by Laura Gill
Already, it was becoming clear that Ktimene could not touch me with either a belt or a switch without Phileia’s explicit permission, and the high priestess was absorbed with trying to include me in the upcoming winter solstice rites. “Now,” she said, “you can’t participate in the rites this year, so you won’t be included, but that just gives us more time to teach you about the year-cycle of the Mistress. And you can always help with what we’re doing here.”
She and Ktimene were preparing the ritual vessels and garments for solstice eve. Phileia let me handle the woman-shaped rhyton, whose perforated terracotta breasts let offerings of honey and milk spill onto the barren earth. I had only ever seen the lion’s head rhyton Father and Great-aunt Kitane used; this one struck me as a thing alternately sacred and obscene, something to giggle at even though I understood how holy such a representation of Mother Demeter was.
Then there were the robes of colored cloth, worn and dye-faded, consisting of bodices and wraparound skirts. “In summer we wear only the skirt,” Phileia explained. Threading the bone needle, jabbing, and tugging, she deftly repaired a rent in the hem of her skirt. “When you attain the female mysteries, you, too, can wear such garments.”
“Only if you’re worthy,” Ktimene added grimly. She was brushing stray bits of sweetening herbs from the wool and linen garments. “It’s a mark of honor to be able to dress as the goddess and wear the moon mask.”
The moon mask, the chalky white visage priestesses wore to signify that they were acting as the agents of the immortals, and should not be approached as the mortal women they were underneath. The ingredients were no different than those which occupied the many flasks and cosmetic palettes of any wellborn lady’s dressing table: the lampblack for kohl, the common red ocher to rouge the cheeks and lips, and the white lead to blanch the complexion. Ladies of the court never went barefaced in the megaron, whereas I as a maiden was permitted only a little ocher on the lips. That would have changed with my receiving the mysteries.
All this I told Phileia when she asked why priestesses painted their faces, and that would have sufficed had Ktimene not decided to belabor the point. “Why a white face, girl, and not a red or yellow one?”
Her mocking tone irritated me. “Because of the whiteness of the Lady’s moon,” I replied. “And because goddesses are like the ladies of the court who don’t have to labor under the hot sun like peasant women. Men prefer pretty white arms and faces.”
Ktimene snorted. Her scalp gleamed with the oil she used to soften her skin after she shaved. “What does the Mistress care what men think of her?”
“I’m only repeating what my aunt and the ladies of the court told me!” I exclaimed defensively. “Were they wrong?”
“No, the women of Argos are correct,” Phileia replied. “The moon mask evokes the Mistress’s moon face, but it also signifies the strength of her purity. Red, of course, signifies both the life-giving properties of blood and the blood of sacrifice, and black signifies the black of the fertile earth and the fetidness of decay.” Securing her thread, she bit off a length and smoothed her work. “One day, you’ll experience these mysteries within yourself, and you’ll be grateful that you have the Mistress to guide and safeguard you.”
Ktimene showed me how to mix charcoal, ocher, and white lead with goose fat and eggs in separate bowls for that night’s ceremony. She used the mortar and pestle to crush the charcoal, then, once she sifted the black powder into the ceramic bowl, she added the goose fat and with a wooden stick whisked them together.
I wished Phileia instructed me instead, as I learned better when it was the high priestess. Ktimene noticed my reticence and commented, “Why so shy today? You act like I’ve scorpions in the bowl.” A sardonic grunt passed for laughter. “Come closer, or you won’t learn much. I don’t bite.”
Not bite, maybe, but box an ear, most definitely. “My aunt’s women never let me touch the cosmetics or costly oils.” I told a partial falsehood. Wordeia’s tiring woman often let me dip my finger into the rouge, but not the expensive myrrh, frankincense, or Egyptian oil of lotus that came in small flasks, themselves works of art with their painted scenes.
I sidled over and took the stick she handed me to inspect the consistency of the lampblack. My stepmother always used to scold her women for making her cosmetics too thick and cakey; the ladies gossiped that the women did it deliberately. “Do you have a mirror?”
