CHAPTER XXXII
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.”