by Tracy Groot
Bek`eshan sank into the seat and put his head in his hands. After a moment, his shoulders shook as he began to weep.
The young man went to meet the boy against the lowering sun. If Antenor did not have enough to take in at that moment, the little boy standing small before the young man, the young man looking long upon him, touching his hair, then gently picking him up to carry him back . . . Tallis, that conundrum of Callimachus’s, dragged himself white and haggard from the bottom of the cart.
Tallis saw the young man with the boy, saw the two women, and said, “She’s the other? Arinna?” And he laughed until he groaned, and flopped back into the cart.
Arinna sat on the ground next to Devorah, gripping her skirts. They didn’t have time for this. Zagreus sat on Bek`eshan’s lap in the driver’s seat of the buckboard. As the adults spoke, Bek would occasionally slip a murmur to him, as if to say, Just listen to them—you and I better stick together. Once Bek grinned and gently roughened up his hair, but the grin died when Zagreus did not respond.
The sun was setting on the Day of Dionysus.
Arinna watched the two younger men and the old one as they argued across the road. Master Tallis sat not far from Arinna and Devorah, but he didn’t look well and had his back hunched against the city of Scythopolis. Once he peeked over his shoulder, and his eyes went up to the heavens. He looked as if he would sick up, and turned away, hunching even more. Arinna glanced to see what he saw, but saw nothing.
Bahat`avi, Bek`eshan’s son, paced near the driver’s seat with his arms folded, a grim guardian over Zagreus. Arinna didn’t like the looks he gave her, as if the whole thing were her fault. She made sure, once, that he got a full look of her own, one of disdain and scorn. She’d soon be done with this lot. Not soon enough.
“What are they arguing about?” Devorah whispered fearfully.
Arinna didn’t like it that she didn’t know, because she’d gotten used to the superiority of her station as Keeper of the Divine Child, and she ought to be the one in charge. The tall and very handsome man with the gray eyes let her know she wasn’t, when, after she’d told them the story of their flight from the temple (leaving out the big bright man part), he ordered her and Devorah to sit until they figured out what to do.
“I don’t know,” she finally admitted. “I hope they get it straight soon. Looks like the shorter one in leather wants to go to the city, very badly, and the tall handsome one doesn’t, and the old man . . . I can’t tell whose side he’s on. I think he’s with the leather one.”
“The leather one looks angry. They all do. But we’re wasting time.” Worriedly, Devorah cast a look behind her at Scythopolis. “They’ll find out we’re gone and maybe come looking. I want to go home.” She looked eastward, longingly, at the hilly horizon. “This isn’t the way to Pella. We took the wrong road.”
Arinna knew they had but couldn’t argue with Zagreus, to whom, incredibly, she felt she owed some debt. Zagreus had insisted they take the north road out of the city, not the east road. He said the big bright man told him so.
“No, and you can’t argue with the big bright man,” Arinna muttered with a sour look at Zagreus. They’d be in Pella by now. She’d be rid of the wan simpy girl and Zagreus as well, on her merry way to Caesarea, free and happy as a Bacchante in a parade. Her eyes widened—Bahat`avi did not like the sour look she gave Zagreus, gods, he didn’t, and she dropped her eyes.
“Has the child spoken of Jarek?”
Arinna glanced at Master Tallis, who did not look so handsome now. What had she ever seen in him? You work at the inn for five years, you get desperate.
“No.” She studied the arguing men. Maybe she could slip away if the argument got out of control, which is where it appeared to be heading. Let them deal with Devorah and Zagreus. Then she looked again at Tallis. “What about Jarek?”
He was watching the argument too. He looked older than she remembered.
“You don’t know? He’s dead.”
“What do you mean?” she scoffed.
“He’s dead, that’s what I mean. Murdered.” He looked at the child. “If Zagreus didn’t speak of it, I don’t know if that’s good or bad. I wasn’t as young as he when I . . . witnessed a murder.” His voice softened. “At least it wasn’t as violent for him. There is that.”