“Phileia and I paint each other.” Ktimene glanced past me, and with a thrust of her chin indicated the bucket hanging on its peg by the door. “You’d better draw the water for the bath.”
Outside, the mountain air was cold and smelled of wood smoke and pine. Off to the left, the trail leading to the megaron was churned and muddy from the passage of the many women preparing for the night’s feast; only the rituals at the bonfire would take place outdoors. As for that bonfire, as I passed by the heart of the settlement, I encountered Sostrate directing a dozen women in shoveling away the previous night’s new-fallen snow to clear the hearth. The Hunter presented a fierce countenance in her fur coverings, and the blackness of her raven headdress stood out against the paler hues of her surroundings.
I did not fetch the water from the usual well, but from the rarely visited sacred spring where the trickle had frozen over, and where I had to work with the stone pick Phileia had given me earlier in the season to release the flood. It would take several trips to completely fill the tub, though I did not have to bother with heating the water. I found it mind-boggling that Phileia and Ktimene intended to immerse themselves in the freezing water. Why would the Mistress demand something so harsh, and potentially so dangerous? Cyrene always used to hustle me in and out of the bath before I caught cold. Were the priestesses not concerned?
“Why do you think I had you draw the water early?” Ktimene explained when I returned for the fourth and last time and asked about it. “It won’t be quite so cold once it’s sat near the hearth for a few hours.” I started to point out that Phileia had specifically said the water could not be heated over the fire, when Ktimene added with a wink, “The old rule says nothing about the water sitting beside the fire.” She shifted the last bucket onto the broad hearth curb. “It’ll help a little, though not much, I’m afraid. And before you ask, I don’t know why the rules are the way they are. Phileia doesn’t know, either. I asked, too. When customs and laws and rituals are passed down, the reasons why don’t always follow. The laws just are.”
Phileia returned shortly with word that the festival meats were ready. By then, I had finished grinding the white lead and red ocher in the mortar, and mixing them in their bowls with goose fat to Ktimene’s satisfaction.
“Move the tub beside the hearth,” Phileia said. As Ktimene worked with her to shift the tub, I wondered how they reconciled following the law by circumventing it, regardless of the fact that even I considered the law absurd.
When called upon to help pour the water, I dipped in a finger and was dismayed by how frigid it remained. The priestesses took turns bathing, wetting their hair and sponging their bodies, before quickly stepping out to wrap themselves in woolen cloths and warm their limbs by the fire.
“If you want to wash,” Phileia told me, “you can warm the water.” Her teeth rattled, and goose pimples pebbled her arms. “Ah, this never gets any easier.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t do it,” I ventured.
Phileia shook her head. “The Mistress demands it.”
“But why?” From my periphery, Ktimene shot me a look that said she had already answered my question, yet I persisted because I knew that one day the priestesses would expect me to take the same freezing baths.
“You don’t question.” Ktimene vigorously rubbed her arms. “When the Mistress commands, you obey.”
Phileia, however, offered a more reflective answer. “I can’t say for certain, the law is so old, but I think it must be to remind the goddess’s servants of her suffering and loss. We have to feel the cold for ourselves
before we can beseech her to take it away.”
“And that’s why you fast?” The fire at my back felt hot and reassuring. Heating the bathwater meant having to drain the tub afterward, in the cold with my hair still damp. “To experience the hunger mankind felt when Demeter wouldn’t let the crops grow?”
Phileia gave me a quizzical look. “An interesting way of describing it, but no, we fast because it sharpens the mind and makes us clear vessels for the Mistress’s will. We fast whenever the occasion demands, not just in the winter.”
Before the priestesses bathed, they had removed the Mistress of the House from her shelf and gingerly set her in the place of honor on the hearth curb to observe the preparations. Ktimene let her towel drop to the floor, reached for a jar standing beside the goddess, and began to anoint herself.
Fascinated, I watched Ktimene oil her skin. There was something sleek and powerful about her limbs, something mesmerizing about her shaven scalp coated with oil, and when she stood and in her nakedness raised her arms to invoke the goddess, a disquieting shiver passed through me.
