Bob’s Memoir: 4,000 Years as a Free Demon
Part IV
Nobody Expects the Spanish Inquisition
16
Churches and Demons Are Good Company
AFTER I LEFT the palaces of the Peloponnese, I paused long enough to pay my respects to the patroness of Athens and erect a small temple in her honor. Soon after Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus murdered Agamemnon, there was an earthquake that made the small kingdom of the Acropolis self-sufficient with its own water source. Erectheus, the ruler of the microcity, wanted to build and reinforce a wall around the top of the Acropolis. I agreed to do so on condition that he also erect a small temple to Athene within its precincts.
Well, I was there for four or five years, creating the fortification and the temple. It wasn’t huge, but Athene had blessed it and my work, so I was pleased. No, this was not the famed Parthenon of later years. It was just a small temple near Erectheus’s equally small palace. But it served to separate and protect the Acropolis from the curse of the House of Atreus that had claimed so many lives, including Agamemnon. I’ll tell you about that story sometime, but I stayed away from the family as far as I could, and as soon as the little temple was finished, I headed on north.
I’m tired of talking about ancient history. Yes, I met some famous people, like Nebuchadnezzar, Alexander, Caesar, and such, but I’ll get to their stories later. For a few centuries, I enjoyed wandering through northern and eastern Europe, before heading south into Mesopotamia again. There were places where I thought I might successfully settle down and hide the satchel before crawling in and living there with my family forever. But every time I thought I’d found such a place, I’d see people moving that direction.
Not that we didn’t have some good times. There was Impi, for example—a Finnish girl whose name meant ‘virgin,’ which was true for most of the first day I met her. The day was only a few minutes long and then it was night for hours. What’s a demon to do to keep a girl warm when the night is twenty-three or more hours? I built a little hut and we stayed in it for several years. Sadly, the people of that region were not terribly long-lived and I once again bid farewell to a perfectly lovely wife.
Centuries after Homer wrote, there was a great revival of the arts and literature. People dug up the bones of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey and made translations and books. I’m sure if he read and understood them today, Homer would be appalled at how his precious words have been twisted. Well, serves him right if you ask me. He glorified the barbaric Greeks and denigrated the Trojans. Didn’t even mention the underhanded horse trick. I’m glad Virgil got that part right in The Aeneid. Romans should be proud to have the blood of Troy in their veins instead of on their hands.
The whole story of being chased all over the Mediterranean by Poseidon reminds me of another unpleasant voyage or two. But let’s put off talking about more ancient history. I’ll get to Caesar and Cleopatra later. I know you want to hear about them. But everyone has heard about them. This next adventure I want to tell you about happened, oh, less than a millennium or so ago.
I love the sea, so I’d spent years sailing on waters Poseidon had never touched. Of course, by this time, things had become so crazy on earth that the Olympians pretty much gave it up as a bad game and moved on. I didn’t understand for a long time, but when the king of the gods loses control of the kingdom, he gets pouty and out of sorts. Zeus, Poseidon, Hades, all decided eventually to get out of town when the new god started pushing them around. I’ll tell you about him later.
The seas I sailed in this time were far in the south and in the Far East as I made my way from island paradise to island paradise. Those were some good times and I met some interesting people. Remind me to tell you about the Great Khaan sometime. The journey eventually brought me up the west coast of Africa until I once again found myself sailing the familiar seas of the Mediterranean. It was nostalgic. I’d thought I might visit some of the old places and see if anything I remembered was still there. That thought ended with my first stop in Italy. A plague had just begun and they called it the Black Death. People who caught it tended to die.
I considered getting right back on my boat, but it had become infested with rats in almost no time after I made port. I abandoned ship. There were thousands of people living in the infinity room world by this time, so most did not recognize my long absence. I placed a sealing spell on the case making it impervious to anything that might attack it. Especially, rats. After some time in Rome, working on the center city of the church, I made my way north through Italy, hoping to find a place to sit out the plague.
What I found was construction. There were ancient buildings in Rome which had fallen into ruin. The forum and Colosseum were a shambles. But there was a construction boom in Italy. Mostly churches. I was an old hand at building temples by this time and it was easy for me to find small churches either being built or needing repair. I could work pretty rapidly, easing the burdens of many of the workers so their work also went more swiftly. I never stayed longer than it took to complete a specific task or project, then I moved on.
