The Last Song of Orpheus (7 page)

11

We built the rollers and fastened the ropes and hoisted the
Argo
to its track and hauled it down to the shore, putting our backs to it and straining to keep her moving forward. Smoke, dark and bitter-smelling, rose from the rollers under the weight of that mighty keel. I will not pretend it was anything but a horrendous struggle to get that ship to the sea. You will hear poets say that with a few chords of my lyre I magicked the vessel into gliding down to the water of her own accord, and it is, as I have made clear, my custom with these tales neither to confirm or deny; but if you are willing to believe that, you will believe anything. Soon enough, at any rate, the
Argo
approached the sea’s edge and we launched it into the gulf and set the mast and raised the sail; and our voyage to Colchis began. 

It was at dawn we left, after sacrificing two robust oxen to Apollo, who presides over the embarkation of mariners. Tiphys of Siphae was our helmsman, a man exceedingly skilled in the ways of the winds and the stars and the signs by which a craft is steered, and he it was who took us eastward from Thessaly across the sea. The winds were contrary that day and we had to make our departure under the power of our oars alone. It was my task to beat time for the oarsmen with my lyre. I set them a good pace, for they were young men and vigorous ones, who sang to my music as they pulled, and the blades of their oars bit keenly into the foaming water. Each bench held two oarsmen, their places having been decided by lot—all but the place of Heracles, who because of his great size and overwhelming strength must of necessity sit amidships, since otherwise the great force of his giant oar would overbalance the vessel and make it difficult to hold her to a straight course. For his benchmate Jason gave him that massive man Ancaeus, one of the several among us who had sprung from the seed of the god Poseidon. 

Soon a favorable wind came to us and we lifted the great mast into position and unfurled our broad sail of white linen from Egypt and tied its lines in place. It swelled in the breeze and we journeyed smoothly on beyond Mount Pelion, where the centaur Cheiron came down to the sea and waded out into the surf to wave to us. Cheiron was accompanied by his wife, the nymph Charicio. She carried in her arms their latest foster-child, Achilles, son of Peleus and the sea-nymph Thetis, and held the babe up so that his father might see him. The world would hear much more of Achilles in the generation to come. 

We left the booming surf and the hissing combers behind and moved out into the open waters. I beat the time and the oarsmen pulled merrily at the oars and we sped along, though despite the strength and elegance of our smooth-sided vessel it was anything but easy work. The angry wind shrieked and roared overhead and the mainsail strained at its creaking ropes, and great waves loomed about us, mountain-high, crashing athwart our bow and sending fountains of cold white spume across our open deck. Now and again, as we headed farther out from shore, we moved through a cloud of low-hanging silvery mist so thick that we could barely see an oar’s length in front of us, and as we surged upward on the breast of a soaring wave some great black fang of rock, glossy with sea-foam, would rise abruptly before us out of the heaving waters; but Tiphys our master helmsman was ever adroit, and used his wits to steer us clear of danger. 

The wind carried us well, though. Soon we moved past headlands sacred to Artemis, and I sang a hymn to her as we went by. A stiff breeze took us swiftly under the shadow of great Mount Athos in Thrace, but at dawn we were becalmed once more, and it was by the strength of our oarsmen alone that we were able to journey on to the isle of Lemnos. The women of this island, angered by the faithlessness of their men, had fallen upon them one night and slaughtered every one of them; but now they had grown weary of life without a man’s embrace, and when we appeared before them they turned to us with unseemly eagerness. Therefore, alas, we wasted much time on Lemnos because foolish Jason became entangled in a dalliance with the island’s voluptuous queen, and many another of us, seeing our captain so entranced by love, behaved in similar fashion, though not I, because for me there could be no woman after Eurydice. It seemed as though we would remain there forever, lost in this lustful idleness; but at last the anger of Heracles awakened Jason from his dream and led him back to his task. 

