by Tracy Groot
The breeze took her scent to him. He put his head back and inhaled with closed eyes. Lost to him. Lost long ago. Occasionally, over the years, he’d allow himself a rare indulgence to think on that back-porch conversation. Sometimes he fancied up the indulgence. There was first a springtime wedding on Cal’s estate, then a few children playing in the garden. He’d see Callimachus with a child on his knee, telling him story after story. He’d see Aristarchus, walking and talking with a child. The only person he could never see was her. Her face had been blank to him all these years.
Her perfume, so different from Arinna’s. They could wear the very same scent, and it would be different.
He leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees and watch the fishermen. One of them, the dark young man who always had the suspicious look, regarded him from afar.
“I don’t know about the letters. I never saw any. As for the progress reports, to my recollection they were always penned in the name of Polonus—what can I believe now that I’ve been here? It could have been Polonus, could have been anyone.”
“It wasn’t Polonus. He wouldn’t have taken a copper from Callimachus. He loved him. That’s why you posted the message, isn’t it? Callimachus must have been sending operating expenses these past three years. You could have left last week—but you wanted to find out who stole from Cal.”
He rubbed his forehead, then dropped his hand to glare at her. “What do you care?”
“I sent the letters! I pleaded for someone to come and set matters straight when everything had fallen apart! When we realized Athens had abandoned us, we took matters into our own hands—Polonus and I—and my husband—and we disbanded the school entirely.”
“Athens did not abandon you—Athens never knew.”
She was silent for a moment. “I know you have a great deal of affection for Callimachus. We spent half of that porch time talking about him. You told me he rescued you. You never said from what, but I have been rescued too, from something I thought I long left behind.” Her lower lip trembled slightly. “I find it isn’t behind me anymore. I don’t think it ever left.”
Tallis snorted softly at that. Sometimes he dreamed in orange.
“What are you doing here?”
Julia whirled around; Tallis rose from his seat. Kes`Elurah stood holding a tray, glowering at Julia. Wind whirled her dark auburn hair about her face, giving wildness to the look of an already-angry woman. “You want to see one of my guests, you talk to me first.”
Tallis couldn’t help a half smile. “I knew it wouldn’t last.”
The angry look went from Julia to him. Kes balanced the tray on her hip and pulled hair out of her eyes to glare at him better. “What wouldn’t last?”
“Your docile little servitude. You did well yesterday. But I knew it wouldn’t last.”
“Really?” she said icily. “And how would you like me to treat your next guest?”
He glanced uncertainly toward the inn. “What do you mean? I have another visitor?”
“Yes. And you can see him after she leaves,” Kes said, tossing a look at Julia.
Julia and Tallis exchanged a look. “Who could it be?” Tallis asked her.
“I don’t know.” She turned a grim smile to Kes. “But nothing will keep me from finding out.”
Kes glared at her. “I want you to leave. Just because you wear fine clothes doesn’t mean you can—”
“Kes—I need her. She must identify someone for me.”
Kes reluctantly took her glare from Julia. She considered his face for a moment. “Master Tallis, my father runs an honest place. He will not like it if questionable things are going on at the inn.” Then her features softened. “But I will tell you this . . . Zagreus says there is fear in his eyes.”
Julia watched them. “What does that mean . . . ?”
Gazing at Kes, whose face was now anxious, Tallis murmured, “It means she does not trust this new visitor. So neither will we.”
The common room was beginning to fill. The fishermen were at the long table in the back. The old salt was making a joke at the expense of his boat companion. The young man glowered as the others laughed, the old salt loudest of all, but a certain affectionate toleration was in the grousing look of the young man.
A few more customers came in at the door, brushing past a short man who stood more outside than in. His arms were folded; he was leaning against the frame and gazing north at the hills. Kes had told Tallis the man refused to come inside, refused any refreshment.
