Madman

by Tracy Groot

  Julia? She’d show. Good, clean Julia and her handsome, forthright husband. Antenor couldn’t think of anyone in the Decaphiloi—Portia included—who did not secretly or openly yearn for Julia, body, soul, and spirit. Yearn for her sweetness and her kindness, her gaiety and loveliness. Julia, shot through with goodness and naïveté, equal parts, so that she could not see how desperately a man could love her. Julia with her buckets of tesserae and her goodwill cases, students who couldn’t pay, but she managed to plead them a spot in the academy because nobody could say no to her.

  Nobody could say no to Portia, either, because she was the opposite of Julia, twisted through with treachery and deceit. Would she dare show her face? Antenor gripped the fabric of his toga, enjoying the sensual swell of rage that thoughts of her brought. He hadn’t seen her in three years, not since the very last meeting of the Academy of Socrates in Palestine. Not a single word was spoken in that last meeting, and of course, not everyone was there: Bion was off killing himself, and Theseus was already dead. Kardus had abandoned the academy and taken to the hills.

  The mesmeric plodding of the donkey jostled him gently in the cart.

  It was the day after the Festival of Dionysus. The students had not yet arrived. They were sleeping off the revels of the previous evening, but the teachers were there. The teachers were there.

  They had arrived one by one, Polonus first, Antenor second. The two stood in the cool of the portico, Polonus with those stricken eyes, Antenor, horrified and finally believing, with no words to tell Polonus how sorry he was. Julia arrived next, rushing in, stopping short. By the horror on her face she too had heard the news. She gazed from Polonus to Antenor, tears in her eyes, hands pressing her mouth to quiet her convulsive gasps. Lucius and Marcus arrived together, shock and disbelief etched deeply on their faces. Hector came next, staggering into the stoa as if under a great weight, leaning heavily on a column. His horror was the greatest: He was the one who had found Theseus.

  Portia came last, strolling into the stoa. Antenor could still hear the soft click of her sandals on the marble, and the dreadful emptiness that sound brought. It was interesting, looking back, that it was not rage he had for Portia at that moment. Rage did not come until later, and it grew as each year passed. At that moment, for the first time, he truly feared her.

  Her hands were clasped in front of her, and her face was the only one without incredulity. Her mouth was slightly turned up at the corners, her brows were lifted, eyes bright with an unnatural glitter. Those of the Decaphiloi who had learned to look away from her, in cowardice or in revulsion or in mere uncomfortable avoidance, now stared in open shock.

  It was her moment of complete triumph over the Decaphiloi, the moment of its destruction. Antenor could feel it splinter and crack, crashing down around him as one by one the Decaphiloi left the academy, never to return. Polonus, his face heavy and gray, left first. Julia, bursting into sobs, ran away next. Then Lucius and Marcus. Hector shoved off from the column, stumbling away. Only Portia and Antenor remained in the portico.

  Polonus had warned them. And Antenor had led the rest in not believing. He saw his own folly as he looked into her eyes and realized she had used him all along.

  He had disbelieved Polonus’s frets about Kardus and his suspicions that Portia’s teachings with her students were going too far. He’d dismissed the rumors of secret meetings where strange things were happening. Some of her students had left the academy entirely, and Polonus claimed he had proof that she was proselytizing them to the temple she attended in Scythopolis. And Antenor had disbelieved. He’d never liked Portia, but never dreamed what lay beneath her coolness.

  He disbelieved the fears Polonus had for Theseus, who openly mocked Portia and her Dionysus. He disbelieved the whole bit about Portia’s proselytizing. The only one of the Decaphiloi who had believed Polonus was Bion. They would later learn that the same night Theseus was murdered, Bion had hanged himself.

  Portia had gazed at him across the way, with those unusually bright eyes. He felt her supersedence then—he had a strange sensation of looking up at her, though she was shorter than he. And then she turned and strolled away, sandals clicking. Hatreds began then. Hatred for the sound of clicking sandals. Hatred for himself for not believing Polonus, hatred for Polonus for being right, hatred for Portia who had the power to deliver a man to a heinous death, simply to prove that she could. Hatred, most of all, for Callimachus.

