‘Good. Let us wait here a while until my stepmother and her Scythian guards are out of sight,’ said Calaïs. ‘But, Orpheus – since you are yourself a Thracian – will you go forward alone as though you were a travelling minstrel and amuse the palace guards and servants in the courtyard? If you do so, the rest of us will pass quietly into the palace by a side-gate. Zetes and I will then have the pleasure of addressing our father Phineus without fear of interruption.’
Nobody in this world could long remain insensible to music which sounded from the lyre of Orpheus, and when now he marched into the palace court, thrumming a lively jig, the sentries laid down their weapons, the cooks left the meat to burn on the spits, the washerwomen abandoned the linen on the flat stones by the lake-side, and all indiscriminately began dancing together in the open court. Caps of fox-skin flew into the air.
The party of Argonauts, stealing softly into the palace, were guided by Calaïs and Zetes to the dining-hall. As they opened a side-door their nostrils were at once affronted by a disgusting stench, a mixture of fresh dung and putrid flesh; and, inside, a marvellously strange sight assailed their eyes. King Phineus was seated before a long gilt-legged table loaded with dishes, among which a covey of twenty or thirty kites were quarrelsomely feeding. Every now and then, with a flutter of wings, another kite would fly in through an open window and join in the feast. They were tearing with their sharp beaks at lumps of offal and putrid flesh laid in the valuable dishes. Though Phineus constantly clapped his hands and shouted at them to begone, they took no notice of him at all but continued greedily at their disgusting repast. Though a man of not more than fifty years of age, Phineus had the emaciated and yellow face of a great-grandfather in his last winter of life.
With one accord the Argonauts made a rush for the table, yelling loudly; and the birds flew away out of the window, first snatching from the dishes whatever they could carry off. Calaïs and Zetes motioned to Echion to speak to the King on their behalf, not wishing to reveal their presence until they had heard his explanation of what had just occurred.
Echion advanced, cleared his throat, and addressed Phineus in his most eloquent style.
‘Majesty, I am the herald Echion, an adept of the heralds’ college of Mount Cyllene, son of the God Hermes. I believe that I have the honour to address Phineus, King of the famous Thynians whose land extends north-westward from swift-flowing Bosphorus almost to the thousand mouths of tremendous Danube. Majesty, you will (I hope) pardon this unannounced entry, but a travelling musician has just struck up a miserable jig in the courtyard and distracted the attention of all your loyal guards and servitors. They refused to pay the least attention to my comrades and myself when we presented ourselves, and therefore, rather than miss the pleasure of saluting you at our first arrival, we have found our way in by ourselves.’
‘Whose herald are you?’ asked Phineus, in quavering tones.
Echion replied: ‘I represent a party of noble Thessalians come on a trading voyage to your hospitable land. Iolcos is our home port, and we carry a cargo of decorated pottery, white horse-hides and hanks of woollen yarn (dyed in wonderful colours, and ready for the loom), which we hope to trade against the valuable products of your rich land.’
‘They are of no use to me,’ said miserable Phineus, ‘of no use at all. But I would give you all the golden rings and chains that still remain to me in exchange for one little piece of clean bread or a lump of figs or a slice of cheese that has not yet been befouled by these filthy, woman-faced Harpies. Ah, but what is the use of talking? Even if you had such a gift for me, the Harpies would fly back at once and snatch it from my fingers. It is now many months since I had anything clean to eat. For as soon as the rich and tasty meats are brought in, down fly the Harpies through the window and either snatch or spoil them all. My loving wife Idaea has tried every possible means of ridding me of these woman-faced pests, but without the least success. They are sent by some god whom I have unwittingly offended.’
Echion asked: ‘If I may be so bold as to ask this question – how do you, a blind man, know what appearance these Harpies wear?’
Phineus replied: ‘My loving wife Idaea has often described to me their lean, haggish faces, their withered breasts, and their huge bat-like wings. Besides, I have other senses too, especially ears and nose, and when I hear their cackling laughter and whispering and obscene cries, and the rattle of dishes as they feed, and feel the sough of their wings, and smell their putrid breath and the horrible ordure with which they bespatter the room – why, I need no eyes to see them plainly, and am for once content in my blindness.’
