shook.
2
In Corinth, on a winding hillside street, stood an old
house,
its stone blackened by many rains, great hallways dark with restive shadows of vines, alive though withered,
waiting—
listening for wind, a sound from the bottom of the sea—
climbing
crumbling walls, dropping their ancient, silent weight from huge amphoras suspended by chains from the
ceiling beams.
“The house of the witch,” it was called by children of
the neighborhood.
They came no nearer than the outer protective wall of
darkening
brick. They played there, peeking in from the midnight
shade
of olive trees that by half a century out-aged the oldest crone in Corinth. They spied with rounded
eyes
through the leaves, whispering, watching the windows
for strange lights,
alarming themselves to sharp squeals by the flicker of
a bat,
the moan of an owl, the dusty stare of a humpbacked
toad
on the ground near where the vines began.
He saw it, from his room
above, standing as he’d stood all day—or so I guessed by the way he was leaning on the window frame, the
deep-toned back
of his hand touching his jaw. What he thought, if
anything,
was locked in his mirroring eyes. Great Jason, Aison’s
son,
who’d gone to the rim of the world and back on nerve
and luck,
quick wits, a golden tongue—who’d once been crowned
a king,
his mind as ready to rule great towns as once it had been to rule the Argonauts: shrewd hero in a panther-skin, a sleek cape midnight-black. The man who brought
help.” No wonder
some men have had the suspicion he brought it from
the Underworld,
the winecup-crowded grave. His gray eyes stared out now as once they’d stared at the gleaming mirror of the gods,
the frameless
sea. He waited, still as a boulder in the silent house, no riffle of wind in the sky above. He tapped the wall with his fingertips; then stillness again.
Behind the house, in a garden hidden from strangers’
eyes
by hemlocks wedged in thick as the boulders in a wall,
a place
once formal, spare, now overrun—the vines of roses twisting, reaching like lepers’ hands or the dying limbs of oaks—white lilies, lilacs tilting up faceless graves like a dry cough from earth—his wife Medeia sat, her two young sons on the flagstones near her feet.
The span
the garden granted was filled like a bowl with sunlight. Seated by the corner gate, an old man watched, the household slave whose work
was care
of the children. Birds flashed near, quick flame: red
coral, amber,
cobalt, emerald green—bright arrows pursuing the
restless
gnat, overweening fly. But no bird’s wing, no blossom shone like Medeia’s hair. It fell to the glowing green of the grass like a coppery waterfall, as light as air, as charged with delicate hues as swirling fire. Her face was soft, half sleeping, the jawline clean as an Indian’s. Her hands were small and white. The children talked.
She smiled.
Jason—gazing from his room as a restless lion stares from his rocky cave to the sand where his big-pawed
cubs, at play,
snarl at the bones of a goat, and his calm-eyed mate
observes,
still as the desert grass—lifted his eyes from the scene, his chest still vaguely hungry, and searched the wide,
dull sky.
It stared back, quiet as a beggar’s eyes. “How casually you sit this stillness out, time slowed to stone, Medeia! It’s a fine thing to be born a princess, raised up idle, basking in the sunlight, warmed by the smile of
commoners,
or warm without it! A statue, golden ornament indifferent to the climb and fall of the sun and moon,
the endless,
murderous draw of tides. And still the days drag on.” So he spoke, removed by cruel misfortunes from all
who once
listened in a spell to his oratory, or observed with
slightly narrowed eyes
the twists and turns of his ingenious wit. No great wit now, I thought. But I hadn’t yet seen how
well
he still worked words when attending some purpose
more worthy of his skill
than private, dreary complaint. I was struck by a curious
thing:
The hero famous for his golden tongue had difficulty
speaking—
some slight stiffness of throat, his tongue unsure. If once his words came flowing like water down a weir, it was
true no longer:
as Jason was imprisoned by fate in Corinth—useless,
so Jason’s words seemed prisoned in his chest,
hammering to be free.
A moment after he spoke, Medeia’s voice came up to the window, soft as a fern; and then the children’s
voices,
softer than hers, blending in the strains of an ancient
canon
telling of blood-stained ikons, isles grown still. He
listened.
The voices rising from the garden were light as spirit
voices
freed from the crawl of change like summer in a
painted tree.
When the three finished, they clapped as though the
lyric were
some sweet thing safe as the garden, warm as leaves.
Medeia
rose, took the children’s hands, and saying a word too
faint
to hear in the room above, moved down an alleyway pressed close on either side by blue-green boughs. Jason turned his back on the window. He suddenly laughed.
His face
went grim. “You should see your Jason now, brave
Argonauts!
Living like a king, and without the drag of a king’s
dull work.
Grapes, pomegranates piled up in every bowl like the
gods’
own harvest! Ah, most happy Jason!” His eyes grew
fierce.
In the street below, the three small boys who watched, in
hiding,
hunched like cunning astrologers spying on the stars,
exchanged
sharp glances, hearing that laugh, and a visitor standing
at the gate,
Aigeus, father of Theseus—so I would later find out, a man in Medeia’s cure—looked down at the
cobblestones,
changed his mind, departed. In the garden, Medeia
looked back
at the house, or through it. It seemed her mind was far
away.
“Mother?” the children called. She gave them a nod.
“I’m coming.”
They ran ahead once more. She followed with thoughtful
eyes.
Her feet moved, hushed and white, past crumbling grave
markers.
A shadow darkened the sky, then passed. At Jason’s
gate
a mist shaped like a man took on solidity: Ipnolebes, Kreon’s slave. The three boys watching fled. With a palsy-shaken hand, a crumpled lizard’s claw, he reached to the dangling rod, made the black bronze
gate-ring clang.
