Medea (20 page)

'Hekate's curse on them, whatever they are called,' I muttered. I wrung out the beautiful black hair over my wrist, and motioned Iole to stand up and be dried. The linen sheets were ready and I wrapped her in them. She was beautiful, deep breasted and round-bellied.

'Lucky we met the Pardalatae before your wedding cloths grew moth-holes,' commented Anemone. 'They have certainly settled into their creases, Iole.'

'And after tonight they may crease as they like,' said Iole, standing naked before the fire. Her hair fell around her hips, steaming in the head, and she was smiling. It was a smile of anticipated pleasure. I had seen a similar expression on the face of a hungry child being offered not just bread, but honeycomb, and I felt a strange pang of envy, which I hid by pouring out the cauldron into the ditch which surrounded the camp.

Anemone watched as I slicked perfumed oil across Iole's body; my palm, sliding across her breasts, made the nipples harden, and when I applied more to her thighs and genitalia, she gasped and moved with the touch, as though she liked my caress. Then I threw over her head the scarlet gown of the bride, tied at the waist with a golden belt.

I heard drums. An insistent throbbing of a hand drum, as fast as a heartbeat. First one voice and then another rose, men's voices calling, answered by women's voices, mocking, scathing.

'Come, come,' throbbed the drums and the men. 'Come, come to us.'

'Why?'
demanded the women.

'Why, why come to you?

Is men's love so good?

Are men's arms so strong

That we should abandon the maidens?

Abandon sister and mother?

Why, why come to you?'

'Here, here,'
sang the bass voices.

'Here is love, here is joy,

Here is a man's love, come, come.'

'There, there,'
screeched the sisters.

'There's a phallus spurting

Over in a moment

There's a snoring head

On our restless pillow

Why should we come to you?'

'Come, come,'
throbbed the drums and the men.

'We'll love you all night,

We'll make you pant and scream,

Make the bird-noises,

Then sleep sound in our arms.'

'How many heroes,'
sang the women,

'Does it take to complete us?

How many men

Have you got to please us?

We don't come easily,

If we come, come to you'

 

The drums were joined by shrill pipes, which twittered and embroidered above and below the tune. Iole gathered her red robe about her. A procession was advancing through the camp.

I stepped back, but Anemone put an arm around my neck, drawing me close. 'Join us, Scythling,' she said. 'You came to learn about the Scythians, Hekate's priestess. This will teach you more about us than anything else. See, there, across the field, there are the Pardalatae holding their wedding feast. We will meet at the great fire. Aren't you hungry? I can smell roasting.'

Despite my misgivings, I accompanied the queen of the Scythians in the procession. Young men bore torches and the drums never stopped their throbbing which, after a while, entered my bones. The song had changed; it was sitll challenge and response, but the roles had reversed.

'Come, come,'
sang the female voices.

'Come, come to us.'

'Why should we come?'
growled the bass response.

'Is woman's love so good,

Are women's breasts so soft

That we should leave father and brothers

For the love of woman?'

'Come to us,'
crooned the women.

'Come and lie in our arms,

And we will caress you

Until you weep with joy.

We will drink in your seed

Until you shiver with delight.'

'Women's love destroys,'
said the men,

'Sucking out our life,

Drinking our blood

Until, dried and impotent,

She spits out the husk.

Why, why should we come to you?'

'Women's love engenders,'
the women replied

Children of your seed,

Small Scythlings nurtured

In Scythian wombs. Come,

Plant your seed inside us,

We will make you

Swoon with pleasure.'

 

We had passed the last wagon and were out in the darkened meadow. The moon was gone. It was Hekate's night, the Night of Hunted Things.

I felt I should object to this feast of unbridled licentiousness being held on such a night, but I was amongst strangers, however friendly, and held my peace.

The drums, the voices and the bird-like pipes carried the procession around the fire once, twice, three times. Now the voices sang together, strophe and antistrophe.