Her powerful voice calling upon the aspects of the Mistress only deepened those feelings. “Hail, Potnia! Mistress of the House, Giver of Life and Receiver of the Dead, hail!” Firelight and shadow played upon her glistening skin, as if spirits danced inside her. “Hail, Hekate, dark goddess! Hail, Potnia Theron, Mistress of the Beasts! Hail, Artemis, Mistress of the Winds!” I scarcely heard the words, the catalogue of the goddess’s sacred names, only drank in the scent of sage and fire-warmed bare skin, and wondered how someone so troubled and troubling could channel such power.
Phileia followed, anointing herself with the same sage-scented oil and chanting the invocation. As she recited the litany of the Mistress’s sacred names, she seemed to grow in stature, and her voice resonated with authority.
“Now,” she said afterward, “the goddess inhabits us both.”
Bewildered, I asked, “How is that possible? I thought it was only the high priestess who got to become the goddess.”
Phileia gave me an enigmatic smile. “Why, the Mistress is both one and many. Think of all the sanctuaries where she will appear this night. Down in the lowlands, in Tegea and Mantinea, here in the mountains among the other tribes of sacred women, in the royal houses of Argos and Tiryns, of Athens, Corinth, Thebes, and everywhere else where Demeter searched for her lost daughter. All those high priestesses will call the goddess to her, and she will come, and because she comes to receive the people’s worship spring will come with her.”
“I once saw that in Argos,” I said, even though I found it hard to connect with the princess of Argos who had seen Queen Eurydike receive the goddess. I bit my lip and waited for someone to point out that Outis had never lived in Argos.
Instead, Phileia sat down. “Tell us what you saw, while we paint our faces. Light more lamps.”
I filled the lamps with fresh oil and lit the cloth wicks before bringing them to the hearth. Phileia urged me to arrange the lamps around the Mistress of the House. Ktimene brought out small wooden cosmetic sticks for the lampblack and linen sponges for the white lead and red ocher. “We are coming, Mistress!” she chanted. “We are bringing the kykeon and opening the doors. We are lighting the night to bring Koré home!”
Phileia loaded her linen sponge with white lead for Ktimene’s face. “Tell us, Outis, how they welcome the goddess on solstice eve in Argos.”
“My aunt said—I mean, I heard from someone that the queen prepares the megaron and makes the sacred drink.” Would the priestesses reprimand me for my slip of the tongue? I watched Ktimene’s tawny skin vanish under layers of white cosmetic. Even the plum of her lips disappeared. “I heard that she paints herself and makes herself beautiful, and she has a bath, like you do, but with hot water. That takes all afternoon.”
“Ah.” Phileia moved from Ktimene’s face to daub her scalp with a layer of white; that was a curiosity I had neither expected nor seen before. “And did you help with those preparations?”
I shook my head.
“Did you see the rites?”
I nodded. “Only a little, because I had to go to bed early.” When it was Eurydike’s turn to play hostess to the ragged Demeter, she brought her lowborn oafishness to the rites. Many of the court’s ladies mocked her coarseness during the next night’s solstice feast.
Phileia inspected her work, dabbing here and there where the white lead provided insufficient cover. “Yes, finished.” Ktimene, her face and neck now a death hue of white, smeared her sponge in the mixture while Phileia pulled back and secured her wispy hair with a pin.
“Which of you will play the goddess tonight?” I asked. Phileia had said the Mistress as Demeter would appear from the shadows between the trees once all the women were gathered at the bonfire and accept the kykeon, but she had not explained further. “You both have the goddess inside you, so which one offers the drink and which one accepts and lets spring come?”
Phileia uttered a bemused little laugh. “Ah, that’s between us.” One cheek and an eye socket showed white already, as if she were slowly being turned to stone. Ktimene needed longer to apply the cosmetic, for although Phileia was a smaller woman with more delicate bones it required a careful eye to make sure the paint evenly penetrated the creases between the old woman’s wrinkles. Ktimene squinted, grunted, and instructed the high priestess in gruff tones to turn her head this way and that, while Phileia admonished her not to frown or purse her lips too much. “All that scowling and you’ll crack your moon mask.”
