Neaera answered gently: ‘My dearest one, you cannot fight against Fate, for Fate is the Mother herself. Fate binds you to Ephyra and Jason, not to Albania and Styrus. Come, take your serpent girdle and cast it into the air for a sign.’
Medea did as she was told. The golden serpent fell at full length with its jewelled head pointed towards the east.
Neaera uttered a glad cry: ‘In which direction does Ephyra lie, and in which do the Albanian mountains lie?’ she asked. With that, she reported Jason’s message word for word and said: ‘Ideëssas has arrived safely back with my father’s bones at his city among his Moschian mountains. Soon the poor ghost will be at rest, and I shall be grateful to Jason for ever more. But I pity his forlorn condition with all my heart. Why are you so cruel to him, Medea? Ah, if only I could myself heal the Healer.’
Medea answered, weeping large, round tears: ‘I love him, I love him with unendurable passion. I cannot root out his image from my mind. The pain that I feel throbs under my breast-bone close to my navel and cuts deep under the nape of my neck, slantwise, as though the Love Spite had pierced me through and through with an arrow shot from below. Yet how can I thwart my father, to whom my duty lies? He will be undone if, when King Styrus comes to lead me off into marriage, I am no longer here.
‘Last night I could not sleep. I rose and dressed myself long after midnight, when even the dogs had stopped barking and no sound came from the city except at intervals the voices of the watchmen calling out the hour. I wanted to go and talk to Jason. But when I gently opened the door into the vestibule where my twelve maidens sleep, and would have passed between their pallets into the corridor, shame drove me back. Three times the same thing happened, and at last in desperation I went to my medicine-cabinet and took out the poison casket, and undid the clasps slowly, one by one. Then it came to me: “If I kill myself, I shall never look upon Jason again with living eyes and he will marry another woman. Nor will suicide advantage me in the least, for every city near and far will ring with my infamy. Colchian women will spit into their bosoms if ever my name is spoken and say: ‘She fell in love with a yellow-haired foreigner and died like a fool, disgracing her home and her father.’” So I put away the casket, trembling for fear. I sat down on a low stool beside my bed, resting my cheek on my left palm, and waited for the cocks to crow, thinking that day would perhaps prove kinder to me than night; but that was a foolish fancy.
‘O Neaera, what shall I do? My thoughts chase one another faster and faster in an unescapable circle. Break the circle, my dearest friend, with a word, lest I go mad with the chase. Tell me what I am to do. I will obey you, whatever you may say.’
‘Go to him,’ Neaera answered. ‘This love-impulse comes to you from the Bird-headed Mother, and is not to be lightly regarded.’ But she did not know of the condition that Jason had laid upon Medea before he would take her with him, and which Medea would not reveal; else perhaps she would not have urged her so warmly to flight with Jason. Neaera had been in awe of Prometheus from earliest childhood and would have loathed to rob him of his golden prize.
It was thus that Medea took her decision, and once her feet were on the new road they never strayed or faltered. She told Neaera: ‘Inform Jason that I will do all that he wishes, but only in the name of the Mother, and that henceforth my duty is no longer to my father but to him alone, so long as he offers the Mother no injury; and that I will never fail him, for I believe that he will never fail me.’ And she gave her an ointment for Jason to rub upon his body after he had washed himself three times in running water; and told her where he should be at midnight of the following night.
The next morning the outriders of King Styrus, conspicuous for their oblong shields and tiger-skin capes, came knocking at the Eastern Gate of the city, demanding admittance for their master, who presently arrived with the clashing of cymbals and blaring of horns borne on a litter by two frost-coloured mules. Styrus was a benign old man with a scanty beard and small merry eyes. He and his courtiers stank of putrid fish – for the Albanians bury their fish for days before eating it – and of garlic, of which they consume prodigious quantities as a protection against giddiness on their mountain peaks. Aeëtes said privately to his Councillors: ‘I shall fumigate this palace with sulphur when the marriage ceremonies are over. Meanwhile, pray bear this stench with Colchian fortitude!’
