by Byrne Fone
Sometimes as I stood near the altar ready to give my father a beaker filled with lustral water or hand him the bowl of incense, as the smoke of sacrifice rose to heaven I would feel light-headed. My eyes would lose their focus and the room around me shimmer, fade and disappear. It was as if I rose from out of my body. I could look down and in some odd way see myself still standing there, still mechanically serving at the altar. But my spirit was elsewhere, in other places, other times. Often the vision would be as fleeting as a cloud quickly scudding across the sky. It would end as suddenly as it came. Then I would descend back into my body and awake to find myself handing my father the sickle used to cut the barley sheaves. It was as if no time had passed there at the altar, though in my visions I sometimes thought I had traversed a thousand years.
When it first happened it came suddenly to me, unexpectedly. I was fourteen summers then. I was alone one afternoon in the temple washing the altar after the morning sacrifice. The scent of incense mixed with the smell of the blood that still stained the altar, the fruit, brought earlier, smelling sweet, even a little rotten made me dizzy. I sat to rest on the lower step of the altar when the now familiar feeling possessed me for the first time. I do not now remember what I saw, but I do know that it was sweet and filled me with strange rich pleasure. My body seemed to be afire, to be transparent, I felt in tune with music I could not hear but only felt as I rose up and out of my body into a rich immensity and expectation. I had never known such, how can I call it, such ecstasy. I think that I never have again.
Once begun, the visions continued, always coming when I did not expect them. Some visions seemed harmless, many delighted me, others I could not fathom. Was it the past I saw, some long ago and distant age, some vanished nation? Or did I see what was to come? Often I never knew, for I saw nothing that I understood or recognized, no faces that I loved or feared. But others were not so inexplicable and as I grew older many filled me with terror. I came to fear the onset of the heady warning. One vision especially recurred. Fragments of it would haunt my dreams. It would flash upon me in unlikely places: at the market, cutting wheat sheaves in the field. In it I saw running men with spears; I could hear no sound, but I saw faces filled with horror and with fear. I saw women raped and murdered. Buildings in flame, men in armor, wounded, men dead. I did not know then what it meant. I know now. All I knew was that when I came back into myself, I was sick with terror.
This vision in one of its many forms came to me again one early morning when I was handing my father the grain for the offering. I must have staggered, or paused, or given some indication that all was not well. But then I came back into myself, and though dizzied, managed to continue. My father looked at me oddly with a keen and penetrating glance. But as he must he continued the ritual without a word. He was Apollo’s priest and little escaped him. Did he know what seized me? Who came to me?
Afterwards he led me to outside to the long stone bench in the courtyard. He brought me a beaker of water mixed with some wine. He gently asked if I was well. I did not know what to say. He could see my fear, my uncertainty.
Then he said, simply, “I know.” He took me in his arms, saying, “I knew this must one day come. Now it is time for you to know everything.”
It was then that he told me about the miracle of my birth. “You are chosen, Chryseis,” he said. “You belong to the god. Never forget that.” He told me because he knew as well as I do now, better no doubt, what was due to a woman to whom the god had given such a gift.
Chapter 4
Chryseis
The morning sun became warmer and the bees hummed around us. A gentle breeze blew the perfume of lavender and thyme, like incense around us. No clouds scudded above. The sky was so blue and clear that it was as if a light glittered about us like silver. I will always remember that day, and remember what he told me, word for word.
“After our son, your brother died, your mother and I were desperate. We prayed and sacrificed to Zeus and Hera to give us a child. I visited foul huts in the dark of the moon and bought erotic nostrums from wizards and mad old women, all to no avail. Hypasia went on a mid-summer night deep into the dark forests to dance with bacchantes in hopes that her fertility would be restored, swaying to the drums and cymbals in that fearful night of abandon where women dance before the goddess until they are mad. With them she smeared her naked body with blood and semen got from who knows where, and tore in pieces small living animals and devoured them for the potency of their blood. What other things she did, too fearful to speak of, the very rumor of which disgusts men and makes them turn from their wives in horror, I did not want to know. But to have a child I let her do it. No gods heard us, and we had begun to despair, for you should know, then I was not a priest.
