The Mysteries, A Novel of Ancient Eleusis

by David Sheppard

  *

  Myrrhine spent her days sifting ashes. She still went without food or washing, clothes tattered and blackened with soot, pulling her dark robe about her. Even in the presence of women, she lowered her veil. She took no interest in the constant stream of warriors from the east and west as they converged at Eleusis before turning north along the road over Oak Heads Pass and then continued on past the dark feet of Kithaeron to where the battle would be fought on the grassy banks of the Asopus. All her thoughts were of her dead father and Melaina, her pregnant daughter, now the caretaker of the home of the richest man in Athens.

  Early one morning, Myrrhine dug herself out of her new sleeping quarters, a lean-to in the Cave of Hades where she'd taken to spending nights. She'd heard familiar voices and now saw young Sophocles coming toward her. Her old friend Kleito, messenger of mercy, was with him as well as Kleito's ever-present child Euripides, his hands already blackened with ashes.

  "Oh, Myrrhine!" said Kleito, "how you've wasted away! You mustn't indulge in such fruitless grief."

  "How can I live without Melaina? My father is dead. I have no one."

  Myrrhine collapsed into Kleito's arms and cried the long hard tears she hadn't allowed herself. She still refused to eat, even refused a cup of wine. Kleito mixed a sacred drink, the kykeon: water, barley meal, and pennyroyal, which the initiates to the Mysteries took to break their fast.

  "I saw Melaina a short while before she and Kallias left for Athens," said Kleito. "She was marvelously well, spirits high. In no more than a month, you'll be a grandmother."

  "Oh Kleito!" cried Myrrhine, "I feel as though I've been sheltered all my days and now, finally, initiated into life itself. These painful gifts of the gods are too much to bear. The Mysteries have fallen into the hands of the Kerykes. The yoke about my neck is too heavy."

  "Still, you can be glad for Melaina. There's no better bridegroom in all Hellas. Plouton, god of wealth himself, could offer no more."

  Myrrhine wasn't consoled. "I must see her, Kleito. This marriage cannot be."