“Up from the human city through the sacred gate…”
[:::::: This episode begins a chapter on the Conqueror’s experiences on the march.::]
[:: Hesperides explained.. {Here} ::]
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12: Episode Ten: Garden Of The Hesperides
Up from the human city through the sacred gate; out upon the sacred road among the orchards; there at last the great procession somehow by the will of all was sorted out into a different proper order.
The queen and king and sacred cart today were floated on among a tight-knit crowd in sacred garb who warily watched about themselves – some Elfesinians mixed in with some of their invited guests, some with walking staves like clubs of Heracles, crowded in a tight watchful cluster round the queen and king and cart – then the whole folk of the city and the travelers of the world. This year the beggars felt the power of the holiness they went to meet so powerfully that some must even walk in a singing crowd a little way ahead.
The wide bridge next was easily passed, and then into a space of land that really made the city dwellers feel their walls were left behind; fields turned by the plow and waiting for the autumn’s second sowing, rows of grape vine marching up the hills. The hymns of compassion and charity gave way to songs of Nature’s fertile beauty.
But then the narrow bridge was seen. For many on the march – in fact, for most – this was the one real test. It was well known to all, for every year it was the same, and yet it was a thing which very few would ever claim they had done well. It was a test of wise humility some said, but others said it was a test of sturdy pride, and other arguments of greater philosophical refinement too were made.
A team of Athens’ famous comic prostitutes stood up there on the knolls to left and right above the far end of the narrow bridge to mock the folk who tried to hurry past below. The folk came on across just three or four abreast and somewhat slowed by fear of stumbling in the press. That’s all it was. And yet to have one of the vulgar beings point at you and screech and make some motion of the most obscene insulting kind – and then to know that the least small protest on your part, your least small hinted expression of outrage or disgust, would be greeted by your fellows on the march, and even for the next year in the city, as a weakness in your character instead of strength – this brought disorienting turmoil to the proud Hellenic heart. They tried to hide and tried to brazen through and tried to spy upon their neighbors. And they thought about it.
For Phillipus it was hard. And yet it took him one step further on. As he came hurrying by between the narrow high railings, feeling all the thousands coming on behind but slowed by those ahead, looking up, he saw one of the women definitely looking down at him, even pointing. Then she clearly signed that he let other men stuff him in his missing eye. That’s what her pantomime had meant, with no mistake.
He wanted first, of course, to storm the little hill and strangle her; the others too but that one in particular. He truly thought upon it. This perpetration stained the honor of his wound. His honor was the only beauty that he had. And was he not the conqueror of Athens? Was he not a lion hiding here among this drove of sheep? Such a homicide was justified simply in the name of sanity; whatever ancient priest had dreamed this up was mad and so too were the nation who sustained this abominable custom for all these years.
Just past the bridge he stood at a little spot beside the road while others hurried on to get shut of the place as quickly as they could. He wiped the road dust from his sweaty face but he was in a cloud of it. His face was blazing in a blush. Of course his better judgment did provide restraint. He simply stood beside that rushing road – actually standing at a little resting spot provided for this kind of contemplation – breathing as deeply as possible, while the murderous rage subsided, gazing up at the unguarded backs of the jigging gesturing women on the pair of little hills that flanked the bridge. He blew the dust out of his nose then put his hands upon his hips and gave himself to thought.
This damnable thing had been explained to him last month by a perfectly sane philosopher his staff had hired to come in for a seminar. Everyone was mocked. It happened every year. The honor of the thing lay somewhere in accepting it without complaint the way a labor slave or abject peasant could be broken down to do. Where was the sense? The hired philosopher had likened it to a sudoforic used to balance down the system, but that analogy seemed dense. Thinking on it now, Phillipus thought that from his point of view this narrow bridge was part and parcel with the note this morning and the strange king who’d tugged his ear, all riddles he could not unlock. There was a vague thought that all the pointers of the riddles seemed to point at him. Could he personally gain any profit from this thing? He had no notion how. Yet there it was and he had bought it with the bargain. Solemn holy oaths had long ago bound him to the noble task of bringing glorious adventure to the human world, et cetera. Adventure surely led through Athens. If he wanted Athens longer than a year or two then he must have Elfesis. Rocky as it was, this was the only path. This was his duty.
And all of this was deep confusion. Honor somehow was dishonor; the reverse as well.
Weariness came on him and pain glowed in his leg. He looked about and found there was a large rock provided to be sat on and he sat there by the road, which still of course was flowing fully with the crowd. This ritual was a greater and more peculiar strain on his resources than he had expected. Half way to the Sacred Precinct, more or less, and he was tired from the stress. These wafty wispy joys of these spiritual pursuits were certainly hardly the palest shadow of the vibrant carnal exhilaration of a properly conducted bloody battle. Where was the reward?
