them. In the hall
that opened on the great front door with its thickly
figured panels,
its hinges the length and breadth of a man, the old
king bowed,
without a word, and they parted. The short, red-bearded
man
accompanied Jason, walking out into the night. I kept to the shadows, following behind.
   At the foot of the palace steps red Kompsis paused, and Jason reluctantly waited for
him.
“You amaze me, Jason.” He folded his beefy hands and
smiled,
malevolent. âThe hanged boy was a friend of yours.” Jason said nothing. “He was, I think, the son of a king who defended the
Argo
from ruin by northern
barbarians.
He was a mighty chieftain, at that time.
But later, his luck abandoned him.
His palace fell to marauders from the South. He himself,
though old
and cunning as a dragon, was driven to the hills and
there surrounded
by Danaans and slain, still clinging to his two-hand
sword. His head
they hacked from his shoulders and threw in the river,
and all his animals,
horses and dogs, they slaughtered, in scorn of the habit
of the Kelts;
and his son in scorn they christened Amekhenos.
Shackled as a slave,
for all his angry pride, they brought him to Corinth.
Here Kreon
bought him, believing he could tame that wolfish heart.”
To all this
Jason listened in silence, his eyes on the ground. Red
Kompsis
laughed, but his voice was violent, his body hunched.
He said:
“He recognized you at once, of course. At the first
chance,
he spoke with you. I saw your look of bewilderment
You'd heard that voice before somewhere, but you couldn't recall it. Faces, voices, they don't last
long
in the snatching brain of Jason.” He laughed again.
“You would
have remembered him soon enough, I think, if you'd
needed his aid.
But the shoe was on the other foot. He was not a man
to press
for favors owed to his house. Though a single word
from you
to Kreonâfond as he is of his mighty adventurerâ
would have freed that prince in the same instant, you
kept your peace.
Because of bad memory.” He leaned toward Jason
fiercely. “âBecause of
shallowness of heart.
I name it its name! Your every
word
reveals your devilish secret!
   “âVery well, you forgot his name. He must seek his freedom by other means. And so
escaped,
slippedâincredible!âeven past sleepless Ipnolebes'
eyes.
We know better, of course. You saw his rage. For once
in his life
the old man chose to blink. âBut whatever his
barbarous courage,
whatever the cunning of his savage Keltic brain, no
slave
escapes from the gyves of Kreon. And so he was missed,
and hunted,
and eventually found inâincredible again ⦔
   “I know. That's enough!” Jason broke in without meaning to. He stood
tight-lipped,
saying no more. Red Kompsis laughed,
swollen with righteous indignation, godlike scorn.
   “âwas found in the chief ship of the Arenians, in command of a
man
you once knew wellâmad Idas, son of Aphareos.
Surely it did not escape the wily Jason's mind that something, somewhere, was amiss! Why would
Idas, for all his famed
insanity, give help to a perfect stranger, a dangerous
Kelt? All the crew was arrested, the runaway slave
was hanged,
and still from Jason not a syllable. Though all the
harbor
churned up seething in fury at Kreon's tyrannyâ grizzly, base-born seadogs with no more nobility of
blood
than jackalsâstill the golden tongue was silent. You
can
explain, no doubt. The golden tongue can explain away the moon, the sun, the firmament, explain away birth and death, not to mention marriageâleave all this
universe pale
as mist.” So he spoke, lips trembling with anger, and
while he spoke,
the sky grew darker, glowering and oppressive. I
understood
it was no mere mortal whose anger charged the night,
but the wrath
of a goddess whose power was rising. The Father of
Gods had withdrawn
his check on her. The houses of heaven had changed.
   Then quietly Jason spoke, his gaze groundward. He stood like a spur of rock when gale winds pound it from all directions
and trees
roll crazily, torn up by the roots. “It seems an easy thing to claim a man should react like a loyal dog, leap out fangs bared, whatever the attacker, and die at the swipe
of a club,
true to the last to his instincts. I cannot defend myself from the charge that I haven't behaved like a loyal
dogâexcept
that once, by the leap of instinct, I killed my cousin.
I might
have saved the slave, as you claim, by a careful word
or two
to Kreon; I might by a well-framed speech have rescued
Idas
and all his men from prison. I might. You know well
enough
the risk. Old Kreon's a stubborn man. He does not like his judgment doubted or his will crossed. Be sure, if
I'd won
those favors from him, I'd then and there have
exhausted the old man's
love of me. Whatever good I might hope to do for all the enslaved, for all my friends, for future
generations,
that good I'd have traded for an instant's sweet
self-righteousness.
Though all the harbor rose up in rage at an immoral
actâ
a thousand, three, five thousand men?âI do not find that the evil deed was rectified, or the sentence undone.
A good man out of power is worth
a pine-seedling in the Hellespont!
Such are the brutal realities, my friend.
Do not be such a fool, Kompsis, as to think man's
choice
lies between evil and good. All serious options are
moral,
and all serious choices inherently risky, if not, for the heart that's pure, impossible.” So Jason spoke, and I could not doubt, listening in the shadow of the
colonnade,
that his words came not from guilt but from honest
intent. His heart
was heavy, his purpose firm. But the god in human
shape
was scornful. Kompsis grinned, his eyes like thunder
blooming
in the low, black night. “However, the house you owed
your life
hangs motionless there in the marketplace, food for
crows. Consider:
No grand law will preserve your state if fools succeed
you;
and every line comes down, soon or late, to fools. Create the noblest constitution the mind of man can frame: eventually fools will crumple it. You plan for the
splendid
future, though decay is certain; and you let the present
rot
though a single word could cleanse it. Do as you must.
