The Golden Fleece

by Robert Graves

  Jason threw off his blankets, hastily ran an ivory comb through his hair, and stood up before her, tall and handsome, dressed in a purple tunic fringed with gold lace and decorated at the neck and shoulders with amber pendants; these were spoils that he had taken from King Amycus the Bebrycian at the sack of his palace.

  The two stood gazing at each other for a while, saying nothing, both equally astonished that a close view augmented the beauty that they had seen from a distance. It seemed to Medea that they were two trees: she a spired white cypress, and he a golden oak that overtopped her. Their roots entwined below the earth; their branches quivered together in the same southern breeze. The very first greeting that passed between them was not a word or a hand-clasp but a trembling kiss; yet a sense of shame preserved the decorum of the occasion and Jason did not press his advantage by handling her familiarly as he had handled Queen Hypsipyle at their first meeting.

  Jason spoke first: ‘Lovely lady, your holy powers have not been exaggerated. There are priestesses of the Mother who have the double-eye and use it to ruin and destroy, but you use the single-eye to heal and make whole.’

  Medea answered wonderingly: ‘You are the first of your sex who has ever kissed me, or whom I have kissed, since I was a child riding on the knee of my father.’

  Jason said: ‘Only allow me to hope that none other but myself will ever have this delight again – until one day perhaps an infant son clasps you about the neck, and kisses you, and calls you Mother.’

  She said: ‘How can this be, my dear love? Do you not know that I am to be courted by old Styrus the Albanian lice-eater, and that for the kingdom’s sake I cannot refuse to marry him but must smile on him as he fetches me away to his gloomy mountain fortress in Caspia. O, but I can say no more, nor tell you with what horror and loathing my belly churns at the thought of this union – for my father has strictly forbidden me to make the least complaint.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Jason, ‘the Colchian Mother will strike your old suitor dead at the palace gates if you pray to her with holy fervour; for among the Albanians, I hear, the Sun God presumptuously makes himself the equal of his Mother the Moon. But it would be dishonourable in me to suggest, as your true friend Neaera has done, that you should forget your duty to your father and steal away with me before this wretch’s arrival. And if you are so scrupulous to obey your father in the small matter of making no complaint against the filthy wedlock, the barren slavery, arranged for you, how will you dare to disobey him in a great matter?’

  Medea did not answer this question, but raised her downcast eyes to his and said: ‘Phrontis has already told me of your courtship of Queen Hypsipyle the Lemnian. He had the story from your comrade Euphemus. Euphemus did not impute any falseness or cruelty to you, but is it not true that you quitted the Queen after only two days, and would not undertake ever to return?’

  ‘It was three days,’ Jason answered, flushing, ‘and that was an altogether different case from this. I consider Phrontis most uncomradely to have carried an old tale to your ears, knowing how easily you might have misunderstood it and judged me accordingly. Well, I will tell you briefly how it was. This Queen Hypsipyle invited me to share her bed chiefly for reasons of state: she needed a male heir for her throne and wished to provide him with a distinguished father. She showed me and my crew wonderful hospitality during our visit, and I should have been a boor to deny her anything within reason. Thus, certain loving courtesies passed between us which are inseparable from the act of procreation, and I do not deny that my person attracted her greatly. Yet I did not fall in love with her at first sight, as I have done with you, or even at second sight. My feelings for her are fairly proved by my honourable refusal of the throne of Lemnos. How many men do you know, Lovely One, who would refuse a rich kingdom freely offered them even if the gift were burdened with the forced embraces of an ugly old woman? Hypsipyle was young and generally accounted beautiful though a deal taller than you (too tall, in fact, for my liking). She had dark hair, not golden; and a straight nose, not one with your falcon-like hook; and her pale lips did not invite my kisses as do your red ones. It was easy to forget Hypsipyle; but you I could never forget though I outlived the Egyptian Phoenix. At the instant that I first set eyes upon you my heart began a golden dance. Do you know how a sunbeam quivers on the whitewashed ceiling of an upper room, thrown up there by a great cauldron of lustral water in the courtyard, whose surface the wind stirs? That is how my heart danced, and is dancing now.’

