CHAPTER 33: Reading Entrails
Kallias was gone but a short time and returned forthwith, the fleet seer trailing after him. "Ever your impact on people amazes me," Kallias said. "For when I reentered, the generals were discussing not which chastisement best suited your crime, but how to further explore the will of Zeus. Here with me stands Deiphonus, soothsayer extraordinaire, sent by Leotychides. He's to divine the god's will with you assisting. From now on, limit your outspokenness so as not to overly concern me."
"Which way flows the tide of opinion?" she asked.
"Amazingly, the generals lean toward going. After suffering your assault on him, Leotychides weakens from his steadfast opposition. The sacrificial omens will swing the balance. You two are to set up the sacrifice for the generals' observance."
He left her in the hands of belligerent Deiphonus.
The two walked silently in lengthening shadows to the temple of Apollo, past the colossal cult statue, the monumental gilded image of the god holding a likeness of the three Graces in his right hand and a bow in his left. Inside was the fireplace covered in ash, glowing charcoal, bones, and the slaughter stone stained by blood, oil, and wine. Vessels of all kinds stood about along with roasting spits, axes, and cauldrons on tripods for boiling sacrificial meat. She knew Deiphonus didn't want to share the sacrifice, but looked strangely afraid. He fidgeted with his himation, kept throwing the end over his shoulder.
Of all the men in the meeting they'd just left, he'd seemed the only clean one. His chiton, warn next to the skin, appeared new or at least recently washed. His himation was so clean and white that it glowed in the pale torchlight of the temple. His himation was girded about the waist by a band of the finest silk, almost like a woman, she thought. Everything about him shouted pretense. The scent emanating from him was saffron.
"Don't worry," she said, "I've learned my lesson. I realize a fleet seer of your reputation could teach me much. I'll but observe the intricacies of your art, and try to learn from a master."
Deiphonus looked frightened and turned away, stroked his beard nervously. He said, "To learn to work together we'll need a practice victim." He disappeared.
While he was gone, Melaina rekindled the fire, but he reappeared quickly with a goat from the holding pen, a bit of confidence returning to his troubled face. He sprinkled the goat with meal and wine, waited for it to shiver assent. This he did with great flourish. Melaina uttered the woman's cry as he slit the animal's throat, then elevated the back legs to encourage the blood flow. Just when she expected him to open up the animal, he paused. She saw his hands tremble. He's afraid, she thought, but of what? When he slit the animal down the middle and broke it open, he paused again.
"Are you going to read the entrails, or not?" she asked.
He sat to the task, but started unfolding the large intestine, laid it out on the ground. Then he grabbed the heart with the left hand while he cut it loose from the arteries with his right.
"What are you doing?" she asked, unable to contain her curiosity. She suppressed a laugh. "Start with the lungs, heart, then liberate the gallbladder and liver."
"I've never done this in front of a priestess," he answered.
She wondered how a grown man, a fleet diviner, could be afraid of a girl only fifteen, when she realized, with a jolt, that the man was a fraud. "You have a problem?" she asked.
"I know that with the knowledge you've shown just this far, you'll see through me, so I must tell you the truth. I have no reputation. Many chide me over my lack of skill." He still wouldn't look at her. "I've but taken the name of a great diviner's son and have little knowledge of seercraft. If the generals find out, they'll have my head."
Melaina thought to herself, So that's what's behind his façade. Instantly, she made a decision. "No one need know," she said, then thought, How fragile and transparent are the hearts of men! "I learned from an aged blind man at Epidaurus, a descendent of ancient Teiresias. We'll work together to bring forth a prophecy so pure, it'll sway the hearts of even the most ardent disbelievers."
She took the knife from him and severed a large vessel coming from the head. "Note," she said, "on its path to the liver, one-half the vessel runs beside the kidney and loin to the thigh, then continues to the foot. It's called the 'hollow vein.' The other half courses the diaphragm, lying close to the lung, then branches to the heart and arm."
Deiphonus stared into the bloody victim, observing Melaina's hands as they quickly severed the connecting veins and raised a dark mass from within the bloody chamber. The hot, sticky fluids warmed her cold hands. "This is the liver with gall bladder attached."
"What part indicates divine preference?" he asked. "I know the liver, spleen, heart. Even their function in nourishing the body is no great secret. But I find no god residing there."
