John Gardner - Jason and Medeia

wielding

Ares’ formidable shield. It mirrored her breasts. And

here

a woodland pasturage, with oxen grazing — in a grove

nearby,

herdsmen fighting off raiders. The trees were wet with

blood.

And here stood Phrixos with the golden ram, the huge

beast speaking,

Phrixos listening, and the whole weird scene so artfully

wrought

that all who looked at it hushed for a moment,

listening too,

straining for the creature’s words. Who knows what

all this means?

Argus wove it. Who knows if he knew himself?

“I wore

the mantle, crossing to the city, and the water glowed

blood-red

beside me. When I passed through the gates the women

came flocking around me,

reddened, demonic in the mantle’s glow. They sighed

and smiled

and held out flowers that gleamed, as eerie as

gardens lit

by burning walls. I kept my eyes on the ground

and walked

till I came to Hypsipyle’s palace. The double doors

with close-fit

panels flew open — panelling of cypress, the beams

of the palace

cedar, and all around me the scent of nard and saffron, calamus and cinnamon, and incense-bearing trees,

Oriental

myrrh and aloes — and Iphinoe led me quickly through the hall and brought me to a polished chair where I sat

and faced

the queen. In blood-red stillness that sweet face looked

at me.

For all the old artificer’s magic, her cheeks were as fair between their pendants — and her neck in the cup of

her necklaces—

as young doves hiding in the clefts of a rock, the

coverts of a cliff.

‘My lord,’ she said, more soft, more gentle than a child,

“why have

you stayed so long outside our city — a city that has lost its men? They have gone to the mainland to plough

the fields of Thrace.

She kept back tears. ‘I’ll tell you the truth. In my

father’s time

they raided there, bringing booty home, and women too. But cruel and childlike Aphrodite for a long time had kept her eye on them, and at last she struck. She

made

their hearts furnaces, howling, raging with lust — burned

out

their wits. They lost all sense of right and wrong,

conceived

a loathing for their wedded wives: turned them out of

doors and took

their captives into their beds. For a long time we

endured it,

hoping their lust would die — but its heat increased.

No father

cared at all for his daughter; a cruel step-mother

could kill

the girl-child in his sight, and the father would laugh.

No brother

cared for his sister as he ought or defended his mother.

At last,

at the dark whisper of a god, we resolved to act. One day when the men sailed home from raiding, we closed our

gates against them,

hoping to drive them elsewhere, whores and all.

They fought us.’

She paused, lowering her eyes, as though the memory were even now a source of pain and shame. ‘Some died,’ she said, ‘some both on their side and on ours. In the

end,

they begged from us our male children and left, and so went back with their women to Thrace. And there they

are now, scratching

a livelihood from its snowy fields. ‘She paused again, eyes turned aside, maidenly.’ Because of that, noble stranger, I invite you to stay and settle with us. All that women can do for men we’ll do for you, beyond your wildest hopes. And you yourself, captain— robed like a king — my father’s sceptre shall be yours

alone,

and all you say shall be heard as law on Lemnos.’ She

raised

her shy eyes, gently pleading, like a girl who’s come to

her beloved

and stands now naked and trembling, awaiting her loved

one’s hands,

fearing he’ll scoff at her gift as shameful. What

could I say?

I could easily think, in the cloak’s unnatural light,

that all

her words were lies. Yet how could I know? Old

Argus wove

the cloth. There was magic in it, the magic of Athena,

queen

of cities, builder of the Argo. And what did Athena care for Hypsipyle, the quiet power a man might gain as king on that lonely island, guarding its old,

deep-grounded

walls, defending its women, right or wrong? As for all Aithalides saw and heard, should I trust the evidence of another’s fallible senses and not my own? A case of desperate rationalizing, you may say. I grant it. But I think no man but a fool would have dared to

avenge those deaths

with no more case for Hypsipyle’s guilt than that. She

was

no ordinary beauty, moreover — whatever her sins. She was fait as the moon, resplendent as the sun; in

her gem-rich robes

as dazzling as an army with all its banners flying.

“I rose.

‘We need your help, Hypsipyle,’ I said, ‘and all you

can give us.

But the sovereignty I must leave to you — though not

from indifference.

An urgent calling forces me on. I’ll talk with my men and come once more to your palace.’ I stretched my

hand to her

and she took it A touch like fire. I quickly turned and

left,

and countless young girls ran to me, dancing around

me, smiling,

kissing my hands, my cheeks, my clothes. They knew

what it was

to be women, manless for a year and more. Before

I reached

the shore, they were there before me with

smooth-running wagons laden

with gifts. They did not find it hard to bring my

Argonauts

home with them. Queen Aphrodite, changeable as summer wind, was in every blade of grass; she shone in every rock and tree. And so I spent the night with Hypsipyle, my truncheon under the pillow. And

spent

the next night too, and the next. And I could find no

sign

of wickedness in those dove-soft eyes, no trace of a lie on her apple-scented lips. Nor could my men find evil hidden in the women who led them gently, shyly, home to bed. They were not racked by nightmares, prodded

and pinched

by guilt, hounded by furies. If they were alarmed

at times

by images, were their husbands not alarmed before

them,

those who’d raided and bloodied the fields of Thrace?

Do innocent

sheep not sometimes cringe, ambushed by memory,

the same as

wolves?

“As I lay beside her one night, my left hand under

her head, my right embracing her, she whispered, ‘Jason, are men capable of love?’ I glanced at her eyes. They

seemed

a child’s eyes, baffled and lonely, but far more beautiful than any ordinary child’s. ‘Are women?’ I asked.

Her eyes

formed tears — whether false or honest tears, who

knows? I listened.

The night outside our window fell forever, a void. I heard the dark sea pounding on the land, the dark

wind shaking

trees, and I fell into a dream of wheeling birds,

old sea-beasts,

monsters crawling on the land on short, dark legs.

If we were

centaurs landed on Lemnos, violent murderers, still I’d be here in her arms, and might be fond of her. And Thoas’ daughter would move her hand on my

wiry mane,

my gift to her coiled in her womb. When hot Aphrodite

strikes,

sanity shifts to loblogic. My nightmare turned to numbers bumping in space like rocks in a vortex.

I sat up,

staring. She touched my cheek. We slept again,

and again

at dawn the fire awoke in me and I took her in my arms and thought her filled with light. And still the old gray

waves

crashed on the rocks, and the rocks took them, hurled

them away again,

took them again; and the ghost-filled wind moved