Madman

by Tracy Groot

  Maybe that helped keep the detachment. Maybe keeping her own name kept her.

  Semele was the name of one of the daughters of Cadmus, Arinna remembered from her early lessons of the play The Bacchae. It too was one of the names for the mother of Dionysus.

  “My name is Devorah.” A very small smile. She looked at Arinna. Her small smile faded, and her eyes were huge.

  “Do you think we’ll stew in the Styx?” Arinna said softly. “Do you think he’ll hunt us down?”

  “I don’t know,” Devorah whispered. “I’m frightened.”

  “So am I.”

  “I wish my father were here.”

  “How long have you been here?”

  “Almost two months. If he knew where I was, he’d be here. He wouldn’t fear Dionysus or Queen Ariadne or anything. He’d bash the door down. He’d come and get me, no matter what.” Her voice dwindled. “He doesn’t know where I am, because he would have come by now. Divine Keeper—”

  “Don’t call me that again. My name is Arinna.”

  “Arinna . . . what are we going to do?”

  Arinna felt for the large cushion and took it into her lap. She wrapped her arms about it and fell into hard thought.

  They could wait until the evening revels to slip Zagreus away under the cloak of darkness, but that is when he would be most watched. And how could they know where they were going in the dark? She didn’t know these hills in the daytime, let alone at night. The only thing to do was to get him out of the temple before the parade.

  The public parade would commence late in the afternoon, when all the women dressed in their finery would dance the choruses and make merry and herald the coming of the god. They’d wave their ribbon-bedecked thrysi and throw figs into the crowd. The parades, more than anything else, gathered new initiates. Young girls gazed, enraptured, at the beautiful women making merry in the streets, and they too wanted to be beautiful and make merry and wave the sticks with the streaming ribbons.

  After the parade the Maenads, drunk with gaiety and goodwill, would return to the temple for a great feast, after which another parade would take place at midnight. A very solemn and secret one.

  Zagreus was to be dressed in a specially made gown, borne upon a special funeral bier. They would take him in procession to the northeast gate, the gate closest to the temple, and carry him to the place of sacrifice. The place was known only to Queen Ariadne and her eunuch, who had gone to the grove the day before to sanctify it. It would be somewhere far enough away from the city that no one would notice if the unpredictable Dionysus did indeed bring his famous reveling madness. Portia told them they needed to be more careful these days . . . something about a new law with a closer eye on the Bacchanalia.

  Arinna set aside the cushion. “We must go now.”

  Semele—Devorah—started from the couch. Her hand flew to her throat. “Now? You mean—now?”

  “We can’t get him away in the dark, and the public parade starts soon. Likely there’s a crowd on the steps already.”

  The moment the Bacchantes burst from the temple was a grand moment indeed, and many waited for hours to have a good spot for it.

  “I must—gather my things,” Devorah said, rising from the couch. Confusion was on her face.

  “What if you see Portia?”

  “Portia?” Devorah said uncertainly.

  “Ariadne,” Arinna said impatiently. “Devorah—we have one chance at this, and it’s now. If you go to your cell, don’t bother coming back. I’ll be gone.”

  “But . . . I have a necklace from my mother. . . .”

  “Leave it.” Arinna took a small cushion and ripped a hole into a corner of it with her teeth. She worked her finger into the hole and tore the cushion open along the seam. She took out the stuffing and refilled it quickly, grabbing anything she could against an uncertain journey. The figs, a few sweets given her by admiring initiates, a wedge of cheese from the platter, a little basket of pistachios given by the woman whose cell she took over. (Not given, actually—left in the cell, hers by right.)

  “Where do they have Zagreus?” Arinna looked ruefully at the few coins in her palm. If the color of her coins was silver instead of copper, she could get more than a loaf of bread and a skin of watered wine—she could get an armed escort out of the city, and safe passage to Caesarea. She put them into the cushion bag.

  “In a cell, in the corridor on the west side of the entrance.”

  “Is it locked?”

  “No, but it’s guarded by two nurses. They cast lots for the privilege.” Devorah anxiously searched Arinna’s face. “What will we do? How do we get him out of there?”

