*
In the pink glow before dawn, Melaina saw the rebirth of the glittering Dog Star, Sirius, bringing the new year and the dog days of summer. The Athenians again sent for help from Sparta, but learned that Spartan troops were already on the move to the Isthmus. In spite of this, the Hierophant seemed agitated. He'd heard that the Persians had begun to burn Greek temples, and he reluctantly planned an escape for all of them in case things went sour.
Melaina continued classes for her circle of girls, but her stomach was greatly upset and even rejected fluids. She went to her mother. "Help me," she said. "If I don't keep down something soon, my baby will wither."
"When I was pregnant with you," her mother said, "Kleito was ready with a remedy at the slightest mention of a symptom." Her mother applied astringent embrocations made of freshly ground, unripe olives to Melaina's abdomen and bound it with wool. When that seemed not to help, she applied oil of roses mixed with saffron and pomegranate peel.
"At least this smells better," said Melaina.
As an aid to digestion, she gave Melaina a decoction of purslane, picking the tiny yellow-flowered plant from the garden according to Kleito's instructions, and tried to follow it with sweet Cretan wine, but Melaina protested. "Remember the physician's admonition against wine," she said.
While she suffered one of these bouts of nausea, Melaina asked her mother about arrogance. "Why is it so difficult for me?"
Her mother didn't answer right away, treating Melaina's question more seriously than she would have in times past.
"The blacksmith says arrogance is a deadly defect," Melaina said, "and virtually impossible to guard against. I've found it true. My mouth forever gets me into trouble."
Her mother smiled. "You enjoy these philosophical discussions, the play of ideas men esteem so. The solution to arrogance is within the world of women. Courage that produces arrogance must be woven with moderation that comes with introspection. The two work counter to each other and are the warp and woof of an elaborate fabric that forms the personality. It's the same with marriage. Weaving of feminine warp and masculine woof produces the fabric on which the couple embroiders their lives."
"You make it all seem so simple."
But Myrrhine had fallen silent, heavy thought wrinkling her brow, and Melaina went out to find her circle of friends. They'd been cut to only a few by the evacuation. Today she'd teach them to make themselves more desirable for marriage. She prompted them to concentrate on their looks. "Avoid working wool. It makes the hands hard," she said, and taught them how to apply a little rouge to the cheeks and bleach their tresses in a caustic wash until it was auburn, the preferred hair color. She taught them to construct the ever-fashionable psyche-knots and to plait and crimp the hair. She also warned of the manner with which prostitutes and courtesans wore clothing and fabricated the figure by use of padding. She shuddered to remember what she'd done in her own attempt to snare young Sophocles. "Never present a false front. Never resort to manipulation. Never set in motion what you can't control," she told them.
Melaina loved her days home with her mother. Each brought new movement from the baby, and her mother would feel the swelled abdomen, placing her warm palm against the stretched skin. When something startled Melaina, the baby also jumped. And Melaina would smile and wrap her arms around her abdomen when the baby quaked with tiny hiccups. In the mornings, Eleusis rang with songs of slave women grinding barley meal, and Melaina had taken to eating ripe figs directly from the tree.
One bright summer afternoon, Melaina took her circle of friends into the grass-covered fields across the sacred way that led eastward to Athens and west toward Megara. In the shade of a tall plane tree, they removed their sandals, formed a circle in grass spiced with thyme and bog myrtle, and picked heavy-scented lilies.
Melaina stopped to look at little Agido. How she'd grown in the last year, yet was still such a child. She'd inherited a chiton many sizes too big and frizzled by the wash. She reminded Melaina of the little Bears at Brauron. Agido's unconscious charm was Melaina's delight. Anaktoria was a slender sapling, her chiton a brilliant play of pleats, hair tightly curled. Aristocratic, dignified, that was Anaktoria. Melaina taught them manners, saying, "When anger wells up inside your breast, guard against a biting tongue," and "Wealth without sympathy is a frightful friend."
The noble-peaked landscape to the north towered above the circle of girls, and ever-changing clouds billowed, sailed with the wind, their dark shadows charging across the meadow where the girls plucked flowers in the lush meadow. Melaina had planned to teach them prayer but had put it off until she was sure she had it right, but they forced her hand now. "Teach us to commune with the divine," talkative Dorothea demanded.
Melaina smiled and thought this was probably her most important lesson. "Let you utter no wrong or complaining word, remembering that good speech starts with holy silence. The simplest prayer requires but a small glass of wine spread over sacred fire. First of all, speak the name of the deity, requesting that she hear you. Heap epithets one upon another and speak fulsome descriptions of the goddess' powers. This should be done with raised arms and upturned palms. Call her from her dwelling place that she might hear your plea. You must then tell her why you've inconvenienced her and that only she can help. State the problem quickly, succinctly, and be done with it. Never trouble the divine with trivial thoughts. After learning prayer structure, you can offer up variations and unusual themes."
"Compose one," said normally quiet Euphemia.
"One to gladden our hearts," added Agido.
They were standing in the Rarian meadow beside the river Kephisos, the first field ever sown with wheat, glorious Helios beaming down on the deep-bosomed daughters of Eleusis. Melaina thought perhaps a prayer to the Muses would be appropriate. She composed on the spot, knowing it less than inspired, and formed them into a chorus. "A chorus is the loom of society," she told them. "With dancing and singing we weave the fabric of civilization." She spoke the words once that they might repeat them, and then they all held hands, danced and sang.
"Polymnia, daughter of Mnemosyne and lightning-throwing Zeus, sweet song-addicted, lovely-haired spirit of many hymns, who haunts the misty slopes of Helikon with your eight sisters. Come to us here in the dusty fields of Eleusis. Give us the divine art of prayer that we might better serve the ancient gods on Olympus."
They finished the prayer, twirled and stopped, their laughter ringing. Melaina spotted a yellow narcissus, beautiful, wonderfully radiant, awesome. She bent to pick it, reached out both hands for the sweet-smelling bloom glowing in the orange sunset, when she heard a noise. Startled, she thought a visitor had come among them. But the shout had panicked the girls, and Melaina looked behind her to see a band of men rounding the hilltop, dark men strangely dressed, one's shrill voice rising in a heart-ripping screech.
From the west they came, rounding the crests of hills, sloshing through the waters of the Kephisos, hordes of men on horseback and on foot, a charging mass of humanity with an inhuman thirst for blood. The people of Eleusis scattered before them, some west along the plane, others north to seek the safety of the mountains, and those closest to the city streaked for the safety of stone walls.
Melaina ran after her screaming girls, ran though her swelled abdomen wouldn't allow it. She heard horses' hooves thunder behind as she slowed and stopped, fearing she'd lose the child. Arrows whistled about her, and a spear lodged in the ground at her feet. She smelled smoke from the torches that would soon burn Eleusis, her home. A war machine, a great mechanical monster for crashing gates, rose above the hilltop. As the host of Persians descended upon her, intent on its prey, a great team of horses drew alongside, and all her sight turned dark. Erebos had blacked her mind. "Save me!" she screamed with all her might, screamed again, but knew not for whom she was screaming. She heard a shriek at her ear.
"Father!" she cried, "O dear Lord Kynegeiros, save my unborn child!"
The Mysteries, A Novel of Ancient Eleusis Page 55