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