Medea (50 page)

Carefully his hands slid, touched, stroked. I turned in his arms, feeling his warmth; not the burning of a young man, like Jason so long ago when I dived into his arms and engulfed the piercing spike which engendered my murdered flesh. Herakles glowed with a banked fire, warm, comforting, and I lay down almost sleepily in his embrace. My breast fitted his hands and the nipples rose between thumb and forefinger.

There was no sharp climax, no spasm in the back and belly, but a mounting heat as his mouth sucked and his hands moved, gentle and inexorable, listening for a response, tasting my kisses.

I had not thought to make love again, destined for death, Medea the outcast. Herakles' phallus slid inside me, gently, letting me feel the strength of his desire, and he moved slowly, each movement of thigh and buttocks bringing more of the buried senses to my skin. Nerves flared on the surface and deep inside me, and I gasped aloud, hearing his breathing roughen, my hands grasping to pull him down close, heavier, twining my legs around his back.

His body anchored me to reality. I was not pierced to the heart as I had been once, and had considered desirable. I was not pinned by one shoulder like a deer beneath a hound. I was close, close - as close to Herakles the hero as his skin, joined along thigh and loins and chest, mouth to mouth.

And as I felt the phallus within me blossom and heard his groan, I glowed with a bright light; we shone in the darkness, and I began to cry and could not stop.

He hauled me across his body as he rolled, so that I was lying on his chest, naked and wet, and my tears rolled down his shoulder. He did not speak or try to comfort me. He pulled a blanket over us, held me as close as a nursing mother holds a newborn, and listened to me weep, drinking my tears so that his mouth was sharp with brine. We lay warm in the scent of tears and semen and sweat, the smell of human love.

I have never loved a man so much as, at that moment, I loved Herakles, the hero; Herakles, servant of women.

 

I wept all night. I had not known I contained so many tears. After a while it became spasmodic, and in between we talked. I remembered tending this hero, dreadfully wounded, amongst the Scyths. I was pleased to find that the
lithos sophronister
had worked. Herakles told me that he had retired to Athens to conclude his life without incident. He said that his wife was loving, his sons healthy, his house well run, the wine excellent and the company undemanding.

'But I cannot go to a tavern any more,' he said.

My head was on his chest and his hand was stroking my hair. Something had broken inside me, a knotted cord, and now I could not stop the tears which bathed his chest and soaked his bedclothes.

'Why not? You are a hero,' I said.

'I am a hero, yes, but if I go to a tavern they demand stories. If I tell them I am boasting; if I do not tell them I am too proud to mix with common men. Then some young hot-head is likely to challenge me. If I fight him and win, it would be oppression, for everyone knows that Herakles is a great hero. If I fight him and lose, as sooner or later all heroes must, he will gain great notoriety for having defeated the strongest man in the world. So mostly I stay here. I have visitors. Philammon always calls when he is here for the festival. And I have my own courtyard and my own vine and I am content. What else happened at Delphi? There is something which you are not telling me.'

'The children spoke…' I wept again, and when I could speak I told him all that Mermerus, through the priestess, had said.

'They are sacrificing to them as myxobarbaroi, the half-strangers, and Corinth has a plague to punish its dreadful deeds,' Herakles said, his voice rumbling in his chest. 'The city will expiate the crime for eternity; unless the gods change their purposes. That can happen, of course - do I not know that all too well? But you know they are safe, Medea. I wish that I knew that.'

I wept again, but with less agony. He rose and gave me wine, mingled with some bitter herbs.

'You will live,' he said, mopping his breast. 'We have to live. I do not mean that you will forget them.' He raised a hand to still my protest. He looked like an elderly farmer reproving a grandson, this hero before whom all the world stood in awe.

'But you will live, now that you have mourned them. They are safe with Clytie and walk in the fields of heaven. You cannot come to them there yet, but you will, in time.'

He lay down with me again and we made love and wept and made love again until dawn. The sun shot beams like arrows through Herakles' window. He was not asleep. He said to me, 'Where will you go?'

'Can't I stay with you?'

'No. The city will not accept you, and my wife will be hurt, and I would not hurt her, poor maiden.'