  Arinna didn’t answer. She went to the door and put her hand on the iron pull. Suddenly, her heart began to catch up. It began to pound so furiously she could feel it at the bottom of her stomach. What was she thinking? How could they get him out without anyone knowing?

  Was she crazy?

  She took her hand from the cold touch of the door pull. And even if nobody saw, which was impossible in a small temple filled with fifty-seven women, Dionysus saw. Dionysus would know.

  “Divine Kee—Arinna?”

  If they escaped the temple, could they escape Dionysus?

  “Arinna?”

  Would he track Arinna down? All the way to Rome? Sure, she had a body blessed by the gods, or so Demas had told her one starry night in the grasses by the Galilee, but Demas had left her at the inn. It was all because of Zagreus—Demas thought the child was hers, and the day Demas left, Arinna screamed at Zagreus that she was sorry to be stuck with such a leg iron as he, and why on earth was she chosen to be his mother? Why couldn’t someone else have been chosen? And his face had gone white, and he sat small in a corner of their room while she raged at her misfortune. Handsome Demas with his glorious voice was gone, and she couldn’t go with him, and it was all Zagreus’s fault.

  The pain on his little face made her more furious than ever, and she’d spent herself in a tantrum, screaming into her bedding so Kes wouldn’t hear. She cried herself empty for the loss of Demas, for losses long before Demas, before she had ever arrived, broken, on the steps of the temple. She cried into the bedding the sorrow of a life used up at age twenty, until she felt a small hand on her back, patting, caressing. And she knew he’d never learned that tenderness from her, and she had wept a little longer.

  “Arinna . . . ?”

  Her hand was on the iron pull. She was terrified to go, and she was terrified to stay.

  But the door was pushing slowly into the room by itself, and she stepped back. Arinna expected someone taller—when she dropped her eyes to the little figure who pushed the door, she did something she never thought she’d do, not of her own free will. She dropped to her knees with a cry and pulled the child Zagreus into her arms, as she’d seen Kes do, and held him fiercely. He smelled like home.

  She held him back to look him over. “You look tired. Are you all right?”

  The child nodded, and after five years of minding him, Arinna saw his eyes for the first time. Such dark, beautiful eyes, like Kardus’s eyes, before the madness fully came. Tired eyes. He cupped his hands around his mouth and said in a hush, “I want to go home.”

  Devorah came behind Arinna. She put her hands together in a prim, nervous pose. “How did you get out of the cell, Zagreus Most Blessed?” she inquired formally, not quite allowing herself to believe he was a mere mortal.

  “The big bright man,” the child said. “He says we must hurry. He says we must take the kitchen entrance.”

  The three stole down the dark, narrow corridor into the east side of the building. Arinna saw no big bright man, but Zagreus had always been an odd child. She didn’t know how Portia managed to get him away from Jarek and Samir and Kes, and Master Tallis too, but it couldn’t have been easy. The trauma of his taking likely made him fancy an imaginary helper.

  Zagreus led the way. He’d often consult with a look up to his left. It made Arinna’s skin prickle. Th
e quicker they got out of this eerie place, the better.

  The aroma of many feast-day smells grew stronger as they hurried along. She could smell fresh bread and roasting meat and savory vegetables. But the closer they got to the kitchen, the more her alarm grew. Surely they couldn’t think to leave the temple from there.

  “Zagreus, the kitchen will be crowded,” she whispered.

  “He says not to worry.”

  “Fine for him, he won’t get caught,” Arinna hissed.

  Zagreus paused when the corridor ended at a narrower cross-passage. Arinna nearly bumped into him. Devorah was on her heels, and did bump into her.

  “What are you doing?” Arinna whispered to the child.

  “He says wait.”

  So they pressed against the wall and waited. Arinna finally rolled her eyes and was about to take the lead herself. Suddenly voices came down the cross-passage, and she pulled back, pressing Zagreus and Devorah against the shadowed wall.

  “My feet are killing me. I’ve been on them since dawn.”