That woman! That struggle sparked his carnal appetite. No doubt it was the danger. By the gods, one look and he had wanted her. He had to think his body’s lust to copulate with hers was something with immortal reasons. The thing he really wanted was to blast his soul into her, not an image that he quite remembered ever having had indulged in, certainly not ever with such enormous passion. Not to get her pregnant either, really, but just as though a key would fit some lock and turn, as though some door between the spheres would open. Even now his cock swelled up again just thinking of the moment when he first had seen her.
But damn! He’d made a solemn promise to himself to never fik another goddess. Once burnt, twice shy and he was burnt one time indeed; he’d lain abed in agony for days. And from his bed he’d had to scotch a plot among the council to charge his wife with sorcery; she’d done the ritual at his behest to get a holy child and there were factions in his court who didn’t want that. And yet, despite the horrors of that experience, he wanted this one now. Right now, today. Afterward, tomorrow, would not be the same. Where was the sense in this?
Phillipus had to blow his nose again to breathe. And yet that suffocating smell of Earth penetrated through his senses. It gave a feeling almost that he had been buried here alive, immersed in dirt.
Now what was this? Some sort of ripple seemed to pass through everything. He looked about, looked outward from his thoughts, and found the world had changed. Looking outward from his nearly overwhelming yearnings now, he found the billowing air and shaking ground were somehow glowing with his passion, and in the same confusing blend in which he felt it. A moment then of disbelief but then an understanding that he looked now on the world as true magicians do. It seemed preposterous, not in a temple with the incense and somnambulistic chants and animated statues and that whole load of crap, but here in some ordinary open space of land. And yet the same incomprehensible vibrating hum was in this place that he had sometimes felt in solemn rites. He reached to press his hand onto the ground and felt a power of Divinity in the countless rushing steps.
He looked then at the narrow passage with the people streaming through between the little hills. Oh yes, he thought he saw, the hills were tits. He could read the symbols. Oh no, the hills and bridge made up a cock and scrotum. No? Yes? And thus he saw the purpose of this bit of landscape: confusion. Break the bonds between these people and the normal world. It was a magic gate. This whole land from here was a labyrinth and an outer forecourt of Elfesis. And it had snapped his bonds to everything he used to know before he stepped onto that narrow span. The power in this day was more than he could hope to comprehend. Nothing else to do but go on forward.
Wishing now to rise and disappear into the crowd again, to seek somewhere a little further on some clarity, he found his aching hip would not respond. That was the damndest thing. Seeking to rise, he rather fell back on the rock and even seemed to strain his lower back. Where had this lameness and the stooping of his shoulders come from? He’d thought at first that he had taken on the thing quite voluntarily as a disguise to ease his passage through the hostile mob. But more and more he yearned for a sturdy walking stick and for some merciful deity to lift off his back the burdens of the struggling wandering life in which, in actual fact, he tramped the Earth.
Trying once again to stand, he slipped down to the ground instead and felt the depth of weariness. Despite himself, he leaned back on the rock but found some hard sharp point was stabbing at his evidently bruised lower back. So he crossed his legs as comfortably as possible and leaned forward with elbows on his knees and with his face pressed in the darkness of his hands and gave himself to prayer.
He did not try nor care to name the deity to whom he prayed but only knew it was the one who walked in her today, whomever it might be. He saw the woman as he’d seen her in the marketplace, saw her fascinating womanly form and face reflected in the shining aura round her, and now again gave himself to rapt adoring study of that glittering countenance.
Phillipus formed his yearnings into words as he so glibly did so many times and, though he felt the worthlessness of eloquence, he spoke to her; “Lady, mistress of my soul and body, I am yours. I beg whatever you may wish to give. I humbly beg the honor of giving what you wish to take. Give me better life or take this life I have from me, whatever is your will. Only let it be, I humbly beg, a shape and form of blessing I can understand, to be a beacon for my journey or to light my thoughts in Hades’ halls, or to be a memory in future lives.”
The moments passed. He held himself into the task of prayer as best he could, found that he must concentrate attention on the holy face and on his plea by turns, not both at once, or both would start to slip and fade.
Something thumped onto the ground beside so that he almost started from his work – as though this were a battlefield where tasks of every kind must be attended to at once – and yet he pulled himself back to the job again by force. And yet the thought of that unknown something falling at the roadside by him would not be chased away. Suddenly the Holy Lady very clearly in his vision frowned. Her hand appeared. She pointed there. He was supposed to look.
He took his hands away and then he turned his head to look down by his side and then he opened up his eye.
By the gods! It was a crutch! It was a knotty twisted kind of peasant’s crutch roughly carved from a fruit tree branch.
[:: Two episodes after this we will watch the conquering war horse disastrously stumble in the hurdle, ..{Here}.. when King Phillipus must finally swear the Beggars’ Oath in actual presence of the people’s Goddess. .. .. In the next episode we will set the interesting scene for that act of divine power on Earth. ::]
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{- End Of “Bridge To Hesperides” -}
{-Creds.. This is from my book.. “Dark Of Light”
.. .. Its overview page .. {-Here-} -}
Stone Riley Druid Classroom 