An Apocryphal Tale for Oestara by Sadie Rose Bermingham
"When we first began to write the Rayne Wylde vampire stories we had a little joke that Jabez Everman had been hanging around at some of the principal political hotspots of history. There was some little quip about him selling miniature crosses at the Crucifixion, which was in very poor taste, I know! This story sprang from it and is probably no better off in the taste ratings. Anyone who has strong Christian convictions probably ought not to read it at all as it will only upset you, even though it's really quite mild by my normal low standards. As usual, if you choose to ignore the warning, don't come crying to me about desecration and profanity afterwards. I am a worthless Pagan and I will not be sympathetic.
Apologies to the Rayne fans, he isn't in this one. I thought he deserved a little break, but he will be back!"
xxx.Sadie
PART 1 - THE EVERMAN
Since leaving his homeland of Egypt there had been good days and bad days for the tall, bronze-maned Vampire who currently dominated the small cell beneath the palace of Caiphas. Jerusalem had brought many good days but it was in Jerusalem where the bad luck hit him, and hard.
Akhenaten had not believed that he was fallible. That in itself was a weakness, a vulnerability born of two thousand years and more of wandering from place to place like a nomad, altering his name and changing his circumstances as his latest halt required of him. Since leaving Egypt behind him he had borne many names. The most oft repeated was a title that translated roughly from Aramaic as The Everman. It was a curious conceit, but he liked it well enough.
Once the Pharaoh Akhenaten had been all-powerful, born of the great god Amun-Re, no less, as was every King of the Two Lands of Egypt. Mighty warlords and the leaders of nations had quaked before him in the halls of his sacred city, Amarna. The tributes brought to him there were lavish; gold enough to build a city fifty miles wide; jewels of such brilliance that they rivalled the very stars for their beauty. But material wealth had not been enough for him. Akhenaten desired immortality. He wanted the world to speak his name in tones of reverence; The Heretic King of the Two Lands, the Pharaoh who would never die.
In Amarna he traded all that he had for one Eternal Kiss, an endless curse that would follow him into infinity. On his knees before the temple shrine he had erected to the sacred Sun God, the Aten, turning his back on the pantheon of Egypt's old deities, he received the agonising barbed tribute; the flesh-rending bite that drove the last of his mortality from his body. He was resurrected as a true, living God.
And all that he had worked for turned slowly to ashes around him. One by one, those he loved were taken from him, by plague or by false words. Most cruelly, his precious Neferneferuaten, foremost and most beautiful of his wives, was accused of treachery and torn from the sanctuary of their palace home; brutally raped and killed by soldiers of the Priesthood of Amun Re. Her body was dumped upon the temple steps in Amarna as a warning to all who would continue in the worship of The Aten.
The name of Akhenaten was slowly wiped from the face of history. Though he could not die, that did not mean that he could not be erased and replaced. The priesthood of Amun adopted a new pharaoh and the traditional Godhead was restored in Thebes. Life simply went on without him. Amarna languished and fell into ruin, reclaimed by the shifting sands of the desert.
And the old gods laughed long and hard at his despair, turning their backs on Akhenaten, just as he had repudiated them. All he was left with were memories and his dwindling estate. Sly thieves gradually filched that which the desert did not snatch back until a few sparse possessions were all that were left to him.
Not that he had any possessions to brag about right now.
This evening he barely had clothing enough to protect his modesty. The pit he had been flung into was deep and dark and bone-numbingly cold. Its disgruntled occupant huddled in one corner, his arms wrapped around his knees and his long, dark, gold-streaked hair cascading like a ragged blanket over his naked back and shoulders as he contemplated this latest twist of fate.
Never one to rest on his laurels (even when he still 'had' laurels to brag of) on his arrival in Jerusalem Akhenaten wasted no time in sounding out the names of those with power and authority. He had come to this city of sinners with barely a coin in his pocket, but all of that was to change.
