Medea (10 page)

'A great feat, Mistress,' I said with respect. 'Did you find the cause of the fever?'

'Poti has too much contact with the outside. It is on the sea and many strangers come there. The people had left their faith, seduced by foreign ways, and thus had earned the enmity of our gods. Ammon sent the burning fever, and Hekate the watery humour. After the city had been cleansed of foreigners - they all died, for we did not tend them -then the gods smiled on Poti once more, content with their warning. No strange ships' crews can leave the narrow strip of houses and taverns along the sea, now. They are confined in their influence, and Poti is healthy. How do you feel now, daughter?'

'Strange. But better.' I leaned up on one elbow. Kore complained briefly, scratched an itchy ear, and lay down again - she was serving as my pillow.

'Good.' Most unusually, she stroked my forehead. With my moon-bleed, a softness had come to my mistress, who had always been distant with me.

'Tell me a tale,' I dared to ak, as Scylla wriggled closer into my arms, her warm back pressing pleasantly into my sore stomach. The snow flowed down outside the temple, muffling her voice, and the fire burned up hot and bright. We had a great store of fuel, cut by sweating labourers in the forests and hauled into the heat and Trioda's voice underlay my quietness.

There was a great queen, Cerlithe of the Fortunate Island, a place many day's journey distant, at the back of the north wind. She is the mother of Ishtar, Isis, whom the Achaeans call Aphrodite; the old woman, the crone, Hekate our own Dark Mother. But in those places they call her Cerlithe.

She was a woman of knowledge and sorcery. She began a powerful working for the sake of her son, for whom she would risk sanity and life, to make a potion of inspiration for him, so that the gods would breathe wisdom and power into his mouth.

 

The fire flickered. I closed my eyes. The pain in my back and belly had ebbed under her influence. Her voice was even and low, blending with the hiss of falling snow outside, until it seemed to be part of the darkness.

Many days Cerlithe gathered and distilled herbs. Many days she laboured, first making the clay mould and then smelting the metal. She called upon many gods, pleading for their help, and the gods gave their help, because she was a woman skilled and commanding. The cauldron was made, a bronze cauldron such as we, too, know how to construct. Such a
krater
can do many things - with the help of the gods. It can make potent remedies to heal the sick and soothe wounds. It can make poisons of such venom that they must be handled through five layers of leather. It can make the acid that bites a design into metal.

And there is one other thing that such a cauldron can do.

But in the making she had exhausted her energy. For a priestess puts some of herself, her own essence, into everything she makes, and the cauldron was a mighty task, even for such as she. So she bade a child stir the cauldron while she slept, and keep the fire stoked; and thus was her ruin and a strange making.

I was almost asleep, lapped in warmth, but something of Trioda's horror crept into my mind. I looked up at her, lying still so as not to disturb the hounds.

'What ruin, Mistress?'

While the priestess slept, three drops flew from the cauldron and fell on the child's finger, scalding the skin. He sucked his finger. Thus her year's work was wasted, and the inspiration she had designed for her son stolen, gone into another.

She woke, and in her rage, transformed, as you, daughter, were transformed into Ophis. The boy was so terrified that he used his stolen gift to fly from her just rage, and turned into a hare and ran for his life.

'And Cerlithe?'

She turned into a hound and hunted him. They say the chase lasted for days. He turned into a fish, and she dived after him as an otter. He flew up from the water as a starling, and she swooped on him as a hawk. As a frog he hid beneath a lily leaf; as a heron her beak stabbed for him, seeking his life. He flew as a hawk; she pursued him as an eagle. Whatever he did, he could not escape her.

'What happened in the end, Mistress?' I asked, imagining the sleek flash of scale and fur, the blend of claws and hands and paws, flowing like water in the green meadow beyond the north wind.

'He fell from a tree into a heap of wheat as an ear of wheat, and thought himself safe.'

'So he escaped with his stolen blessings?' I was outraged.

'No, daughter,' Trioda's voice was rich with satisfaction. 'She transformed herself into the shape of a hen, clawed through the heaped grain, caught him and swallowed him.'

'So he was dead?'

