Medea (8 page)

We left our potion in the hands of the king's counsellor, Eupolis, an old man and trusted. It is the ancient law in Colchis that if the king dies in circumstances which could indicate poison or assassination, all his counsellors are executed by being stitched alive into an oxhide and hung in the willows. Eupolis would not dare meddle with the medicine, and would make sure that it was administered correctly.

Then we left the palace and came into the city, walking down the street which led us to Rivergate and the Grove of The Serpent, outside the walls.

I was apprehensive. Trioda spoke of the serpent as she, meaning that the creature was an avatar of Hekate, as were Kore and Scylla. But although my hounds were sacred, they were also dogs, prone to snap if startled and provided with strong teeth and haughty tempers. The serpent of the grove would also bear her original snaky nature when she was not possessed by Hekate. And women whispered that the serpent was as long as a riverboat and as wide as a door, that even to smell her breath was death, the guardian of the grove where hung the greatest treasure of Colchis, the Golden Fleece.

We took the path which wound through dripping marshes, where the dead men of Colchis hung in their oxhides. This was an eerie place, haunted by the piping of little unseen birds which, they said, were the voices of the dead, diminishing as the bodies rotted, until they were little but a squeaking in the reeds, which were once men and had men's voices.

It was also the haunt of midges and mosquitoes, eager to feast on human blood, and leeches as long as my finger, black with red stripes, which dropped from the willows and fastened in an eyeblink, plumping out on their stolen harvest in seconds.

They did not, of course, harm us. We were redolent of an essence of white summer daisies, sun-flowers dedicated to Ammon, and another oil derived from a certain fungus which belongs to the Dark Mother alone. If any insect were bold enough to ignore the repelling power of Ammon and bite us, it would instantly die.

'What was the potion, Mistress?' I asked Trioda, as we waded through the black water in the rising mist.

'Potion, daughter?'

'The queen required it of you,' I reminded her. 'Is she poisoning my father?'

'No,' said Trioda.

We walked a few paces. A year before I might not have persisted, but now I had more courage. I had saved my father's life and I was a woman of knowledge, about to meet the guardian of the serpent grove. Also I needed some words to break the silence as we walked amongst the bobbing dead in the stench of rotting flesh and marsh-water, the mist flowing around us.

'Then what is the medicine, Mistress? Does the queen suffer from some shameful ailment?'

Women's illnesses are indications of the disfavour of the Triple Goddess, and to placate the goddess it is essential to examine the state of mind of the woman. If she cannot conceive, for instance, she may have desired her stepson or a priest of Ammon, may have lusted to follow her own appetite - although there may be other reasons. A woman whose womb will not hold the quickening child may have blasphemed the goddess, cursing by Hekate at some domestic misfortune. Sacrifice and fasting will usually mend the fault, and the medicines of the skilled women of the temple. However, no woman would admit to illness before a man, lest she be shamed.

'Not precisely,' said Trioda. She held a bush aside for me as we took the winding path, almost invisible to the eye, towards the ilex grove.

'I am your acolyte, Mistress, your daughter. Tell me.'

'The queen of Colchis wants to live,' said Trioda after a long pause. 'If she bears a child, she will die. She cannot disobey the commands of the king your father to lie down under him and receive his seed, the black seed of Aetes. Therefore Eidyia, every month when the moon is gone, takes one drop of a certain potion.'

'What potion?' I watched a leech curl dead from my forearm and plop into the dark water.

'It is compounded in copper of fireweed and fungus of rye,' she said. I thought about it. The purple fungus which infects rye which has been wet too often in growing, produces gangrene and mania, a dancing madness. A pregnant woman who tastes of it…

"She aborts the child,' I said, astonished at the queen's cunning.

'There may not be a child. That compound causes the womb to contract, loosing the tide of blood that follows the moon. Thus Eidyia risks all - discovery and disgrace - to avoid death in childbirth. And thus, child, Eidyia endangers her husband, who needs another daughter, so that the sons of Phrixos, through their mother, shall not rule his kingdom after he is dead.'

'Mistress, you have told me that dead men die and rot, that their spirits fly to the land of Ammon to dwell in the sun, as the spirits of women are carried in Hekate's arms to sleep in her bosom. What should the king care that some other man will take his kingdom after he is gone?'

