Medea (40 page)

And in the end I think she understood and forgave me, because the deep oppression which had compressed my spirit lifted, and I saw a wryneck, the bird which conducts the soul to the river of Hades' realm, flash past the door into the sunset. She was journeying to her other sons and my father, who waited this side of the cold river of forgetfulness for her to come; for my father was a man of his word, and I was sure that he would be there when my mother's shade came down the dark staircase into the underworld.

I would not be long joining them, for all my joy was turned to sorrow.

I called in the neighbours when the darkness came, to prepare the body for burial. Only the bodies of nobles were burned, and I wanted her to share my father's grave, as she had shared his bed all those years. The fishermen took me out of the cold house and into someone's kitchen, where attentive boys gave me wine. They told me that she had been inconsolable when my father was lost. They said that they had sent their daughters and wives to my mother in her despair, and I had no doubt that they had - fishing communities look after each other - but she had refused all help and after a few days, even food.

The women had watched her, fearing suicide, but she had slipped their guard and found, somewhere, a hemlock infusion strong enough to accomplish her purpose. She had asked that she be left alone all day to pray and sacrifice to the gods. That request could not be denied, and she had been cunning. She knew how long it took hemlock to work, and had made sure that no one would intrude on her until it was too late.

The fishermen begged me to absolve them of blame in her death, and truly I did not blame them. I wept and they wept with me.

'You are home now, Nauplios, and although it is a terrible homecoming, it is at least a homecoming. Your quest is achieved, and we welcome you, however sadly,' said Icthyos, the old man who was my father's closest friend. 'You must allow us to care for you, for we will not lose you as well, fisherman of Iolkos.'

They made me eat a hot, strong fish stew and pressed on me honeycakes and more wine, and I ate and drank as they required.

The young men asked about the voyage for the Golden Fleece. I could not talk to them at first, then I imagined in one old face or another that I saw a hint of my father, a spark of his intelligence, or perhaps the cast of his countenance. So I told the tale of the Golden Fleece to my father, Dictys, as though he were alive and listening, while the women washed and shrouded my mother's body, keening their grief, and we carried her out into the street with torches to her funeral.

We accompanied the wrapped bundle which had been my mother, Althea, to the cemetery on the hill, where someone had hacked out a grave beside my father. The priests made the offerings, and I wept and tore my hair and poured ashes on my head, and then someone took me home to sleep by their fire and I passed out of consciousness.

I awoke with Icthyos' daughter bending over me. I did not remember her well - she had been a little girl when I left with Jason - but she had grown as well as I. She was attempting to reach the hearth without waking me. I had fallen with my feet to the fire, and my soles were almost smouldering. My head, as I found when I tried to lift it, hurt with cold and wine and grief.

'Nauplios,' she said soothingly, helping me to sit up. 'I am sorry about your mother. I hope you do not blame us.'

'I do not blame you,' I said, wrapping someone's cloak around me and moving so that she could get to the fire with her armload of light wood. She threw the kindling on the ashy hearth and it flared up, washing me with heat. She set a pot on the fire, and presently gave me a piece of bread and some warm, heavily watered wine.

'Thank you, maiden,' I said uncertainly. I did not feel altogether real. I knew that as soon as I came wholly back to myself I would be plunged in grief, but at that moment, nothing actually hurt me. 'I have forgotten your name, I am sorry.'

'I am called Amphitrite,' she said. Her voice was low and sympathetic. She was certainly good looking, soft and dark, with long cloudy hair bound up with a white sea-shell. I drank the wine and stumbled to the door.

The sun was shining. This struck me as unfair and I wept. How could the sun rise callously as if nothing had happened, when my family was gone?

Amphitrite, daughter of Icthyos, gave me a cloth to wipe my face and said nothing, for which I was grateful.

I sat in mourning at my father's hearth for three days, as was fitting. The crew of the
Argo
had heard the news - gossip spreads like wildfire in small seaside towns - and they came, one by one or in small groups, to express their sympathy and bring me gifts and food.

