of giants! And the fleece! Flattered like a goose-eyed
country wench
I granted what should have been sacred, what may be
no more, for you,
than a trophy, a tale for carousing boysâbut for me
the demise
of honor, the death of childhood, disgrace of my
womanhood!
I tell you I am your wife, Jasonâyour daughter, your
sister,
and no man's whore. And I'm coming with you to
Hellas. You swore
you'd fight for meâfight come what mayânot leave
me alone
as you diddle with kings. Jason, we're pledged to one
another,
betrothed in the sight of gods. Abide by that or draw your dagger and slit my throat, give my love its due.
Think, Jason!
What if this king who judges me should send me to
Kolchisâ
supposingâincrediblyâthat my brother keeps his
word, refrains
from sheathing you all in fire before he drags me home to protect his own poor head from my father's rage.
Can your mind
conceive the cruelty of my father's revenge? âAs for
yourself,
If the goddess of will, as you say, is your protectorâ
beware!
When was she kind toward cowardice?' Raising my
arms and eyes
to heaven, I cried, âMay the glorious Argonauts reach
not Hellas
but Hell! May the fleece disappear like an idle dream,
sink down
to Erebus! And even in Hades' realm, may howling
furies
drive false Jason from stone to stone for eternity!' And then, to Jason: âYou have broken an oath to the
gods. By your own
sweet standard, Reason, my curses cannot miscarry.
For now,
you're sure of yourself. But wait. I'm nothing in your
eyes, but soon
you'll know my power, my favor with the gods. Beware
of me!'
“I boiled with rage. I longed to fill all the ship with
fire,
kindle the planking and hurl my flesh to the flames.
But Jason
touched me, soothing. I had terrified him. âMedeia,
princess,
beware of
yourself!'
And again that voice, still new to
me,
had uncanny power. âYou begin with complaints,
appeals, but soon
your own blood's heat makes a holocaust. Call back
your curses.
It's not finished yet. Perhaps I may prove less vicious
than you think.
Look. Look around you at the Kolchians' ships. We're
encircled by a thousand
enemies. Even the natives are ready to attack us to be rid of Apsyrtus as he leads you home to Aietes.
If we dare
strike out at these hordes, well die to a man. Will it
please you more,
sailing back to your father, if all of us are slaughtered,
and you
are all we leave them as a prize? This truce has given
us time.
We must waitâand plan. Bring down Apsyrtus, and his
forceâfor all
its banners, its chatter of buglesâwill clatter to the
ground like a shed.'
“My eyes widened, believing for an instant. The
next, I doubted.
Was he lying? I was sick with anguish. His look was
impenetrable.
I who moved at ease with the primal, lumbering minds of snakes, who knew every gesture of the carrion crow,
the still-eyed
cat, who knew even thoughts of the moon, stared
humbly, baffled,
at the alien eyes of Jason. It seemed impossible that the golden tongue, those gentle hands, could lie.
Searching
vainly for some sure signâhis hands on my armsâ
I felt
a violent surge of love, desire not physical merely, but absolute: desire for his god-dark soul. I whispered: âJason, plan
now.
Evil deeds commit their victims to responses evil as the deeds themselves. If what you
say
is trueâif my brother's forces will collapse when my
brother falls,
and if that, as you claim, was your hope when you
sealed that heartless truceâ
then once again, I can help you. Call Apsyrtus to you. Keep him friendly. Offer him splendid gifts, and when his heralds are taking them away, I'll speak and
persuade them to arrange
a meeting between usâmy brother and myself. They'll
do it, I think.
They no more wish me sorrow than does my brother.
When we meet,
slay him. I will not blame you for it. The murder's our
one
last hope.'
“And still Lord Jason's eyes were impenetrable, studying me. His swordsman's hands closed tighter on
my arms,
as if horrified. But at last he nodded, the barest flick, revealing no sign of his reasons. My anguish was
greater than before:
on one side, terror that he scorned me for the plan,
seized it merely
as the skillful, methodical killer I knew he was; on
the other,
sorrow for Apsyrtus. He'd thrown me up on his
shoulders as a child,
had shaken snow-apples down for me from hillside
trees.
Despite all that, he would drag me to my father's
torture rooms.
Was I more cruel? But my mind flinched back. It was
not a question
for reason. There was no possibility of reason, no
possibility
of justice, virtue, innocence, on any side.
“So that,
mind blank, heart pounding in terror and
self-condemnation, I watched
as Jason in his scarlet mantle, all stitched with
bewildering figures,
laid out gifts for Apsyrtus, with the Argonauts' help.
Black Idas
watched me, smiling to himself, and soon the trap was
set.
I watched Lord Jason debating in his mind the final
giftâ
the mantle of scarlet that Argus wove, majestic but
gloomyâ
it sent out a dull, infernal lightâor the sky blue mantle King Thoas gave to Hypsipyle when she wept and
spared him,
sending him out on the sea. The son of Aison chose the blue, hurled it on the pile as if in anger; then, suddenly smiling, transformed, he came where I stood.
The heralds
approached. My mind went strangely calm, as calm as it
was
when I charmed the guardian snake. They left with the
message. When I
had come to the temple of Artemisâso the message
ranâ
Apsyrtus must meet me, under cover of night. I would
steal the fleece
and return with the treasure to Aietes, to bargain for
my life. Such was
the lure. I know pretty well how Apsyrtus received it,
sweet brother!