He was mostly bald, and the rest of his hair, early gray, was very closely cropped. He studied the northern hills with a steady, wary eye. Without the man seeing him, Tallis slipped into the room and stood near the same place he’d sat with Julia. The man made Tallis think of a rope—he was compact, hard, and used. Even a little frayed. He had the look of a survivor.
“You have come in response to my forum message?” Tallis finally asked. The man pushed off from his hillside study. The light-blue color of his eyes was surprising for these parts. And Tallis did not trust him at a glance.
Tallis took a long sip from his wine as he held out another goblet to the stranger. “Not bad, for a backwater inn. Come, refresh yourself.”
“You are Tallis?”
“I am.”
The man glanced at the offered goblet. “My master sent me. I’m not to dally.”
Tallis took another sip and frowned at his cup. “Needs water. No wonder this place is so crowded at night.”
The man scratched the back of his neck, looked over his shoulder, and came inside. He reached for the wine and took a sip, grinned at Tallis, and drank more deeply. Tallis slid a look at Kes, who worked at her mortar and pestle at the corner counter. She caught his glance and looked to the kitchen where Julia hid, then very slightly shook her head at Tallis. Julia did not know this man.
“They’re asking for trouble,” the man said, and wiped his mouth on his tunic sleeve.
Tallis nodded. “I don’t know how it is here in Palestine, but in Athens there are laws against serving unmixed wine.”
The man finished off his goblet and handed it to Tallis, who set it on the table and gestured for the man to sit. But the stranger shook his head.
“My master sent me,” he said. “I am to ask you to accompany me to his villa.”
“Who would your master be?”
“Polonus. He said you would know his name. He is most anxious to speak with you.”
“Is he,” Tallis murmured, glancing outside at the deepening twilight. Two men he recognized as customers came through the doorway, brushing past Tallis’s stranger and looking about the common room. They saw Kes and greeted her. “How far is your master’s villa?”
“Not far. A mile south, half mile east. I have a cart and two swift horses waiting.”
“It’s getting dark out there.” Only men looking for trouble wandered about at night. Others went to sip ale at cheap inns.
“The master just returned from Hippos with news of your note. He is most anxious to speak with you.”
“Yes, you said that.”
Kes was still talking with the men. Another customer ambled through the door. Jarek came through the kitchen entrance, mopping the back of his neck with a towel. He handed the towel to Kes and reached for an apron behind the corner counter.
“He asks the privilege of entertainment—the servants are preparing a meal for you. I am to tell you you are welcome to spend the night. Or if you prefer, we will escort you back to the inn.”
Tallis set his cup down. He felt relief at the sight of Jarek. He hadn’t seen him all day. “Very well—I’ll accompany you, but I wish to be escorted back. I might receive other guests while I am gone and do not want to keep them waiting.”
The man inclined his head. “As you wish.” He went out the door.
Tallis looked at Kes, who was already looking at him while placing cups on a tray. “I’ll be back in a few hours,” he said as softly as he could over the growing d
in in the room. “If anyone comes for me—”
“Tie him up.”
He smiled and glanced at the kitchen. “Tell her I said good-bye.”
Kes nodded and watched him go.
The horses were indeed swift, and Polonus’s servant seemed obliged to find every rut in the road. Tallis held tightly to his seat, trying not to lurch into the whipcord man at every dip. It was his first time riding the road instead of walking it. He glanced at the Galilee on his jolting right. The sky was particularly interesting this night, the last of the sun’s rays striking wide shelves of cloud with crimson orange.
He didn’t know what to say to the servant. “Lovely night—interesting sky” didn’t seem right. Perhaps he was the only one to feel the awkwardness, and so he said nothing at all.
Where did Julia live? How would he contact her again? He hoped she left instructions with Kes. He wished she had come with him so they could speak to Polonus together, but he hadn’t thought of it until now. She hadn’t yet told her own story before he was whisked away to hear that of another.
How happily was she married?
Her husband had rescued her, she said. A certain bond existed between the rescuer and the rescued. He hadn’t left Callimachus in twenty-five years, content to weed his garden and eventually run his estate without a thought of leaving, not permanently at least.
