Medea (49 page)

We tended the hurts of the villagers as we passed, and only once did she seem stricken. A child fled almost under my mare's hoofs, crying aloud with fear. I picked him up and asked, 'What, boy, did no one teach you not to run under a horse?' and Princess Medea gasped, though I did not know why. The child told us that he had ruined his tunic with tar and his mother was going to beat him, and the lady reached into her bundle and gave the furious woman a plain, well-woven garment.

The peasant softened instantly, holding the squirming child by the ear, and asked, 'Your own, Lady, are they gone?'

'Gone,' replied the lady Medea. 'Do not beat him. The gods do not give us children, they are lent. A blessing on him,' she added, and the woman made us come inside and fed us new cheese from her own goats, fresh and delicious, while the boy leaned on my knee and demanded to ride my horse.

We reached Athens at last. My lady had gained beauty with every step. She had washed her hair and combed it. Her face was filling out from that skull-like thinness which had frightened me. Her eyes were alert. But there was some part of her which I could not reach, and she still had not wept over her children.

We found the house of Herakles easily. Everyone in the village of Athens knew Herakles. He lived next to the temple of Athene Parthenos, patroness of the city. The Athenians were proud to have such a hero living with them, though they were uneasy about him. He had not been possessed of battle fury for a long time, but he had the potential, and everyone knew if he was in that state he would slaughter all about him without mercy or volition.

We stopped at a tavern to lodge our horses and pick up the gossip. Athens has always been a place buzzing with scandal. I heard many things in that tavern which do not bear repeating, and in any case did not interest me much, for they were about people I had never met. But there was talk of the hero. He had married a maiden called Deianeira, an orphan, whose relative he had met in the underworld. She was supposed to be very beautiful, with pale skin and grey eyes, though her lack of intelligence was something of a by-word. However, Achaeans do not like intelligent women, so this was accounted a virtue.

The taverners said that the centaur Nessus, when crossing a river, had assailed this Deianeira from behind, attempting rape.

I remembered Nessus, a thoroughly reprehensible character who could not be trusted within grabbing range of any female creature, even a goat.

Deianeira had shrieked to Herakles for help, who had turned from the other bank and sent a bolt into the centaur. Herakles was always an amazing shot with a bow. He said that the gods directed his arrows. There was, according to the gossip, then some conversation between the dying Nessus and the maiden. She had been observed to collect his blood and semen in a cup; though what use she would have for such a noxious potion was beyond Athens.

The wine was excellent. The vintners of Athens boast rightly of the excellence of their grapes. Herakles was from home, my lady had gone to the kitchen to see what was cooking, so I sat comfortably on a stone bench and listened to the voices. It was a strange, harsh accent, clipped and guttural at the same time.

'Philammon is wandering this way,' observed the owner of the tavern. 'The Orpheans come every year to Athens, stranger,' he informed me, condescendingly. 'There is a festival of singing held on the Acropolis where the new temple is being built in honour of the voluntary suicide of the daughters of Erectheus, our king. All the bards come to Athens, because we feast them well, and we appreciate their music as no other people can. But they will not accept rewards of gold or horses,' he said. 'Philammon performed the Creation last festival and would take only some journey bread and a passage in a fishing boat to Corinth.'

'I know, I saw him there,' I said, nettled by his tone. 'I am a friend of his.'

'Who are you?' asked a man sitting unnoticed in a corner under the vine. 'I have seen your face before, somewhere.'

'Certainly you have,' I answered, recognising a known voice with great pleasure. 'Have I changed so much since we rowed together, Clytios?'

'Nauplios of Iolkos, by all the gods!' he swore. 'What brings you here?'

'I came to see Herakles, but I am delighted to see you.'

'Ah, Nauplios, my comrade.' He came forward into the light, and I saw that he was much scarred. Long stripes marked his face and torso. He had been raked deep, by claws perhaps, though he had healed well and the injuries were a couple of years old. 'A lion,' he explained. 'I missed the first shot and he was on me before I could run.'

Then he announced to the tavern, 'This is Nauplios of Iolkos, companion of Jason, an Argonaut and a brave man. Bring out the best wine,' he ordered the landlord. 'Not that goat's piss you serve to strangers. He is
philos
, my brother.'

