Bob’s Memoir: 4,000 Years as a Free Demon
18
In 1492, Columbus Sailed…
“AFTER YOU LEFT…” Esmeralda started her tale.
“Was imprisoned,” I corrected.
“After you were cruelly and brutally forced into a dank dark cell and kept there without food or water or human company,” she started again, rolling her eyes, “Grandmother discovered you had never been on a sales trip in all the years you were taking casks away. There was no one outside our valley who had ever heard of our wine. The money had all come from you as you stockpiled the wine in your bag. She almost opened the bag just to demand the money.”
“That would have been unwise,” I grumbled.
“So she figured. Anyway, she had enough money to keep the vineyard producing and was able to buy another wagon and horse to replace the one you stole.”
“I didn’t steal it! She trapped it inside with me.”
“Uh huh. She hired helpers for the vineyard and then she and her son loaded the wagon and took it to surrounding villages. After sampling the vintage, the road houses and taverns all wanted to buy as much as they could. Our Chianti became the most popular primitivo table wine in all of Tuscany. She reckoned that if you had actually taken the wine to sell, we’d have earned twice the paltry sum you paid for it.”
“That was not a paltry sum!” I bellowed, and then lowered my voice. “She certainly never complained about money when she was spending it.”
“I’m sure. Great Grandmother Esmira always exaggerated when she spoke of you. To hear her talk in her older years, you were so well hung she had to take a day’s journey by horse just to get to the end of your cock.”
“It’s not that big,” I said.
“I saw. Big enough, though.”
“When did she tell you all of this?”
“Some of the stories were passed down from my mother or her mother. Anyway, Esmira’s children got married and had children. The more she thought about it, the more Esmira decided you couldn’t have actually been the father because her children showed no sign of any demonic traits.”
“I wonder which of my traits she considered demonic,” I sighed.
“Most of them. Really, the kids didn’t even look anything like you according to her. One was so dark-skinned she was sure the father was African or south Mediterranean. I have just a bit of her color.”
“Well, she was right. I cannot father children,” I confessed.
“I need have no worry about having sex with my grandfather then.” I looked at her sharply, but she just continued. “Everyone worked on the farm, but Esmira was always the head of the family and the boss, right up until she died. She continued to acquire land and began raising goats to make cheese that went well with the wine. By the time she died a couple of years ago, the palazzo was among the wealthiest and most illustrious in all of Tuscany.”
“She died a couple of years ago and you just got around to opening the bag?” I raged. Quietly.
“She shoved it into my hands just before she died and told me to keep it next to me always. There was an inheritance dispute among the descendants. As a result, I was shipped off to a convent at San Michele a Monteripaldi. That reduced the number of heirs. It’s funny how no one has ever touched or even mentioned the satchel.”
“The look-away spell,” I said. “I’m glad it is still working. I need to refresh it so it doesn’t fade.”
“Well, I can see it. It’s right… Wait! Where did it go?”
“You could see it while it was in your possession. Now it is in my possession.”
“That’s not fair. I wanted to go inside.”
“Someday. Just not yet. I need you out here. Now continue the story.”
“I’m still too young to take the holy vows. I was just considered one of the orphans they cared for. Though I understand I came with a rather sizable gift to the convent. Then Father Calvino arrived. He’d recently been promoted to Cardinal and was all full of himself in his red robes and pointed hat. He got the appointment so he could carry ‘certain papers’ to Spain on behalf of the Pope. But that was all he had. He had to find a seaport and book his own passage. The ports around Rome are still too dangerous as Turkish pirates harry the Spaniards. So, he came north. He stopped at the monastery, looking for a secretary. They sent him to the convent. The convent gave him me because I could read and write.”
“And he took you because you have tits.”
“You noticed?” she asked excitedly. “They’re not as big as Mother’s or Grandmother’s, but I think they’ll grow.”
“I noticed,” I said. “We need to disguise them to keep you from looking so desirable.”
“Desirable,” she sighed. She was not getting the point.
