by Tracy Groot
The inn was mostly empty in a moment, men hurrying home with unspoken thoughts for their families. Kes went to see what was keeping Zagreus, and Jarek went to the corner where a thick beam stood against the wall. He took it and set it near the doorway. He went behind the corner counter and rummaged about, finally producing a short sword, which he propped near the beam at the door. He came back to Tallis and said, “It’s not often I have to bolt my doors, but if the devils come I’ll be ready. Shamash-Eriba leads a bad lot.” He squinted at Tallis’s face. “How’s that fella you drove off with?”
“He got away,” Tallis muttered.
“You hurt anywhere else?”
“I just need to lie down.” He ached everywhere, felt like he was going to be sick again. And all the while murmuring in the back of his mind, since he’d struggled out of that ditch, were the words of Polonus’s servant. Personally deliver you to Portia.
Personally deliver you to Portia? Did he really say that, or was it leftover Dionysiac paranoia from earlier? How did he know to say the one thing Tallis could fear the most? He drank some of the water and wiped his mouth. “Jarek, I want to go to my room.”
“Let Kes have a look at you first.”
“By the gods, Jarek, I just want my bed!”
“She learned doctoring from her mother. Closest thing we got to a doctor, outside Kursi.” The innkeeper gently patted his shoulder, started off to speak with the others, but hesitated. He scratched his head and, without looking at Tallis, said, “You’re a good lad. I take it personal when a guest of mine is hurt.” He went to join the others outside.
Personally deliver you to Portia.
Kes arrived with a bowl of water and some towels. She dipped a towel in the water and wrung it out. She dabbed at his face. He pulled away, shifting on the bench and arching his back to take pressure off his rib cage. It hurt to sit, gods, it hurt. No position gave relief. Kes looked questioningly, and he said, “I think I broke a rib.”
“Arinna?” Kes called. “Bring an old bedcloth from the linen cupboard.” With a quick glance at the doorway where men congregated inside and out, she softly said, “What happened? Was it that man? I shouldn’t have let you go. Zagreus didn’t like him.”
Why a small boy should have a say in it was something he brushed aside for now. He didn’t want to tell her what happened. He didn’t want her involved. And why did she seem involved anyway? When exactly did that happen? When she volunteered to see if Julia had the mark of the Bacchantes.
“Is Julia still here?”
“No. She left after you did. She was angry with you. She didn’t know where you were going or why. She wanted to come with you. At least—that’s what I think. She didn’t say much.”
Julia’s cart must have scared them away. “You don’t even know why I am in Palestine, Kes`Elurah,” he murmured. He suddenly felt the warmth of the ale moving along his blood. One eye was nearly closed, so he squinted at her with the other. “You don’t know our business. Why did you help me and Julia? Don’t tell me it’s because of fear in my eyes. Or the lack thereof.”
She did not reply. She simply washed his face and told him to take off his toga.
“You want me to take off my toga,” he repeated carefully. He mused on this interesting piece of information. “That’s a pleasant thing for a man to hear.”
“I need to bind your ribs, you idiot.” She fingered the sleeve of his toga. “Stupid garment. So thick.”
Arinna arrived with a bundle of cloth.
Kes shook it out and began to tear it into strips. “Go get one of Kardus’s old tunics,” Kes told her.
After a lingering look at Tallis and his wounds, Arinna went to obey her mistress.
Maybe the blow had thickened his hearing. Maybe it was the ale. “You said ‘Kardus’?”
“My brother. Come,” she said, and tugged gently on his arm to get him to stand.
He pushed up from the table gingerly. He pressed his hand against his back. “Look at me—I’m pregnant. I think I’m having twins.” Wincing, he said, “Is Kardus a common name?”
Kes`Elurah lifted the skirt of his toga, looking perplexed. “How does this come off?”
Yes, it would seem a complicated rig to people who knew only simple vestments like tunics. He showed her the way it wound from his left shoulder to his right thigh. She helped him shrug out of it. Because of the pain it caused, it reduced the embarrassment at being public in his smallclothes.