  The cart stopped in front of a low-roofed building. A little boy appeared on the porch of the inn, regarded Antenor for a long moment, and then ran off.

  He sat in the cart for a few moments. He hoped Claudius had posted the schedule for the new performances, hoped Master Quirinicus showed up to craft another scathing review. Wearily, he climbed down from the cart and wondered if Portia would really have the guts to show up. He wondered what he would do when he saw her.

  The light curtain of the sedan fluttered in the wind, giving Julia glimpses of the eastern hills, glimpses she did not see.

  Her stomach had been in twists since Philip told her about the message posted in the forum. He sat beside her, gazing out his open window at the Galilee, as silent as she. He had insisted on coming, and she could not protest. She couldn’t tell him she wished she could go alone. If she told him she should face it by herself, he would nod gravely and say he understood. And he would come anyway. She smiled a little.

  Oddly, it was Philip who first thought she should go, and Julia who did not want to. It was hard, being in the place where Kardus used to live. And it was hard enough seeing Tallis again, without seeing him with Philip by her side.

  Philip had asked her once if there had been a lover in her past, and she said yes, but they never had the chance for love. He had clasped her hands and kissed her fingertips and said he was glad.

  She’d fallen in love with Tallis before they ever exchanged a word. What was it about him that had attracted her attention as he served the smug crowd at the house of Callimachus? The gap-toothed grin that had flashed after he’d made a side comment to a pompous scholar? The scholar had forgotten his pomposity for the moment and laughed hard enough to attract attention. Everyone looked, bemused, upon the famous scholar, but Julia had watched Tallis and his small satisfied smile as he turned away with his tray, delivering a quiet instruction to a slave, swooping to pick up a napkin from the floor. He’d attended the noisy room with immaculate attention to detail, and all the while managed to keep a subtle eye on Callimachus. While everyone couldn’t help a constant regard of the infamous Callimachus—glances strayed to him, no matter what the activity—she couldn’t take her eyes off Tallis.

  His face wasn’t smooth and strong and handsome like Philip’s. It was rugged and went with a gap-toothed grin. His dark eyes glinted with amusements. He was unperturbed by fretful outbursts from the cook or the crooked little man named Aristarchus or haughty scholars. He had held the entire gathering together, yet was invisible. He acted more like the great Callimachus, affable and gentle, ready with good humor.

  “Are you nervous?”

  Julia broke from unseen glimpses. She smiled at Philip.

  He reached and squeezed her hand.

  “A little.”

  “Who do you think will be there?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you think Portia will show?”

  She squeezed his hand back. “I don’t see how she could.”

  His face became grave, and he searched her eyes. “She isn’t like you, Julia. She isn’t like most people—she doesn’t have a conscience. She could easily show up. Who knows how she thinks.”

  She studied his gray eyes, remembering a time when they were filled with worry for her. A time when his earnest pleading made her think differently of the son of the Hippos market controller.

  Can’t you see what she is doing to your precious group? How can all of you be so blind?

  Philip, please . . . She is wise, she is trying to teach us a new way of—
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br />   She’s a sham! Do only a few students see it? Or outsiders like me? No one will listen because none of you could possibly be wrong! You’re all so full of pride; you think you could never be taken. Julia, I thought Polonus ran your group—open your eyes, look and see who holds the reins.

  Polonus has had misgivings about her lately. . . .

  Misgivings. She’s a sorceress witch, and he has “misgivings.”

  Antenor never liked her. And Kardus has been acting strange. So strange . . .

  Julia. One of these days you’re all going to wake up and see what she really is. I hope to gods it isn’t too late.

  Philip—

  Don’t let her ruin you, Julia. Not you. Not you . . .

  “Philip,” she said suddenly. “Thank you for coming.”

  He smiled and took her hand to kiss her fingertips, then looked out the window once more.