'It is the duty of a king to care for his kingdom, to leave it in safe hands. And that is as strong as the duty laid on women to endure the man, suck in his seed, feed his children with her blood, bear them in agony and nurture them, though she suckles the sons who enslave her sisters and breeds her own captors. That is all I will say to you, Medea.'

She waded onto the path again, and I followed her in silence.

 

I thought often of the young centaur woman in the next year, though I did not see her. I might have gone wandering to the other side of the mountain, where the women lived, despite the danger of death if I was caught, for my heart was greatly inclined toward her, but I had no leisure. Jason and I were worked hard by our master.

Cheiron kept us at his side, trying to instil precepts of government and all his wisdom into our heads, so that we would not forget when we left.

For when Jason, son of Aison, was fifteen, he would descend the mountain and try and regain his kingdom.

'Pelias, brother of your father, is a proud and cunning man,' he instructed as we sat close around a horse-dung fire, shivering in the chill winds. 'You are too honest, young prince of Iolkos.'

'How can I be too honest, Master?' asked my lord. His eyes looked blue in the cooling darkness.

'Is not Herakles the greatest hero? Yet he has cunning. You must try to acquire it, Jason, and not die untimely, your quest unaccomplished. Men cling to power, so will Pelia. Men cling more closely to power which is stolen and majesty which is usurped. Use great formality with your uncle, boy. Show me your obeisance.'

Jason got up and made a graceful, sweeping bow, flourishing his goatskin rug like a cloak. Cheiron grunted in approval.

'And the words you will say?'

'Master, I can't remember,' confessed Jason. Cheiron swatted at his ears and repeated, 'I am Jason, son of Aison, and I am come to reclaim my father's right.'

Jason repeated it, again and again, under the centaur's patient teaching, and eventually both of us knew it by heart.

 

Time passed, as time does. The festival came and went again, but neither of us were allowed to take part. Philos, who had offered us his captive, had been sent to another mountain in disgrace for defiling the ceremony. I asked the old man about their custom. Would they not rather have wives to live with, as my father lived with my mother?

I could remember my parents talking quietly by the fire, while my brothers and I were lying almost asleep in our sheepskins. Their voices had soothed me, though they said no words of love, just commonplace matters - the health of the flock, the fishing, the mending of nets, the rising or setting of the Pleiades which ruled the seasons. I sometimes recalled little vivid pictures from my past before I had climbed the centaurs' mountain, and that was one of them. The quiet voices discussing the likely value of the clip, and the unaccountable ways of Poseidon's folk, the fish. And I remember waking early one morning and hearing them sacrificing to Aphrodite, goddess of love. My mother had moaned, her arms were around my father's neck and she was kissing him. She had seemed to enjoy his embrace. She was not pinned and hurt like the centaur maiden. And afterwards they had slept companionably together, her head on his shoulder.

'Indeed, Master,' Jason joined in. 'Is there not true love between man and woman?'

'There is not, however many sentimental Achaean songs say there is. There cannot be. For, tell me, young men' - his old brow furrowed and his voice dropped to an impressive whisper - 'Tell me, Prince of Iolkos, what true allegiance can you give to a weak king?'

'None, Master,' answered Jason. His hair was long and he wound a lock around his hand as he listened.

'Then there can be no true love between a woman and a man. True love is for equals, or inferior and superior when there is proper respect. Women are foolish, powerless, enslaved for their good, for they are flighty and weak and there is no integrity in them. They cannot be trusted. One sniff of a man and they are gone, leaving heart, home and honour, and they will move from man to man and husband to husband without grief, for they are lacking in courage and bold only in their vices. If you find a woman who looks up to you as little less than a god, Jason, then you may feel safe with her, for woman is also religious and superstitious. But marry a woman who is learned, as far as such witless things can have learning, and has her own will, then beware, for she will destroy you.'

'But,' began Jason, and the old man cut him off with a fierce gesture.

