Jason and Medeia (12 page)

stratagems.

‘For all he said of my wickedness—I was fifteen

then—

I preferred to wheel and deal. So, having nothing, only the dry crumbs Pelias dropped, I made my bargain with

him.

I'd sail the seas, bring back whatever my crew and I could steal, and leave it for him to decide what worth

it was.

I wouldn't be the first great lord, God knew, who'd

gotten his start

marauding. I gathered my crew together, and with the

first fair wind,

we sailed. We were lucky. Good breezes most of the

way, good hosts …

“We learned quickly. If men came down to us with

open arms,

glad to see strangers, eager to hear of our sea

adventures,

we made ourselves their firm friends—praised them to

the skies,

fought beside them if they happened to have some

war in progress,

drank with them, gave them our shoulders later when

they stumbled, climbing

to bed. And when the time for leaving came, they'd

give us

gifts, the finest they had—they'd load up our boat to

the gunnels,

throw in a barge of their own—and we'd stand on the

shore with them, moaning,

tears running down our cheeks, and we'd hug them,

swearing we'd never

forget. When we sailed away we'd wave till the haze

of land

was far below the horizon. They were no jokes, those

friendships.

Sooner than anyone thought, I'd prove how firm they

were,

when all at once I had need of the men I'd fought beside, sung with half the night, or tracked down women

with—

princes my own age, some of them, or second sons, nephews of kings, like myself, with no inheritance but nerve—courage and talent to spare—and their old

advisors,

sea-dog uncles, friends of their fathers, powerful fighters who'd outlived the centaur war, seen war with the

Amazons,

and now, like dust-dry banners in a trunk, waited, their

glory

dimmed.

“So it was with friends. But if, on the other hand, we landed and men came down at us with battle-axes, stones and hammers, swords, we'd repay them blow

for blow

till the rock shore streamed with blood—or we'd row

for our lives, and then

creep back when darkness came, invisible shadows

more soft

of foot than preying cats, and we'd split their skulls.

We'd sack

their towns, stampede their cattle in the vineyards till

not one vine

stood straight; and so we'd take by force what they

might have made

more profitable by hurling it into the sea before we came. Yet it wasn't the best of bargains on either

side.

Both of us paid with lives, and more than once we lost a ship. Besides, the booty we snatched and hauled

aboard

was mediocre at best—far cry from the hand-picked

treasures

given with love by friends. Sometimes when the sea

was rough

the loot we'd loaded on the run would clatter and slide,

and our weight

would shift, and we'd scratch for a handhold, watching

the sea comb in.

“We learned. We were out three years. When we

turned at last for home,

we had seven ships for the one we'd started with. I'd

earned

my keep, I thought: a house like any lord's, at least, and some small say in my uncle's court I figured wrong. Sour milk and rancid honey it was, in the eyes of Pelias.

“The king had gotten the solemn word of an oracle

that he'd meet his death through the works of a man

he'd someday see

coming from town with one bare foot. It was soon

confirmed.

Just after we landed, I was fording the Anauros River,

making

for town and the palace beyond, when I lost one sandal

in the mud.

It was stuck fast, gripped as if by the hand of old Hades seizing at a pledge. The river was flooded—it was a

time of thaw—

so I left it there. Pelias was giving a great banquet for his father Poseidon and the other gods—or all but

Hera—

when I came where he sat, his lords and ladies all

crowded around him,

dressed to the nines, like a flock of exotic birds—long

capes

more brilliant than precious stones, deep blue, sharp

yellow, scarlet—

eating and laughing, plump as the mountainous clusters

of grapes

the slaves bore in. I bowed to him, dressed in the

panther-cape

already famous for midnight strikes, unexpected attacks from rooftops, pits of dungeons. I bowed, most

dignified—

except, of course, for that one bare foot. He looked not

exactly

gratified that I'd made it. He looked, in fact, like a man who's gotten an arrow in his back. Pelias threw out his

hands,

tiny chins trembling, and said, ‘J-J-J
-Jason!'
And said no more. He'd fainted. It was three full days before I

could see him.

“Well, no reason to stretch it out. I sat by his bed, summed up my winnings, and waited to hear what he

thought it all worth.

I heard, instead, about the golden fleece. I had the

m-makings

of a king, he said. He continually squeezed his hands

together,

winking. I thought he'd gone crazy. ‘J-J-J-Jason, b-boy, you've got the m-makings of a king.' He was gray and

flabby, like a man

who's been sitting in a dimly lit room for a full

half-century.

His legs and arms were spindles, the rest of him loose,

like a pudding,

his large head wide and flat, wrinkled like an embryo's. In his splendid bedclothes—azure and green and as full

of light

as wine falling in a stream in front of a candle flame-he looked like a slightly frightened treetoad, blinking

its eyes,

cautiously peeking out from a spray of peacock feathers. You would not have thought him a child of Poseidon

the Earth-trembler,

but demigod he was, nonetheless, and dangerous.

“I waited, laboring to figure him out. I dropped the

idea

of craziness. He was sly, vulpine. The way he made his eyes glint when he mentioned the fleece, and wrung

his hands

and made me bend to his pillow, to let him poke at me, conspirators in a cunning scheme—I knew the old man was sane enough. He was pulling something. Yet this

was the plan:

Bring him the golden fleece, and he'd split the kingdom

with me,

half and half. I could see at a glance what he wanted,

all right,

though I wasn't quite sure of the reason—not then.

But half the kingdom!

I looked down, hiding my interest, adding it up. I saids “You seem to forget the difficulties,' and watched him

closely.