  “And I haven’t? You know, I don’t think there’s nearly enough nut pastry for the feast.”

  “That’s because you’ve been snitching it.”

  “I have not!”

  “What’s in your pocket?” the other voice challenged.

  “It’s only because I won’t get any if the other pigs go first!”

  Two novitiates walked by, inches from Zagreus. Arinna felt the air move as they passed.

  “Did you see the eunuch? Queen Ariadne’s helper?”

  “Yes, he’s rather handsome. Well—from a distance. Up close he looks like my brother. Does a eunuch really . . . ?”

  “Really what?”

  “Oh, don’t make me say it. You know.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about. . . .”

  The voices faded down the corridor, where they turned a corner and were lost completely.

  The three slipped into the passage, going where the two novitiates had come from. The odors grew even stronger, and now Arinna heard kitchen sounds. The clatter of a lid on a cook pot, the rhythmic chopping of vegetables. Voices.

  When they came near the kitchen entrance, from where light spilled into the dim corridor, Zagreus halted and consulted up to his left. He reported in a whisper to Arinna, “He says wait.”

  They waited. Then Zagreus crept to the kitchen entrance and peeked. After a few moments, he beckoned.

  Arinna and Devorah exchanged anxious looks. What would they say to the kitchen workers? From the voices, there had to be five or six. They would inform Portia, and Portia would know they had gone.

  Arinna thought quickly. She could tell them some nonsense about a Divine Keeper ritual she had to perform with Zagreus before the commencement of the ceremony tonight. She could tell them Devorah had to help with the ritual. Yes! She could say his ties to her needed to be cut, else catastrophic things would happen. And if anyone questioned her, she would say this, that Dionysus had appeared to her himself and had required it. Didn’t others claim a visitation? Why not the Divine Keeper?

  Zagreus beckoned more urgently.

  Arinna swallowed convulsively. Devorah clutched Arinna’s sleeve, and they crept to the entrance and peeked in.

  One worker chatted amiably with another at a breadboard. One worker stirred a huge pot at the hearth. Another chopped vegetables at a worktable in the corner. Another stirred a sauce at the brazier. She dipped the spoon into the sauce, tasted it, and frowned. She took a handful of dried leaves from a bowl. She put the spoon in her teeth and rubbed the leaves between her palms over the sauce, and dusted off her palms.

  And Zagreus was walking straight down the center of the kitchen, and not a single person noticed him. He got to the door on the other side, turned, and waited for Arinna and Devorah.

  Feeling giddy, as in a dream, Arinna started stiffly across the kitchen with Devorah inching behind, clutching the back of her dress the whole way. Once the cook at the brazier turned and looked directly at Arinna. Arinna froze and felt the blood drop from her face and swoosh into her legs—but the cook looked right through her to the girl at the worktable in the corner and called, “I need a few more onions, chop ’em fine.” The cook turned back to her sauce and, frowning, sipped another taste from the spoon.

  Devorah’s fingers dug into her lower back, and they crept across the kitchen, unseen by the five workers. As they passed the breadboard, Arinna slipped a flat round loaf from the board and hid it in her skirts. The bread makers carried on their conversation as if completely ignoring her, so she leaned over the terrified Devorah and snatched another. Zagreus opened the door into late afternoon, and all three left the temple, closing the door behind them.

  “Quandocumque impellunt, repelle. Quandocumque impellunt . . .”

  “What’s wrong with him? What’s he saying?” Tavi asked Antenor, warily watching Tallis. “I do not know this language.”

  Antenor regarded the servant of Callimachus in the bottom of the cart. Tallis lay curled on his side, his arms wrapped about his head. He was muttering, sometimes coherently, sometimes not. The closer the cart got to Scythopolis—and they were less than a half mile away—the more the man shriveled up.

  Antenor scanned the horizon where Tallis had looked. Whatever it was, it was doing Tallis harm. Antenor feared to go any farther. “Stop the cart,” he finally called to the driver. He gazed down at Tallis. “Something’s wrong. We cannot take him there.”

