Medea (42 page)

Jason looked at the city and sighed. 'To have come so far, Lady,' he said to me dolefully. 'To have dared so much and borne so many losses, to have done such great deeds in such company, and here we are on the waterfront of Corinth like beggars. I would that Pelias was still alive, and we were in the tavern in Iolkos, drinking Kiti wine.'

'But Pelias is dead, my lord,' I said.

'And whose fault is that?' he snarled, glaring sideways at me.

'Mine, my lord,' I admitted. 'But that cannot now be amended. Do not despair. There is always time to despair, my lord. We can always despair later.'

He seemed to acknowledge this. We stood in silence, looking over the fine city of Corinth, until Nauplios came back and led us to the house of his cousin. The man, it appeared, was nervous of lodging us. He, too, had heard of Medea the sorceress. I wondered whether we were going to be barred from the door. I wondered, too, whether I would give birth to Jason's child in the gutter outside, for it was leaping in the womb and the movement turned me dizzy.

There were two men and a woman in the tiny house. Nauplios held the door open and his cousin Sisyphos said hesitantly, 'I can take you and your lord, Nauplios, in memory of your father, but this foreign woman is another matter. She…'

'Get out of the way, husband,' snapped the large woman, getting ponderously to her feet and shoving the other man out of the way. 'She may be witch or sorceress, but she's a young thing about to become a mother and she will stay with me, or I will never lie here again, and you must give my dowry-boat back to my father, for there I shall go and that tonight.'

This statement from an Achaean woman was evidently so surprising that both men stared at her in astonishment. After a long moment, the husband nodded.

'Now out you go, Lords, I must tend her,' she said briskly, and turned her husband and mine out of the room.

I was half-carried inside and let down onto a bench, the room's only furnishing. Kore and Scylla threw themselves down in front of the fire, panting in the sudden heat.

'Come now, pretty, sit down here and let Clytie care for you,' she instructed. Her voice was almost rough, but her touch was gentle and sure. She warmed water and washed my face and hands clean of salt, combed my hair, and crouched beside the hearth to heat some soup. I was so touched by this unexpected kindness that tears came into my eyes.

'We women must support each other,' she said in answer to my stammered thanks. 'The world is run by men, and a bad job they make of it, with their pride and their greed. But the real work of the world is done by us, by women. It would never do to let men know that we could manage perfectly well without them, and they are useful for some tasks. In their wisdom, the gods gave them the power to rule us and abuse us, kill us and sell us, put us in jeopardy by every war, murdering our sons. But when I saw you sagging by my doorway, pretty, with my husband about to deny you entry, I knew that I had endured enough from men.'

'But he'll beat you for shaming him in front of strangers,' I protested, sipping at weak, hot soup made of cracked barley grains.

'Then he'll beat me,' she shrugged. 'But meanwhile you are in out of the cold and need not give birth in the street.'

'Mistress, I am in your debt,' I said. The baby had calmed inside me. Perhaps it slept. I was warm and clean and the relief was so great that I began to sob. Clytie wiped my tears away with a work-roughened hand and soothed, 'There, sweeting, there, pretty creature. Your first child?' I nodded. "It took me like that, too.'

'You have many children?' I asked.

She was a big woman, with broad hips and shoulders as wide as an axe-handle. Her hair was greying, dragged back under a veil. Her face was generous and bony, with a strong jaw. But she looked for a moment like a girl, a sad maiden, as she replied steadily, 'I had three strong sons; the sea took two and Korinthos the Usurper's border dispute another. My only daughter died in childbirth less than a moon ago. Her son died with her. So when I saw you I knew I could not deny you hospitality. You are the Princess Medea, are you not, Lady?'

'I am Medea, wife of Jason of Iolkos,' I said. 'I am neither princess nor priestess any more.'

'And now you need to sleep. Now, pretty, you lie down in this corner. Wrap yourself in one of these cloaks you have brought and be at peace. Come along, dogs. Lie down with your mistress. Sleep, Lady. No one will molest you, for I will lie here and we will draw the curtain.'

She pulled at a cord which brought a faded piece of old sailcloth across to cut off a third of the room. Achaeans who have only one room cannot seclude their women during the day, but they can make their sleeping place secure. I lay down as ordered, warm in my cloak, and I heard her call in the men.

