John Gardner - Jason and Medeia

human.

Only one old man escaped, King Thoas, father of Hypsipyle. She spared him — set him adrift across the sea, inside a chest. Young fishermen dragged him

ashore

weeks later, numb and emaciated, at the isle of Oinoe.

“They managed well, those Lemnian women, ploughing, tending to their cattle, occasionally putting

on

a suit of bronze. Nevertheless, they lived in terror of the Thracians; again and again they’d cast a glance

across

the gray intervening sea to be sure they weren’t coming.

“So when

they saw the Argo ploughing in toward shore (for all they knew, the coulter of a ploughing Thracian fleet)

they swiftly

put on the bronze of war and poured down, frantic

and stumbling,

from the wooden gates of Myrine, shouting, ‘Thracians!

Thracians!’

It was a panicky rabble, speechless, impotent with fear,

that streamed

to the beach.

“I sent Aithalides and Euphemos

to meet them, treat for terms. Old Thoas’ daughter

agreed,

in curious alarm — daylight was spent — to grant us

anchor

Just offshore for the night. My heralds bowed, withdrew.

“While the two reported, Lynkeus of the amazing eyes, mad Idas’ brother, looked with his predator’s stare at

the shore,

his sharp ears cocked, sidewhiskers quiet as a jungle

cat’s,

his dark hands steady on the Argo’s rail. His back

was round

with closed-in thought and his eerily beastlike

watchfulness.

He said, when they finished, “Jason, those people on

the shore are women.

And those by the city wall, the same. And those by

the trees.”

I looked at him. We all did. “It’s a whole damn island of women,” he said. Mad Idas, standing at his

shoulder, grinned.

“As soon as the sky was dark enough, I sent

our heralds

back, and Lynkeus with them — the runner Euphemos for quick report, Aithalides, the son of Hermes, for his wide mind and his all-embracing memory, gift of his father, a memory that never failed. They went to a room where Lynkeus said he could see an assembly

gathered.

He was right. It seemed the whole city was there.

“Hypsipyle spoke,

who’d called the assembly together. She said, in the

ravens’ version

(briefer by nearly an hour than that of Aithalides): ‘My friends, we must conciliate these foreigners by our lavishness. Let us supply them at once with food, good wine, young women, all they may dream of

wanting with them

on the ship, and thus we’ll make sure they don’t press

close to us

or know us too well — as they might if need should

drive them to it.

Let these strangers mingle with us, and the dark news of what happened here will fly through the world. It

was a great crime,

and one not likely to endear us much to these men—

or to others—

if they learn of it. You’ve heard what I say. If

anyone here

believes she has a better plan, let her stand and offer it.’

“Hypsipyle finished and took her seat once more in

her father’s

throne. Then her shrivelled nurse, sharp-eyed Polyxo,

rose,

an ancient woman tottering on withered feet and leaning on a staff, but nonetheless determined to be heard.

She made

her way to the center of the meeting place, raised

her head

with a painful effort, and began:

“ ‘Hypsipyle’s right. We must

accommodate these strangers. It is better to give

by choice

than be robbed. — But that will be no guarantee of future happiness. What if the Thracians attack us?

What if

some other enemy appears? Such things occur! ‘She

shook her finger,

bent like a hook.’ And they happen unannounced.

Look how these came

today. One moment an empty sea, and the next—

look out!

But even if heaven should spare us that great calamity, there are many troubles far worse than war that you’ll

have to meet

as time goes on. When the older among us have all

died off,

how are you childless younger women to face the

miseries

of age? Will the oxen yoke themselves? Will they trudge

to the fields

and drag the ploughshare off through the stubborn

fallow? Think!

Will the farm dogs watch the seasons turning, sniffing

the wind,

and know when it’s harvest time?

“ ‘As for myself, though death

still shudders at sight of me, I think the coining year will see me into my grave, dutifully buried before the bad time comes. But I do advise you younger ones to think. Dry wind like a claw scraping at the rocky hills by the burying ground, a long slow file of toothless hags, brittle as beetles, moaning, inching a casket along in the dry, needling wind…. But salvation lies at

your feet!

Entrust your homes, your cattle, your lovely city on

the hill

to these visitors! Whatever their beauty or ugliness, they’re lovely beside old age, starvation, the silence

at the end.’

“They listened, shocked. A few rose up and clapped;

and then

on every side, the hall applauded Polyxo’s speech. Hypsipyle stood up again, ghost-white. ‘Since you’re

all agreed,

I’ll send a messenger to the ship at once.’ She said

to Iphinoe:

‘Go, Iphinoe, and ask the captain of this expedition, whoever, whatever the man may be, to come to

my house;

and tell his men they may land their ship and come

into town

as friends.’ With that, the beautiful golden-haired

daughter of Thoas

dismissed the meeting and set out in haste for home.

“More swiftly

Euphemos came, racing over the water, to the Argo, and so we were ready for the news Iphinoe brought.

“Blue eyes

cast down, half-kneeling like a dancer, a slave,

a suppliant,

she poured out her tale. I hardly listened to the words,

wondering

at the clash of appearance and fact. She seemed more

soft than ferns

at dawn, more sweet than a bower of herbs and

gillyflowers,

clear and holy of mind as sunlit glodes. I stood bemused, and heard her out. In the end, I said I’d come. None spoke against it. We stood observing Iphinoe like

men

in a trance: the night was silent, not a wave stirring.

By the light

of the ship’s torches she seemed a celestial vision of

beauty

and innocence — and yet we knew — and we stared,

numbed,

like a child who’s discovered a spider in the fold

of a rose. When the girl

was gone, receding like music toward that torchlit shore, we gathered around Aithalides, who told what he’d seen and heard, and we turned it over in our minds like a

strange coin,

an arrowhead centuries old. And then I went to them. I hardly knew myself what I meant to do. Avenge the dead, perhaps. Yet how can a man set his mind

to avenge

a crime he can hardly conceive, an act as baffling as

the dreams

of camels?

“Old Argus knew my thought, as usual.

He called me, frowning, and gave me a cloak as I

started for town.

The man knew more than it’s good for a man to know.

The cloak

was crimson, bordered with curious designs that

outshone the rising

sun. I remember the old man’s look as he pointed

them out.

Here the cyclops, hammering out the great thunderbolt for Zeus, one ray still lacking, lying on the ground

and spurting

flame. And here Antiope’s sons, with the town of Thebes, as yet unfortified. Zethos shouldered a mountain peak— he seemed to find it heavy work — and Amphion walked behind, singing to his lyre; a boulder twice his size came trundling after him. Here came Aphrodite,