CHAPTER 27: Exile
Kallias flogged the four black horses drawing the chariot, his concentration broken only as he shouted to all they encountered, "Persians! Persians!" Along the bay he fled with Melaina, out of Eleusis with the open sea to their left and sunset turning from bright orange to dull gray before them. Melaina wondered if he'd run the horses to death. Great beasts they seemed, harbingers of the death from which they fled. She feared the child within her would be shaken from her womb.
Not until they entered the outskirts of Megara did Kallias let up to negotiate the shadowed city streets along the waterfront. He reined in the stallions at the ferry to Salamis and drove the chariot aboard the two-oared skiff without consulting the ferryman.
"Get us out of here!" Kallias shouted.
The aged ferryman stood sullen, unresponsive. A soiled garb hung by a knot round his shoulders, his hand upon the boatman's pole. His chin was an untrimmed grizzle, his eyes orbs of staring fire.
"Persians!" shouted Kallias walking among the horses trying to quiet them, and them blenching at his bellow. The horses were all eyes and trembling, nostrils flared, soapy foam soaking their flanks.
Melaina was glad to be aboard the ferry and stepped from the carriage realizing she was barefooted. She took the reins and tried to quiet the horses, huge gusts of breath coming from their nostrils.
The ferryman refused a sack of gold Kallias thrust on him. "Patience," the man said, "never does the ferry leave dock before time."
The dusky barge swelled with shouting passengers: matrons, boys and maidens, mothers panting pink from the run. As birds flock south when the fall chill fills the air, so Megarians came before the Persian flood, a migration seeking safety afloat the ferry.
Melaina looked along the coast to the bright flames rising above Eleusis wondering if her mother and grandfather had met their fate. And what of her companions? Tears streaked her cheeks as she thought of little Agido and Anaktoria. Everything had happened so fast that she could hardly believe she was alive herself. She owed her own safety a second time, plus that of her child, to Kallias.
The ferryman called out his destinations. "Who's for Salamis' westward tip? Who for Kerberia or Lethe's plain?" Melaina recognized the last two as references to the Underworld and thought it a grim joke.
Kallias left the reins with Melaina and chased after the ferryman, spouting a stream of oaths. "You pus bucket. I'm the Dadouchos with a priestess of the Mysteries to protect. Get us out of here!"
But the ferryman went about his business collecting fees and apportioning the deck to old men and mothers with children, refusing a herd of goats, one of sheep. Finally, he unfurled the small sail, loosed the tie lines, and signaled to the man at the poles. "Heave ahoy!" he shouted.
At the last moment, a runner carrying a torch jumped onboard. "Delphic fire!" the man shouted, "by order of the Archon Basileus."
They pushed off, two men at the stern alternately pushing and pulling at the handle, plying the long sweep-oar propelling the craft. Gradually, they moved away from dock into the black night. A torch at each end of the ferry cast an eerie glow onboard, but black water surrounded them. Flames spread along the coast as the Persians loosed wildfire on buildings, orchards, wheat fields. As the ferry crossed the Strait of Megara, the torches on dock at Salamis gradually emerged.
"Slow down! Easy!" shouted the ferryman as he loosened the halyards. "Push her to." They crunched into the dock, sending a shudder through the crowd and shaking the horses so they stumbled about and whinnied nervously.
Once offloaded, Kallias ushered Melaina quickly into the chariot and once again drove the horses with the whip, although the stallions' eagerness equaled his. The previous year, when he'd brought Melaina home from Brauron, they'd had young Sophocles to light the way, but now they charged blindly though the perilous night, courting disaster at every turn. Once off the peninsula, the surface improved and lights of small villages cast a dim glow across their path. A bay cut deeply through the island to the right of the road, and they entered a town at its edge, but Kallias kept the whip cracking.
When she saw refugees' tents dotting the roadside, Melaina knew they were approaching Samos Town. She'd seen it all last year. Kallias then slowed, picking his way through the crowds to the far shore and to the hill on the promontory from which Melaina had fallen during the battle of Salamis. He pulled up at water's edge. Here they needed no torches, for across the channel, all Athens was flame atop flame, lapping darkness from the firmament. Melaina remembered her mother's words that fire was the coinage between mortals and immortals. Melaina wondered if the gods had felt cheated by their puny sacrifices and wanted Athens and the whole of Attica sent to the Realm of the Divine. She could feel the heat and feared the earth and water themselves would catch fire, the world burn.
