by Tracy Groot
“He should have listened too.”
She glanced at him. “No. I was acting childish. I should have listened to him—he needed me to. It would have been kind to listen to him. It was cruel not to. If I had listened, maybe . . . things would be different.”
“Sometimes it’s hard, Kes,” Tallis said, with a trace of impatience in his voice. “Who did you have to talk to?”
“He had so much to say. She bottled him up, she pressed him down all those years. He had a voice, and he needed so desperately to talk. She did her best, but in the end he won. So she killed herself.”
Tallis froze. Kes smoothed and plucked. They heard the sound of settling in the next room—one of the guests had come in for the night. Kes saw the candle was burning down. She went to the writing table and took another candle from the drawer. She lit the new candle, snuffed out the stub of the other, and worked it from the candlestick. She placed the new candle in the holder and put the stub into a pocket in her skirts. She watched the burning flame for a moment, then came back to the stool.
“She used bristlebane. The days before she died were particularly quiet. Hardly knew she was around. She’d go and stand for hours and stare across the lake. Never sit, just stand. For hours. But because no one spoke around here, because she forbade it, no one asked her what she was doing. No one questioned it.”
“Kes . . .” He reached to take her hand, but she pulled away. “Kes. I know what it’s like to have a mother who is not well, in her heart, and in her head.”
Kes lifted eyes of despair to him. “Did she make your life miserable?”
“Not until I was twelve. Miserable ever since.”
“Did she hurt the ones you loved?”
Tallis did not answer. The poultice had rolled off when he went to take her hand. He eased back and put it on the wound again.
Kes said softly, “I used to think if she just went away it would answer everything. We could be happy. We could talk and make some noise. But what she did . . . it was her final way to wreck us. Not long after she died, Kardus left. He first went to Athens with Polonus, then came back, but not here. Never here—he was done with us. He settled in Hippos to start the school. That left me and my father. For the first time in our lives we could talk to each other, but now we had nothing to say.”
“My mother killed herself too. But she didn’t die.” Broken ribs and all, Tallis rolled to his side and faced the wall.
Kes sat rigid, staring. His mother had killed herself too? What did he mean, she didn’t die?
After a moment she took up the tray. She gazed at his curled form in the candlelight—his arm was over his head, his knees drawn up.
The lady Julia had troubles. This smart and compassionate man had troubles. Didn’t matter if you were rich and refined, didn’t matter if you were smart and the servant of a great philosopher. Didn’t matter if you were an innkeeper’s daughter. Troubles put a connection between folks; it bonded them as nothing else could.
Something bad had happened to this good man. His mother died, but there was more. He had been thrashing in the chicken yard at midnight, warding off unseen terrors.
She’d try and help him. Maybe she could talk to Polonus. Maybe to the lady. Tallis trusted her, and Kes saw clear through his eyes—she saw past the dignity down to the good.
She would put herself between Tallis and the unseen terrors. It was an old, familiar place. She’d try and help him, as she should have listened to Kardus.
She blew out the candle, paused in the doorway, and closed the door softly behind her.
VI
“IS IT BASKET DAY, Mistress Kes?” Zagreus asked from his stool at the table.
Kes paused at her job. She was scrubbing out the pot she had used to make the poultice last night. “Yes.”
“Do you want me to fetch bandages?”
“Master Polonus hasn’t asked for bandages lately. No bandages today.”
“That’s good, isn’t it?”
“Yes, Zagreus. That’s very good.”
Zagreus went back to turning the hand mill. Something more was bothering Mistress Kes. No bandages was a good thing for basket day—it usually made her more cheerful. Master Tallis had his ribs bound this morning, and Mistress Kes was pleased when she saw his wounds. She said the poultice had worked nicely. Then what could be bothering Mistress Kes—
Zagreus stopped turning the handle. His heart began to pound hard.
“Is it Auntie day?”
Mistress Kes stopped scrubbing. She would not look at him.
He put the mill on the table. “I don’t want to see her.”