The first was Atalante, who came striding up the steps, scandalously underclad in her short tunic. I heard the wives and the old women clucking with disapproval like a lot of hens as she walked past their windows.

'Nauplios,' she said, sitting down without invitation. Atalante paid no attention to inconvenient customs. 'I mourn with you,' she said, taking a pinch of ash and scattering it over her head. Then she did not speak or try and comfort me, but sat companionably and shared my silence.

Telamon, Oileus, Nestor and Alabande came in a group, bringing bread and oil and precious Kriti honey, but my grief made them uneasy and they did not stay. Argos sent Melas with fish. Erginos, Clytios, Authalides and Ancaeas came and sat with me for a whole day.

As they left, Ancaeas the Strong told me, 'Don't despair. There are gods, you know, shipmate, and they have Tiphys, Hylas and Idmon as well to care for. We have to trust the gods, Nauplios.'

I don't think I replied. I could not get used to my father not being there, not being in the world. I had pictured his pleased face, if I ever got home to tell my tale. I had often thought of how proud he might be of me, and how delighted my mother would be if I had told her that I was never moving from Iolkos again. Now they were gone into the dark, and couldn't hear me. They were all gone into the dark.

Jason never came, nor Akastos or Admetos. None of the royal ones of Iolkos came to sit with Dictys the net-caster's son, in his sorrow. But I should not have expected it. The deaths of a fisherman and his lowly wife were not significant when they were occupied with affairs of state.

Idas told me that Pelias was delaying the transfer of the kingship to Jason; which would have seemed important to me once. All of the other Argonauts came and left some gift or some saying, or sat with me as the dawn grew into noon and then faded into dark.

Even Autolycus came, and his friends Deileon and Phlogius. They brought the most expensive wine, which I could not drink until the third day. It had the seal of Pelias of Iolkos on the jars, and I wondered that the king was so generous.

Then, late on the second day, I heard a lyre, and the noise of a litter being carried up the steps. The bearers were panting and someone was scolding them in inventive but excellent Achaean with a strong Colchian accent.

'Put this litter down and let me walk!' she demanded.

'Lady, you must not walk like a common woman!' protested a bearer.

'I am no common woman, even if I crawl,' said the lady Medea. 'Do as I say. The street is too narrow. Now, stand there and wait for me. You may look inside, if you must, but you will not interrupt or I will stop all your tongues forever, and you will never charm a girl again with your sweet words.'

'What shall we say to your lord, if he asks us why we allowed you to be alone in a room with a man?' wailed the same voice.

'You shall tell him the man is Nauplios, an Argonaut and a comrade, and if he does not trust me in this, he can trust me in nothing,' she spat, evidently seriously displeased. 'Let me pass, or not one of you will be going down this hill with the same number of testicles as he had when he came up.'

This threat worked. She came into my father's house on a gust of wind, accompanied by her hounds. The ashes of mourning puffed up into a cloud. She was clad all in red and her hair was as black as ebony. Kore and Scylla whined and licked at my tears.

'I can do little for you,' the lady said to me. 'I have brought you this potion, which will give you sleep without dreams. I am thinking of you, Nauplios, I grieve with you.'

She did not know our customs, I realise that. She did not know that a man in mourning must not be touched. She knelt beside me and pulled me into her arms, and I was so surprised that I did not withdraw, as I should have.

She smelled so clean. I was sticky with the blood of the funeral sacrifice and streaked with tears and ash. She was fresh from bathing. Strands of her hair fell across my face. Most improperly, I allowed her to stroke my forehead - her fingers were cool and sure - then she traced a sign on my cheek and kissed the centre of it.

'You will recover,' she said seriously. 'You will not die of grief. No one does, not of grief itself. Here is the infusion, it will do you no harm, even if you drink all of it. And I have brought Philammon to you,' she added.

Philammon bent his coppery head to come in under the lintel, and when I looked past him the lady Medea was gone.

The bard was also looking after the retreating red gown. 'She is unique, the daughter of Aetes,' he commented. 'What song can I sing you, Nauplios my friend? Or will you have my silence?'