“See here, Esmeralda. If you follow around a priest and look like you are ready to fuck, someone will. Or they will imagine that I already am. Either way, it would put us both in danger. Until we have fulfilled our current mission and delivered the papal bull, we need to lay low and not raise any suspicion. If I have to use magic to protect us, they will do their best to find and destroy us.”
“I understand, Bob. But can I have them out to display when it’s just the two of us?”
I groaned. She really looked delectable. And to think her great grandmother had been shocked speechless when I removed her clothes.
I’d last sailed just a century and a half ago, but I was amazed at how far the technology of shipbuilding had come, even in that little time. The Spanish galleon was a large and fast ship with passenger cabins below deck. I thought fleetingly that Poseidon would have had a tougher time with this ship than he had with my tiny boat. I’d like to see the Scylla attempt to crush this one!
I quickly silenced my thoughts lest they be overheard as a challenge.
By the time we reached Catalonia, I had made sufficient alterations to Esmeralda’s appearance that she would not draw attention. I also worked on a modified ‘look-away’ spell that would keep her from unwanted notice. It wouldn’t make her invisible like the effect on the bag, but she would be unremarkable and simply not draw attention. She was more androgynous in appearance but I didn’t want her to look too much like a boy. There were many in the religious orders who preferred that gender. I had not told Esmeralda what Calvino had actually intended to do to her. It would make her constipated.
We disembarked and were met by a small detachment of mounted soldiers and a few priests. The priests did obeisance and the soldiers watched impatiently as our luggage was loaded onto the top of a carriage in which we rode to Castile, where Isabella had recently consolidated her control by ousting her aunt and legitimizing her claim to the throne. I was transporting three large trunks and had no idea what was in any of them. How many possessions did a priest need? We stayed in inns along the way and no one thought it the least bit strange that my secretary nun stayed in my room.
A rumor grew that she was a bodyguard and people were better warned away. Of course, I had no part in starting that rumor. I did, however, spend time making sure she knew how to defend herself and she took to the instruction well. When we were in private, Zhi emerged from the bag to give her lessons in hand-to-hand combat.
In Castile, we were conducted to a suite of rooms in the local diocese and given two days rest before the monarchs summoned us. We immediately began unpacking the trunks to see what on earth was in them.
What I found made me smile. Some twenty-five years before, a man in Germany had succeeded in making multiple copies of the Bible with a machine he called a printing press. Since that time, many books had been printed in Germany, Italy, France, and even England. I pushed the trunks through the gateway to the infinity room and the ladies unloaded the books for our library and refilled the trunks with normal clothing and household goods so they weighed about the same. Then they pushed the trunks back out to me. I had a new collection of books and looked forward to the time when I could sit and read.
My libraries had grown quite extensive, as I noted during my time in captivity. I’d collected works from some of the largest libraries in the world, not just those of Europe and the Middle East. But it was not appropriate for me to just steal all the books from wherever I saw them. I developed a replicating spell that I could pass a thing through and make a copy of it. I had first discovered the spell when I replicated Odysseus’s boat on the infinity room sea. With only a few modifications, I was able to rapidly send books through to the infinity room where they were replicated exactly and then I put the originals back on their shelves. But sometimes, I simply saved books from disasters or from ignorant people who decided too much knowledge was a dangerous thing and were devoted to destroying them. Or from luggage I inherited from a dead priest.
Ferdinand was besotted with his wife, Queen Isabella. In fact, I’d say totally pussy-whipped. He’d made a play to be declared ruler of Castile when her father died, but it did not take long for the nobility to set him straight. Isabella was Queen in her own right and as she was adjunct to him in Aragon, so he was adjunct to her in Castile. Together, they brought the rest of Spain and Portugal under one rule, at least in name: The Catholic Monarchy. Ferdinand might have been upset about his position in Castile, but he was overwhelmed by his wife. I did not witness anything Isabella wanted that Ferdinand didn’t jump to provide. More about that later.
