The Reincarnationist Read Online Free Page A

despair in his voice and relieved when the professor anticipated his question and answered it.
    â€œOver there, she’s hard to see in this light, no?” In a long slow move, the professor swept the lantern across the room until it illuminated the alcove in the far corner of the west wall.
    She was crouched on the floor.
    Slowly, as if he were in a funeral procession, walking down a hundred-foot aisle and not a seven-foot span, Josh made his way to her, knelt beside her and stared at what was left of her, gripped by a grief so intense he could barely breathe. How could a past-life memory, if that’s what it was—something he didn’t believe in, something he didn’t understand—make him sadder than he’d ever been in his life?
    There, in a field, in the Roman countryside at 6:45 in the morning, inside a newly excavated tomb that dated back to the fourth-century A.D., was proof of his story at its end. Now, if he could only learn it from the beginning.

Chapter 3
    â€œI call her Bella because she is such a beautiful find for us,” Professor Rudolfo said, shining the lamp on the ancient skeleton. He was aware of Josh’s emotional reaction. “Each day, since Gabby and I discovered her, I spend this time in the morning alone with her. Communing with her dead bones, you might say.” He chuckled.
    Taking a deep breath of the musty air, Josh held it in his chest and then concentrated on exhaling. Was this the woman he only knew as fractured fragments? A phantom from a past he didn’t believe in but couldn’t let go of?
    His head ached. The information, present and past, crashed in waves of pain. He needed to focus on either then or now. Couldn’t afford a migraine.
    He shut his eyes.
    Connect to the present, connect to who you know you are.
    Josh. Ryder. Josh. Ryder. Josh Ryder.
    This was what Dr. Talmage taught him to do to stop an episode from overwhelming him. The pain began subsiding.
    â€œShe teases you with her secrets, no?”
    Josh’s “yes” was barely audible.
    The professor stared at him, trying to take his mental temperature. Thinking—Josh could see it in the man’s eyes—that he might be crazy, he resumed his lecturing. “We believe Bella was a Vestal Virgin. Holy and revered, they were both protected and privileged. Tending the fire and cleaning the hearth was a woman’s job in ancient times. Not all that different nowadays, no matter how hard women have tried to get us men to change.” The professor laughed. “In ancient Rome, that flame, which was entirely practical and necessary for the survival of society, eventually took on a spiritual significance.
    â€œAccording to what is written, tending the state hearth required sprinkling it daily with the holy water of Egeria and making sure the fire didn’t go out, which would bring bad luck to the city—and was an unpardonable sin. That was the primary job of the Vestals, but…”
    As the professor continued to explain, Josh felt as if he were racing ahead, knowing what he was going to say next, not as actual information, but as vague recollections.
    â€œEach Virgin was chosen at a very young age—only six or seven—from among the finest of Rome’s families. We cannot imagine such a thing now, but it was a great honor then. Many girls were presented to the head priest, the Pontifex Maximus, by anxious fathers and mothers, each hoping their daughter would be picked. After the novitiate was chosen, the girl was escorted to the building where she would live for the next three decades: the large white marble villa directly behind the Temple of Vesta. Immediately, in a private ritual witnessed only by the other five Vestals, she’d be bathed, her hair would be arranged in the style brides wore, a white robe would be lowered over her head and then her education would begin.”
    Josh nodded, almost seeing the scene play out in his mind,