Madman

by Tracy Groot

  But it wasn’t long before Kardus began to change, and then Arinna didn’t like it when he came. His face went from open to closed off. He didn’t have the lighthearted Demas look anymore. His intensity became something dark, something wrong, and his glowing secrets no longer interested her—they frightened her. He looked at her once and seemed to see right through her. She felt like she’d told him everything in that one glance. She hated that superior, knowing, gloating look. She hated it when he came. She hid behind the door to the guest rooms.

  How goes the teaching, Kardus?

  Kardus had eyed the common room, wary as a cat, then realized his father asked a question.

  Fine.

  You know how proud Kes and I—

  Where’s Samir?

  Samir? Out back. Do you want to see him?

  No. I feel him.

  Are you . . . Is everything all right, Kardus?

  I miss Portia.

  Arinna’s ears had pricked at that, and she listened more closely. Part of her job was to make sure the child was never connected to his mother.

  Portia . . .

  The whore. She says I’m insufferable. She didn’t think so before.

  Arinna had peered through the crack. Kardus’s look was sullen and black.

  Sorry to hear that, lad—and watch your foul mouth. How is Polonus?

  Insufferable.

  Kardus, what is wrong with you?

  Why do you say that? Why do I come here? I don’t like it here anymore. You’re all so small. Can’t have a decent conversation with anyone—nobody knows what I’m talking about! I speak, and they look at me with tomfool faces, so stupid and dull. I could tear those faces off. There is no one intelligent to speak with anymore. I am alone. Alone.

  I don’t like the way you’re talking, boy.

  Most of the visits ended with Kardus storming out, incensed that his family could not understand him, convinced they did not care about him. And one day, Jarek threw him out.

  Kes had invited him for supper, but Samir was there too, and had provoked Kardus somehow. Kardus leapt from the table, and when he opened his mouth at Samir it was as if Hades itself poured forth. Arinna shivered, remembering.

  He had cursed viciously at Samir, cursed Samir’s God with spittle flying and his face ugly crimson. Kes got angry and stood between them, shouting that Kardus was selfish and arrogant and thought only about himself, and why did he never thank them for what they had done for him all those years—couldn’t he even say a simple thank-you? Why was he always so selfish?

  Kardus went berserk at that. He overturned the table in one move; he heaved a bench across the room. Jarek was dumbfounded, and Kes cowered at his rage. Then he screamed things at her that turned her gray as ash. He claimed that Kes, his own sister, had tempted him to evil . . . he screamed that Kes, his own sister, was a whore, and Samir her lover. He said his own sister would lie on her back for anyone who looked twice, that Jarek likely profited from her trade and that he, Jarek, likely enjoyed it himself. Jarek grabbed him and threw him out then, told him never to come back.

  For a time he didn’t. Then one day Polonus rushed into the inn and told Jarek and Kes to come quickly. They ran outside and found Kardus in the back of a cart, looking like they had never seen him before. Arinna stood on the porch, and when Zagreus tried to make his way down the steps and see what Mistress Kes was crying about, Arinna snatched him back and watched from a safe distance.

  Kardus had pressed himself into the corner of the cart. His face was gray with dark shadows in it. He looked at them all with a cornered-animal gaze.

  “I’ve been searching for days,” Polonus had cried. “I found him in the tombs! Something is terribly wrong!”

  Jarek cried, “Kardus! Kardus, my son, what’s wrong?”

  Then Kardus spoke, and abominable cold fell upon them.

  TAKE US TO THE TOMBS!

  Kes screamed, and Arinna backed away, holding Zagreus as a shield. Tears of horror streamed down Jarek’s terror-struck face at this strange, strong, chorused voice coming from Kardus.

  Polonus leapt into the cart and whipped the horse. The cart bounced away, and the exultant eye of Kardus was on them all. When the pall of his presence had left, and they stood in a wash of shaken relief, they heard a commotion from the barn. The animals were clucking and squealing, barking and braying, and one horrifying sound rose above it all. They found Samir in the chicken yard, flat out on the ground, arms spread wide as if embracing the earth . . . pouring forth such a lamentation of grief that Kes sat on the ground to weep, Jarek hung his head, and Arinna raced for the safety of her room, where she slammed the door behind her and dove beneath her bed.