Gods and temples. I’ve never quite understood. I believe it is an immortal vanity. When Ninra got me to build his temple in Bathra, there was no slowing things down. Everyone knew the god and goddess had their hands in getting it built, as they were represented directly by the Queen and King—Bao and me. We worked beside the laborers to make a beautiful temple with Ninra and Namri’s blessing. People saw the hand of the gods at work.
To me, it was evidence that the Christian god didn’t command the building of a temple in every city of any size in the world. The churches were created to the glory of the architects and priests who made sure their names were attached to the various churches and cathedrals.
Here’s the thing. The god of the Jews, to whom I had been near but never met, had a single temple. His people knew exactly where they needed to go to worship. Oh, there were some smaller places regionally where people met to study the holy books, but sacrifice was strictly limited to the temple.
Then there was the whole debacle with the summoning of a messiah and not knowing what it was they wanted. Everyone had a different idea of what the messiah should be. When he didn’t turn out to be that, they looked for something more substantial. Now many people maintain the old ways, and worship the old god of the Torah. I have nothing against that, any more than I object to raising my glass to Aphrodite on occasion. But he quit working when the world began to collapse around him. Like the ancient Greek gods, he retired to Olympus or to Sinai or maybe to Miami.
Without a god and having rejected the message of the messiah they summoned, a new religion arose. It was designed according to the ideal that these adherents held—the new god would dominate not only his people, but the world. And if their god dominated the world, then his people dominated all other people. This general philosophy was present in the creation of some other religions and at least one competed for world domination.
You don’t have to believe my theories, of course. I am merely a 4,000-year-old demon. I have seen gods come and go. Gods that depend on the belief of their people. More than anything else, the new god destroyed the belief in other gods. It’s just my opinion, of course. I’m not about to try to find that god and interview him.
Which brings me back to the elaborate and beautiful cathedrals. A simple survey of the names of the cathedrals and their dedications will tell you quickly that they were not erected to serve the god, but rather the various saints and priests and architects who attached their names to them. Hence—and since the objective of the religion was world domination—there was not a single temple where the god could be identified and worshiped, but rather a cathedral in every town, established with the mythos that the god is present in all at the same time.
All of which made no difference to me at all. I had built dozens of temples throughout the world at this point, and I saw no difficulty in helping build another. Which is what brought me to the temple in Firenze. I should remember to say cathedral. It had been begun fifty years before I got there and was expected to take another hundred years to finish. I revised my assessment that no god was lightening the load of the peasants cutting stone and elevating it to be stacked on the walls. The god, if he was involved at all, had provided engineers. The sleds used for hauling the heavy stones had wheels. They were pulled by horses. There was no need for a simple demon to come along and enchant the sled so whatever was on it was light enough for a man to pull. Stones moved steadily from the quarry to the temple.
I admired the men who dreamed dreams of these temples and then created them with essentially the same tools I used for the palaces in Knossos or the temple in Bathra. Oh, there were bright architects, engineers, and mechanics at work. A small item I contributed was to demonstrate how a groove on one stone could be matched with a tongue on the next stone to create a stronger weld between the stones. I’d learned that in creating the bricks in Bathra.
I tried not to practice too much magic around the cathedral, and none at all on the building itself. I’m not really that good with subtle magic. I did, however, find an ancient spell for binding two items together. When I saw the rickety scaffolding the workers were using to hoist the heavy stones into place, I made nightly trips around the structures and bound the joints together so they wouldn’t collapse. Otherwise, I was just a worker putting my back into the building of the cathedral, and leaving some well-placed drawings lying around where the architects could find and claim them.
During this time, I fell in with a monk named Brother Matteo, who spent his days in sober prayer for the safety of the workers and the glory of the building. Glory of God, I should say. I visited with Brother Matteo frequently and he took me to his home at night. His home, with others of his kind, was out in the countryside and most of the holy men spent their time tending vast plots of grapevines. The grapes were harvested and pressed into juice, then fermented into some of the finest wine I had ever tasted. They had reached a point of perfection. While Brother Matteo spent his days in sober prayer, his nights were not as sober.
