CHAPTER 23: The Burning of Eleusis
Myrrhine had left her housemaids and gone to watch Melaina and her girls cross the road. She saw them settle down on the hillside beneath the plane tree, along the bank of the cold, swift-running water of the Kephisos. Myrrhine had turned away, deciding they were safe. This was another of Melaina's favorite places, but one Myrrhine despised because Demeter's daughter had been kidnapped there. Myrrhine had been more vigilant lately, not letting Melaina out of her sight. Her daughter's abdomen was so large that a seizure now could injure her or the baby, and Myrrhine had little faith in the supposed healing at Epidaurus. But the invasion no longer seemed such a threat; last word had the Persians retreating from Attica, and the Spartans had been seen at the Isthmus with a small contingent on their way to Eleusis to bolster their own troops. She hadn't felt such relief in over a year.
The scorching heat was beginning to subside as sundown approached. Myrrhine's first indication that something was wrong came from dogs barking in the distance. She wondered if someone's sheep or goats had gotten loose. Sundown spooked animals. Myrrhine thought how proud she was of Melaina teaching her little circle of friends. Several mothers had changed their minds about Melaina because of their daughters' enthusiasm for learning, and they had made favorable comments to Myrrhine. Now, Myrrhine heard the sound of horses' hooves, and thought they were probably from Aeschylus' strong steed. He frequently charged through the city gates with news for the Hierophant and other city officials.
Just as she reached the city gate, Myrrhine heard the first scream. Horses they were, but not those of Greece. Persians sprang as if from the earth, shield-laden, rapiers rattling. The Persian cavalry came by storm, fearful to behold, and with the infantry in hot pursuit. Myrrhine panicked, fell into confusion and turned toward safety. Then, remembering her pregnant daughter in the path of the deadly charge, she turned back to save Melaina, realized the futility, and turned homeward again. She'd only taken a step when she heard Melaina's scream, her frantic plea to her long-dead father. Back Myrrhine ran toward the Persian onslaught, vowing to die with her daughter in her arms. Melaina was now obscured from view by the raging torrent of grim death descending on them.
Myrrhine felt an arm take hold of her. Aeschylus pulled her from the road, back through the city gates, and inside the stone walls.
"Melaina!" she screamed, hearing the gates thud to and clank behind her as the bolts shot home.
"To the docks!" cried Aeschylus. "Leave Melaina to us."
Myrrhine fled back into the city, past the Kallichoron Well where local women gathered to draw water and gossip. "Persians!" she shouted. "To your homes and children!" But Myrrhine couldn't force herself to the docks. From the propylaea, she ran to the Telesterion, the stone walls deep in shadow from the encroaching darkness. Searching frantically for the Hierophant, she found him running toward her, shield and sword in hand, and several more officials with him.
"To the boats!" she shouted. "Save yourselves!"
"Never!" he cried, flinging off his robe. "I go the way of Eleusis."
A stout arm grabbed Myrrhine from behind. She screamed, thinking it a Persian, but saw that it was young Sophocles.
"Follow me!" he shouted.
"No! Melaina!"
Persian shouts and the thunder of many feet swept her words away. Her father and the other sacred officials stepped forward to join soldiers manning the walls. Densely massed, they blocked the closed entryway. But brandishing two-edged axes, the Persians smote the wood doors through and off their hinges, hewed a hole in the stubborn oak beam, and breached the stone wall.
Sophocles jerked Myrrhine back from the action. They fled the temple, up the incline, and past the Cave of Hades to the hilltop overlooking the city. Myrrhine stopped to catch her breath and looked north to where she'd last seen Melaina. The air was filled with savage cries, women's plaints, and wailing. This way and that the people of Eleusis flew, some to the ships, some clambering west through the streets, all hoping to outrun the onslaught. From within the stone walls, the bewildered cries of children came, along with the shouts of husbands and fathers going rapidly to their deaths.
Myrrhine heard a loud pounding, the quick blows of a battering ram. Smoke from every quarter rose, black belching clouds laced with crimson quivering tongues. Persians spread like ravening wolves in a black mist. The myrtle grove rose in flame. The enemy drove from their pins sheep and goats, squealing pigs, cows, bawling calves.
Sophocles held fast to Myrrhine's arm, dragged her down the hill and along the street to the docks where the hordes were crowding aboard ships. She was crying now, burning grief gripping her throat.
