Medea (5 page)

I wondered what she would be like as I lay in my cold wrappings, apart from my bedmate. Not beautiful, that would be too much to expect. Old, perhaps, even crippled - Nauplios, the net-man Dictys' son, could command no beauty of face or body - but possessed of those parts which could enfold me, take me into her body, give me joy. Her arms would wrap me close, hold me to her breast - ah, her soft breast! - and I would lie in her arms all night.

Such musings usually ended with me turning my body into the soft earth. She always accepted my libation graciously.

That night I slept intermittently around the fire. I was afraid of the dawn. I was even more afraid of my own fear. I must not fail at this hunt.

As soon as the goddess whom we call Eos trailed a pink garment over the horizon we were awake. I had polished and oiled the stone head of the boar spear, had tended my feet, too, which were as hard as hoofs, and tightened the belt and loincloth which held my shrinking genitals in some kind of safety. For a cornered boar strikes for the fork of the biped which assails it, tusks and tears for the belly and the sex, to bring the insolent attacker to his knees to be savaged. From my belt hung a bronze knife, one of a pair which Jason had brought with him. It was as sharp as I could make it. I tied up my hair and joined my friend, who was leaning against the corner of a hut and looking irritatingly relaxed.

'Which way are we going?' I asked, not wanting to trust my tongue overmuch.

He pointed and touched his ear, hunter's talk for 'Listen!'

I listened. Far up the mountain I heard the baying of the hounds. They had found prey. The boar was moving, from the sound, down the valley between Centaurs' Mountain and the next, which they called Axe Head because of its shape. That was bad. That valley was thickly wooded, with deep undergrowth. Jason and I had penetrated there in search of a lost goat once, and it had taken hours to find our way out again - with the burden of a new kid and a very affronted mother, who had chosen, she thought, the safest place in the world for her delivery.

The thorned red vines which the centaurs call wolf's fruit, because of a resemblance to the berries of blood dripping from a predator's jaws, were high enough to cut off the sky. I had drawn a deep breath of relief as we had paused on Centaurs' Mountain as the goat suckled her kid and I sucked my scratches, under the benign gaze of heaven again.

But there was no fighting the dictates of Fate, so I hefted my spear and we joined the soft-footed hunters.

In twos and threes we drifted down the slope, over the grass and the flowers of Adonis, stepped across the stream at the bottom and began climbing the other side.

I was lost in the space of time in which a man drinks a cup of wine. Jason at my side was fighting his way through the scrub, and I could not speak to remind him that we were supposed to stand still, unwind the vine, and slide through the bushes, making little sound. This slowed the progress but reduced the damage to human skin. I stopped for the thousandth time to unwrap my thigh from the cruel embrace of thorns as sharp as daggers, and then I saw him.

The hounds bayed, higher up. The hunters whistled, calling in the dogs, and I heard a crash and a short bitten-off scream on the slope above my head. They were seeking him on their own level.

But out of the coiled tangle of undergrowth, the head was emerging. A high-shouldered king boar - tall as a colt, wide as a doorway, scarred with many encounters, ten years old and cunning as a serpent. His eyes were red with rage and dark with calculation.

I froze. I could not move or speak.

He shook himself, tossing his head. His tusks dripped with blood. He was hideous and proud, lord of his world, and we mere humans could not dent his arrogance. The stench of him encompassed me. Almost human, the scent of a boar. An unwashed human who reeks with maleness and blood - that is the smell.

Then Jason screamed a challenge aloud, and thrust a spear into the creature's side.

The boar turned quicker than sight; I heard his jaw snap closed on the boar spear, and the splinter of breaking wood. Jason was shaken as the boar shook his heavy head and then, as the spear broke, my lord was thrown to one side.

I had to distract the attacker. I grounded my spear, braced it with my foot, and whistled. The boar spun again, moving like a snake, and pawed the ground, grunting with fury. I saw the red wound in his side, bleeding fresh red in gouts, not slowing his advance. I cried to Jason, who was caught in the thorns, 'Help!' and he felt for his knife, shaking his head.