Kallias was quiet, staring off into the distant flames. Melaina wondered whether he viewed the fire only as a spectacle or truly sensed the loss. She glanced out the corner of her eye, knowing it was not proper to take in his presence fully. She saw the red glow reflected on his wet cheek, thought it glistening sweat, then realized the truth of it. Kallias was crying.
"Will you take me to Kleito, please?" she asked.
As they entered the women's quarters at Mnesarchides' home, Melaina heard loud voices and saw a distraught, fist-shaking Kleito standing before her husband. Kleito stabbed a finger at him while holding her truant son, Euripides, by the ear.
Little Euripides saw Melaina first and struggled from his mother's clasp, sacrificing his ear for the comfort of Melaina's arms. "I haven't the strength to lift you now, Euri," she said.
Seeing Melaina, Kleito screamed and rushed to her as if the rest of the world, husband included, had evaporated. She threw her arms around the girl. "We thought you were all dead. Your mother! Are you here without Myrrhine? And barefooted?"
Melaina told her of the narrow escape in Kallias' chariot and that they knew nothing of her mother's fate.
Kleito noticed Melaina's swollen abdomen. "I doubt anyone in Hellas doesn't know that the maid who gave the prayer the night before the battle of Salamis is pregnant by a god. The priests of Epidaurus claim you conceived there in the Abaton."
Kleito led Melaina to the hearth, piling on wood for light and heat. She locked the double doors to the women's quarters and ordered the maids to bring a chair and cover it with a heavy fleece. Kleito insisted upon examining Melaina, stripping the chiton with a force Melaina was powerless to resist. Kleito slackened the breastbands and let them slip free.
"You appear healthy enough, but signs indicating the baby's sex are confusing. You've excellent color and your right breast is enlarged, firm and full, as one would expect with a male child. But your left breast is equally large, perhaps even fuller, the nipple more swelled as with a female. Still, you're without the pallor. Is the baby's movement notable?"
"Vigorous at times. Slow, even sluggish at others."
"Strange. I've not seen all this except with twins, but signs are never certain. How's your movement?"
"Oh! Slow. I'm a cow!" She noted Kleito had adopted the mannerisms of the physician who examined her at Eleusis, his clipped questioning.
"Another sign of a female. What a bag of contradictions! You're past your eighth month, not a time to be jostled about in a chariot. I'm surprised you and the child survived intact."
It was late, and Melaina wanted to sleep, but Kleito wasn't about to let her rest. The woman pushed and poked at her abdomen until Melaina thought surely she'd injure the baby. Even the personal regions weren't beyond Kleito's scrutiny. Melaina had never seen such fuss even from a midwife. Kleito went to her chamber, and when she returned, held two white lumps. "Vaginal suppositories," Kleito said.
Melaina was vexed, blushed crimson. "But why?" she whined.
"Goose fat and marrow to relax the womb," added Kleito. With that, she spread Melaina's knees, felt the cleft with her fat warm hand and inserted the cold lumps, fidgeting as if something were wrong. "
The vaginal covering is still partially intact. Astounding, considering your condition!" She pushed the suppositories home and proceeded inside to the orifice of the uterus, anointing it with her finger.
Melaina squinted and winced with pain. "The priest at Epidaurus told me no such membrane exists."
"Women's truth and what men think they know of it are two different things." Kleito sat beside her, content to stare at Melaina's face. "Some immortal certainly set your cheeks aglow." Kleito jumped into action again. "You sag!"
Kleito's head disappeared inside a chest but quickly reappeared with a broad linen bandage. She placed the middle under the bulk of child-filled abdomen, brought both ends round the sides, crossed them, laid them over Melaina's shoulders and fastened them in front on the encircling band. The contraption reminded Melaina of that she'd used on her grandfather following his ordeal with the irons. Kleito anointed the protruding abdomen with a cerate of green-olive oil and myrtle. "Toned skin doesn't break or wrinkle," she offered.
Finally, Melaina was laid down to sleep. A guarding maid sat at her bedside.
The Mysteries, A Novel of Ancient Eleusis Page 66