*
The following morning, Melaina decided that the light barley gruel, which at first she'd detested, gave off a delicious aroma and even asked, but was refused, seconds. Theognotus caught her with earth on her mouth and touching ashes from the sacrificial hearth to her tongue. He ejected her with a laugh. She particularly enjoyed the thermal spring that came from the depths of Earth, and bathed lavishly in the nude with her mother and other women. They were told that all the water at Epidaurus was sacred due to it being sent up from the ground by Asklepios himself. Afterward, large muscular women massaged and generously splashed the two priestesses with olive oil. Melaina felt rested but limp, even stumbled about, her legs so relaxed they refused to carry her weight.
To pass the time, the two women and Hierophant visited the inscriptions, left by grateful patients, just outside the Abaton. Melaina found them interesting. "Here's a curious one," she said standing before a large plastered plank with a detailed account of a cure scratched across its surface. She read aloud.
Kleo was pregnant for five years. After the fifth year of pregnancy, she came as a supplicant to the god and slept in the Abaton. As soon as she had left it and was outside the sacred area, she gave birth to a son who, as soon as he was born, washed himself at the fountain and walked about with his mother. After this success…
Melaina was laughing so hard she broke off reading. "Why have you brought me here? This place is a sham!"
"Hush!" said her mother. "Shame on you! You're here but two days and ready to close the place. Until you can relieve suffering yourself, don't criticize the efforts of others."
"But mother…five years?"
Myrrhine pushed Melaina along. "Don't upset your grandfather with your insolence."
The Mysteries, A Novel of Ancient Eleusis Page 46