  Who would show? She’d seen Antenor only once. They saw each other in a wineshop and pretended not to. By then he had grown a beard and went by his forename, Patroclus, and he was the master of the theater. She thought she’d seen Hector once, when she was out on an evening stroll with Philip, but that could have been her fancy. The rest she had not seen since that awful last meeting in the colonnade.

  Antenor—she remembered how her heart had crushed at seeing his face, so betrayed, so bewildered. So broken. She remembered Polonus and his despair. And Hector . . . poor Hector. Theseus’s best friend. Most of all she remembered Portia and her wordless coup.

  As Philip had wondered, how could they have been so blind? It was mystifying, how they seemed to give Portia more and more control over them. Utterly mystifying. The things she said in the end that had made sense would never have made sense in the beginning.

  Julia missed the way it was at the beginning, the camaraderie with the teachers, the respect she felt from them, her happiness when she took out the templates and the buckets and began to teach of mosaic. She missed the way it felt to walk through the colonnades on a beautiful day and see Polonus and Antenor seated on the steps with a group of earnest-faced students, deep in conversation. She missed the way Antenor acted the good-natured antagonist, the way Polonus parried his jabs, the laughter of the students. She missed the way Antenor teased her. She missed Hector and Theseus, Lucius and Marcus, and Bion. Sweet, shy, stuttering Bion. He brought her a posy one day, tied in a lavender ribbon.

  And Kardus. Kardus thought he was in love with her.

  Tears came, and she let them slide down her cheeks so she wouldn’t catch Philip’s eye by wiping them away.

  She and Polonus had entered a whimsical pact, to push Kardus away from themselves to Portia. Julia would be free of his increasingly sticky bids for attention, and Polonus would be free to “be,” he had laughingly said.

  Kardus, honest Kardus, so effusive with learning and teaching, so earnest and direct. How expansive he was with the dreams of Callimachus. How he loved to teach his students, most of them his own age. Kardus was so dramatic he would actually act out some of the scenes he told of Alexander the Great. The other teachers would gather discreetly behind the columns to watch, bemused and entertained, as the talented young man regaled the students on the steps. He even attracted the attention of shopkeepers and passersby, and they applauded when he was done. He would grin and bow with a flourish, and once leapt down the steps to fleece the crowd with an upturned palm. All the teachers had laughed and clapped at that.

  At the same time Kardus thought he was in love with her, she began to notice the son of the agoranomos, the market controller of Hippos, the handsome man named Philip who collected the shopkeepers’ rent. He collected the rent each month from Antenor, who was in charge of the academy purse, and Julia soon had occasion to be where he was at every collection.

  Kardus was younger than she was. It was hard, at first, because she had been interested in him, despite the gap in their ages. He was charming with his enthusiastic ways, handsome by those ways. She was just beginning to return his interest when she noticed the son of the market controller.

  Was it her fault? Did she sense the danger in Portia before she pushed Kardus her way? If so, she was guilty of murder, because Kardus was the living dead. Everything bad happened after Kardus became involved with Portia. And once Portia controlled Kardus, it seemed she controlled everything. Kardus, the greatest tragedy of the Decaphiloi demise. So winsome and bright. Just as dead as Theseus and Bion.

  Could she have been happy with him if she tried? If she had tried, then Portia would not have ruined him. Then Theseus and Bion would be alive, and Polonus would still be teaching; they would all be teaching, and—

  “I don’t want to go!” Julia cried. “Please, Philip, I don’t want to go!” She seized his arm. “Please, Philip! Please take me home!”

  Philip called for the driver to stop, ordered him to turn around. He took Julia into his arms and held her tightly as she wept into his neck.

  “It’s all right,” he whispered into her hair. “We won’t go, my darling. We won’t go. Oh, Julia . . . don’t cry, my love.”

  Hector never made it out of Hippos.

  He’d seen the message in the forum. Seen it every day since it was posted. Read it so many times he had it memorized. He sat now in the back of a comfortable wineshop, under an awning of green vines. He was unused to the daytime and had a slight headache, but he couldn’t sleep. He lifted the mug to his lips and took an absent sip.