  “Keeper of the Divine Child?” a young woman whispered timidly to her.

  Arinna blinked. “Yes—my dear?”

  “What was it like?” she asked wistfully. She was about fourteen. Blue eyes in a thin face shone with wonder.

  A few who heard the question leaned in for the answer, trying to keep attention on their queen while helpless to prevent attention from the Divine Keeper.

  “I can’t believe you lived with Dionysus all this time . . . ,” one whispered, and she impulsively reached to touch Arinna’s sleeve.

  “Truly, you were favored. . . .”

  “Handmaiden of the Lord of Souls . . .”

  “I can’t wait for the festival!” another put in with a shiver. “They say his presence begins with the midnight revels . . . I hope he touches me!”

  “My friend’s cousin fell to the ground in a trance for two days. She said it was like . . .” The girl put her fingers on her lips and glanced around coyly. “. . . like sex!”

  Gasps and twitters. They silenced themselves when disapproving eyes looked their way.

  When it was safe, someone behind Arinna whispered in tragic awe, “I can’t believe she’s going to do it.”

  Pitying eyes fell upon the lovely Ariadne, who was listening to a question from one of the novitiates in the front row.

  “So brave, to sacrifice her own child.”

  “Remember what she said? ‘Sacrifice is giving up what you want for what you believe in.’”

  “I wrote that down on a parchment.”

  “So wise . . . so brave.”

  “Of course—no one was closer to Zagreus than I,” Arinna sighed.

  Sympathetic murmurs, pats on the back. One put her arm around Arinna and hugged her close.

  “Poor dear . . .”

  “You poor thing!”

  Arinna sniffed, then lifted her chin bravely. “I’ll miss him . . . gods, how I will miss him. So beautiful in . . . radiance. So majestic in . . . in . . . majesticness. Sometimes he would sit for hours, perfectly motionless, as if he were somewhere else, in the presence of Zeus on Mount Olympus, maybe, and I, his humble servant, would sit at his feet and just . . . listen to his presence.”

  Some of the girls gasped. All eyes were wide.

  “Five years with him. Five glorious years, and now . . .” She sniffed and wiped away a suggestion of a tear.

  More gasps, this time of abject pity. Arinna felt their pity so palpably she began to feel sorry for herself. Yes. Yes, she would miss him, poor Zagreus. A real tear stung. Then, overcome, she covered her face.

  “Don’t cry, dear Keeper!”

  “Be brave! Be courageous!”

  “Think on the courage of our queen,” said one initiate in a gently remonstrating voice, meaning to give stoutness to her heart. “It is her child the god will receive.”

  Arinna kept her face covered for a moment, then lifted her head in wan courage. They petted her and they patted her, and she felt comforted for all her years of toil at the inn.

  Tallis was trying to adjust the grindstone in the kitchen yard, though he felt it was a task best assigned to Samir, who was a genius at fixing things. He did not completely understand what was wrong with it to begin with—Kes said the grind was off.

  “Off,” Tallis had repeated.

/>   “Yes, off,” Kes had said. “My flour is too coarse.”

  “Off,” he muttered.

  It wasn’t easy to harness thoughts to off grindstones. Last night he’d had a nightmare that followed him into the daytime. Kes and Jarek and Zagreus and Samir were all in his dream, and their eyes were all the same: huge and oddly slanted and colored orange. Kes had been at the brazier with her back to him, then turned those shocking eyes on him. Zagreus had a thick-lipped leering grin with the eyes. Jarek laughed and laughed at him, with those huge slanted eyes. Samir was the worst: his eyes were not only huge and orange, they were dead, and when he smiled at Tallis, he showed rows of sharp teeth that went all the way around to the back of his head.

  Terror held Tallis fast in his cot when he woke. He was drenched in sweat and breathing hard, wondering if he had cried out. It was the middle of the night, and he’d tried to go back to sleep but had to admit he was afraid to.

