Into Eden: Pangaea - Book 1 (8 page)

“Jesse!” Tamar exclaimed. “I have some exciting news for you! Meroni is coming to help out with your recovery! Won’t that be wonderful? The two of you can get to know each other better! I wrote her all about what happened, how you so bravely fought off the fierce jackal-head and were gravely wounded and about how you were now Master of the house of Nashon!”

That last statement was no doubt what prompted Meroni—his fiancé by his mother’s choice—to help in his recovery. Jesse doubted that she cared little for his health. His newfound wealth on the other hand was a different matter.

His mother went on, “With Meroni here you won’t have to rely on the servants to do everything for you!”

Jesse was starting to feel better already. He would dress himself and make his own way to the commode if it killed him.

“I just received her reply this morning,” she continued. “She’ll be here in a fortnight. Won’t that be fabulous?”

“Great. Just great,” Jesse mumbled back.

“I knew that you’d be happy. Bye now. I have to go and start making preparations for her arrival.” With that, Tamar left her son’s room.

Jesse looked over at Enoch, sitting by the chair by his bed. The dog was grinning.

“Go ahead,” Jesse told him. “Have your little chuckle. I’m NOT going to have her play nurse for me and I’m NOT going to marry her. Now that the Atlantan senate has declared that men can only have one wife I intend to make sure that I get one that I like.”

“A noble goal. But while the senate may stipulate how many wives you may have, your mother still gets to choose which one.”

“Leave me, Enoch. I want to pout in solitude.”

Jesse turned his head to the wall and Enoch trotted out—but not before finishing off the lamb-chops on the platter beside Jesse’s bed.

The thought of Meroni coming to nurse him back to health brought on a depression that he hadn’t felt since his first day of recovery. He had met her only once before—five years ago when they were both eighty-five, and at a time when Jesse was just starting to show an interest in girls. Tamar had chosen Meroni as his bride for two reasons. First, Meroni was his first cousin and his mother wanted to keep Nashon’s money in the family. Second, Meroni was a beautiful girl. Women—including his mother—could be so funny about such things. Meroni was beautiful—there could be no doubt—but good looks seemed to be her sole asset as far as Jesse could see.

Meroni was the daughter of Tamar’s sister, Helita, who lived in Atlantis. Meroni was a city-girl in every way. Tall, like many Atlantan women, with long, blonde hair and deep, blue eyes. Tamar and Helita had introduced the two and then disappeared, leaving them to “get to know each other” which translated meant that Jesse got to hear her talk and complain. She kept going on about her “dreadful” trip down from Atlantis, how the roads were bumpy, the people were dirty, the coach-driver was rude, the food at the inns was awful, and the locals were uncultured—except (of course)—for his family.

Jesse, for his part, could not help but stare at her. Unlike the local girls (who wore their hair in braids) Meroni’s was long, silky, and straight. She wore eye makeup (something unheard of in the Foothills) and a form-fitting dress made from smuggled silk. The dress shamefully exposed her entire ankles and was cut to show cleavage from her ample bosoms. No Foothills girl would ever go out in public dressed like that—but Meroni wasn’t even blushing! What were the men of Atlantis to think seeing girls in public dressed like that?

Meroni went on, “Then I told the innkeeper, ‘You just wait! I’ll have you fired!’ And do you know what he said to me?”

“What?” Jesse asked.

“Jesse! You’re staring at my breasts! That’s so rude!”

Jesse focuses on her blue eyes and said, “I’m sorry. Please go on.”

“Well,” she said, not skipping a beat, “he had the nerve to say to me that I couldn’t have him fired because he owned the place! Can you believe that? That dirty, little, fat, bald man would speak to me like that! Meee!”

The way that she emphasized the word, “Me” spoke volumes on her world view, he thought.

“Jesse! You are staring at my breasts, again, aren’t you?”

“Sorry.” Again he focused on her eyes.

