James Patterson’s Journal – The Story of the Congregation of Andria Church During the Dark Time (Patterson’s Tale #2)
“For the next 3 months or so, we concentrated on restoring the old house back to as close to its original condition as we could. We repaired the water damaged floors and window frames and sills. A carpenter in the village, whose name was Jozef, was sympathetic to the Jesus Sect and measured all the doors and windows, and along with his son, Justin, made us new ones and installed them, charging only 2 cows and 1 bull, plus a sow pig and 5 piglets. My uncle Trika, my father’s youngest brother, felt that this was too high a price to pay for the carpenter’s work and was just about to head off to his shop/home to threaten him when my Uncle Jorgan stopped him, reminding him that although the carpenter was a pagan, he and his son were trusted friends to the JS people, which in Andria village at that time meant a lot. Trika apologized to Uncle Jorgan for his hot temper.
“Uncle Trika later left his life of violence and became a real Jesus Sect man who proved his love for our Savior many ways over all the years I knew him. His 2 sons were not much like him, sad to say, for they went the way of the pagans in their 20’s, and we never saw them again. Trika was killed 20 years later defending his home and farm from a raid by the Enforcer beasts that tried to confiscate half of his herd of cows for “unpaid taxes”. He killed 6 of them before they finally killed him and his wife. They also took his entire herd of dairy cows and sold them for their own profit. This is still common.
“My father’s other brother, my uncle Karkal, never became one of us but he was always very kind to my family and me. He told me many times that he could not understand why anyone would worship a god he could not see or hear, and that existed only in the pages of an ancient book. I tried many times in my adult life, and Leah did also, to tell him why we worshipped the One who loved us and gave Himself for us, but he claimed to never understand our motives. Until he was killed in a raid on his compound by the Billsun clan in the JS year of 2390 he was a doubting pagan who loved my mother, my sisters, and me almost like he was our father. He did help clean out and paint the old house when we first moved into it, and he helped maintain it over the years. But that was as far as he would go concerning our faith.
“Over the years our congregation grew slowly, as did the population of Andria village. We had many pagans living among us who hated Jesus God’s people and who delighted in calling us evil names and harassing the JS members in Andria, even to the point of beating us regularly. Once they ambushed and cruelly killed two of our members as they travelled through the forest between Andria and one of the other small villages up-river. This was about 5 or 6 years after we had begun using the old house as our church building. This so infuriated my uncle Karkal that he and the men loyal to his clan began to question (or probably torture, I’ll admit) some of the people in the village who were suspected of being involved in the killing of our members, or at least knowing who were the guilty ones.
“My uncle Karkal was one of the 2 or 3 men in Andria who were as powerful as the Overmasters of our district, whom we rarely saw. They had their army of Enforcers, possibly 5 or 6 hundred of them. But my uncle Karkal controlled 60 to 70 warrior farmers who had sworn loyalty and allegiance to him over the years. He and the other 2 powerful Masters around Andria controlled at least 200 or more warrior farmers, a few of who were members of the Jesus Sect, but most of who were pagans like my uncle, and who were fanatically loyal to their Masters and feared even by the Enforcers, despite their superior weaponry of firearms. Anyway, about 2 weeks after our members were ambushed and killed by, we soon learned, 5 or 6 ‘cowards’, as my uncle called them, they were all hunted down and forced to confess, being tortured, I’m sure.
“When they confessed they were given the opportunity to “Test The Arrow”, that is, a trial by arrow fire over a long distance. Each of them was tied to a small tree with his arms behind his back. The arrow shooters stood 100 paces away from the condemned man. Each shooter used his war bow, a very long and strong bow that could propel an arrow a great distance at a velocity sufficient to penetrate the cows skin armor in use at that time. Ten shooters launched 2 arrows each at the condemned man tied to the tree. If all 20 arrows missed he was released and banished from the village. If any arrows hit him but did not kill him, he was released after the 20th arrow was released. No one in the village was allowed to aid this man, who usually died alone in the forest or by the Tomak river.
“I remember the day of the “Arrow’s Test” as being one of much festivity and celebration around Andria. Our pastor, my cousin Torash, was very upset, I was told, with the torture of these 6 men, and insisted on talking with each of them personally and privately to verify the legitimacy of their confessions. Five of them soon confessed to Torash, admitting their guilt. The 6th was a teen, perhaps 16 or 17 years old, who was so terrified that he screamed and begged for forgiveness by my uncle. It turned out that this teen was a member of our Andria church. He begged and begged Torash to let him live, but eventually confessed that he had been “with” those who killed his fellow JS members in the forest.
Torash spent much time with this teen, whose name was Rogele, making certain that he really was ‘born again’, as God’s Word demanded. After making certain he really was a follower of Jesus God, Torash turned him over to the executioners, although he was still crying and begging for forgiveness and mercy. The punishment decreed by our “Ruling Masters” was final, and even Torash, a man considered to be our spiritual leader by the Jesus Sect in Andria, could not change our law, nor was he permitted to intercede for Rogele once the sentence of “Trial By Arrow” was spoken.