Then I was accorded all the respect which I could have wished. Clytios told some highly exaggerated tales of my courage and I told some perfectly truthful ones about his, and we were occupied until the tavern population recollected that it had tasks to do and fields to sow and drifted regretfully away, leaving Clytios and me alone at the table.

'Have you heard of Jason?' he asked quietly.

I had not even thought of Jason in all the time since I had lifted the lady Medea out of the fishing boat. And I did not care what had happened to him, but I felt it politic to ask.

'No, I have not heard. Tell me.'

'He was cast out of his kingship, but he has not left Corinth. Instead, he roams the dockside, telling his tales of the Golden Fleece to the traders. They buy him wine and he drinks until he falls down. And a plague has struck that blasphemous city, sent by the goddesses, by Demeter and Hera and Aphrodite and Artemis. All the men there are struck impotent, and worse.'

'Worse?' I was hoping that something cataclysmic had happened to Corinth.

'They have dreams of blood. Then they burn in fever which cannot be assuaged, until they die. The sufferers tear their own flesh or fling themselves into the sea, but they burn with a fire which cannot be quenched. They are dying by the family. No women are affected, not even those who tend the sick, and very few children.'

I recognised the curse. I had heard the lady Medea applying it to the bandits who had ambushed us. But I did not think that she was responsible for the plague on Corinth. Corinth was responsible for that.

'So they sent to Delphi for advice, and the god told them that the murdered children of Jason and Medea were now demigods, living in the Elysian Fields with the heroes; the three of them and their nurse, a fisherman's wife called Clytie. Or so they say, though how anyone could make a demigod out of a fisherman's wife I cannot imagine.'

I bit my tongue. Clytie would make an excellent, sharp-tongued demigod and would certainly keep the heroes in order.

'She would have been queen of Corinth, if she had lived,' I told him. 'Her husband, Sisyphos, is now king.'

'Oh, well, that makes more sense,' said Clytios, pouring me another cup of wine. 'The god ordered that they be sacrificed to as
myxobarbaroi,
and funeral games should be held for them. And every year, seven Corinthian youths and seven Corinthian maidens of the best families must go and dwell in the temple of the Mother in expiation for the city's sin, and to mourn the victims of their blasphemy. Sisyphos has ordered it, though he has scarcely enough healthy citizens to run a foot-race. It should stop the plague if it is divine.'

'That is just,' I agreed.

'But the fate of the lady Medea is unknown. There are those who say that she turned into a raven and flew away, or that she was snatched up by a lustful Zeus. In any case she has been so badly treated, so betrayed by our erstwhile lord, that I expect that she is dead. She left everything for him as you and I know, Nauplios, and I would not have said that he was a cruel man. Is the story true about his demand for a divorce and the exile of his queen?'

'It is true,' I informed him.

'She cured Herakles, you know. He says she made him a stone which wards off
Lyssa
, madness, the goddess who haunted him, sent by the gods. He has been peaceful since he came here and married. His new wife has not conceived yet, but the hero is over seventy. Even heroes get tired, and he must have lain with a thousand women. He must be sick of the sight of them.'

'Can we call on Herakles?' I asked. 'I came to Athens hoping to speak to him.'

'He stays inside, sometimes, for days on end, seeing no one. But we'll go and ask after the noon meal.'

The meal was sumptuous. The landlord, evidently a man who valued heroes, provided the specialities of his village. There was a spicy stew of goat's flesh and herbs, olives bursting with taste, a sweet dish made of dried grapes and honey and breadcrumbs and lamb meat on skewers, roasted over a charcoal fire and wrapped in bread and sauced with
yourti,
a Scythian delicacy lately come to Athens via the seafarers. It tasted like sour cream and was delicious.

Clytios had not spoken to my female companion, as was proper. She was heavily veiled and said nothing, only absorbed food as though she had been fasting. It was only after we sat back, replete, to pick our teeth and sip at the sweet red wine, that he gave her a polite greeting.

She replied as was fitting, but the effect on my shipmate was similar to the time I had seen him grab an electric eel.

'By all the gods, you are the lady Medea!' he whispered, glancing furtively around.