  ‘Nevertheless,’ said Medea, trying to calm the clamour of her heart with a prudent speech, ‘nevertheless, if it ever happened, whether because of the timely death of Styrus or for some other reason, that I were free to offer you more intimate embraces than those which we have thievishly enjoyed, I should be bound to exact an oath from you that you would marry me honourably beforehand and afterwards share the Corinthian throne with me; for my brother Apsyrtus has already privately resigned his claim to it in my favour. Also, I should require you first of all to conduct me to the Istrian city of Aeaea ruled over by Circe, sister to my father; she has summoned me to her in a dream.’

  Jason knew Medea to be desperate and believed that she could be trusted with any confidence. He said: ‘I would take that oath at once, were you to swear at the same time to help me accomplish my twin missions in this country.’

  ‘What are they?’ she asked. ‘I have, so far, been told only that the Mare-headed Goddess of Pelion wishes you to inter the bones of Phrixus in the Greek manner, and this before quitting Colchis. I will gladly assist you, and already know the means. Ideëssas, the eldest son of the Moschian King, comes here tomorrow with the annual tribute. As usual, he will consult the Oracle of Prometheus, for whom the Moschians have the greatest veneration because the responses committed to me by him always prove to be true. Ideëssas will be told, among other things, that Prometheus loves the Moschians well and will graciously grant them an Oracle of their own which they can consult immediately whenever an unusual event occurs to disturb their peace of mind; that they are therefore to build a tomb of shining stone, in imitation of the shrine of Prometheus, and are to deposit in it, with such and such ceremonies, the heroic bones that Ideëssas, upon returning to his apartment, will find laid in his own bed. But he will oracularly be warned to conceal these bones from every human eye until they are safe in the tomb; and to conceal their provenience ever afterwards, lest their oracular properties be impaired; and to speak of the hero merely as The Benefactor. And the aspect of the Goddess to whom he is to be oracular hero shall be the White Goddess, Ino of Pelion. I shall not reveal to the prince that under that name the Ephyrans have worshipped Ino, by whom Phrixus was sent to Colchis, ever since by her suicide and the murder of her son she became one with the Many-named Mother.’

  ‘That is wonderfully contrived,’ said Jason; ‘but who will steal the bones and intrude them into the bed of Ideëssas?’

  She answered: ‘The trader from Sinope, Autolycus, is reputedly the cleverest thief in the world; Phrontis will instruct him how to act. And now for the other matter. You spoke obscurely of your twin missions. What other divine task have you been set to accomplish?’

  Jason demanded: ‘First swear by your girdle that you will never, by word, sign, or act, reveal this mission to any living soul until we are safely home in Greece.’

  Medea took the oath.

  Then Jason said: ‘It is to carry off the Golden Fleece of Zeus from the shrine of Prometheus, and restore it to the oaken image of the Ram God upon Mount Laphystios.’

  Her eyes widened and her lips parted in amazed horror. At last she said in a whisper: ‘You ask this of me, the daughter of Aeëtes and Priestess of the shrine of Prometheus?’

  ‘I do,’ he answered, ‘and with the explicit authority of the Mother herself.’

  ‘You are lying,’ she cried wildly. ‘You are lying!’ She turned and ran weeping from the room, all undisguised as she was.

  He was taken aback and could say nothing. />
  Fortunately the corridors were empty, because of the supper-hour: Medea regained her own room without having been observed. Left alone, Jason presently stretched out his arms and exulted to himself: ‘Was I not wise to say nothing and make no movement to restrain her when she ran out? A man should never run after a woman who loves him; just as a fisherman would be mad to plunge into the water after the fish which he has hooked. This shining fish of mine cannot swim further than the length of my line, which will not break.’

  That evening he watched her from his window as, standing upright in a polished car, she drove her mules at full tilt through the streets of Aea and out through the East Gate towards the temple of Infernal Brimo. The reins were wound about her middle and she wielded a heavy whip in her right hand. On either side of her crouched a young priestess, and behind the chariot ran four more, with their light robes kilted to the knee, and each with a hand laid upon the rail. She urged the beasts on with cries of rage and the people fell back to avoid her onrush, shunning her glance. As Jason watched and wondered, a crow chattered at him from a poplar-tree that grew near his window. He asked Mopsus, who was with him, what the crow had said.