“I remember standing with my mother and sister, off to the side of the row of archers. Rogele was the first to be tied to the tree, screaming and begging for our mercy. I can still hear his cries to this day. The first archer fired his 2 arrows and missed with both. It appeared to me that he purposely missed, but no one dared to question an executioner, not even my uncle Karkal. The 2nd archer shot his first arrow and just missed the teen, but his second shot pierced the boy’s shoulder, causing him to scream in pain and beg loudly for mercy. The next two archers both missed the teen, and again it seemed to me that they missed him deliberately. But I knew I could not even talk during the ordeal, so I remained silent.
“The next archer pierced the teen with both arrows, one in his upper leg and one through his stomach, again causing such screams that some of the witnesses turned away and began to vomit. The 6th archer hit the unfortunate youth with both arrows into his chest. The boy’s head dropped down onto his chest, and he moaned for a short time, then was silent. The “Remover of Breath”, a man who wore a hood during this ordeal, went to the youth and examined him, listening for a heartbeat and watching for any sign of breathing. Finding neither, he declared the teen to be dead, saying, “His life spirit has departed from him”. The youth was untied from the tree, the arrows pulled from him by the same hooded man, and broken in half, to be later burned. His waiting and grieving family took his body away from us.
“In the same manner, the other 5 men were tied to the same tree in turn, and suffered the same fate as the teen. All of the archers shot arrows at the condemned men in turn, so each of them launched some of the fatal arrows. The last man was pierced by 8 arrows in his legs, arms, and chest but was still alive when the last arrow was shot. He was untied from the tree and several men took him away from the village and left him beside the river, where I was later told he died in great pain. Thus was justice delivered to the murderers of our brethren, whose families had to be paid a ‘blood price’ of one cow, or one sheep, or one sow, by the families of the executed murderers. My uncle Jorgan declared that God’s Will had been done, and sent 10 of his men to the compounds or homes of the families of the executed ones, to make certain that the blood price was paid as our law demanded. Uncle Torash prayed for Jesus God’s peace to come over our troubled village, and for His comfort for the families of the murder victims. But peace in Andria was often elusive.
“The threats against and the harassment of the members of the Jesus Sect in and around Andria did decrease very noticeably after these executions. But the Billsun clan, of whom the executed teen, Rogele, was a member, let it be known around Andria that they would have their vengeance, and they became our bitter enemies to the end. The dead teen’s parents, who had worshipped with us from time to time, renounced their JS beliefs and reverted to the pagan beliefs they professed to have abandoned. At this time, however, my uncle was too powerful for them to confront directly, so they allied themselves with the enemies of our clan and waited for their chance to get their revenge.
“Uncle Karkal and one of the other powerful Masters soon let it be known to all in and around Andria village, and even to the villages up and down the river, that the persecution against the members of the Jesus Sect must cease. A few of the pagans decided to test my uncle’s resolve to protect his clan’s members who belonged to the JS by verbally or physically attacking us over the next several months. For their efforts at trying to intimidate us they were rewarded by themselves being severely beaten and in more than one instance driven out of Andria and threatened with death if they returned. Thus it was that for the next 20 years or so we lived most of the time in peace with the others in Andria village, a third of who were either members of or sympathetic to the Jesus Sect, another third of who were extremely hostile pagans who hated us, and the rest too fearful or too concerned with their own survival to care about either group.
“Tragically we were never in peace with our District’s Overmasters, who were becoming very powerful, or with their masters, the Great Council, whose nine members, called ‘Councilors’, hated and despised the Jesus Sect with the fierceness born of their father, the Evil One. There were always nine of them, and it was they who wielded total power in their somewhat loose alliance that existed in a vast territory that as far as I knew had no name when I was a teen, but that now is increasingly being called ‘The Peoples Democracy’, or just ‘Democrata’. As I grew up this Council grew in wealth and power, so much so that our local Overmasters who resisted them were all massacred over a 3 day war in our area about 15 years after we began using Rober Tely’s old house as our church building, but they were replaced with new, finger picked replacements who would be loyal to the elites who were determined to rule over us. That Council was always the ultimate power in our country, and we all knew that even the Overmasters feared them.
NEXT TIME IN PART 3: The small band of Jesus Sect followers in Andria village struggle to live in peace with the pagans around them. The new church building is dedicated to God’s service. The Jesus Sect celebrates its first ‘Lord’s Supper’ in it. The eight old columns in front of it are restored, and a large Christian cross is carved into the center column. The Jesus sect begins to call Rober Tely’s old house “The Old White Church”, and begin to try to restore some of the ancient grave sites in the forest all around the church. James Patterson meets Leah Lee, who will become his wife.
