For then and there, linked as they were by the sudden bond of passion, Medea and Jason had silently made a compact with each other to work together to fulfill Aietes’ requests, and to take the Fleece from him after that. I have said that she was a witch and a priestess of mysterious Hecate, and indeed she was. All manner of skills were at her command, the use of magical herbs, of poisons, of spells. Then, too, not only was her heart consumed with love for Jason, but it had long been full of hatred for her father Aietes and his city, for he had neglected her grievously after her mother’s death, and she had lived in his palace almost as a maidservant might, embittered and forlorn, a lonely, forgotten woman whose only solace lay in the dark cult of her mistress the moon-goddess Hecate. So with her sister Chalciope’s help she had herself secretly conveyed to Jason a little while afterward, and offered him the aid of her witchcraft in performing the tasks that Aietes had laid upon him, and so it was agreed.
When Jason had dealt with the fire-breathing bulls and the magical warriors who had to be overcome, and so forth, making use of a potion Medea had brewed from the blood-red juice of the crocus flower that blooms in the Caucasus in the places where the blood of the tortured Prometheus has spilled, he ordered the Argo brought from its hiding-place in the marsh. That was no easy task for us, pulling the vessel free of the heavy muck into which it had settled. We anchored it at a wharf in the city harbor in a place called “the Ram’s Couch.”
Aietes, ever suspicious, was dismayed at the sight of the great craft and its formidable band of heroes. He was certain now that Jason had come to Colchis to overthrow him. When the news was brought to him soon after that Jason had achieved all that he had been ordered to accomplish, the king was consumed by a high fury and resolved that he would put the Argo to the torch and slaughter all her crew, rather than keep his promise to surrender the Fleece.
Unaware, though, of all that had passed betwen Jason and Medea, Aietes was injudicious enough to let slip something to her concerning his intentions. Hastily Medea carried word of that to Jason, telling him that he must seize the Fleece that very night—she would aid him in that, she told him, using one of her potions to lull the serpent that kept watch over it—and then he must set out to sea immediately thereafter. She would, she said, leave Colchis with us, for she was confident that Jason would make good on his pledge to take her as his wife once the expedition had returned to the Hellene lands.
“So be it,” said Jason, buckling on his sword.
Then Medea turned to me and said, “You must come along with us today, Orpheus. My drug alone will not be sufficient to close the serpent’s eyes.”
I understood. Indeed, I had been expecting the request.
So we set out together in the darkness, Jason and Medea and I, toward the sacred forest called the Precinct of Ares, some six miles away from our mooring-place. There the fabled Golden Fleece hung all agleam from a bough of a gigantic oak tree. It was near to dawn when we got there; and when the first pink glow fell upon us out of the east, we beheld not only the tree and the wondrous dazzling Fleece, so bright even in that early light that the eye could barely stand to look upon it for long, but also saw the terrible guardian of the Fleece, lying coiled in casual heaps about the base of the tree, a monstrous mottled green-and-gray thing so thick around that I doubt that even Heracles could have encompassed its girth with his arms.
The snake was sleeping when we approached. But it sensed us quickly, opening first one chilly red-rimmed eye and then the other, and lifted its enormous head and hissed a warning to us to be gone. “By Hera,” said Jason in a hoarse whisper, “it would be greater in length than the Argo itself, if it uncoiled,” and I looked at him and saw him pale and bloodless, with unmistakable terror showing on his face, a thing which I had never seen before. I realized that he must believe now that everything he had struggled for all these many months was slipping from his grasp in this one moment, for surely it would be impossible to gain the mastery over this stupendous monster.
But Medea showed us then, as she would on many occasions thereafter, that she was a woman born without any sense of fear. She went forward until she stood face to face with the beast, so close that she could almost have reached out and tapped it on its scaly snout. It hissed once more and, slowly, almost lazily, drew its huge jaws apart as though it meant to devour her at a gulp. Medea, weaving from side to side very much as if she were a serpent herself, murmured an incantation of some sort, a low rhythmic chant in a language I had never heard before. From the bosom of her gown she drew a small green phial sealed with a waxen stopper and broke the seal, and with a quick gesture splashed the potion that the phial contained across the serpent’s slitted nostrils.
A different kind of hiss came from the serpent then, a muzzy soft-edged sound that seemed almost like one of bafflement. A mist came over those hard ophidian eyes and the great eyelids began to grow slack and the beast’s head swayed sleepily from one side to the other. But its fanged jaws were still gaping, and even as the creature struggled against the power of Medea’s drug it thrust its head malevolently in Jason’s direction as though it meant to snap him in two if it could manage to reach him.
“Now,” she cried. “Play, Orpheus! Play!”
Yes. I played.
There is music to stir the soul and make a man leap forward eagerly to his death on the battlefield, and there is music to spur the oarsmen of a great ship to pull against the angriest of seas, and there is music that can soothe any creature into the trance of utmost peace. I knew my task and I had the skill. I took my lyre in my hands and from it came such tones as even a monster like this could not withstand. The shallow drowsiness that Medea’s potion had induced became deep slumber. The ponderous jaws slowly closed and the huge head sagged and sagged again, until it fell nestling into the creature’s tangled coils. I swear by bright-eyed Athena and her father the lord of thunder that the thing had begun to snore.
Quickly Jason broke free of his terrors, sprang forward past the helpless serpent, reached up and pulled the Fleece from the tree. In that same moment the dawning sun came fully into the sky and its brilliant radiance, striking against the Fleece like a bolt of lightning, lit Jason from head to foot so that he seemed to shine with a golden flame. For an instant it seemed that I was looking not upon the mortal son of Aeson but on Apollo himself.
“Come,” he cried hoarsely, and we fled from that grove and hurried back to the Argo where it lay in harbor. There Jason displayed his glittering prize to our astonished comrades, who gathered round, murmuring in awe. Medea came aboard with us, as she had said she would. We said the words that we hoped would bring the restless spirit of dead Phrixus on board too, for that was part of our task. That having been done, we cut our hawsers then and there, and with a furious splashing of oars we pulled out into the open water.