Echion said: ‘Gracious King, someone is playing a loathsome trick upon you. Ask any man of our company what he has seen, and what he still sees, and he will tell you the same as I. Those were no woman faced Harpies, but simple kites; and they were not tearing at tasty meats but at lumps of offal and putrid flesh set before them as a lure. Nor did they befoul your table, as you suppose; for this had clearly been done beforehand by your shameless pages who cast the shovellings of the pig-sty and jakes into little heaps here and there on your table, and tainted your dish and cup. As for the cackling laughter and whispering, that doubtless proceeded from certain female slaves concerned in the plot. If your loving wife Idaea has told you that your visitors are Harpies, she is either very wicked or completely mad.’
Peleus, Acastus, Jason, and the rest confirmed Echion’s statement, but Phineus found it hard to believe them. He continually reverted to his tale of the Harpies. At last Peleus took from his wallet a piece of barley-bread and another of sheep’s cheese, and put them into the King’s hand, saying: ‘Eat, eat, Majesty. This is wholesome food and nobody will snatch it from you. The kites and the wicked servants are chased away and will not return.’
Phineus tasted doubtfully and then began to eat with relish. Jason pressed on him a lump of figs and a honey-cake or two, and filled a goblet with unmixed wine from a leather bottle at his girdle. The blood flooded back into the King’s emaciated cheeks. Then suddenly he began to beat his breast, tear his matted hair and bitterly lament his own credulity, declaring that at last, but too late, he understood how cruelly he had been imposed upon. Why had he ever believed a word of what Idaea told him? Why had he refused to listen to the accusations of his stepsons? They had warned him that she was taking advantage of his blindness to deceive him, but he had stopped his ears against them. In his infatuation he had banished the two eldest, Calaïs and Zetes, and for all he knew their bones might be whitening at the bottom of the sea. The two youngest had lately been accused by Idaea of attempting to rape her in the palace bath; they were now imprisoned in the dungeon, a bronze-doored burial chamber. Guards flogged them daily with whips of bulls’ hide until they should confess their sin and plead for pardon.
‘But what can I do? What can I do?’ he cried in broken tones. ‘Idaea rules here, not I; she keeps the prison keys, not I. She commands the guards, not I. I am wholly in her power. Kind Thessalians, in return for your delicious meal, pray take whatever dishes of silver and gold you may fancy, and then go off quickly by the way you came, leaving me here in my distress. I deserve all that I have suffered because of my follies and do not wish to involve you in my wicked wife’s vengeance. Alas for my stepsons, Calaïs and Zetes! I charge you, strangers’ seek them out wherever they may be; give them my blessing and ask them to forgive me in their hearts for the wrong that I did them. Yet it will be too late for them to deliver their brothers from death under the whip, or myself from slow starvation.’
At this Calaïs and Zetes revealed themselves to Phineus, and the scene of recognition and reconciliation drew tears from every eye. Then Peleus and Coronus ran hastily down to the dungeon chamber and broke open the doors with blows of a heavy hammer. They released the young men, who were nearly dead of hunger and their daily whippings.
From them Calaïs and Zetes learned which of the palace servants were still faithful to Phineus and which were unfaithful. They went out int
o the courtyard and signalled to Orpheus for the music to cease. Then, rallying the faithful, they seized the unfaithful and sent them down to the prison chamber under escort. Soon the whole palace was in their hands. To be brief, Calaïs next contrived an ambush against the return of Queen Idaea and her bodyguard; into which they presently fell, and were disarmed and taken alive. Idaea was not in any way punished by Phineus for her treachery and spite; he sent her back to her father, the Scythian king, with a plain account of what he had suffered at her hands. The Scythian, who was a just man, as most Scythians are, admired Phineus for the forbearance that he had shown. In token of his admiration he put Idaea to death; but the news of this did not reach Thynia until the Argo was well on her way again.