The bald head with the black fringe, the large eyes. His thick hand scruffing up Zagreus’s hair, shooing him to wash up.
“That’s ridiculous,” Arinna snapped. “Jarek isn’t dead.”
Tallis looked at her with dull, miserable surprise.
She rose quickly, smoothing down her skirts. “Stop talking nonsense. I’m sick of it all. I want to get out of here. I want to go to Caesarea. And then maybe Rome, because Demas said they would pay me to sit for them.”
“Sick of it all?” Tallis spoke as if the words tasted bad. “You’re sick of it all? Like it was a game? Samir said they play for keeps.”
“And don’t speak to me of Samir. That’s all I need right now.”
Tallis rose, and Arinna avoided looking at him. She folded her arms and fumed at the three men, but Tallis came close.
“They murdered Jarek to get to him.”
She backed away, but he followed.
“He died protecting him, and you . . .” He nodded in disgust. “You kept him safe for slaughter. You knew all along what they planned for him.”
He caught her arm, and she tried to twist away from him.
“What did she promise you, Arinna? What was worth the innkeeper’s life? What is worth a little boy?”
“You’re lying. Get away from me with your lies!” She tried to push him away, but his grip only tightened. “Let me go!”
“Am I lying? Think, Arinna—how do you suppose Zagreus got to Scythopolis except over the dead body of his grandfather?”
“Jarek is not dead!” Arinna screamed.
Her voice echoed, and silence roared in after. And into the silence crept a very small sound.
She looked to see. Tallis, still holding her arm and breathing murder on her face, looked too. Zagreus, small on the lap of Bek`eshan. Zagreus, his little face stricken in horror, mouth open wide and dark eyes huge, as though he saw before him unspeakable atrocity. Small stuttering gasps attended his horror, until, finally, a wail, a wail so different from her own scream. It was the anguish of a child who knew, who had known, and it drew deeply upon all those in earshot. It was a dreadful sound of innocence lost.
Tallis groaned and started for him, and Devorah did too, and the three men stopped their arguing. Bahat`avi went blindly to a horse and hung his fingers in the bridle. He put his head on the horse’s head and began to weep. And the eyes of the wailing lost child searched, searched, found Arinna, and from bewildered instinct, he rose trembling from Bek`eshan’s lap, such a thin little thing, and put his arms out to her.
Tallis and Devorah were nearly at his side when Arinna leapt in like a cat, clawing them away, screaming at them to leave him alone. She took him down from the buckboard and gathered him in safe. She took him to the roadside and settled him on her lap, and she rocked with him. She murmured to him soothingly, and she held him close, and kissed the top of his head over and over. And soon she felt his small body let go and felt his small and weary sigh.
By the gods and the goddesses and all that was holy, she would never leave him again, not ever, not if they killed her to get to him.
There was no pursuit from Scythopolis, and the party traveling back to Hippos had watched hard for it. Watched for an anxious hour, until the darkness was thick enough for them to ease their vigilance.
Arinna sat in the corner of the cart, Zagreus asleep in her arms. She refused to lay him on the bed of sacks Antenor had made for him. She hadn’t let him go since Scythopolis. Hector was gone, escorting the girl Devorah to her home in Pella. Zagreus had ended the argument of pursuing justice, for that day anyway.
Hector himself, who thirsted like a desert for Portia’s blood, had gazed on Arinna a
nd the child rocking on the ground and told Antenor and Philip he had a family to take care of in Hippos, the news of which surprised Antenor—he didn’t even know the man was married. Hector said he needed his job, he’d talk to them later about justice—in a forum for Truth, he said with a glance at Tallis—and he walked away, leading his horse with the girl on it. Antenor had called after him, on impulse, “Let’s meet for a cup of wine sometime.” And Hector had replied, “If you’re buying.”
Bek`eshan stopped the cart at the bottom of the small mountain of Hippos, and Antenor climbed out. They’d seen Hippos from a long distance, glowing with the late-night fires of those for whom the revelry had just begun. Antenor wondered how the plays had gone. The Day of Dionysus was always their biggest moneymaking day. Perhaps they had enough in the coffers to set aside the comedies and put on a quality performance.