Eventually, I left the construction on the cathedral and spent my time learning everything I could from the monks about making wine. Then I began searching for a suitable plot of ground where I could grow my own grapes and make my own wine.
Enter Esmira. Remember, I mentioned her back once at the beginning of this tale. Well, it’s time tell her story. I might almost have thought Aphrodite had placed her in my path, but I hadn’t heard from My Lady Goddess in a thousand years. Nonetheless, I whispered a blessing to her.
Esmira was a raven-haired beauty with bountiful breasts, scarcely contained within her dress. She was the sixteen-year-old daughter of—Surprise! Surprise!—a vineyard owner. I approached her cautiously and she approached me flirtatiously. The plague had reduced the number of potential mates for the surviving women. She took it as a sign when I stumbled upon her vineyard that I was destined to be hers. Perhaps she was right. I had no objections.
“If you are looking for work, I have a few suggestions of things you could do,” she said, sidling up to me. She almost brushed me with the tips of her breasts as she swayed in front of me.
“I could see working in a vineyard for such a beautiful young foreman,” I responded.
“Some of the work would be hard,” she said, definitely brushing her nipples across my sleeve this time. Things were getting hard already.
“I would hate to plant seeds in someone else’s vineyard,” I said. “Or even to plow someone else’s field.” My hand had strayed to her waist and stroked down her hip.
“If your plow is as sharp as your tongue, the furrow would be easy to part,” she said, reaching between us to stroke my length.
“So sharp, in fact, that I sometimes use my tongue to prepare the soil for my plow.” I tweaked her nipple and she gasped.
“Come with me. This field can only be plowed by its rightful owner, but I think a purchase could be arranged.” She grabbed my hand and dragged me out of the field toward the modest home near the winery.
I observed the operation as Esmira continued to chat with me and discover where I came from. It seemed most of the vineyard was run by women, but that made sense if young men were in short supply. That happens in times of plague and war.
“Papa! This is Roberto! He is eligible and I want him. Please make a marriage contract between us,” Esmira announced when she brought me into the house to meet her father. She was not about to waste time in laying claim.
“Roberto? Roberto who? I don’t know any Roberto!” the man said.
“Roberto di Firenze,” I made up on the spot. “Please, just call me Bob.”
“I am Manduggo Domenic Ermengildo di Maiano,” the man said. “You may call me Doug. Now, what do you have to offer that will make me give you my precious daughter and her inheritance in the vineyards around us.”
That was music to my ears. Not only was Esmira a fiery woman who was hot to trot, she came with an inheritance of these vineyards. I thought I could easily live with that.
“Since the time of the plague, I have worked my way from church to cathedral, lending my back to the glory of God. But my heart belongs to the land. I have spent the past two years learning winemaking from the monks of San Michele a Monteripaldi. They make a fine wine and I would put it up against any in the region.”
He simply stared at me as if winemakers were a dime a dozen and he wanted something better for his daughter. Hmm. It seemed I’d used that strategy before, myself.
“I have some small wealth of my own that I can bring to hire help when we expand our vineyards and our winery to double its current size, and your lovely home into a palazzo worthy of the beautiful Esmira,” I said. I laid it on a bit thick, I suppose. I think he was sold as soon as I mentioned a little wealth. Esmira had been sold as soon as she stroked my manhood.
He immediately tapped a keg of wine and poured us each a carafe from which we poured glass after glass. When I had adequately sampled his fare and approved of it, I pulled two bottles of the Monteripaldi wine from my satchel and we compared the subtle differences. During the evening, Esmira brought plate after plate of food, waiting on us as we discussed her dowry and the commitments we would make to each other as father and husband. Her mother had been caught by the plague and they mourned her, but father and daughter had avoided infection and worked constantly in the vineyard and winery.
By the end of the night, I had a bride and a stake in a lovely vineyard.
“Roberto, we are now wed,” Esmira said when we returned to the vineyard after our vows at the still-unfinished cathedral.
I couldn’t help myself while we were in Firenze. I saw the display of the architect’s drawings for the duomo and stopped to sketch a few suggestions to leave for him. If he took my suggestions, it would reduce the building time by half.