Phineus regarded the Argonauts as his deliverers. He tried to dissuade them from their quest, of which they told him in confidence, but when he could not, he feasted them well and gave them an itinerary of the southern route to Colchis, complete with details of winds, currents, landmarks, and anchorages; and promised them a warm welcome at Salmydessos on their return voyage. He grieved that Calaïs and Zetes were set on remaining aboard the Argo, but did not attempt to restrain them when he learned that they were bound by an oath to do so. His younger sons soon set his kingdom into order for him; and the sacred kites, when they were again fed, as formerly, under the meeting-tree of the Kite men (a Thynian fraternity in which Calaïs and Zetes were enrolled), lost the habit, which Idaea had inculcated in them, of swooping in through the windows of the palace dining-hall.
To the question, why did Idaea not murder Phineus outright, rather than plague him as she did? the answer customarily given is: ‘No Scythian woman ever murders her husband, for fear of the terrible fate that would be hers in the Underworld.’ However, she hoped, by giving Phineus only tainted food, to reduce him to such a lamentable condition that he would end his life voluntarily and not suspect her as the cause of his distress.
Chapter Twenty-Five
The Passage of the Bosphorus
‘The Bosphorus,’ Phineus had announced, ‘measures some sixteen miles in length from sea to sea, and resembles a rushing river rather than a strait, especially where the channel narrows to less than half a mile from bank to bank: for it receives the outflow of a huge sea nearly a thousand miles long and five hundred miles broad, which is fed by several enormous rivers. O my friends, when the melting snows of the great northern steppes, or of the Caucasian mountains, swell each of those rivers to many times its usual size, and when violent north-easterly gales drive the tremendous mass of waters before them into the Bosphorus you can imagine what a cataract roars down the Narrows! Fortunately the worst season is not yet here and the south-west wind which has now blown for two days will have abated the force of the current. Seize the chance without delay, and may the Gods grant that you win through before the wind swings about again, as by the look of the sky I fear it will soon do.
‘The current runs most swiftly in the middle of the strait, and on either side you will find eddies and counter-currents. Remember that unless you make use of these counter-currents your oarsmen’s task will be an impossible one; remember, too, that the projecting points of the abrupt and twisted channel provide shelter under their lee, where the current is deflected, and allow you to regain your breath for a renewed effort. But your master and helmsman must be men of the coolest judgement, otherwise you will assuredly be swept against the rocks.
‘Begin your ascent from the eastern side, where the coast is bold and you will find deep water close inshore; but beware the entrance to the Narrows, where a shoal fronts the mouth of a mountain torrent and extends off-shore for a hundred paces. Here, as you venture into midstream, your vessel will be whirled about like a chip of wood. Let your helmsman keep her prow pointed straight into the current; and do you put your trust in the Gods and bend to your oars. When you have passed through the Narrows, where the pace of the current today will, I reckon, be that of a man walking very fast, you will find that the strait opens out again, with slack water on either side; on the western shore is Therapeia, a little bay where you may anchor safely, if you wish, for a half-way rest. Only once more does the passage become difficult; and there lies the greatest danger of all – the Clashing Rocks. You will meet them about two hundred paces off-shore at a narrow point distinguished by a grove of white cypress-trees. As you sail with difficulty along the western side of the strait, where the water is slacker than on the eastern, you will find the counter-current so capricious that your eyes will be tricked. It will seem as though the dark rocks, some of which are awash, are not fixed to the bottom of the channel but swing about and attempt to crush the vessel between themselves and the shore. But let your helmsman fix his gaze on some steady mark across the strait and steer towards it.
‘Once you have passed the Clashing Rocks, you may lift up your hearts, for you will have only three more miles to go, and these present no great difficulty. Unless the wind suddenly shifts, you will soon be riding at anchor in the Black Sea, or beached on some pleasant strand.’
They carefully memorized these and other instructions and repeated them to one another as they sailed up the first reach of the strait, not rowing but conserving their strength for the struggle at the Narrows. The water teemed with tunny and swordfish, and the rocks as they passed by were overhung with caper-bushes of a bright green colour.
When they approached the Narrows and took to their oars, Orpheus tuned up for a new song, a sharp satire upon the ship’s company, designed to turn away the anger of any jealous god or goddess who might seize this opportunity of injuring them. The chorus went:
Did ever so strange a company
Of tall young champions take to sea?
