Medea (38 page)

I had not been much attended before. It was strange to lie back in scented water and be groomed. No wonder Scylla and Kore washed each other so thoroughly. It felt very pleasant.

'My lady has beautiful hands,' observed the slave who was cleaning my nails. 'Has she any jewellery fit for a wedding?'

'The lady has not,' I replied. 'The lady brings nothing to her lord but two hounds and herself.'

'Your lord is fortunate,' said the slave automatically, laying my hand back under the water.

I was lifted from my bath, dried, and laid on a bench while an old woman massaged me with scented oil. The island is famous for its scents, and I did not know this compound; it was sweet and musky, a little like the frankincense which the Scythian women used.

'It is a blend of aromatic herbs,' said the old woman, feeling for knots in my shoulder and back with her knobbed, wise hands. 'It is jasmine and roses, and a scent extracted from the testicles of certain beasts, and it is a soft waxy substance which washes ashore. We call it the gift of Thetis, as our island is the sickle of Cronos. It is the marriage scent, Lady, the essence of the flesh. Here you will know all the joys of love as you lie down with your new husband. He is also being washed and anointed for your sacrifice to Aphrodite.'

'I am a little afraid,' I said truthfully.

'That is to be expected,' she answered, turning me over and smoothing her soft hand down my belly. 'But if you love this man, you will like his touch. You will accept a little pain for greater joy. Here,' she slid her fingers along the inside of my thighs, 'here is the sheath.'

I allowed her to part my legs and she made a sharp tutting noise as she stroked oil into the skin. 'You have been mishandled, Lady. By your lord?'

'By one who tried to rape me,' I replied, remembering Aegialeus and repressing a shudder.

'He did not succeed,' she soothed. 'But there are some small cuts, which I will anoint. In your husband's arms you will forget the cruelty of the other,' she promised, and I drowsed as she stroked me. In Jason's arms, I was convinced, I would forget Aegialeus, Phrixos, Achaea and Colchis.

I bade farewell for the night to Scylla and Kore, bidding them stay with the women. They whined. They had not slept without me before. I kissed each of them on the nose, promising to return. The women brought me into the dark street. I was dressed in a tunic of cobweb thinness and a red robe heavy with gold. I looked through my red veil to the dancers and singers. All the maidens were singing a song to Hymen, the Achaean god of marriage, and they danced around me, their tunics fluttering, as we walked along towards the palace.

The singing and drums and lyres echoed and bounced, and I was suddenly short of breath, my heart thudding like the drums. I leaned on the old woman as the torches blurred. She clucked and bore me up, and she was smiling at me. They were all smiling.

'Maiden, here is your husband,' announced the old woman. And there was Jason - and he was magnificent.

The royal slaves had found him a red robe which matched mine. His hair flowed down, golden as sunrise. The Argonauts flanked him, though I looked for the boy Nauplios and could not see him. Jason held out his arms, and I walked into his embrace.

And then they conducted us into a chamber which was hung with tapestries. In the middle was a bed on which was lain the Golden Fleece of Colchis. Laughing and singing, the attendants laid us down together and gave us wine. I drank thirstily, for my mouth was dry. Then at last they were gone and the door was shut.

The only light came from a small oil lamp. Jason rose on one elbow and I looked into the face of a god.

His mouth came down on mine. I was naked and he was naked and we lay flank to flank and skin to skin. His hands trailed down, from my hair to my throat, shoulders to breast. He tasted of honey and wine and salt.

'You are so beautiful,' he murmured, kissing my breast. He mouthed the nipple, and a jolt went through me. I reached out for him, caressing his back and his chest. My hands slid down over his flat belly, then faltered. He took my hand in his and laid it on the phallus. It filled my palm, a hard spear, far too big to fit inside me.

But my touch was pleasing him. He gasped, 'Oh, my love, my love, my own princess,' he whispered. 'My wife, my own.'

I opened my legs as his fingers sought the vessel. His touch recalled Aegialeus and I winced, but he was moving slowly, murmuring of my beauty and his desire, and gradually I felt the touch go deep, as though his fingers were sinking into my flesh, as though he was part of me. The scented oil which the old woman had applied to me was easing the way of the clever hands, which found and stroked so gently that I felt the prickling again, an itch which demanded to be scratched.