  Fear felt palpable in the room. He thought he heard a door open and shut, and during the brief time it was opened he heard a chanting buzz, a swell of many voices. He was certain he’d heard the door when he was awake, but was also certain the door belonged to the nightmare. Even now, chills raised on his skin as he thought on it.

  “You’ll never guess who’s here!”

  Tallis jumped and cursed, then turned on Zagreus with very pained patience and told him never to sneak up and shout at a person like that, and never, ever repeat what Master Tallis had just said, especially to Mistress Kes.

  “Master Tallis, you’ll never guess who’s here,” Zagreus tried again in a loud whisper between cupped hands.

  Tallis first looked at the recalcitrant grindstone. He glared at the awl in his hand, wondering what Samir thought he should do with it. He’d like to tell Samir what to do with it. “My grind is ‘off,’ she says. Who is here?”

  “Master Polonus!”

  He stared at the boy, then tossed the awl on the grindstone and followed Zagreus to the common room. He paused in the doorway to get a look at Polonus before meeting him.

  An elderly man sat with Kes and Jarek at a long table, he on one side and they on the other. Perhaps they had been in conversation for a time, because now nobody spoke. Polonus glanced about at nothing in particular, idly brushing his lips with his fingertips. Jarek looked uncomfortable, shifting glances from Polonus to Kes, and Kes didn’t take her eyes off Polonus.

  He was the same man who had picked up the basket many days ago, the tall one with the intriguing aloofness. Yet a difference attended him, even from that brief visual encounter. Tallis scratched the back of his neck.

  Tallis remembered his face from Athens. It had aged astonishingly in eight years. He remembered a composed, inquiring gaze; now Polonus’s gaze did not stay in one place but flitted about the room. His color was gray, as though he hadn’t seen the sun in an age. He had dark color beneath his eyes, making the rest of the gray almost white, and his fingers wouldn’t quit their fiddling with his mouth. Every now and then his stare jerked to the left or right. Sometimes he looked over his shoulder.

  Polonus was the first chosen by Callimachus to lead the academy in Hippos. Where was the composure Tallis remembered? Where was that good-natured confidence? But then, Tallis had read his scrolls.

  He came into the room and gave a small deferential bow when the trio noticed him. “Master Polonus, it is an honor.”

  Polonus’s look was first suspicious, his eyes unnaturally vivid by the dark contrast beneath them, unnaturally lurid, with a strange flickering within—and just when a chill began on Tallis’s neck, the scholar’s face cleared, the eyes reduced somehow, and childlike recognition came.

  “Why, Tallis! Tallis, of Callimachus! Kes told me you were here!” Polonus rose and came to embrace him as if he were Callimachus himself. He held him back to look on him with pleasure. “Tallis from Athens. Gods and goddesses, how I miss Athens. How is Callimachus?”

  The grip on his shoulders was strong, and he was not letting go. Tallis smiled at him and cut a glance at Jarek and Kes. Neither smiled as they watched Polonus. Their faces were troubled.

  Tallis discreetly pulled himself from Polonus, covering for it by seeing him to the table. “Callimachus was well, last time I saw him. He has the gout, however, and suffers at the ministering hands of Aristarchus.”

  “Aristarchus!” Polonus exclaimed joyously as he took his seat.

  Tallis sat opposite.

  “Good old Aristarchus! Oh, how I pity Callimachus—you know how Aristarchus is.” He gazed eagerly at Tallis. His eyes were focused now, and he plied Tallis for information of Athens.

  Tallis told him what he could, said Cal had a new young philosopher in the school by the name of Diomedes who was taking over some of the teaching. He told Polonus that Cal was growing too old to attend the forums, and at the time he left Athens, was getting about with a donkey and cart instead of his gout-troubled feet. When Tallis exhausted his supply of hometown news, even the trivial things for which Polonus seemed pathetically eager, a silence settled. Polonus’s gaze began to drift, and he went back to twiddling with his lips.

  Tallis had a plan to present to Polonus, and he even had rehearsed some of what he would say. He wanted to join forces with Polonus on behalf of Kardus, join this noble fight to help the man regain his mind. Somehow it seemed out of place to bring it up. There was an odd mood in the room.