  He thought about going. Had thought about nothing else for the past three days. He’d visited the baths and gone to see the comedies three times, brooding all the while on whether he should go. His nighttime job as watchman at the western gate gave him much time for introspection. None of the Decaphiloi knew he was still around, at least he didn’t think so. A former teacher at the Academy of Socrates in Hippos surely had fled the debacle in Palestine and landed at Asclepius on Cos to pursue a career in the growing science of medicaments. Surely he did not lose himself in the obscurity of a silent nocturnal life on a workman’s wage.

  Sometimes things were interesting. He had to investigate the occasional nighttime ruckus in the marketplace, a thief plundering a stall, a drunkard raising laments. Mostly, things were quiet. He patrolled the dark and empty streets, duly checking out every storefront and stall, making sure the rare drunken sprawl did not become a brawl. He avoided the bathhouse on the northeast side: it was the only place he did not patrol. There, he had found Theseus. Theseus, his best friend. It was Portia’s particular cruelty to leave Hector the note of where to find him.

  The dismemberment had not occurred at the bathhouse—this, half his brain informed him as he observed the monstrous scene. The other half of his brain was occupied in shock. He had come upon the scene thinking he saw a man spread-eagle on the bathhouse steps, wondering why he lay with his arms outspread as if to embrace the sky, wondering why ivy leaves were sprinkled over him, and why he wore a mask. It was a mask of Dionysus, a typical mask used for home decoration or for parading the streets. It was early morning after the festival, and Hector thought it was a reveler sleeping off his celebration.

  As he approached, the scientific half of his brain thought the arm span oddly long; the other half of his brain recoiled. The scientific half thought the man on the steps the tallest man he’d ever seen; the other half shook. The scientific half saw, when he came close enough for the other half to make him halt with dread, that he was not an extraordinarily tall man with a very long arm span, but a man who had been dismembered and reassembled, with several inches between the severed limbs. The scientific half knew instantly the violence had been done elsewhere, for the lack of an ocean of blood on the steps; the other half remembered the words of Portia’s note, and they beat upon his breast: You will find the mocker on the altar of the ruined.

  The mocker—Theseus.

  Altar of the ruined—it was Hector and Theseus’s joke. They once had kidded that the ignorant gathered on these bathhouse steps to glean wisdom on the altar
of the ruined. This particular bathhouse was known for dark deeds, and they joked that no man of repute would be found dead upon its steps. Portia had listened, had laughed along with them.

  The scientific half said don’t look, you know it’s him. The other half with shaking hands lifted the mask and saw. Theseus, eyes garishly staring, flaccid gray face drained of blood, head a few inches from his neck.

  Hector lifted the mug to his lips, set it down before he took a sip. The scientific half wondered if she had wielded the knife herself, and how did she know exactly where to separate the limbs, and did she simply drain him or did she cauterize the wounds, and could wounds like that be cauterized.

  The other half ached whenever he saw the widow of Theseus and his orphans in the marketplace. The same half kept a secret and silent vigil to protect the woman and her children for the rest of their lives. The same half left her money where she could find it, not much, only a workman’s wage, and the same half wished this Tallis well on his quest and hoped he would not end up on another altar of the ruined. To this Tallis, and his forum for Truth, Hector lifted his mug.

  The man named Tallis sat at the other end of the long table. He had stopped looking anxiously for any other Decaphiloi to attend his little forum. Antenor had watched the sister of Kardus give the man concerned looks when Tallis did not notice. As the hours went by and no one else came, Tallis sank into a stupor over his mug and no longer attempted to make Antenor feel like a guest.

  Well, and it was time for him to leave. He knew this would be an exercise in futility. He wondered how Claudius fared with the troupe. Anything could happen with Claudius in charge.

  Tallis hadn’t seem surprised when Antenor appeared at the door. He’d even greeted him by his surname, not Patroclus. Antenor wondered how he knew. The servant of Callimachus was cordial, if tense, and looked like he could use a good night in a reputable brothel. He had a fading bruise at his eye and looked as if he hadn’t slept in a week.