CHAPTER 24: In the Persian Camp
Myrrhine again entered the ruins of the Telesterion, where she and Agido collected the Hierophant's relics. They would have to be buried, but she hadn't time now. She stuffed them in a sarcophagus beside her husband's tomb and said a prayer over them while worrying Melaina's epilepsy. Would her captors put Melaina to the knife if she had a seizure?
Myrrhine heard the laments of others returning from Salamis to sort through the dead and prepare funeral pyres. She took Agido to her burned-out home. One of the deceased was Agido's father, the sight of whose remains sent Agido into a new fit of hysteria. Agido had always been tied to her mother, and her only time away from home had been spent with Melaina. Now Agido's mother was missing and her father dead. The girl wrapped her arms around Myrrhine's neck in a death grip. Myrrhine hated to leave her in the hands of others at such a time. "I'll make it up to you later," she said.
She found the blacksmith, not at his bellows and anvil, but alone in his chamber, head between his knees. When she spoke to him, he came alert although she could tell he'd been crying.
Palaemon asked, "Any word of the little mistress?"
"Nothing."
"But for these withered limbs…. The gods have turned all Attica into a smelter. With this purification great things must follow. But oh, the misery!"
Myrrhine had never actually taken note of his deformity. She'd always thought that his legs were weak, but now realized that though they were small, they were perfect in form. Still, she wondered why his mother hadn't exposed him at birth as was customary with a deformed child.
"I've come to ask a favor," she said. "Take me to the Persian camp."
"Oh great Zeus! That'll not be safe for you, priestess. I could never defend you. Aeschylus is a great warrior. He could raise an army."
"No one could protect me behind enemy lines. I'll be honest with you. I've heard that the Persians fear your shape. In this instance, no army would be as powerful and provide safety as well as would your deformity. We'll bring back Melaina."
At this, he again dropped his head. Myrrhine watched large tears splash mud on the powdery floor. He said, "We'll take Akmon and Damnameneus."
She wasn't particularly excited about leaving behind his two giant workmen herself. In fact, she felt her first affinity for the brutes, but she knew their presence could spell death. "No. We must project weakness. They'd be provocative."
"If these spindly legs can be of use in such an undertaking, the years enduring them will have been worth it."
"The longer we wait, the less our chances of finding Melaina," she said. She remembered the hard thoughts her father had toward the Persian general. "Let's find out who this Mardonius really is, man or monster."
Myrrhine loaded the wagon with what food she could find in the rubble heaps while he harnessed the mules. She salvaged a sacred robe with one singed cuff that smelled ferociously of smoke. She decided, the better for effect.
Myrrhine spoke to scouts who were passing through Eleusis on their way the Isthmus with reconnaissance for the Spartan generals, and learned that Mardonius was evacuating Attica for Boeotia. She'd originally thought they'd find him in Athens but now knew the entire Persian army was retreating east, circling Mt. Parnes, and would eventually turn north to seek a strategic position for the coming land battle. She and the blacksmith would take the shortcut north along the foothills of Mt. Pateras and through the pass in the spurs of Kithaeron to hated Thebes. Traitorous Thebes would be the Persian stronghold.
As the sun once again dipped toward the horizon, they set off, Palaemon at the reins of the two mules, Myrrhine beside him in the wagon. They wouldn't get far before nightfall, but time was precious. They stopped at the first village in the foothills, on the banks of a branch of the Kephisos River. It appeared deserted at first, residents huddled in their homes and afraid to come forward until they knew the strangers were not Persian. Myrrhine took a room with a family, but the smith bedded down in the wagon.
That evening before sleep, Myrrhine stood outside in the dark watching the smoldering fires south at Eleusis and east at Athens, wondering where her daughter was spending the night, if she was alive. She worried over Melaina's pregnancy, the epilepsy. The gods have taken everything from me, Myrrhine thought, every joy turned to pain. Her husband had been killed at Marathon, and her father's charred remains were now in an undistinguished sarcophagus. The Mysteries could no longer be held. The sacred officials were dead, the Telesterion destroyed. Was it possible for Greece to survive without the Mysteries? She dipped her head and returned inside.
The Mysteries, A Novel of Ancient Eleusis Page 57