Medea (26 page)

Miraculously, we inched across the fact of the great wave. Europe was on one side of us, Asia on the other, formidable cliffs with no landfall for a breakable wooden vessel full of fragile humans. We were a spark, a little lamp, a bundle of limbs and beating hearts in a cloud-topping waste of hostile water. I heard Atalante praying to Poseidon, and Philammon chanting the words.

We moved as warily as mice in a strange kitchen, hardly daring to breathe, keeping pace to the small hand drum. As the wave moved, we moved with it. We kept pace with the monstrous ocean until it picked us up and dropped us onto the coast that faces the Bithinian land.

As we laid down our sweeps, still disbelieving of our good fortune, Idmon raised a hand and said into the silence of the little bay, 'I hear birds. A lot of birds. But what are they? I never heard such bird-voices before.'

We were too shocked and exhausted to stop him. He leapt ashore, wading through the surf in his long white robes. After what happened to Hylas, we would not allow anyone to go off alone, so while the others dragged
Argo
out of the water and set up camp, Clytios, Tiphys and I ran after the seer, shouting for him to wait.

He paused at the end of the beach and we caught up with him.

There we saw a very strange sight, so odd that we halted in our tracks, staring.

A table was set up under the sheer fall of a cliff. The rock was dark blue, the hard stone common on this shore, though it was strangely streaked with white. At the table sat an old man. His beard was long and snowy. In front of him was a feast, roasted flesh and bread and olives, but he was clearly starving. His face was gaunt, his eyes hollow, and his bony hands shook as he reached for a loaf and broke it.

From above came a shrieking, which set my teeth on edge. Plunging down through the air and settling onto the table came hundreds of huge birds. I had never seen them before, and from his eagerness, neither had Idmon the bird-diviner. They easily avoided the old man's sweeping arms. His face, as the light caught it, was rugged and strong, but his eyes were open and unseeing, pale as pearls. He was blind. The birds were foul-smelling - the cloud of their scent billowed towards us and we choked on the reek. They had green heads and savage hooked beaks, and they tore and befouled the food, gobbling and scattering it. They even wrenched the loaf which he had just broken out of the old man's grasp.

A short time later, they exploded upward in a flurry of verdigris feathers, black beaks and scaly, yellow legs and claws, leaving the old man weeping with rage and then with hunger, spattered with evil smelling droppings, with his ravaged feast on the table before him.

'I have never seen such birds before,' whispered Idmon.

'And I have never seen an old man so starved and mistreated,' I declared. I shook off Tiphys' hand and climbed the tumble of rocks to the table, saying soothingly as I came, 'Lord, I am Nauplios of the ship
Argo
, out of Iolkos, on the quest for the Golden Fleece and the bones of Phrixos; I wish to help you.'

He wiped his face on his sleeve and said in a rich, beautiful voice, 'Well, Nauplios of Iolkos, if you really intend to help me, take my hand and lead me away from this cliff to the sea, where I can wash. And if you have come to slay me, Nauplios of Iolkos, you may then do me that service when I am clean, because I am cursed by the envious gods, and I no longer wish to live if I must live like this.'

I approached the table and took the old man's hand, leading him away from the destroyed dinner. The smell, like rotting flesh, was frightful and I wondered how he bore it. Someone must have set the feast for him, laying a cloth on the table and putting out dishes. Why, if they meant to serve this venerable person, did they continue to set his table under this cliff, where these carrion-eating creatures clearly made their home? It seemed like some sort of torture to me, and I have never approved of torture. I also liked this old man, who reminded me strongly of my own grandfather. He had been blind, also, for two years before he died.

I led him to the sea and helped him to wash, holding his inner garment as he scoured his body and beard in the salt water. I dried him with the inside of his stained and stinking robe and re-clothed him in his tunic. It seemed indecent for me to stare at his skeletal nakedness when he was unaware of my gaze. He was cruelly thin. I could count every single bone, from his withered shanks to his knobbed backbone, and his old neck seemed too fragile to hold up the luxuriance of his beard and hair. As with Grandfather, I easily learn to identify and locate people by their voices. Grandfather used to be able to tell me exactly what was happening in the market, just by the sounds.