“It’s only for a little while, Zagreus,” Mistress Kes said, her voice gentle.
“I hate it when she comes. I will to go to the barn.”
Mistress Kes left the pot and came to him. She stood near him, and he could smell her apron. It smelled like cooking. It had a little bit of fresh in it from the clothesline.
She knelt in front of him and looked into his eyes. “I will be there the whole time, as I always am. She will not stay long. She only comes to see how you are doing. You are five years old today. She wants to see how you’ve grown.”
Aunt Ariadne always came on his birthing day, and when he was exactly a half year older. Twice a year she came.
“I’m afraid of her,” Zagreus whispered, and tears filled his eyes. “I don’t like her.”
“Neither do I.”
Zagreus stared at Mistress Kes, waiting for her to take it back or to explain it. She did neither. He wiped his nose on his sleeve. “You don’t?” he asked incredulously.
“Not a bit,” she said crisply. “So we not like her together.” She smiled at him, a real smile. “Do you think you can stay out of the barn?”
He pursed his lips as he thought on it. If they didn’t like her together, he could do it. But in a very little voice he asked her, “Will you hold my hand while she is here? The whole time?”
“The whole time.”
He sighed. “I won’t go to the barn.”
“Good boy.” She began to rise.
“Mistress Kes?”
She eased down and looked at him. He liked it when he could see her eyes. He never saw his mother’s eyes.
“Does it make you sad when I go to the barn if your brother comes?”
She did not answer right away.
“I am afraid of him too,” he confided in a whisper.
She patted his knee. “It’s okay if you go to the barn then.”
“Just not with Auntie.”
“Not with Auntie.”
“And you will hold my hand.”
She brushed his hair behind his ear, then said softly, “I will hold your hand.”
Auntie never stayed very long, not even long enough to have refreshment. And Mistress Kes would hold his hand. He took the mill from the table and began to turn it again.
Samir came into the kitchen. “The lady Ariadne is here to see Zagreus.”
Kes did not miss the slave’s darkened tone. Samir was fond of Zagreus. She wiped her hands on a towel and kept her answer brisk—she would not let the slave see how she too regretted these visits. “Very well. Fetch Zagreus and Arinna.”
“Mistress Arinna is already speaking with the lady in the common room. And Zagreus is in the barn.” He lifted his chin and gave her a significant look.
Samir and Zagreus had a closeness Kes had subtly tried to encourage. She trusted Samir, a sun-dark Parthian born into slavery, as she trusted her own father. He was a good slave who looked after the family as if it were his own.
The only time her father had ever taken a strap to Samir was when he had hidden two-and-a-half-year-old Zagreus in the barn, the day Ariadne came to visit. The child had screamed when pulled away from Samir, and Samir had wept like a child.
Kes had wept too, silently, when she later treated the stripes on Samir’s back. She knew Father was right. A slave had to obey. And she knew Samir was right.
She put
her hands on her hips as she regarded the unhappy man in the kitchen doorway. “Zagreus and I have worked a bargain. You go and see if he will not willingly come. You remind him about Mistress Kes’s bargain.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said doubtfully and left.
He returned, much mystified, with a reluctant but compliant Zagreus. Even after she washed Zagreus’s face and brushed the barn sweetgrass from his clothing, she had to shoo Samir away. He clearly wanted to see what had made the child come, and clearly wasn’t happy he came at all. He left for the barn with a scowl.
Kes straightened the child’s overvest. She worked her fingers through his hair to smooth it out. She looked him over and gave him an encouraging smile. “It won’t last long. You know she never stays.”
He nodded miserably. She offered her hand, and he grasped it. The child’s hand was cold and wet.
As they crossed the kitchen to the common room threshold, Zagreus hesitated.
Kes gripped his hand and whispered into his ear, “We won’t like her together, Zagreus. There’s nothing we can’t do together.” After a moment, they entered the common room.
