panther-cape
already famous for midnight strikes, unexpected attacks from rooftops, pits of dungeons. I bowed, most
dignified—
except, of course, for that one bare foot. He looked not
exactly
gratified that I’d made it. He looked, in fact, like a man who’s gotten an arrow in his back. Pelias threw out his
hands,
tiny chins trembling, and said, ‘J-J-J -Jason!’ And said no more. He’d fainted. It was three full days before I
could see him.
“Well, no reason to stretch it out. I sat by his bed, summed up my winnings, and waited to hear what he
thought it all worth.
I heard, instead, about the golden fleece. I had the
m-makings
of a king, he said. He continually squeezed his hands
together,
winking. I thought he’d gone crazy. ‘J-J-J-Jason, b-boy, you’ve got the m-makings of a king.’ He was gray and
flabby, like a man
who’s been sitting in a dimly lit room for a full
half-century.
His legs and arms were spindles, the rest of him loose,
like a pudding,
his large head wide and flat, wrinkled like an embryo’s. In his splendid bedclothes — azure and green and as full
of light
as wine falling in a stream in front of a candle flame-he looked like a slightly frightened treetoad, blinking
its eyes,
cautiously peeking out from a spray of peacock feathers. You would not have thought him a child of Poseidon
the Earth-trembler,
but demigod he was, nonetheless, and dangerous.
“I waited, laboring to figure him out. I dropped the
idea
of craziness. He was sly, vulpine. The way he made his eyes glint when he mentioned the fleece, and wrung
his hands
and made me bend to his pillow, to let him poke at me, conspirators in a cunning scheme — I knew the old man was sane enough. He was pulling something. Yet this
was the plan:
Bring him the golden fleece, and he’d split the kingdom
with me,
half and half. I could see at a glance what he wanted,
all right,
though I wasn’t quite sure of the reason — not then.
But half the kingdom!
I looked down, hiding my interest, adding it up. I saids “You seem to forget the difficulties,’ and watched him
closely.
‘No d-d-d- diff iculties!’ he said, and splashed out his
arms,
then wiped his mouth. “None for a muh-muh-man like
you!
‘I waited. He grinned like a monkey. Then after a while
he sighed,
allowed that it might be a long way, allowed that there
might
be ‘snakes’ (he glanced at me) ‘snakes and suh-suh-so
on.’ He sighed.
‘And if I … refuse your offer?’ He sighed again, looked
grieved.
“You’re young, J-Jason. P-popular.’ He looked out the
window.
And I understood. ‘You think I’ll reclaim my father’s
throne
despite all the horrors of civil war. But if, by
mischance—’
‘J-Jason!’ he exclaimed. His eyes were wide with shock.
I laughed.
He snatched my hand, and, sickly as he looked, his grip
was fierce.
He wept. ‘J-Jason, I wish you w-well,’ he said. And
he did—
as Zeus wished Kronos well when he had all his bulk
in chains,
or as Herakles wished for nothing but peace to the
slaughtered snake
or the shredded, mammocked tree when he tore off the
apples of gold.
‘Suppose you had the suh-certain word of an oracle,’
he said,
‘that a suh-certain man was going to k-k-k-kill you.
What would
you do?’ I nodded. ‘I’d send him to fetch the golden
fleece,’
I said. Old Pelias squeezed my hand. ‘Go and f-fetch it.’ And so I agreed. Pelias had known I’d agree, of course. What Pelias couldn’t know was that I’d beat those odds. It meant two things — the perfect ship and the perfect
crew.
I could get them. That very day I checked with the
augurers,
playing it safe. No signs were ever better; and though I had, like any man of sense, my doubts about how much a squinting, cracked old priest — with
reasons of his own,
could be, for seeing what he did — how much such a
man could know
by watching a few stray birds, still, I was excited.
I was
a most devout young man, in those days. Goodness
in the gods
was a rockfirm fact of experience, I thought. And so
I told
the king that as soon as I’d gotten my ship and crew
together
I’d sail.
“It was Argus who built the ship — old Argus, under Athena’s eye. He built it of trees from her sacred groves, beech and ironwood, towering pines and great dark
oaks
that sang in the wind like men, a vast, unearthly
choir—
and Athena showed him herself which trees to cut.
When the beam
of the keel went in, old Argus smiled, his long gray hair tied back with a thong, and the beam said, ‘Good! Nice
work, old man!’
When he notched the planks and lowered them onto the
chucks, the planks
said, ‘Good! Nice fit!’ He carved the masts and shaped
them with figures
facing in all the four directions, and after he’d dropped
them,
slid them with a hollow thump to the central beam,
they said,
That’s fine! We’re snug as rocks!’ Then he built the
booms and wove
the sails. The black ship sang, and Argus had finished it.
“I gathered the crew.
“I can’t deny it: there never was
in all this world or on any world a mightier crew than the Argonauts. Sweet gods, beside the most feeble
of the lot,
I seemed, myself, a mildly intelligent hedgehog!
I gathered
Akhaians from far and near — all men of genius, sons of gods—
“And the first, the finest of them all, was Orpheus.
He was borne by Kalliope herself to her Thracian lover
Oiagros,
high on the slopes of Pimplea. Even as a child, with his
music
he enchanted the towering, frozen rocks and the violent
streams,
and to this day there are quernal forests on the coasts
of Thrace
that Orpheus, playing his lyre, lured down from Pieria, rank on rank of them, coming to his music like soldiers
on the march.
The next I chose was Polyphemon, son of Eilatos,
out of
Larissa. He was, in his younger days, a hero in the
ranks
of the incredible Lapithai who warred with the centaurs
once.
His limbs by now were heavy with age, but he still had
the same
fierce heart.
‘The next was Asterios, son of an endless line
of travellers, explorers, river merchants, a man who
could trade up
wools and linens to priceless gems. And Iphiklos was
next,
my mother’s brother, who came for the sake of our
kinship. Then
Admetos, king of Pherai, rich in sheep. Then the sons of Hermes, out of Alope, land of cornfields; with them Aithalides their kinsman. Then, from wealthy Gyrton, Koronos came, the son of Kaineos — strong as a boulder, though he wasn’t the man his father was. In Gyrton
they say
the old man singlehanded beat the centaurs back, and after the centaurs rallied and overcame him, even then they couldn’t kill him. With massive pines they
drove him
down in the earth like a nail. He was still alive.
“Then Mopsos,
powerful man whom Apollo had trained to excel all
others
in the art of augury from birds. He knew when he
came, he said,
that he’d meet his end in the Libyan desert.
Then Telamon
and Peleus, sons of Aiakos, fathers in turn of sons as awesome as they were themselves — the heroes Aias
and Akhilles,
now chief terrors of Troy.
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