But manage it quickly if you can. We both depend on
you.”
She turned, started out. Athena followed. Poor
Aphrodite,
sighing, went out as well. She’d never been meant to
be a mother.
But too late now. (Married to a dreary old gimpleg—
she
who’d slept, in her youth, with the god of war himself!
— Never mind.
— Nevertheless, it was a bitter thing to waste eternity with a durgen, genius or not.) She wiped her eye and
sniffed.
She glanced through the world and saw Jason, watchful
on the Argo, a man
as handsome as Ares in his youth. And she turned her
eyes to the palace
of Aietes, and saw where Medeia slept, and suddenly
her heart
was warmed. The goddesses were right: they made a
lovely couple!
Things not possible in heaven she meant to shape on
earth.
The Argonauts were sitting in conference on the
benches of their ship.
Row on row sat silent as Jason spoke. “My friends, my advice is this — if you disagree, speak up. I’ll go with three or four others, to Aietes’ palace and parley,
find whether
he means to treat us as friends or to try out his army
against us.
No point killing a king who, if asked, would gladly
oblige us.”
With one accord, the Argonauts approved.
With the sons of Phrixos, and with Telamon, the father
of Alas,
and with Augeias, Aietes’ half-brother, the captain of
the Argonauts
set forth. Queen Hera sent a mist before them, so
covered the town
that no man saw them till they’d reached Aietes’ house.
And then
the mist lifted. They paused at the entrance, astonished
to see
the half-mile gates, the rows of soaring columns
surrounding
the palace walls, and high over all, the marble cornice resting on triglyphs of bronze. They crossed the
threshold then,
unchallenged, and came to the sculptured trees and,
below them, four springs,
Hephaiastos’ work. One flowed with milk, another
with wine,
the third with fragrant oil; but the fourth was the
finest of all,
a fountain that, when the Pleiades set, ran boiling hot, and afterward bubbled from the hollow rock ice-cold.
All that,
they would learn in time, was nothing to the
flame-breathing bulls of bronze
that the craftsman of the gods had created as a gift
for Aietes. There was also
an inner court with ingeniously fashioned folding doors of enormous size, each of them leading to a splendid
room
and to galleries left and right. At angles to the court,
on all sides
stood higher buildings. In the highest, Aietes lived
with his queen.
In another Apsyrtus lived, Aietes’ son, and in yet another, his daughters, Khalkiope and Medeia. That
Moment
Medeia was roaming from room to room in search of
her sister.
The goddess Hera had fettered Medeia to the house
that day;
as a rule she spent most of her day in the temple of
Hekate, of whom
she was priestess.
The voice of the narrator softened. I had to close
my eyes and concentrate to hear.
“And I was that child Medeia,
a thousand thousand lives ago. And yet one moment stands like a newly made mural ablaze in the sun.
I glanced
at the courtyard and saw, as the mist rose, seven men,
and their leader
wore black, and his cape was a panther skin. His hand
was on his sword,
and his look was as keen as a god’s. Without knowing
I’d do it, I raised
my hand to my lips, cried out. In an instant the
courtyard was astir—
Khalkiope joyfully greeting her sons, her children by
Phrixos,
my father approaching on the steps, all smiles, huge
arms extended,
and a moment later his servants were working with the
carcase of a bull,
more servants chopping up firewood, and others
preparing hot water
for baths. I stared from the balcony, half in a daze.
Stupidly,
unable to move a muscle, I watched sly Eros creep in (none of them saw him but me). In the porch, beneath
the lintel
he hastily strung his bow, slipped an arrow from the
quiver to the string, and,
still unobserved by the others, ran across the gleaming
threshold,
his blind eyes sparkles, and crouched at Jason’s feet.
He drew
the bow as far as his fat arms reached, and fired.
I could
do nothing. A searing pain leaped through me. My
heart stood still.
With a laugh like a jackal’s, the little brute flashed out
of sight and was gone
from the hall. The invisible shaft in my breast was
flame. Ah, poor
ridiculous Medeia! Time and again she darts a glance at Jason, and she cannot make out if the feeling is
mainly pain
or sweetness!
“How can I say what happened then? In a blur,
a baffling radiance, I moved through the feast. His eyes
dazzled,
his scent — new oil of his welcoming bath — filled me
with anguish
as blood and the smoke of incense-reckels confound the
dead.
“When they’d eaten and drunk their fill, my father
Aietes asked questions
of the sons of Khalkiope and Phrixos. I paid no
attention, but watched
that beautiful, godlike stranger. He never glanced once
at me,
but myself, I could see nothing else. For even if I closed
my eyes,
he was there, like the retinal after-image of a
candleflame.
Childish love-madness, perhaps. Yet I do not think so,
even now.
We’re all imperfect, created with some part missing;
and I saw
from the first instant my crippled soul’s completion in
that dark-robed
prince. He stood as if perfectly fearless in front of
Aietes,
a king whom he could not help but know, by reputation, as one of the world’s great wizards, king of an
enchanted land,
and no mere mortal, for the sun each night when it took
to its bed
did so in Aietes’ hall. I knew at a glance that the man from the South was no skillful magician. His eyes were
the eyes of one
who lives by shrewd calculation, forethought,
willingness to change
his plans. If my father were suddenly to raise up a
manticore
at his feet, the stranger would study it a moment,
consider the angles,
converse with it, probably persuade it. There could be
no guessing what
that strange prince thought or felt, behind those
mirroring eyes;
and all my impulsive, volcanic soul — the ages of Tartar, Indian and Kelt that shaped us all, as Helios’ children, and made us passionate, mystical, seismic in love and
wrath—
went thudding as if to a god to that man for salvation.
My face
would sting one moment as if burned; the next, a
freeze rang through me.
Make no mistake! The spirit knows its physician,
howeverso halt, lame, muddled
the mind in its stiff bed reason! I watched his smile — self-assured, by no means trusting — and I