Medea (34 page)

The milk was mixed to her satisfaction.

'Stay here, do not come any further than the edge of the burning,' she told me. 'If this works, you can escort us to the ship. If it does not work, run to
Argo
and tell the others to row out into Phasis and flee. Aetes will pursue them and he has many ships. Thank you for your aid, of which your lord shall know. And the blessings of the Dark Mother, Three-Headed One, She Who Is Met On The Road, be upon you, Nauplios.'

She sketched some signs in the air. I bowed my head, as one does to a bestower of a blessing, and followed her into the wood, halting when I reached the edge of the burned patch. A small fire, perhaps a year ago, had charred the branches and burned the groundcover to ash, which rose in pale dust around my feet.

 

Snakes dislike charcoal; a ring of it will keep them out of a house. Apparently the guardian of the sacred grove was still, in some essentials, a serpent.

I heard the princess calling, 'Jason, Jason, where are you?' into the gloom.

This was not a pleasant forest. It smelled of pines, but also of some deeply unsettling smell, like a rock laden with sleeping vipers on a riverbank at noon; a smell that had been set on the creatures by the gods to warn all men to stay away. An oily, acid smell, like bad vinegar. I wiped my face and drew a fold of my cloak over my nose and mouth so that I should not sneeze. I saw the shiny limbs of the princess as she moved deeper into the trees, walking fearlessly. Then I heard a rustle and a voice.

'I am here,' said Jason, almost fainting with terror. 'And she is here also.'

Rising from the forest floor like a mast, a snake huge beyond all belief was swaying, pinning Jason with its hypnotic gaze. It was mottled like tortoiseshell. Jason stood still. Ophis Megale was waiting, with divine, eternal patience, for him to move or fall so that she could bind him in her coils, kill him, and eat him.

Opposed to this monster was a slim girl with a bucket of milk in her hand, which sloshed gentle as she walked towards the snake. The shed skin was over her head and she was singing in a pure, clear voice,
'Ophis Megale, Ophis Megale, Ophis Megale kale,
' over and over again. 'Great Serpent, Great Serpent, Beautiful Great Serpent,' sang the princess.

Despite my terror, which seemed all-encompassing, my eyelids drooped. It was a sleepy tune - perfectly pitched, and the singer did not falter as the giant snake turned her cowsized head to regard Medea with those lidless eyes which melted my marrow and made the hair on the back of my neck stand up like quills on the hedgehog.

'
Ophis Megale
,' sang the princess. 'Do not stir, my lord,' she added to Jason. 'Stay quite still.

'Hekate Oldest, Hekate Dark Mother, Hekate be with me, most disgraced of your children,' she said almost to herself, before resuming the somnolent tune.

I held my breath, trying not to move at all, though the dust puffed up at the slightest shift of my feet. The princess held out the bucket, and Ophis Megale slid, rustling, over the pine needles, and dipper her gigantic head to drink, her forked tongue flicking in and out.

I do not know how long I stood in that wood. Jason had frozen. His hands were bound behind his back. Medea sang and held the leather bucket full of milk up to the snake, who must have been twenty paces long. Ophis drank, and the great head drooped, closer and closer to the ground until, with most the milk gone, she subsided into sleep and lay there like a dog, unmoving.

'Now,' said Medea to Jason. She walked carefully away from Ophis, drew her knife, and cut his bonds. My lord stared at her.

'You came for the Golden Fleece,' she reminded him impatiently. 'There it is. Take it. And hanging next to it are the bones of my sister's husband, Phrixos.'

Jason rubbed his wrists, unbelieving, looking first at the princess and then at the serpent. I wanted to shout at him to hurry, but dared not speak. Finally he lifted the Golden Fleece down and slung the leather bag containing Phrixos' bones over his shoulder. Medea gave him her hand, leading him towards where I stood, quivering in the burned trees.

'Give me your sword, Nauplios,' he said, transferring the fleece to me. It was very heavy, being full of gold, and I staggered under the weight.

'Why do you need a sword?' asked the princess, pulling off the snakeskin and dragging on her black robes.

'To kill the serpent,' said Jason, as though this was self-evident. She looked at him aghast.

'You have no need to kill her,' said Medea of Colchis. 'She will sleep for an hour yet and then she will wake. You have what you came for. Your crew is waiting, and my father will be gathering a fleet to pursue you. Come this way.'