Tallis studied and wrote plays in his spare time. He’d studied Dionysus at first, until Cal put an end to it. Then one day he heard one of the teachers give a talk about Alexander of Macedon. He was Alexander’s slave after that.
He combed continents—mostly through books—gathering lore. He did go to Alexandria in Egypt, with Aristarchus, to read a copy of Ptolemy’s personal history of Alexander at the famous collection of books in the library. He went to Macedonia and spent a month there, wondering what a provincial place like Macedonia had done to produce a man like Alexander, or like Philip, Alexander’s remarkable father. His material on Alexander grew, and he even started a scroll.
What did her husband rescue her from?
She hadn’t needed rescuing eight years ago. She was like so many of the teachers who came to the villa of Callimachus that summer in Athens, full of enthusiasm and pride at being in the inner circle of Cal’s domain—Cal had chosen the teachers himself.
He could see her dark silhouette in that chaise. She was gazing at the stars, a little tipsy, redolent with contentment. She confessed to Tallis she’d never worked harder than to get Cal’s eye and gain a posting at the school in Hippos. While most of the mosaicists had produced copies from the masters, every mosaic template she’d produced for her entrance assessment had been her own design.
What if her husband died suddenly? How quickly could he win over her child?
“Do you know anything about Julia’s husband?” he mused aloud to Polonus’s manservant. “He’s not, with any luck of the gods, an ancient dotard about to topple into his grave, is he?”
And suddenly, he realized the opportunity he had. Looking for information in the low places now seemed quite natural. At least he wouldn’t have to pay out coin for this. “How much do you know about the academy?”
The man did not seem eager to answer. Perhaps a like-minded appeal would loosen him up. “Look, I’m a servant too,” Tallis said dryly. “I know what goes on around my master’s estate. What do you know about the Decaphiloi?”
The man did not answer. He leaned forward and peered ahead at the roadside, but his look was strangely obvious . . . like Tallis should look too . . . so he didn’t. That’s when Tallis noticed the man’s fingers beginning to inch the reins into his hands, gathering them taut. A strange thing he was doing, inching those reins . . .
The blow snapped his head back, stunned him stupid. The crimson-shelved sky turned crazily, and he felt himself spilling from the cart. He clung to the side of the cart until he realized it had stopped, and then he slid to the hard-packed road.
He tasted dust and thought maybe the blow had rendered him deaf; he could hear only the isolated sound of his own pounding heart. He saw a man scramble out of the ditch and run toward him. Still stunned, Tallis waved his arm in a nonsense gesture to ward him off, but rough hands grabbed him and hauled him to his feet, slammed him against the cart.
The whipcord man bent down from his seat and gathered a fistful of Tallis’s hair, jerking him upright. “Master says you are to leave for Athens in the morning,” he hissed in his ear. “If you do not he will personally deliver you to Portia. Now my friend here will break your leg and you will make it back to the inn in an hour, on your belly, if you hurry. And you better hurry—the madman comes out at night!”
Clarity had seeped back with the rope man’s speech—Tallis lunged upward, grabbing for his head to haul him off his perch, but the other man drove a blow to his ribs. He crumpled to the ground, clutching his belly, wheezing for air. The man grabbed him by the neck of his toga and dragged him to the side of the road.
Tallis heard a shout, and the man suddenly released him. Tallis instantly rolled away, clawing for the ditch. He reached the edge and tumbled in headfirst. He pulled back and pressed himself into the curve of the ditch, looking desperately about for something, anything, to defend himself with. He found only loose pebbles but grabbed them anyway, bracing for the man who had an appointment with his leg. He waited, tensed and panting—and heard nothing. Past the wildness of his heart, he heard only silence. What was this? Finally, he lifted up for a peek. The cart and the men were gone.