Clytie bustled them inside, supplied them with watered wine, bread and soup, refreshed the fire, and then sat down between me and the male inhabitants. I heard her grunt as she settled, wrapping her own garment about her. I had never been so generously treated in a place so poor.

As I drifted off to sleep - I seemed to need much more sleep, as though the baby was tiring me - I heard the men discussing what they would do next. The name Creon was mentioned, as the most powerful man in the
demos
, the man who owned the most land and slaves, one who sent a fleet of boats from Corinth to trade all over the sea of Aegeas every spring. He was very rich, they said, and would know what to do about my claim to Corinth.

'She is the grand-daughter of Helios,' I heard Nauplios say. 'She has the right.'

'But Korinthos will deny it,' protested Nauplios' cousin.

'What force can we muster?' asked Jason.

'He has the allegiance of many small factions,' explained Clytie's husband. 'This is a city of feud. Apart from Creon and his brother, there are no friends among the demos of Corinth. Each one dislikes one of the others so much that they would rather support Korinthos the Usurper than run the risk of their blood-enemy becoming powerful.'

'Korinthos holds Corinth because Helios appointed his grandfather, Bunous, governor of the city,' commented Clytie's brother.

'The only man who could oppose Korinthos and bind together the petty lords is Creon,' decided Nauplios.

My fate was being decided, too, but there seemed nothing I could do to affect it, so I went to sleep. The hounds and Clytie lay next to me, all snoring, and the sound seemed comforting. I had been a long time out of the company of women.

The next day Clytie tended me again, escorting me out into the lanes to find a place to wash and relieve myself. There we met one of her neighbours, a heavily built woman who said affably, 'Who do we have here, sister?'

'A stray from the ocean,' laughed Clytie, pushing me partly behind her. 'My brother brought her in last night. Heavy with child, poor thing.'

'A moon to go, maybe,' observed the woman, poking my belly. She could not see my face under the veil and I had borrowed Clytie's other tunic and stola. My own clothes were too fine for the fisherman's houses of Corinth. 'And so young! She'll have a hard time, unless the goddess is merciful. Her man is here?'

'With mine. They have gone down to the tavern to talk - as men do, the lazy ruffians. How is your daughter, sister?'

'Drooping, poor creature. Her man needs no daughters, and the baby was exposed last night. The midwife should not have let her hold it. She should have taken it right away and not let the mother even see it, for once we hold a babe to the breast our heart is engaged, be it deformed or a despised female. Ah, well, sister, she will recover, and perhaps next time she will bear a son. Better take your stray home, she looks faint.'

And so I was. I had not really realised what being an Achaean wife meant, and it had come home to me all of a sudden, robbing my limbs of strength, so that Clytie had to hold me up with one muscular arm around my thickened waist. This life I nurtured under my breast, this live creature even now dancing in the womb, which drank my blood and shared my breath; when it was born, if it was born alive, and assuming I survived the birth, it could be killed with impunity by my lord if he did not wish to keep it. It could be taken out of my arms and thrown on a cold mountain, and there it would die.

In Colchis we did not treat any animal with such cruelty. A woman could refuse to bear, but no man could kill her child. If she was a slave he could sell it when it was grown, but he could not slaughter it casually as though it was an unwanted puppy.

'Pay no attention to her, pretty,' said Clytie, leading me back to her lord's house. 'Always been as sour as a green plum, that one. That family is descended from sea-turtles, it's well known that they have black bile instead of blood.'

And I laughed a little, even in the midst of cold horror. Clytie could always make me laugh.

We ground some corn for the noon meal, tidied the little room and took the mats and blankets outside to beat. All over Corinth the women were doing the same tasks. A child tripped and fell at my feet, and I knelt clumsily to pick him up. His face was distorted with howling and I did not know what to do. I knew nothing about children.

I was assisted by Kore, who licked his skinned knee, and Scylla, who licked his face. The child was still crying, but the real pain had gone out of him.

'Stop crying,' I ordered, and he was so surprised that he obeyed. I wiped his nose with a corner of my duster. 'There. Now go back to your mother,' I told him. Instead, the child sat down on the cobbles and put one arm around both dog's necks.

'Nice doggies,' he commented. 'Who are you, Lady?'

'I'm Clytie's friend,' I replied.

