Madman

by Tracy Groot

  Tallis eased onto the stool at the worktable. His ribs had had enough for the day. “He’s not there. Looks like he hasn’t been there for a few days.” Did she know about the record Polonus was keeping on her brother? “I would like you to tell me about him.”

  Kes unwrapped a block of cheese and cut a hunk from it. “What do you want to know?”

  “Anything you do.”

  “I’ll be right back.” She arranged the hunk of cheese on the plate and took it to the common room.

  She wasn’t right back. Tallis leaned on his stool to see. The place was beginning to fill with hungry people for midmeal. Arinna was nowhere to be seen. Kes spoke rapidly with her father, who wasn’t happy at her words. With his back to the customers, Jarek’s face deepened to a glower as he listened. It cleared instantly when he turned to the guests. He spoke with them as he reached for his apron behind the corner counter. Jarek never worked in the inn during the day.

  Kes flew back to the kitchen and pointed to the loaves of bread on the worktable. “Hurry, cut those loaves, not too thick. We have a delegation to Damascus from Jerusalem. Ten people.”

  It took a moment to realize she was speaking to him. He reached for the knife and pulled a loaf over.

  “I don’t care if she’s gone,” Kes muttered as she quickly took down a stack of bowls from the cupboard. “I don’t care, I’m glad. She never acted like a mother to him. If she comes for him I’ll—” But she left it unsaid, and stirred the stew in the pot on the brazier.

  The brazier was a long narrow trough set into the wall, with a long grate over it. Half of the brazier was for grilling meat. A thick patina of many meals coated that part of the grating, with dried drips clinging to the underside. The other half of the brazier was for pot cooking. An extension at that end was a work surface. Kes quickly set out bowls on the extension and began to ladle the stew.

  She had tied her hair back with a faded blue cloth since Tallis last saw her asleep in the sweetgrass. She still had a few bits of the grass in her hair. She was barefoot and rose up on her toes to ladle the stew. She wasn’t markedly short, but the brazier was high, and the pot was tall. Perhaps her mother had been a tall woman.

  Between slicing, he watched her work. She swooped to grab trays from under the worktable and slid them onto the surface. She pulled out a basket and rapidly rummaged through it for napkins. She inspected them for cleanness, tossing dirty ones in the corner. She layered the clean ones in a pile, smoothing each one she placed on top.

  She knew this kitchen, she knew her work, and it was evident to see that she took pleasure in it. Not that she smiled, he rarely saw that—only when making Arinna clean up vomit—but in the swift, measured way she worked, he could sense the pleasure it gave her.

  Tallis considered the thickness of his slices. He held one up. “Is this all right?”

  She glanced and nodded. “Three each. One piece of cheese each.”

  “What about these little end pieces?” He held up a crust of bread.

  “Not for the guests. We eat them or give them to the pigs.”

  “What will you do if she comes for him?”

  She smoothed out the last napkin, picked at a dried something on it and brushed it away, then whisked the basket beneath the table. “I won’t give her her son.” She began to fold the napkins.

  Jarek’s anxious face appeared at the doorway. “Kes . . .”

  “Two minutes,” she replied.

  She pushed aside Tallis’s loaves and slices until they reached the edge of the table, then laid out the trays.

  “Olives?” Tallis asked.

  “In the crock, right there. Fill up two bowls from that cupboard.”

  Tallis fetched the dishes and went to work filling them. He popped an olive into his mouth. “Do you know about Polonus’s journals?”

  “The scrolls? Yes. He is keeping a record of his work with Kardus. He hopes it will someday help others who suffer from the same . . . malady.”

  “Have you read any of them?”

  She snorted. “I cannot read. Kardus used to read to us. Sometimes I tear off a piece of his favorite scroll and put it in the basket. Polonus told me to stop destroying a good book, because it means nothing to Kardus. I keep hoping it might help him remember what he used to love. Maybe it will remind him of us.”

  “Kes—I read some of the scrolls.” He hesitated. “I think you should know some of the things I read.”

  “We must speak of it later.”

  “Where do you think Polonus could be?”