"Oh, but you must think in terms of the wits, the way thoughts come to us." Melaina took a deep breath, realizing she'd better start at the beginning. "The brain contains the higher principal, the divine element of the soul," she said, "and the body the lower. The neck is the isthmus connecting but restraining passage. The higher principal contains reason, reflection, and understanding. The lower houses terrible but necessary feelings: pleasure, pain, confidence, and fear, the appetites. It's irrational, falling easily under the spell of phantoms. The heart, filled with courage, passion, and love for contention, is set at the guardpost before the gate to the divine citadel, demanding temperance and enforcing the rule that only the best shall pass upward."
"True enough," he said. "But this tells nothing of divine will."
"Patience," she said, "I'm coming to that. We feel the gods, experience their presence inside ourselves. They influence us mortals through our entrails and demarcate animal entrails in the same way."
Melaina laid the dripping mass in his hands and stroked the surface to indicate the condition of the various parts as she spoke. "Diviners use the nobler entrails, in particular the liver, which resides next to the irrational part of the soul with its weakness for hallucination. The liver transmits thoughts to the soul under the influence of the gods, receiving and reflecting images as a mirror. It's there, into the liver, that the gods throw their ideas and feelings."
"But how to read it?" Deiphonus' voice was high-pitched, full of panic. "What discernible signs could possibly manifest there?"
"When the gods wish to express dissatisfaction, they cause the liver to become bitter and threatening, thus giving off bilious color while becoming wrinkled and round. The lobes bend and shrivel. Conversely to express pleasure, the gods use the liver's natural sweetness to provide gentle thoughts, allaying bile and bitterness to render smoothness, perfection, and thus furnish happiness and joy. All this occurs within the livers of humans and animals alike and is the reason seers divine using sacrificial victims. To read divine will in the entrails, one simply unfolds the liver as a writing tablet, opening and inspecting it."
"Beyond strange, but simple enough," he said, his voice returning to its normal state of feigned confidence. "The lower portion of the soul, though irrational, sees the future?"
"Necessarily so. As proof that divination comes from our innate foolishness, not wisdom, realize that I don't attain prophetic truth and inspiration when I have my wits about me but when I'm demented. Only later, when I have recovered my reason, can I judge the meaning in my apparitions and interpret whether they are favorable or contrary."
Deiphonus' eyes were large, and his voice filled with wonder. "How did mortals learn such things?"
"Prometheus, Forethought himself, taught mortals divining when he stole fire. As punishment Zeus sent his winged hound, the eagle, to banquet on Prometheus' liver. Since Prometheus taught us to read the liver, Zeus tortured Prometheus' own."
"Yes, I've wondered about that. But hurry. Let's set up the sacrifice. The generals will arrive shortly."
Into the garden the generals came, the temple overflowing with warriors and seamen to witness the sacrifice. Melaina had slaves cut them all te
nder myrtle sprays to bind their brows. She and Deiphonus then purified their hands in the sacred mountain stream, while one servant brought baskets and another a bowl for slaughter blood. They kindled the fire and set cauldrons around the hearth, the clang of metal ringing.
"Bring a lamb," she said.
"Will any do?" whispered Deiphonus.
"Select haphazardly, as in casting lots, so divine guidance that pervades the universe will direct the choice."
While he was gone, Keladeine appeared, Lykos at her side. Melaina whispered a few words to her, and Keladeine spoke sternly to the wolf. Melaina then patted him on the nose. Keladeine stood back with the other observers, Kallias at her side. Melaina regarded him briefly, then turned back to the sacrificial fire just as Deiphonus returned carrying the lamb under his arm.
Melaina turned to Leotychides, and asked him to agree to a twofold question. She offered, "Is it better and more proper for us to wage war on Persia in Ionia than to remain at Delos?"
"Yes, that is the question," Leotychides assured.
Melaina cast barley meal upon the altar and spoke. "Apollo of rocky Delos, vouchsafe victory for Hellene forces and ruin for our foes."
From the basket, Deiphonus took the straight blade, sheared a lock of lamb's wool and cast it upon the flame. Then he slit the lamb's throat.
With the filleting of the animal, Deiphonus showed considerable skill, slitting it down the middle with the sharp blade, and breaking it open. Melaina took the knife from him and bent to the work of severing the large vessel from the head to liberate the liver. She stared at it intently. But the liver was less a lobe. Melaina knew only a healthy sheep could be used and studied the visceral side of the liver, which also contained a deformed gallbladder.
Deiphonus gasped. "Evil portents, foreshadow of disaster!"
A murmur of concern passed among the generals.
"Hardly!" Melaina scowled. "The lamb is diseased, the omens spurious." She turned on him. "You've brought us a bad victim. I'll have to select one myself."
