TERRIBLE NEWS FROM THERMOPYLÆ
Theria lay on her couch without change, except to grow weaker each day.
Baltè had her own remedies. She brought a sieve and suspended it from the
ceiling. Then she whirled it, reciting all the magic she knew and all the
cures. At whatever cure the sieve came to rest that one she tried. But,
alas, it did no good.
Nikander, in spite of urgent business with the priests, spent hour upon
hour beside his daughter. Sometimes he himself wondered at his strength
of love for a mere girl. He sat dreaming over her, learning her with a
new intimate vision which led him farther every hour.
Often and again as he looked across to where Melantho sat he would say:
“Wife, we have not understood this little one of ours, and now it is too
late.”
And Melantho would come around the couch and timidly kiss her husband’s
forehead.
Nikander, after his first keen gratitude to Eëtíon, was too beaten about
by the winds of fate to think of him. Eëtíon, however, came every day. He
was very shy, very guarded in his inquiries after the Delphic priestess.
His friendship for Dryas and Dryas’s devotion to him were ample excuse
for his coming.
Then on the fourth day of Theria’s illness Delphi rocked with news as at
times it rocked with actual earthquakes. The heralds from the north came
running, crying the news with spent voices:
“Thermopylæ is taken! Thermopylæ is taken by the Persians!”
Then after they took breath again from their long run—
“The Spartans are beaten back. The noble three hundred are killed every
man. Leonidas is killed. All, all is lost. The Persians stole through
over the mountain and attacked us from the rear. Thus they took the pass.
They are free in Hellas now to do their will upon you. Yes, they are
marching hither. They are already in the land of Daulis. They are not
forty miles away.”
The trembling Delphians were mute with horror.
“But the fleet,” pursued Nikander, “was the fleet also destroyed?”
Upon this the heralds had better news to tell.
“Oh, the fleet, wonderful! The gods themselves! Never was known such a
storm. Three days it lasted, oh, Delphians. Rain, torrents of rain, now
in midsummer when we never have rain. Wind! Oh, such wind that it strewed
the Persian ships in heaps along the shore—windrows of ships and drowned
Persians. But our ships, the Athenians were safe in the Eubœan strait.
Not one was lost in the storm and very few by battle. Well said your
Oracle: ‘Pray to the winds.’”
Nikander, his heart swelling with joy and pride, began to see dimly that
miracles can happen in spite of sacrilege and in other than accepted ways.
“The Athenians?” he asked. “Are they hopeful?”
“Oh, hopeful! Heartened by the god’s help and the storm’s help. Of course
the Persian and Ionian ships still outnumber them. But the Athenians say
that some god is on their side. They are ready to fight again. They are
hastening back to Athenian waters for the fighting.”
But Delphi had no such hope. Delphi was all confusion. She had no real
army even though she was an independent state. She had only her temple
guard. This guard had been sufficient in ordinary times. For all Hellas
revered Apollo’s temple. No Hellenic state would dare plunder Apollo’s
shrine. But now! Those hordes of barbarians who knew not the god. From
these the Delphians well knew what to expect.
They hurriedly left the heralds. Everywhere now were seen men with their
families, their slaves, carrying burdens, some hurrying up toward the
mountain, some hurrying down toward the port of Kirrha. But the braver
citizens stayed with white faces to consult the Oracle once more.
Nikander, hastening homeward, found these and the priests already at his
door.
“You must give us back the Pythia, Nikander,” spoke Kobon angrily. “The
Oracle must be consulted at once. Who ever heard of a Pythia being taken
home again?”
Nikander pushed through the crowd and stood with his back to the closed
door.
“You may not take her,” he said. “She is dying. She would die before she
reached the tripod.”
“She might not. You know very well, Nikander, that on the edge of death
the Pythia often prophesies best.”
Timon took Nikander’s arm.
“I am sorry, cousin,” he said, “but you know that what Kobon says is
true. This is no time for a man to think of his own household. She might
save the very shrine.”
“She cannot save it,” said Nikander stubbornly. “She has not spoken for
four days. She is beyond all speech. Aristonikè is not so ill as she.”
He closed his eyes for a moment, trying to decide what he might and might
not tell. “My daughter has no gift of ecstasy,” he ventured. “No oracles
come to her at all.”
“Nikander, what lies! You know the very best of the oracles have been
through her.”
“Aristonikè,” broke in another priest; “Aristonikè prophesies nothing but
ill.”
They seized Nikander, held him struggling, while priests and citizens
broke upon the door and rushed into the house.
“Dryas, Dryas, help me!” Nikander shouted; but if Dryas was there he did
not appear.
Nikander heard Baltè shriek as the priests caught up her nurseling. Forth
they rushed again, his daughter white as death in a stalwart priest’s
arms. So they hurried up the road toward the temple.
Then Nikander from his house saw temple slaves running to meet the
priests, saw them all stop together. They crowded in confusion. Then from
the confusion came the same temple slaves and to Nikander’s amazement
they were bearing Theria in their arms, bringing her home again. The
priests and citizens ran onward frantically up to the temple.
Nikander wrested himself free and ran to meet the slaves. They gave her
carefully into his arms.
“She is dead, already dead?” he whispered.
“No—no, Master,” they assured him.
He did not pause to find out what had happened but hurried back with
Theria to her couch, where on a sudden he could do nothing but weep and
wring his hands. Baltè had to compose both her patient and him, assuring
him over and over again that no harm had been done.
It was Dryas who, later, hurrying home from the Precinct, told Nikander
what had happened.
“Aristonikè,” he announced, “passed into ecstasy suddenly without any
rites and prophesied wonderful things. They carried her to the tripod
even while she prophesied. The crowd of priests coming from our house
reached the adytum just in time to hear her cry out:
“‘The god will care for his own.’
“Then she fell forward into old Akeretos’s arms and was dead.”
Nikander shuddered. “Poor child,” he said, “poor, poor little girl.”
“But, Father, think what that means!” said Dryas. “‘The god will care for
his own’!”
Nikander put his hand on Dryas’s shoulder.
“Yes, yes, my son, you are right, but had any one asked a question? How
did it happen?”
“But, Father, don’t you know that Akeretos himself has been asking a
question for days? He is so old, I suppose he knows the Oracle better
than any of us. He says that in his youth this method was tried and
answer received beyond all hope.
“But what did he do?” asked the dazed Nikander.
“He made sacrifice right in front of the Pythia House, not as usual on
the Great Altar. The question which he was to ask was: ‘What shall we
do to save the treasures of the god? Shall we hide them in the hills?’
But he repeated not this question at all, but instead, the while he
was sacrificing, he kept repeating to himself the answer which he
desired—thinking only of this answer: ‘The god will care for his own.
The sacred things must not be touched by mortal hands. The god will care
for his own.’ And sure enough within the house, locked within it indeed,
Aristonikè awoke from sleep with a low cry and began to say those very
words:
“Touch not the sacred things,
The god will care for his own!”
“So when Tuchè came running out to tell him, Akeretos brought Aristonikè
forth to the tripod.”
Dryas paused, taking a long breath.
“And now all the Delphians say there is no need to stay to defend our
Delphi. We may all flee to the mountains while the god alone fights for
us. We of the household also must make haste to go.”
It was almost a pleading look which poor Dryas bent upon his father.
“You can go if you will, Dryas. For my part, I shall not leave the
shrine.”
Again Dryas took a long breath. His cheek paled and he looked down, then
he said:
“I might have known you would answer that. I shall stay with you.”