CHAPTER 21: Encounter with Asklepios
With the sun casting long shadows, Melaina and Theognotus left for the large circular building, the one that'd captured the Hierophant's curiosity from the time they arrived. The Tholos was adjacent the Abaton where the women would later undergo incubation. But first, Melaina and Theognostus stopped before a small building to the east that smelled like a barn. Inside, Melaina saw blind Udaeüs within a fenced enclosure, crawling on all fours. When she peered over the waist-high wall, she realized he chased white mice. Unaccountably, Theognotus scooped Melaina into his arms and set her over the wall, which had no gate.
Mice were not Melaina's favorite animals, being considered a nuisance at Eleusis because they spoiled the grain.
"Help me," said Udaeüs. "We need three."
Melaina chased the mice into a corner, caught each by the tail, lowering it into a leather pouch that Udaeüs held open for her. He then pulled the drawstring, took her hand and wrapped her fingers about the pouch.
"Now," he said, "we're off to the Tholos."
She led him to the circular building, up a stone ramp, and through a ring of Doric columns to a stone wall with a door that opened into a paved portico. When the priest opened the door, the growl of the hinges echoed in the dimly lit chamber. Another circle was inside the circular wall, this time of Corinthian columns, set about a floor with alternating patches of black limestone and brilliant-white marble in a spiral pattern. Melaina felt irresistibly drawn to the center of the room.
She'd expected the room to be empty, but a girls' chorus, each girl carrying a terracotta oil lamp, ringed it just inside the columns. The tiny flames sparkled in the girls' eyes and reflected off the marble walls and ceiling. Except for the soft shuffle of feet, the chamber was quiet. Udaeüs slammed and bolted the door behind them and walked to the center of the chamber, footsteps echoing. The chorus then began a wordless hymn, something from the ancient poet Olen, a celestial sound, ephemeral, haunting.
Udaeüs fumbled for, found, and lifted a trapdoor, then again requested Melaina's hand. "Illness is descent toward death," he said. "All cures point toward resurrection. With your Mysteries of Demeter, resurrection is in the Isle of the Blessed; with Asklepios, it's back to life on earth. You'll not be cured here, since this is but preparation for the dream world. You'll descend to feed the god and render him predisposed toward you."
She stepped into the black hole. "We're headed into darkness. Won't we need a lamp?"
"For a blind man?" he laughed. "No light is allowed below ground. You're entering my world. In the Mysteries, as the initiate approaches the dread goddess of the Underworld, Asklepios receives him first. At Epidaurus we don't go as far as the Mistress of the Undergloom."
Melaina wondered at his in-depth knowledge of the Mysteries, but didn't ask because she worried what would happen next. She pictured the suffering, kindly face of the icon with which she'd fallen in love. "At Eleusis we ascend, not descend," she said. "You want me to go into Asklepios' grave to meet the god in person?"
"He's seldom seen. Even then, he takes an earthly form, a serpent."
"What!" she exclaimed, backing out of the hole. "In underground darkness, I'll encounter a snake?"
Udaeüs was astonished at her. "A friendly one. You don't know? Always at Epidaurus, the god appears as a serpent."
"You treat me as all-knowing, yet, I'm barely fifteen. The mice I hold in this pouch frighten me. Surely I'm not one to meet a dragon underground."
Udaeüs leaned back, pursed his lips. "True, your spirit projects a more mature woman to a blind man. We'll go now, while you still have some semblance of courage."
He took the lead, stepped down through the hole and pulled her behind him by the hand. The passage was much tighter than Melaina imagined. Wooden steps were set between concentric stone rings, descending below ground. As the dim lamplight faded to blackness, so the voiceless chorus faded from hearing.
Udaeüs said, "Watch your head," just as she bumped her brow, then he pulled her through an opening in the circular wall. Circumnavigating, they ran into a dead end but entered another stone ring through another doorway. Again, they circumnavigated and entered yet another doorway.
Melaina said, "I feel as though I'm Theseus descending into the Labyrinth."
"An apt comparison. But this is the last chamber," he said, as they again encountered a brick wall. He turned loose of her hand. "Take the stool."
She fumbled, found a seat against the wall at the narrow walkway's end. "The darkness is disturbing," she said. The chamber's walls dripped, and the smell of moist earth hung thick in the air.
"To be blind is to exist at the threshold of the gods."
"Theognotus said that are you the only one to feed Asklepios."
"No other has the lineage. Remember? I'm a descendant of Manto and her father, Teiresias. Teiresias' heritage was from the Sparti at Thebes, the sown-men. When Kadmos came to Thebes, he killed a sacred dragon and sowed its teeth in the ground as one would wheat. From those teeth sprang the Sparti, my ancestors." His breath came rapidly, as from excitement. "Also, I receive prophecy from Apollo, who took over the temple of Earth at Delphi by slaying the she-dragon, Python. I'm charged to fulfill a debt to both."
"I'm beginning to see again," she said. "A bright light, growing brilliant."
"Let's feed the god quickly and return. You're being seduced by the world of the divine."
"Just a moment. It's a child! I hear the chorus again, even down here."
"Please, young mistress. Now you're frightening me. The pouch, please. Witnessing the divine is deadly."
"A divine child bathed in flame, surrounded by a chorus of Nereïds." Melaina loosed the string of the leather pouch, placed it against the ground and pushed out the squirming bodies. "I can see the white mice," she said. "They scintillate."
"Quickly!" he said. "The god already has them. Ascend!"
The Mysteries, A Novel of Ancient Eleusis Page 49