'I am, Clytios,' she answered softly.

'Lady, you must not be seen. The Athenians sympathise, but they will fear to harbour a witch, and one who has killed Creon, the brother of our king. You must leave.'

'Clytios, you have just told me that Corinth is sacrificing to the murder victims as demigods,' I objected.

'Religion is one thing, popular prejudice is another,' he whispered.

I heard the lady sigh and watched her gather up her cloak.

'I will go,' she said, so resignedly that I was saddened.

At that moment, an over-painted, voluptuous slave girl came into the tavern and walked hesitatingly to the lady Medea's chair.

'I am the messenger of Herakles the hero,' said the girl. 'He sends his greetings, and asks you to come with me, Lady.'

'And my companion?'

'Herakles, my master, asks that he stay with Clytios for tonight, and come to our house in the morning,' said the girl. 'He orders me to tell you, lord Nauplios, that he will care for the lady if you will entrust her to him.'

I looked at my lady, and she rose, saying, 'I will see you in the morning, Lord.'

Then they left, the brazen slave-girl and the veiled princess. I looked back to find Clytios staring at me, open-mouthed.

'Where did you find her? How do you come to be travelling with her? Are you bespelled?' he demanded.

'Khirra, in a fishing boat which she sailed alone from Corinth. And because she was going to Delphi and I could not let her go alone, though no bandit would have dared come near her after the first. I don't think so.' I answered his questions in turn.

'Come home with me,' said Clytios after a pause in which he clearly debated whether to ask any more questions about my lady and decided against it. 'I have a house, a wife. A child, now. A son. His name was to be Jason, but that is ill-omened. I now have a good name, one which will bring him luck,' he said, draping an arm over my shoulder and leading me out of the tavern and into weak sunlight. 'I shall call him Nauplios.'

 

The slave girl brought me through the back door of a little house, through a garden bright with rare flowers, under a vine putting on new leaves, and into a cool, dim room. It was simply furnished: one bed and a chair and a cupboard on which stood two wine cups, a jug, and a shallow bowl full of water lilies. They smelt fugitive and sweet. He turned as I came in, and I saw that his hair had thinned. The remaining locks were white. His face was deeply lined.

'Oh, Herakles,' I said.

He made a wry face, as though he knew what I was thinking, then said, 'Lady Medea, they have banished you?'

'Banished me? No, my friend, I left Corinth of my own will, after they … after they killed my children.'

The vision rose again. Flies settled on the eyes of the dead boy, my little son, Mermerus. So many dead, so much blood. All of it on my hands.

'And then?'

I sat down on the bed next to the hero, and he took my hand. 'I went to Delphi.'

'And Pythia told you?' he prompted.

'That I am in balance,' I said, listening to my voice rise out of control. 'That their deaths paid for the deaths I had caused - my brother Aegialeus, Pelias, Creon and Creusa. Four deaths, and my remaining three children and my dearest friend dead. The justice of the gods, ah, Herakles. I have no refuge. I'm hungry again and sleepy; the gods won't let me die.'

I could not weep, but he leaned sideways and gathered me into his arms. He was as strong as ever - a hero's bones are like metal - but the embrace was as delicate as if he were cupping a bird in his hands.

'They are dead, and it is my doing,' I said.

'I know.' The hands ran from my shoulders down my sides like a warrior reassuring himself that his comrade was unbroken.

'Dead,' I said flatly. He raised my chin and forced me to look into the trout-stream eyes. He seemed to contain sorrow.

'Your children are dead because of your deeds,' he said softly. 'My children, Medea, died by my own hand.'

For a moment we were one. I looked into his heart and heard someone weeping; endlessly weeping. Herakles in battle fury had killed his own children. I felt his pain wash against mine like an opposing tide.

'How, then, are we still alive?' I asked drearily, and then the great hero kissed me.

I wore only a chiton and I cast it aside. He lay down beside me, flank to flank, and began to caress me.

He was old, Herakles, not yet the immortal. His skin smelt so sweet to me, but his potency was ebbing; he would no longer be able to deflower the fifty daughters of a king in one night. In its place was skill and understanding, a feeling for my flesh, a soothing balm of sensuality laid over my insulted and abused senses.