He had grown to understand solitude as he watched his family and friends die. He had learned to keep his distance from others after generations of friendships had ended in death.
But what of this immortal boy Leopold had spoken of?
Thomas Bolar.
Judas wanted him. He would bargain with Rasputin, pay whatever the monk desired, and fetch this immortal child to his home. His heart quickened at the thought of meeting another like himself, but also from knowing the role that the boy was destined to play.
To help bring about the end of the world.
It was a shame he hadn’t met this boy earlier in his long life, to have someone to share his endless span of years, another who was as ageless and as unfettered by time.
Still, Judas had been offered such a chance centuries before, and he had wasted it.
Perhaps this is my penance.
As he pulled on the oars, he pictured Arella’s dark skin and gold eyes. He remembered the first ride that he had taken with her, the night they were reunited at the Venetian masquerade. Then, too, he had manned a wooden boat, driven the craft where he wanted it to go, never sensing how little control he had.
Their gondola glided over the calm water of a dark canal, the stars shining above, a full moon beckoning. As he poled the craft through a light mist, passing alongside a grand Venetian house, the reek of excrement and waste washed over their craft, intruding on their pleasant night like some sulfurous shade.
He scowled at the sewage pipe leaking tepidly into the canal.
Noticing his attention and expression, Arella laughed. “Is this city not refined enough for your tastes?”
He gestured at the rooms above full of laughter and decadence, then to the sludge fouling the water below. “There are better ways of ridding such waste.”
“And when it is time, they will find them.”
“They have found them and lost them.” Judas’s voice held the bitterness he had acquired from watching the fate of men.
She trailed long dark fingers along the hull’s black lacquer. “You speak of the former wonders of Rome, when the city was at its splendorous best.”
He poled the boat away from the lighted houses and back toward his inn. “Much was lost when that city fell.”
She shrugged. “It shall be regained. In time.”
“In times past, the healers of Rome knew how to cure diseases from which the men of this era still suffer and die.”
He sighed at how much had been lost to the darkness of this age. He wished that he had studied medicine, that he could have preserved such knowledge after the libraries burned and the men of learning were put to the sword.
“This age will pass,” Arella assured him. “And the knowledge will be found again.”
Silvery moonlight shone on her hair and her bare shoulders, leaving him wondering about this beautiful mystery before him. After discovering each other again, they had danced most of the night away, sweeping across wooden floors, until finding themselves here as dawn neared.
He finally broached the subject that he had been reluctant to raise all evening, fearful of the answer.
“Arella . . .” He slowed the pace of the boat and let it drift through the mists on its own, as undirected as a leaf. “By my name alone, you know my sin, my crime, and the curse laid upon me by Christ, to march these endless years. But how are you able . . . what are you . . . ?”
He could not even form the question fully on his lips.
Still, she understood and smiled. “What does my name tell you?”
“Arella,” he repeated, letting it roll off his tongue. “A beautiful name. Ancient. In old Hebrew, it means a messenger from God.”
“And it is a fitting name,” she said. “I have often carried messages from God. In that way also, we two are alike. Both servants to the heavens, bound to our duty.”
Judas snorted softly. “Unlike you, I have received no special messages from above.”
And how he wished he would have. After the bitterness of his curse waned, he had often wondered why this punishment had been exacted upon his flesh, leaving it undying. Was it merely penance for his sin or was it for some purpose, a goal he had not yet come to understand?
“You are fortunate,” she said. “I would gladly accept such silence.”
“Why?” he pressed.
She sighed and touched the silver shard hanging from around her neck. “It can be a curse to see dimly into the future, knowing of a tragedy to come but not knowing how to avert it.”
“So then you are a prophetess?”
“I was once,” she said, her dark eyes flicking up to the moon and back. “Or should I say, many times. In the past, I once bore the title of the Oracle of Greece, another time the Sibyl of Erythraea, but throughout the ages, I was called countless other names.”