Thence we went to Samothrace, an island holy to Persephone. Here I felt it needful to pause and take part in the Mysteries that are practiced there in her honor, not only in regard for the aid that Hades’ queen had offered me in my futile quest to regain Eurydice but also because I knew that my shipmates and I must do whatever we could to gain the love of the gods if we were to succeed in this perilous adventure. 

So I clad myself in the white robe marked with a jagged streak of golden lightning that I had brought with me from Egypt and went ashore to meet with the priestess, who could tell immediately, from that robe, that I was an initiate. She agreed to my request, and I returned to the ship and gathered up ten of the Argonauts, those whom I felt would best be able to benefit from the rites in which they would take part. Jason was one of the ones I chose, but when the priestess saw him she hesitated, and seemed about to reject him from the group. Then she relented and let him stay, though plainly she perceived the great flaws in him that were beyond redemption and would lead eventually to his undoing. 

I cannot, of course, sing of the Mysteries except in the most superficial way. Like all Mysteries, they tell of birth and life and death and resurrection. I can tell you that we acted out the rite of Creation first, building the circular mound of earth and surrounding it with a water-filled trench and dancing on it and saying the Words of Coming Forth, and then the serpent was brought out and the gong was sounded and the flutes played, and after that came the rite of the dove and the crab, and the ceremonies of Priapus. At last the acolytes, with faces and bodies powdered with gypsum so that they were snowy white, brought out the little bull-calf for the sacrifice, and shed its blood and sprinkled it on Jason and his companions, after which came the ritual ablution, and the rite of rebirth and the anointing with oil, and then the final rite whose very name cannot be spoken. The men were solemn and silent as we made our way back to the
Argo
, and I heard none of them speak of what they had witnessed that night, though I knew they had been profoundly shaken by it. In my solitude aforedeck I sang the songs of my love for Eurydice again, softly singing for myself alone, telling myself once more how I had won her and lost her and won her again by Persephone’s favor, and had lost her the second time because that was the path that the gods had made a necessary part of the toilsome journey that is my life. Necessary, yes; but the pain of it will always be with me. 

Our next landfall was along the coast of Mysia as we made our way northward and eastward toward the Hellespont strait that would admit us to the sea where Colchis lay. The wind had been slack for several days, but we were making good headway along that coast by the use of our oars alone, with the prodigious indefatigable Heracles setting an unmatchable pace. Only Jason was able to equal him for a time; and then even Jason fell forward over his oar and collapsed in exhaustion. At that same moment Heracles’ mighty oar snapped in half from the force of his exertions. He glared at the stump of it in fury and disgust. We had no alternative but to put ashore to allow him to search out a tree from which he could make a new one. 

We made camp on the shore. Within a couple of hours Heracles returned from the interior, dragging behind him a colossal fir tree that he set about trimming to shape. Meanwhile, though, Heracles’ squire Hylas, had gone off toward a nearby pool to fetch water, and had not returned. This Hylas was a pretty young man whom Heracles, who had taken him as a lover, had insisted that we bring with us on the voyage. Jason had sent staunch Polyphemus the Arcadian, one of our most sober and reliable men, to find him, and he had not returned either. 

After a while Heracles noticed that Hylas was not in the camp, and when someone told him where he had gone and how long he had been absent, Heracles went rushing off into the forest, frantically shouting his name. What happened after that I learned many years later, when I encountered Heracles in Thrace. In the forest he found only Polyphemus, who had been to the pool and discovered Hylas’ water-pitcher lying abandoned beside it. Of Hylas himself there was no trace, and Polyphemus suggested that the pretty boy had been carried off by nymphs of the pool or forest who had taken a fancy to him. Heracles, with a great roar of rage, cried that they must search until they found him, and so they did, for when dawn came there was no sign in camp of either man, let alone the one for whom they had gone in search. 