“Bob!” Back to Esmira. “You are my husband. You need no longer confine your hands to the outside of my clothing. Please! I have waited all my life for this moment and I want my husband between my legs!”
We slipped away from the party held in our honor and I began undressing her at once.
“What are you doing with my clothes?” she asked in alarm.
“Oh, my dear wife,” I said. “I am preparing us for the most delightful experience of your young life. To do it properly, we need no clothes between us.”
“No clothes! You are an evil and lascivious man!”
“Did you think I would merely raise your skirts and plunder your sex without worshiping every inch of your body? My sweet, we are to become one flesh. There is no sin in putting our skin directly together.”
As hot and ready as Esmira was, I don’t believe she was expecting the sudden shaking that wracked her body when she came. Girls were often highly protected from all knowledge of the world in that day. She stared at me with eyes and mouth open as I peeled my own clothes off my body. She simply stood and stared, stark naked and not knowing what to do next. For a girl who had so mastered the art of flirtation, she really did not know where to go from there.
I swept her up in my arms and carried her to the bed, pulling the blanket off before I laid her down. I was serious when I told her I would worship every inch of her body. I set about proving it, and she began what would be a long line of climaxes that helped to pass our night before I ever parted those womanly folds and entered her.
Esmira was so overwhelmed with the strength of her orgasm when I came in her that she passed out and slept until morning.
Life was good. I managed on occasion, to cross into the infinity room and update my wives and possessions about what was going on in the natural world. They were thrilled that I’d taken another wife and asked me repeatedly to bring her to them.
That was something I wasn’t about to risk. My time in the infinity room was limited as it was. You see, the Church of Rome and, as a result, the people who followed its religion, had rigid views of demons. They were not good.
Back in Jesus’ time, there had been instances in which he convinced another demon to leave a possession and make its home elsewhere. Now, never did Jesus send a fellow demon to hell. That manmade lake of fire and torture had no place in his dealings. But he was also firm about the possession of a human body.
There is a difference here that you may not understand. I’ll try to explain. When I possessed Josie or Pari, they actually asked me to possess them—to take full and complete ownership of their bodies, minds, and wills. I had my own body. I didn’t need to inhabit theirs in order to possess them. On the other hand, there were many demons who for one reason or another had lost their bodies without returning to the primordial mass. One means of avoiding death was to jump into the body of someone else and possess it regardless of their will. Jesus was known to have cast demons out of the body of a person, setting that demon free to find another host—often an animal.
There’s a famous story of a demon being cast out and into a passel of swine and the pigs ran off a cliff. Let me say several things about this. First, there were very few pigs in Judea. They were anathema and there was no market. I suppose some Roman soldiers somewhere might have had some. They liked bacon. Second, in the story, Jesus did not send the pigs off the cliff. He had a very high regard for life and would not have sent innocent animals, even unclean ones, to their death. Third, the death of the pig would not have meant the death of the demon, any more than the death of his original body. It might have hurt like hell, but he’d have escaped and found another host.
The religion, however, holds that all demons are evil, that they come from and return to hell, and traffic with one is to risk eternal damnation. I was not about to reveal myself to Esmira.
Everything went well for a long time. Esmira was a lubricious lover and made sure I was always welcome between her legs. When it became necessary to produce an heir on her, I enlisted the help of one of the many men from the infinity room, to whom I gave my shape and let him happily impregnate my wife. And I was proud that I restrained myself from killing him afterward.
Esmira was none the wiser and was happy to produce little Doug and later, Esmirina.
The farm and vineyard were prosperous. I enjoyed drinking the wine almost as much as I enjoyed feasting between Esmira’s legs.
The plague was now well past, so my visits to the infinity room increased in frequency. I was careful. I would load up a wagon of barrels of wine and take it into the city or to another village to sell. Of course, I didn’t take all the wine to a city or village. I found a cave where I could open a door to the infinity room and bring barrels of wine in for our future enjoyment. I always paid for the wine with gold from the infinity room. While there, I had ample opportunity to enjoy Nimia, Josie, Penelope, Princess, Zhi, Pari and others. Yes, I’ll tell you about those you don’t recognize later.
That is what proved to be my undoing as I once became careless about crossing the threshold into my kingdom.
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