spears, and helmets
whose splendor flashed to Olympos. They shone like a
night full of stars
when snow lies deep and wind has swept off the clouds.
But Jason
remembered the counsel of Medeia of the many wiles:
picked up
a boulder from the field—a rock four men would have
strained to budge—
and staggering forward with the rock in both arms,
he bowled it toward them,
and at once crouched behind his shield, unseen, full
of confidence.
The Kolchians gave a tremendous shout, and Aietes
himself
was astonished to see that great ball thrown. But the
earthborn men
fell on one another in a froth, and beneath each other’s
spearpoints
toppled like pines uprooted in a violent gale. And now, like a thunderstone out of heaven, pursued by its fiery
tail,
the son of Aison came, spear flashing, and the dark
field streamed
with blood. Some fell while running, some still
half-emerged,
their flanks and bellies showing, or only their heads.
So Jason
reaped with his murderous sickle that unripe grain.
Blood flowed
in new-ploughed furrows like water in a ditch.
“Such was the scene
the Lord of the Bulls surveyed, and such was his rage
and grief.
For he knew well enough whence came this miraculous
power in the man.
He went back numbed with fury to the city of the
Kolchians.
So the day ended, and so Lord Jason’s contest ended.
15
The witch slept, and in dreams the goddess Hera filled her heart with agonizing fears. She trembled like a fawn
half hidden
in a copse at the baying of hounds. Her eyeballs burned;
her ears
filled with a roar like the crashing of a tide. She played
again
(it was no mere game) with the thought of some
deathwort painless and swift.
Far better that than the vengeance her father would
devise. (She’d seen him,
a shadowy form in her sorcelled mirror, seated with
his nobles,
preparing his treacherous stroke.) She groaned,
awakened in terror,
the shadow of a crow on the moon. She slipped her feet
down, groping,
moving in silence to the box where her potions were
locked, then paused,
remembering the stranger’s words. It was not possible,
perhaps—
and yet, perhaps in that kinder world … In haste, half
swooning,
Medeia kneeled down and kissed her bed, her eyes
streaming,
and kissed the posts at each side of the folding doors,
and the walls.
She snipped a lock of her hair for her mother to
remember her by,
and then, to no one in the darkness, whispered,
Farewell, Mother.
Farewell Khalkiope; farewell my home, my beloved
brother,
farewell sweet rooms, old fields…’ She could say no
more, sobbed only,
‘Jason, I wish you had drowned!’ Then weeping like a
newly captive
slave torn roughly from her home by the luck of war,
she fled
in silence swiftly through the palace. The doors,
awakening
to her hasty spells, swung open of their own accord.
So onward
barefoot she ran down narrow alleys, her right hand
raising
the hem of her skirt, her left hand holding her mantle
to her forehead,
hiding her face. Thus swiftly, fearfully, she crossed
the city
by lightless streets, and passed the towers on the wall
unseen
by the watch. The moon sang down, cool
huntress-goddess, grim:
‘How many times have you blocked my rays by your
incantations,
to practice your witchery undisturbed—your search for
corpses,
noxious roots? How many times have you terrified
innocents,
raising up devils, the shadow of wolves, along country
lanes?
Go then, victim of the mischief god! Seek out thy light, sweet Jason, life-long heartache! Clever as you are,
you’ll find
there’s deadlier craft than witchcraft stalking the night
Go! Run!’
“Thus sang the moon. But Medeia rushed on, and
arrived at last
at the high earth sconce by the river and, looking
across it, caught
the bloom of the Argonauts’ bonfire, kept all night,
celebration
of victory. She sent a clear call ringing through the dark to Melas, Phrixos’ son, on the further bank. He heard and recognized her, as Jason did. They spoke to the
others.
The Argonauts were speechless with amazement and
dread. Three times
she called; three times they shouted back, rowing toward
her.
“Before they’d shored or cast off the hawsers, Jason
leaped
light-footed from the Argo’s deck, and after him
Phrixos’ sons.
At once she wrapped her arms around Jason’s knees,
imploring:
‘Save me, I beg you, from Aietes’ wrath—and save
yourselves.
Our tricks are discovered; there’s nothing we can do.
Let us sail away
before he can reach his chariot I’ll give you, myself, the golden fleece. I have spells that can bring down
sleep on the serpent.
—But first, before all your men, you must call on the
gods to witness
your promises to me. You must vow you will not
disgrace me when I
am far from home and in no dear kinsmen’s protection.’