The papal bull I brought to them was exactly what she wanted. It put control of the Inquisition in her hands rather than in the hands of the church. Of course, priests would investigate and try the accused, but the queen’s soldiers made the arrests, consolidating the power of law under the monarchy rather than the pope. The priests did not need an army.
“You see,” Isabella explained to me as if I were a child, “we have too much greed in our nation. A man covets his neighbor’s house and therefore denounces the neighbor so he can get the property. I’m sick of it and the priesthood has been complicit. They have the notion that the church should get all forfeited property. Not in my country. The inquisition is not a path to greater wealth for the church.”
“What is the scope of the planned inquisition?” I asked.
“The Moors have been too long on the soil of Europe. We will build our strength and push south until we have driven them into the sea and across to Africa where they belong. And the Jews. I suspect that most of those who convert to Christianity are false. I will root out and kill all those who are not truly of the faith. Believe me when I tell you, Spain will be a Catholic country and there will be only Catholics in it. So, I suppose you want to become the Inquisitor General since you came here from the pope.”
“Oh, your Majesty, not this humble priest. I will, of course, be at the disposal of your inquisitors, but have no desire to seek the glory of Inquisitor General,” I said. In fact, that had been Calvino’s intent, but everything I found about the direction of the Catholic church in this century repulsed me. I wanted to wash my hands of it and depart as quickly as possible.
I was dismissed as no longer of importance to the monarchs.
Religious fervor and the threat of eternal damnation is an effective means of controlling the poor and ignorant. The Jews of Iberia were neither poor nor ignorant. On the other hand, they had their own religious fervor that I had seen on a couple of occasions in my history. At some point, I’ll tell you about how the Jews summoned the most powerful demon I’ve ever met. Fortunately, I have not met many demons.
The Inquisition got off to a slow start, which gave Esmeralda and me a chance to put together a kind of path to safety for the Jews. There was not much I could do for the Muslims because Isabella had reignited the Reconquista. This holy war was devoted to driving the Muslim Moors out of the south of Spain.
The Jews were stubborn. They held that their god would protect his people. Frankly, I felt their god had already left to join the immortals on Olympus—or perhaps Sinai or some other holy mountain where they did not need to deal with humans. But even those who had publicly converted to Christianity insisted their god would protect them. I offered to resettle anyone who would go back to their promised land. As strongly as they believed in their god, they were not quite so committed to the country from which they had been scattered.
Some few heeded my word and left for France. Not a good move. France had already expelled the Jews and they had to keep moving. Some others decided to sail south and founded an enclave on the African Continent, where Christians were uninterested. And there were a few—a very few—who took my offer of refuge in the infinity room.
Of those arrested and tried in the Inquisition, over ninety percent of those executed were Jews.
I spent ten years traveling as an itinerant priest, attempting to get the Jews to safety. Ten years is not much time for me. For Esmeralda, it was a time of great change. She went from a thirteen-year-old girl to a twenty-three-year-old beautiful woman. My spells were no longer enough to keep her from being noticed. And, it seemed she was constantly horny. Keeping her a virgin to honor my role as a priest did not last long. By the time she was sixteen, she was in my bed every night. She had no desire to leave me, even knowing I was a demon. She did, however, want to visit the infinity room. The more I thought about it, the better the idea sounded. She was the only living human being who knew of its existence and even one person in knowledge was too many.
We made a wide circuit through the western edge of Spain and Portugal, now united—at least in name—under the Catholic Monarchs. I gained a reputation as a great evangelist, converting Jews wherever I went. Ferdinand and Isabella celebrated their victories over the Moors by moving the seat of government to Cordoba. The treaty assured an independent state for the Moors. I had to wonder how long that would last. Isabella was devoted to conversion or elimination.
In the mountains of Portugal, I addressed my mistress’s desire to enter the infinity room. I explained that it was a one-way trip, but she had heard me tell others the same thing.