Tallis climbed over the side of the cart and dropped down beside Antenor. “Thank you for coming, Antenor.”
“Not that I did anything significant.”
“It was significant to me. Please thank Philip for me. I didn’t realize he’d left—I must have dozed off.”
“He left when Hippos came in sight. Couldn’t wait to get home to his son, I suppose.”
“I’ll come and see you before I leave for Athens.” Tallis’s tone went wry. “There is a curious matter to discuss, after all, of certain reports forged to Callimachus.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Tallis smiled. But his smile soon vanished, and Antenor did not envy his return to the inn without the innkeeper to greet him.
He said, “You are welcome to stay here for the evening. It’s very late.”
Tallis shook his head. “No. I want to get Zagreus home to Kes.” He glanced at the dark road ahead. “Brigands are toasting Dionysus right now. We’ll be safe.”
Antenor studied him, couldn’t help but feel some surge of emotion for the man. To have lost your little brother like that, to have witnessed it. To be helpless with Kardus . . . same as he felt with Polonus. To have to scuttle back to Athens because the truth was more than he could stand up to. There was strength in this younger man, and frailty as well. He was an innocent man, that much Antenor knew. A good man.
“When are you leaving for Athens?”
“I don’t know. Soon,” Tallis said, gazing at Zagreus, sleeping in the arms of the girl.
The girl glanced up, and for a moment she and Tallis shared a look.
“Callimachus is lucky to have you.”
“It’s the only place I’m any good.” He looked away from the girl. “I’m no use here.”
“You tried, as Polonus did. You tried to stand against Evil. That’s a good thing.”
Tallis didn’t answer, and Antenor didn’t know what else to say, so he patted the man on the arm and told him to come see him before he left.
The old scholar watched until the darkness swallowed up the cart. He could still hear it on the road, gravel crunching beneath the wheels, and he listened until a raucous whoop drifted down on the wind from the flat mountaintop. The revels would last long into the night.
He wondered if Gracchus, his understudy, had remembered his lines for Cadmus in the play. He wondered how the whole day had gone, what had happened during the play—something crazy always happened, whether on the stage or in the audience. Claudius would be the one to tell what had happened; he always told things well.
“Quandocumque impellunt, repelle,” he said thoughtfully, hands clasped behind as he began the traversing walk to the city.
XVII
To Callimachus
At the Academy of Socrates, West Stoa
The Acropolis
Athens
From your servant Tallis
At the Inn-by-the-Lake
And that lake is the Galilee
In Palestine
Greetings.
Much has transpired since last we conversed, Callimachus, dear friend.
It’s been a month since I wrote to you of the death of Jarek of Kursi. I know I said I’d be home soon. I find it difficult to leave.
You are dearer to me now than you ever were, you who took in a broken boy. You and Aristarchus could not erase from my mind things that had happened, but you made me strong against the day I should remember once more. I did not expect to be far away from you when the day came.
I should be home by now, but for a debt I have a chance to repay. I cannot erase from the mind of Zagreus what he saw, witnessing the murder of his grandfather, but neither can I leave him, not yet. I can do nothing for his father, Kardus, as I foolishly fancied I could, nor for his former protector, Polonus. Nothing for them, save grieve, and bring a basket of food now and then. But for Zagreus . . . I have a deep pity for this boy that goes beyond natural sympathy. I have a chance to throw down a ladder, as you did for me.
Yet I don’t know what to do for him. I don’t know what it has done to his mind. I want to make him strong against the day it visits him—but what do I know? Perhaps he lives with its visitation. Perhaps it is, after all, a reality he has accepted. He always seemed wise to me, for such a little fellow. He’s had a teacher since birth, the man Samir. I will tell you of him someday.
The child is quiet. Day after day. He misses Jarek dreadfully, they all do. Kes`Elurah, Samir. The customers. Especially Bek and Tavi. But the child saw it happen.
