THE CODEX - The Untold Truth

VITA ET ITINERA IUDAE GAUFRIDO ET DANIELAE DICATA

(Life and Travels of Jude, Dedicated to Jeff and Danielle)

Day and Month: Unknown

Location: Unknown

I remember it perfectly. It remains sharp and vivid within me, though a lifetime has passed. My last lifetime, I hope. But that memory is so engraved in my mind that it's the only one that hasn't faded with time. And it's nothing but the recollection of the purest distillation, the most sublimated quintessence of physical pain I experienced during my rebirth.

The growing heat that had enveloped my head at the moment of launch. Like molten lead, it had suddenly permeated every vein, every muscle, every atom of my body. Though that sensation perhaps lasted less than the blink of an eye, the pain reached such an intensity that it nearly rendered me insensible before I lost consciousness.

Then the fall, like a full sack, onto soft, damp ground. And pain again, this time in my chest and back. Then a sound like thunder, and needles! Hundreds of thin, cold, sharp needles striking my body violently. I remember trying repeatedly to open my eyes, but my vision was clouded. I glimpsed flames behind me and then felt their scorching heat. Desperate and unable to stand, I tried to roll away from the fire, but every movement was agony. Then I felt arms dragging me away from that searing heat. At times, I heard muffled voices in a language I vaguely recognized, but the pain gripped my mind with such intensity that I couldn't identify it clearly. I realized I was lying on my back, naked, on muddy ground under heavy rain, surrounded by figures I couldn’t see well. Instinctively, and with immense effort, I curled onto my side. As I struggled to endure the sharpening pain in my chest and shoulder blade, a kick struck my back. I cried out in anguish and thought they would kill me. At that moment, I heard agitated voices and the pounding of hooves. An instant later came a choked scream, and someone collapsed onto me. The strong odor of horses and their nervous whinnying filled the air. Then more voices, in a different language than before, multiplied frantically. I heard the sound of hooves approaching, seemingly toward me. Then I blacked out.

I don’t remember much of the following days. I woke intermittently and only briefly. My vision seemed less blurred because I could distinguish colors clearly—red, blue, and brown. Sometimes I regained consciousness with my eyes to the sky, but above me I saw only a sort of beige canopy surrounding and moving with me, every jolt a stab of pain. Other times, I woke on my side, and everything seemed frozen, crystallized. Even the air. But that beige canopy still loomed, as if ready to engulf me at any moment and smother me. Someone gave me thick soups and a kind of sweet bread to eat. And that same someone also attended to my hygiene, as I was always clean whenever conscious.

I awoke from this liminal state to full awareness one morning before dawn. In truth, it was the noises outside the tent where I lay on a makeshift field cot that roused me. I immediately recalled my delirium of the beige cloth. Nothing more than a tent.

I cautiously touched my body. A linen bandage soaked in a yellowish liquid crossed my chest and back. Apart from a lingering ache where I’d been kicked, the rest of my body seemed intact. I touched my face. There was a scrape on my forehead and a bandage around my head. I probed it but felt no discomfort. Slowly, I sat up and looked around.

My vision had fully returned. The tent held twenty or thirty small cots like mine, though mine was the only one occupied. Outside, the clamor grew louder—iron and wood clashing in the air. The tent was deserted, but shortly after I awoke, I saw the flap open as four men entered—one wearing a blue tunic, the other three in brown. They spoke urgently and carried a stretcher. The man in blue saw me awake and raised a hand for silence; the others fell quiet at once. He was of average height, athletic, with a well-groomed beard and piercing eyes.

He strode over and stopped beside me, his expression both questioning and amused.

“Who are you?” he asked in Greek.

“My name is Yehuda ben Benjamin, Kýrie. I was attacked by bandits who took everything from me and tried to kill me. But the pain made me lose consciousness, and I remember nothing after that moment,” I replied fluently in his language, addressing him with the word meaning my lord in Greek.