“We had always heard of the great Sibyl, a wise woman and oracle on the island of Tenedos. But it was said that though many came to seek her aid, she seldom granted audiences, and some even said that she did not exist at all. It was not a great voyage, but we were poor and even such short travel would tax our resources, for the captains of the boats that went to Tenedos knew that their passengers were often desperate people who would pay anything for passage there. But we knew that we must go and so we made the journey on foot to Larissa, nestled on the seashore, and there boarded a small ship filled with hopeful people that plied back and forth to Tenedos, to the oracle on that isle sacred to Apollo.
We landed on Tenedos at the small village that served as a docking point, a handful of houses, a dirty tavern, and joined a rag-tag group of people, all of whom were seeking comfort from the oracle. The shrine was approached by a narrow track that led us finally to a dark grove of ancient trees deep in the center of the island. There in a small clearing ringed by low stonewalls and near a spring that flowed into a natural stone basin, we found that we were hardly alone. A hundred suppliants at least sat on the grass, clutching cages of animals for sacrifice, or panniers of vegetables and grain, all gifts to the oracle, waiting and hoping to be admitted. Mostly women and some men waited there, some poor farmers like us, others displaying signs of worldly wealth that was of no avail when the gods did not smile on them. We sat in this throng all one day, and through a night, and then into the next day. We feared that the little store of bitter wine, onions, and bread that we had brought with us would soon be exhausted. We held hands tightly. A current of anxiety and fear seemed to pass from hand to hand and as I held her I could feel her heart racing like that of a terrified animal before the sacrifice. Then, just as the moon began to rise on the second night, a young priestess appeared from out of the forest and came and stood before the crowd. With the moonlight at her back, dark robes softly billowing in the scented evening breeze, her gaunt face painted, her eyes dark and hollow, she was at once a figure of fear and hope.
“Who seeks the oracle?” she asked in a low toneless voice. Everyone clamored at once: “Take me, take me.” The priestess walked slowly among the crowd, her hands brushing heads as she passed. She paused before some and asked, “What have you brought for the oracle and to please the God?” People desperately held up their offerings: a caged rabbit, a bag of squashes, a cask of bitter wine. She looked and passed on. Then she came to us. “What have you brought for the oracle and to please the God?” she asked your mother.
We had brought no offering. Why, I do not know. Somehow it had never, in our desperation, occurred to us to do so. My heart went dead. But Hypasia said. “ I have nothing save my need.”
Silence.
The priestess touched Hypasia’s hair.
“Come,” she said.