She spoke
in anguish, fallen at his feet. But the words she spoke
made Jason’s
heart leap high, whether for joy at her beauty—now
granted
as a gift to him—or joy at her promise of the fleece, she
could not
tell, study his eyes as she might. He raised her to her
feet,
embracing her. Then, to comfort her: ‘Beautiful
princess,
I swear—may Olympian Zeus and his consort Hera,
Goddess
of Wedlock, witness my words—that when we’re safe in
Hellas,
I’ll make you my wedded wife.’ And he took her hand
in his.
She believed him, and said, ‘I have nothing to promise
in return but this:
‘I’ll be faithful to you. Wherever you go, I will go.’
“So to the ship, and at once, with all speed, to the
sacred wood
in hopes that while night still clung they might capture
and carry away
the treasure, in defiance of the king. The oars with their
pinewood blades
skirled water, awakening the dark. As the boat slid out
from shore
like a nearly forgotten dream, Medeia gasped, wide-eyed, and stretched out her arms to the land, full of wild
regret. But Jason,
never at a loss, spoke softly, and her mind was calmed.
She turned
like a charmed spirit, and gazed toward the isle of the
serpent.
“The Argo
glided landwards, the mast tip blazing with dawn’s first
glance,
and, guided by Medeia, the Argonauts leaped to the
rockstrewn, windless
beach—a muffled jangle of war-dress, and then vast
stillness.
A path led straight to the sacred wood. They advanced,
silent;
and so they came within sight of the mammoth oak,
and high
in its beams, like a cloud incarnadined by the fiery
glance
of morning, they saw the fleece. They stood stock-still,
amazed.
It hung, magnificent, above them, like a thing
indifferent
to the petty spleen of Aietes, courage of Jason, or the
beating
of Medeia’s confounded heart. It seemed a thing
indifferent
to Time itself: Virtue, Beauty, Holiness, Change— all were revealed for an instant as paltry children’s
dreams,
carpentered illusions to wall off the truth, man’s
otherness—
eternal, inexpiable—from this. The Argonauts
remembered again
Prometheus’ screams—first thief of celestial fire;
remembered
the whispering ram on the mantle that Argus had made,
off Lemnos,
Phrixos listening, all attention, and all who looked on it listening, tensed for the secret; but the smouldering
ram’s eyes laughed,
and the secret refused their minds. Stay on! It’s not
far now!
A moral meaningless, outrageous. For a long time they
stared,
like mystics gazing at an inner sun, some nether
darkness,
pyralises. But now the sharp unsleeping eyes of the
snake had seen them,
and the head swung near like a barque on invisible
waters. Their minds
came awake again, and even the bravest of the
Argonauts shook
till their armor rang, and their legs no longer held
them. The serpent
hissed, and the banks of the river, the deep recesses
of the wood
threw back the sound, and far away from Titanian Aia it reached the ears of Kolchians living by the outfall of
Lykos.
Babies sleeping in their mothers’ arms were startled
awake,
and their mothers, awakening in terror, hugged them
close. Apophis,
in his sheath of blue-green scales, rolled forward his
interminable coils
like the eddies of thick black smoke that spring from
smouldering logs
and pursue each other from below in endless
convolutions. Then
he saw the witch Medeia rise from the ground and
stand,
her hair and eyes like flame, her strangely gentle voice invoking sleep, a sing-song soothing to his ancient mind; he heard her calling to the queen of the Underworld—
softly, softly—
and as Jason looked up, stretched out flatlings in the
shadow of her skirt,
the snake, for all its age and rage, was lulled a little. The whole vast sinuate spine relaxed, and its
undulations
smoothed a little, moving like a dark and silent swell rolling on a sluggish sea. Even now his head still
hovered,
and his jaws, with their glittering, needlesharp tusks,
were agape, as if
to snap the intruders to their death like fear-numbed
mice. But Medeia,
chanting a spell, sprinkled his eyes with a powerful
drug,
and as the magic assaulted his heavy mind, the scent
spreading out
around him, his will collapsed. His wedge-shape head
sank slowly,
his innumerable coils behind him spanning the wood.
Then, rising
on feeble legs, Jason dragged down the fleece from the
oak,
Medeia moving her hand on Apophis’ head, soothing his wildness with a magic oil. As if in a trance herself, she gave no sign when Jason called. He returned for her, touching her elbow, drawing her back to the ship. And
so
they left the grove of Ares.
“Magnificent triumph, you may think.
Was Aietes not a devil, and his downfall just? Ah, yes. But the legend of human triumph coils inward forever,
burns
at the heart with old contradictions. The goddess was
in us, the anguine
goddess with sleepy eyes.