  “Probably out with Kardus. Tallis, I can’t talk about it right now.” She took the bowls filled with stew and began to hurry them to the trays on the worktable.

  “His door was closed. The fire pit was cold. Kardus was alone.”

  “You saw Kardus?”

  “Briefly, yes.”

  “Were you frightened?”

  Tallis glanced up from the crock. “Briefly. Yes.” Now wasn’t the time to tell her of the effect of that meeting, that for a few moments he went blind. He still did not understand it.

  Suddenly she said in surprise, “Tallis.” She looked at his nose and his eye, still slightly swollen. “You should sit, you should . . . you shouldn’t have gone to see Polonus. What were you thinking?” She reached for the olive dishes. “How do you feel?”

  He moved the dishes out of her reach and put them on the trays.

  “I’m fine. You tied me tighter than an Egyptian mummy. Maybe my ribs are only bruised.”

  “What’s a mummy?”

  “A bound dead person.”

  “Tallis, why did you go see Polonus?”

  “Let’s get the trays out there.” He helped finish loading the trays with bowls of stew, and added spoons, baskets of bread, and the dishes of olives. Kes took the napkins and a platter with sliced cheeses. Tallis took two trays and followed her into the common room.

  For the next hour he filled cups with Kes and Jarek, he joked with a few of the customers, he fetched more bread or specially requested herbs. It felt like home. It felt like serving Callimachus. Well, and wasn’t he now in the employ of Kes and her father? One customer asked what happened to his eye, and he hooked his thumb at Kes. She saw him do it, and for the first time he heard her laugh.

  She refused to let him wash the dishes with her. Instead, she handed him an amphora of wine and a fine silver cup and told him to go to his place by the lake. She said she’d join him when the delegation for Damascus had left. When he glanced over his shoulder on the way out the kitchen door, she was watching him go.

  It wasn’t comfortable to sit slouched in the chair. After enjoying a cup of truly fine and undiluted rich wine, Tallis laid himself out on the sun-warmed boulder. The breeze came down from the eastern heights to sweep over the lake, and it was cool with leftover winter. Prickles rose on his skin, but the sun was warm. He couldn’t relax, though—his middle felt too tight. He fought with the wrappings and loosened them a bit.

  He felt for the piece of parchment in his pocket and held it against the slanting rays of the sun. If there is no hope for him, there is no hope for anyone. The oil stains made some of the ink smear. He rested the scrap on his stomach.

  Kes had told him Polonus was devoting himself to righting a wrong. He was trying to reverse what had happened to Kardus, trying to make it right. He had left everything to dwell with a lunatic. Three years he had lived with Kardus. Gods, what was that like? How could he dwell daily with that presence Tallis felt on the slope? He’d be mad himself, inside a week. What sort of a man was Polonus to hold out against the madness for three years? Or was Tallis himself simply weak?

  Tallis fiddled with the scrap. He knew that presence. It was enough to trouble him into next week. He knew Kardus from his force. He knew it from the Theban hillside, knew it from different times in his life. He had felt it in the chicken yard when he woke up.

  He had been stained with it, like this parchment, stained in his studies when he learned of the deep
atrocities of the Maenads. Every time he read of their horrors he felt an assault on the innocence first molested in the grove. Reading of it left him defeated at the depravity in the world. Tallis was not an innocent man, but encounters with the orange presence were always a lecherous lunge toward an innocent place within. If it went there, if it violated that one place, in that moment he would die. Worse, like Kardus, he would live.

  Once he was in a marketplace in Athens, hunting down peppercorns for the cook. He paused suddenly in the press of the crowd, and a dread came upon him. It was unaccountable, illogical, this nightmare feel in the broad of day.

  There was a distant confusion, growing in its babble. He had let the crowd jostle around him as he stood still. Then he began to look around, with fear seeking the source of daytime darkness, and finally saw across the marketplace an old man. He looked as unlikely as the fellow standing next to him, but Tallis knew this was the man, as if he were a single red poppy in a field of white.

  So far away, he knew him. So far away, he recognized him. It was the stench. He felt the odor, felt vulnerable to it, this putrescence marauding his senses. He was assailed where he stood at an impossible distance apart. It was not possible to feel an odor, yet he did. He felt in the odor what he had felt in the Theban grove, and terror held him hostage.

