for its neck and chaplets of flowers for ourselves, though Pindaros refused to let Io mount.
Perhaps I should write here that the temple of the Grain Goddess is called the Royal House and that Pindaros said it was different from any other he had seen. Certainly it seems strange enough to me. It is large and square, and its interior is filled with pillars, so that one walks in it as in a forest of stone. They say the fire before the statue has been kept burning since the goddess wished to bathe the infant Demophon in its flames.
I will not give the words we spoke to the goddess before we sacrificed; I do not think it lawful. When all had been said, I put my hand on the bullock's head and begged the goddess to join my friends and me in our meal. Polyhommes poured milk in the bullock's ear, asking whether it wished to go to the goddess. It nodded, and Polyhommes cut its throat with the holy knife, which is of bronze, not iron. We cast certain parts of the carcass into the flames, and everyone relaxed.
'A good sacrifice, wouldn't you say, Holiness?' Pindaros smiled and straightened his chaplet of blossoms.
'A most excellent sacrifice,' Polyhommes assured him.
Hilaeira's eyes were bright with tears. 'I feel I'm a friend of the goddess's already,' she said. 'Once I thought she smiled at me. I really did.'
'She does have a kind face,' Polyhommes said, smiling up at his goddess. 'Severe, but-'
Io asked, 'What's the matter?'
He did not answer. He had been ruddy, but his cheeks were as white as tallow now, and the hand that held the sacred blade shook so that I feared he would drop it. Pindaros took his arm. 'Are you ill?' 'Let me sit,' Polyhommes gasped, and Pindaros and I led him to the nearest bench. His forehead was beaded with sweat; when he was seated, he wiped it with a corner of his robe. 'You wouldn't know,' he said. 'You're not familiar with her, as I am.'
'What is it?' Pindaros asked. 'My family always supplies the priests… '
'You told us that.'
'So we're always in and out of the Royal House, even when we're just children. I've seen the goddess… I've seen her statue I suppose ten thousand times.' We nodded.
'Now I want one of you-you, little girl-to describe it to me. I must know whether you see what I do.'
Io asked, 'Just talk about her? She's real big, bigger than any real woman. She wears her hair off her shoulders, I think probably in a knot at the back of her head. Should I go around and see?'
'No. Go on.'
'And she's got a crown of poppies, and wheat-a sheaf of wheat, is that what they call it?-in her hand. Her other hand is pointing at the floor.'
The fat priest let out his breath in a great whoosh. 'I must see my uncle-get him to rule on this. All four of you remain here. Right here. It might be better if you didn't speak.'
He hurried off, and we sat in silence. It seemed to me there should have been a feeling of peace then in the quiet temple, peace engendered by its sullen fire, its bars of sunshine and deep shadows; but there was none. Rather it seemed filled with soft yet heavy noises, as if some massive beast stirred and stamped where it could not be seen.
Polyhommes soon returned. 'Our high priest has gone to the city; I'll have to decide this myself.' He seemed calmer, and the heavy odor of wine was on his breath. 'Very well. You must accept my statement that I have observed this statue many times, and that until today its left hand has always rested upon the head of the stone boar standing beside it.'
Hilaeira's mouth opened, and even Pindaros gave a low whistle.
'A miracle-a major miracle-has taken place here today. A great sign. Did any of you see it? See the hand actually move?'
Pindaros, Hilaeira, and I all shook our heads. Io had trotted around the sacred hearth to look more closely at the statue.
'A pity, and yet move it surely did, doubtless at the very moment of sacrifice, when our eyes were on the victim.' Polyhommes paused, drew a deep breath, and let it out again. 'I suppose you've heard about the dead woman in the city? She's said to have walked until cockcrow and spoken to many persons, and the whole town's abuzz over it. No one knows what it may mean, and now this! Wait until word of this gets out! Can you imagine it?'
'I can,' Pindaros said. 'I hope I'm far away by then.'
Polyhommes continued as though he had not heard him. 'This is something you can see for yourself and go home and tell your children about. This is-'
Io called. 'There's a clean place on the pig's head where the hand used to be. Come look!'
No doubt it was a measure of our amazement that all of us did, obedient as children to a child's command. She was right. Smoke from the sacred fire had grimed the boar's head, but the broken marble where the goddess's hand had left it was white and new.
'Think what this will mean for our Royal House.' Polyhommes rubbed his hands. 'For the mysteries!'
'And I was here,' Hilaeira whispered.
'Indeed you were, my daughter. Indeed you were! And when you've fathomed the mysteries-well, priests are always chosen from the men of our family, as I've said. But there is a place-the highest of all-for a woman in the ceremonies.'
Hilaeira stared at him, a dawning wonder in her eyes. 'She too is customarily of the Eumolpides, but that is no insupportable obstacle. There is adoption, after all. There is even marriage. Such arrangements might be made by the high priest, and there can surely be no question now about who the next high priest will be.'
Polyhommes threw out his chest. 'My uncle is an elderly man, and it would seem that the goddess has made her wishes regarding his successor quite clear. There was, after all, only one priest present at the time of the miracle.'
Io asked, 'But what does she want?'
'Eh?' He turned to look at her. 'The goddess. Why's she pointing at the floor?'
'I'm not sure.' The fat priest hesitated. 'When such a gesture is used by one in authority, it generally means that something or someone is to be brought to him.'
Pindaros cleared his throat. 'An oracle in our shining city directed that Latro be brought to the goddess.'
'Ah. And he was the giver of the sacrifice-officially, at least.' Polyhommes turned to me. 'Young man, you must remain in this Royal House overnight, sleeping on the floor or upon one of these benches. Perhaps the goddess herself will appear in your dreams. If not, I think it likely she'll favor you with some message.'
Thus I am here, sitting with my back against a column and writing these words by the light of the declining sun. I have had a good deal of time to think this afternoon; and it seems to me that more than once I have felt the spirit of a house when I, a stranger, went into that house-though I cannot retrieve from the mist those times or those houses. A temple is the house of the god who dwells there, and so I open myself to this house of the Grain Goddess, hoping to know whether it is friendly to me.
There is nothing-or rather, there is only the sense of age. It is as if I sit with a woman so old she neither knows nor cares whether I am real or only some figment of her disordered mind, a shadow or a ghost. A fly may light upon a rock; but what does the rock, which has seen whole ages since the morning when gods strode from hill to hill, care for a fly, the creature of a summer? CHAPTER XIX-In the Presence of the Goddess
I ate the beef, bread, and fruit Io had brought me from the inn, and drank the wine. When I was finished, I spread the pallet Hilaeira had carried and lay down; but I was not in the least ready for sleep, and when the town grew quiet, I sat up again.
For a time I read this scroll (which I must try always to keep with me) by the light of the sacred fire, learning of the many gods and goddesses who have shown themselves to me; and once or twice I took up the stylus to add some conclusion to the account of today's events I had written earlier. But how can a man draw conclusions from what he does not comprehend? I knew I did not understand what occurred, and it seemed to me that it would be better to wait until the goddess had spoken. Now I sit in the same place to write this record.
An acolyte entered without taking the least notice of me and, mumbling a prayer, cast an armload of cedar into the fire. It fell with a deep booming, as though the sacred hearth were a drum and not a stone. When I dozed, that booming echoed through my dreams and woke me.