“Where is your brother?” he asked when the toga came off. “I haven’t seen him about.”
She gently probed the bruise at his ribs with her fingertips, her face in a slight wince. “I’ll need aloe pulp. Some hot mint, mustard. Coralwart. I’ll fix a poultice before I bind you. You won’t like the smell.”
“Kes . . . where is your brother?”
Her fingertips stilled on the wound. Many things stilled in that moment. He was holding his breath—seemed the whole place held its breath. Then she raised her green eyes to his, eyes with alarming elements Tallis recognized. Despair. Hopelessness.
“My brother lives in the tombs. My brother is a madman.”
V
KES STIRRED THE POT CAREFULLY. The poultice would require more hotmint than she had, so she sent Samir to old Shoshanna down the road. She was the only one in shouting distance who would have a large quantity of dried hotmint. With any luck she had it in leaves, not ground.
She had never had to tell anybody about Kardus before. They all knew.
Demas had never asked. She wouldn’t have told him. And the first person she tells says the strangest thing, in the strangest way: with staring surprise Tallis had said, “Your brother is why I am here.”
Kes frowned. He didn’t seem like a shaman from the East. Father said he was a Greek scholar, or that he worked for a Greek scholar. He was on business from Athens—that’s all anyone knew about the curious man who had been living at the inn for over a week. Nobody stayed at the inn for a week. They stopped over from the East, or from Damascus or Jerusalem, for one day only, sometimes two, to rest their horses. This weeklong guest came from Athens just to see her brother? Did his fame reach so far?
“He’s not a shaman,” she murmured doubtfully, then started when she realized she’d not been stirring the mixture.
Did they have a different kind of shaman out West? Someone who wasn’t outlandish and did not smell bad and frighten people? Her father had hired a man from the East, a man renowned for his work in the dark arts. He was superior and strange. He brought his own food, even his own oil, and made Kes prepare strange things for his meals. He told her he needed to be one with the gods when he started his work with Kardus. His gods liked strange things.
He stayed at the inn for three days before he began his work with Kardus, and during that time, Zagreus would not set foot in the kitchen. He stayed in the barn, in such a state that she feared he was going the way of Kardus himself. He refused to eat; he could not sleep for the terror of his dreams. He begged and pleaded for Kes to send the shaman away. It made her angry with him, because Zagreus was never wrong about these things, because she had hoped with all her heart that the shaman could help.
In the end, nobody had to tell him to leave. After a single encounter with Kardus, the hill herdsmen carried the shaman back to the inn on a plank. It was days before he came out of his gibbering state. His eyes rolled wild, his speech was unintelligible. Then one day Kes went to his room and he was gone. Packed his things and left. Never asked for his money.
Samir came in with the hotmint, a bundle of dried stems and leaves. “Shoshanna says seven prutahs. She said she’ll take it in eggs.”
Kes nodded and glanced at him. He was acting perfectly normal. Perfectly Samir. He acted as though he had never defied her father. The strange authority that had risen in the yard had resettled to the docile man she’d known for twenty years. His familiar, plodding meekness nestled around him like his musty barn fragrance.
“Where’s Zagreus?�
�� she said briskly.
“With your father out front.”
“Tell him it’s time for bed.”
“Aye, Mistress Kes.” Samir went through the kitchen to the common room, passing Arinna through the doorway. Arinna flattened herself so she wouldn’t touch Samir, and Samir had taken care not to touch her, though not as obviously.
Kes carefully scraped the mixture together. It was getting runny; she may have let it go too long. If it went too long, the pulp melted and lost its shape. It had to be just warm enough to hold together, so her mother taught her years ago. She pulled the pot from the brazier and set it to cool on an iron grate.
“Arinna, quickly—” she nodded at the bundle on the worktable—“help me strip the leaves from the stems. I want to get that swelling down before we bind him.”
“Tallis is asking for you,” Arinna said as she untied the bundle.
“Master Tallis,” Kes said sharply.
Arinna shrugged. “Master Tallis. I never noticed how handsome he is. He’s never around—he’s usually gone to Hippos or sitting at the sea.”