  It seemed the old man should sense Tallis the way Tallis sensed him, but he never looked his way. He picked his way through the crowd, and, yes, Tallis saw the way others turned troubled looks upon him. Some, confused, looked past him as if what they felt did not go with what they saw. Others were aware of the force then—if only a few—and in this Tallis had found great comfort.

  As he lay on the sun-warmed rock, warmed without by the sun and within by the wine, he wondered about that old man. Wondered what was his end, if he ever came to it, and wondered what was his beginning.

  Seabirds dipped and cried over the Galilee before a limitless blue sky. The breeze brought not a stench but a fresh smell of water and fish, and from the inn, the smell of the charcoal. Tallis drowsed into a stupor.

  Distant confusion, growing in its babble.

  I am here.

  A dark form backlit by the sun. In a monstrous metal squeal it creaks open its cavernous mouth, and reveals within deep treacherous blackness. He hears pandemonium rise from the well, sees flashes of yellow-green light. He hears echoing torment, as if from a thousand beings slowly disemboweled, humans, animals, fell creatures; ragged voices blended into one hellish misery.

  Dread images fill his mind, fair agonized faces and rotting corpses and black winged things, melded in sticky amalgam. The fair faces, hopeless with knowledge; the grotesque faces, surprised by suffering.

  Tallis lay at the bottom of the slope, and Kardus slid toward him in a black boiling mass, his cavernous mouth open wide.

  Help—!

  The force lunged for the sacred place. . . .

  Help me—!

  Kardus could not touch him, could not touch him, if he did he would . . .

  . . . the presence touched him, and Tallis went blind.

  He knew rape. He knew invasion as dry scrabbling claws from the mouth of Kardus pried him open, tearing, gouging, frantic for the place.

  He now heard voices in the bedlam from the black cavern, distinguished agonies. One voice rose above all, a crooning singsong of despair, and he saw his mother.

  Tallis! Why are you here? Run, Tallis! Far from this place!

  Black claws ravaged for the sacred place, and he lifted his head and howled.

  He couldn’t see. Couldn’t move. Where was he?

  “Wake up!”

  We will end your agony, poor man, poor man, say yes say yes say yes!

  It will all end if you just say yes!

  How long we have waited for this! Give us your yes, poor man . . .

  Say yes. The plunging will go away. The digging will end. The torment will cease.

  The fight would be over.

  “Tallis! Wake up!”

  Pinpricks of pain, of awareness. He tried to speak; it came out slurred.

  Whore! Gray slug of a human, this is Our business!

  You’re next, sister of Madman, daughter of Maenad!

  Suddenly—shrieking. Wails of despair.

  He comes!

  We go!

  The babble of voices retreated, angry and sullen.

  “Tallis, Tallis!” Kes was shaking him. Jarek was beside her, clutching her shoulder, peering anxiously. Samir, with Zagreus under his arm, came striding up. The slave was chanting or cursing.

  Full face slaps, one after the other, until Tallis fumbled for her wrist.

  She saw him rouse and seized his face, looking anxiously into his eyes. Her own eyes were red, her face livid with emotion. She searched his eyes until Jarek pulled her back to look himself. Kes turned away to weep quietly into her apron.

  Jarek was angry. It was the first honest emotion Tallis had seen in him. The innkeeper was alarmed, and the alarm angered him. After searching Tallis’s face, the innkeeper turned away and went to look at the hills, the northern hills. He watched with his fists on his hips, and then dropped his head. Tallis heard him curse softly.

  That’s how I feel, Jarek, Tallis thought. Once again, flat on my back, helpless and shamed. Don’t I feel the fool.

  Samir, with a squirming Zagreus under his arm, squatted beside Tallis and took his chin. Tallis caught his musky odor, strange spicy oils and sweat, and the barn. He looked long into Tallis, dark eyes searching until he was satisfied.

  What safety did Tallis find in those dark searching eyes? Only now did relief wash over him. Samir smelled like the barn. He smelled human.

