The Ruling Elite and Other Stories
Page 12
*
They waited by the bronze door of the temple, Callithoe and the priestesses, and King Celeus's guards in their cuirasses and lances, their helmets shining smartly.
"It will be bad today," warned the head priestess. The lines on her face had deepened into chasms these past years. Though she had grown gaunt and stooped, her voice still rang with authority.
"Stand back when I command it," directed Menos, the head guard. He nodded at the four other guards. Callithoe saw only their eyes, brown and anxious, and their lips, resolved and thin, around the crossbars of their helmets. "Do not allow tenderness to cloud your minds. They are ravening beasts at times such as these."
Then Menos opened the door and the harsh afternoon sun burst across the cool darkness of the temple storehouse. The noise of the poor waiting there rose like a great wind upon the sea. Callithoe flew into action, scooping the grain from the storage vessels.
"Here, here!" cried the voices.
Outstretched bowls and open sacks and humble woven baskets thrust toward her, one on top of another. The poor lunged, desperate and wild-eyed. Old and young, male and female, they became alike in their hunger and want.
"Fall back!" Menos ordered. "Be patient! You will each get a turn."
Callithoe emptied her bowl into a near sack, spilling a little in her haste. The owner of the sack pulled it open again. "More! Please, my child weeps for bread!"
Callithoe ignored that plea, and the others, busying herself with the physical motions of scooping the grain, emptying it, pushing away the filled vessels.
The scene repeated itself every month on the new moon. The poor clamored at the door in their threadbare clothing. The grain from the king's warehouses had grown less as the years of the famine multiplied into seven, now. Wise Celeus himself allocated the rations. Deep in the storehouses the reserve from the years of plenty had become so depleted that it would run out entirely soon.
Once, whole herds of lambs and goats had swarmed over the hills. How those hills had echoed with the bells on their collars, the bleating calls of the young. So many had been killed for food or died off from disease, made weak by the lack of forage that few remained. Likewise the poor had died off, the babes in arms, the little children and the old and feeble. Callithoe had visited the makeshift hospitals and nursed them as she could. After a while she had stopped coming, though. She could not dwell so much on their great suffering, their miserable plight. She could not bear it.
She concentrated on counting the bowls of grain she distributed. At twenty-three only dregs remained from the storage vessels. Scooping up the remains with her bare hands, she let them fall into the bowl of a thin boy with a festering sore on his lip.
"Please, we need more!" he beseeched her. "My mother is ill! I cannot go home with this – it will barely last us the week."
"I'm sorry—"
Menos thrust his lance between them, pushing the child away. The boy's eyes widened as a look of stark agony transformed his face. He began to shriek, high and unintelligible, as though a snake bit him or a slave master beat him. His red face, tear-stained face disappeared as the guards cursed and shoved back the others who filled the gap the boy had made.
Callithoe stumbled back as the guards protected her and the priestesses from the rabble. With deep shouts and brutal efficiency, they ejected the remaining poor from the temple and barred the doors.
She stood there panting with the other women. They looked at one another, silent. No one needed to say it. The feeding of the poor had never been an easy task, but this time it was worse than ever.