CHAPTER 19: Prophecy on the Road
Melaina's flow was absent for the next two months, but she hid the fact from her mother by smearing her rags with goat blood. Simply an effect of the south wind, she told herself but broke out in a nervous sweat nonetheless. Sophocles seldom came to Eleusis anymore, and this both puzzled and troubled Melaina. When next she saw him, he'd had his shoulder-length hair cut, long blond locks now clipped in the short style of most men. She noticed the beginning of a beard. Melaina realized that Sophocles' father had given him a festival and initiated him into the deme of Kolonus. He had come of age. Her attempted encounters with Sophocles had ended before they began, were brief and confused. Melaina was guilt-ridden, angry, longed to see him more than ever.
Despite the physician's urging, wet winter weather did delay her trip to Epidaurus. Boreas' evil frost-breath unleashed its fury from the north, bringing rain and settling drought dust. Not to be outdone, his brother Zephyrus' stormy blast howled in from the west. Intermittent sunshine brought tender barley shoots to the fields and hillsides. Wildflowers lent fragrance to the air, iris and blooming honeysuckle.
Melaina brought her little troop indoors to the women's courtyard, as her Uncle Aeschylus had suggested and the weather demanded, and it swelled to ten. She'd turned down several as too young. They'll be sending them to me in swaddling clothes, she thought. Word that she had something special to teach was spreading. She'd composed her own songs on the lyre, as had Sappho on the sandy shores of Lesbos four generations before. Melaina concentrated on local myths and customs of Eleusis. She taught the girls to write. They read poorly, and Melaina was appalled that most couldn't make their letters. She realized then how thorough her own mother's training had been. She started drawing the letters with a stylus herself before giving them the slate, and then told them to trace hers.
One night Melaina woke from a nightmare of being raped, and rather than dwell upon it, rose to write down some of her own lyrics, having noticed the epilepsy stealing bits of memory. She'd seen spider webs before her eyes and wondered if she was having small seizures while alone. She lit an oil lamp and retrieved waxed tablets, papyrus and lampblack from within an old chest where she stored miscellaneous items.
Thus, she was already up when the Hierophant came to wake her for the trip to Epidaurus. The weather had changed overnight and the prognosticators gave several days of moderate winds. She was to make ready for a trip of seven days. She ran quickly to her mother's chamber to ask what to bring, and found her sitting in the middle of her floor weeping and talking to her dead husband as if he were present. "Please forgive this longing for remarriage," Melaina heard her say.
"Mother, why are you crying? You're to marry?"
"Don't I wish," her mother said. "These are tears of relief. I've wanted to go to Epidaurus for years."
While they gathered the few things allowed, Melaina listened to her mother gush details of desires she'd kept secret. "After you were born, I had no more children," her mother said. "I've willed not to marry again out of love for your father, although no one would have me anyway because I'm barren. Epidaurus is a great center for curing this problem. Since you've refused to marry, I've been considering it again myself. Asklepios may be the answer." Then Myrrhine broke down completely, sobbing like a little girl. "I've felt so distraught because Demeter and Kore could send up blessings from beneath the earth, but they chose to leave me barren and unmarried."
Melaina took her mother into her own arms and let her heaving sobs take their course. It seemed to Melaina that her mother had become her child. She'd never realized how tormented her mother had been since her father's death. But Melaina also recognized a change in herself. While still short of fifteen, she felt that she was gaining an uncommon maturity. Melaina wondered if this was really true or arrogance's sly seduction.
The Mysteries, A Novel of Ancient Eleusis Page 40