I warn you,
heaven is against you. Trouble is coming to the man
who builds
his town on blood, or founds his kingdom on crimes
unavenged.
Like a shepherd rescuing a couple of legs or a bit of an
ear
from the lion's mouth, you salvage justice murdered.”
As Jason
turned in fury, his blood in his face,
the last man living to be tricked by the jangle of
rhetoric,
he saw that the stones where Kompsis had stood were
bare, and knew
he'd spoken with a god. His cheeks went white, as if
lightning-struck,
and his muscles locked in rage and frustration. “It's the
truth,” he shouted.
He lifted his face to the midnight sky, his features
anguished,
and raised his fists. He seemed to struggle for speech.
The cords
of his throat stood out and his temples bulged. Then
suddenly
from his chest came the bellow of a maddened bull.
“I've been cheated enough!
I've told you nothing but the truth!” So he raged, then
clutched his head
as if shocked by searing pain. The sky was silent.
   Laterâ it was nearly dawnâI saw him in the windswept
temple of Apollo,
hissing angrily, on his knees before the seer. The blind
man
listened in silence, his filmed eyes wandering, out of
control.
“The gods are many. Who knows how many? They
endlessly contradict each other like aphorisms. Tell me what to fear!
I've honored the gods both known and unknown,
emptied my coffers on temples, images, hillside
shrines. Not from convictionâI grant that too.
Is a man made holy by boldfaced lies?
There was a time I believed that the skies could open,
make horses stagger,
the soldier throw up his arms in fear. I believed, in fact, I'd seen such things. But the world changed, or my
vision changed.
What possible good in denying the fact? I could see no
proof
that Hypsipyle was evil, whatever the magic of Argus'
cloak,
tradition-trick, subtle distorter of patent truth
not, in itself, allegorical.
I saw when we beached at Samothrace
and watched the mysteries, how man's mind
(Herakles swelling to what he believed was a god-sent
power)
was all that the mind could be sure of, how even my
own conversion
if such it was, had no sure cause in the universe.
And so descended from death to death;
learned on the isle of the Doliones
the fallacy of faith in technique and faith in perception;
learned
by the death of Hylas and loss of Heraklesâthe stupid
and yet unassailable assertion of Amykosâ
old murdererâand the deadly confusion in Phineus'
heartâ
the fundamental absurdity of the world itself, mad gods
in all-out war. I did not
shrink from these grim discoveries. Neither did I whine,
renounce
my quest, though I knew no reason for the quest.
I slogged on
toward Kolchis. What reason could hammer no
justification for,
I justified by groundless faith. Slog on or die,
abandon hopeâthe hope of eventual clarity.
Those were the choices. I bowed to the gods I could
not seeâ
or could not trust if I happened to see them, as I saw
Apollo,
striding, astounding, when we'd rowed our blood to a
state of exhaustionâ
bowed because life unredeemed by the gods would be
idiocy,
bowed, yet refused to lie, claim to see things invisible.
Let the future judge me. I give you my grim prediction,
seer:
Famine is coming, deadliest of droughts.
Mankind will stagger from sea to sea, from north to
east,
seeking the word of some god and failing to find it.
   “But yes, I bowed, dubious, true to my nature yet granting its
limits.
What more can heaven demand of a man?
Tell me what to fear!
I've walked, cold-bloodedly honest, to the rim of the
pit. I've affirmed
Justice, compassion, decency. When granted power
I've used it to benefit man. I've fiercely denied that life is bestialâhaving seen in my own life the leer of the
ape.
Yet the sky turns dark, and gods threaten me. If the
universe
is evil, then let me be martyred in battle with the
universe.
If not, then where am I mistaken?”
   In silence, the seer of Apollo stretched out his arms to Jason, touching his shoulders.
The night
hung waiting. “Lord Jason, you ask me to speak as a court counsellor, a prince of wizards, a philosopher
versed
in the subtleties of old, cracked scrolls. Such things I
cannot be.
Though you teach horned owls to sing, by your cunning,
or make lambs laugh in the dragon's nest,
I can speak only what Apollo speaks.
I can say to you:
The man of high estate will be tinder,
his handiwork a spark.
Both will burn together,
and none will extinguish them.”
“Explain!” Jason said. But the seer would say no more.
   In her room, Pyripta, princess of Corinth, wept. The words of Jason
had changed her: for all the smoothness of her face,
the innocence
of her clear eyes, the tale had aged her, filled her with
sorrow
beyond her years. She clung to her knees, sobbing in the
bed
of ivory, and prayed no more for purity of spirit but mourned her loss. The princess had learned her
significance.
She spoke not a word; but I saw, I understood. No hope of clinging now to childhood, the sweetness of virginity.
Let shepherds' daughters worship in the groves of the
huntress! She was
a wife already, sullied with the knowledge of
compromise,
faults in nobility, flickering virtue in the flesh-fat heart. She knew him too well, the husband each tick of the
universe
brought nearer, whatever her wish. She was no fool.
Admired
the courage of his mind. But she could not walk in
bridal radiance
to a future unknown and clean, the gradual discovery
of a past
sacred, intimate, hallowed by slow revelations of love.
Yet knew, because a princess, that she would walk,