A Mutual Accord

Prologue

PROLOGUE

J erusalem, 33 AD

Madness. The brown dirt street was filled with dust. Dust, people, women, men, children, soldiers, screams, cheers. The streets were filled with many things, but that day they were primarily filled with madness. Cartaphilus saw it more clearly looking back over the years. The cobblestone and dirt roads had been filled with utter insanity, and they had all been consumed by it.

A man struggled up the lane as the mob ran about him, cheering and screaming. He nearly buckled under the weight of a crucifix fashioned from the wood of a great olive tree. Blood ran down his face as he wept, and staggered away from Jerusalem, up the hill to Golgotha.

Cartaphilus ran with the crowd and cheered, as filled with lust for blood as any other. His ears buzzed, and he had never felt so alive. The shouts of Jews and Romans filled the air, as the man stumbled and cried out, falling to his knees in the street.

Cartaphilus dashed forward and cuffed the man on the head, “Get up!” he cried. “Get up, get up! This is no time to rest!” He grazed his wrist on the crown of thorns on the man’s head.

The man turned reproachful eyes upon him. “I will go, and you will wait until I return.”

Cartaphilus struck the man again, and ran ahead, cheering with the others. Madness .

An abomination happened that day. An abomination against God. Against humanity itself…

Sixty years later:

Cartaphilus watched sadly as an elderly woman, his second wife, threw crockery at him from across the room.

“Get out, get out ! Vile beast! Demon! You are unholy! You never change, while the rest of us grow old and die! You are stealing our life, that is what you are doing! Get away!” The woman collapsed, sobbing, on the floor. His youngest son stood in the doorway, a grandfather, already grey, eyes filled with distrust and fear. His eldest son was already dead.

“Go,” his son ordered him. “Go, and take your evil with you.”

He went… He never returned…