He slid back to his curve on the slope. He released the stones and put a trembling hand to his nose—it came away with blood. Rope man had slammed an iron elbow into his face. A swell of nausea came, and he suddenly rolled to his side, vomiting wine and the sardines he’d finally had a chance to try at lunch. He wiped his mouth and froze at a sound.
Cart wheels. He felt for another handful of stones.
He waited, flattened against the slope, panting and tasting bile and blood. But the cart wheels, which didn’t seem in any hurry, rolled away. His stiff fingers finally released the rocks, and he closed his eyes, panting. This second cart must have scared the first away. He gingerly touched his eye. It pulsed as if about to explode from the socket. And if the man hadn’t broken his leg, he had surely broken a few ribs. He looked down at his toga and cursed in dismay—so much for the brushing he’d given it. Even in the dusk he could see the blood. Another swell of nausea came, and he vomited himself empty, every heave now firing pain in his ribs. The tumult finally quieted, and he trembled on all fours, spitting the last of the bile.
“Sure. I’ll come see your master.” He spat. “We’ll talk. Have some wine.” He wiped his mouth. “Then I’ll cut out his liver and roast it on a spit.”
The thought came that he better get back to the inn as fast as he could, in case Polonus’s men came back to make good on their promise.
He kept to the rocky ditch every painful step back to the inn, half the time looking over his shoulder. Soon he had to walk with his belly thrust forward to ease the pain in his ribs. He pressed his hand on his back, glad to be in the ditch; he walked like a pregnant woman.
Personally deliver you to Portia . . .
He came to the edge of the stable yard and waited by a tree while Samir led a horse into the barn. The guest rooms were in the back of the building, facing the lake, and the window of his room was too high for him to climb into. He put his forehead against the tree, groaning softly. His room was the last one in the hallway off the very crowded common room, the same one he’d have to walk through to get to it. There was no way he could make it unnoticed.
He doused his face with water from the trough. He tried to brush off the bracken from the ditch, but his toga looked like he’d—got beat up and rolled in a ditch. His nose and eye would be difficult to conceal, felt like they had swelled double. He’d keep his head down and pretend to scratch his eyebrow all the way to his room. Maybe the place was so crowded he wouldn’t be noticed.
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br /> He stood at the kitchen entrance, summoning the strength it would take to walk normally to his room, without sticking his stomach out. Gods, all he wanted was his bed, just to slip into his bed. His nose had stopped bleeding, but clammy sweat made his toga cling to him.
He heard the murmur of conversation drift through the kitchen from the common room. He heard Jarek laugh loudly, heard someone start a song. He took as deep a breath as he could, held it, and straightened. He brushed past a staring Zagreus at the worktable and slipped into the common room.
He kept to the back wall, head low, rubbing his eyebrow the whole while. When he was three steps from the hallway, Jarek exclaimed, “What happened to you?”
The common room murmur came to complete silence.
Great gods and goddesses, all he wanted was his bed.
“Brigands,” he managed, and waved at the front door. “Attacked us on the road.”
Plates clattered, benches scraped. Everyone talked at once. Kes was at his side, helping him to a bench, Jarek was shouting for Zagreus to fetch a towel and water.
Tallis just wanted his bed. He could feel himself tremble with fatigue. And he was horribly thirsty. He grabbed the mug closest and emptied it before he knew what it was—a burning ale that slid like liquid fire down his throat. It set him to gasping and coughing, and he groaned at the fresh pain.
Jarek took the mug from him, saying, “Easy, lad, that’s the wrong drink for you.” He replaced it with a mug of water.
“Parthians?” a burly man demanded, his foot on the bench.
Tallis tasted blood on his lips. “Couldn’t tell, too dark.”
“How many?” said another.
“Couldn’t tell.”
“Probably that marauding band Lepidus warned us about.”
“They wouldn’t dare come this far west,” someone scoffed.
“If it’s that Shamash-Eriba, they would.”
“I’m getting home, lads,” called one over his shoulder, his tone warning others they should do the same.