'We will make you,'
sang the women

      'Swoon with pleasure,'
sang the men

'In the burning

      Of our loving,

In the fire of our furnace,

      In the heat of our phallus,

      We will prove the love of men,

We will prove the love of women,

Tested in the fire,

Burning brightly.'

 

I was pulled down to sit next to Anemone, who surveyed the crowd with approval.

'We have mated well, I think. Iole shall have Idanthyrsus' cousin, a good young man of fine stock. Dianthys has taken the stranger - he of another tribe, the Geloni. We need new blood.'

'They're not horses, they're people,' I objected. She raised an eyebrow.

'Certainly they are people. Horses have a talent for choosing the best mate, but humans frequently desire weaklings, led astray by a smile or the rising of the blood. I was saying that most of the maidens have been sensible in their choices. They should have delight of their mates, and thus breed strong children. Badly mated women bear, as all female creatures must, but heir children are sickly and do not live. To engender the best babes, there must be pleasure.'

I had never heard this before. I accepted a chunk of roasted meat and a piece of the flat bread made by the Scyths, and extinguished my bewilderment in food.

And then, after we had eaten, the new brides began to dance.

I had never seen anything like it. Each wore a red garment which opened down the front. Their waists were confined with belt of gold coins which clinked as they moved, and they bore delicate chiming bracelets on each wrist and ankle. Their hair flowed behind them as they began to move to the beat of the drums and the piping of the flutes.

In front of my abashed eyes, the robes began to part and fall away. I was gazing at rounded flesh, bronzed by firelight, which twitched, pumped and flowed, turned in a flutter of red, then spun and slid across my sight. Knee and thigh and hip; mount of Aphrodite pearled with sweat, hands which curved and twisted and caressed the air.

It was so indecent that I could not look away. There was a shout, and the young men joined the dancers. They also wore a red robe caught in at the waist, and now as they also strutted like cocks, swirled and spun, I could see… I could see swollen flesh, hardening before my sight into the authentic phallus, like that which is worshipped every year in Colchis at the festival of Dionysos; where women are banned. Wooden phalluses are carried through the streets there; and I had seen one, once, while peering through a crack in a door. Trioda had caught me and beaten me, saying such sights were not for maidens.

And here were real phalluses of flesh and blood, attached to real men, dancing in the firelight, their robes billowing. The drums pounded faster and the dancers moved like puppets, jerking and twisting, until they came together in the cleared space before the fire, cleaving to each other so hard that I fancied I heard sinews crack.

The Scythians gnawed bones and drank more kermiss as I watched, fascinated. Iole lay sprawled on her back with a young man's face between her legs. I heard her moan with what must have been pleasure, then she pulled her lover into her arms, so that the phallus was extinguished inside her and the young man gasped as though he had been struck with an arrow, before his mouth met hers and he was silenced.

They were all mating, all the new married ones. Firelight gilded the bodies as they met, plunged and clung. Anemone drank more wine, offered me some bread, and commented in an approving tone, 'Such passion! Surely we shall have fine children by winter.'

I could not bear the pressure which was building up inside me. I did not know if I was about to rage or weep, but I had to get away.

I ran from the drums and the firelight and the flesh. I ran until I fell in a heap under a tree, and cried into Kore's patient back while Scylla licked my tears.

 

Three days without food and I was no longer hungry.

They kept the initiates in the caves, under a hill in the island of Samothrace. I never knew its name. We were hungry at first, and some of the heroes complained, missing flesh and even bread. But the priests gave us a honeyed drink in which were mingled some strange and bitter herbs, and after the first day of inaction we did not wish to move. We became able to sit for a whole day, from sunrise to sunset, the passing of time marked only by the tinkling melodies of Philammon's lyre as we stared into the little ray of light which crossed the floor, from east to west.

