by John Gardner
Medeia said, as if drained of emotion—the tears
on her cheeks
independent of her mind and heart, mechanical as
stars turning—
“Go to her, one of you. Tell her I repent. My war is not with women, sad fellow-sufferers.” She closed her eyes. “Do not think I don’t love that old woman. I have
dealt with her
more gently than I can with those I love far more.”
And then,
suddenly whispering in panic and squeezing her
blue-white hands:
“Suppose them slain. What city will receive me? what
friend give refuge?
None. So I still must wait, for a time, conjure some
tower
of defense. That too I can manage, yes. By the goddess
Hekate,
first and last friend welcome to my hearth, not one
will escape me.
Your new tie, husband—my soul’s grim fire, familiar
heartache—
you’ll find more bitter than the last. You’ve proved
your cruelty.
Prepare for mine! You’ll ere long find your sweet
bedfellow
a lady Hades himself might prove reluctant to fold in his arms. So I pay you for mocking derision of a princess born
of the mightiest king on earth, a child of the sun-god’s
race!”
Then she left them, fleeing to her room to put on
dry clothes,
preparing in outer appearance for a secret and
deadly role.
The sewing women took up the golden cloth once more, their hearts quaking, too sick with sorrow and fear
to speak.
Their needles raced, in the corner Hekate in a long
black shawl,
sly-eyed and heavy, whiskered like a peasant,
and each whipstitch she sewed would prove a shackle
for the bride
who smiled now, gazing in her mirror, in Kreon’s palace.
The shadow
of Hekate, rocking on the wall, became a second ghost, the black, horned god himself in the service of Medeia.
When Jason learned, by questions to the slave Ipnolebes, what Kreon
had done,
he was filled with alarm—no less by the spiteful
gloating the slave
could scarcely hide than by knowledge of his wife.
But he bided his time,
watching the fiery rain, apprehensive, knowing
well enough
that the weather bore some message in it. He knew
beyond doubt
he was caught up now in a race against time. He could
hardly guess
in which direction the danger lay, couldn’t even be sure how grave it was; but he knew he must be in command
when she struck—
or best, get control before she struck—must stand
in position
to counter her, issue commands to protect them all.
Yet he could not press; he dared not even suggest that
the sceptre be granted to him
for fear that even now the king might repent and everything be lost. He remained with Pyripta,
smiling like a bridegroom,
stroking her cheeks and throat, lightly kissing her
eyelids, feigning
the adoration he must wait for a calmer time to feel.
The princess talked, pouring her pleasure in her new
husband’s ear—
talked as she never had talked before, and sometimes
broke off
to laugh at her chatter, yet believed his assurance and
chattered still more.
She had not known how much she loved him. With a
frightened look
she asked of his life with Medeia. He smiled and gently
kissed her,
silencing her. “You demand too much,” he said lightly,
his mind
racing down other, far darker lanes. “We have sons,”
he said.
“You must understand …” But catching the anger
and jealousy flashing
in her glance, he swiftly and easily guided her
elsewhere. I watched,
protected by a mist from their seeing me, and my heart
was divided,
loyal to the woman on the hill below, yet to Jason too, for he meant no harm, only good for them all, though
all he was doing
was false and tragically harmful. Again and again I felt on the verge of speaking to warn him, but each time
fear kept me silent.
The new solidity the gods had given was no great
advantage,
I knew to my sorrow. It seemed unlikely that empty
shadows
could harm me, or dreams turn real. Yet how could I
doubt those bruises,
that stabbing pain in my poor right hand, or my
spectacles’ ruin?
I constructed theories. Haven’t there been cases, I said
to myself,
when men fell down stairs while sleep-walking, and with
broken backs
dreamed on, explaining the pain by imagined giants?
And might
some action of mine inside this dream not trigger
repercussions
wherever it is that I really am? So I labored, guessing, and what was true I had no way of knowing, the rules
of the vision
kept hidden from me, however I strained to grasp them,
sweating,
and I kept my cowardly silence despite all nobler urges, huddling in protective mist.
At noon, at the midday feast, his waiting ended. In the presence of kings, high priests
in attendance,
the goddesses Hera and Athena behind him
(I alone saw them—
their look triumphant and wary at once, Aphrodite
glaring,
furious at Jason for the love he feigned, scornful of
her power),
Kreon—with an endless rambling speech—allusions
to Oidipus,
Jokasta, Antigone—transferred his sceptre and power
to Jason.