Deiphonus threw the carcass to the stray dogs standing about, and he and Melaina left the temple together, walked to the sacred holding pen. Several lambs approached the two seers, and Deiphonus was ready to take the largest, but Melaina spotted one in a far corner. "That!" she said. "The word of Apollo is elusive. We'll take one reflecting his nature."
Back in the temple, Deiphonus drew back the lamb's head with great flourish, cutting through sinews of the neck, and splashing red the stone altar. After the filleting, he offered the gods thighbones wrapped in glistening fat.
Melaina said, "Listen. Hear the fire crackle? That's Hephaestus laughing. A favorable sign." Then she grasped the noble entrails and inspected them, Deiphonus looking over her shoulder.
"The liver is sectioned as a picture of the world read from the night sky, a model of the heavens," she said quietly to Deiphonus. "Read from the top, going around to the right. I read a favorable sign from Hera," she said, "obviously concerned for her temple on Samos, her birthplace."
"Yes," said Deiphonus, then raised his voice so all could hear, "a favorable sign from divine Hera, her temple on your island in jeopardy," he said to the Samians.
This brought murmurs from the crowd, "Ah, yes," they said, but still Melaina saw confusion etched in their faces. If I don't get on with this, she thought, they'll lose confidence in me.
Melaina knew that the regions of the liver important for interpreting Demeter's influence also carried significance for Kore. She stopped, her courage shaken, then regained her composure. "This is from the divine daughter and pertains to me alone," she said.
Melaina's silence had caused some in the crowd to believe she'd lost her confidence. Kimon said, "She hasn't the courage to speak the will of Zeus. Shout your thought in the midst of us, Melaina. Does cowardice master you?"
Leotychides chimed in. "She's lost her way in the reading," he shouted. "If you utter a vain prophecy, lead the fleet to disaster, think how to escape my hands alive."
Melaina's face flushed and for the first time she panicked. Deiphonus was not the only fraud here. Never before had she read entrails on her own. Yet she knew she could do it. Had they already lost faith in her?
Kallias then stepped in front of the general, his face red with anger. "Hold your tongue when addressing this priestess for she is my wife. I'll send you to the Undergloom if you threaten her again."
Another murmur of surprise passed through the crowd, and they seemed to look upon her with new respect. This was the first time Kallias had mentioned their marriage in public. Melaina was struck dumb by the statement and felt immeasurable gratitude for this magnification of her stature. Now she was not only a priestess but also the wife of the richest aristocrat in Athens, a field commander's wife. She could do this.
Melaina addressed Leotychides' fear. "I falter not from lack of knowledge, sir, but overabundance. Never have I seen such beautiful entrails. The liver glistens with more brilliance than the heavens. The fate of all present here is written therein, just as in the stars. Any of you, step forward. I'll read your fate in the coming days."
The two generals who had spoken against her shuffled about uneasily, each standing first on one foot, then the other.
"I see the end of all your lives," she said, "you have but to ask to know if it comes tomorrow or in a hundred years."
But not one had the courage to look his own fate in the face. Kallias shamed them. "Ever you find fault with soothsayers, but tremble before her seercraft."
Since they all remained silent, she proceeded with the reading. Deiphonus crowded in behind her. The two spoke quietly, then Melaina addressed the generals.
"Deiphonus allows me to relay the final word of Apollo as he prophesies the will of Zeus. The condition of the entrails is perfect. Never has either of us seen such glistening liver fat. Zeus has spoken again, his word unchanged from past prophecy." She raised her hand in the air, made a fist. "Ionia is ours! Death to Persia!"
But her enthusiasm was slow to move the crowd. Leotychides spoke for the group. "This is the final word then? A favorable reading from the entrails?" But Melaina could tell he was still unstirred.
"One more word will I speak," she said. "The vision came to me as I read the entrails. The Persians have burned Samos. Red flames lick timbers on the holy island as we speak."
The Samians shouted in dismay. "Ever more urgent is our need," said their aged leader. "Proceed quickly."
Melaina continued, "If you had doubt that those on Samos would revolt against the Persians, this should settle the issue."
Seeing that the omens were favorable, Leotychides asked the Samians for their names, "Perhaps they will contain another good omen," he said.
Lampon was one, another Athenagoras. The Samian who'd done all the talking stepped forward, the old humped man. "Hegesistratus," he said, Leader of the Host.
Melaina thought this a curious name and wondered if she hadn't heard it before.
Quickly, Kallias came alive, drew his sword and advanced on the man. "I'll hack your head from your shoulders," he said.
Melaina wondered if Kallias had gone mad.