Their fingers worked quickly. Presently, Kes said, “He’s not that handsome.”
“No. Not like Demas,” Arinna said with a demure little smile, and Kes was proud of herself—she didn’t twitch at the mention of his name, and she knew Arinna looked for it.
The stems were thick but brittle, and the leaves pulled away easily. Kes tore a leaf and smelled it, tasted it. Good. Very potent. Harvested just before winter and dried properly. Mother had always counted on Shoshanna for quality herbs.
It was a pity Mother had not lived to see what she had done to Kardus.
Halfway through the job, Kes noticed Arinna’s silence. Arinna was never quiet. Kes glanced and saw a small smile that tightened her stomach.
She couldn’t tell her to stay away from him; it would only mount a challenge. She’d made that mistake with Demas. Arinna was prettier than Kes, and much more willing. It was Kes who had the eye of Demas from the beginning, wonder of wonders, but once Arinna found out about it, discovered Kes actually returned his favor, she’d slipped between them because she could. And the one man who had kindled Kes’s interest, kindled her blood and set her to soft imaginings, was lost to her. Now she wished Demas was around. Arinna wouldn’t look twice at Tallis with Demas around.
Demas was the man Mother would have wanted for a son-in-law—the kind of man she wanted for a son. He was once-in-a-lifetime beautiful, funny and smart, confident and arrogant, and could he sing? Oh, could he sing. Such a voice to match his strong handsome face.
Kes never forgot the day she stopped loving Demas. It wasn’t Arinna, not even after Arinna’s lazy boast one afternoon, standing right here while they chopped vegetables for stew—“The moon is full, but I’m not sure my flow will start.” Even then she loved him, ignoring the hurt of Arinna’s words, pretending she never saw the way Demas looked at Arinna. No. She didn’t stop loving him until she realized he was everything Mother could have wanted for a son-in-law . . . or a son.
Demas moved on with his troupe to Scythopolis, and Kes went to visit a cousin in Caesarea for a time. How often had she longed to leave the inn? She left in defiance of the expectations laid upon her after Mother died.
She hadn’t come back for Father’s sake, he who never had the backbone to stand up to Mother. She blamed Father just as much for what happened to Kardus, because he was the man but never acted it.
Weak good comes to no good, master. Have you learned nothing?
Did Samir really say that? Did he know her father so well? She glanced at her arms—the words raised a chill on her skin. The truth of them astounded her.
Father should have stood in Mother’s way. Those years of cruelties and tyrannies, he should have stopped her. Samir saw that. Samir knew. The realization dumbfounded her. She could hardly believe he’d said those words, much less that he—
I should have stopped her.
She felt a clutch at her throat, but she swallowed it away. What’s done is done, Kes`Elurah, she thought sternly to herself. You’re stronger when you remember that. You’re stronger when you impart no blame. Don’t hate your father because his fear of her was stronger than his love for Kardus.
The thought squeezed her heart with pain.
“Look at me, I’m pregnant, he says,” Arinna murmured with a chuckle. “I have twins. He’s funny.”
You could have stayed in Caesarea with Cousin Sazar. But you came back, Kes`Elurah. Never forget you came back, because your love is stronger than his. “Weak good comes to no good.” The words dizzied her.
Am I weak?
“It’s enough,” Kes said of the mound of dried leaves. “Put Zagreus to bed.”
Arinna dusted off her hands and left.
Father never said anything when she came back from Caesarea. She took up in the kitchen, and Father acted as though she had never left. Treated her coldly, like he’d never missed her and she shouldn’t bother hoping he had.
Something Kardus said actually stayed with her, as many times as she’d ignored him—he told her something from the school he went to, something a man named Socrates said: Mankind will have no greater helper than love.
Your brother is why I am here, Tallis said.
She put the poultice pot level with the worktable and swept the hotmint into the mixture. “Yes,” she whispered as she began to stir, pulling back from rising vapors. “He’s why I’m here too.”
