Historical setting: 584 C.E. The house of Eve, pagan healer
Nic is telling me how my bones were saved from a forever memorial under the stone that fell. He rambles on, “August tried using the winches adding to them the stronger pulleys retrieved from the crane arm but to no avail. So on the third day he had the stone-cutters split the stone in two to managed with strong men and winches. On the fourth day we found you were indeed badly crushed and broken into uselessness like the crane was also. If you don’t mind me saying it so bluntly, you were very definitely dead – though not stiff with death or stinking yet. That was the surprise. We all thought you would be stinking by this time. There were all sorts of theories flying around about how come you were not stinking after four days dead. No one believed the ‘Lazarus theory’ even though your own blood sisters had the same wonder back in the day. [John 11:39 — best from the KJV for the use of that rare word “stinketh”]
“We were able to remove what was left of you. I wrapped you in your cloak and laid you onto the cart next to the lady of stone. Brother August wasn’t pleased with that. It was his cart and it was messy. I knew enough to bring you up here, and we didn’t have to travel at ox speed. It seems your patient brown horse was willing to wear a yolk and harness. I made it in good time while everyone else in Bordeaux was worrying over the broken crane wheel. That heap of wooden crane curves never did heal in all these twenty years. The new basilica never rose to the heights of the older Roman buildings. The whole world it seems is coming to grips that the empire has indeed fallen. Well, except for the pope in Rome who is still battling Arian heretics. I wrote all that stuff in some history pages I gave to the little girl, Anatase, who is as good at reading as she is playing the flute. I thought she could read you the events of these years when I’m gone.
“And I have to tell you, my dear friend and brother, when I am gone, I promise I will stay gone. I won’t leave you all with near on a two decades of hopes and wonders caught in a limbo between the possibilities of death-stench or life-stench.”
I speak my apology. He doesn’t hear me.
(Continues tomorrow)
Lazarus Ink 