"Show your leg!" demanded Kallias. "I'll see the right foot, or take your head."
The Samian pushed back, wanting no part of his body vulnerable.
Then Melaina's own confusion over the name resolved, and she realized Kallias' worry. She stepped between them. "Lord Kallias! I know your mind and can assure you he's not who you suspect."
Kallias turned to her incredulous. "You know him?"
"No, but I've met a man by that name, Hegesistratus the clubfoot who divines for Mardonius." She turned to the Samian. "Sir, offer up the limb. I'll see to it that he, my husband, not cleave it from the trunk."
The man cautiously stepped aside, raised his tunic.
"Yes," said Kallias, "the woman is right. No carved timber you walk upon. Forgive my outburst. I thought we had an enemy amongst us." He turned to Melaina. "Who in Hel
las or Persia, or in all the world for that matter, don't you know? Women are supposed to come to marriage as a clean slate, a piece of papyrus for their husbands to write upon. You come to me a book of screeches and ravings, full of enough lunatic learning to baffle an aged philosopher, and not yet past your fifteenth year."
The tension broke, and Leotychides spoke to Hegesistratus. "The meaning of your name is indeed a good omen. I'll cast my vote also for liberating Ionia. But before such an undertaking, let us take an oath of offensive and defensive alliance. This young priestess here would seem an excellent choice to give it. Let her be the one to pour wine and administer the words." He then looked expectantly at Melaina.
Melaina was astounded with the distinction given her. But the thrill quickly turned to foreboding as she looked at Kallias and remembered his vacillation concerning their marriage. Even with his recent admonition, the fact that he'd faltered for a while still stung her. Can a man keep an oath? she wondered. "Greatly do you honor me, sir," she said to Leotychides. "What holds Hellas together is the oath. Still, without wishing to seem ungrateful, I'll not do it with wine."
"She's temperamental," said Kallias, "and unreasonable at times. Perhaps someone else would be a better choice."
Melaina ignored him and continued addressing Leotychides. "I'll use water from the river Styx carried in a golden goblet, as do the gods."
"Impossible!" shouted Kallias, and the murmur from the rest told that they shared his alarm.
Anticipating such an outburst, Melaina maintained her composure. "The islet west of Delos is sacred to both Hekate and Iris. A sacred spring flows there with water forbidden for use other than oaths. It comes from Styx in the Underworld, and Iris herself draws water there for the gods' oaths. I'll use it unless your oath is insincere."
Leotychides questioned her. "Why such extremes for oath taking? I've heard nothing like it."
"Kallias has taught me well of men's fickle hearts," she said. "I'll not give an oath that can be taken lightly."
"What of this, Kallias?" asked Xanthippus.
Kallias, face beaming brilliant red, turned his back to them.
Then, all stood still, each hoping the other would know how to satisfy her. Finally, Kallias turned back, spoke. "I'll take her to the island. She can draw the water herself."
"Hurry," said Hegesistratus, "Helios' light fades."
From Apollo's temple, the priest retrieved a large golden goblet that Melaina carried in both hands on the walk to the dock. Quickly, she and Kallias entered a small fishing boat. Kallias, at the oars, facing the stern where Melaina sat, negotiated the narrow channel as the pink glow of sunset faded from the western sky.
On the far side, they exited the boat, and Kallias helped her up the shallow incline and past a small abandoned building, a temple of the divine oathgiver Iris, Hera's winged messenger, the angel. They came to a grove of oak trees, all stunted by rocky soil. Within the shaded grove, they found a cliff and through a cleft in it heard, but could not see, running water. Melaina removed her chiton and unwrapped the bandage supporting her bulging abdomen, then folded and laid both on the ground. She stood naked before Kallias, holding the golden goblet.
"I'm afraid of the dark," she said. "Talk to me while I enter."
"So you do still have some of the little girl left in you," said Kallias, then kept up a stream of words, nonsense really, as her bare feet stepped into the cold water. She squeezed between rocks into the cleft, wetness splashing her, then held out the goblet until she felt it overflow. She backed out of the cleft to Kallias.
"Quickly, Lord," she said. "Dry me. This water has death in it."
"Is it really from the Styx?"
"So it's been told by priests since primordial times. To drink it brings death, to get it on the skin causes those closest you to grow remote."
He dabbed the cold water from her with the bandage, then stood looking at her. "Though eight months pregnant, you're by far the most beautiful woman I've ever seen, Melaina. I've come to love you in spite of this terrible falling affliction." His voice was smooth there in the pale moonlight, touched with sadness. He took her into his arms.