“Victorious Jason, on the Argo,
lifted the fleece in his arms. The shimmering wool
threw a glow,
fiery, majestic, on his beautiful cheeks and forehead.
And Jason
rejoiced in the light, as glad as a girl when she catches
in her gown
the glow of the moon when it climbs the welken and
gazes in
at her window. The fleece was as large as the hide
of an ox, a stag.
When he slung it on his shoulder, it draped to below
his feet. But soon
his mood changed. With a look at the sky, he bundled
the fleece
to a tight roll and hid it in a place only Argus knew in the Argo’s planking, for fear some envious man or
god
might steal it from him. He led Medeia aft and found a seat for her, then turned to his men, who watched
him thoughtfully,
puzzled by the hint of strangeness he’d taken on. He
said:
‘My friends, let us now start home without further
delay. The prize
for which we’ve suffered, and for which you’ve labored
unselfishly,
unstintingly, is at last ours. And indeed, the task proved easy, in the end, thanks to this princess whom
I now propose,
with her consent, to carry home with me and marry.
I charge you,
cherish her even as I do, as saviour of Akhaia and
ourselves.
And have no doubt of our need for haste. Aietes and
his devils
are certainly even now assembled and rushing to bar our passage from the river to the sea. So man the
ship—two men
on every bench, taking it in turns to row. Those men not rowing, raise up your ox-hide shields to protect us
from arrows.
We hold the future of Hellas in our hands! We can
plunge her into sorrow,
we can bring her unheard-of glory.’ So saying, he
donned his arms.
They obeyed at once, without a word. Dramatically,
Jason
drew his sword—the same he’d used for goading the
bulls—
and severed the hawsers at the stern, abandoning the
anchor stones.
Then, in his brilliant battle gear, he took his stand at Medeia’s side, near the steersman Ankaios. And the
Argo leaped
at the mighty crew’s first heave. And still none spoke.
They watched him.
And she—I—knew it, and was sick at heart,
remembering the song
of the moon. We had done a splendid thing—and I
above all,
—was that not true?—forsaking my dragon-eyed father,
rejecting
his treachery, turning half-blindly, innocently to the strange new doctrine, Love. Oh, it was not glory
I asked
,
throwing myself on the mercy of Jason’s Akhaians.
I asked
to live, only that, to live and be treated unshamefully. Yet Jason glanced at the sky, the shore, still thinking of
the fleece,
and the ship rode low in the water, it seemed to me,
with guilt.
The snake would be waking now, I knew; its dumb wits
grieved,
its earth-old spirit shaken. It made no sound.
“We came
to the harbor mouth like a high sentry-gate guarding
the port
where my father maintained five hundred of his fastest
ships. Inside,
the water was dark, the sun still struggling with the
hills. Mad Idas
spoke, eyes rolling, mule-teeth gleaming, spitting in
Jason’s
ear. The Argo could slip in and out of there quicker’n
a weasel.
Consider what warmth we could get for our chilly bones,
out of all
that wood! Recall how we sent up the city of the
Doliones—
a city well guarded and wide awake—whereas here
there’s hardly
an upright creature, discounting the chain-wrapped
bollards.’ His brother,
catlike Lynkeus, studied the docks, the black-hulled
ships.
He pointed the guards out—ten of them. Jason mused,
then nodded.
‘We’ll risk it,’ he said, and signalled Ankaios at the
steering oar.
The ship veered in, oars soundless all at once, though
those on the selmas
rowed more swiftly than before. In the shadow of the
sleeping hills
the Argo was black as the water, invisible as death
except
for the silver virl on her bows, a downswept sharksmile,
cruising.
We shot in nearly to the anchor stones of the resined
fleet—
I’d hardly guessed their skill, those professional killers
of Akhaia,
and my heart thrilled with pride. Then suddenly all
was light,
shocking as crimson ruddle on a snow white lamb:
their spears
arked through blackness to the tinder of sails like
rushing meteors,
like baetyls hurled by infuriate gods. Then men on the
ships,
stumbling, half awake, snibbed the hawserlines,
struggling to flee
the incineration of the ships struck first—there men
with mattocks
and fire-axes struck out, blinded by smoke and steam, at timbers redder than rubies—but they found no
channel for flight,
pleached on all sides by their own burning ships, lost in
a forest
of hissing swirls of smoke. Hulls shogged together,
sailmasts
clattered to smouldering decks, and still the resin that