  Suddenly Tallis was no longer certain his plans for the redemption of Kardus were good plans at all. In fact, all at once they felt foolish. What did he know of the mind of a crazy man? He was no scholar. Look what it was doing to Polonus—there he sat, dazed and fidgeting.

  “Polonus, where have you been?” Kes ventured.

  Polonus slid a guarded look her way. “Why do you want to know?”

  She didn’t know how to answer. “I—we were worried.”

  “Worried,” he sneered, his upper lip curling. “You weren’t worried about me. You were worried about your precious Kardus.”

  From her astonished look, this wasn’t a typical conversation. Tallis eyed Polonus carefully. “That isn’t true, and you know it,” Kes said defensively.

  Polonus blinked at that, and the sneer lowered. He brushed his fingertips on his lips, then something at the kitchen entrance caught his eye. His hand slowly lowered.

  And only because Tallis had been watching carefully did he see the reaction. He saw the pupils dilate, saw the leap of fear within. He saw revulsion, and it seemed Polonus fought. The pupils contracted. Then came relief. Relief in such amounts that tears came to his eyes. Somehow, Tallis didn’t have to turn to know Samir was in the doorway.

  “Samir!” Polonus cried and got up to embrace the man. “Good old Samir!”

  Such gentleness and pity in the face of the slave. While Polonus held Samir’s shoulders as he’d held his own, and regarded Samir with pathetic enthusiasm, Samir returned an apprehensive compassion. This morning when he handed the awl to Tallis, there was no emotion whatsoever, only a slave’s passivity. No hint that, only a few days ago, he’d held Tallis’s face and searched deeply, authoritatively, in his eyes, and before that, stood like a god come down from Mount Olympus in the chicken yard, warding off unseen terrors. Now the slave brought out new emotions.

  If Tallis got Get up, you Greek dog, Polonus got compassion. Samir gently led Polonus to the table as if he were a feeble old man.

  “It’s always better when you’re around,” Polonus said affectionately, patting Samir’s arm. He sighed. “Always better.” They settled on the bench.

  “How are you, old friend?” Samir asked, and his face was creased with care.

  Polonus’s eyes glazed for an instant, and with eyebrows high and his voice in a confessional hush, he said, “I am weary, Samir.”

  “Do not go back there, Polonus,” Samir said, quietly pleading. “We have a place for you here.”

  Polonus gazed at him with a slight smile. Then the smile faded, and the lip brushing came. “No. No,
no, my place is with him. It’s my work.”

  “A wise man knows when his work is done. It is time for another.” Samir indicated Tallis with a move of his head. “This man wishes to join the fight. Did he tell you that?”

  Had Tallis told Samir that?

  “He didn’t have to.” Polonus slid an odd glance at Tallis.

  Tallis thought now was a good time to confess. He cleared his throat and said, “Master Polonus, I must tell you—I don’t know if you’ve been back to your home yet. I visited when you were gone. I read some of your work—I’m sorry, I should have asked first.” As long as he was confessing, he may as well tell it entirely. “I brought some scrolls back with me. Borrowed them.”

  Polonus didn’t answer. He didn’t seem to hear. He’d faded out and stared across the room.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t put the other scrolls away. I left them on your desk. I . . . left in a hurry.”

  The eyes focused and found Tallis. “Did he frighten you?”

  “Oh—well, actually . . . what I read in the scrolls frightened me.”

  “Ah.” Polonus smiled a horribly empty smile. “A sensible man. Only fools aren’t afraid. I’ve been a fool much too long.”

  Tallis leaned forward on the table, and a ripple of the purpose came back. “Sir, I read things on your desk, on parchment scraps. I read things in your scrolls. I think it’s good that you and I talk. I may have something to offer.” It came to him as he spoke, and he felt his way for the words. “You see, my mother was a Maenad. I studied Dionysus for years, and I see things here in Palestine . . . tangled lines with a commonality—”

  “Where do you think the word Maenad came from, my brilliant lad from Athens?” Polonus said sharply.

  Tallis pulled back but noticed a subtle reaction from the others. Jarek and Samir exchanged glances.

  “Well, from . . . madness,” Tallis said.