touched
Pyripta’s arm. The princess stared at the water once
more
and sighed, shook back her hair. “I won’t,” she
whispered. “Why must I?
Later! Please, gods, later! I need more time!” The
goddess
moved her hand on Pyripta’s hair. The girl looked
down,
posing, as before. The flowers of the garden rimmed the
pool
like a wreath of yellows and pinks. The swans moved
lazily,
like words on the delicate surface of a too-calm dream.
Above,
on the palace roof, a songbird whistled its warning to
the sky,
the encroaching leaves: Take caret Take care! Take
care up there!”
As I raised my foot, stepping over a flower, the garden vanished.
I stood in the shadow of Jason’s wall. There were vines, the scent of black earth, old brick. I went to the open
window,
cleaned my glasses on the sleeve of my coat and,
standing on tiptoe,
peeked through the louvers. He was dressed to go out,
standing at the mirror,
his back to Medeia, brushing his long black hair.
She said:
“Don’t go, Jason.” He said nothing, brushing, his arm
and shoulder
smooth, automatic as a lion’s. He put down the brush
and took
his cape from the slave. Except for his eyes, he seemed
relaxed.
His eyes had blue-black glints like sparks.
But he swung the cape to his shoulders gently, graceful
as a dancer.
“Jason,” she whispered, “for the love of God, don’t
make me beg!”
He turned to the door. She paled. “Don’t go,” she said.
“Don’t go!”
She went past him, blocking the door, and her eyes were
wild. “Jason!”
He moved her aside like a child and walked from the
house. “Jason!”
she screamed, clinging to the jamb. He didn’t look back.
He walked
to the gate and through it. I hurried after him, amazed,
stumbling,
trying to watch Medeia over my shoulder, where she
stood
on the steps.
“Jason, you’re insane!” I hissed. I snatched at his arm. My hand passed through his wrist. Ghosts, I
remembered. Shadows.
I kept close to him, whispering. If Medeia had seen me,
so could he,
if he’d use the right part of his mind. “I know the whole
story!” I hissed,
“the fiercest, most horrible tragedy ever recorded! God’s
truth!”
I might as well have complained to the passing wind.
We came
to the palace steps. There was a crowd gathering. He
started up,
three steps at a bound, his cape flaring out behind. At
the door
I caught a glimpse of the blond young slave Amekhenos. Gone before Jason saw him.
Then, from behind us in the street,
came a thin, blood-curdling wail. “Jason!” We stopped
in our tracks.
The crowd shrank back. She stood with blood running
down her cheeks,
the skin torn by her own nails. “Jason, I warn you,” she called, and sank to her knees, stretched out hex
arms to him.
“By the sign of this blood, I warn you — Medeia,
daughter of Aietes,
as mighty a king as has ever ruled on earth — come
away!”
He stared, shrinking. I was sick, so weak that my
knees could barely
hold me. Her hair was beautiful — red-gold, shimmering
with light,
too lovely for earth — but her face was torn and swollen,
bleeding…
We looked away, all of us but Jason. At last he went
down to her
and, gently, he took her hands. After a moment, he said, firmly, but as if he were speaking to a child, “No,
Medeia.”
She searched his face, trembling, clinging to his hands.
“Go home,”
he said. “I know you too well, Medeia. Not that your rage and grief are lies. You feel what you feel. Nevertheless, this once you can’t have your way. If you could show
what I do
in any way unjust or unlawful — if you could raise the shadow of a logical objection, I’d change my course
for you.
You cannot. Long as we’ve lived together, you were
never my wife,
only the lady I’ve loved. There’s a difference, in noble
houses
with large responsibilities. For love of you I fled my homeland, abandoned my throne, sharing
the exile
your crimes earned. I was innocent myself — all Argos
knew it;
no one more shocked than I when I learned of that
monstrous feast.
Ask anyone here.” He turned to the crowd, then to her
again.
“Now, and partly for your sake, I mean to rebuild my
power,
gain back part of what I’ve lost. Go home and wait for
me.”
She drew back her hands from his and, touching her
lips, said nothing.
Jason too was silent now. He merely looked at her, then went back up the steps and into the hall. At the
doorway
Kreon nodded, wordless. Jason bowed. They went to their places. The slaves brought dinner in, and soon
the hall
was filled to the chine of the wide-ribbed roof with the
whisper of eating,
the snarling of dogs over scraps, the hum of the
sea-kings’ talk.
Jason sat very still. Pyripta watched him. There were no gods in sight, today. The servants watched like
lepers,
moving without a sound between the trestle-tables. I whispered, “Change your mind, Jason! It’s not too
late!”
When the time came, he told the story of Lemnos.
Said:
“We couldn’t know, as we rowed through dusk to that
rocky coast,
the terrible things that had happened on Lemnos the
year before—
the wrath of the goddess of love. (We might have
guessed from the way
the surf crashed in on those shaded rocks, and the way
it pulled back
with a groan and a long, dry gasp.)
“There were now no men on the island;
murdered, every last one of them, by their wives—
and all
their sons killed too, so that none might rise to avenge
the crime.
For a long time the women of Lemnos had scorned
Aphrodite
and thought her wiles and tricks beneath their dignity. (So Medeia would tell me, long after, whose raven spies, children of Hekate, keep all the past of the world in
mind.)
They were not less wise than their men, the women of
Lemnos said—
quicker, if anything, with their minds as with their
hands. They would
not creep, stoop, cajole, flatter, run up and down like slaves — sew half the night while their burly
masters slept,
legs aspraddle, snoring, farting from wine, in big soft beds. If women were weaker, was that some fault
of their own?
They were human, as human as men, and they meant
to be judged as human.
They declared war, held angry council. From this day
forth
they’d crackle and cavil at each least hint of tyranny, traduce each day all pillars, pylons, fenceposts, stocks of trees, all shapes ophidian, all tripod forms; inveigh against all dangling things, hurl malisons on winds not shrill, all shapes not bulbous, torous,