“Well then I said…” Meroni went on speed-talking for another thirty minutes or so, but never seemed to even get winded. Yes, his mother had found him a beautiful bride, but Jesse purposed in the first hour that he met her that the wedding would never take place. And now, five years later recovering in his sickbed Jesse purposed that he would be gone before she returned. He could ride a horse with bandaged arms and side, and he would have plenty of time to mend on the road. He would not wait for spring. He would not wait a fortnight. He would leave in a week’s time, whether Enoch came with him or not.

It had been a week since Tamar told Jesse of Meroni’s plans to come to the estate and nurse him back to health. His progress had been slow, but since that day Jesse had forced himself to take care of all his personal needs from shaving to bathing. It hadn’t been easy, and each day he fell asleep exhausted and hurting from wounds that he re-opened from time to time after overexerting himself. Still, he was making steady progress and even occasionally would walk out on the bedroom’s balcony when he knew his mother would not be looking. He did not want her to know how mobile he was.

Over the last couple of days Jesse had gathered together a number of things and stashed them under his bed. He had some of his father’s old maps detailing village locations along the Southern Highway. He had his shaving gear, a cloak, some firesticks, a couple extra changes of clothing, a compass and an extra blanket. Even some biscuits and dried beef for the road. Some of the biscuits were already a little moldy, but Doc Paron said that eating moldy biscuits helped fight infection and would help him heal sooner. He thought that to be a stupid wives’ tale, but as long as it didn’t make him sicker he’d try it. He had almost everything that he needed for the journey.

On the night of his departure he awoke with a start. Fearful that he had overslept, he sat up and looked out the window. It was a moonless night, new moon to be sure, so gauging the time of night by the moon’s position was an impossibility. Outside the courtyard was quiet and dark. All the lights were out in the servants’ quarters—that meant that it must be sometime after midnight. Time to get started, then. Jesse rolled out of bed and used a firestick to light a candle. He dressed as quickly as his healing wounds would permit, leaving his boots off to avoid making too much noise, then dug out all of his supplies from under his bed. He crammed all of them in two pillowcases. Next he went to an ornamented wardrobe and removed his sword, his bow, and a quiver full of arrows and laid them out on his bed. Just one more thing to get.

Leaving his bedroom he crept quietly down the hall to what had been his father’s room. Jesse took a look around. The feather-mattress that his father had died on had been stripped from the bed. Even though servants had scrubbed the floors, you could still see slight dark areas on the oak flooring where his father, Anubis, and he had alternately spilled their blood. He noticed that someone had put the spear that he had thrust into Anubis back up on the wall, but the mount that had held it was still broken. It would take little to have it fall down. He counted four planks over from the wall, and then got down on his hands and knees. Pulling out a dagger he found the seam between the boards and began to pry. In a moment the plank came up, exposing a small, hidden compartment beneath the floor. His father had shown Josiah and him the hiding place over a year ago. “If I die suddenly,” Nashon had told them, “be sure someone knows that it’s here.” Jesse had told no one.

He reached into the compartment and pulled out a tin box about a third of a pace long and a sixth of a pace in width. It was so heavy that he re-opened the wounds in his side and right arm pulling it out. Laying it on the floor, he opened it and counted out one-hundred gold Atlantan denari and fifty coppers for change, placing the coins in a purse. He should be able to live off that amount of money for years, he thought. He then carefully, quietly, placed the box back in its hiding place. Getting up to leave he headed for the door, then stopped. There was one more thing. “Sometimes,” his father once told him, “you need to listen to the small voice inside your head when it tells you to do something. It just may save your life.” Jesse returned to the head of the bed and reached up and removed the spear from its broken mount. He still didn’t believe that there were lions on the road—but sometimes it didn’t hurt to be prepared.