In it he made a jest upon each of the Argonauts in turn. He sung of Lynceus, whose sight was so keen that he could look through an oak and read the thoughts of a beetle crawling on the other side; of Butes, who knew all his bees by name and lineage and wept if one of them did not return to the hive, having perhaps been eaten by a swallow; of Admetus, to whom Apollo came as a menial, but who could think of no better orders for the God than ‘Bring me sausages, if you please’; of Euphemus the swimmer, who challenged a tunny to a swimming match around the island of Cythera and would have won but that the fish cheated; of Calaïs and Zetes, who ran so fast that they always arrived at their goal a little before the word ‘Go’, and who once chased a covey of Harpies down the Sea of Marmora and across the Aegean and Greece to the Strophades Islands; of Periclymenus the wizard, born in an eclipse, who could change at will into any beast or insect that he fancied, but one day got stuck in the shape of an ass’s foal too young to remember how to return to human shape; of Mopsus and Idmon, who preferred the conversation of birds to that of any human being, even of each other; of Iphitus, who painted on the interior walls of a house in Phocis so lively a picture of a stag hunt that quarry, hounds, and huntsmen all ran off in the night and disappeared through the smoke-hole in the roof; of Jason, who was so handsome that women fainted at the sight of him and had to be restored with the smell of burning feathers. But Orpheus was careful to satirize himself among the rest: he told how, in an Arcadian valley, a great number of forest trees pulled themselves up by the roots and shuffled along behind him as he thoughtlessly played Come to a better Country, Come to Thrace.
These jests carried them safely through the worst of the Narrows, though at one point, even with the most vigorous rowing, it needed three verses of the song to help them gain a hundred paces. They were trembling with their exertions and nearly dead when Tiphys steered them into Therapeia Bay. They cast anchor and refreshed themselves with wine, cheese, and strips of pickled venison which Phineus had given them; but when the wind began to fail they cut short their meal and continued their passage for fear of worse things. But first, to lighten the ship, they disembarked the Mariandynians whom they had rescued from Amycus, and agreed to meet them that same evening, the Gods permitting, on the shores of the Black Sea, to the east of the
entrance of the Bosphorus
They sailed slowly up the broader part of the strait, but the wind had died away altogether when they came in view of the cypress headland and from the hissing noise of water they knew that the Clashing Rocks were near. Their mouths were dry with fear and their limbs twitched but Tiphys kept them on their course and Orpheus played cheerfully to them. The current in mid-stream ran at a terrible rate and the eddies close inshore twisted the Argo about crazily. The oarsmen saw a heron in flight upstream towards them and gaspingly cheered it, because the bird is sacred to the Goddess Athena; but as it flapped overhead at mast height the cheer changed to a groan of dismay. They faltered in their stroke and lost headway, for a sparrowhawk had stooped at the heron and missed its mark only by a very little. A tail feather fluttered down and was whirled away by the current.
The hawk soared to strike again, and it would have been the worst possible omen had the heron been killed. Phalerus, whose oar Jason had taken at Therapeia because he had not yet recovered from the blow on his hip that a Bebrycian had dealt him, seized up his bow, fitted an arrow to the string and let fly. Down into the boat tumbled the sparrowhawk pierced through the heart, and the heron flew safely on towards the Black Sea.
Seldom was an augury so speedily justified as this. Tiphys, seeing one of the Clashing Rocks uncovered by the tide at some distance away towards mid-stream, judged that he was steering a safe course, but the noise of water had confused him. The sudden tug of an eddy whirled the Argo about, and there followed a grinding crash and a shock that made every one aboard think that the voyage had ended untimely and all was lost. Nevertheless, Orpheus continued with his song, Tiphys regained control of the ship, and they rowed staunchly on, their oars bending like bows from the force of the current. The salt water did not wet their feet, as at every moment they expected it to do; and Phalerus leaning over the side to see what was amiss, shouted that they had merely fouled the base of their stern ornament against a sunken rock. Part had been broken off, much in the same way as the heron had lost her tail feather; but the skin of the boat was not pierced.
The Golden Fleece Page 27