I was speaking of our mission to regain the fleece when the old man came close to me and touched my face. His hands were thin but still strong, and he traced my mouth, my nose, my eyes, my hair. The spidery fingers crept over my cheek to run along my jaw, then dropped without warning to my chest, where he laid a palm flat over my breast, feeling for my heart.

'A young man, a fine face, and a strong heart,' he commented. 'You are not afraid of me.'

'No, Lord,' I said, touched. 'Why should I be afraid of you?'

'I am Phineas,' he said, the cold hand on my chest feeling for my reaction, an acceleration in my heartbeat. I had heard of Phineas the prophet, of course.

'You have heard of me?' The sightless eyes were turned away, as is the disconcerting habit of the blind.

'Yes, Lord, but I heard no ill of you. Men say that you speak nothing but the truth. But now, lord Phineas, what is your will? My captain would be honoured to meet you, and although our fare is rough it is clean.'

'You are Minyans, are you not? My people have no feud with you. Very well. I will meet your captain. Tell the tall man who is standing behind you to go and warn him that I am coming. For I am Phineas, and speak the truth - which is why the gods blinded me. And I tell all I know, so beware. That is why my food is placed under that cliff, and the harpies come and destroy it. What do they look like? I have often wondered.'

Tiphys, who had been standing behind me, ran off down the beach to warn Jason.

'Their bodies are the size of a newborn kid, Lord Phineas, with a wingspan as broad as my arms, and they are green - a dirty green like unpolished bronze. Their legs are yellow and their beaks are black, and Idmon the seer says he has never seen their like before.'

'Zeus sent them,' said the old man. He leaned more heavily on my arm as we tottered along the beach. When we were in sight of the camp, he suddenly swooned and crumpled. Telamon picked him up in his arms and carried him to the fireside, and Philammon dripped honeyed wine into the open mouth as the old man began to recover.

'It really is Phineas,' breathed the bard, supporting the white head in his lap.

'Why, who's Phineas?' asked Oileus. 'A scrawny old man, almost dead from hunger - I can show you a thousand such.'

'A scrawny old king,' corrected the bard. He stared at Oileus and the hero lowered his eyes. No one, I had noticed, could bear Philammon's direct gaze for long.

'He is the son of Agenor, king of Thrace. He was given the gift of prophecy, Oileus, and then he made a great mistake. He told the truth, and truth is a very dangerous possession. He was exiled here, and someone has arranged this torment for him.'

'The gods,' murmured Phineas, licking his lips.

'Perhaps,' replied Philammon dryly. 'However, it ends today.'

'Jason and the
Argo,
' murmured Phineas. 'Yes, they were the names. You are fated to free me, whether from torture or from life I know not - and neither do I care, greatly. I am to advise you of the way to Colchis, and I will do so.'

'After you have drunk this broth,' said Philammon.

'And eaten some bread,' said Jason. His gentle heart was moved by the old man's condition. Oileus, ashamed, spread his second cloak over Phineas' shoulders and I washed his bespattered robe. The old man ate the broth, bursting into helpless tears as he tasted it. He ate some bread and drank a mouthful of wine.

I saw Atalante and Clytios on guard, bows bent, as I came up from the stream with the wet gown and hung it on a tree to dry. It had been a fine robe, and I had got most of the filth out of it.

'What are you doing?' I asked curiously.

'Nauplios, those birds might be from the gods,' said Artemis' maiden firmly. 'But equally they might just be hungry, and I do not intend to share my dinner with them.'

'They have no courtesy at table,' agreed Phineas, and chuckled.

'Shall we kill the harpies?' asked Clytios. 'It is shameful to so torment you, who was once a king.'

'Do not challenge the gods, archer,' said Phineas. 'Unless you have a single heart and a will which never fails. But you have a diviner with you. What says Idmon the seer?'

'That they will haunt you no more,' said Idmon. 'Your time of suffering is over. The people who bring you offerings in exchange for your prophecies will lay your food in another place, and the harpies will not pursue you.'

'How can you turn them from their purpose, which the gods laid on them?' asked Phineas doubtfully, taking another piece of bread as though he might not taste it again.

'I will speak to them,' said Idmon with perfect confidence.

