CHAPTER 14: The Funeral Pyre
Melaina woke tired, grumpy. Shouts of those leaving to join the fleet echoed again in the courtyard. Her chamber was dark, her mother gone. Memory of the previous day was one long blur punctuated by a recollection of nausea and vomiting. The world was a different place this morning. Every sound, sight, and smell was now tainted with the horror of epilepsy. She felt none of yesterday's eagerness to see the fleet disembark.
Her mother had tried to console Melaina; after all, Kleito had given her the hellebore. Kleito had told Melaina that epilepsy was caused when phlegm from the head stopped life-giving air from flowing into the veins. But Melaina wasn't so sure. She'd momentarily seen the world as the gods see it, remembered gentle Hermes herding the souls of the freshly dead, the exquisite euphoria. Mortals had seemed but actors in some great tragedy written by the gods. She had been a quasi-divine power viewing the battle as might a spectator in the theatre. The logic behind it all had been revealed to her. Just a blink of that divine world was worth her whole existence, a gift no one else would understand. She wondered if epilepsy was what her father had meant when he'd told her that not all burdens are a curse. Yet she was terrorized by the memory of the pain just before she collapsed.
Melaina walked from the women's quarters to the courtyard. Since the chaos of war had forced women into the open, they tended campfires, rushed back and forth looking for missing children, and lined the streets preparing their dead for burial while bracing themselves for a new wave of casualties. In the distance, Melaina saw the men laboring to get damaged triremes seaworthy, heard shouts and mallets pounding in the cove.
She worried about Sophocles. He'd made that short appearance after the battle, then disappeared. Had he suffered some terrible personal defeat? At least, she knew he'd survived.
Melaina found her mother with an old woman who was trying to decide whether to simply bury her husband and son or have them cremated and bury the bones. As priestess of Demeter, Myrrhine was much in demand. When Melaina appeared at her side, the woman turned to her, saying, "Kore, Kore," with respect and childlike desperation as she groped for Melaina, took her by the hand to a beloved corpse, raised her voice in anguish, and ripped fistfuls of hair from her own head. The woman lacerated her cheeks with her fingernails until little rivulets of blood streaked her face. With that, Melaina stopped her. "No more unseemly mourning," she said. "Limit your grief. Please, do not destroy yourself."
Particularly desperate were those whose loved ones had never been initiated into the Mysteries. Their souls were destined for a shade's existence on the Plain of Asphodel where they drank from the river Lethe, forgot the past, and forever retained a clouded mind. Those who'd been initiated resided in the Elysian Fields, the Isle of the Blessed, where they lived a carefree existence with the gods.
Even women whose loved ones had been initiated needed reassuring. These came to Melaina begging to be told of Kore and what Kore did with the dead after taking them from Hermes. They needed to know that Kore was gentle, understanding. The more jealous wanted the specifics about with whom their deceased husbands would be allowed to socialize. One woman demanded to know how she might keep Aphrodite from her husband, tears turning to jealous rage.
By mid-morning, boats of the Greek fleet began filtering back to the docks, but it wasn't until Aeschylus returned that Melaina and her mother found out what'd happened. Aeschylus looked strangely out of sorts, depressed, a pensive shadow of thoughtfulness invading his disposition.
"We manned the triremes with new resolve this morning," he said quietly, "anticipating a new wave of Persian ships, but when Helios first shed light on Phaleron, none were in sight. They'd fled during the night." A look of confusion, even disbelief, swept across his massive brow. "We've won the battle for the seas."
"Sophocles," asked Melaina, "is he well?"
"Well, but suffering from his first battle anguish."
Melaina had pondered Sophocles' sudden appearance and departure. What is the nature of his suffering? she wondered.
With the return of the fleet, mourning for the dead gathered strength. Wails passed wave-on-wave over the island as grieving women washed corpses in seawater, anointed them with olive oil, cleansed and bandaged wounds. They wrapped each corpse in a white shroud, carefully anointed the hair, closed the eyes, and laid it on the bier. Moaning, they covered the feet with laurel branches and placed a linen chin-strap around the head to prevent the jaw from sagging open. As a show of sanctity, they placed a crown of myrtle upon each head. Last of all, they inserted a one-obol coin between the lips as payment to grumpy Charon for the ferry ride across the Styx and on to the dark shore of the Underworld.
Women performed all these acts. Women had brought the men into the world, women must see to their departure.
That evening, Aeschylus called Melaina and Myrrhine into the banquet hall before the hearth of Hestia. This was the first time since arriving at Salamis that Melaina had seen Aeschylus' wife, Philokleia, and his two children. Thank goodness Philokleia hasn't heard of my epilepsy, Melaina thought. All Salamis would know by now. Melaina held little Euripides in her arms as he clung fiercely to her neck. Mnesarchides hobbled in, pale as death and leaning heavily on bulky Kleito.
Aeschylus spoke over the thud of axes felling trees for funeral pyres. "What I'm about to say," he began, "should not be retold. We know little for certain, although all our spies tell much the same story. We know for sure that the Persian fleet has fled east into the Aegean. Xerxes is in a panic that we might cut his bridges across the Hellespont, trapping him in Hellas. This may force his hand on the ground. He could make a land assault on the Isthmus and the Spartan's great wall. If he does, Eleusis is in danger. Let us remain optimistic, toning down our fear. It would be sacrilege to forget the dead before their interment. I've sent a scout to Eleusis. My concern now is for the Hierophant. The old fool should never have stayed behind."
Yes, Melaina thought, and I should not have left my dowry.
That night, Melaina lay awake listening to the wail of mourners mixed with the heavy whack-on-whack of axes, sounds all blown about by night breezes. She worried over the plight of her grandfather and her dowry, longed to once again run her fingers through the hidden compartment's ancient coins.
She felt humiliated by her epilepsy, felt fragile and stalked by a frenzied madness. Her mother had shut tight the jar of gossip that could have rippled through the families of Eleusis. The isolation here at Kleito's had been fortuitous. Thank goodness Agido and Anaktoria hadn't seen me, she thought. Even Uncle Aeschylus didn't know. If Kleito's cure worked, this would be the end of it, but Melaina wasn't optimistic. She'd been allowed to dip into the divine. Surely the gods permitted that for a reason, one not as yet revealed. Close to her breast, she held fast the blacksmith's broach, the golden eagle, symbol of Prometheus' punishment. To think you are divine, or even above other mortals, she knew was the great arrogance.
The Mysteries, A Novel of Ancient Eleusis Page 27