Medea was presented to Styrus, who was at first surprised and displeased by the colour of her hair, but, none the less, asked for her hand in marriage. She did not either refuse or accept him, being careful of her pledged word; but deceived him by saying submissively: ‘My lord, when once I am in your Court I will dye my hair with ink of cuttlefish, or with whatever stain you commend. But meanwhile do not, by dispraising it, hurt the religious feelings of the Colchians, for whom the colour has the lucky connotation of honey and gold.’
Since the retinue of Styrus was larger than had been foreseen, some of the elder men, priests of the Albanian Sun God, were accommodated in the inner hall where the brazen bulls stood; which furthered Medea’s plans. When all were lying behind locked doors in drugged slumber on their mattresses that night, Jason and Autolycus entered the inner hall by a window of the musicians’ gallery. Autolycus uttered a long charm of aversion, taught him by Medea, and going boldly up to the bulls, gelded first one and then the other with shrewd strokes of hammer and chisel. This terrible task had at first been assigned to Argus, but, being a Bull man, he had shrunk from it because of religious scruples. Autolycus was of the Wolf fraternity and did what was desired to do, grinning. He was the very man for the task, having once been a were-wolf. He had taken part in the octennial festival of the Wolf men, when the guts of a boy are mixed with those of wolves at the solemn pool-side feast; the man who eats the guts of the boy hangs his clothes upon an oak-tree, swims across the pool, and lives as a wolf with wolves until the next festival. Autolycus had been such a one.
Jason unwrapped the bundle that they had brought with them, in which were a double yoke and traces and a wooden plough. He harnessed the bulls to the plough, saying: ‘Be oxen now!’ Their jewelled eyes seemed to flash red with anger in the light of Jason’s torch, but they were powerless to hurt either him or Autolycus, who presently climbed out again by the window of the gallery. Thus the dream that Aeëtes had unwisely revealed to Medea first, before telling it to the Sun, was in part fulfilled; but the incident of the falling star and that of the anguished cry of Prometheus still remained for fulfilment.
Medea, wearing the customary willow-chaplet in honour of Prometheus, waited for Jason in a thicket at some little distance from the hero-shrine. The moon was young, and obscured occasionally with clouds hurrying from the east. Medea’s mind was calm now, though every now and then an involuntary spasm shook her, as huge waves still toss a ship after the water-spout has passed. She had sacrificed to Brimo with nameless offerings, and the Goddess had granted her favourable omens.
Soon she heard Jason’s stealthy tread along the path. Her heart knocked loudly as she asked in a whisper: ‘Is the deed done? Is all well?’
He answered: ‘It is done. All is well. Give me leave to kiss you, my fair-haired love, and lend you courage for your fearful deed.’
Her veins, when he kissed her, seemed to run with fire, and her heart to leap out of her breast. She had no strength left in her knees for moving backwards, and a dark mist came over her eyes; yet she thrust him from her, crying faintly: ‘Have done, now, my love! Your kisses sting like hornets. O that I had never been born a king’s daughter!’
She gave him a woman’s smock and shawl for a disguise and put into his hand a basket containing a black cock, a bag of barley-grains, and a flint knife. She warned him: ‘Crouch low to conceal your stature, take hobbling steps, shroud your chin in your shawl, show yourself submissive to me. If anyone addresses you, place your finger on your lips and shake your head.’
He obeyed her, and this time did nothing foolish, remembering how badly he had played at being servan
t to Argus among the Lapiths.
They went together along a well-planted avenue of black cypress until they came to the gate of the enclosure.
There stood two sentries with battle-axes, wearing bull masks and cloaks of black bulls’ hide with dangling tails. Medea set her finger to her lips and they admitted both her and Jason, making a reverence to them. Medea passed across the court, looking neither to the right nor to the left, and Jason followed, three paces behind her, until they reached the small bronze door of the inner enclosure. This she unlocked with a bronze key and they entered a paved maze, the walls of which were tall yew-trees planted closely together and confined with bronze railings. Medea led Jason first this way and then that, singing softly as she threaded the windings of the maze. Now and then she stood still, listened and sang again.
Presently Jason heard a strange noise of rustling or scraping. Medea breathed: ‘The serpent is issuing from his shrine. He is taking up his station on the tree.’