The man furrowed his brow, looking even more intrigued, and took a stool from behind him to sit down.

"I am not your lord, but I am curious to know how Yehuda ben Benjamin ended up in a war zone and speaks Greek so fluently? When we found you, you were naked, and three presumed rebels were about to kill you. Had you not muttered random words in Greek when they brought you to me, we would have already dumped you in some village—or worse. Are you a spy?"

I immediately recalled that I had been deceived by those who sent me. They had assured me my arrival would be in a sparsely populated area, never in the middle of a war—yet the exact opposite had happened. The fact that he addressed me in Greek at first led me to conclude they had made a colossal error. For me, in that precise moment, it meant they had never been certain about the time and place to which they had sent me.

I didn’t know who these people were or whom they were fighting, but I realized I was in extreme danger. I quickly recounted the cover story I had been instructed to use upon arrival, hoping it would serve some purpose.

"I am not a spy, sir, I beg you to believe me. I set out with my father because he was old and wanted to see his native village before he died. He fell ill during the journey and passed away before we could reach it. I buried him and then walked for a long time, I think. Someone attacked me, stripped me, beat me, and then I blacked out."

"You’d better pray your story is true, because it’s not my place to interrogate you—but the man who will know instantly when someone lies, and if you do, you won’t meet a pleasant end."

The man spoke again, then stood and signaled to the others who had entered with him. After settling me onto the stretcher, they carried me to a wagon behind the tent, covered with the same beige tarp that had haunted my nightmares. Just as we began to move, I remember with perfect clarity hearing for the first time the creak of many wheels and the wet thudding of dozens of hooves moving across the muddy ground. I needed to know where—and by whom—I had been found.

THE REBIRTH

DCCLIX AVC - AUGUSTO TRIBUNICIA POTESTATE XXVII

(Year 759 Ab Urbe Condita – 27th Tribunician Power of Octavian Augustus)

Date: A.D. XII KAL. MAR. (March 21)

Location: Eastern shore of Asphaltites Lacus – Province of Judea

After a journey lasting five or six hours, followed by another two where I waited in the wagon without being allowed to disembark, I was eventually carried back inside the same tent.

To get an idea of the outside environment and, above all, understand who had picked me up, I took the opportunity to look around. The tent had been erected within what appeared to be a tall palisade, with two guard towers flanking a wooden gate—evidently the same one through which my wagon had entered. Men in red tunics bustled about, erecting tents in orderly rows. As soon as each was anchored to the ground, units of soldiers in chainmail, burdened with beige packs, positioned themselves in front to occupy them. At regular intervals, sharp blasts from wind instruments seemed to dictate every movement of the men within the compound.

Once I had been settled back onto my field cot—without a word from the two men who had carried me inside—I sat up with some effort, planting my feet on the ground. My head spun, but I forced myself to think about my next steps.

I knew the man in the blue tunic was a physician named Demetrius, who addressed his capsarii, the assistants in brown tunics, in Greek. But I could also hear the soldiers speaking Latin, and from their uniforms, I understood I was inside a Roman camp. The air was fresh, and behind the camp stood modest mountains covered in dense woods. I tried to come up with a plausible story for whoever would interrogate me, for I was certain they would. I recalled that the arrival time window could vary by three to five years, while the ‘landing’ area had a margin of error spanning two to ten miles. That's why they had chosen semi-desert areas for arrival. I didn't know the exact year, but I was certainly somewhere in the Middle East during the early first century of our era. Yet instead of landing in a safe, semi-desert region, I had plummeted near a Roman legion on the march.

Before departure, I'd been required to memorize multiple cover stories, each adaptable to various periods over the last thirty centuries. But in all of them, my name remained Yehuda ben Benjamin. I evidently have Middle Eastern features and genuinely Jewish ancestry. My real name was a literal translation and quite common among Jews. Nothing had been left to chance—or so I'd believed. And that was precisely why I felt betrayed.