'Did you come in last night with the men of Iolkos, Nauplios and his friend?' he asked.

'Yes,' I agreed.

'I'm going to be a fisherman,' said the child. 'My father owns a boat. She is called the
Artemis.
She's a goddess,' he informed me.

I was at a loss as to what to say, but luckily at this juncture his mother ran up the steps, all apologies, collected the child and carried him back to her own house. He did not approve of this action, just when he was impressing me with his importance, and he kicked and screamed. 'Foreign witch!' he yelled at his mother, who did not react. 'Stranger! Barbarian!' This insult was apparently too much, for she paused to clip his ears, and the rest of his comments were lost in a scream of rage.

Words which could describe Medea, wife of Jason, were insults in Corinth.

We were summoned to the palace of Creon near dusk. I dressed in the finest clothes which fate and flight had left me. I wore the red-and-gold gown in which I had left Iolkos and as much jewellery as remained, and I coloured my cheeks with red dye and outlined my eyes with kohl which, in Colchis, denotes royal descent. Clytie stared at me.

'Neither priestess nor princess, eh, pretty?' she chuckled. 'You look both and more. I've brushed the hounds and they match you well.'

Kore and Scylla flanked me. They had a sense of occasion, and adopted the grave demeanour of black stone sculptures. I had no fear that they would have off after a rabbit or respond to the challenge of another dog when they were with me. They were temple bitches of Hekate, and had been well trained. And I hoped that the goddess was still with them, for they were innocent beasts, and not involved in the crimes of the faithless Medea.

Jason wore the red gown of his marriage, and a thin gold crown confined his hair. We were escorted into the street and the houses emptied of people, gaping. It became a progress. I saw some women make sacred signs against evil as I passed.

'Well, I hope this works,' worried Nauplios at Jason's side. 'If Creon does not accept us, there will be no concealing our presence in Corinth now.'

'It will work,' said my lord, confident in his beautiful clothes.

I was not confident at all, but my opinion on the matter was not requested.

We had gathered a train of perhaps a hundred people by the time we climbed the steps to Creon's great house. I was weakening, footsore and over-burdened with the baby, but my training held. A priestess of Hekate could walk until her actual bones failed, long after muscle and tendon had tired beyond breaking point. We sailed across the courtyard and Creon's great doors were opened to admit us.

And there, on something very close to a throne, sat the lord of this place. Creon the most powerful man in Corinth, although it was actually ruled by the usurper Korinthos. He was of middle height, stocky and strong. He was dressed in rich robes embroidered with pearls, but he looked like a fisherman. His skin was weathered, his eyes crinkled at the corners. I knew that he was almost forty years old, a venerable age, and that he had many daughters but no son, despite his Herakles-like efforts with two wives and a houseful of female slaves from all known nations, even Libyans from beyond the temple of Ammon on the shores of Egypt. He stood up immediately and held out both arms. He was smiling a broad, charming smile.

'Jason of Iolkos,' he exclaimed. 'My lady the Princess Medea, grand-daughter of Helios! I never thought that I would see this day, and I thank all the gods for it.'

He hurried off the dais and led us to seats on either side of him, then clapped, and music began to play. A garlanded child, a maiden of perhaps eight, carried a plate forward on which were bread and salt. We tasted it, the hospitality gift of Creon, making us
xenoi,
his guests, safe from assault and part of his household while we lived.

'My lord,' said Creon to Jason. 'What brings you to Corinth? Is it, I hope, your intention to take the kingship from the hated usurper Korinthos?'

'It is,' said Jason very impressively. Creon grinned again and rubbed his hands.

'By right of your lady, my lord Jason, and by right of your heroic deeds, we shall have a king again in this city,' he enthused.

 

'Now, as it is not possible for a woman to share the feast, I will have your wife conducted to my wife Meroe, to be welcomed fittingly. And we shall speak further of political matters, which are not fit for her ears.'

I think Creon was afraid of me. He did not touch my hand as I rose and left the audience chamber, following the little girl through a curtained doorway to the left of the dais and into another dazzling room, lined with fresh-painted frescoes of gods. I bent the knee as I passed Demeter, who is Gaia and the three women, and who contains the Black Mother, the Crone, Hekate, whom I had abandoned. But Hekate's hounds were still with me, preserving their decorous behaviour even amongst the lights and the manifold scents.