Great lords of Corinth unfastened the cloak from the
old king’s shoulders
and draped it on Aison’s son, its wide flow covering
the cape
Argus had made at Lemnos. Attended by lords, he took the central chair on the dais. His kingship was ratified
by vows
to Zeus and Hera and the chief gods of the pantheon, such vows as no man on earth would break. And high
in the rain
some saw Zeus’s eagle, they thought, though others
thought not.
The assembled kings, his equals, came to him,
confirming alliances
promised to Kreon in the past, and one by one they
bowed to him,
taking his hands, and bowed to Pyripta beside him,
his queen.
Again there were drums and trumpets, and slaves
poured wine.
And then a thing so strange took place that no one felt certain,
afterward,
whether it had happened or not. All in gold, the Asian,
Koprophoros,
stood before Jason, solemn. He bowed to the ground
in the fashion
of the Orient, then bowed to Pyripta in the same manner. When he spoke, his voice was as deep and soft as the
slow thundering
of far-off rainclouds, a voice so changed I was filled
with alarm.
“So the game is ended at last, good prince,” he said,
and smiled.
“All you were robbed of in life, you have now back in
hand, though opposed
by more than you dreamed.” He turned to the kings
around him. “Let men
report it to the world’s last age that once, in a palace
called Akhaia,
a man, by cunning and tenacity, out-fought the gods
of the Underworld for a city and princess, though the
gods of Death
were granted their prey in advance by fate. Yet lose
they did,
for the moment, playing too lightly—as the mighty will
do sometimes.
But fate, after all, is inexorable, whatever man’s power. The dagger blade has already cut deep in the
shimmering veil;
the dream is nearly done. Fear now no god, Jason. Fear things human, and infinitely more terrible. He smiled his scarcely perceptible smile. “If my words
seem strange,
ponder them after I’m gone. And so, good-day.”
With that
he tapped the stone floor lightly with his foot. In a flash,
where he’d stood
there loomed an enormous serpent whose wedge-shaped
head struck the roof
and whose coils were thicker than an ancient oak—
a female serpent
obscenely bloated with eggs; and I thought of Harmonia, noblest of queens, transformed by the Master of
Life and Death
to Queen of the Dead. She vanished.
While the hall still stared, dumbfounded, Paidoboron bowed to the throne. His words were stern
and brief:
“Now all escape is sealed.” And immediately he, too,
vanished,
and there in his place stood a dragon who filled all the
palace with fire,
and his scales were like plates of steel. Each nail on
his saurian claws
was longer than a man, and his two bright fangs were
massive stalactites,
children of the world’s first cave. Then the dragon too
was gone.
Kreon, pale as a sea-ghost, clutched at his chest,
shaking,
and even Jason was trembling. The nobles around him
swore
it was Hades himself he’d contended with, or his
surrogate, Kadmos,
man-god ruler of the dead. They swore that Death
and his wife
had come for their sport and had made long-winded
mockery
of Kreon’s fears and Jason’s desires and the hopes of
the sea-kings,
the whole fierce struggle a sardonic joke. The princess
suddenly
cried out, waking from a vision. But at once, though
his throat was working
and dark blood rushing to his face, the son of Aison
seized
his new bride’s hand and calmed her. When his tongue
would work, he said,
“Don’t be afraid! I swear all this terror will prove
some trick
of Medeia’s. If not, you’ve heard what the two ghosts
say: The gods
have retired from the conflict. It’s now no more than
mere human craft
we must guard against. —Yet I’m certain it’s only as
I said at first,
some heartless illusion by Medeia, designed to
terrify us.”
At once they believed him, for surely the gods play
no tricks so base,
not even the gods of the Underworld. So they told
themselves,
and so, little by little, their calm was restored.
His thick fear
hidden in the deepest, darkest of abditoriums,
Jason spoke lightly, driving out shadows as, long ago, he’d lightened the hearts of the Argonauts when hope
seemed madness.
He praised King Kreon’s long wise rule and swore
to uphold
his principles, and praised his visitors and vassals.
Of those things
nearest his heart—Idas in the dungeon, his own wife
and children
banished—he spoke not a syllable, biding his time.
His eyes
moved, as he spoke, from rafter to rafter through
Kreon’s hall,
secretly watching omens, a silent invasion: ravens.
