Little as I’d slept, I’d awaken refreshed,
would plunge into work as I did in the days when the
Argo’s beams
groaned at the hammering of waves or shuddered at the
blow of sunken
rocks. Pelias, weeping on the pillow, would stutter the
fruit
of his senility, clinging to my hand. “Beware of
puh-pride, my son.
My suh-son, beware of offending the g-g-g-gods.’ His
daughters’
heads hung pale as cornflowers; their pastel scarves fluttered in the flimsy wind of their love and awe. I
could bow
and smile, unoffended, as alive in the stink of his
sickness as I was
in the field of Aietes’ bulls.
“On other occasions, when she left to haunt the wilderness in search of some cure for her
malady,
I rose up, silent, and walked to the chamber of a certain
Slave
and slipped into bed beside her, my hand on her mouth.
I did not
love her, make no mistake, a cowering, mouse-shy
creature
as repulsive to me as Pelias was in his feeblest moods.
But I’d lie beside her, exploring the curves of her body
with my hands,
caressing her soft, damp fur, and at last would mount
and pierce her,
twist and stab till she cried out in pain and fright. Again and again, through the long still night I’d use her,
driving like a horse;
she’d weep — once dared like a fool to strike me. I
laughed. When dawn
crept near, I’d return to my own room, and when
Medeia came,
slyly I would make love to her. We’d awaken refreshed, rejuvenated. The slave soon came to expect my visits, came to take pleasure in my violent lust. Though
cowardly as ever—
hang-dog, feather-voiced, as stooped of shoulder as
Pelias at his most
obsequious — she began to throw me sidelong glances, for all the world like a litter-runt bitch in heat. When
she found me
alone in a room, she would come to me softly,
seductively touch
my arm, impose her scent on me. Sometimes even when Medeia was near, whose eyes missed nothing,
the wretched slave
would call to me down the room with her foxy eyes.
I gave
her warning. I was not eager to lose her — those great
fat breasts
dangling above me, glowing in the moonless night. She
refused
to hear. I gave commands; she vanished. I waited for
remorse;
it failed to arrive. I felt, if anything, nobler, more alive than before. I soon took other women,
choosing — from slaves, from noblemen’s wives — more
carefully,
women of taste and discretion. Even so, Medeia learned; flashed like a dragon, an electric storm. I pretended to
end
such pleasures. But I’d grown addicted, in fact. I’d
learned the secret
of godhood. In lust alone is mankind limitless, as vast as Zeus. Who hasn’t hungered to live all lives, pierce the secrets of the swan, the bull, the king, the
captive,
close all infinite space in his arms? Such was my desire, my absolute of hunger. I remembered the Sirens’ song.
“Meanwhile, word got abroad that Medeia had curious
powers.
I’d known, of course, it was only a matter of time.
Who learned
her secret first, I have no idea. She had visitors, impotent old men, young women with barren wombs.
They’d arrive
at the palace on flimsy pretexts, would tour, do the
honors to Pelias,
and eventually vanish with Medeia. I did not comment
on it,
though I knew in my bones we were moving toward
dangerous waters.
“I had at this time troubles more immediate. Our land
has been
divided since time began by the sacred Anauros River. In certain seasons a man or a team of oxen could ford it, but whenever the river was in spate, the kingdom
became, in effect,
twin kingdoms: if the people were starving on one side,
and corn and cattle
were plentiful over the opposite bank, the starving died while the oversupply of their immediate neighbors
corrupted. Old Argus,
at a word from me, had solved that problem, and in
the same stroke
transformed the very idea of the river. He would cut
a wide channel
where ships could pass, carrying the crops of the
midland to the sea
and foreign goods inland. So that men could cross it,
in any season,
he’d devised, with the help of Athena, the plan of an
ingenious bridge
that could span the torrent yet swing, by the force of
enormous sails
and waterwheels, so that even the loftiest vessel
might pass.
I had no doubt the assembly would quickly agree.
“By some cruel warp of fate, Pelias appeared at the assembly on the day the plan was first introduced. Who can say what
crackpot fears
assailed the man? Mixed-up memories of the oracle, which involved the river, or his well-known grudge
against all things daring—
the fear that had driven him to tear down Hera’s
images once,
his coward’s terror of acts of will … Whatever
the reason,
he opposed me. He shook like a tree in high wind.
He cajoled, whined, whimpered.
Now ashen, now scarlet, he appealed to the gods, the
fitness of things,
to tradition, to unborn generations, to all-hallowed
patriotism.
I was stunned, furious. I came close to telling him the
truth: he ruled
by my sufferance. When he tipped his head at me,
pitiful, appealing for tolerance
of an old man’s harmless whim, my rage grew
dangerous
I could feel the muscles of my cheek jerking. I hid them.
behind
my hands, pretending to consider his words, and by
force of will
as great as I’d used when I talked with Aietes, Lord
of the Bulls,
I closed the assembly for the day. We would speak of
the matter again.
“That night, standing by the balustrade, I thought
about murder,
my heart bubbling like a cauldron. My wrath was
absurd, of course.
I would win. I had no doubt of that. But the wrath was
there.
I did not hide it — least of all from Medeia. I half resolved in my mind to depose the old man at once,
without talk
or ritual. But in the end, I fought him on the floor of
the assembly,
as usual, polite, eternally reasonable, revealing my anger to no one, or no one but Medeia.
That was
my error, of course. The lady of spells had schemes
afoot.
“It seems the old man’s daughters had learned
of Medeia’s skill
and had come to her. Pitifully, timid heads hanging,
eyes streaming,
their long white fingers interlaced in lament, they
begged for her help.
They spoke of the figure their father cut once — how all
Akhaia
had honored him — and how, now, crushed by tragic
senescence,
he was less than a shadow of his former self. The eldest
wept,
grovelling, reaching to Medeia’s knees. ‘O Queen,’ she
wailed,
‘child of Helios, to whom all the secrets of death and
life
are plain as the seasons to the rest of us, have mercy on