Medea (23 page)

'The Scyths kill them when they can,' I said. 'Anemone says that the Anthropophagi are avoiding the Scythians.'

'That might be so; a blessing on the Scythians, then. They may be savages but they are great fighters.'

'Priestess, I have brought you a small offering,' I said, remembering my bundle. 'Just a few honeycakes, and some kermiss. Trioda said that Hekate did not allow us such intoxicants, but Anemone told me to take it - I hope that you are not offended.'

Tyche unsealed the flask and sniffed.

'Anemone is correct, and Trioda was instilling in your head the correct precepts. We should not need any intoxicants, Medea. But that does not mean that we are not allowed them. Come, we shall sit down in my chamber, after we have made the offering.'

She poured a little of the kermiss into an
anagismos
, a death-altar, before a stone image of the goddess. Unlike a
bomos
, the hearth-altar which is used for other gods, the altar of Hekate is shaped like a funnel, so that the blood of the sacrifice can pour down into the earth. Tyche added a piece of the honey-cake, and bowed. She chanted the prayer for protection to Hekate in a dialect strange to me, though I could pick out most of the words.

'Now, daughter, through here,' she said, and I came into a cosy little cave. The priestess' bed was piled against one corner, a huge heap of Scythian blankets and fleeces. A broad hearth was laid with a good fire, which was burning brightly.

'The Scyths bring me wood,' said Tyche, sitting down in a carved chair and motioning me to a pile of cushions and rugs at her feet. The light, absolutely forbidden in any of the temples I had seen, washed over her wizened face. She was all wrinkles and hollows. She looked as old as time, but her eyes were alert, black and bright.

'They cut logs and roll them down into a valley which is almost at my back door. The builders of this temple knew that the priestess might be trapped underground, by a rockfall or by hostile tribes. So they made a bolt-hole. It is perfectly concealed, and comes out in the middle of a bramble thicket. So, daughter. Let us share these honeycakes and sip a little kermiss and you can tell me how things are in Colchis. I have not talked to any who came there for ten years, and not been there for… oh, Goddess, it must be forty years. Aetes was a child when I last walked through the mists of the Phasis to grove of the Golden Fleece.'

'Aetes was a child? Lady, Aetes the old is my father, a venerable king with a white beard,' I said, taking a crumb of the honeycake.

'Is he so? Is he so indeed? A long time, child, as I said,' she sighed. 'Tell me, then, of your mistress. Trioda, I believe? A strict teacher, or so I have heard.'

'Very strict, Lady, but she has taught me well.'

'Has she indeed? Tell me, then,' and she fired a series of questions at me, mixing doctrinal ones with recipes and spells and herbs and the geography of the king's domain, an examination of everything I might have been taught, from concoctions for treating staggers in sheep to methods of diagnosing which poison had been used on a corpse. From the best method to dye wool a fast scarlet to the various signs to be looked for that someone is lying. Then she asked, in various dialects and tongues, for information and directions in the cities of Colchis and Poti.

I managed quite well. I found that as long as I concentrated on one question at a time and did not allow her to rattle me, I knew most of the answers. But her last question floored me.

'Why are you a priestess of Hekate?' she snapped, and I didn't know. I gaped at her and she chuckled, patting Kore on the head.

'Aha,' said Tyche. 'And that is the important one, isn't it, maiden?'

'I never wondered about it,' I said stiffly. 'It is my destiny, from the time I was born. My mother died and my father gave me to Trioda, and the Mother had marked me.'

'Others are marked, Medea. Hekate wants women of their own will, not those who have never thought of any other life.'

'But the other life would be a terrible sin,' I whispered. I felt myself blushing.

'The love of men is not, of itself, sinful,' she said calmly.

'The reason why Trioda sent me away,' I whispered. 'The reason why I am with Anemone and the Scythians…'

'Well, daughter, out with it. I doubt you will shock me. It has been many years since I had even the pleasure of a surprise.' She smiled. Tyche had a very charming smile, a snake-charmer's smile, which drew confidences out of me like serpents out of a basket in a market-place.

'My half-brother wants to marry me to give himself a right to the throne,' I said as flatly as I could. I was looking at her as I spoke, and she did not even blink.