Jason followed her out of the grove and into the reeds where, without the princess' guiding hand, we should have been instantly and irrevocably lost.

The reeds were not pathless. On the contrary, they were full of paths, all leading into an evil-smelling, mosquito-loud swamp.

We emerged from cover at the
Argo
and fell aboard. Jason dropped the bones of Phrixos into the ship. I allowed Oileus and Telamon to take the Golden Fleece. They exclaimed over it. The quest was achieved.

Now all we had to do was escape Aetes' vengeance and get home alive.

'Lady,' said Jason to the princess, not releasing her hand, 'we owe all this to you. I plead with you by Hekate and by Zeus and by the power of Aphrodite, come with me. I will make you queen of Iolkos when I return there, bearing the proofs of kingship. I can only repay you by spending the rest of my days singing your praises.'

He was staring into her eyes, and the maiden priestess seemed unable to look away. 'Why would you tempt me from my home, Achaean?' she asked.

'Lady, most beautiful of princesses, dare I leave you alone to face the wrath of your father? He will know that I could never have faced the serpent alone. To what dreadful fate will you be condemned, most beautiful of all women, Princess Medea of the honey skin and soot-black hair, when he finds that you have helped the Achaean foreigners to steal the Golden Fleece?'

'He will do nothing to me,' said the princess. 'I will leave him and join the Scyths. I have been cast out of the worship of Hekate by my mistress, Trioda, who believes me, most untruly, to be unchaste. There is no place for me in Colchis, Achaean.'

'Then come with us,' pleaded Jason, sinking down onto his knees. 'My comrades will offer you no insult and neither will I, most learned of women. Songs will be made about you as were made of Ariadne, daughter of Minos and Pasiphae, who helped Theseus through the labyrinth with her thread.'

'And who came to an unfortunate end when Theseus abandoned her on Naxos,' said Princess Medea, sharply.

'That will never happen,' said Jason. 'I swear by our patron, by Hera, goddess of marriage, that I will stay with you as long as I live, that I will always love you and cherish you as I do now.

 

When we return to Iolkos we shall wed. The maidens will escort you to my palace, dancing and singing. But we are married now, if you will so declare. I give my oath before Hestia and Poseidon and all the gods and goddesses that I will never leave you.'

'Someone's coming,' warned Atalante, who had watched this scene with a thoroughly unimpressed countenance.

'Men, along the path,' affirmed Lynkeos. 'Armed men.'

'Medea, I beg you,' Jason pleaded. She paused like a bird alighting on a branch, on foot on the bulwark of the ship and one on the land. The two black hounds rose with their feet on the bench, Jason's other hand was on one black head, and she decided.

She dropped a bundle into the boat and leapt in herself, missed her footing and slipped down in a tangle of garments and hounds, laughing as they licked her face. We released both mooring lines, reefed them, and began to row out into Phasis, heading for the open sea where we belonged.

 

I don't know why I helped them.

I was sorry for the crew of the ship
Argo
. They had travelled a long way with Jason, and had suffered many perils, and it seemed unfair that they should be assailed and slaughtered because my father would not keep his word.

I was also in favour of the sons of Phrixos, of whom I knew no harm, and I was definitely not in favour of my half-brother Aegialeus, who wanted to rape me.

I was shocked by Trioda's assault, stung by her unfair suspicions, and utterly taken aback to be cast out of the sisterhood and worship of my mother, Hekate, who had been mine as long as I could remember and who, I thought, would always be my refuge. I felt displaced, confused - as though I had been waylaid and beaten and robbed. Throughout the rescue and the theft of the Golden Fleece, I could not remember that I was no longer a priestess. I had blessed the shy boy, Nauplios, as though he was a Colchian, and I had full authority, and Ophis Megale had responded to my song and my magic and succumbed to the sleeping drug in her milk, just as if I were still Hekate's maiden.

And I was still maiden, but that could be easily amended.

But mostly, I was obsessed with Jason, son of Aison. I did not know myself any more. I did not trust myself. I could not think. I could not bear to have him out of my sight, and I shivered when he touched me as though I had the ague. Whatever this strange state was, it over-mastered all the controls on my own emotions that I had learned painfully through ordeal, when Trioda kept me from food or water or sleep for long days, beating me if I wept, so that after the first few times I did not weep. I had thought myself as strong as bronze, and I was as soft as cushion-stuffing. Disgusted at my weakness, I sat on the stern-deck and smiled dotingly on Jason as though I were drunk or drugged. And nothing in the world - neither father nor brothers, nor Colchis, nor even the goddess - seemed to matter, if I could not save this most beautiful of men, whose every movement pleased me, from the vengeance of my treacherous father.