She led him into the central enclosure, paved with serpentine, which was in the shape of an equal-sided triangle, and as he entered the moon rode clear from behind a pack of cloud. At the furthest angle, behind the round white shrine where the sacred jaw-bone and navel-string were laid up, grew an ancient cypress-tree.
Jason drew in his breath sharply. He had come at last to the goal of his travels, but would willingly have forfeited five years of life to be safely back in Lemnos with buxom Hypsipyle, playing dice with her for kisses under a painted bed-canopy while the birds of morning sang sweetly from the rose-bushes below the window. Before him, tied to the cypress, under a slight canopy of planking, shone the Golden Fleece, hung head downwards as if in mockery of the Ram God; and around the trunk and limbs of the tree coiled the serpent Prometheus. He waved his blunt head slowly to and fro as Medea sang to him in the Greek tongue, and flickered his forked tongue. Jason judged his length to be four times that of a tall man, and his thickness about that of a man’s thigh.
Medea took the basket from Jason’s trembling hands and opened the lid. She pulled out the cock, unhooded its head, untied its legs, set it upon the ground and poured it barley-grains to eat.
Then she addressed the serpent in a low caressing voice, chanting:
Prometheus, take this gift, this cock,
This black cock gift I make.
Devour it for my sake, Medea’s sake, Fair-haired Medea’s sake.
Then sleep, Prometheus, sleep you well,
Sleep well tip dawn shall break.
The great serpent uncoiled his full length from the cypress and came rustling down towards them, but the smell of Jason made him restive and he uttered a sudden hissing sound: for all savage beasts are disturbed by the sour smell exhaled by frightened men. Medea soothed him with gentle words as a mother soothes a fractious child and brought him to obedience. Her voice soothed Jason too; his smell sweetened and gave the serpent no further offence.
The serpent Prometheus perceived the cock and coiled to strike. The cock became aware of the greatness of its peril. It ceased pecking at the barley, drooped its crest and quailed. The serpent drew back his head and drove it suddenly forward like a darted spear.
‘Close your eyes!’ ordered Medea. ‘No man is permitted to watch Prometheus at his feast.’
Jason closed his eyes. When he was instructed to open them the serpent had engulfed the cock – feathers, legs, beak and all. Medea stretched out her hand behind her, searching for Jason’s hand. He pressed it to his lips, but neither said a word.
Presently the serpent glided slowly back to his station on the cypress, and Medea sang to him again. Jason observed that he no longer kept time with the music as he swayed, but moved sluggishly. His head sank lower and lower: for the feathers of the cock had been sprinkled with the soporific juice of the tall, two-stalked saffron-coloured Caucasian crocus, that has a root as red as newly carved flesh and is now known as the flower of Prometheus. Medea had cut the root while the moon was full, and let it bleed into a three-whorled Caspian shell.
Now she drew from her bosom a spray of juniper and waved it slowly before the serpent’s eyes in a holy figure of eight. Soon he dizzied and a shudder ran through his vast body. His coils relaxed and he hung suspended from the branches with dangling head, as if lifeless, beside the dangling head of the Fleece.
‘O beloved Jason,’ said Medea, between weeping and laughter. ‘Go up now and take your prize. Here is the knife.’
Jason climbed into the cypress, among the huge coils of the drugged serpent, which were cold as death to his touch. He cut the leather thongs by which the two fore-feet and the two hind-feet of the Fleece were bound together about the tree; and took hold of it by the tail, and began to climb down again. Unknowingly he grimaced as though he had drained a hornful of sour wine, yet when he stood on the pavement again the glory of his deed warmed his belly and flushed his face.
The Fleece was wonderfully heavy because of the huge curving horns and the golden fringe. Jason bound it about himself under his smock. Then Medea gave him the basket again, and he followed her out through the maze.
They recrossed the court of the war god, looking neither to the right hand nor to the left. The bull-headed sentries opened the gate to let them pass out and made them a reverence. They trod in safety down the avenue of cypress trees towards the city, Medea leading the way, neither saying a word. Jason wished to run, but Medea’s pace was slow and meditative.