'I suppose that is so.' I had not even considered that Herakles was married.

'You have rejoined the Dark Mother,' he reminded me.

'Not wholly. My sacrifice was complete, but the priestess said that I could not come back to Hekate yet.'

'I think she will accept you now,' he said slowly. 'When Nauplios comes, what will you say to him?'

'That I will go on alone to the temple of Hekate on the coast.'

'You will not go alone,' said Herakles, rolling over to get to his feet and stretching. I heard his spine crack into place and he scratched his beard unaffectedly.

'I won't?' I asked.

I ran a hand down my body and felt wetness and brought my fingers away bloody. The Mother was asserting her control over me. I had not seen moon blood for some time. I was returning to health, whether I liked it or not.

'Nauplios loves you,' said Herakles simply. 'He always has, from the first time he saw you. But he will offer you no affront, Lady. He wants to care for you, and you should allow him this grace. He has been faithful.'

'Men are not faithful,' I said bitterly.

'Jason was always weak,' said Herakles, catching me in a breath-stopping embrace. 'He had no authority, even on the quest for the Golden Fleece. Nauplios is a fisherman's son, a peasant. He does not share the vices of the nobility, who are effete, cruel and cowardly. Consider Erystheus, giving me murderous missions from inside his grain emphora. Nauplios has courage and sureness of mind. Go with him to Hekate's temple, at least.'

'If you request this, of course,' I said, dazed with mourning and release.

'It is the last thing I shall ask of you,' said Herakles, and he kissed me very gently.

 

I drank too much with Clytios, renewing old memories, and rose groaning at sunrise to collect my belongings, saddle the horses and walk out into the sunlight.

Kore and Scylla came from the courtyard where they had been rolling in the dew. Their black coats were sparkling with light, little bright points which made me blink, and they jumped up onto me, happy with the idea of morning and spring.

I was not terribly impressed, but patted them and told them that we were leaving. Clytios would not come with me, but loaded me with presents and food. In return I gave his small son an agate pendant, an amulet of Poseidon, for it had a piece of fringed sea-weed trapped inside the stone. The child gummed it instantly and his father just managed to grab it before he swallowed it.

Reminding little Nauplios that amulets were to be worn externally, not internally, I farewelled Clytios affectionately and, following his directions, the lady Medea's faithful followers went through a back lane to Herakles' house, as the hero had requested.

The same bold slave girl let us into a courtyard blooming with beautiful flowers. I bent to sniff, suppressing a spasm as my head reminded me that I was getting too old for late hours and a half-emphora of wine between two comrades.

Herakles had managed to make all manner of different flowers grow in his garden, ones that normally would be found in different places. Some were seashore plants, some from the high mountains. Here they all bloomed happily together. There was a theory that Herakles was actually a Dactyl, the demigods born when Rhea the Titan dug her hands into the ground while Zeus All Father was being born. That being so, he might have had green fingers.

The lady Medea came into the garden with the hero, summoned by the girl. Herakles stooped with difficulty and picked some of the dark blue flowers which he had worn when I first saw him. They were stone-gentians, which usually only grow just below the snow-line. She stood smiling as he plaited them into her straight black hair, an aureole of strong blue around her dark face. She was as beautiful as a goddess. I perceived that she had lain with Herakles, and was struck with an instant and unworthy pang of jealousy so strong that it stirred my already unstable insides and made me feel nauseous.

I felt someone's gaze on me. Out of the window, a set, furious face was staring, watching Herakles kiss my lady very gently on the forehead. A young woman with golden hair and burning grey eyes. She saw me looking at her, grabbed for a veil and vanished. I presumed that this was the maiden Deianeira, the wife of Herakles.

My lady could lie with whomsoever she desired, and who better to comfort her than a hero? It was none of my concern to be jealous of her. She could bestow her body where she wished, and if Herakles had loosed the tears in her, then he had done both of us a great service.

I lost the uncertain feeling in my belly and could appreciate the garden, the vine, and the sight of my lady smiling, which I had not thought to see again.

Then the hero saw me and hailed, 'Nauplios, my dear comrade.' I came to him and he hugged me, the bear-hug of Herakles which somehow did not crack the bones as one would expect. He was old. He looked even more like a peasant, which endeared him to me. Even the fame which echoed around the world had not taken his essential earthliness away from Herakles.