For Jason was mine, sworn and declared and mine, my own love, my promised husband. If I were to marry him, I could lie down in his arms as all women do, and find there, I was convinced, great and abiding joy.

Trioda had suspected me of being unchaste, and now I was: in thought, though not yet in deed. I had fallen. I found myself remembering the mating of the Scyths, and imagined myself as Iole, lying down with her new mate in her arms and crying aloud with delight. Trioda could never have experienced love, I reflected bitterly, or she would never have spoken about it in such crude terms.

I was dragged out of my thoughts by an Argonaut shouting, 'They're coming!'

'How many ships?' demanded Atalante, the only other woman on board.

'Ten, and they're coming up fast with the wind, while we are rowing against it. What are your orders, Jason?'

'Princess Medea?' he asked me. I was honoured by his trust in my counsel. I considered the landscape. We were in Scythian territory, but the Scyths would not be there. The only people to be found would be wandering tribes and the Androphagi, and I did not want to meet them again. There were very few harbours along this stretch of coast. I knew of no place where we could hide.

'We'll have to go on,' I said to my lord Jason. 'No bay along here could conceal a ship this big, until we come to the papyrus beds at the mouth of the Reedy River. There we could hide, if you wish to hide, my lord.'

'No good,' said Argos, the old man at the steering oars. 'They'll catch up within the day.'

'The Brygean Islands,' I suggested. 'We will have to stop for water, and they are within the distance, and perhaps we can parley or give them the slip in the dark. It depends on who is commanding the fleet. I doubt that Aetes would trust the sons of Phrixos with his vengeance. I hope they are not dead already, but they may be.'

'Who, then, would be the likely commander, Princess?' asked Authalides the herald.

'Aegialeus.' I shuddered, and Nauplios noticed and cast his cloak around me. 'It is likely to be my half-brother, Aegialeus. I fear that he will not give up, because not only does he need to regain Aetes' favour by slaughtering you and regaining the Golden Fleece, but he wishes to cement his claim to the throne by marrying me.'

'But you're his sister,' objected Atalante.

'Even so,' I rejoiced, and she spat over the side and said, 'Colchian customs are barbaric.'

'It is not a Colchian custom,' I protested, but she was not listening.

The ships gained on us all day. The Brygean Islands loomed, the rowers hauled and swore and hauled, and the boy, Melas, brought watered wine and bread to them when they took short breaks between intervals of muscle-wracking work. The middle of the ship was manned by the biggest men: Telamon, Oileus, Ancaeas the Strong and Nestor, Honey-Voiced. The weaker the muscle, the further away from the middle, so that nearest to me were Philammon, the bard, and Atalante, who told me that she was a dedicated maiden, suckled by the bears of Brauron and devoted to Artemis, the Achaean goddess of hunting. Philammon's god was known to Colchis. Ammon, the sun god, whom the Achaeans call Apollo, though from the stories, our Ammon was pale and weak compared to their plague-hurling, dangerously unstable golden god. It was easy to offend Apollo and invariably fatal, and I was alarmed to learn that he had even murdered his favourite, Asclepius the Healer, because he was too learned.

I told no tales of Hekate in return, because they were still sacred to me, and I did not think that they would wish to hear them. The story of how Hekate had designed the serpent, for instance, seemed childish and trifling beside a smith god, called Hephaestos, who forged the bronze pillars of the immortals' palace in a volcano.

The day wore on and the Colchians gained, until we rowed between the two Brygean Islands and into a harbour on the ocean side of the furthest.

The crew shipped oars and cast out an anchor-stone, and we drank some more wine. Nauplios and Melas splashed ashore to fill the water-skins.

Jason came and sat beside me on the little after-deck. He took my hand. I felt his hard thigh aligned with mine and my body reacted in a way which I had not experienced. A sharp bolt went through my spine, so that I sat up straight, and then a warming glow crept through my loins. I wriggled a little, trying to lift one buttock and then the other without being noticed. I felt fluid between my thighs, and wondered if my bleeding had begun, though it was not the right phase of the moon.