The last boat pushed off as the first Persians descended upon them. Several soldiers rushed to their aid, but she realized Sophocles was no longer beside her. She ran to the water's edge, wondering if he'd boarded without her, but spotted him dragging a fishing boat from its storage hut. Myrrhine helped him pull it to the water's edge and climbed inside. Too late. Two Persians were upon them. Sophocles drew his sword and turned his rage on one. An arrow from some unseen bow took the other.
Now they huddled in the boat, young Sophocles madly rowing out of range of the whistling missiles. The boat pitched and swayed in the light surf, but Myrrhine's eyes remained glued on shore, hope of her father and Aeschylus escaping certain death dissipating in the gathering darkness. Once beyond any arrow's arc, she bid Sophocles stop rowing. "Wait for survivors. Perhaps someone will swim out to us."
No one came, though they waited as the sunlight failed, the landscape lit anew by towering flames. She studied the shore, memorizing every feature. She saw only Persians scouring the beach.
The other boats rowed on to Salamis, leaving Myrrhine and Sophocles alone, bobbing amongst the waves. Many times Myrrhine had witnessed her daughter's regard for Sophocles. She was surprised at how well, in spite of his youth, he'd acquitted himself against the Persian warrior. Then again, he was a veteran of the battle of Salamis.
A trireme came alongside, and the crew pulled them and their small boat aboard. Myrrhine recognized the captain as the Athenian general at the Isthmus, Kimon, who'd felt such affection for Melaina.
Myrrhine went to him. "Save my daughter," she begged, "set ashore your warriors. Save the daughter of Kynegeiros. The Persians have her."
"Eyie!" he said, raising his arm and sweeping the horizon to the east.
Myrrhine hadn't noticed anything but Eleusis burning. With the gesture, Kimon revealed the burning grain fields of the Thriasian Plain, Apollo's temple at Daphni in flames, and to the southeast, a new sun rising, the great conflagration consuming Athens.
Myrrhine paced the deck, speaking rapidly and to no one. She castigated herself for letting Melaina out of her sight. How could she possibly have let her beyond the city gates? If Melaina had been with her, Sophocles would have saved them both.
The trireme sailed unmolested southwest along the coast. Myrrhine stood alongside Kimon and Sophocles, judging Persian progress by the traveling wave of fire. They picked up survivors, some in small boats, and others who'd swum out to sea to drown rather than face the barbarian onslaught. The deck swelled with frightened refugees.
As the night labored away the hours, the trireme negotiated the zigzag strait of Megara, then turned west along the coastal town that centuries before had been the home of Kalchas, seer with the Greek forces at Troy. Soon Megara also cast the bright glow of flames out over the dark waters. Megara was the last city to burn. The wave of flame stopped there, and as suddenly as they'd come, the Persians turned about, retreated. The roar of the army faded as it swept back east.
"A foolhardy idea anyway," said Kimon. "Persia would have paid a more terrible price at the narrows of the Scironian Way than at Thermopylae. It would have cost them the war."
The trireme also turned about, renegotiated the strait, and came opposite Eleusis again as the sky lightened in the east. The flames had died to a glow, smoke no longer billowing, but now a rising mist o
f darkened hopes. As the pink glow of dawn revealed a smoke-burdened sky and the last of the Persian menace in the Thriasian Plain, Kimon ordered the ship in close to dock and put ashore an armed contingent to gauge their security should they decide to return.
A shout went up from those onboard when the troops reappeared with two survivors. Myrrhine's heart leapt seeing one was a girl, but it fell when she realized it was not Melaina's pregnant shape. It was Agido. But the dejected, battle-beaten man beside her was Aeschylus.
Myrrhine was the first off the trireme. Agido ran to her arms, and Myrrhine hugged her as if she were her own daughter. She knew how Melaina loved the little girl. But Agido couldn't tell what had happened to Melaina.
"She's lost her voice," said Aeschylus. "We survived hiding in the blacksmith's shop." Shame cut him short. "I didn't want to die. If I were a Spartan, they'd stone me." Then he spoke to Myrrhine's great fear. "We've seen nothing of Melaina, and Zakorus didn't make it." Aeschylus had already reverted to the Hierophant's given name, as was the custom once he no longer occupied the sacred office. "He fell during fierce fighting in the temple."
