Medea (37 page)

She was smooth and skilled and I pleased her - or perhaps it had just been a long time since she had been allowed to mate with a man. Or men. She had lain with someone else that night, for her sheath was slippery under my questing fingers. But some hunger had built up inside me, some pressure, and instead of slowly pleasuring her with my hands and my lips, as I had learned on Lemnos, I laid her on her back and drove inside her, so that she cried aloud and grasped my hips, digging in her nails. I felt the liquid strength of the female sheath, designed by the gods to raise men to the heights of delight, and thrust again, and the willing sheath embraced my phallus like a mouth, sucking. She bit my neck, curling around me, strong legs locked around my waist, and thrust back, until we sobbed into climax and collapsed.

I did not know her name and she was not the one whom I wanted - I dared not even form the thought about who I really desired - but she was kind, pliable and scented, she took my over-eager seed and sucked out of me some of my pain, and I remember her with gratitude.

When we woke no one was there. As we gathered up our coverings, we called, but no one came. I wondered who we had lain with, beasts perhaps, or phantoms, and every man there was thinking the same, for our progress to the beach went from an orderly walk to a run to a rout, and we threw ourselves into the ship and rowed frantically out of the harbour.

I asked Philammon. 'Who do you think those maidens were?'

'Maidens?' asked the bard, plucking at a string, frowning, and tightening it.

'Last night, at the feast of Circe. You know, the young women who made sacrifice to Aphrodite with us.'

'I saw no young women,' he said, plucking another string.

'What, then, did you see?' demanded several voices anxiously.

'I saw nothing,' replied Philammon. Then he sang, looking at the Princess Medea.

Not the hasty, fleeting, incomplete

Mating of humans and beasts,

But a melting, a fiery loving

Which melded the forms and shapes

Into one creature. In the music,

Male blended with female

And swelled with child.

 

'What do you mean?' she asked, smiling. 'That they mated with demons or shadows?'

Philammon would not answer, and they began to discuss Orpheus and his death at the hands of the Bacchantes.

'They tore him apart with their bare hands,' said the bard. 'The pieces they threw into the sea. His head, still singing, washed up on the island of Lesbos. The women built a shrine around it, and then a stone temple. Only when the temple was complete did the head complete its song, for the young trees around the building took up his tune. Even now, the Lesbian women allow travellers to sleep a night in that temple, though men are banned from their island as women are banned from Andros. The sleepers listen to the music and become poets or madmen. But then, the women of Lesbos say that all men are poets or madmen.'

 

It seemed that I had been sailing for all of my life in
Argo,
listening to the same noises. The groan of Ancaeas the Strong as he extracted himself from under his rowing bench - I still could not see how he fitted himself into that space. The incessant quarrelling of Idas and Lynkeos, which began to annoy us so much that we separated them, one at the extreme end of the stern, the other at the furthest point of the bow, and even then they shouted insults at each other until Telamon threatened to tie them into knots and throw them overboard to act as sea anchors. Atalante chanted her prayers to her own goddess, Artemis, at the rising and setting of the moon, and Philammon marked the changes of the planets with music and talked to the princess, who was interested in every facet of Achaean life which he could tell her. Melas was instructed by Argos, his father, in the making and sailing of ships. Nestor, Telamon, Oileus and Ancaeas sang songs from amidships as we heaved through heavy seas. Alabande sewed when we were sailing, long strips of complex embroidery delicate enough for a princess. They were designed for the lady Medea; and she was wrapped in a cloak of immense richness by the time we hove to off Phaeacia.

Meleagros and Perithous exchanged endless reminiscences of women they had known, which were so highly coloured that I did not believe more than one tale in five. Erginos developed a talent for catching sea birds on a long line, so the usual noises of the ship were punctuated by a shout, a frantic flapping, a squawk and a thud. I could smell tarred line, canvas, and wooden planks well seasoned by the ocean.
Argo
was a boat redolent of men and sweat and urine; and of the princess' perfume, a dark, smoky, disturbing female scent.