When he got back to his room he laid the spear on the bed and divided the coins. Half he kept in his purse, the others he tucked in a money belt that he kept under his underwear. “A wayfarer may steal your purse and boots,” his father once told him, “but I’ve yet to see a robber who’d leave you beside the road naked.” When he was done with the money, he sat down at his desk. Laying out a piece of parchment he began to write a note to his mother using a quill and ink. He blew the ink to hasten its drying, then carefully folded it so that the seam was in the middle of the paper. He then dripped a small amount of wax from his candle to seal the letter and took his father’s signet ring which he now wore on a chain around his neck and embossed the wax with the signet of the house of Nashon: sheaves and a scythe. Jesse wrote his mother’s name below the seal then carefully placed it on the desk where it would be sure to be found. While he assured her in his letter that he would only be away a short time, he could not have known that many months would pass before he saw her face again.

When he was done with his written, “Goodbye” he pulled on his boots, strapped on his sword, and threw his quiver, bow, and two pillowcases over his shoulder. He then picked up his spear and tiptoed out the door and down the stairs. As he was crossing the courtyard to the stables he observed that something about the night was not right. It was, somehow, darker than usual. No moon, he thought, its new moon. No stars…no stars? He
had
overslept! It would soon be sunrise! When this realization hit him he hurried to the stable and hastily began to saddle his stallion.

The stable was dark, and filled with the smells of hay and manure. Through the dim light coming through a high window he could see the horses sleeping in the stalls.

“Going somewhere?” came a voice from the darkness behind him. It was Enoch, and Jesse was so startled that he nearly cried-out.

“Yes, Enoch. I’m going somewhere...and you know where.”

“So soon? I figured that you were smart enough to hold off on a journey over the mountains until the spring. It’s too late in the summer to get started on travels to the south. I thought that I had all fall and winter to talk you out of this nonsense.”

“Waiting until spring was my original plan.” Jesse cinched the strap on the horse’s saddle.

“What changed?”

“Meroni’s coming to see me.”

“Meroni?! Let me get this straight. You’re getting ready to ride two-thousand miles, brave lions on the road, a river filled with monsters and a steaming jungle filled with more monsters to avoid a woman?”

“Yes.”

“You are wise beyond your years.”

“That’s what I like about you, Enoch; old age has made you cynical.”

“And protective. Now if you insist on embarking on this fool-hardy quest, I insist that you take me with you.”

“I only want you to come if you will help me. Otherwise, you’re just slowing me down.”

“I won’t partake in murder—you know that. But I will agree to not interfere with your plans.”

“Not good enough,” Jesse replied as his stuffed the last of his things in the saddlebags.

“I’m afraid that you have no choice.”

“And why’s that?”

“Because if you don’t take me I’ll stand under your mother’s window and bark until she wakes up. Then I’ll tell her exactly what you have planned and you’ll never make it as far as Albion Bridge.”

“You wouldn’t.”

Enoch began to bark and the horses awaked and started to whinny. Jesse clamped his hands over Enoch’s muzzle and said, “Okay. Okay. You have a deal.”

“Good,” said Enoch as Jesse released him. “Now get the saddle off your stallion and hitch up the gray gelding to the buckboard. I don’t intend to walk all the way to New Sodom.”

“I can’t. That’s not my horse.”

“Wrong, Jesse. They’re all your horses now.”

The truth of Enoch’s observation struck Jesse as oddly surreal. The estate was now his. Horses, houses and fields. And yet he still thought in terms of, this is my horse. That is someone else’s carriage. But all of that had changed. The change had been brought on by a murderous rampage that now he was setting out to avenge. Ironic.

Jesse stripped the stallion of its tack and then led the gelding out to the buckboard. Time was of the essence. Soon lights would be coming on in the servants’ quarters and an undiscovered exit would not be possible. He threw the saddlebags, spear, quiver and bow in the back of the wagon as Enoch jumped up and sat down behind the driver’s seat. In a low voice Jesse urged the animal forward. When they approached the gate Jesse was surprised to find Abijah standing guard, sword strapped to his belt.