  Mopsus replied: ‘Crows have only two topics – the weather and love. This crow was talking to you about love, assuring you that all was well.’

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  The Seizure of the Fleece

  After breakfast the next morning, Jason invited King Aeëtes to visit him in his apartment, and when he entered made a show of profound gratitude and respect. He even praised the King’s decision to sacrifice his daughter’s happiness for the good of Colchis. ‘Alas, Majesty,’ he said, ‘the royal tiara is cruel headgear for many a loving father!’

  Aeëtes answered with a frown: ‘Why should my daughter Medea not be happy? And is she not free to accept or reject any suitor that I propose for her? Albania is a rich country and the old man will soon die, leaving her to rule as she pleases, for she will be styled the Mother of the sons who succeed him, and in Albania it is the King’s mother who exercises the greatest power.’

  ‘I beg you to excuse me,’ said Jason. ‘I had not known that this marriage was of Medea’s own choice, and was ignorant of Caucasian customs. Yet for my part I should prefer to be your meanest subject than sole sovereign of any other land hereabouts, were the choice offered me.’

  After enlarging upon the beauty and fertility of Colchis, where all good things spring up without sowing or ploughing, and congratulating Aeëtes on the harmony that ruled between its diverse inhabitants, Jason suddenly displayed the skeleton of Phrixus, falling apart from decay, which Autolycus had stolen out of the horse-hide suspended from the poplar. Aeëtes recognized the skeleton by the teeth (for Phrixus was gap-toothed) and wept over it. The bones had a miserably forlorn look, being furred over with white and green mildew. Then Jason, in the hearing of Aeëtes, ordered Autolycus to convey them with circumspection down to the Argo and there secrete them in the locker under the helmsman’s seat, which had a false bottom. Autolycus took them away but not to the Argo: he went first to the apartment of Neaera, where she and her four brothers piously scraped and polished them; he himself undertook the articulation, boring each bone with an awl and joining it to its neighbour with a strip of leather. When they had done, and had jewelled the eye-sockets with turquoise, Autolycus removed the limber skeleton. He conveyed it to the apartment of Ideëssas, which, as he had hoped, he found deserted. For much the same distraction had been arranged as at the palace of King Phineus: all the Colchian palace servants, and the Moschian suite of Ideëssas with them, had been drawn out by Orpheus to the fore-court with an inviting jig. They now stood rooted there with delight and amazement around a gaudy booth where Periclymenus the wizard was making magic. Besides the feats that he had shown the Argonauts on their first entrance into the Black Sea, he performed others even more extraordinary. He swallowed a two-handled sword and, as if that were insufficient wonder a long broad-headed javelin, point downwards; and presently voided them both from behind. And he set a wooden duck in a basin of pure water and then addressed the water, which heaved about with such a tempest that the duck was cast clean out of the basin; then, as he made to pick it up, it sprouted feathers and flew away quacking.

  When, at a covert sign from Autolycus, Periclymenus at last concluded his performance, the Moschian suite reluctantly returned to their duty; but on re-entering the apartment they saw, as they thought, the figure of their princely master lying between the blankets of his bed, with his head tied in a woollen nightcap and his face turned to the wall. They did not dare address him, but sat on the floor in repentant attitudes until he should awake. They were disturbed and astonished by the sudden arrival of Ideëssas himself, who disregarded their nervous greetings and, going over to the bed, reverently abased himself, well knowing what would be lying between the blankets. He drew back the blankets, and there lay the polished white skeleton of a hero, just as the Oracle had promised. It held a tiger’s tail in one hand, which is a good-luck sign among the Moschians, and in the other the staff of Ideëssas himself, as though it intended to go on a journey to Moschia.