We had no hint of trouble when we landed on the island of King Alcinous and Queen Arete. They were well known to be hospitable to travellers, and we dragged the ship out of the water and secured her, for a storm was coming. Black clouds scudded in from the east and riding on them came a fleet of ships.

Admetos said to Akastos, 'Here come our lord's royal cousins.'

'They must have picked up all of the bits of Aegialeus,' observed Akastos.

'Holy ground,' said Philammon, leading the way quickly toward a temple which stood on top of a cliff. We had seen it out on Ocean's bosom; the sailors use it as a sighting hark. It was called 'The White Pillars" and was dedicated to Themis, who is Justice.

Slaughtering us in the temple of Justice herself would be unthinkable, even for Colchians.

Then we sent word by the priests that we had arrived, and asked the royal rulers of the island to come to us, as we dared not leave our sanctuary.

The Colchians, grim men and salt-stained, climbed the path, but, as Philammon had guessed, they did not dare defy Themis and enter the shrine. They sat down outside and made their camp, and I guessed that they would not be easy to drug again.

They had just lit their cooking fires when King Alcinous and Queen Arete came into the temple.

They were strikingly similar. They were both small and old, with the same long white hair. Alcinous was clean shaven. Both were wearing voluminous purple robes and golden crowns, small circlets set with sea-pearls. I wondered, for a moment, whether they were brother and sister. Then I saw that they had been together a long while, and had grown to resemble each other as long-married people do, even when they originally were unlike.

Old goat-herds, they say in Iolkos, resemble goats and old sheep-men resemble sheep, and Alcinous and Arete had been ruling for so long that they contained and embodied the concept of royalty.

We all knelt. They sat, in identical thrones which the priests carried forward.

'Who comes to our island?' asked Alcinous.

'Jason, son of Aison, the crew of the ship
Argo
, and the daughter of Aetes, Medea, Princess of Colchis, who is my affianced bride,' replied Jason.

'And who pursues you?' asked Arete, in the same slightly cracked, authoritative tone.

'Men of Colchis,' said a voice from beyond the door. 'To retrieve our stolen fleece, our stolen bones and our stolen princess, and to revenge the death of the king's son, Aegialeus, murdered and then butchered by this Achaean pirate.'

'Will you accept our judgement?' asked Alcinous.

'I will,' declared Jason.

'I will,' said the gruff voice of the Colchian.

'Then there shall be truce,' ordered Arete, or possibly Alcinous. 'Three days. We shall then return and pronounce our verdict. In that time the Achaeans will stay in the palace and the Colchians will stay in the temple. You are forbidden to speak to each other or to come closer to each other than a bowshot. Are these terms understood?'

'Understood,' said Jason and the captain of the Colchians.

We packed up and moved to the palace. The city was like all others on that island where war did not come, a well-maintained, well-built place of stone houses, each with a sleeping dog on the scrubbed step. It was a place where every man had a vine over his courtyard and sat under it when his toil was done, drinking mead from his wooden cup, attended by slaves who had been slaves for ten generations and were content.

The streets were paved and the temples numerous, and every fifth day there seemed to be a festival. The blue-robed priests of Themis were sweeping rose-petals from the temple steps as we came into the city, for the island of Alcinous and Arete is famous for its scents. It was clean and comfortable and we were well fed, but I went for long walks with the Princess Medea's hounds, Kore and Scylla, to ease the burning inside me. There was no possibility that Nauplios, the net-caster's son, could achieve his desire, and I strove to push it to the very depths of my mind, to bury it under a thousand other concerns. Her hounds liked me, and that was something I could do for the princess, now secluded like the Achaean woman she would have to become. For women of my country do not walk in the public street unveiled, or talk to unrelated men, not unless they are peasants or market-women or whores.

I was bringing the black dogs back on the second day when she called me into the women's quarters. I stood at the door, for my entrance was against all custom, and she said more loudly, 'Come in, Nauplios.'

'Lady, I am your slave,' I replied. 'But you are in the women's quarters and I cannot come in.'

'Then I will come out,' she declared.

'Lady, you must not,' said one of the women within. 'You must not go out into the open street with a man.'