  “It’s time for another?” Tallis slurred. “Who’s the other? Quando . . . easy for you, Samir, you’ve done it all your life . . . impellunt . . . certainly—and if you can stand upright to do it, why then, repelle . . .” He chuckled. “The gods are laughing.”

  “What’s he saying?”

  “It is Latin,” Antenor said slowly to Tavi. “‘When they push, push back.’” He looked at the horizon.

  “Whenever they push. Quandocumque. My contribution. Can’t let them get away with a thing.”

  Tavi watched Tallis. “It has to do with Kardus, doesn’t it. It always has to do with Kardus, anything strange, anything bad.” He looked where Antenor did, perhaps now as uneasy to continue as Antenor himself was. “He never used to be that way. Nobody believes it.”

  Hector pulled up his mount beside the cart. He took off his leather helmet and wiped his forehead on his sleeve. He gestured with the helmet at Tallis. “What’s wrong with him now? We don’t have time for this.”

  “Nothing is wrong with me,” Tallis snapped, his voice muffled beneath his arms. “Why has the cart stopped? Are we there yet?”

  Philip’s horse nosed in beside Hector. “We’re about a half mile from the northeast gates.” He glanced at Antenor, then at Tallis. “Are you well?”

  “Yes, I’m well,” Tallis growled, still beneath his arms. “Stomachache. Bad fish. Gods and goddesses, keep going, will you?” He muttered a bit more.

  Antenor didn’t quite catch it, something about serving himself hemlock. He rose, looking for what he could not see in the air above the acropolis, then climbed out of the cart. Hector and Philip dismounted and joined him at the roadside.

  “He cannot go into the city,” Antenor said, keeping his voice low.

  “He can make that decision himself. I think he just did,” Hector replied, and the older man eyed him.

  Had Hector learned nothing from the days at the academy with Portia? Had he so tidily put behind him all that happened? Hector himself had found Theseus. How could he not believe in . . . great evil?

  Antenor saw in Hector’s face great defiance: he defied Antenor to tell him Tallis was vexed not by last night’s supper but by Evil, Evil emanating from the place they approached. Briefly, as Antenor searched the familiar face, he felt a twinge for the old days. Hector, and that old defiance. It used to be good-natured. They used to love to argue together, everything from the theorem of Pythagoras to Aristotle’s forms; from what Socrates thought of women, to what women thought of Socrates—wi
th Julia in on those discussions. Theseus would sometimes join in, usually taking Hector’s side. They were best friends. They met each other at Cal’s villa, were inseparable after that, Hector and Theseus.

  Antenor glanced toward the city. He could feel the darkness, like cold shade on his heart. He could put a hand out, as Tallis did, and feel it on his palm. Hector did not believe in the resistance from the city, or refused to. And Antenor wondered, sadly, whether Great Good was indeed out there somewhere, was it in a place he could go, and did it put up a shield against Evil, as this Evil did against Good.

  Movement on the road ahead drew his eye from the city. The sun was falling west, shining directly in his eyes, and he put up his hand against it. Through the filtered rays he saw two women with a child between them, coming this way. As they came closer he saw that, intriguingly, their dresses were the current fashion of the Bacchantes: the faint gleam from gold tasseled belts, the generous fabric in the skirts that allowed for dramatic movement, the color. He’d had the old theater costumes replaced this year, thanks to a grant from a pitying rich woman who loved The Bacchae, and who had been scandalized by the condition of last year’s garments. The dresses of the girls on the road were even the same shade as the theater costumes, a rich ivy green.

  The driver rose from his seat, shielding his eyes. Tavi looked up from where he crouched beside Tallis; then he stiffened. He leaned forward to grip the sides of the cart, gazing intently at the three, then swung down for a better look.

  “Father . . . ?” he asked, squinting beneath his hand.

  “I don’t know, lad,” Bek`eshan answered uncertainly. “I can’t tell from here.”

  “But I can,” Tavi answered, and he lowered his hand. “Look and see how his ears stand out. Looks like Kardus when he came from the inn, done with his chores. It’s Zagreus, Father. It’s Kardus’s boy.”