chart without even knowing my date of birth or anything else. How’s that possible? Who are you and what do you want?”

“To be part of my plan and those of others like me. I will teach you to harbor the quest for divine power, which will be very important for when you make a permanent life in America. There is someone there, a friend. He, too, will be important. You both have the ability to create the new Atlantis once you rid yourself of your enemies.”

I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or shake my head in disbelief. Taking a closer look at John, I saw a tall handsome man still youthful in age with a raucous laugh and a pious Christian, judging by the large wooden cross around his neck. I concluded he was harmless, a wildly demented and delusional immortal with cloaking powers and a generous nature.

“I will let you know,” I replied.

“I promise you won’t be disappointed.”

“Not right now.”

“Please Emmanuel, consider what I have to tell you.”

“No.”

I didn’t care to be involved in Dee’s hocus pocus skullduggery so I excused myself without wanting to be insulting. Upon hearing John’s confession, Juan had gone off with Rachel. I searched for them to no avail, frustrated because I needed someone to help me make sense of what I saw as complete madness and folly. I
despised
the year 1678, which continued to be obnoxious no matter where I roamed. Through an interminable night of frustration without sight or sound of my fellow travelers, I thought long and hard about the purpose of my existence. What if I stopped the endless coin searching? Would I be forever condemned to a miserable existence, one in which I habitually used people for my own personal gain, buying my way into social circles and manipulating every situation to my advantage? It was a world I’d already created and refined through endless centuries, becoming so familiar.

I didn’t know how to begin to change.

The long night gave no answers and between such intense heat and mosquitoes buzzing close to the sleeping net, it was difficult to fall asleep. At dawn, I hoped to find Juan who would listen to my woes and tell me, in spite of my fighting nature, I was a good person to have as a friend. It was swelteringly humid as I walked amongst the Baobabs, hundred foot trees that housed a variety of Madagascar’s wildlife. I jumped when a Sifaka Lemur climbed down a tree. Its piercing yellow eyes surprised as mine, it turned tail and ran. I followed it’s trail, wanting to know where it was going, needing desperately to clear my troubled mind.

But conditions within the forest became intolerable as a multitude of bugs invaded my space alongside snakes, which slithered across my path, annoying my every move. A walk of reflection wasn’t turning out to be so pleasant as I slapped my skin and ignored the venomous bites. Having had enough I returned to the relative coolness of the shady courtyard and John Dee.

“Where did you go, Emmanuel?” he asked. The breakfast table was laden with a variety of fresh fruit, enticing me to sit down. The only thing missing was Juan, Rachel and a relaxing hammock.

“I took a walk in the forest to clear the cobwebs. Have you seen the others?”

“Ah… our precious forests. My charts see in the future they will disappear, and the earth’s lungs will stop breathing. A catastrophe.”

“I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”

“You will… one day.”

Before I could reply, Rachel appeared wearing an African Lamba, a multi-colored cloth wrapped sensuously around her body. She was adorned with all manner of strange necklaces and bracelets made from ivory beads, and her hair had been plaited tight to her head.

“Are you an African girl now?” I asked, trying to stay polite.

“John’s wives helped me. I love it! It’s cooler and more comfortable, far better than corsets and silly bonnets,” she replied.

“Where’s Juan? Have you seen him?”

“Not since yesterday. Have you disposed of him?”

I didn’t take kindly to her sarcasm. What if something terrible happened? Maybe like me, he took a walk in the forest and was set upon by wild animals, or the jungle savages known to be fierce. I needed to act quickly.

“I must look for Juan. It isn’t normal for him to not tell me where he’s going,” I said.