'Sing,' I said. The lady had done something to me. I had not forgotten my family but the unbearable ache had eased. Not gone. But I no longer felt like a void, a gap in the universe, a nothing. I was Nauplios again, a shaky, incomplete version of him, but Nauplios the Argonaut of Iolkos.

'I will sing you then the song of the net, Dictys net-wielder's son,' Philammon said, tuning the lyre. Then he began to sing.

 

Ash blew at the sound of his voice and the notes of his lyre, and I had a vision.

The fisherman casts his net

Across the blue water,

All manner of strange things rise to the surface,

Flatfish and weed and stones and stars,

The net of Phanes ties all things together,

Touch one thread and another vibrates.

A woman groans in childbirth,

And Libyan men get sunstroke.

A man dies of fever in Attica,

And Egyptian palms bear many dates.

A wave moves on Aegeas' ocean,

The stars tremble. Be aware of the net.

Phanes' net, which links all things together.

 

I was out in the small boat with my father. My brothers were beside me, and my mother, and my father were saying, 'There, see, boys? There's the harbour.' And we were sailing into a magnificent bay towards a village, golden and white. I did not know the seaport, but I was suddenly flooded with a sense of rightness, of peace.

I drank the potion and slept deeply. Philammon stayed with me for the third day and Atalante, Clytios, Lynkeos and I got uproariously drunk that night on the wine of Pelias. Nothing hurt me ferociously after that. I felt that nothing could be worse, and a man who has borne the worst, Herakles used to say, can laugh at ordinary pains.

I did not laugh, but I knew what he meant.

I had cleansed my father's house of the ash and blood of mourning. I had washed the step with clean water seven times, to deny entrance to ghosts. Amphitrite, Icthyos' daughter, had brought a flame from her father's hearth to light my fire again. If I prospered, I had agreed with my father's oldest friend to marry his daughter. I was determined that my father's seed should not die utterly, and Amphitrite was a virtuous girl and an excellent housekeeper. She was also his third daughter, so he would not demand too much dowry for her. She liked me well and might grow to love me, and in any case was willing to bear my sons and to care for me and my house. I might, in time, be as happy as I could be.

But when I heard what was happening in the palace of the king, I saw my marriage prospects slipping away like an ebbing tide.

Pelias had broken his word. He would not surrender the kingship to Jason, and there seemed nothing to be done about it. We were not numerous enough to defeat Pelias with arms, and in any case that would not have helped, as Philammon pointed out. It would merely replace one usurper with another. Jason was in despair, and Admetos and Akastos had no advice to offer.

I joined the Argonauts in the waterfront tavern. Some had already gone home. That night we farewelled the strong men, Atalante and Clytios and the twins. My heart was still so tender that I cried like a child, and they all embraced me as they took their leave and went away.

'Come and see us,' begged Idas and Lynkeos, for the first time speaking in harmony with each other. 'We won't forget you,' promised Atalante and Clytios, Meleagros, Perithous and Nestor. His honey-voice cracked as he began his speech of parting, and he finished it in a whisper.

My world, which had seemed so solid, was melting again, and I was very glad that Argos and Melas would still be there after this night, as would Admetos, Akastos and Philammon, who said that his god had instructed him to stay until the matter of the kingship of Iolkos was resolved.

The Argonauts went away on the same roads on which they had arrived, shamefully unprovided with treasure or reward for their great courage and skill. The only heavy bundle was that of Autolycus, and I had a suspicion that, witting or unwitting, Pelias had contributed to his travelling expenses.

Atalante's straight back glimmered between Idas and Lynkeos, who were already quarrelling about who had saved whom from the predatory Lemnian women. Clytios was singing a walking song in his clear tenor voice. They were all leaving us, leaving doomed Iolkos, leaving to go home to fame, and to hearths, and parents who would be proud of them. I suddenly remembered Hylas and Herakles coming into the market-place after dark; the beautiful boy and a great hero who looked like an elderly farmer and who touched a bunch of blue flowers with reverent fingers. All gone; all dead or gone. The darkness was thronged with ghosts, and I shivered.

'He must die,' said Jason suddenly.