The mysteries of Samothrace are the mysteries of Kadmos and Omonia - Harmony - and we were told the tale on the third day. The priests were preparing the ritual meal, which we would take in brotherhood before the Showing, the Revelation which is at the heart of all mysteries.

The head priest, an old, old man whose white hair flowed down his shoulders to mingle with his white beard, proclaimed in a voice which was still strong and compelling, 'There is no hero so beloved of gods and men as Kadmos. Zeus was his great-grandfather, Poseidon his grandfather, Ares and Aphrodite the parents of his wife. His daughter was Semele, the mother of Dionysos, and Ino, who became Leukothea, was his offspring also. We, the Kabeiroi, worship Kadmos and Omonia and also Hermes, for it was that marriage that begot the divine child.'

I was given a plate on which were phallic cakes. I took one.

 

The cup which someone passed me was filled with cold water, which tasted of earth. The cake tasted musty, strangely fungal and oddly sweet. I was hollow. I ate all of it, licking up the crumbs from the palm of my hand.

'Kadmos searched the world for his lost sister, Europa, who rode the white bull into the sea. Here he came, after long wandering, and here the gods told him that he could not reclaim Europa. She had lain with Zeus, and was his wife. But they told him that a greater destiny was prepared for him. They told him to find and slay the dragon. They told him his strength was sufficient to kill the monster, and they gave him a sword.'

There seemed to be more light in the cave, seeping, perhaps, out of the walls. We heard a dragging noise, as of a scaly body being pulled along the sandly floor. Some cried out, and I drew closer to Jason, who was sitting next to me. A huge shadow was thrown on the wall. I saw a serpent shape bigger than a boat. Its monstrous head reared higher than a mast. The mouth opened and showed the shadows of teeth as long as daggers. I quailed. I felt Jason beside me, shuddering.

'He came to the den of the monster and cried a challenge,' said the old priest.

Now there was another shadow on the wall. A tall man in armour, his head protected by an old-fashioned boar's-tusk helm, armed with a long sword. The dragon turned its head, saw him and attacked.

The fight of Kadmos and the dragon lasted - I know not how long. The dragon feinted, struck, missed, and then tried to loop its length around the hero to crush him. We heard the snap of its teeth as they closed on air. We heard the sword whistle through the air as the hero danced and sparred, all in shadow on the white wall, while the light grew bright enough to hurt our eyes. Finally the dragon dived, stretching out to its greatest extent, and in that moment Kadmos leapt and struck and the sword cleaved its neck. The head dropped like stone, with a crash which shook the cave. We smelt the tang of blood in the air, and smoke from the priest's little fires. I heard every man exhale in relief that the monster was dead.

'Kadmos obeyed the gods and removed the dragon's teeth,' said the priest. We saw the hero sit down cross-legged and drag each tooth out of the monster's jaw, gathering them in his helmet. Then he stood and walked away, past the fallen body, and began to sow the teeth in a parody of a husbandman, broadcast from his helmet.

Time passed. I drank again from a cup of spring water, for my mouth was dry. Nothing appeared to be happening. Kadmos was sitting down, wearily leaning his head in his hands, looking at the ground. I wondered if we would sit here until spring, when some harvest might grow from the dragon's teeth, when I saw the shadow of a clod of earth move. It toppled and rolled. Kadmos had not seen it. A dark shape appeared from the ground, the bowl and crest of a helmet. Kadmos still hadn't moved. He was clearly exhausted from his battle with the dragon. More helmets were breaking the surface. I heard Oileus bellow, 'Kadmos! The earth-born men are rising!' and at last the hero appeared to have heard, and sprang to his feet.

Helmets and spear points broke through the ground. The earth-born men were armed and aggressive, shoving each other aside as they stepped free of the ground. The air was full of their snarling, incomprehensible conversations. Heads turned, seeking an enemy. There were far too many for one exhausted hero to fight. I despaired. Next to me, I saw tears course down Jason's face.

Then Kadmos lifted a rock, and flung it into their midst.