and through it.”
So the old king spoke, nodding to himself. Then went to bed. Ipnolebes sighed, went down to his own small
couch.
“Hopeless,” I whispered, bending close to the old
slave’s ear,
for surely he, at least, had the wits to hear me.
“Darkness
has no other side. Turn back in time!” The slave slept on, snoring. I stared at the hairy nostrils, peeked at the blackness beyond the fallen walls of teeth, then
stepped back,
shocked. There was fire in his mouth: the screams of
women and children.
“Goddess! Goddess!” I whispered. But the walls of the
dream were sealed,
dark, deep-grounded as birth and death. I heard their
laughter,
dry and eternal as the wind. No trace of hope.
8
He said:
“Faith wasn’t our business. Herakles’ business, maybe; sailing the cool, treacherous seas of the barbarians. Or faith was Orpheus’ business — singing, picking at his
lyre,
conversing with winds and rain.
“We beached at Samothrace,
island of Elektra, Atlas’ child, where Kadmos of Thebes first glimpsed his faultless wife. The stop was
Orpheus’ idea.
If we took the initiation, learned the secret rites, we might sail on to Kolchis with greater confidence, ‘sure of our ground,’ he said. I smiled. But gave
the order.
I knew well enough what uncertainty he had in mind, on my back the sky-blue cape from Lemnos’ queen,
a proof
of undying love, she said; and all around me on the
Argo,
slaves of Herakles’ strength, if not of his idiot ideas; betrayers, as I was myself, of vows of faithfulness. Trust was dead on the Argo, though no one spoke of it. We had at least our manners … perhaps mere mutual
compassion.
“We glided in where the water was dark, reflecting
trees,
the steering-oar turning in Tiphys’ hands like a part of
himself,
the rowers automatic, the laws of our nautical art in
their blood.
And so came in to our mooring place, where vestal
virgins
waited in the ancient attire, and palsied, white-robed
priests
stood with their arms uplifted, figures like stone. We
waded
in, and told them our wish. They bowed, then moved,
formulaic
as antique songs, to the temple. And so that night we
saw
the mysteries. Impressive, of course. I watched, went
through
the motions. Maybe, as the priests pretended, the land
had mysterious
powers; and maybe not. All the same to me. Sly magic, communion with gods — it made no difference. Tell me
the fire
that bursts, sudden and astounding, in the huge dark
limbs of an oak,
lighting the ground for a mile, is some god visiting us, and I answer, “Welcome, visitor! Have some meat!’
Politely.
What’s it to me if the gods fly to earth, take nests
in trees?
Black Idas scornfully lifted his middle finger to them, daring their rage. Not I. I wished the gods no ill. No more than I wished the grass any ill, or passing
salamanders.
Herakles pressed his forehead to the ground and wept,
vast shoulders
swelling with power, a gift of the holy visitor, he
thought.
I wished him well, though I might have suggested to
the hero, if I liked,
that terror can trigger mysterious juices in the fleeing
deer,
and the scent of blood makes lions unnaturally strong.
More tricks
of chemistry. But live and let live. Idmon and Mopsos, the Argo’s seers, were respectful. Professional courtesy,
maybe;
or maybe the real thing. Of no importance. Orpheus watched like a hawk. As for myself, I made the intruder welcome, since he was there, if he was. I might have
been happy
to learn the principles of faith between men — husbands
and wives,
fellow adventurers — or the rules of faith between one
man’s mind
and heart, if any such rules exist. I’d been, all my life, on a mission not of my own choosing (the fleece no
more
than an instance), a mission I was powerless to choose
against. Such rules
would perhaps have been of interest. But they did not
teach them there.
Elsewhere, perhaps. I’ll leave it to you to judge. We
learned,
there, that priests can do strange things; that
worshippers have
a certain stance, expressions, gestures submissive to
reason’s
analysis — as the worshipped is not. We learned what
we knew:
politeness to gods is best. Then sailed on. over the gulf of Melas, the land of the Thracians portside, Imbros
north,
o starboard.
“We reached the foreland of the Khersonese,
where we met strong wind from the south. We set our
sails to it
and entered the current of the Hellespont. By dawn
we’d left
the northern sea; by nightfall the Argo was coasting
in the straits,
with the land of Ida on our right; before the next
day’s dawn,
we’d left Hellespont behind. And so we came to the land of Kyzikos, King of the Doliones.
“Kyzikos had learned,
by the sortilege of a local seer, that someday a band of adventurers would land, and if not met kindly,
would leave
his city on fire, the best of his soldiers dead. He was not a friendly man — his dark eyes snapped like embers
breaking—
a man in no mood, when we landed, to waste his
time on us.
He was newly married that day to the beautiful and
gentle Kleite,
daughter of Percosian Merops, to whom he’d paid a
dowry
fit for the child of a goddess. Nevertheless, when word of our landing came, he left his wife in the bridal
chamber,
mournfully gazing in her mirror, pouting — baffled,
no doubt,
that the man cared more for strangers’ talk than for
all her art,
all the labor of her tutors. But the young king bore in
mind
the words of his seer, and so came down, all labored
smiles,
and after he learned what our business was, he offered
his house and
servants and begged us to row in farther, moor near
town.
From his personal cellar he brought us magnificent
wine, and from
his own vast herds, fat lambs, the tenderest of
weanlings, plump
and sweet with their mothers’ milk. We went up to
dinner with him.
“I asked, as we ate with him: Tell us, Kyzikos: what
will we meet
that we ought to be ready for, north of here? What
strange peoples
live between here and Kolchis, tilling the fields, or
hunting?
‘The handsome young king thought, then said: ‘I can
tell you of all
my neighbors’ cities, and tell you of the whole
Propontic Gulf;
beyond that, nothing.’ He glanced at his seer. Tour
crew should be warned
of one rough gang especially — the people who keep Bear Mountain, as we call it here, the wooded, rocky rise at the tip of our own island. We’d’ve had hard going