'No, Medea. She carried him for nine moons and bore him in her own image; the rebel and thief reborn as poet and singer. They called him Radiant, the priest of Apollo, son of Orpheus, the sweet singer.'

'And her own child, Mistress, for whom she brewed the miraculous potion?'

'His fate was hard. All fates are ruled, not by Zeus or Hekate but by Ate, and she is unaccountable. But, daughter, your lesson is this. Women's magic cannot be avoided, for it is made of the earth and the fire, of sky and water. The thief could not survive his theft unchanged, and finally she incorporated him as her acolyte.'

'Mistress,' I acknowledged.

'And that cauldron has this property. Renewal. If a great priestess and blessed of Hekate is willing to put her whole being into the spell, then a dead creature can be resurrected, and an old woman become young again.'

'Then why have we not done this?' I asked, sleepily.

'The price of Hekate's gift of life is death, daughter. It would require something very important - something so imperative that the priestess would challenge Fate and Time to defy them - to make it. Few human objectives are that important, daughter. Now sleep, Medea. I hope that in your life you will never have to make such a choice. For to make the cauldron of renewal needs skill and wit, and most of a woman's life force, and Hekate may need you for other purposes.'

I slipped into a drowse, pondering on Cerlithe and the thief. One method of conquering a man, it seemed, was to take him whole inside one's body, and bear him again anew.

Kore snuffled me, and we settled into sleep.

 

On the day that we at last came down from the mountain, I lost Jason.

Dressed in our best tunics, with plaited horsehair bands confining our hair and supple sandals of sacred horsehide on our feet, we walked down through the flower-bearing bushes onto the ridge which led down to the city of Pelias the Usurper.

Then a mist bloomed, it seemed, out of the earth. It blanketed sight and damped sound. Jason, who had been ten paces ahead of me, vanished in the time it takes to blink an eye. I stood still, as I had been instructed. These sudden mists are not unknown on the heights, though they were not usually met with so far down the mountain and at the beginning of spring. A truism of mountain ways is that one does not walk where one cannot see. I crouched down, pulling my cloak over my head, and called, 'My lord?' but heard no reply.

There was nothing I could do and it might be fatal to wander. I could not see any path. So I sat still, picking flowers and weaving a garland. It was not cold, and I knew the mist would pass as soon as the sun rose higher. And I knew my way down the mountain to Iolkos, for had I not come that way so many years ago?

But I had lost Jason. When the rays of Apollo burned off the haze, he was nowhere in sight. I donned my garland and walked, feeling free for the first time. Free of the centaurs' domination, free of teaching or command, free to wander whither I would, although my feet were taking me ever downward, downward, and when I reached the ridge and saw the bright gleam and smelt salt, I sat down and burst into tears.

For sea-water is in the blood of Dictys' sons, the net-men of Iolkos. In all my time with Cheiron I had never forgotten the sea.

'Thalassa, thalassa!
' I called, stretching out my arms to the immensity of the salt river Ocean, which spans the watery globe of the world. Horizons, constrained among the mountains by the next ridge or valley, had been abolished. There was only the arc of the sky and the sea, Poseidon's kingdom, azure, pellucid, and I swore never to leave it again, reckless of my lord and my teaching.

I ran and leapt, taking no care, from out-thrust rock to boulder to grass, down a path which only a goat might enjoy traversing, and I never stumbled. There in front of me was the immensity of Ocean, eager to embrace me. Down a sheer side I climbed like a squirrel. I reached the edge, stripped off my tunic, cloak and sandals, ran for the water, and dived full length into the arms of the Nereids.

The water was cool and salt and Poseidon bore me up on his bosom. I ducked my garlanded head and left the circle of flowers floating in homage to the Earth-shaker. My salt tears blended with the salt wave, and I surfaced and laughed and turned over on my back to float, secure as a babe in his mother's arms. The Master of Horses had forgiven me, most faithless of Oceanos' children, for leaving him for so long.

Then I was recalled to my duty. A long wave lifted me and deposited me in the shallows, and I rose from the sand and reclothed myself, for something was happening in the city of Iolkos, just across the bay. A crowd was gathering, and voices were raised.

It seemed that Jason had arrived.

As I walked around the rocky edge and climbed up the steps from the sand to the landing stage, I heard raised voices.