Once she finished painting Phileia, Ktimene rose and, wearing nothing but her cosmetics and her rumpled bath sheet about her shoulders, peered outside to gauge the hour. She resembled a lioness with a woman’s face, a creature that Cyrene had called a sphinx; she even lifted her head to scent the air like a beast. “A blizzard threatens,” she announced. “The goddess’s sorrows are very great. We will have to double our entreaties.”
“Be grateful you can stay in tonight,” Phileia commented to me. “There was a terrible snowstorm the first time I accompanied Alexandra to the rites. I remember, the howling wind almost smothered the bonfire, and knocked a vessel of beer into the snow. The Mistress took her own libation that night.” She nodded. “Remain with the Mistress of the House. I’ll send someone with food and drink. Remember to make the offerings.”
“I’ll come myself to make sure you do.” Ktimene had since shut the door and shed the bath sheet again. “Tonight’s not a night to stint her.”
I avoided looking at the squat idol beside me; the ancient Mistress promised to be a dour hearth companion.
Sunset came, bringing with it the first hint of twilight, and then it was time for the priestesses to appear. Rhona, wearing a bright woolen skirt and a wreath of evergreens, knocked on the door. “Come, High Priestess, and join us,” she told Phileia. “The bonfire burns. The Women of the Mountain sing the praises of the Mistress, but she will not come without you to offer the nourishing kykeon.” Her intonation carried the substance of ritual. No one had told me how the evening’s ceremonies would proceed; my designated role was to silently observe wherever I could and to be patient about the rest. My time would come.
Phileia delivered her formulaic response. “Go, then, Woman of the Mountain, and tell your sisters that we have prepared the kykeon, and that we come by the Lady’s horned moon.” Even though the moon was waxing gibbous that night, no one could have corrected the moon-masked priestess. She spoke with authority, leaving me without a doubt that a horned moon had hung in the sky on every winter’s solstice night, and would until time’s end.
Carrying her torch before her, Rhona departed, but now there were other women, half a dozen of them, garbed in colorful woolens and evergreen garlands, holding aloft sputtering torches exuding a heady scent of pine resin. From my place by the hearth, I saw the wind whip the torches into fiery demons. Snowflakes flurried the air. Not a night for anyone, not even Demeter, to be abroad, and part of me was grat
eful that I would not have to bundle up and head into the darkness.
Phileia and Ktimene drew mantles of dun wool trimmed with fur over their colorful vestments before stepping out into the snow. I ventured as far as the door to watch them leave, mindful of Phileia’s command to shut myself in though not yet willing to relinquish the sight of the priestesses disappearing among the women, and then into the mist that crawled among the shadows of the trees, the diminishing haloes of torchlight the only markers of their going. Only then, when the last halo blurred from sight, did I close the door.
Mindful of Phileia’s instructions, I rinsed my hair, scrubbed my face and hands, and then, opening the door just long enough to bail my bucket, tossed the cloudy water outside. Wind-driven snow turned to slush against the side of the house. Ktimene’s blizzard had not yet arrived, although I had no doubt it would come before morning. The falling snow obscured the tree-line and the outlines of the nearest houses, and masked the moon and stars. Once, as I emptied the last bucket, I perceived the glow of a bonfire through a parting of the mist. I thought I heard the raucous noise of celebration above the rattling of the shutters and the moaning breath of the mountain.
Apart from bathing, Phileia expected me to spend my time working wool and beseeching the Mistress to leave off her mourning. Did she mean for me to address those prayers to the Mistress of the House? I chanced a look at the forbidding little goddess bathed in the dancing firelight. “Stop staring at me.” My belly growled. Phileia had apparently forgotten her promise to send someone with supper. “It’s not my fault you’re hungry.” Then I remembered there were a few chestnuts left over from the day before yesterday, when Phileia and Ktimene had gorged themselves on bread and nuts to sustain themselves through their winter fast.