Kes pushed the door open with her toe, carrying a tray with the poultice dressings. Arinna had lit the candle on the small table near Tallis’s bed. He was lying on his cot, half-asleep but moving restlessly. She brought her tray to the candle table, but it wouldn’t fit. She set it on the floor next to the bed and went to fetch the stool from the writing table, shoved beneath the windowsill. She frowned at that. Likely the table edge would have scratches in it from the bottom of the sill. Didn’t Tallis think of that, or did he only think of his precious view?
“Kes?” Her father stood in the doorway, looking unhappily at Tallis in his bed. “How is he?”
“I prepared a poultice for his ribs. If there is nothing else broken inside, he will mend.” Then she asked about the “brigands,” because he would expect her to.
“No, nobody saw anything. I don’t fancy it was Eriba’s band. Maybe a coupla drunken louts up from Hippos.” He glanced at her directly and glanced away.
Kes understood. No, it wouldn’t have been Shamash-Eriba’s band of Parthian marauders—anyone leading a group of malcontents in these parts knew enough about the hills of Kursi to stay far away. It was an odd safety her brother provided for the entire village and its surroundings. Here there weren’t any raids on herds. Here crops were left alone. Brigands gave the hinterlands of Kursi a wide berth. You could call it the safest place in Palestine.
But if the presence of her brother brought an odd safety, it also brought a pall. Trade had suffered. Some families had actually moved away, families rooted in the landscape, their generations preceding Kardus’s precious Alexander the Great. Kes and her father felt the onus of every incident tied to Kardus.
One man lost his daughter and claimed the madman in the tombs carried her off. It was later discovered the girl had run away with a tradesman. Well and good, but did the man come to apologize for the day he stormed into the inn and announced to the common room that Kardus had raped his daughter and probably killed her? No, but those were the last images the people had: Kardus the rapist, Kardus the murderer.
But Kardus had done terrible things these past few years. Every new report made Kes at first fiercely defensive of her brother and, as time went on, doubtful. Perhaps he really did some of the things they said he did—it was just so hard to believe. So painful to believe. Surely not rape. Surely not murder. Not Kardus.
Father was still looking unhappily at Tallis. “You think he’s . . . ?” Her father whirled his finger at his temple. He was speaking, without speaking, of last evening in
the chicken yard.
“It was only a bad dream. Zagreus has been having them too.”
Her father turned to go, but Kes softly called him back. She hesitated, and glanced at Tallis. “He has asked for employment.”
Jarek grunted in surprise. “You never know who has money these days. A man can be well dressed and speak like a politician . . .” He thought a moment, and sighed. He scratched the side of his head. “I suppose I can hire out Samir, when this fellow mends. I’d get some coin for it, at least.”
“Thank you, Father,” Kes said, and meant it. Jarek grunted again, for the bargain and for good night, and left. She watched him through the doorway as he stopped to pick up a scrap of something on the hallway floor. He went off examining it, probably heading for the trash heap out back.
“I’ve got the job?” Tallis croaked.
“When you mend.”
Kes pulled the stool next to the bed and moved the candle table closer so she could see the wound on his chest better. She hissed at what she saw, a rising discolored mound, and glanced at his face. She reached and touched his temple, frowning. “I hope I have enough for this too.”
“If you’re talking about that evil-smelling—” he looked down with a curled lip at the pot—“mess, I’ll be fine without it.”
She picked up the pot and spooned the mixture onto a square of cloth, leaving some in the pot to treat the eye. “That’s the coralwort. It’s awful. I think Mother put it in because if it smells bad, it’s bound to work.” She folded in the edges of the cloth and tied the bundle. “I put it in because you never know.” She let it drip over the pot a moment, then settled the pack on Tallis’s wound.
He winced at first, then looked at her in surprise. “It’s cooling.”
“That’s the hotmint.”
“Why don’t they call it coolmint?”
She pressed her lips. Always ready with a fast remark. She wanted to smile entirely too much around him. “I once looked into a pot my mother had just added a bunch of hotmint to—the vapors burned my face. Guess what Mother used to treat the burns?”
