John Gardner - Jason and Medeia

The distant shafts of sunlight dimmed, died out; the

hills

went dark. In the gray garden, rain drummed steadily on the rude, unadorned coffin carved from gray-black

rock

to house a dead king’s bones, forgotten founder of a city, ancient pessimist locked away safe in the earth’s stiff

heart.

No rune revealed the monarch’s name; no gravid wordshape hinted which god he trusted in.

The old slave dressed in black, Ipnolebes, dear to

the king—

his eyes were mortal now — appeared at the columned

door.

“Amekhenos,” the old man called. The fair-haired slave looked down, drew back his hand. Whatever smoldered

in his mind

was cooled, for the time. He turned, waiting, to the

old man.

Take more wine to the king’s guests, Amekhenos.” The young man bowed, withdrew. The old man watched

him go,

then turned to his business, supervision of the kitchen

slaves

at work on the evening meal. Wherever the old man

walked,

slave girls scrubbed or swept more busily, their

whispering ceased,

laments and curses — silenced not by fear, it seemed, but as if all the household were quickened by something

in the old man’s face,

as if his character carried some wordless meaning in it To a boy he said, “Go help Amekhenos with the wine.”

Without

a word, quiet as an owl in the hall, the boy ran off.

Travellers were gathered in the dark-beamed central

room of the palace,

men from farther away than the realm of Avalon, men who brought gold from Mesopotamia, silks from

Troy,

jewels from India, iron from the foot of the Caucasus. They sat in their fine apparel, kings and the minions

of kings,

drinking from golden bowls and exchanging noble tales of storms, strange creatures, islands enveloped in

eternal night;

they told of beasts half bird, half horse, of talking trees, ships that could fly, and ladies whose arms turned men

to fish.

They told of the spirits and men and gods in the war

now raging

on the plains of Ilium. The kings and Corinthian nobles

laughed,

admired the tales and treasures, awaiting their host’s

return.

The time for exchange was near. The strangers itched

for canvas,

sea-salt spray in their beards, the song of the halcyon, sweeter to sea-kings’ ears than all but the shoals of

home.

Kreon would hardly have slighted such men in the old

days,

they said. They’d burned men’s towns for less.

The lords of Corinth

smiled. The king was old, and the wealthiest Akhaian

alive.

It gave him a certain latitude, as one of the strangers saw more clearly than the rest. He spoke to his

neighbors — a fat man,

womanish-voiced, sow-slack monster of abdomens and

chins—

a prominent lord out of Asia known as Koprophoros. His slanted eyes were large and strangely luminous, eyes like a Buddha’s, an Egyptian king’s. His turban was gold, and a blood-red ruby was set on

his forehead.

I heard from one who claimed to know, that if he

stamped his foot

the ground would open like a magic door and carry him

at once

to his palace of coal-black marble. He wore a scimitar so sharp, men said, that if he laid the edge on a tabletop of solid oak, the blade would part it by its own weight. I laughed in my hand when I heard these things, yet

this was sure:

he was vast — so fat he was frightening — and painted

like a harlot,

and his eyes were chilling, like a ghost’s.

He said:

“Be patient, friends, with a good man’s eccentricity. We all, poor humble traders, have got our pressing

affairs—

accounts to settle, business mounting while we sit here cross-legged, stuffing our bellies like Egypt’s pet baboons, or fat old queens with no use left but ceremony. And yet we remain.” He smiled. “I ask myself, “Why?’

And with

a sly wink I respond: ‘His majesty’s daughter, you’ve

noticed,

is of marrying age. He’s not so addled in his wits, I hope, as not to have seen it himself.’” The young man

chuckled, squinted.

“I’ll speak what I think. He’s displayed her to us twice

at meals,

leading her in on his arm with only a mump or two by way of introduction. Her robe was bridal white impleached with gold, and resting in her golden hair, a

crown

of gold, garnets, and fine-wrought milleflori work. Perhaps he deems it enough to merely — venditate’— not plink out his thought in words. These things are delicate, friends. They require some measure of

dignity!”

They laughed. The creature expressed what had come

into all their minds

at the first glimpse of Pyripta. What he hinted might

be so:

some man whose treasures outweighed other men’s,

whose thought

sparkled more keen, or whose gentility stood out white as the moon in a kingdom of feebly blinking stars, might land him a lovelier fish than he’d come here

baited for—

the throne of Corinth. Even to the poorest of the foreign

kings,

even to the humblest second son of a Corinthian lord, the wait seemed worth it. For what man knows what his

fate may bring?

But the winner would not be Koprophoros, I could pretty

well see,

whatever his cunning or wealth. Not a man in the hall

could be sure

if the monster was female or male — smooth-faced as a

mushroom, an alto;

by all indications (despite his pretense) transvestite, or

gelded.

And yet he had come to contend for the princess’ hand—

came filled

with sinister confidence. I shuddered, looked down at my

shoes, waiting.

And so the strangers continued to eat, drank Kreon’s

wine,

and talked, observing in the backs of their minds the

muffled boom

of thunder, the whisper of rain. Below the city wall, the thistle-whiskered guardians watching the sea-kings’

ships

cursed the delay, huddled in tents of sail, and cursed their fellow seamen, hours late in arriving to stand their stint — slack whoresmen swilling down wine like

the hopeful captains

packed into Kreon’s hall. The sea-kings knew their

grumbling—

talked of that nuisance from time to time, among

themselves,

with grim smiles. They sent men down, from time to

time,

to quiet the sailors’ mutterings; but they kept their seats. The stakes were high, though what game Kreon meant

to play

was not yet clear.

The Northern slave, Amekhenos, moved

with the boy from table to table, pouring Cretan wine to the riveted rims of the bowls, his eyes averted, masked in submissiveness. The boy, head bent, returned the

bowls

to the trestle-tables, where the strangers seized them

with jewelled hands

and drank, never glancing at the slaves — no more aware

of them

than they would have been of ghosts or the whispering

gods.

The sun

fell fire-wheeled to the rim of the sea. King Kreon’s

herds,

dwindling day by day for the sea-kings’ feasts, lay still in the shade of elms. The storm had passed; in its

green wake

songbirds warbled the sweetness of former times, the age when gods and goddesses walked the world on feet so

light

they snapped no flower stem. The air was ripe with the

scent

of olives, apples heavy on the bough, and autumn honey. Already the broadleafed oaks of every coppice and hurst had turned, pyretic, sealing their poisons away for the

time

of cold; soon the leaves would fall like abandoned

wealth. Below,

the coriander on the cantles of walls and bandied posts of hayricks flamed its retreat. The very air was medlar, sweet with the juice of decay. The palace of Kreon,