As I struggled to concoct a plausible story about my presence there—still unsure exactly where "there" was—the tent flap opened, and several beige-clad men entered supporting two red-tunic-clad figures, drenched in sweat and visibly in pain. They were settled onto field cots opposite mine. Shortly after, the man who'd spoken to me in Greek that morning entered and approached them. After asking questions, he examined them and issued orders. Three capsarii appeared carrying a leather satchel and basins of warm water.

I watched Demetrius's work furtively. One legionary, a stocky, dark-haired man, had likely struck his foot with a pickaxe. The medicus—the military physician—first cleansed the wound with warm water, then probed the man's foot, making him grit his teeth though he uttered no sound. Demetrius applied some kind of paste to the wound that seemed to stop the bleeding, then bandaged the foot with strips soaked in a sticky substance, perhaps honey. Then he ordered him to lie down and moved to the second man, who had a deep gash on his hand. The assistants had stanched the wound, and Demetrius washed it again with water.

“I’ll have to stitch this, and it will hurt,” he said to the legionary in Latin.

“Willow bark,” I blurted out loud.

Everyone turned abruptly to look at me, and I panicked. I could have bitten my tongue. Instead, I kept my head down.

“I saw willow trees from the wagon. Have him chew the bark. It’s bitter, but it eases the pain,” I said in Greek.

The physician stared at me for a moment, then ordered someone to fetch willow bark. Leaving the legionary in his assistants’ care, he approached me with a questioning look. I fixed my gaze on a distant point ahead. I remember sweating, even though the sound of pounding rain came from outside.

“What did I use to stop the first man’s bleeding?” he demanded abruptly in Greek.

“A paste,” I replied.

Demetrius smirked sarcastically.

“If you’re not a charlatan, I think you can do better than that.”

“I would have applied a poultice of plantain and garlic to stop the bleeding and prevent the wound from swelling and festering before stitching it.”

“And for the bandages?”

“Honey. It protects the wound.”

Demetrius studied me with a probing gaze.

“Are you a medicus, Yehuda ben Benjamin, wandering through war-torn Judea speaking multiple languages and giving sound advice for treating wounds?” he said, smiling, then his expression shifted as he added, “Or are you also a spy?”

Of the meticulously prepared plan for my mission, nothing—aside from the launch—was going as expected. And partly because of me. I had been instructed to reveal little or nothing of my skills, including languages, until it was safe enough to keep me out of trouble. Yet, I had revealed everything within the first three days of arrival. I felt doomed but decided to press on—not that I had a choice. I looked up, slightly indignant, and spat my reply.

“I am not a spy!”

Just then, Demetrius’s assistant returned with the willow bark, and as he handed it over to be given to the wounded legionary, he said: “Primipilus is coming.”

The Primipilus: field commander on behalf of the Legatus, the legion's general. I immediately lowered my gaze, stealing furtive glances.

Moments later, a man with a transversely crested helmet strode decisively into the tent. He wore a lorica musculata, the leather armor of legionary officers. His dark, intense eyes and square jaw were framed by a beard born more of exhaustion than grooming. Of average height, his formidable physique was intimidating. His chest bore numerous decorations—I recognized torcs, armillae, and even two coronae. He marched straight toward the two legionaries.

“Quis malum es, frustum stercoris?” (1) he roared into the face of the man lying on the cot. The soldier struggled to sit up, chewing willow bark.

With a pained grimace and a muffled mouth, he mumbled, “Miles Flavius Marius, Tenth Legion, First Cohort, Third Century, Third Contubernium, Primipilus!”

The officer shifted his glare to the other legionary, whose bleeding had finally been stanched. The man identified himself immediately. Demetrius stepped toward the Primipilus, but the latter raised a silencing hand. His lips parted to hiss rapid Latin.

“You two, frusta stercoris, belong—much to my dismay—to Rome’s most distinguished legion. Not only that, but you’re also part of the veteran centuries, and what do you do? You injure yourselves handling tools you’ve used every damn day of your miserable lives, right in the middle of a military operation!”