‘No d-d-d-
diff
iculties!' he said, and splashed out his

arms,

then wiped his mouth. “None for a muh-muh-man like

you!

‘I waited. He grinned like a monkey. Then after a while

he sighed,

allowed that it might be a long way, allowed that there

might

be ‘snakes' (he glanced at me) ‘snakes and suh-suh-so

on.' He sighed.

‘And if I … refuse your offer?' He sighed again, looked

grieved.

“You're young, J-Jason. P-popular.' He looked out the

window.

And I understood. ‘You think I'll reclaim my father's

throne

despite all the horrors of civil war. But if, by

mischance—'

‘J-Jason!' he exclaimed. His eyes were wide with shock.

I laughed.

He snatched my hand, and, sickly as he looked, his grip

was fierce.

He wept. ‘J-Jason, I wish you w-well,' he said. And

he did—

as Zeus wished Kronos well when he had all his bulk

in chains,

or as Herakles wished for nothing but peace to the

slaughtered snake

or the shredded, mammocked tree when he tore off the

apples of gold.

‘Suppose you had the suh-certain word of an oracle,'

he said,

‘that a suh-certain man was going to k-k-k-kill you.

What would

you do?' I nodded. ‘I'd send him to fetch the golden

fleece,'

I said. Old Pelias squeezed my hand. ‘Go and f-fetch it.' And so I agreed. Pelias had known I'd agree, of course. What Pelias couldn't know was that I'd beat those odds. It meant two things—the perfect ship and the perfect

crew.

I could get them. That very day I checked with the

augurers,

playing it safe. No signs were ever better; and though I had, like any man of sense, my doubts about how much a squinting, cracked old priest—with

reasons of his own,

could be, for seeing what he did—how much such a

man could know

by watching a few stray birds, still, I was excited.

I was

a most devout young man, in those days. Goodness

in the gods

was a rockfirm fact of experience, I thought. And so

I told

the king that as soon as I'd gotten my ship and crew

together

I'd sail.

“It was Argus who built the ship—old Argus, under Athena's eye. He built it of trees from her sacred groves, beech and ironwood, towering pines and great dark

oaks

that sang in the wind like men, a vast, unearthly

choir—

and Athena showed him herself which trees to cut.

When the beam

of the keel went in, old Argus smiled, his long gray hair tied back with a thong, and the beam said, ‘Good! Nice

work, old man!'

When he notched the planks and lowered them onto the

chucks, the planks

said, ‘Good! Nice fit!' He carved the masts and shaped

them with figures

facing in all the four directions, and after he'd dropped

them,

slid them with a hollow thump to the central beam,

they said,

That's fine! We're snug as rocks!' Then he built the

booms and wove

the sails. The black ship sang, and Argus had finished it.

“I gathered the crew.

“I can't deny it: there never was

in all this world or on any world a mightier crew than the Argonauts. Sweet gods, beside the most feeble

of the lot,

I seemed, myself, a mildly intelligent hedgehog!

I gathered

Akhaians from far and near—all men of genius, sons of gods—

“And the first, the finest of them all, was Orpheus.

He was borne by Kalliope herself to her Thracian lover

Oiagros,

high on the slopes of Pimplea. Even as a child, with his

music

he enchanted the towering, frozen rocks and the violent

streams,

and to this day there are quernal forests on the coasts

of Thrace

that Orpheus, playing his lyre, lured down from Pieria, rank on rank of them, coming to his music like soldiers

on the march.

The next I chose was Polyphemon, son of Eilatos,

out of

Larissa. He was, in his younger days, a hero in the

ranks

of the incredible Lapithai who warred with the centaurs

once.

His limbs by now were heavy with age, but he still had

the same

fierce heart.

‘The next was Asterios, son of an endless line

of travellers, explorers, river merchants, a man who

could trade up

wools and linens to priceless gems. And Iphiklos was

next,

my mother's brother, who came for the sake of our

kinship. Then

Admetos, king of Pherai, rich in sheep. Then the sons of Hermes, out of Alope, land of cornfields; with them Aithalides their kinsman. Then, from wealthy Gyrton, Koronos came, the son of Kaineos—strong as a boulder, though he wasn't the man his father was. In Gyrton

they say

the old man singlehanded beat the centaurs back, and after the centaurs rallied and overcame him, even then they couldn't kill him. With massive pines they

drove him

down in the earth like a nail. He was still alive.

“Then Mopsos,

powerful man whom Apollo had trained to excel all

others

in the art of augury from birds. He knew when he

came, he said,

that he'd meet his end in the Libyan desert.

Then Telamon

and Peleus, sons of Aiakos, fathers in turn of sons as awesome as they were themselves—the heroes Aias

and Akhilles,

now chief terrors of Troy.

“And after the two great brothers,

from Attica came Butes, son of Teleon, and Phalerus, famous for their deadly spears. (Theseus, finest of the Attic line, was out of business. He'd gone with Peirithoös into the Underworld, and was kept

there, chained,

a prisoner deep in the earth.)

‘Then out of the Thespian town

of Siphai, Tiphys came. He was a mariner who could sense the coming of a swell across the open

sea

and knew by the sun and stars when storms were

brewing, six

weeks off. Athena herself had sent him to join us—she who'd supervised the building of our ship.

“Then Phlias

came, Dionysos' son, who lived by the springs of

Asopos—

child of the black-robed god who was my father's father. Phlias was a dancer, a tiger in battle. He never learned

speech.

“From Argos came Talaos and Areion, and powerful

Leodokos.

“Then came Herakles. He'd heard a rumor of the

expedition