Meanwhile a fair breeze had sprung up at last, and to the astonishment of everyone Jason gave the order for us to resume the voyage. “But where is Heracles?” Admetus of Pherae asked, as we settled into our places aboard the
Argo
. “Where is Polyphemus?” Others—Peleus, Acastus—took up the cry. Jason, glowering, merely shrugged and said the gods wished us to be on our way, and that he was not going to offend them by waiting any longer for Heracles and Polyphemus. Nor did we, though there was a noisy quarrel first, Admetus claiming that Jason was marooning Heracles out of jealousy, because Heracles had humiliated him by rowing so vigorously that Jason had been outmanned at the oars. To this accusation Jason made no answer, but simply went about directing the raising of the mast and the hoisting of the sail. In the end Mopsus the Lapith, who had the powers of a soothsayer, ended the wrangling by going into a trance, or pretending to do so, and announcing that it was the will of Zeus that Heracles and Polyphemus be left behind, for great-thewed Heracles was so rash that he would endanger the expedition when it came to the land of the Golden Fleece, and Polyphemus was needed for some task in another place. So we went on, having lost the services of two of our most valuable shipmates. 

We were to have yet another such unhappy landing farther along. In the land of the Doliones we were given a warm welcome by Cyzicus, their king, but when we took our leave a contrary gale seized hold of us in the night, swinging us about in the sea and sending wild waters spilling across our deck, and carrying us back all unawares to the harbor from which we had just set out; and Cyzicus, thinking his city was being attacked by pirates, led an armed force out against us as we came ashore. In the darkness and confusion we slew our former host and a great number of his stalwart men. I watched the carnage from one side, for I am not a warrior and the taking of life is not what the gods meant me to do; but I knew that this tragic error could not be prevented, and though I did not slay, neither did I do anything to intervene. 

Afterward we held funeral games in Cyzicus’ honor, and sacrificed many a beast in atonement for the bloodshed we had unwittingly brought about, but even so we were kept in harbor for twelve days by foul weather before we could at last depart from that sorry land. Great was my own regret that I could not have averted this sad mistake; but I knew that I had to let events unfold, for King Cyzicus, despite his kindness to us, had been marked for death by the goddess Rhea, whose sacred lion he had slain on Mount Dindymum. We are eternally caught up, mortals and demigods alike, in the larger patterns that the gods have decreed. 

Nor did we bring great joy to our next port of call. The isle of Bebrycos was ruled by the savage King Amycus, who fancied himself a great boxer and would give us neither food nor water until one of our men fought a contest with him. We learned that Amycus invariably won these matches and put the loser to death, and that any voyagers who refused to meet his challenge were summarily flung over the side of a cliff into the sea. Well, we sent our gallant Polydeuces against him, he who had been the victor time and again in the Olympic Games, and although Amycus was as strong as a bull and a ferocious boxer besides, Polydeuces was more skillful and struck him such a blow that he fell down dead. This led us into a battle with the infuriated Bebryceans, and once again our swordsmen were forced to slay many of them in our own necessary defense. You who live after us will say that was a cruel age, our age, and indeed it was: many good men fell in such needless quarrels, for when strife arose our heroes looked upon the shedding of blood as unavoidable. Since Amycus was said to be yet another son of Poseidon, we placated that god by sacrificing twenty red bulls to him that we found in the city, and put to sea the next day. 

Now we were approaching the Hellespont. We had been warned that the watchful men of Troy maintained a close surveillance over its eastern shore and would attack any vessel that approached their territory, so we took the precaution of painting our handsome white sail with the black ink of cuttlefish ink, which royal Peleus had brought along to be used in flavoring our stews and porridges. It was a sad thing to expend that delectable stuff for such a purpose as this, but we feared that the Trojan watchmen would see the glint of moonlight on our bright sail as we passed by; and so we mixed the cuttlefish ink with water and painted our sail until it was an ugly muddy hue. And by such a deception we went safely past the vigilant guardians of the great city of Troy and entered into the Hellespont.