'Oh, that again. There has always been trouble with the sons of the king if they had multiple wives, and of course Aetes' seed is deadly. What is the new queen like?'

'She is young and pretty and afraid,' I answered. 'And she takes measures not to conceive.'

'Wise, if she wants to save her life, but sometimes life is not that great a boon. So there will be no more players in this drama. There are the sons of Chalkiope, however. Strong boys, I was told.'

'Yes, but my father has banished them. He thought it was they who changed the ointment in the bull-ploughing. Trioda and I managed to save the king and the ceremony by a fire flash and a trick, but it wasn't Phrixos' sons.'

'Who was it?' she asked, sipping kermiss, perfectly relaxed.

'Aegialeus. I saw his face.'

'Hmm. And he is the one who wants to marry you to cement his claim to the throne, once his father has been removed?'

I nodded. 'But Trioda says that the mistakes of men are not our concern,' I said.

'Not our concern?' Tyche snorted. 'They affect our fate, daughter, and must be our concern. Hmm. There has always been trouble because of the female succession in Colchis. In fact, Medea, by right of your mother, you and your sister are actually queens of Corinth in Achaea as well. Not that this is at all helpful at the moment. Helios, whom some call the sun (but do not let the priests of Ammon hear you say that), was your mother's grandfather. Corinth descends in the female line and you and Chalkiope carry the right to the kingship - though you would have to confer it on a man, of course. Such is the custom of Achaea. So, you suspect that your half-brother will not relinquish his plan, hmm, little daughter?'

'I do suspect that. I do not know what will happen when I go back there, and the Scythian journey has already turned back. I am on the way home, and I fear to arrive.'

Kore and Scylla, sensing my nervousness, snuggled closer to me and I hugged them. Tyche was thinking. Her already sharp features had sharpened further. But what she said was not about Colchis.

'How have you found these Scyths? Have they treated you well?'

'Very well and kindly, Lady. But they have strange customs. They are primitive. And many things they say do not agree with what I was taught.'

'Such as?'

'Lady, they say that there is pleasure in lying with a man.'

'And with what other blasphemies have they defiled your maiden ears?' asked Tyche. She was laughing! I was astounded. The old woman laughed like a girl, an incongruous sound. I shifted away from her, affronted.

After a long time she conquered her merriment and told me, 'Of course there is pleasure in the love of men, Medea, if one finds the right man and the right time. We priestesses sacrifice the joy we might have felt and the children we might have borne to the service of the Dark Woman, the Three-Headed One. It would be no pleasure to Hekate to be served only by children and bitter old crones, with veins full of black bile. She is, after all, Guardian of the Newborn.

'Your Trioda is evidently just such a disappointed woman, sour as wormwood. We decide to remain maidens as a free gift to the goddess who loves us. There, Medea, I have shocked you,' she said, without the least sign of penitence. 'Come. We will cook the birds which my Scyths brought me yesterday, and you will feel better after some food.'

We cooked the birds in a clay pot beneath her fire, wrapped in the sliced smoked flesh of a wild pig, with the roots of a sharp herb whose taste was new to me. It was a feast. Trioda did not believe in pampering the appetite. With her I had never had entirely enough to eat. But the Scyths ate well and I had been urged to join in every feast, tasting strange roasted beasts and new bulbs and drinking the milk of their goats, which also made excellent cheese to lay on their flat bread. I had been introduced to a strange thickened curd,
yourti
, which they flavoured with berries or with wine. Since the spring I had gained flesh. My hair had grown longer and thicker and my breasts now filled my hands. Tyche did not scold me for my gluttony, but refilled my plate.

'I like watching the young eat,' she said, putting down her half-empty bowl for Scylla. Kore would get mine and the remains of the feast. She knew this, but whined anyway, largely as a matter of form.

'Why?' I asked, my mouth disgracefully full.

'They enjoy it. And that is a new savour, daughter, is it not? It has been fifty years since I tasted a new taste. Although that is a good method for cooking those birds, I have eaten it thousands of times. But there, my life coming to an end. The goddess will wrap her cloak around Tyche soon, and I will lie down in her embrace with pleasure. You will stay tonight, daughter?'