Everything was moving very slowly. The boar gouged great furrows in the leaf-mould with his front feet, challenging me. I braced the spear and myself for his rush, knowing that if I did not hold him he would run along the spear, that even spitted through the whole length of his gullet he could still tear me to pieces before he died. I needed Jason to cut the boar's throat, and he was still lying in the bushes, looking dazed.

'Jason! Help me!' I screamed, and the boar charged.

The spear entered his mouth, a wet red cavern, and the shock of his attack knocked me to the ground. I was lying on my back, the spear grounded deep in the earth, and the boar was between my legs.

I was so afraid that I ceased to be afraid. I thought how we must look, the huge beast and the boy, the fragile limbs vainly wrapping the barred sides as the tusks sank into the belly, tore and destroyed, the toss of the head as he flung up loops of guts like a domestic pig roosting in beechmast. I was dead, I was floating. I heard some noises as something tore through the thorns, and then someone cut the string which tied my soul to my body, and I floated away like a butterfly.

 

I was still pondering the nature of the relations between men and women when I went into Colchis for the autumn festival.

My two black bitches, Scylla and Kore, were well trained, silent mouthed, and watchful. They were sometimes just hounds, of course, but they had the ability to receive the goddess; they could become avatars of She Who Meets, and speak with her voice. They never left me. The priestess of Hekate is known by her black garments, her pale skin, her dangerous gaze and her fanged escorts. I was eleven years old, still unwomaned, but the crowds made way as I walked through the streets, and men and boys avoided my eyes. Women gazed hopefully on me, presenting me with their squealing offspring to bless, and although I disliked their sour, milky smell, I always kissed them with Hekate's kiss, She of the Newborn. I had duties now, and power. I had seen the goddess and felt her influence.

And alone in my bed I still yearned for that safety, rocked in the arms of the Dark Mother, cradled against her cloudy breast.

Colchis was crowded with foreigners. It is a small but rich city, Colchis Phasinos. When they came from Egypt, our ancestors brought with them seeds, tinctures and skills, and they used them, making a small island of civilisation in an ocean of barbarians. Colchis was built in a square, protected against strong winds and assault by high walls of dark local stone in which there are four gates. Scythgate looks towards the south and the plains. Eastgate towards the curve of the river which embraces the town at Rivergate, and west is Mountaingate.

Very high and cold are the peaks we see from Mountaingate, and there is always snow on them. There men search for gold, Colchis' reason for existence, together with the poison and medicine and dye we produce from the yellow flower, colchida. The flower blooms in spring, making the sedge and the river banks golden. It is the preserve of Hekate the Triple One, and can only be culled by her priestesses. When we have stocked our own temples, we sell the remainder to the traders, who come from many lands to Poti at the delta and thence down the Phasis to the landing stages of Colchis, for it is a precious and sacred herb. Some parts of the plant will save those whose heart fails them. Some parts will dye cloth golden as sunshine. Some parts will flavor food with an unsurpassable savour; and some parts, correctly distilled, will kill a man with one drop in a bowl of wine.

Autumn brings the colchida harvest, and I was on my way home to the palace of my father, my tunic overflowing with the precious flowers, the Princess Medea's share. The mist was coming down, as it does, in the marshes which surround watery Colchis. The elderly priestesses were already eyeing the weather doubtfully and ordering stores moved up from the cellars and away from all riverbanks, even from small trickles which bear water only in winter. I was charged with informing the king that the winter would bring flood and exceptional cold, so I would have to request audience of him.

I very seldom saw my father, Aetes. He had never forgiven my mother for dying without giving him a male child, though I would have thought that the birth of my half-brother, Aegialeus, would have mitigated his wrath. I had seen him only in state, never in private, though they said that he had held me when I was two days old, when Trioda showed me to Hekate and said, 'Lady, your priestess is born.'

The palace is the only building in Colchis made wholly of stone. Stone does not grow in the marshes. It must be brought with great labour from the mountains, floated on rafts. Only the palace is built of it and has stone floors and interlocking courtyards all of marble.

One reaches the audience chamber of King Aetes by passing through a great door, along a passage figured with little gold rams, under the lintel of bronze and the lowering ram's head in the centre, and into the main courtyard.