Ariadne had been waiting anxiously for the child to appear. She was sitting at the table with Arinna, an impatient look upon her fine features. Her black hair was upswept and as lovely as usual, fastened under a brocaded red-and-black head covering, stitched like the finest tapestry. It matched a lovely red tunic stitched with black and gold; it had wide bell-shaped sleeves and an expansive amount of fabric in the skirt. A gold, braided belt was fitted about her waist, tied in front with the long ends dangling.
Two things Kes noticed at once: Upon seeing Kes, Arinna immediately slipped something from the table and hid it in her lap. And Zagreus gripped her hand with the strength of a man.
Ariadne rose in a rustle of fabric and clasped her hands to her bosom, gazing upon Zagreus with nothing less than rapturous joy. “My darling,” she breathed, and went to her knees in front of the child. “My joy . . .”
The child could not speak.
Kes whispered in his ear, “Say ‘Hello, Auntie.’”
The child said nothing.
Ariadne crooned over the boy, marveling how he’d grown. Her smile was wide and beaming, her teeth white. Her brown eyes were filled with pure adoration, and her fingertips traced his hair, the lines of his face. She held his cheeks with wordless pleasure, and Kes saw tears rise in her eyes. Clearly she loved this boy, this child she saw only twice a year, and for such a short time. Clearly she loved him, more than his own mother, and Kes did not know why the woman vexed her so.
She wore expensive clothing—was it Kes’s own feelings of inferiority that made her wish Ariadne wouldn’t come? She didn’t think so. Miss Julia wore expensive clothing, and Kes did not feel inferior around her. Not much.
The woman dabbed at her tears with a lovely embroidered handkerchief.
If you love him so much, why don’t you visit more often? Kes always wanted to ask. But I’m glad you don’t, because he is going to squeeze my fingers off.
Ariadne tenderly brushed a lock of Zagreus’s hair with her fingers, smoothed it down on the side of his face. That was when the bell-shaped sleeve slipped back to reveal a mark on her inner forearm.
A small tattoo of twining ivy leaves.
Kes looked from the tattoo to the enraptured face. She looked from the face to Arinna seated at the table, picking at her fingernails, bored. She glanced at Arinna’s lap and wondered what she hid there.
“I am so happy to see you, Zagreus, my joy,” Ariadne whispered. “Soon, Zagreus. Soon.”
Kes’s voice cut like metal on the honeyed reunion. “Soon what?”
The woman dabbed her cheeks and rose. Her eyes turned on Kes, eyes interrupted of their adoration and not best pleased.
“Soon my Zagreus will come visit me, in my palace.” She looked down on the child, and joy came rushing back to her countenance. Her eyes glowed as she gazed on him. She playfully flicked a lock of his hair. “Does it please you to know I am a queen, little Zagreus? I am your queen.”
Ariadne had always been a little odd at these visits, bestowing upon the child such billows of affection that it never failed to make Kes uncomfortable. But she never once said she lived in a palace, though her clothing had the look of it, and never once said she was a queen. Was she only playing at some motherly game?
“Do you know anyone named Portia?” Kes suddenly asked.
Two things happened at once: On the periphery Arinna’s attention snapped to Kes, and Ariadne’s enraptured gaze upon Zagreus froze. A frozen look of rapture is not a pleasant thing to see, less so when it is turned upon you.
Kes felt something warm at her feet . . . Zagreus was wetting himself.
She did the only thing possible then. She swooped up the child and ran for the barn.
Motes of dust lazed in the beam of light coming in from the cracks. Kes had not seen the barn from this angle, tucked in the corner where she was, hidden from the doorway by the mound of sweetgrass. Not since she was a child.
Samir had started from a bucket of tools when she flew into the barn with the child, and he ushered her to the corner, throwing coarse sacks over them. He hurried to the barn door, then stopped and looked about. He grabbed a long-handled pruning hook for the olive trees, then slipped out the door and closed it. He’d stood sentry at the door for an hour.