  Ideëssas closely questioned the four servants: what did they know of the matter? The first answered, his teeth chattering with fear, that none of them had left his post for an instant, the second was bold enough to allege that the skeleton had come walking in at the door without knocking; the third added that the skeleton, unwrapping the tiger’s tail from about its skull, had drawn on the nightcap instead – after which, seizing the staff, it had rapped nine times upon the floor and climbed into bed. The fourth then declared that he and his companions, struck with awe at this unaccountable event, had crouched about the bed in silence, reverently guarding the occupant until Ideëssas should appear. For the Moschians excel even the Cretans in lying fiction.

  Ideëssas was overjoyed. As a reward for their discreet behaviour he gave each of the four servants a fine Chalybean hunting-knife with an ivory handle, and enjoined them to holy silence. Then he folded the skeleton into a crouching posture, locked it into a chest of cypress wood and went at once to take his leave of Aeëtes. The Oracle had warned him to make no delay.

  Presently Jason, watching from the city walls, saw the Moschian embassy winding their eastward way along the river-road of the Phasis, mounted on mules. A great burden was lifted from his heart. It was clear that Medea had given Ideëssas the oracular instructions of which she had spoken; and that not only were the bones of Phrixus on their way to a distinguished burial with full rites, but she had committed herself to a gross deception of her father – for Aeëtes had intended the bones to be buried in Greece, not in Moschia. Jason was convinced that the nearer the day drew for her meeting with Styrus, the more compelling would be her temptation to throw in her lot with his, even if in so doing she must rob Prometheus of the Fleece.

  Yet for the three following days Medea gave no sign at all. She refused audience to the sons of Phrixus, and even to Neaera, whom she blamed beyond all others for the turn that events had taken.

  On the last of these days Jason was walking through the palace grounds in the early morning when he heard a hissing sound above his head and, looking up, saw a writhing head and neck among the leaves. It was no snake, as he had supposed, but a dappled wryneck, or snake-bird, caught in a fowler’s snare. He at once recalled an infallible love-charm, the charm of the hero Ixion, which had been taught him by Philara, the mother of Cheiron the Centaur. He released the bird from the snare and took it back with him to the palace, hidden in his wallet together with leaves of the plant ixias, which, as he expected, he found growing not far off. At the palace he obtained a Colchian fylfot fire-wheel and a piece of willow-heart touchwood and took them to his apartment. With his knife that night he whittled the touchwood into a female doll and addressed it as Medea, with soft words of love, tying a purple rag around its middle for a skirt; this rag Autolycus had secretly cut from Medea’s own robe as she walked along the corridor to
supper.

  Jason fixed the spindle of the wheel into the doll’s navel, the seat of love in a woman; then, smearing the wryneck’s beak and claws with the bruised leaves of the plant ixias, he spread-eagled it to the four spokes of the fylfot-wheel. He turned the wheel around, whirling it gradually faster and faster, muttering as he did so:

  Wryneck, cuckoo’s mate,

  Not too soon, not too late,

  Bring the girl to my gate.

  The driving band of the wheel twirled the spindle at such speed that presently the doll Medea burst into flames; and Jason blew gently upon them until she burned down to a fine ash. Then he released the dazed wryneck, thanked it, gave it barley to peck at, and put it on the windowsill. After a while it flew off.

  On the fourth night at midnight a tiny gleam appeared to the southeast across the Phasis, in the remote distance: it was a great bonfire of pine-trees lighted by Ideëssas to signal his safe return with the bones. Now at last Jason could undertake his seizure of the Fleece. He sent a message to Medea by Neaera: ‘Loveliest of women, I thank you most heartily for your pious action in the matter of the bones: may the Bird-headed Mother reward you with happiness. But, alas, since you are unable to help me in the other matter of which I spoke, there is no help for it, but I must say farewell for ever. I propose to sail in two days’ time, at dawn, empty-handed, and carrying within me an aching heart, the pain of which no other woman’s love will ever assuage. Remember me, unfortunate one, on the morning of your marriage.’

  Neaera was afraid to visit Medea, because on the last occasion that she had done so Medea had driven her from the room with Gorgon grimaces; but her brothers persuaded her to go.

  She found Medea asleep. Medea started up with a cry from terrible dreams and, when she awoke, retched for disgust. She threw her arms about Neaera’s neck, clasping her tightly, and cried: ‘No, no, I cannot. It is too horrible to endure.’