Melaina felt an exquisite internal warmth and a quiet compassion for him, though she'd not call it love. But she did kiss him, kissed him as if she loved him. Then she donned her chiton and they returned to the boat by torchlight.
She warned him, "Careful the waves not rock the boat and splash this Styx water on deck." She held the torch while he rowed.
Once again before the generals, Melaina said, "My final request."
The generals then looked askance of one another, nervousness besetting the group. Kallias stood aside, refusing to argue with her.
Melaina looked at them as if they were her group of girls back at Eleusis. "I'll need a lump of iron for each general, and a single hand-bellows. Following that I'll give the greatest and most awful oath possible."
From within the city grounds, slaves brought forth several heavy ingots and placed them and the wheezing bellows before her.
"Fire them!" she said. "They're of no use until white hot."
She stood before the fire squeezing the bellows as she'd seen Palaemon at Eleusis. Great flames grew but gradually died as the glowing coals became hotter and hotter.
"This water bears a curse," she said, holding up the goblet, "therefore drink none of it. It comes from far below Earth's wide paths, a cascade from the briny deep. If any god of snowy Olympus pours a libation of this water then swears falsely, he lies breathless a full year, wrapped in evil coma. When this trial subsides, another seizes him: nine years banishment from council and feast. Mortals suffer ten years exile plus whatever other evils the gods devise."
Deiphonus, along with a warrior he had sequestered, brought forward two ewes, one back, one white, and while Deiphonus slit their throats, spilling black blood into a bowl, Melaina called forth the gods. "Immortal Zeus, father of all mortals and immortals, wrathful and invincible god ruling from Olympus; bright-faced Helios, whose eternal eye sees all; and rabid, arrogant Furies who howl Necessity's dictates and wreak vengeance for false swearing; all you gods witness this solemn oath."
Then the generals, each in turn, retrieved their glowing iron ingot from the fire and, using the sacrificial victim's skin as a sling, cast the hot metal into the sea. "We swear never to break our mutual friendship until the masses of iron float up of their own freewill, still red hot."
With that, she poured upon the ground water from the golden goblet, the generals scurrying from its trailing path lest their feet become wet with the fearful liquid. Melaina prayed again. "Ethereal and blazing Zeus, and all you other vengeance-mindful gods; whosoever is first to do wrong against this oath, may his brain spill out on the ground as does this water, his wife be a captor of other men's desires, and his children reflect the face of his enemies."
Kallias flinched at the mention of children and wives, then looked daggers at Melaina. The generals plunged their right hands of fellowship into the warm, sacrificial blood, and Melaina spoke words binding each to the other, those from Samos pledging wholehearted support of the Greek cause during the coming battle. Henceforth and forever, the generals Leotychides and Xanthippus pledged both liberation of Ionia and protection against Persia.
The oath complete, the meeting broke up, generals to the docks, Melaina and Kallias to the temple of Artemis. They entered her chamber and closed the door.
Kallias said, "I'll leave you here and board one of my triremes for the trip to Samos. You'll return tomorrow morning to Athens or perhaps Eleusis, whichever you prefer. I only ask that you send word to my mother of your decision."
"Me, decide?" said Melaina. "How am I ever to understand you and your vacillating commitment to our marriage? In Athens, you sealed my fate saying you'd not suffer my illness. Then you acknowledge our marriage here before the generals. And now you act as though it's been me vacillating all along."
Kallias looked apologetic, yet remained quiet.
Just as he seemed ready to speak, he was interrupted by a knock at the door.
Xanthippus entered smiling. "We want Priestess Melaina with the fleet," he said. "They would sail the triremes through the Gates of Hades for her if she willed it, I swear. We took a vote and gained unanimous consent."
Melaina slipped back behind Kallias, not wanting the general to see her face. Mention of sailing further east brought sudden fear to her.
Kallias told him they'd consider the matter and give a decision before the fleet sailed. "She's heavy with child," he said.
The general left, and Kallias turned to Melaina. "You can't withdraw your support now."
But her courage had left her entirely. "O Father Zeus! What a fearful thing to ask," Melaina said. "Let me think. Had I to say this moment, I'd return home. You promised my father you'd take care of me." As she spoke, tears filled her eyes. "The unborn babe, my lone feeble ally in anguish, just kicked me in the ribs. It too senses the peril. But to give the warriors an example of cowardice, when they desperately need a call to valor, would be unseemly. Allow a little of this night, Lord Kallias, for me to find my courage."
The Mysteries, A Novel of Ancient Eleusis Page 79