He turned to Demetrius.

“How many days before these two idiots can rejoin their units?”

“Two, maybe three days. But not for digging. That’ll take at least ten more days.”

“I want them back in their units in two days,” the officer decreed, then addressed the two legionaries again, who sat on their cots staring at the ground.

“Pray to all your gods that we don’t engage the enemy anytime soon, because if we do, I’ll personally place you at the head of your centuries. Vos sagittas edite et fulmina cacate ex stationibus! Liquetne, merdae molles?” (2)

“Ita, Primus Pilus!” (3) the two men shouted in unison.

At that point, the Primipilus turned and noticed me. He strode over.

“Quis malum es?” (4) he said, grabbing me by the tunic Demetrius had given me.

The medic hurried to my cot.

“Primipilus Fabius Tullius, this is the man Decurion Lucterius and his scouts found three days ago, saving him from a group of suspected rebels who intended to kill him. I filed my report that same evening, and surely the decurion did as well.”

The officer kept staring at me without loosening his grip.

“Latinène intellegis, an merdam in cerebro habes, Iudaee?” (5)

Demetrius intervened again.

“He speaks Latin and Greek,” the medicus nearly whispered, adding, “Fluently, I’d say.”

The officer raised an eyebrow and forcibly yanked me up, still gripping my tunic.

“Are you here to spy on us? Where the fuck did you come from?”

I sighed. I knew that with a single story, I was gambling everything that was supposed to sustain me for an entire lifetime—perhaps a quiet, low-profile existence, revealing my abilities gradually. If they didn’t believe me, based on what I’d studied in my previous life, these men would quickly string me up on a cross.

“I was born in Hermopolis, Egypt. My mother died in childbirth, and I lived with my father until two months ago. My grandfather was born in Sepphoris, and when my father fell ill, he expressed his wish to die in the land of his ancestors. We set out three months ago, but my father died while still within Egypt’s borders. I buried him and decided to continue the journey in his memory. Four nights ago, my mule vanished, and the next day, I was ambushed, knocked unconscious, and stripped. Then I woke up here.” I replied in fluent Latin.

The officer released his grip and raised an eyebrow again. I remember his slightly bewildered gaze well.

"What's his name?" he then asked Demetrius without taking his eyes off me. He reeked of leather mixed with sweat.

"Yehuda ben Benjamin," he replied.

The Primipilus sized me up, then began feeling my arms and legs.

"Where is Yehuda?" he suddenly demanded.

I didn't understand the question. I frowned and stammered.

"Yehuda...is...well...I'm...here...Dominus."

He backhanded me, splitting my lip.

"Derīdēsne mē, Iudaee? Si sic, culum tibi frangam. Teda?" (6)He said in a low, hoarse, threatening voice, using the Aramaic word at the end to ask if I understood.

"I didn't understand the question, Dominus!" I mumbled.

"I'm losing patience, you ass-faced bastard! Tell me where that Galilean son of a bitch is heading with his ragtag band!" he shouted this time.

In my previous life, my instructor had revealed that I apparently possessed a kind of rapid logical thinking, allowing me to assess dangerous situations at a glance and make quick decisions that—most of the time—ensured survival. In jargon: the Blink. At that moment, my mind processed the situation at lightning speed, but the conclusion offered no survival options. And all because of a group of idiotic scientists and my own stupidity for accepting their proposal. My situation was practically desperate.

NOTES

1. “Who the fuck are you, you worthless piece of shit?” in Latin military jargon.
2. “I want to see you eating arrows and shitting lightning from your positions. Understood, you spineless shits?” in Latin military jargon.
3. “Yes, Commander!” in Latin.
4. “Who the fuck are you?” in Latin military jargon.
5. “Do you understand Latin, or is your brain full of shit too, Judean?” in vulgar Latin.
6. "Are you trying to 'take me for an ass,' Judean? Because if so, I'll split yours—understand?" in vulgar Latin