Chapter Thirty-Four
The Flight from Aea
When Jason and Medea came within sight of Aea again, Jason uttered the call that had been agreed upon, the melancholy howl of a Magnesian leopard, which set all the house-dogs of the city barking together. This was a signal for the sons of Phrixus to begin the bloody diversion under cover of which the Argo might sail away undisturbed. They ran through the palace, each through a different wing, yelling all at once so that the cry echoed down every corridor: ‘O the villains! O, O! Revenge on the sacrilegious villains!’
Aeëtes sprang from his high couch, half-clothed and bewildered, to ask what was amiss, and Phrontis came running to tell him: ‘Alas, Majesty! The filthy Albanian, your intended son-in-law, has desecrated your palace. He has castrated and mockingly yoked with a double yoke the sacred bulls of your Taurian allies. Yet was this not to be expected from a lice-eating aboriginal to whom the Bull is a symbol of all evil?’
The news of the sacrilege spread like fire about the palace, and Medea’s stony-eyed Taurian mother, Idyia, sent her son Apsyrtus in haste to summon the Bull men from the shrine of the war god. Soon they came running down the avenue in a swarm and Idyia herself opened the North Gate to admit them. Without a word they ran on into the palace brandishing their axes, to the terrible sound of bull-roarers whirled on long cords. Then battle was joined between the Taurians and the Albanians, Aeëtes trying in vain to keep the two nations apart. The Taurians with their axes soon broke down the well-fitting doors of the inner hall; and when they saw their mutilated and insulted gods they were excited to unspeakable deeds of vengeance. Their axes rose and fell like flails, until the son of Styrus, descending upon them from the gallery with his Albanian spearmen, bloodily drove them out again.
As the tide of battle ebbed and flowed and corpses were piled high in the doorways and corridors, the Argonauts, under the command of Great Ancaeus, slipped stealthily out through the unguarded gate by which the Taurians had been admitted, and making a wide circuit of the city came to the river without discovery.
Argus and Nauplius had moored the Argo in a narrow backwater under the shadow of a poplar-grove. This was the very spot where Phrixus had disembarked a generation before, when he brought the stolen Fleece to Aeëtes. Jason and Medea were already aboard when Ancaeus and his party came hurrying to the ship, and all was in readiness for flight. They took their seats hastily, stumbling against one another in the darkness, for the moon was obscured by clouds as well as by the foliage of the poplars; then some of them, reaching for poles, began to
push off. But Lynceus, counting heads, cried in a fierce whisper: ‘Hold! We are short of a man. Remember our covenant, Argonauts! We cannot sail away and leave a comrade behind.’
‘Who is missing? Who?’ asked Jason impatiently. And he complained: ‘I cannot distinguish anything in this darkness, Lynceus, nor do I believe that you can, either.’
‘Who shares the bench with Melampus, son of Ares?’ asked Lynceus. ‘It is Butes the Athenian,’ whispered Melampus. ‘You are right, Lynceus. He is not here yet.’
‘Butes, Butes, where are you?’ called Jason.
‘Hiss!’ said everyone at once. ‘Not so loud!’
Jason called ‘Butes, Butes’ again in sharp petulant tones. But no answer came. ‘O, O, does anyone know where he is?’ he asked, nearly weeping.
Phalerus the Athenian answered: ‘Alas, noble Jason, about an hour ago, or it may have been less – not long, at least, before Phrontis raised the alarm in the palace – I met my compatriot Butes in a corridor. “Look you, Phalerus,” he said. “I cannot bear to leave Aea without first sampling the Colchian mountain honey which Autolycus and his two brothers pretend to be poisonous. Here I have a luscious piece of honeycomb fetched this morning from the high azalea forest. Smell it; it smells delicious. Try some of it, dear Phalerus, as I also intend to do. Together let us prove that these wolfish Thessalians are credulous fools.” But I replied: “No, Butes, no! Let Trouble seek me out, I will not go in search of her.” Then Butes put the honeycomb to his lips and, first licking it with his tongue, bit off a mouthful. He said: “It has a bitter but refreshing taste. See, I do not swell up suddenly and die! Try it, I beg of you, my Phalerus!” But again I refused to eat, or so much as to taste the drippings. I turned and left him to finish the comb by himself. Since then, I have not seen or heard of him.’
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