*
That afternoon the Hierophant received word that his time had come.
"Are you sure you want to do this?" asked Theognotus.
"By the gods!" answered the Hierophant. "What do I have to do to get treated?"
The Hierophant called the cure, "surgery," but Theognotus called it, "an initiation of sorts," even suggesting that all should undergo the "trial of the irons" once. Melaina took the priest literally and wondered if it was similar to initiation into the Mysteries.
The Hierophant left with the priest for a building outside the sacred glen, and when Myrrhine went down for a nap, Melaina became restless. She walked the grounds alone, and concern over her grandfather's condition caused her to circumnavigate the facility where the priest had taken him. Seeing others enter and exit, she peeked inside, then entered a long empty foyer. She smelled smoke and heard voices from a chamber at the foyer's far end. A female slave left smiling, greeted Melaina as she passed, and entered another room off the corridor. Melaina stepped into the doorway.
Melaina heard voices coming from a room at the end of the hall and peeked inside. It was exactly as she expected, not a surgical facility at all, as the Hierophant had suggested: no hot water or white bandages, no instruments for delicate incision, no prosthetics for limb replacement, no urns of herbs or jars of pungent oils, as she'd seen at Kleito's. She decided that the priest's description had been the more accurate. It wasn't a medical procedure at all, but some ancient rite appropriate to a Hierophant's station, perhaps one divinely inspired hundreds of years before when Kalchas of Megara had divined for Agamemnon's forces at Troy.
A group of men gathered about a circular hearth at the center of the room: Theognotus and her grandfather, who was nervous enough for his limbs to shake, and blind Udaeüs attending the fire as if he had eyes, plus seven burly assistants who seemed to have no function other than to witness the ceremony. Melaina watched Theognotus prepare a set of eight irons, as the blacksmith back at Eleusis might, placing them among coals until the tips glowed, then bending them flat as an obol at the ends. Reluctant to perform before, Theognotus now seemed to relish executing the ritual. Udaeüs boiled a fine broth of lentil and chickpeas on the fire, possibly a divine repast to be ingested during the rite.
Then she heard the name for this healing ceremony and felt bad about it, probably some secret word not to be uttered in the presence of women. "Haemorrhoids," said Theognotus, and Melaina felt sorry but could do nothing to redeem herself, the forbidden ceremonial key forever locked in her memory.
Theognotus laid the Hierophant on his back upon the table and gathered his tunic to the waist. The Hierophant muttered softly to himself, "two trials for every blessing" and "the soul trapped within the flesh," as Theognotus placed a pillow under the naked loins. The attendants then approached, one at the head, one at each arm and two at each leg. Smiling and chuckling they were, as if some pleasant reminder of their own initiation had passed before the mind's eye. They brought the Hierophant's knees to his chest as Theognotus, grabbing a glowing iron from the coals, said, "Shout so they'll pop from the anus like livid grapes."
The Hierophant sang while the attendants held him down, but not until she heard the hiss of hot iron against flesh did he reach full volume, his shriek ringing throughout the sanctuary and scaring Melaina's wits from her. "Louder!" shouted the priest while probing with the iron, the stench of seared tissue drifting about in smoke clouds. Copious sweat flowed from Melaina's brow, her own cry of dismay absorbed in the Hierophant's bellow. Her eyes remained glued on the priest as he brought iron after iron from the glowing coals to renew her grandfather's agony. Finally, the scorching complete, Udaeüs pounded smooth the lentil and chickpea soup and applied it as a plaster.
Melaina fled the scene.
The Mysteries, A Novel of Ancient Eleusis Page 53