John Gardner - Jason and Medeia

thought,

had things he could tell, one day, when the time was

right for it.

The house lower on the hill was dark save one dim

lamp

that bloomed dully in its shade like a dragon’s lidded

eye.

The female slave Agapetika kneeled at the rough-carved

shrine

of Apollo the Healer, in the corner of her room. Not

like Helios—

rising and setting in anger, rampaging in the

Underworld,

sire of dragons, zacotic old war-monger — not like Helios was the god of poesy, lord of the sun.

In her larger room,

high-windowed, dim, Medeia lay troubled by gloomy

dreams.

The cloth lay in the moonlight singing softly, faint as the song of mosquitoes’ wings, the sleeping children’s

breath.

Argus wove me, weary old Argus, weary old Argus who

wished them well.

“It was Pelias shipped us out. I might have murdered

him

and seized my father’s kingdom back, and might have

been thanked for it.

Nobody cared for his rule. But he was my uncle, and

I had

my cousins to think of, also my father’s memory,

he who’d

given my throne to Pelias, or so old Pelias claimed, backed by his toadies, I being only a child, unfit, a ruffian to be watched, required to prove my

kingliness.

I seethed, not deaf to the whispers in Iolkos. More than

age,

men hinted on every side, had hustled my father to

his grave.

It was possible. They wrestled, those two half-brothers,

from birth,

contending in anger for the place of greater dignity, whether the line of Poseidon or of Lord Dionysos should

rule.

If Pelias seemed a timid man, consider the weasel: he does not suck in air and roar like the honest,

irascible tiger, or stamp

his hoof in annoyance, like the straightforward horse; nevertheless, he has his way — soft-furred as the coney, more calculating, more subtle and swift than a jungle

snake,

richer in mystery, conceiving his young through his

ear, like a poet.

My father, old women claim, gave my uncle Pelias

his limp—

a man more direct than I, my father; rough, red-robed, beard a-tremble in the fury of long-forgotten winds … “Shifted to a smoky old house with my mother, I kept

my quiet;

watched him when he came to call with his curkling

retinue,

watched the cowering, sequacious mob as the old

cloud-monger

stammered the state of the kingdom, stuttered his

counsellors’ thoughts,

balbutiating the world to balls of spit. I watched with the eye of a cockatrice, but when he smiled,

smiled back,

pretended to scoff at the rumors. I would not tangle

with him,

at least not yet. Like those who crowded the streets,

I beamed,

shouted evoes at his rhetoric. Things might be worse. He hadn’t seen fit to imprison us yet ‘for our own

protection’—

a gambit common enough. Yet I was in prison, all right. To an eagle the widest of volaries is not yet sky. Men came to me in the night with suggestions. I refused

to hear them.

Sibyls brought me the riddlings of gods, how they

signalled in the dust,

mumbled through thunder. I’d give no ear to their

stratagems.

‘For all he said of my wickedness — I was fifteen

then—

I preferred to wheel and deal. So, having nothing, only the dry crumbs Pelias dropped, I made my bargain with

him.

I’d sail the seas, bring back whatever my crew and I could steal, and leave it for him to decide what worth

it was.

I wouldn’t be the first great lord, God knew, who’d

gotten his start

marauding. I gathered my crew together, and with the

first fair wind,

we sailed. We were lucky. Good breezes most of the

way, good hosts …

“We learned quickly. If men came down to us with

open arms,

glad to see strangers, eager to hear of our sea

adventures,

we made ourselves their firm friends — praised them to

the skies,

fought beside them if they happened to have some

war in progress,

drank with them, gave them our shoulders later when

they stumbled, climbing

to bed. And when the time for leaving came, they’d

give us

gifts, the finest they had — they’d load up our boat to

the gunnels,

throw in a barge of their own — and we’d stand on the

shore with them, moaning,

tears running down our cheeks, and we’d hug them,

swearing we’d never

forget. When we sailed away we’d wave till the haze

of land

was far below the horizon. They were no jokes, those

friendships.

Sooner than anyone thought, I’d prove how firm they

were,

when all at once I had need of the men I’d fought beside, sung with half the night, or tracked down women

with—

princes my own age, some of them, or second sons, nephews of kings, like myself, with no inheritance but nerve — courage and talent to spare — and their old

advisors,

sea-dog uncles, friends of their fathers, powerful fighters who’d outlived the centaur war, seen war with the

Amazons,

and now, like dust-dry banners in a trunk, waited, their

glory

dimmed.

“So it was with friends. But if, on the other hand, we landed and men came down at us with battle-axes, stones and hammers, swords, we’d repay them blow

for blow

till the rock shore streamed with blood — or we’d row

for our lives, and then

creep back when darkness came, invisible shadows

more soft

of foot than preying cats, and we’d split their skulls.

We’d sack

their towns, stampede their cattle in the vineyards till

not one vine

stood straight; and so we’d take by force what they

might have made

more profitable by hurling it into the sea before we came. Yet it wasn’t the best of bargains on either

side.

Both of us paid with lives, and more than once we lost a ship. Besides, the booty we snatched and hauled

aboard

was mediocre at best — far cry from the hand-picked

treasures

given with love by friends. Sometimes when the sea

was rough

the loot we’d loaded on the run would clatter and slide,

and our weight

would shift, and we’d scratch for a handhold, watching

the sea comb in.

“We learned. We were out three years. When we

turned at last for home,

we had seven ships for the one we’d started with. I’d

earned

my keep, I thought: a house like any lord’s, at least, and some small say in my uncle’s court I figured wrong. Sour milk and rancid honey it was, in the eyes of Pelias.

“The king had gotten the solemn word of an oracle

that he’d meet his death through the works of a man

he’d someday see

coming from town with one bare foot. It was soon

confirmed.

Just after we landed, I was fording the Anauros River,

making

for town and the palace beyond, when I lost one sandal

in the mud.

It was stuck fast, gripped as if by the hand of old Hades seizing at a pledge. The river was flooded — it was a

time of thaw—

so I left it there. Pelias was giving a great banquet for his father Poseidon and the other gods — or all but

Hera—

when I came where he sat, his lords and ladies all

crowded around him,

dressed to the nines, like a flock of exotic birds — long

capes

more brilliant than precious stones, deep blue, sharp

yellow, scarlet—

eating and laughing, plump as the mountainous clusters

of grapes

the slaves bore in. I bowed to him, dressed in the