He was lying with his head on my belly, looking at the sacred place which priestesses of Hekate are forbidden to touch. 'Ah, my beautiful one,' he said, and kissed the place where the hair fails, the mount of Isis, which fitted into his hand as though it had been designed for him.

The kiss sent a shock through me. My back arched. I heard him say, 'Ah, my witch,' and then he was lying between my legs. The weight on me was heavy, but a desired weight. Something inside me was knotted like string, some part of me which I had been unaware was empty, hollow, a void was begging to be filled.

And then I felt the phallus touch, withdraw, touch, and I was filled with fire. I wreathed my legs around his waist and he moved suddenly, and he was inside me.

Oh, strange, oh, beautiful, the closeness, the closeness. There was no rip or tear as he slid inside me, my sheath wet with oil and desire. I felt something stretch and then break without pain. Yet the itch was not relieved, but heightened by this mating; I felt him move within me, forward and back, and each time the fire ran along my limbs and I held him tighter. I saw him reared above me like Poseidon, his hair falling onto my face, his skin bronzed by the light. His face was a mask, holy and worshipful.

I began to move with him, lifting my hips, unbearably stimulated, desperate for some release from the sweet pain, and then I felt the phallus shudder and the world dissolved in bright light. I convulsed, feeling muscles which were not subject to my will wrap the phallus and contract and suck.

I don't know how long it was before I came back to myself. I was lying under my lord. He was heavy, and I wriggled.

He woke and lay beside me. 'Oh, my sweet love,' sighed Jason. I felt down the sheath, and brought my fingers back wet with semen - a new smell, like the herb wormwood - and blood, and he kissed them.

'You have given me a great gift,' he said, and laid his head on my breast. I embraced his body and closed my eyes. I was new-made. I was no longer Medea the princess and priestess of Colchis. I was Medea the Achaean, wife of Jason, son of Aison.

We slept a little, then woke and made love again, and slept again. His breath was sweet, his skin smooth, I trembled at his touch, and my caress pleased him. He was my god, my deity, my most beautiful man. I had left the worship of the dark, and fallen in love with the light.

 

The Argonauts were rowing, I was stitching a new sole for my lord's sandal and we were approaching an island, when there was a dreadful crash and a rock, hurled from the shore, splashed down near us. The boat rocked, the rowers cursed and Philammon commented, 'Ah. Talos' isle.'

'Talos?' I asked. This was a god whose name I did not know.

'The bronze giant. He patrols this place.'

'Well, we can sail around, out of range,' said Nauplios. He was not speaking directly to me, and he did not seem to want to look at me, either. I wondered what I had done to offend him. I liked Nauplios best of all the Argonauts - except for my lord, of course - but he had avoided me since I had been married, and I supposed that his previous good opinion of me had been based on my virgin state.

I was joyfully and entirely no longer virgin. Jason delved into my body with delight, and I wrapped him in my arms. I had never been so happy. I longed for the night, so that I could lie eagerly down with him in his cloak, or naked on soft grass, and open my body to him, drinking in his seed. I was witless, adoring, given over entirely to the service of Isis, whom the Achaeans call Aphrodite.

Queen Arete and King Alcinous had known of my married state as soon as they had seen me - seen us, for my lord also glowed with love. They had dismissed us as blameless and sent the Colchians home, and they had gone, with the judgement of the sweet-scented island to justify their return without fleece or bones or the Princess Medea, or revenge for the death of Aegialeus. It had been two weeks and I was utterly pleased with my marriage, though Scylla and Kore removed themselves in dudgeon when we were making love, and curled up together at a distance. But now it looked as if I would have to gather up what wits love had left me and concentrate. I put down the sandal as another boulder hurtled through the sky and thudded into the sea. The assailant was getting closer to us.

'It may not be possible to navigate around Talos. The sea is intent on carrying us into his realm,' said Argos.

'Tell me of this giant,' I said.

Philammon replied, 'He was made by Hephaestos to guard his smithy. Talos is thirty cubits tall and as strong as the earth, and ships who land on his island never leave, because he bombards them with rocks until they sink.'