His heart leaped up and he laughed aloud. âAh, Medeia! Brilliant, magnificent Medeia of the many wiles!' He
could scarcely
wait for nightfall, pacing restless on his ship and
smiling,
beaming at his sister's guile.
“The sun hung low in the heavens,
reluctant to set, but at last, blood red with rage, it sank. As soon as darkness was complete he came to me,
speeding in his ship,
and landed on the sacred island in the dead of night.
Unescorted,
he rushed to the torchlit room where I waited and paced.
He seized me
with a cry of joy, proud of my Kolchian cunning. And
for all
my grief and revulsion, my murderer's certainty of his
imminent deathâ
tricked for an instant by his smile of loveâmay the
gods forgive me!â
I returned the smile. With his bright sword lifted,
Jason leaped
from his hiding place. I turned my face away, shielding
my eyes.
Apsyrtus went down like a bull, but even as he sank
to the flagstones
he caught the blood in his hands, and as I shrank from
him,
reached out and painted my silvery veil and dress.
I wept,
soundless, rigid as a column. We bid the corpse in the
earth.
Orpheus was there, standing in the moonlight. There
was no other way,'
I said, rage flashing. He nodded. I said: âI loved my
brother!'
Perhaps even Jason understood, dark eyes more veiled
than a snake's.
He took my hand, head bowed. We returned to the
Argonauts.
Apsyrtus' fleet was heartsick, divided and confused,
when they learned,
by local seers, that the prince was gone forever. And
so
the
Argo
escaped.
“Such was our crime, our helplessness.
“In Artemis' temple we killed him. The blood-wet corpse
we hid
in the goddess' sacred grove. Then Zeus the Father of
the Gods
was seized with wrath, and ordained that by counsel of
Aiaian Circe
we must cleanse ourselves from the stain of blood, and
suffer sorrows
bitter and past all number before we should come to
the land
of Hellas. We sailed unaware of that, though with heavy
hearts,
praying, the sons of Phrixos and I, for their mother's
escape
when news of the murder came to Aietes' dragon-dark
mind.
Our fears, we learned much later, were not ill-founded.
He lay
on the palace floor for days, shuddering in lunes of rage, calling on the gods to witness the foul and unnatural
deed
committed in Artemis' temple. He'd neither lift his eyes nor raise his cheek from the flagstones, but wept and
howled imprecations,
hammering his fists till they bled. And at last it reached
his thought
that she who had seemed most innocent, bronze
Khalkiope,
was most at fault. Then soon chaogenous dreams of
revenge
were fuming in his serpent brain, the last of his sanity
burned out,
and he called her to him.
“She knew when the message came what it meant.
She touched her bedposts, the walls of her room, with
the air of one
distracted, and since they could grant her no time for
parting words,
she left with the guards themselves her sad farewell to
our mother.
She looked a last time at the figures of her sons, the
work of a sculptor
famous in the East, and tears ran down her cheeks in
streams.
Then, walking in the halls with her silent guards, her
sandals a whisper
on fire-bright tessellated floors, she prayed for the safety
of her sons;
and for all her tremblingâmost timid of all Aietes'
children,
her hair like honey as it rolls from the bowlâshe kept
her courage,
and came where Aietes lay. He rose up a little on his
arms
and hissed at the guards. They backed away as
commanded. And then,
though he'd planned slow torture, unspeakable pain
for the sly eldest daughter
(so she seemed to him), he was suddenly wracked by
such fiery rage
that he hurled his axe, and Khalkiope, with a startled
cry,
was dead. A death to be proud of, the sweet gift of life
to her sons!
“We left behind the Liburnian isles, and Korkyra with its black and somber woods, and passed Melite,
riding
in a softly blowing breeze; passed steep Kerossus, where
the daughter
of Atlas dwelt, and we thought we saw in the mists the
hills
of thunder.
“Then Hera remembered the counsels and anger of
Zeus.
She stirred up stormwinds before us, and black waves
caught us and hurled us
back to the isle of Elektra with its jagged rocks where
once
King Kadmos struck down the serpent and found his
wife. And suddenly
the beam of Dodonian oak that Athena had set in the
center,
as keel to the hollow ship, cried out and told us of the
wrath
of Zeus. The beam proclaimed that we'd never escape
the paths
of the endless sea, nor know any roofing but thunderous
winds
till Circe purged us of guilt for the murder of Apsyrtus.
And if
in cleansing us by ritual, the heart of Circe remained aloof, forgiving by law but not by love, then even in Hellas our lives should be cursed. The
beam cried out:
âPray for your souls now, Argonauts! Pray for some
track
to the kingdom of Helios' daughter!' Thus wailed the
Argo
in the night.
The Argonauts hurled up prayers to the gods as the
ship leaped on
through dark welms streaming like a wound. O, dark as
my soul was the place!
Sick those seas as my body in riotous rebellionâ
fevers,
chills, mysterious flashes of pain. His ghost was in me, a steady nightmare, a madness. I vomited, fouling my
beauty
in Jason's sight. Not even Orpheus' lyre could check that sickness throbbing in my head, or the fire in my
bowels. They looked
away, one and all, as from Hell itself. I hissed
imprecations,
and they listened with white teeth clenched.
“And as for the sea, it was
the water of Helios' wrath. No bird, for all its rush, for all the lightness of its arching wings, could cross
that deep,
but mid-course, down it would plunge, fluttering,
consumed in flames;
and all around it, the daughters of Helios, locked in
poplars,
wailed their piteous complaint, and their weeping eyes
dripped amber.
“There sailed the joyless Argonauts, weary of heart,