We followed her deeper into the forest until we stood before the entrance to the grotto, a fissure in the rock, almost invisible behind a curtain of hanging vines. They smelled oddly, a mixture of aromatic herbs and something more noxious. We pushed through them and squeezed into what was barely a hole wide enough for a child. But once through it opened out into a cave, not high enough to stand upright, but lighted by a feeble torch so that
we could just see that the walls had been painted with circles and swirling designs, red figures of men and animals. A small brightly colored snake slithered away from us as we entered, hissing slightly as it disappeared into a crevice in the stone. The priestess pointed to the end of the cave and we saw that it descended into gloom. She took the torch from its holder on the wall and gave it to us. Then she disappeared back through the entrance. Deep in that dark precinct beneath the earth we traveled down and down on a narrow path between walls that sweated moisture and on which too were more of the same incomprehensible designs. As we continued down the steep path, bats, disturbed by the light of our torch, swooped past our heads. In the distance we could hear an odd low muttering that dully echoed against the dank stone walls. The air grew close and hot; the smell was fetid, unpleasant--a reek of feces, decay, and flesh. Finally we came to her—sister it must be of the great Sibyl at Delphi—where she waited for us. She sat cross-legged in a stone chair. Her age was impossible to determine; her head was covered with a shawl and around her scraps of food moldered; a small fire burned in a low tripod before her. She did not seem to see us; her head was bowed and she was crooning a wordless tune, more a humming than song. We stood, not certain what to do. Then she made a gesture; the fire in the tripod leapt up, lightened the room. She raised her head and stared at us, her face was shadowed by the shawl, but her eyes were sharp and reflected the leaping flames. I felt that she was looking at me and through me, beyond me, into the past and the future at once. She said nothing, just stared. Despite the heat and the close and almost airless cave, I felt a chill as if I had been plunged into an icy stream. Hypasia’s hand gripped mine even harder, her nails digging into my palm. The fire cast leaping shadows on the wall. Smoke swirled up, blue and acrid, filling the room until we could hardly breathe. Then as suddenly as it had all begun, the fire died; she shrank back into her chair and her head fell upon her breast. A feeble gesture of her hand was dismissal enough for us to flee, gasping for air and in terror. Later, when we talked about it, we both agreed that though there had been no sound we both heard a voice, clear and musical and young. Return home, the answer is in plain sight before you. We left knowing that Apollo had spoken, and we knew what we must do.
We returned to Chrysa. Just as the voice had said the answer lay before us. Not far from our house was the ancient temple of Apollo, now disused and there we found the answer to our prayers. It stood on a high promontory above the sea, and spoke of an age long forgotten, of builders who lived long before our people had come to this land, and even of other gods, of gods unknown. Near it was a small grove, sacred surely to Apollo, of stunted, gnarled, and ancient trees that took the wind that blew almost constantly from the water. Many of the trees were hung with offerings, figures made of reeds or cloth, animals—rabbits, a rooster-- hung by nooses, their bones poking through the drying skin.
We did not need to discuss further what we needed to do. The musical voice was fresh in our ears and we were both certain that the god guided us. We waited till the moon was full. Dressed and purified Hypasia and I made the trip to the temple. We brought a sacrifice of grain and honey as we knew we should, and hand in hand we entered between the high dark columns, walked across the broken stone floor, and sank to our knees before the crumbling altar. We looked at one another, and hands still clasped said the ancient prayers that, somehow, we seemed to know, petitioning the god to give us a second chance to have a child.
A rustle of cloth and a footstep followed upon our prayer. An elderly priest appeared from the door behind the altar; in the half-light we could barely see him. “Welcome, “ he said. “I have been waiting long.” We looked at him in wonder. But he said no more. He raised his hand in blessing over us and the sacrifice. Just as had the priestess in Tenedos, he came from the altar and brushed his hand over Hypasia’s head, and then over mine. Then, without a word, he walked out of the temple and into the moonlight toward Apollo’s grove, and just before he entered among the ancient trees, all of them silvered by the pale glimmer of the rising moon, he turned once, made a sign of benediction, and then he faded into the enfolding darkness.
We sat hand in hand before the altar. The moon rose higher, casting long shadows from the columns, turning the image of the god into a glowing figure that seemed to beckon us. As the night grew longer and the moon rose higher, little mice began to play around the base of the image. They too seemed to be made of silver and they glittered as they scurried here and there busily nibbling at the grain we had brought, making happy little squeaks that seemed somehow welcoming and almost musical as if they were singing a wedding song.
And this was what it was to be, this night, a wedding once again for us. The god had told us what to do. Settling on a pallet on the floor in front of the statue of the god, with silver mice playing around us, with the smell of wine from our libations which we too had sipped, with the incense and the smoke from the little fire we had made in the tripod on the altar curling in translucent columns up into the high ceiling of the sanctuary, we lay together and made love. The moon threw glowing shafts in counterpoint to the darker shadows of the ancient columns. The god watched over us; the cuckoo sounded in the sweet perfumed night. I have never known such love. Nor ever would again, for that was one price I would pay for answered prayers.