23
Dressed exactly as he always dressed, not in regal array but hooded and wrapped against rain—for it still fell
fierce and fiery—
Jason went down, alone, to the vine-hung house where
Medeia
and the Corinthian women sewed. He rang the great
brass ring
and waited, restless but patient. At last the male slave
came
and, seeing his master, said he would bring out Medeia.
He returned
to the house, and after a time the princess of Aia
came out.
She stood in the shelter of the rainwashed eaves, and
he called to her
and asked her to unlock the high, wide gate.
Medeia said only,
“Speak from there.” He seized the bars of the
small window
in the gate and called, “You prove once more what
I should have remembered:
a stubborn disposition’s incurable. A home here
in Corinth
you might have yet if only you’d endure old Kreon’s will with at least some show of meekness. But no, you
must hurl wild words.
So you’re banished—thrown out of Corinth as a
dangerous madwoman.
And rightly, no doubt. Not that I too much care,
for myself.
Rail all you please at vilest Jason. Often as the old man’s fear of you rose, I struggled to check it.
I would have had
you stay. But still in your obstinate folly you must
curse and revile
the royal house; so it’s banishment for you—and lucky
no worse.
But despite all that, more faithful than you think,
I’ve prevailed so far
as to see that you’ll not lack gold or anything else
in exile.
Hardships enough you’ll suffer with your sons. So for
all your hatred,
take what I give you, Medeia.”
When first he began to speak she listened with anger locked in, as if, despite her fury, she intended to answer with restraint; but as Jason
continued, speaking
of Kreon as king (I realized now with a shock that
she knew
all that happened in the palace, informed by
black-winged spies),
her fury broke from its prison. She screamed,
“O vile, vile, vilest!
Rail I may well! Do you come to me—to me, Jason? This is no mere self-assurance, no manly hardihood. It’s shamelessness! And yet I’m glad you’ve come,
husband.
I do have one joy left, and that’s berating you.
As all Akhaia knows, I saved your life. I helped you tame those fiery bulls and sow that dangerous tilth. The snake wreathed coil on coil around that
cursèd fleece
I put to sleep for you. I fled my father and home, arranged my brother’s death and later King Pelias’ death, at his own children’s hands. Such deeds I’ve done
for you,
and yet you trade me away like a worn-out cow for
a heifer,
though I bore you sons. If you’d still been childless,
I might perhaps
have pardoned your wish for a second wife.
But now farewell
all faith—for this you know in your soul: You swore
; me oaths.
“Come, let me ask you questions as I would a friend.
Where should
I turn? To my father’s house? To Aia? You know
well enough
how they love me there—kinsmen I betrayed for you.
Shall I go
to the Peliad sisters? Perhaps we can all have a good
laugh now
at that monstrous birthday party. You see how it is:
by those
who loved me at home I am now hated; and those
who least
deserved my wrath, I have turned to foes—for you.”
He listened, hands on the gatebars, his head bent. When her
rantings ceased,
he said—not troubling to shout against the rain—
“Again and again
you’ve preached all that, and again and again I’ve
allowed it to pass,
though surely it’s true that I need thank no one but
the goddess of love
for the services you mention. But let that be; I find no fault with your devotion. And as for the marriage
you hate,
I say again what I’ve said before: with calm dispassion I made that choice, and partly for you and my sons.
No, hear me!
Not out of loathing for your bed, Medeia (the thought
that galls you)
and not through lust for a new bride or for numerous
offspring—
with the sons you’ve borne me I’m well content—
but for this alone
I’ve made my choice: to win for my family, my sons
and you,
such safety and comfort as only a king can be sure of.
My plan
is wise enough; you’d admit it if it weren’t for your
jealousy.
“But why do I waste my words on you? When
nothing mars
your love, you imagine you’re queen of the planet.
But if some slight shadow
clouds your happiness, the best and fairest of lots
seems hateful,
and the finest of houses a shanty in a field
of thorntrees.”
At this Medeia grew angrier still, tied hand and foot
by arguments,
as usual, and straining against the injustice like
a penned-
up bull. I could have told her the futility of trying
to fight
by Jason’s rules; but they looked—both of them—
so dangerous,
and the surrounding storm was so violent, such a
fiery menace,
I kept to my safe hiding place in the dark, thick vines. She said: “If you were not vile, as I’ve claimed—
if all these things
you say to me weren’t shameless lies—you’d have asked
straight out for consent
to your plan, not slyly deceived me.”
He laughed. “No doubt you’d have helped me nobly, since even now your