'There's a headland,' said Akastos. 'He can't see over there - we'll row for it. The current is strong, but we can do it. And the alternative, shipmates, is to wait until the ocean washes us into the bay, where we will shortly be crushed flatter than an ant under an anvil.'

When it was put like that, the Argonauts were convinced. They bent to the oars, and
Argo
complained in all her timbers. As effortfully as an old woman trudging up a muddy road with an amphora of water, we passed across the mouth of the little bay, with rocks falling all about us, and swung her in behind the headland.

I was thinking, something which I had not done for some time. If this was a real giant, he could surely see us, and could easily follow us and drop his missiles on us from above. But the rocks continued to splash into the bay. This argued that he could not move, and probably could not see. I suspected that Talos was not an earthly monster but a machine such as Daedalus the Cretan made for my father, Aetes. I had examined the fountains which gave the Colchians wine and milk during festivals. They were worked by hydraulics, a technique of great ingenuity which used the pressure of a fluid to raise a stopper up a shaft. That same inventor had made figures which moved and danced, or even sang, as the wine flowed through them.

'My lord,' I called to Jason.

'My lady?'

'Let me go ashore alone,' I said, for if this was a matter of machinery I did not want a lot of strong men distracting me and possibly breaking something important. 'I am a Colchian and a sorceress, and I believe that I can defeat Talos.'

Awe crept into his eyes. 'Medea, can you do this?'

'I will attempt it.' I shed my outer robe and stood up in my tunic. 'While he is still casting those stones, we cannot get out of the harbour, and I am eager to see Iolkos and your kingdom, my lord.' I borrowed a long knife from Clytios, who was near me, and jumped onto the rocks, followed by my hounds.

'Wait for me for one day,' I said, glowing with delight at the idea of being able to do something for my lord in return for the gift of his love and protection. Argos dropped a skin of water into my arms, nearly empty, and a lump of hard bread.

I was alone. It felt very strange. I had become used to

living close and lying with my lord. But Kore nosed along the rocks and Scylla and I followed her. Kore was always our pathfinder.

It was a bright day. The island was the usual bare Aegean islet, with a base of limestone and a thin covering of scrubby trees, wild olives on the level and spruces higher up, and thin grass on which some goats grazed. They fled as we approached. They had no bells and no one was attending them, so I assumed that people had once lived on Talos' isle, but lived there no longer.

The reason that the population had fled was explained when I reached the rocky escarpment looking over the bay, and saw him.

He was huge, at least the thirty cubits which Philammon had claimed. He stood in the space between two cliffs. He was indeed bronze, a helmeted man in full armour, standing on legs the size of pillars. His arms never ceased, picking up boulders from the surrounding cliff and hurling them into the sea.

I sat down and watched him. Scylla, who had the most refined nose, sniffed, then whined. The smoothness of his actions, the identical nature of each throw and the fact that he never tired were suggestive; but I had seen a Scythian woman, for a wager, throw a spear twenty times into a tree with the same action. Scylla would probably have howled and fled at the scent of something so alien as this giant must be, if he were flesh and bone. Instead she had seemed worried, but not afraid.

Fling, splash, fling, splash. The interval between movements was always the same, precisely a count of seventy. That decided me. This was a construction, an immense and sophisticated machine, not a reasonable being.

That being so, I climbed down the rocks to the path. I was walking around between the huge legs, attempting to find some way of letting out the fluid which drove it - for it was clear that it was indeed an hydrolos - when a spear whizzed past me and stuck in the sand. I drew my knife. Then a face looked out from behind a rock and I jumped.

'Who are you?' snapped an old, cross voice.

'Medea, wife of Jason, who are you?' I found my voice. The dogs had leapt to my side and were flanking me, fangs bared.

'Talos. Call off the hounds,' he begged.

'Come into view, Talos,' I demanded.

He was a small, bent old man in a stained tunic. The twisting of the bones, which we call rheumatics, had him in its grip. His fingers were like old tree-roots. His hair was white and cut short, but he had a very long white beard.

'Well, Medea, wife of Jason, you are a woman of great daring,' he observed. 'No one else would have challenged my giant.'