The next morning we awoke as if from the sleep of a hundred years. The old priest sat near us, smiling. He gave us clear water in a bronze bowl, and said prayers of purification as we washed. Then he offered us sweet wine, finer than any I have ever since had, and bread and olives and soft white cheese to break our fast.
“What can we do….”? I started to say. He interrupted me: “You have done it. You will know what name to take”
“I do not understand.”
“You will, soon enough. But you can know this. It is the will of god that Hypasia will be with child. There is no doubt. The god will seek you out and when he calls you must answer. That is the price and the sacrifice.”
An old had set and a new moon had risen since our holy night. Your mother was pregnant—with you! Apollo had not played us false. I visited the temple to give thanks. Of the old priest there was nothing to be seen. No one was near save a farmer who tilled the fields adjacent to the temple precincts. He looked at me in wonder when I asked about the priest. “Oh no sir,” he said, “There has been no priest here since time out of mind. I know. No priest at all. I thought that you had come, sir, to be priest to us.” And then it was clear. That was the price. I was to be Apollo’s priest.
Hypasia was growing larger every day. I loved to look at her there as she sat on sun-drenched stone, her golden hair flowing lustrously over her shoulders, those dark eyes that caught my love happy again, her face radiant and her belly filling with our child, our hope. I would rest from moving rocks or repairing a wall and come to her, sit by her, kiss her, adore her. She was mine, my miracle, as you would become.
And people heard, I do not know how, of our “miracle.” They came to the temple to see Hypasia and touch her swelling stomach. They called her holy. And they came to me to ask my blessing. And I gave it, for somehow, I do not know how, I knew what to say to them. I knew the prayers, was adept at the rituals, as if I had been born to do it.
Though some of exemplary piety devote themselves to the gods and sacrifice the comforts of home, hearth, and family, few gods require of men what they are unwilling to give themselves. In our land priests live with their wives just as Zeus with Hera. And so our life remained much as before save that now we lived in the priest’s house by the temple gate and left our little farmhouse for this larger and more spacious home, four rooms to the two we had before, a spacious hearth, windows through which the sea air comes, and a stone floor. A good thing it was too, for Apollo kept his promise. You were born and you were beautiful. But for your mother it was a difficult birth, so much so that we were never able again to make love.
One day shortly before you were due to be born, it occurred to me to a
sk the farmer--his name was Telamon--who now helped me clear the land and rebuild the walls around the temple, if he knew by what name the priests of that temple had been called. “Why Chryses, sir,” he said. “Its Chrysa here, you know that. And I’m told that Chryses was the name they took that served here.” In memory I heard the old priest’s voice: “You will know what name to take.” I knew that I must be Chrsyes too. And my daughter too. Hypasia and we named you Chryseis, the golden one.”
I could not speak after hearing this story. But no words were needed. I bent my head upon his shoulder and he took me in his arms. Peace enfolded us, as if my mother’s spirit had come to comfort us. We sat for a long time, in the warmth of the mid-day sun, holding one another, sharing tears.
Chapter 5
Chryseis
My mother had been dead for three years and I had reached womanhood—eighteen summers-- when the rumors began. A great armada was sailing to invade Troy. Barbarian Achaeans from distant islands would soon to be upon us. Pilgrims brought warnings and more rumors, but no one seemed to know the truth. But we soon learned. An army did land, beaching its dark ships on the shores, setting up camp within sight of the city of Troy itself. Rumors became reality. Messengers galloped across the plain, not stopping at the temple as they ought to have done, but rushed on unknown errands in the direction of Troy. First messengers, then cohorts of soldiers. Men were called up from cities and villages to serve the king. A handful went from Chyrse when an imperious Trojan captain came with a dozen soldiers in gleaming breastplates and plumed helmets to demand from them the allegiance due to Priam.