'Thank you for entrusting her to me,' he said gravely.

'You have my trust, now and always,' I replied.

He grinned and picked for me a red rose, still a bud.

'Put it in water and when it blooms, so shall your life,' he said. 'Are you well stored for the journey?'

'Indeed,' I said, moving aside so he could see the packhorse which carried our baggage. Clytios had given me the horse and had also contributed largely to its burden, as though he was anxious that I should not take offence at the exile of my lady. 'In any case, today we are only going so far as the temple of Hekate on the coast.'

'This may be useful,' he said, handing me something wrapped in cloth. It was long and heavy. I put back the wrappings and found a sword. It was hilted in gold and encrusted with jewels. It must have been worth a king's ransom.

'Take it,' he ordered over my protest that it was far too valuable for a common sailor to own. 'I need no weapons now. And you are a most uncommon sailor, Nauplios.

'Farewell. When you hear of my death, remember that I was glad to live, and now I am glad to die. I will be content, I will be happy. Nauplios? Do you understand?'

'I understand, Lord.'

He gazed into my eyes for another moment, then seemed satisfied. He blessed me, then kissed me on both cheeks like a shipmate. The lady Medea preceded me into the lane, where we mounted and rode out of the little village of Athens and into the scrubby countryside, heading for the sea.

The last we saw of Herakles the hero, he was standing in his garden, gently stroking the trunk of a tree.

'I am an exile,' said the lady to me after we had ridden for some time. 'But that does not mean that you need be an exile, too, Nauplios."

'Lady, I go with you until you are where you wish to be,' I said, shoving down bile. Did she mean to send me away, after we had come so far? Had the hero's love been so sweet that she could not contemplate any other company?

'Nauplios,' she touched me, laying her hand on mine, the horses pacing close together. 'I value you, I do not wish you to lose your future because you are with me. I am witch and sorceress and murderer, remember.'

'I know,' I said.

'And there will be many places where you cannot go if you are with me,' she instructed me gently. 'Most of Achaea, by the look of it. I cannot stay in the land of Pelops, Nauplios. I will have to find another home.'

'Yes,' I agreed. 'And until you find it, you will need company. I have nothing here,' I said, and perhaps a little bitterness crept into my voice, for she took her hand away.

'Since I saw you, Lady, since you came out of the mist in Colchis calling to Melanion, son of Phrixos, I have been your man, wholly. I could not marry in Iolkos, nor in Corinth. Many women were offered to me, but I wanted none of them. If you send me away, Lady, I will go. But there is nothing more in the world I want than to be with you.'

'When we come to the temple, send a messenger to Khirra to bring
Good Catch
to Piraeus,' she said slowly. 'We could buy another boat, but perhaps you would prefer to sail your own vessel.'

'It was my father's ship, and I would prefer it,' I said. 'Especially if we are not coming back to Aegeas' ocean.'

I was hopeful of never hearing the Achaean tongue again. My fellow country-men were cruel and cowardly, the murderers of children, who could not even refrain from challenging an old hero who only wanted to drink wine in peace. 'Where shall we go?'

'I don't know,' she said. 'But if you wish, you shall come with me. I lay with Herakles,' she told me.

'Yes, Lady.'

'And he taught me that I am still female, and I wept all night for my children. I do not know if I have any love to give to requite your devotion, Nauplios. I would not have you pine for me, if I am fatally crippled.'

'Lady, I will not pine,' I promised. 'But I will go with you,' I insisted, and this time she gave me her hand. I kissed it.

The rose of Herakles was in a slim
lekythos
full of water, carefully fastened to the pack-beast's saddle. I began to hope that it would, indeed, bloom for me.

 

I had not noticed that Nauplios loved me, though in retrospect it was obvious and I wondered at my blindness.

He had been always at my side. He had seen that I was cold and given me his cloak on the
Argo
when I was so sunk in love with Jason that I had not even thanked him. He had engineered our escape from Iolkos, had found me fruits when I was sick with pregnancy, had sailed with me when Jason was despondent on the way to Corinth.