From the hilltop, Myrrhine surveyed the smoldering ruins of Eleusis. Heap upon heap of ashes, the strewn dead, the many shapes of sorrow. The blacksmith's shop was the only building still standing, Palaemon himself alive and well, said Aeschylus. They walked in the heat of glowing coals to his shop, but he refused to talk, instead working the bellows so that flames hissed and metal glowed white hot. He'd managed to save his wagon and two mules by tying them inside the smithy. Akmon and Damnameneus had also survived.
Aeschylus told a strange story of how the smith, when he saw the Persians coming, fueled the flames of his furnaces with wretched turkey wood, so the coals danced about sending sparks high into the air. He lit fires in all the smelters and pranced around them, agile as a deer upon his withered legs, waving his arms as might some gangly beast. The Persians, thinking he was an Underworld daemon or perhaps Hephaestus himself, refused to enter the smithy.
"First I've known my deformity to be a blessing," said Palaemon. "Still, it's no boon to remain untouched with your village in ruins and mistress Melaina, bright star of all Eleusis, missing."
Flames still rose from Myrrhine's home. The stone walls had been toppled from their foundations, gardens scorched, slaves gone. Melaina's chamber was strangely vacant, but there were no ashes of the ancient chest, no fused puddle of metal from the hidden cache of coins, no embers of rugs or robes. "The Persians plundered it," Myrrhine said.
Charred remains filled her own chamber, flames still flickering and coals aglow. She stood inside the entry, though the heat flushed her cheeks and smoke burned her eyes and throat. All her possessions, including her dowry, were in ashes. She scraped free pieces of her sacred robes, still wondering at the ashes in her chamber but none in Melaina's.
They hurried to the Telesterion where the columns had been pulled down. The large beams of the collapsed roof still smoldered. Picking apart rubble, Sophocles and Aeschylus went before her to the Anaktoron, Holiest of Holies. It was flattened to the floor and contained no sign of the Sacred Objects so crucial to the Mysteries. They found the smoldering bones of Myrrhine's father with charred pieces of his robe.
"He made his stand here," said Aeschylus.
"As I knew he would," she said. "He'd never allow the Sacred Objects in the hands of barbarians while still alive."
They crossed the Sacred Way to the grass-covered fields where Melaina and her girls had sat encircled beneath the plane tree. There she found the lone traces of her daughter, Melaina's sandals. She grabbed them and held them to her breast. She showed Agido.
Agido cried, grabbed Myrrhine and buried her face in her breast. She spoke her first words. "I ran, but she couldn't. I'm so ashamed!"
"Oh, little Agido!" Myrrhine squeezed her, looked into her eyes. Swift-footed Agido was the only girl of Melaina's circle to reach safety. "If you'd stayed behind, you couldn't have helped her and would've only been taken yourself,."
Myrrhine turned to Aeschylus. "Is Melaina still alive?"
"If they know who she is. She'll make some rich Persian a prestigious concubine; her child will become a valuable slave. She may already be on the way to Sardis or Susa."
"Retrieve her! She must be saved." But she realized that Sardis was deep in Asia, Susa in Persia, close to the world's edge.
Aeschylus threw up his arms. "Your husband has been dead ten years at the hands of Persians, your father freshly killed because of his own idiocy, and you want me to charge into the jaws of death." He walked off.
"She's your brother's daughter."
"I must return to Athens, assess the damage to my residence there, and relocate my family from Salamis. Turn to those who had the sense to evacuate." He walked off muttering to himself, "Chase after Persians? Incurably foolish!"
Sophocles made no move to go with him.
Aeschylus looked back. "Coming?"
Sophocles spoke to Myrrhine. "I too must go. My invalid father should be taken home to Kolonus. His health weighs heavily on me."
"Thank you, Sophocles. You saved my life and have always been a true friend to Melaina."
"Would that I'd been here to save her."
Myrrhine panicked at the sight of them leaving. She missed Kynegeiros terribly. "Oh for a husband!" she shouted after them.
Myrrhine calmed a bit, realizing that Aeschylus leaving was for the best. He would only stop her from doing what she must. Somewhere within Greece, Melaina was still alive. She could believe nothing else. As the hurt found new strength, she fiercely held Agido to her and planned to retrieve Melaina herself.
She'd turn to the one man who'd be safe in the Persian camp.
The Mysteries, A Novel of Ancient Eleusis Page 56