  The slave waited, and Tallis found he had the strength to nod. Samir rose then and left with Zagreus under his arm, softly chanting in a tribal lilt. It was almost like a song, but the dark look to accompany it was far from songlike. Jarek, after a moment, followed the slave.

  Tallis tried to rise but had to lie helpless on the boulder. He felt naked.

  Kes’s weeping had softened to stillness. He was embarrassed to lie close to her, unable to move, and the embarrassment strengthened him. Let no one help you rise. Trembling with the effort, he pulled himself to a sitting position. Face pounding, inflamed with shame and fear, he stared unseeing at the waters of the Galilee.

  “Kardus came, a few moments ago,” she said in a soft trembling voice. “Some cannot be around him. He does that to Zagreus. He did it to the shaman. One of our guests, a little girl, had a horrible fit. He has put a cloak on the village, on the whole region. Some feel it and some don’t. And I fear for Polonus, because he used to be so strong. He is beginning to change.”

  You have no idea.

  His mouth was so dry he could not speak; he felt like he had chewed flour. He looked for the amphora. Kes saw and searched for his cup. She poured the wine, but instead of placing it in his hands, she held it to his lips. His cheeks flushed but he drank. She wiped his lips with her fingers, set the cup in his hands in his lap.

  “You cannot be around him. He will hurt you.”

  Tallis knew it was so.

  “I feel a lure to the hills,” he whispered. “Since I’ve been here.”

  A lure stronger than the strongest sexual desire he had ever felt, stronger than the thing he had wanted most, the death of the Maenads. A lurid pull. He felt promise in it. He wanted it, foul as he knew it was. Wrong as he knew it was. Was he a bad man, then? Attracted to evil? Where was that stirring he felt, that indignation? Why had it settled to obscurity? Why didn’t it rise to confront?

  “Some come to see the lunatic because they are cruel and want to taunt him. They throw things at him, they hurt him, and I hate them.” She was looking down into her lap, and her hair covered her face. It didn’t sound like she was crying, but Tallis saw tears drip into her lap. “Some think they can help him, and they fail. Polonus will fail. I used to be terrified he’d leave. Now I can’t get him to leave, and I’m so afraid for
him. He’s changing and he doesn’t see it. Worse, he doesn’t care.”

  He felt the warmth of the face slaps, and he looked at Kes. She pulled her hair behind her head and caught his look.

  Dark-brown auburn hair. Light-brown eyes with their elusive green. Her face had freckles and strong lines. Honest lines. The furrow in her brow softened as he continued to study her while she retied her hair with the cloth. She was so pragmatic. Hard-nosed and sensible, not like a lot of the nymphy Greek flutter-byes who came to Cal’s estate to try and win his heart—they thought a vast depository of wisdom meant money. How different was this woman from those. He had a flash of Aristarchus, who rubbed the nose of nonsense into its own rot.

  “What keeps you safe?” he asked.

  “I’ve wondered that. Maybe it’s because I’m his sister.”

  “What if it runs in the family?”

  “I hope not.”

  He wet his lips. “How is Polonus changing?”

  She sighed. She peeked in his cup, and he handed it to her. She took a long sip. “Have you ever had this warmed? With cinnamon and ginger? Some ground cloves? It’s a fine drink on a winter night. The guests love it, even the big men with their ale.” She circled her finger on the rim.

  “I feel a distance in Polonus. Never used to. I try to let him know he has friends. I try to hold on to him. We used to talk, but he doesn’t talk anymore. He picks up the basket and leaves. Kardus is changing him, and I wonder—” Her breath caught in a sudden gasp, and her tone went higher and fainter. “I wonder if the villagers are right. If it would be better to take him down with an arrow than let him take others. We’re trying to rescue a drowning man, but we don’t know how to swim.”

  Tallis could not answer, because he thought maybe she was right. The shackles said somebody loved him. They were shackles—hard and cruel, but they prevented him from hurting himself and others. And those shackles could not hold him anymore, maybe as their love couldn’t hold him—no matter how much they loved him. Hurt was the only conclusion. Hurt to himself, and a world of hurt to others. Take him down—it sounded sensible.