'We centaurs know this. We keep our women as we keep our horses; with gentleness and discipline, but knowing that they are brute beasts, without understanding. They live apart and manage their own affairs, except for the four festivals, when we have connection with them to breed new men. Women are only the vessel for the seed, and as unreliable as the earth herself. In them lies no trust, and thinking of them can only weaken a man's spirit, and his body.

'The Aechaeans are a strong people, but think how strong they would be if they did not accept these creatures into their houses, allow them to take over their lives, complaining and caressing and filling their heads - even the king's head - with domestic concerns, with children and petty matters. The breeding of children is their business, and they do it well enough. But they must have no place in government or even in consideration. Do not think overmuch of women, young men. They are a necessary evil.'

'But do you need to hurt them, Master Cheiron?' I asked. 'I saw the maiden weep under the phallus - surely that bodes badly for conception.'

'If once our women tasted the joys of making love as your Aphrodite would instruct, Nauplios - ah yes, I have travelled, and I know of such things, and they are sweet, sweet and foul - they would be forever corrupted, and so would our young men. We are a pure people, and have no taste for sensuality. We need to breed, so let us mate as horses mate, who leap the mares. Our maidens conceive readily enough, for once they have conceived they may not go to the sire again for three years - four, if they produce a boy.'

'But I am an Achaean and a prince and will need to marry, Master,' said Jason. "Or am I to mate as the centaurs do?'

'It would be better for you if you did,' snarled Cheiron.

He would say nothing further on the matter. It was cold, down by his little fire. He told us stories of heroes and battles, and strange centaur stories about the
striga,
the seductive phantom, a woman with white skin and hair like fire, who came in the night and lay with young men, sucking their seed from them, weakening them, so that they grew pale and trembled, useless for hunting or herding, longing for the night. And when they died of exhaustion, she would steal their souls, so that they in turn became spirits who overlay and penetrated young women, sapping their energy from their household tasks, depriving their master of their labour, finally to conceive and bear monsters.

I lay and dreamed, and Jason dreamed the same dream. It was the last night on the mountain with the centaurs. The next day my lord and I would venture into Iolkos and claim his kingdom.

A woman of fascination, a woman with dark hair, not red, a
striga
with dusky skin and warm breath, dressed in black, came and kissed us and stroked us, her clever hands caressing and sliding, her breasts in our face, her mouth on ours, until we woke clasped together, wet with seed, still shuddering.

We said nothing about it. It was dawn, and we washed and dressed in our finest tunics. We were, at last, returning to the sea. We were going down from the mountain to claim Jason's kingdom.

 

The grove was as black as pitch and I stood still, as I had been taught, with my eyes closed. Beside me, Trioda began to sing. I listened carefully.

It was a high, simple, strongly accented tune, punctuated with palm-strokes on the small drum, and I caught the melody quickly and joined in. We sang, on a rising pitch:

O
phis Megale, Ophis Megale, Ophis Megale kale

Then the same triple invocation on a dipping pitch, then the three words on a level. We repeated it.

The treasure of Colchis, the Golden Fleece, hung from the biggest tree. It is the skin of a curly fleeced ram, of considerable size, and it gleams, because it is filled with gold dust. Each tress has been soaked in water-borne gold, and it shines even in the darkness of the grove. In sunlight - though it must never leave the grove - it would be blinding. Achaeans believe that it is the skin of a magical beast on which Phrixos rode to Colchis.

It is actually the skin of the king of the Massagaetae's ram, laid in the stream to soak up gold; and Colchians still lived who had seen Phrixos the Foreigner arrive in a perfectly ordinary ship.

The ilex is not a friendly tree and few things like growing under it. The floor of the grove was, therefore, smooth, and deep in last year's prickly leaves. I could not hear my own footfall, but I could hear something else.

Something very heavy was coming through the leaf mould. I was not sure that I could cope with sight, so I listened and kept my eyes closed, singing along automatically to the tune and the drum. The grove was resounding with the shrill alarm calls of birds when Trioda nudged me and I looked to see a serpent of amazing size. She was as long as a boat and wide as a doorway; wide as a pithos, the big-bellied grain amphora, and taller than me. Her head was the size of a cow's, her eyes the size of my doubled fists, and she must have been very old - only a huge length of years allows the serpent kind to grow so gigantic.