Sirenius was an important name in the court of the potentate, Caiaphas. He was also a very old man, and rich beyond the dreams of most ordinary citizens. The wandering Egyptian exile quickly saw a way in which to work this situation to his advantage. He acquired newer, grander robes from the shop of a merchant in Cain Street, via the open back door, whilst the proprietor was not looking. Adopting the name of Jesus Barabas, he moved among the traders and money lenders of the city, letting it be known that he was the son of Sirenius, returned from the home of his cousins in Galilee, where he had trained as an usurer of lands and properties.
In addition, he let it be known that his 'father' had not many more moons to live upon this earth and that he, Barabas, was the old man's sole heir. In the drinking houses and temples of the city of Jerusalem, he made pacts with the greedier merchants and money lenders, promising them a division of the old man's estate, once he was properly buried, in exchange for a fat fee from each man.
Akhenaten planned to be well away from Jerusalem by the time Sirenius passed into the afterlife. Unfortunately, one of those he gulled turned out to be his undoing. The fellow was a friend of Pilate and also of Sirenius and a little digging around quickly revealed the truth. Sirenius had no sons, only daughters. The fellow, whose name was Akarus, sent guards to the house of 'Barabas' and in the night they finally outnumbered him, but only after an almighty struggle which saw one man dead and countless others carried to the sanitoriuim. At last they bound him in irons and dragged him away to the palace where he was stripped and beaten with great relish by his tormentors.
Their deathless captive fought off the two who came back to his cell planning to rape him, and bled them both with a will, for he was ravenously hungry for fresh blood. For this new outrage he was sentenced to death by crucifixion, the favoured amusement of the Roman invaders at that time, and cast into the pit where he now found himself.
If his conditions had not been so uncomfortable, he might have laughed out loud at this predicament. For over two and a half thousand years he had been living yet dead. He doubted very much that a few nails and a very public hanging would alter that.
PART 2 - THE NAZARENE
It was late on the following evening when the cover of his pit was hauled back, allowing faint twilight to seep down briefly into the darkness. It also admitted the coarse voice of one of his assailants from the previous day.
"Company for ya!" the guardsman bellowed.
This was all the warning he got before a tall, emaciated-looking man was dropped unceremoniously into his dungeon and the shutter of iron and solid cedar-wood came thudding back down again. As the dust settled and the vibrations stilled, Akhenaten got his first good look at the newcomer. He lay where they had thrown him, half on his back, with his knees canted sideways into the dust. Glazed eyes stared back up at the strips of blurry light spilling down from cracks in the cover of their pit. His long, solemn face was sun-gilded and careworn, yet Akhenaten sensed that he was not an old man. Dark eyes were framed by golden lashes and his hair and beard, though ragged and matted with blood and dust, were still fair and spilled around his head like an aurora. The skinny body, barely concealed within the rags of his simple shift spoke of long deprivation and harsh living. His expression was tranquil however, although his flesh told the tale of a worse beating than 'Barabas' had received on the previous day.
Akhenaten was no fool. He listened carefully to the gossip of men who believed him beyond caring. All through the day the palace chatter had been of nothing else but the man from Nazareth, the fellow they were calling the King of the Jews. He worked miracles, they said. He raised the dead and insulted the money-lenders by chasing them from the temples. He cured the sick and lame with a touch. The hysteria was near boiling point. He was here, they whispered urgently. The King of the Jews, in a cell like a common criminal. They had beaten him, the gossips insisted, until the blood ran in rivers from his body. After that they had crowned him in a ring of thorns and spread him roughly on the ground like a whore, where those who were so inclined had used him with no regard for his 'regal' status.
He uttered not a sound, the muttering voices declared, not even when forced to crawl on his hands and knees so that he could be mounted from behind. Twenty seven men had violated him thus, the eager gossips related, over and over, and not once had he raised a hand in his own defence nor his voice in protest.