'The Scyths will not look for me until late the day after tomorrow,' I said. I was about to wipe the last of the delicious gravy up with a piece of bread, but I felt Kore's imploring eyes on me. I sopped up the juice, gave her the bread and the bowl, and leaned back full and complacent. Tyche was right. Things did look more explicable after a meal.

'I will think about your half-brother. You could, of course, kill him,' she said.

'I have thought of that, Lady. But if I kill him and Eidyia the queen bears no more children, then what will become of Colchis? I am a maiden and Aetes has banished the sons of Phrixos. My sister Chalkiope is getting too old to bear, and in any case the king will not allow her to marry again. There will be no heir, and there will be an end of the house of Aetes.'

Tyche stared into the fire and sighed. 'That is true. I will think about it. Ask the goddess to help, Medea. Now, take your hounds outside for a walk - I will not have them fouling my temple - and then, when you come back, we will talk again. Some demonstration will be needed, I think - something large and public.'

Her head dropped on her breast. She was asleep. I took the cooking pot and the licked-clean plates and retraced my steps through the glowing temple and the corridors. This was, of course, another test. I had to find my way out and back again alone.

It was no test, really. The hounds knew the way out - they always do, they are anyone's best guide in caverns. They sniff the air and find the current which leads to the open. Scylla and Kore bounded along joyfully, and we emerged into the sun.

It was late afternoon and the light was dimming, leaching out of the woods slowly, as though the sun was draining like water. But to my eyes it was dazzlingly bright, and I felt my way down to the stream and washed the dishes, filling the waterskin I had found in the temple.

The hounds barked and chased each other through the trees along the verge of the water. I waited until I was sure that they would not foul the temple floors, though they were well trained, and would have gone on their own through the tunnels rather than commit such blasphemy. I noticed some pale flowers growing by the foot of a tree. Aconite. Very poisonous, but the flowers were beautiful. I picked a handful. They were a suitable present for the priestess of the Queen of Phantoms, and I turned back into the darkness, following my own travel-sense down to the glowing temple, and into the small chamber.

We slept in warm darkness, lit by the banked fire. I was very sleepy, and lay in the skins and blankets in such a profound slumber that I was only woken by Kore getting up and shaking herself. I realised that it was dawn and I was alone.

I made my ablutions over the drain in the corner, then dressed in my robe before I went into the temple. I found the old woman on her knees, her forehead against Hekate's icon.

'Yes, Lady,' she murmured. 'I will do as you say.'

I bowed to the image and helped Tyche to her feet.

'The goddess has spoken, which is fortunate, because I could not think of anything dramatic enough myself,' she said.

'What did she say?' I asked.

'The cauldron of renewal,' said Tyche.

'But Lady, does that not take most of a woman's life force, something she can only do once in a lifetime?' I objected.

'Indeed, to really make such a thing is a desperate endeavour and takes at least a year and even then may fail,' she replied. 'but this is not such a difficult matter. Now, we need to go up to the light, taking my big cauldron and that box and that bag, and a coal in the firepot,' she instructed.

Puzzled, I gathered all the things. Heavily laden, I struggled up through the caves and found the old woman leaning on her staff and contemplating a rabbit in a basket. It was not a healthy creature and I hoped that she was not thinking of eating it.

'This is a sick, old rabbit, is it not?' she demanded of me.

'Very sick,' I said. 'It won't last many more days.'

'Put the cauldron there, and light a small fire,' she said. I did as I was told. As I worked, Tyche instructed me.

'The cauldron of renewal is rarely made, because it is so difficult and because it has such a high chance of failure and the waste of at least a year's effort. I have never found it necessary to make it. However, the fact of it having once been made has entered the folk-tales of every tribe on the Euxine Sea. Even as far away as Achaea and Thrace they have heard of the witches of Colchis and their cauldron. Now, Trioda must have told you about belief. A patient who believes that she will die may well die, in spite of medicine and even if she has no disease. Yes?' The pin-sharp eyes were fixed o me. I shoved a log under the cauldron to steady it and agreed.

'And a patient who believes that she will get well often recover, even if she is grievously wounded or sick. Is that not so?'