No women are allowed here but, as a priestess of the Great One, even a minor acolyte, I could pass anywhere. Hekate's priestesses are not women like other women. Through doors and corridors I went, standing straight under my burden of golden flowers, my hard bare feet slapping the marble. The guards looked away from me as though I had the eyes of Gorgon, which turned men to stone.

The courtyard was built for a previous king by an architect who came from the Black Land, and was so pleasing to the eye that I paused, rubbing one sole against the opposite shin where one of Colchis' myriad mosquitoes had bitten me. Kore sat down on one side of me, Scylla on the other, licking paws and panting. They were beasts today, not goddesses, and I liked their warmth and their doggish disdain for the majesty of the king to whom all men bowed. I spared a hand to stroke Kore's warm silky ears and she nuzzled my palm.

The courtyard was square and had four fountains. The water flowed from bronze ram's heads, made marvellously by an Achaean called Daedalus, who contrived that at festivals one ran with oil, another with wine and a third with honeyed milk. The fourth was always supplied with water which was warm when the Pleiades set, but at their rising in summer bubbled up as cold as ice, wonderfully refreshing. No woman could drink of it, but I was not a woman. I cupped a hand and sipped the warm water. Kore and Scylla rose on their hind legs and lapped at the basin.

Vines interlaced the sky in the courtyard of the king, heavy at this season with Colchian grapes, almost black. Into the silence came the sound of wings. A raven dropped from the heavens and landed on the basin, almost on my wet fingers. She was as black as the grapes, with a blue bloom on her feathers, and she dipped her beak and drank three times, heedless of the dogs and of me. Then she cocked her head, examining me with her marigold eye. Swift as a flash, she took wing, plucking three golden flowers from the harvest in my skirt.

Then she was gone, gaining height in a flapping rush.

'Surely you are favoured of Hekate,' said a man's voice.

I turned, spilling flowers. A man in bronze armour stood at the doorway to the audience chamber. The crown of Colchis was on his head and I knelt and the dogs sat down beside me.

'Father,' I said.

I heard him approach. His boots rang on the stone floor. I heard the creak of the harness and smelt him; leather and maleness, wine and oil. An old hand laden with the rings of kingship reached down and raised me to my feet, leaning the while upon my shoulder.

'Daughter,' he acknowledged. 'What have you been gathering?'

'Colchida, Lord, the princess' portion. I bring word to you, Father, from the women of wisdom in the temple of the Dark Mother.'

'What word?' he motioned me to sit down. He had one hand on the fountain coping and one on me. He was heavy. Now that I saw him closely, I noticed that he had aged. He had always seemed god-like to me, strong and tall. He was still ten spans above my height, but deep lines cut into his face, and his hair was thin under the heavy crown. The hand which gripped me had a faint tremor. His slaves said that his temper had become ungovernable lately; that he was willing to strike and to order slain any who displeased him. What I had to say would not please a king, and I tried not to wince at the bite of the coronation rings on my shoulder.

But I was a priestess of the Triple Goddess. I took a deep breath.

'Master, they say that there will be floods this winter. They bid me to tell you that the cattle should be moved to higher ground, towards the mountains, and they that tend them should be warned to expect early snow and long enduring. The sinking of the Seven Sisters this year will bite hard on tenderlings.'

'I am old,' said my father. 'I have seen many hard winters, and we have weathered them. But there is a change coming, Medea. They call you Medea -
of good counsel
- do they not, daughter?'

'That is what they call me, Lord,' I agreed.

'Counsel me,' said the king.

I became alarmed. He seemed unsteady on his feet. Using all my strength, I lowered him to the ground, but he held my wrist in a hard grip and would not let me call his attendants.

'In what can I counsel you, Father?' I asked as evenly as I could. His face had become purple and breath wheezed through his lips.

'They are all plotting,' he whispered, dragging me close to the blubbering mouth. 'All plotting against me. The sons of Phrixos the Foreigner, they conspire to rob me of my throne. They must die.'

'Lord, I am sure that they do not so; and I must tend you. Kore, Scylla, guard,' I said, and spilled my flowers into a pile so that I could run.