We adopted the disguise of two country kids and went to a local priest to get married. Then I found a cave in the mountains and, deep inside where I was sure we could not be stumbled upon, I opened the door of the infinity room and took Esmeralda through. I had only made quick trips into the room to deposit new residents since having been released from the bag. I found it much as I had left it and Josie and Nimia met me as soon as we arrived. They made quite a fuss over Esmeralda and I confirmed that she was, indeed, also my wife. We celebrated for several days and Esmeralda found out what it was like to have a couple more wives helping her out in bed.
I was beginning to tire of traveling the world again. It had been around thirty-six centuries. I liked what I saw growing in the expanded infinity room. Everyone was busy. Everyone was cared for. I wanted to find a place where I could cease my traveling and retire to the world I had created, and still know the room was safe without me outside it guarding it. I decided to devote my time henceforth to finding a safe and secure place where we could live undisturbed.
This is what I was thinking when I reached Cordoba and encountered an enthusiastic sailor named Christopher. He was having difficulty getting funding for a journey west across the Atlantic to reach India. Now, I had sailed the Atlantic as I worked my way up the west coast of Africa some years back. I convinced Chris that I could be an asset in his travels, a position that he eventually endorsed.
He’d made a gross error upon his first meeting with the queen. She was an incredibly beautiful woman and had no difficulty using her womanly charms to get what she wanted. But woe be to a man who attempted to use her in such a way. When Chris had first met her and described his vision of a journey to the west, she leaned toward him and asked sincerely, “What do you want from me?”
“Consummation,” had been his prompt reply. The idiot could have asked for boats and likely got them. Now we had to work our way back into Isabella’s good graces.
I knew the way to sway Isabella.
“Your Majesties, I am widely traveled as an emissary of the pope. I have seen the Holy Land. I have read the journeys of Marco Polo. I have traveled through Greece, Italy, and across the Mediterranean Sea. One thing I have discovered is that everywhere I have gone, there were people who had never heard of the salvation of our Lord and Savior,” I said, laying it on as thickly as I could.
“Heathens and infidels,” Isabella said distastefully.
“Only until they have heard the Word. Then they become faithful followers of the Lord and loyal supporters of the Crown—with their praise and their taxes. The people of India have not been blessed by the missionary zeal of our faith. I would help this master sailor on a mission to bring the true gospel to the people of India,” I said. I decided to cut it off there so I wouldn’t be accused of lying too grossly. I thought that we could sail across, find an uninhabited land, and I could ditch Columbus and his ships.
The ploy worked. Isabella’s missionary fervor burned hot enough to singe Ferdinand and he grudgingly gave three ships to Chris and we set sail.
Of course, I was not the only priest taking passage. I was the only priest who could sail, however. And certainly, the only one who had been to India, though no one knew that. It seemed that in selecting missionaries, Isabella had found the lowest dregs of the priesthood she wanted to get rid of. They were motivated far more by the promise of great riches than by the mission to save souls.
And Christopher kept those fires burning. He nightly regaled the crews with tales of the wealth of India and the spices of China. When there were grumbles among the crew regarding how long the voyage was, he increased the share each would have in the wealth. When wealth was not enough, he added tales of beautiful women who served and worshiped their men.
And that was the first I heard him mention the word ‘slaves.’
I was happy to say nothing.
In all my years of sailing, there were only a few times I had sailed with a crew. I wished I could go back to sailing alone. The men, the captains, the admiral, and even the priests were among the foulest people I had ever met. I had thought that when I found my own paradise, I might offer some of the sailors refuge in the infinity room. I put that thought aside as I knew I would have none of them soiling my landscape.
Sadly, as I think of the years that brought me here, I find that when the gods gave up on humanity and fled to Olympus, they did so because people had become more corrupt and vile than they could stand. Where sacrifices were once burned to the gods, they were now cooked for a feast of men. I found fewer and fewer people I wanted to add to the infinity room as the years went by.
But then, the lookout on the foremast called out the words we all longed to hear. There was land on the horizon.
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