Wickedness won the day Jarek died, and there is a new pall on this place. It’s rather like a submissive bleakness. A capitulation. I feel it everywhere, from the inn folk, the villagers, everyone. Evil has pushed, and no one has the strength to push back. Not this time. They fear to, for repercussions more heinous. Patronage of the inn has dwindled, especially from those who used to come daily for a meal and a mug of wine. It is as though Jarek’s death was the final proof of a place cursed.
Well, and I suppose the evidence is substantial: The mother committed suicide, the son is possessed by demons, the father murdered. The people are afraid, Callimachus. Can you blame them? And Samir is different. He is not afraid—no, it is much worse than that. He is defeated. Only the servant girl seems to defy the shroud on this place, and that’s only because she’s unaware of it.
There is a stretch of road between here and Kursi where people now fear to pass. It is the road near the tombs, where Kardus dwells. Travelers circumvent it, taking a lengthy detour east through rocky, uncleared terrain, extremely difficult to navigate with carts and wagons. The new route goes up the hills through the grazing grounds of the pig herds. The herders are not happy about it, but of all people, they know what it is like to be near Kardus.
I don’t know why I presumed that if only we could get Zagreus back, if only we could save his life, that it would change things entirely, that somehow it would make things right. It did make things right: it was a triumph over Evil. But, and I know you’ll think me melodramatic, we will be made to pay for it. Yes, we have Zagreus, but They have Kardus, and They have Polonus, and since the murder of Jarek, They have the dread of an entire region, which fears now to push back. And because no one resists, I fear for this region, not only for today, but also for tomorrow, and the years to come, and for decades after. Evil has settled here, as if it colonized the place, and it will grow, and it will spread, and it shall not be dethroned, and if anyone tries he will be shattered.
I raise my own skin with this talk. I am being melodramatic. I hope I am.
I will return when I can leave the boy. I will see the both of you into your dotage. (I hear you say, I’m there already!) But I know you, dear Callimachus, and you would not have me leave this family to a despair I feel constrained to ease by helping the boy.
How madness plays out, long after the Maenad is gone. Her son, a madman; her husband, murdered; her grandson, nearly—
He almost used the word killed. But killed only softened it. His own brother deserved truth, and if Truth itself galled, it galled worse if lessened by vicious euphemism.
—slaughtered. Slaughtered, like a pig. A human sacrifice to Dionysus. That we live in a world that does such things . . .
He didn’t know he had stopped writing. When a small vessel with a square sail caught his eye, he came to himself. He wiped off his stylus and dropped it into the vase, and worked the squeaky cork stopper back into the ink bottle. He’d finish later. He had coaxed Zagreus into a spitting contest when he was finished with his chores. If the child wasn’t enthusiastic, to Tallis’s surprise he didn’t decline this time.
He held the letter at an angle to see if the ink had dried, then laid it carefully aside. Spring would soon run into summer. The days were cloudless and hot. He should take Zagreus across the lake to Tiberias for a day, on a little square-sailed vessel like that one. He might enjoy that.
Zagreus asked who his father was the other day.
He had been sitting on his stool at the worktable in the kitchen. Kes was chopping parsley and onions. Tallis was filling the coal box under the brazier with chunks of charcoal.
Zagreus had rested his head on his hand, looking out the kitchen doorway to the Galilee. He looked a little sleepy, like he was ready to doze off. Suddenly he lifted up from his hand as if he saw something on the waters, but instead turned to Kes.
“Who is my father?” he asked. “Jarek was not my father. He was my grandfather.”
Tallis added a coal chunk to the box and glanced at Kes. She had stopped chopping. She brushed the onion and parsley into a pile with the knife blade.
“Jarek’s son is your father, Zagreus,” she said lightly. She did not look at him as she put the vegetables in a bowl.
“But that is Kardus.”
“Yes, it is.”
“But I am afraid of Kardus.”
“Yes. I know.”
Zagreus laid his head on his hand and went back to studying the lake once more. Presently he asked, “Does he know about Grandfather?”
When Kes did not answer, Tallis said gently, “He doesn’t know, Zagreus. He is sick in his mind.”