'Let me pass,' said the princess in a dangerous tone, and the woman must have stood aside, for Medea issued forth in no good temper. She was veiled - she had yielded to custom so far. She grabbed my arm and swung me around, so that my back was against the wall, and demanded, "What's happening?'

'The royal ones are still considering our fate, lady Medea.'

'Where is my lord?'

'Lady, he has gone fishing with the men of this island, as there is nothing else we can do but wait.'

'Nauplios, must all women in Achaea live like this?' she asked. 'Confined in the women's quarters, never to see the sun?'

'Lady, that is how women live,' I replied. I trembled at her nearness. I longed to take her into my arms, feel her lay her head on my shoulder, to comfort her, to die defending her - anything, so that she would know how I felt. But she was my lord's affianced wife, and I said nothing and did nothing which might have alerted her to how much I loved Medea, Princess of Colchis.

I felt that if I stood there any longer I must throw myself at her feet and declare my love. I stepped back a pace. She misinterpreted this, laying a hand on my arm to detain me.

'I mean you no harm, Nauplios, son of Dictys,' she said sadly, looking up into my face. 'Only here have I realised how much of a stranger I am to these Achaeans. I am no black witch, no devotee of demons, and I do not use sorcery to gain my ends. I mean no evil.'

'Lady, I never thought that of you, never,' I protested. I loved her so much, this strong, thin woman with the black hair like a waterfall of ebony under her thin veil. She had saved all our lives, even that of Nauplios. She had gained us the Golden Fleece and the bones of Phrixos, and she would obtain Jason his kingdom. I admired her skill and was in awe of her knowledge, and I had told her the truth, which I owed to her; I never thought she was evil. Her touch was warm and I tried not to return it, though I desperately wanted to cover that small hand with my own.

'Find out for me what will be decided,' she begged.

I had never thought that the proud priestess of Hekate would beg, and it hurt me to see her. I took her hand in mine and said hurriedly, 'I will find out, Lady.' Then I walked quickly away, before I could say or do something unfitting.

It was one of the kitchen-slaves who told me the decision. He had it from one of the bed-chamber slaves, and what bed-chamber slaves do not know about their masters isn't knowledge. I accepted the piece of fresh-baked bread which the fellow insisted on given me, shared a couple of stories about the Lemnian women - the only part of our story which had found universal acceptance - and went to find Jason.

I caught him by the arm when the boat came in. He had netted his own weight in fish and was pleased. 'My lord,' I said. 'I have found out what Alcinous is going to order.'

'You have? Tell me,' ordered my lord.

With the greatest effort of my life, I told him, 'If the Princess Medea is still a maiden, she will have to return to her father, with the fleece and Phrixos. If she is married to you, then we may keep all of them; fleece and Phrixos and the lady Medea.'

'Then we marry tonight,' he decided. 'Tell the women to prepare the bedchamber for us. Lay the Golden Fleece on the bed. I must wash. Hurry, Nauplios!' he said, and ran for the palace, calling for clean linen and hot water.

Into the breeze caused by his departure I asked, 'Shouldn't someone tell the lady Medea?'

In the end, I could not face it. I sent Atalante to tell her that she should prepare to be married, and took myself for a walk all around the island of Arete and Alcinous.

It took me all the rest of the day and all night, and I was so exhausted when I returned that I threw myself down into the nearest bed and slept like a dead man.

 

They sent Atalante to tell me to prepare for my marriage. The judgement had been made, though not pronounced, and I must surrender my maidenhood to Jason or be sent back to my father. There was no gift I would not give to Jason, my dearest love, more willingly than that.

The women of the palace were delighted. I was stripped of my plain robes and my tunic, plunged into a hot bath, and scrubbed unmercifully. One woman sat at my feet, using a piece of volcano-stone to remove tar from my soles. Two others had possession of my hands, paring my nails. More were washing and combing my hair, and the rest of Arete's maidens were rummaging through chests of cloth, seeking wedding garments for a princess.

I was restless and relieved. If I was married to Jason he could not be able to give me to anyone to ensure the safety of his crew. And I wanted him so badly that my knees became unreliable as soon as I pictured his face or remembered his touch.