Under the sacks, Kes had held Zagreus while he lay rigid and shaking. She tucked a sack about him and drew him close and whispered softly to him until his trembling stopped. He lay insensible for a time, staring with a horrifying blankness until at last he fell asleep. It got warm, and Kes pulled the coarse covering off her head and waited for Samir.
When had she last been in the barn? It was Samir’s domain. There was living space for him in the opposite corner, blocked off by a hanging curtain. She could see a pallet beneath the curtain, and a table and a stool, and a small piece of rug in front of the pallet.
She and Kardus had sometimes played in the barn when they were children. They’d tickle the ears of the animals with long sweetgrass. They’d pretend there was an earthquake and throw themselves in a tumult around boxes and stalls, sacks of grain and piles of sweetgrass. They’d peek inside the saddlebags of the guests, wondering at the strange things they found. Once when Kardus stood guard, Kes had rummaged in a pack and found lots of little wooden horse trinkets. She took one and later gave it to Kardus.
The barn door creaked open. “They have not come back, Mistress Kes.”
Ariadne had left the inn within moments of Kes’s flight to the barn. Arinna had gone with her.
“Is my father back yet?”
“No, Mistress Kes.”
“Fetch Master Tallis.”
“Yes, Mistress Kes.”
Her gaze wandered idly about the barn, until she noticed something hanging from pegs on the wall. Shackles. Sets of manacles for hands, shackles for feet. There must have been five or six pairs. A few of the sets had chains that looked newly forged. So this was where Polonus got the shackles: her father kept him supplied.
She’d wondered about that. Polonus didn’t have a lot of money. She often wondered where he did get his money, because he didn’t work. He only studied and roamed and tended her brother. Sometimes he was gone for days at a time, but he always came back. She never gave a thought to where he got the—
She bunched up a sack, pressed it carefully over her face, and cried soundlessly into it.
Tallis peered into the dimness of the barn. “Kes?”
The slave had summoned Tallis from a fitful sleep, the kind of sleep he should have woken from earlier to feel refreshed. But the only real plan he had for the day was to minimize pain, and he had lazed on his bed until he dozed again. Kes had bound his ribs earlier, and truly the support felt better. He should have gone to the lake then. He rubbed his face as he stood in the doorway of the barn, trying to shake off the grogginess.
“Kes?”
T
he slave beckoned and led him to the far corner of the barn. There he saw a strange sight indeed: Zagreus sleeping on a pile of sweetgrass with sacks tucked all about him, and Kes`Elurah in the pile next to him, gazing at the child. When she looked at Tallis, her eyes were swollen from crying.
Tallis didn’t know what to say. She climbed out of the sweetgrass and brushed herself off.
“Is the child all right?” he finally managed.
She looked at Samir, who, as if answering a verbal request, came to the sweetgrass pile with his pruning hook and settled on the ground. After a long look at Zagreus, she whispered, “Let’s go to the lake.”
Tallis eased himself into his chair by the sea, and Kes sat on the ground in front of him. A breeze came from the lake, and she raised her face to the wind. She wasn’t wearing her head covering; it was probably back in the barn. Her hair had sweetgrass in it.
It wasn’t easy for this girl to start with her talk, and Tallis was learning to be patient. If he left off his own need to get the details as accurately and quickly as possible—something ingrained in him from Callimachus—he knew she would talk in due course.
It took a while this time, and he was beginning to fidget. Behind her back, he rolled his hand once—only once—as if to say “Any time, Kes.” But he remained silent. Just when he had settled into musing on the waters and the surrounding hills, just when he forgot they were not here to take in the quietness and beauty, Kes began to talk. Her voice was nearly toneless.
“The council of Kursi came to the inn one evening. The people wanted to put Kardus down like a mad dog. They said we should put him out of his misery. My father and I, and Bek and Tavi, and Shoshanna, said no. Polonus kept telling us, if there’s a way into madness, there’s a way out. He gave us hope. He said Kardus was worth fetching back.
