John Gardner - Jason and Medeia

When we meet,

slay him. I will not blame you for it. The murder’s our

one

last hope.’

“And still Lord Jason’s eyes were impenetrable, studying me. His swordsman’s hands closed tighter on

my arms,

as if horrified. But at last he nodded, the barest flick, revealing no sign of his reasons. My anguish was

greater than before:

on one side, terror that he scorned me for the plan,

seized it merely

as the skillful, methodical killer I knew he was; on

the other,

sorrow for Apsyrtus. He’d thrown me up on his

shoulders as a child,

had shaken snow-apples down for me from hillside

trees.

Despite all that, he would drag me to my father’s

torture rooms.

Was I more cruel? But my mind flinched back. It was

not a question

for reason. There was no possibility of reason, no

possibility

of justice, virtue, innocence, on any side.

“So that,

mind blank, heart pounding in terror and

self-condemnation, I watched

as Jason in his scarlet mantle, all stitched with

bewildering figures,

laid out gifts for Apsyrtus, with the Argonauts’ help.

Black Idas

watched me, smiling to himself, and soon the trap was

set.

I watched Lord Jason debating in his mind the final

gift—

the mantle of scarlet that Argus wove, majestic but

gloomy—

it sent out a dull, infernal light — or the sky blue mantle King Thoas gave to Hypsipyle when she wept and

spared him,

sending him out on the sea. The son of Aison chose the blue, hurled it on the pile as if in anger; then, suddenly smiling, transformed, he came where I stood.

The heralds

approached. My mind went strangely calm, as calm as it

was

when I charmed the guardian snake. They left with the

message. When I

had come to the temple of Artemis — so the message

ran—

Apsyrtus must meet me, under cover of night. I would

steal the fleece

and return with the treasure to Aietes, to bargain for

my life. Such was

the lure. I know pretty well how Apsyrtus received it,

sweet brother!

His heart leaped up and he laughed aloud. ‘Ah, Medeia! Brilliant, magnificent Medeia of the many wiles!’ He

could scarcely

wait for nightfall, pacing restless on his ship and

smiling,

beaming at his sister’s guile.

“The sun hung low in the heavens,

reluctant to set, but at last, blood red with rage, it sank. As soon as darkness was complete he came to me,

speeding in his ship,

and landed on the sacred island in the dead of night.

Unescorted,

he rushed to the torchlit room where I waited and paced.

He seized me

with a cry of joy, proud of my Kolchian cunning. And

for all

my grief and revulsion, my murderer’s certainty of his

imminent death—

tricked for an instant by his smile of love — may the

gods forgive me!—

I returned the smile. With his bright sword lifted,

Jason leaped

from his hiding place. I turned my face away, shielding

my eyes.

Apsyrtus went down like a bull, but even as he sank

to the flagstones

he caught the blood in his hands, and as I shrank from

him,

reached out and painted my silvery veil and dress.

I wept,

soundless, rigid as a column. We bid the corpse in the

earth.

Orpheus was there, standing in the moonlight. There

was no other way,’

I said, rage flashing. He nodded. I said: ‘I loved my

brother!’

Perhaps even Jason understood, dark eyes more veiled

than a snake’s.

He took my hand, head bowed. We returned to the

Argonauts.

Apsyrtus’ fleet was heartsick, divided and confused,

when they learned,

by local seers, that the prince was gone forever. And

so

the Argo escaped.

“Such was our crime, our helplessness.

“In Artemis’ temple we killed him. The blood-wet corpse

we hid

in the goddess’ sacred grove. Then Zeus the Father of

the Gods

was seized with wrath, and ordained that by counsel of

Aiaian Circe

we must cleanse ourselves from the stain of blood, and

suffer sorrows

bitter and past all number before we should come to

the land

of Hellas. We sailed unaware of that, though with heavy

hearts,

praying, the sons of Phrixos and I, for their mother’s

escape

when news of the murder came to Aietes’ dragon-dark

mind.

Our fears, we learned much later, were not ill-founded.

He lay

on the palace floor for days, shuddering in lunes of rage, calling on the gods to witness the foul and unnatural

deed

committed in Artemis’ temple. He’d neither lift his eyes nor raise his cheek from the flagstones, but wept and

howled imprecations,

hammering his fists till they bled. And at last it reached

his thought

that she who had seemed most innocent, bronze

Khalkiope,

was most at fault. Then soon chaogenous dreams of

revenge

were fuming in his serpent brain, the last of his sanity

burned out,

and he called her to him.

“She knew when the message came what it meant.

She touched her bedposts, the walls of her room, with

the air of one

distracted, and since they could grant her no time for

parting words,

she left with the guards themselves her sad farewell to

our mother.

She looked a last time at the figures of her sons, the

work of a sculptor

famous in the East, and tears ran down her cheeks in

streams.

Then, walking in the halls with her silent guards, her

sandals a whisper

on fire-bright tessellated floors, she prayed for the safety

of her sons;

and for all her trembling — most timid of all Aietes’

children,

her hair like honey as it rolls from the bowl — she kept

her courage,

and came where Aietes lay. He rose up a little on his

arms

and hissed at the guards. They backed away as

commanded. And then,

though he’d planned slow torture, unspeakable pain

for the sly eldest daughter

(so she seemed to him), he was suddenly wracked by

such fiery rage

that he hurled his axe, and Khalkiope, with a startled

cry,

was dead. A death to be proud of, the sweet gift of life

to her sons!

“We left behind the Liburnian isles, and Korkyra with its black and somber woods, and passed Melite,

riding

in a softly blowing breeze; passed steep Kerossus, where

the daughter

of Atlas dwelt, and we thought we saw in the mists the

hills

of thunder.

“Then Hera remembered the counsels and anger of

Zeus.

She stirred up stormwinds before us, and black waves

caught us and hurled us

back to the isle of Elektra with its jagged rocks where

once

King Kadmos struck down the serpent and found his

wife. And suddenly

the beam of Dodonian oak that Athena had set in the

center,

as keel to the hollow ship, cried out and told us of the

wrath

of Zeus. The beam proclaimed that we’d never escape

the paths

of the endless sea, nor know any roofing but thunderous

winds

till Circe purged us of guilt for the murder of Apsyrtus.

And if

in cleansing us by ritual, the heart of Circe remained aloof, forgiving by law but not by love, then even in Hellas our lives should be cursed. The

beam cried out:

‘Pray for your souls now, Argonauts! Pray for some

track

to the kingdom of Helios’ daughter!’ Thus wailed the