*
That night, Melaina couldn't sleep. She left her mother and crept through the dark into the temple to see Asklepios' solemn face. She'd fallen in love with the image. Such great sympathy, such suffering in the eyes. She stood before it, reaching to touch the bearded chin, when she heard a noise, perhaps a sigh. In a dark corner of the chamber lurked the outline of blind Udaeüs.
"The little priestess from Eleusis," he said.
"So you can see after all."
"Just good at reading the patter of footsteps. Rarely do I hear anyone so light on their feet."
"You eavesdrop here all night?"
"Tell me of the epilepsy," he said. "Do your seizures bring prophecy?"
His directness startled her. "So some believe. It's but my illness sending visions."
"Diviner's disease. I thought so. It's no boon to see the future. Fools, those who practice the soothsayer's art."
"I'd not choose it for myself. It comes unbidden."
"A gift, some would say. I say, a pity."
"Both, as is the gift of life."
"Ah, but seers are a useless lot."
"And I might question a guide who cannot lead. What good are you?"
He feigned great offense. "Sometimes I have luck with the weather."
"As can a peasant."
"Do you read entrails?"
"I've great interest in the future, having read grandfather's scrolls of Sibylline oracles. But I've no learning in animal innards," she said, "no real knowledge in any form of prophecy. One would have to go to Delphi."
"Follow me," he said, and felt his way along the wall to the door, banging with his cornel stick. "Take my hand," he said, and she led him out into the dark. "To the top of the hill," he ordered. When they were there, "Behold!" he said, "the heavens above and earth below. Point me northward."
Melaina turned him to face Arktos, the Great Bear.
"Both heaven and earth are quartered," he said, stretching out his arms to feel the wind. "Events occurring on the left are calamitous, on the right propitious."
They labored there on the hilltop for some time, Udaeüs explaining each quarter, dividing the quarters again and further dividing, marking segments for the meticulous observation of lightning. "Each of the gods has a direction." He also revealed which of the crook-taloned and ravening birds the gods marked as auspicious, which sinister omens of bird-flight.
"I thought you were to teach me entrails," she said. "It's a great mystery I've often wondered about."
"As you wish," Udaeüs said and had her lead him down the slope through the dark to a sacred holding pen. There he cornered a lamb, put it under his arm, and they stumbled back to the temple. He stood before Asklepios, said a solemn prayer and slit the lamb's throat over the slaughter stone. Melaina screamed spontaneously for the sacrifice. After blood darkened the altar, the blind man laid the lamb on the stone floor, slit the abdomen up to the breastbone, scarred it, laid aside the knife, and broke open the chest cavity. All this he did by feeling, his fingers doing the work for his eyes.
Udaeüs called her to him, had Melaina take hold the slippery vitals, cut loose the liver. "Hold it so the gall points down, large lobe away. Note the division across the middle?"
She said she did.
"That marks the division of north and south. Now turn it over, keeping the large lobe away. All that is visible there is but a reflection of the vault of heaven," he said. "The celestial divisions I taught you on the hilltop are reflected in the liver. All quarterings have the same import."
Then he taught her liver scrutiny as one with authority, as one who knows how to read shape, dappled smoothness, gall-hues that mark the god's pleasure, the speckled symmetry of the liver lobe.
"How can you know these things?" she asked. "Being blind."
"I was a seer before I lost my sight," he said. "I've suffered all the bitter woes of the seer trade."
"Teiresias was a seer after becoming blind."
"Ah, yes!" he said. "External blindness, internal sight. But Athena washed his ears in recompense, so he could understand the language of birds. We can't all be so blessed."
"I suppose Athena took your eyesight because you saw her naked, as she did Teiresias?"
"A Persian gouged them out with his thumb and exiled me from Kolophon for insolence against King Xerxes."
"I'm sorry. I've misjudged you. I've become overly sensitive and suspicious. The seizures make me quarrelsome."
"No matter. Again, view the liver."
Late into the night they bent over the animals as they brought sacrifice after sacrifice. Even as the glow of sunrise rose in the east, he sorted the diverse paths of prophecy, describing among dreams, which are fulfilled, which not. He taught her the reading of savor-wrapped thighbone and tapering chine, the face of flame.
Thus, Melaina came to know the art of prophecy, but as morning broke, so she worried, and knew she must return to her mother.
Udaeüs had a further word. He took her by the shoulder and spoke before her as if his dark empty sockets could see deep into her. "Remember this well, young lady. Prophecy is an unruly art. Zeus delivers utterances incomplete, reveals only half the truth.
Melaina interrupted him. "That explains it. On our way here, we were waylaid by a band of Persians. I had a seizure with a vision of great battles, but nothing of the outcome. Yet I saw Athena side with Hellas and Aries with Persia."
Udaeüs became quiet and seemed to look off into space with his eye sockets. "Do not encourage these beggars who desire to know the future. It'll bring nothing but trouble."
"Oh, but it's irresistible! And they crave knowledge of the visions as would a starving man for table dainties."
"Run from these people. Practice your gift only when cornered. What you know is burdensome. Teiresias thought it dreadful to have knowledge not benefiting the knower, for surely knowledge does not change the future once set by the Fates. It'll bring you fame but not love. If you should announce an adverse answer, you make yourself disliked by those who seek you. If from pity you deceive, you provoke Heaven. Apollo should be man's only prophet."
The Mysteries, A Novel of Ancient Eleusis Page 47