Iolkos was in festival. It was the most solemn day of the year. With the centaurs I had forgotten the calendar of life amongst the Achaeans. We had come - perhaps by chance, perhaps guided by a god - to Iolkos on the feast of Poseidon, when a bull was sacrificed to the Earth-shaker. All the neighbouring kings and princes would be there. I could see them, a gleam of gold and bronze, a glint of light off bracer and necklace and helmet.

A crowd of common people were gathered on the sea side of the market-place. I whispered to an old woman who was standing in front of me, leaning on a creel, 'Mother, tell me what is happening in Iolkos?'

'Young stranger, it is a prodigy,' she replied in a cracked undertone. Her garments and her hair smelt of fish, once a familiar smell.

'Surely the omen has been fulfilled,' she said. 'Here is come one with only one sandal - the one-sandalled man is come! See, there is Pelias, the Usurper,' she began pointing out each noble.

Pelias was staring in horror at someone I could not see. He was a tall man, carrying a considerable belly, dressed in the purple gown of a king. He was hung with jewellery and crowned with a golden crown, figured with bulls.

'There is Pheres, king of Pherae, a prosperous place, they say; him, in the rose-coloured tunic,' said my informant, stabbing the air with her kelp-brown finger. Pheres was big, with a beard like a brown bush. He reminded me strongly of a bear.

'The slender one is Amathaon, a young man for the kingship of Pylus, but a good king, they say. He fought off the Corinthian pirates, wading into the sea to board their vessel. Killed them all, and took the ship.' Amathaon was slim and young, wearing very little ornament, and had long dark hair tied back under a plaited gold band. His legs and arms were bare and sinewy, and his expression was guarded, giving nothing away.

'Mother, what are they all staring at?' I asked.

'You look lithe, young man. Climb to a height and you'll see. But I tell you, it's the omen. He's the
monosandalos
. They don't make prophecies without meaning, you know.'

I scaled the landing stage, perched on a pile of fish-smelling baskets and saw what Pelias was staring at.

In the market-place of Iolkos stood my lord Jason, son of Aison. He was still dressed in tunic and cloak, but one sandal was indeed missing. His brown foot was bare on the well-laid stone, and he was muddy to the hips. He was looking at Pelias, straight in the eyes, and the older man shifted uneasily under his blue-green gaze.

'Who are you, foreigner?' he demanded roughly.

'I am Jason, son of Aison,' said my lord evenly. 'I am come to claim my father's right.'

The commonality shifted and muttered. Such nobility and beauty was revealed in Jason, that Pelias made a gesture which sent back his household warriors. They retreated, sheathing their half-drawn swords. The kings looked at each other, but did not speak at once.

'If you are indeed the son of Aison, then you are unwelcome to me,' said Pelias. Perhaps he had once had a deep voice, but age had thinned it, and it was high and tremulous. 'Why have you come to this city?'

'I have told you why I have come,' said Jason, faintly puzzled.

'And what do you claim is your father's right?'

Jason had been well rehearsed in this matter and answered easily. 'You my lord are the son of Poseidon, and Tyro the queen. My father Aison was the son of Kreutheus the king, and Queen Tyro. Your father was not the king of Iolkos but the god, and therefore, my lord Pelias, I claim my kingdom in my father's right, as the only son of the king of this city.'

There was a stunned silence. Jason spoke gently, as he had been instructed. 'I ask only what is mine, my lord.'

Pelias did not reply. His son Akastos, standing by his father's side, stared at the stranger. There was a tense silence. I bit my fingernails.

'How did you lose your sandal?' asked Amathaon. Jason shook himself like a dog, flinging drops across the hot stone. He put back his golder hair.

'I lost my companion in the mist,' he replied civilly. 'Then as I came to the Enipeus River, an old woman asked me to help her to the other side. I picked her up - she seemed a light burden, being old and bent - but as I crossed her weight increased at every step, and I could hardly carry her. I turned my foot on a slippery stone and wrenched off my sandal - a pity, for it was made by the centaurs from sacred horsehide - but I staggered to the brink and put her down safely. Then I turned to search for my sandal, but it had been swept away. The stream is in spate. When I looked again for the crone, she was gone.'