Jason and Medeia Read online

  me.”

  She drew back her hands from his and, touching her

  lips, said nothing.

  Jason too was silent now. He merely looked at her, then went back up the steps and into the hall. At the

  doorway

  Kreon nodded, wordless. Jason bowed. They went to their places. The slaves brought dinner in, and soon

  the hall

  was filled to the chine of the wide-ribbed roof with the

  whisper of eating,

  the snarling of dogs over scraps, the hum of the

  sea-kings’ talk.

  Jason sat very still. Pyripta watched him. There were no gods in sight, today. The servants watched like

  lepers,

  moving without a sound between the trestle-tables. I whispered, “Change your mind, Jason! It’s not too

  late!”

  When the time came, he told the story of Lemnos.

  Said:

  “We couldn’t know, as we rowed through dusk to that

  rocky coast,

  the terrible things that had happened on Lemnos the

  year before—

  the wrath of the goddess of love. (We might have

  guessed from the way

  the surf crashed in on those shaded rocks, and the way

  it pulled back

  with a groan and a long, dry gasp.)

  “There were now no men on the island;

  murdered, every last one of them, by their wives—

  and all

  their sons killed too, so that none might rise to avenge

  the crime.

  For a long time the women of Lemnos had scorned

  Aphrodite

  and thought her wiles and tricks beneath their dignity. (So Medeia would tell me, long after, whose raven spies, children of Hekate, keep all the past of the world in

  mind.)

  They were not less wise than their men, the women of

  Lemnos said—

  quicker, if anything, with their minds as with their

  hands. They would

  not creep, stoop, cajole, flatter, run up and down like slaves—sew half the night while their burly

  masters slept,

  legs aspraddle, snoring, farting from wine, in big soft beds. If women were weaker, was that some fault

  of their own?

  They were human, as human as men, and they meant

  to be judged as human.

  They declared war, held angry council. From this day

  forth

  they’d crackle and cavil at each least hint of tyranny, traduce each day all pillars, pylons, fenceposts, stocks of trees, all shapes ophidian, all tripod forms; inveigh against all dangling things, hurl malisons on winds not shrill, all shapes not bulbous, torous,

  paggled

  as the belly of a six-months’ bride. They would bend their

  masters’ knees!

  How reasonable it sounds! How just! So it seemed to

  them,

  talking, thinking together when their men were away

  on raids.

  They put on mannish clothes, cut their hair like men,

  took even

  the rough, harsh speech they supposed sure proof of

  equality.

  What could their husbands say? They could curse them,

  use male force

  to whip their women to heel, but how could they answer

  them?

  They accepted, in the end. They were, of course, the

  flaw in the plan.

  They developed a strange, unruly passion for the

  captured girls

  they’d brought from their raids in Thrace—soft

  concubines who’d not yet

  seen their reasonable rights. Sly and hard-headed, cool, no more likely than other women to blur their desires (mix up sex and religion, say, as men can do), they kissed—all girlish tenderness—the chests and arms and fists they knew by instinct they had to tame. They

  praised

  their lords’ absurd ideas; they listened, dazzle-eyed— secretly making lists—to grandly romantic trash: bad poetry, stupid theology—altiloquent designs in the empty air. They got their reward, as

  women

  do for creeping, stooping, cajoling, flattering. They soon

  were

  hauled off to bed. They handled it well, of course, those

  captives:

  slaves eager to do anything—oh, anything!— for the beautiful, glorious lord. When he was satisfied and sleeping, they’d move their girlish hands on his

  buttocks and legs,

  and play, all girlish tenderness, with his private parts. So the men threw off their wives for the girls of Thrace.

  Ah, then

  they knew, those women of Lemnos, what it was to be a woman! They became as irrational as men, but

  fiercer than men—

  unchecked by the foolish poetry, the stupid ideals, of the more romantic part of the two-part beast. They

  killed

  their husbands, their husbands’ mistresses, and all their

  sons;

  learned the truth of insane ideas: men’s soft throats

  flowering

  blood—quick flash of white, the bone, then streaming

  horror;

  and whatever they thought at first—however they

  cringed, all shock

  when first they watched the death convulsion no

  leopard or wolf

  would tolerate, if he understood, but only man— they learned wild joy in the unspeakable: became not

  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. Th
ey 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,

  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 incens
e-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