He went towards the cliff, and we did not see what happened. We heard the harpies arise in a flock, shrieking their ill-omened cry, and Atalante and Clytios readied their bows in case they came to attack us, but they did not. The noise went on until Philammon played the melody of Apollo at sunset. Then Idmon returned. Claws had sliced across his face and there was a set of furrows down his shoulder and chest, which he washed in the sea. He was not smiling.

'They will come no more to torment you, Phineas,' was all he said, and lay down in the sand with his feet to the fire. He was asleep in the time it takes a pot of water to boil, and he did not move all night.

'Listen, heroes,' said Phineas. 'When you leave here, the first thing you will encounter will be the Clashing Rocks, Scylla and Carybdis. Scylla moves, Carybdis is still. Two hundred years ago, the gods struck the island, which was Kalliste the beautiful, with a great convulsion of the sea and the earth. Fire spouted from the sea, blanketing everything in ash, and darkness fell for three nights, and fields burned as the fire fell upon them as far away as Thrace. So the grandfathers of my fathers said, and the story has come through their mouths to mine. A great stone was cast up by that mountain, of a light rock that we call volcano-stone - do you know it?'

Jason nodded, remembered that Phineas could not see and said, 'We know it, Lord. It floats on water.'

'A huge piece, as big as a cliff, was washed into the strait. It was lifted by Poseidon to lie in a cradle of rocky teeth. It can move from east to west, but not north or south. And it does move, Jason. Watch, crew of the
Argo.
Time the movement, for it is not always the same. Send a dove through, and see how fast she flies. Then drive your ship through at her fastest pace, and you might survive.'

'We will do as you say,' said Jason. Argos, on the other side of the fire, Melas asleep beside him, drew diagrams in the sand.

'If you come through, you will see other lands. On the foreland called Carambis, do not land. There the Amazons live and they will massacre you - even a shipload of strong men cannot stand against the armies of those women. After the mouth of Thermodon you will find the Chalybes; the metal workers. After them the sheep farmers, who should welcome you. They are called the Tivareni. The Stymphalian birds may attack; you must find a way of surviving them also.

'Sail on until you come to the farthest corner of the Euxine Sea. There you will find a flat marshy plain and a great river going inland. It is the Phasis, and a little way down the river lies Colchis. In the marshes you will find the bones of Phrixos, and in a wood in the plain of Ares near the city you will find the Golden Fleece. Pray to Artemis, and to Hera your protector. And now I will sleep, heroes, captain. Nauplios? Are you there?'

I kneeled beside him, and he laid his old hand on my head. 'Come home safely and be happy,' he said. 'May you have all the blessing I have to bestow, for because of you, boy, I am clean and filled and before you came I was weary of my life.'

Phineas curled up in Oileus' second-best cloak with a sigh of contentment.

 

I heard dogs baying, but I was loath to wake. I parted from Tyche reluctantly. I had never met a person whom I so instantly trusted and liked. Scylla and Kore had liked her too. I had stayed until the evening of the third day, when I returned alone to the Scyths.

I asked them about her, and they called her 'The Old Woman in the Cave' and said that she was the wisest person in the world. And it was very unlikely that I would see her again. I was going to Colchis to my destiny. And I did not want to go.

Now I heard screams outside Anemone's wagon. The attack had come without warning, but you can't ambush Scyths that way. A Scythian encampment is never without watchers, even if the attackers couldn't see them. Even in their own traditional summer camping place in the heart of their own territory, where we would stay for seven days exchanging without guards. There is even a model guard burned on their pyres, or they wouldn't sleep amongst the dead.

Arrows hummed. I heard one strike the wagon.

This was not some Scythian argument which had got out of hand. Occasional riots ran through the encampment, but none used an arrow against another Scyth. I wondered who could be raiding us, and how bold they were, attacking us. I put on my priestess' robe and took a weapon which Tyche had helped me construct. It was elegant and, I hoped, deadly.

I had a hollow wooden tube made of a reed and a clay pot in which were thin bone darts as long as my hand. This weapon had no other purpose but to kill. Tyche told me that I was welcome to walk through the woods naked, if I liked, but that I must promise to carry the pipe, so I swore. I had practised with it. I could hit a target fairly well at up to ten paces. Now I was about to test it in battle conditions.