*
The next day, Myrrhine visited her daughter's grave, then again on the ninth and thirteenth days to pour a libation and say a prayer. Thereafter, she returned each month until the Genesia year was up. She had developed a wicked insomnia and took to walking at night, a homeless, dislodged spirit seen hovering along the roadways and footpaths of Eleusis.
Then one day, Myrrhine said goodbye, calling upon the hills, meadows and sea beating in the bay where her daughter had so often walked. "Farewell, land of Eleusis," she said. "Waft upon me a peaceful silence that my own will dissolve and I submit to this grim fate the gods have dealt me."
She doused the family hearth fire.
Some said the priestess of Demeter entered the sacred grotto and descended to Hades. Others believed they saw her return each year on the anniversary of Melaina's death to carry a pale torch about the gravesite. Many who passed it late at night heard crying and great lament but saw no one. Mention of Melaina's exploits was forbidden since it was unseemly to speak of women in public, but she lived in people's hearts and private whispers. Many believed that the mother and daughter had been Demeter and Persephone returned to Earth to save Greece. They had spent what time it took and departed.
CHAPTER 43: Xerxes' Bridge Cables
Following the victory at Mykale, and after Melaina and Kallias had departed, the Greek fleet sailed north along the coast of Asia, past Ephesus to the Hellespont where Xerxes had crossed over into Europe a year and a half before. Hard-set they were upon destroying the bridges Xerxes had built of biremes, triremes, papyrus and flax cables. When they arrived, they found that the strong-hearted brothers Boreas and Zephyrus had already demolished the bridges. The rest of the Greek fleet, including the Spartans, returned home, but the Athenians under Xanthippus made port on the Chersonese, where they laid siege to Sestos, the most heavily fortified town in the district. Refugees had fled there and taken the bridge cables with them. The town was still under the command of Xerxes' governor, Artayctes.
When the siege dragged on into the bad-weather months, the occupants of Sestos resorted to boiling their leather bed straps for nourishment. Finally, Artayctes and the rest of the Persians, who'd held the district under their yoke, fled, and the Greek residents opened the gates. Artayctes and his son were captured and brought back to Sestos, where Artayctes offered to pay two hundred talents for his life. But Xanthippus and the locals were in no mood for reconciliation. They dragged him to the spit where Xerxes had winched the bridges.
That cold day in the fall of the year, clever, corrupt Artayctes begged not for his own life as they nailed him to a plank and lofted him high into the air, but for that of his son whom they also brought forward. Not content with the crucified man's physical suffering, they stoned his son before his eyes.
The Athenians then sailed home with the bridge cables Xerxes had used to span the Hellespont. The Persian invasion was over. Xanthippus had indeed survived to raise his son, as Melaina had promised. The child's name was Perikles.
*
After his retreat from Greece following the battle of Salamis, Xerxes had spent the past year at Sardis, where he fell in love with his brother's wife. Xerxes' own wife had the woman's tongue torn out, her breasts, nose, ears, and lips cut off and fed to the dogs. Xerxes' brother then tried to stir up a revolt against Xerxes but was caught and executed. A general decadence fell over his empire, and Xerxes himself eventually succumbed to an assassin.
THE END
Here ends Volumes One and Two of The Mysteries, A Novel of Ancient Eleusis. Volume Three is titled The Twice Born, which tells the story of the two outcast children who lead the struggle to reinstitute the Mysteries of Eleusis. That volume is in process and will be available at a later date. For updates, please check www.themysteriesofeleusis.com.
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Also by David Sheppard:
Oedipus on a Pale Horse
Journey through Greece in Search of a Personal Mythology
Novelsmithing
The Structural Foundation of Plot, Character, and Narration
Introduction to Frankenstein
Origins and Aftermath
The Eternal Return
Oedipus, The Tempest, Forbidden Planet
The Escape of Bobby Ray Hammer
A Novel of a 50s Family
The Mysteries, A Novel of Ancient Eleusis Page 90