A slave peeked out, then opened the gate, admitting
him.
Jason met him at the door with a smile, an extended
hand,
his eyes hooded, covering more than they told. The bent-backe
d slave spoke a few hoarse words, leering, his
square gray teeth
like a mule’s. Lord Jason bowed, took the old man’s arm,
and led him
gently, slowly, to the upstairs room. The old man’s
sandals
hissed on the wooden steps.
When he’d reached his seat at last,
Ipnolebes spoke: “Ah!—ah!—I thank you, Jason, thank you! Forgive an old man’s—” He paused to catch
his breath.
“Forgive an old man’s mysteries. It’s all we have left at my age—he he!” He grabbed awkwardly for Jason’s
hand
and patted it, fatherly, fingers like restless wood. The son of Aison drew up a chair, sat down. At last, his voice detached though friendly, Jason asked, “You have some
message
from the king, Ipnolebes?” The old man bowed. “I do,
I do.”
His skull was a death’s head. Jason waited. “It’s been
some time,”
Ipnolebes said, a sing-song—old age harkening back— “It’s been some time since you visited, up at the palace.
Between
the two of us, old Kreon’s a bit out of sorts about it. He’s done a good deal for you—if you can forgive an
old fool’s
mentioning it. A privilege of age, I hope. He he! Old men are dolts, as they say. Poor innocent children
again.”
Jason pressed his fingertips to his eyelids, said nothing. “Well, so,” Ipnolebes said. It seemed that his mind had
wandered,
slipped from its track not wearily but in sudden
impatience.
He frowned, then brightened. “Yes, of course. Old
Kreon’s quite put out.
“Miffed,” you might say. He was a happy man when
you came, Jason—
the greatest traveller in the world and the greatest
talker, too.
You know how it is with a man like Kreon, whole life
spent
on bookkeeping, so to speak—no more extended views than windows give. It was a great stroke of luck, we
thought,
when you arrived, driven from home on an angry wind through no fault of your own.” He nodded and clasped
his hands.
His eyes moved, darting. The son of Aison studied him. That’s Kreon’s message?” Ipnolebes laughed. “No, no,
not at all!
I spoke no thoughts but my own there. Ha ha! Mere
chaff!”
The old man’s voice took on a whine. “He asks you to
supper.
I told him I’d bring the message myself. I’m a stubborn
man,
when I like, I told him. A hard devil to refuse.” Again he laughed, a stirring of shadows, Ipnolebes leaned
toward him.
“Pyripta, his daughter—I think you remember her,
perhaps?—
she too is eager that you come. A lovely girl, you know. She’ll be marrying soon, no doubt. How the years do
fly!” He grinned.
Jason watched him with still eyes. Ipnolebes wagged his head. “He’ll be a lucky man, the man that snags Pyripta. Also a wealthy man—and powerful, of course.” Jason stood up, moved off. He leaned on the window
frame.
“Between just the two of us,” the old man said,
“you could
do worse than pass a free hour or so with Pyripta.
You never
know. The world—”
Jason turned to him, frowning. “Old friend,
I have a wife.” Ipnolebes bowed. “Yes, yes. So you do. So you feel, anyway. Forgive a poor old bungling fool. In the eyes of the law, of course … but perhaps our
laws are wrong;
we never know.” His glance fled left. “ ‘Our laws,’
I say.
A slave. My care for Kreon carries me farther than
my wits!
And yet it’s a point, perhaps. Am I wrong? In the
strictly legal
sense—” He paused. He tapped the ends of his fingers
together
and squinted as if it were hard indeed to make his
old mind
concentrate. Then after a moment: “In the strictly legal sense, you have no wife—a Northern barbarian, a lady whose barbarous mind has proved its way—
forgive me—
more than just once, to your sorrow. The law no
more allows
such marriages into barbarian races than it does
between Greeks
and horses, say. If you hope to make your Medeia a
home,
and leave something to your sons, it can hardly be as
a line
of Greeks. If you hope to gain back a pittance of all
she’s wrecked—
it can never be, if I understand Greek law, as Medeia’s husband, father of her sons. —But I’m out of my
depth, of course.”
His laugh was a whimper. “I snatch what appearance
of sense I can
for Kreon’s good.”
Jason said nothing, staring out.
So he remained for a long time, saying nothing.
The slave
chuckled. “It’s a rare thing, such loyalty as yours,
dear man.
She’s beautiful, of course. Heaven knows! And yet a
mind … a mind
like a wolf’s. So it seems from the outside, anyway—
seems to those
who hear the tales. A strange creature to have on
the leash—
or be leashed to, whichever.” His chuckle roused
the dark
in the corners of the room again, a sound like spiders
waking,
the stir of uncoiling sea-beasts dreaming from the
deeps toward land.
“Well, no part of the message, of course. I shouldn’t
have spoken.
Marriage is holy, as they say. What a horror this world
would become
if solemn vows were nothing—whether just or foolish
vows!
Even if there are no gods, or the gods are mad—
as they seem,
and as some of our learned philosophers claim—a
vow’s a vow,
even if we grant that it’s grounded on no more than
human agreement.
Indeed, what would happen to positive law itself
without vows?—
even if vowing is a metaphysical absurdity as it may well be, of course.” The old man grinned,
shook his head.
“—And yet for a man to be locked in a vow his whole
life long—
a marriage vow illegal from the strictly human point
of view,
sworn in the ignorant passion of youth, in defiance
of reason,
and proved disastrous!—” Ipnolebes closed his
heavy-knuckled
hands on the arm of the chair and, with a rasping sigh, labored up unsteadily out of his seat. Slowly, inches at a time, he eased his way to the stairs.
“Well, so,”
he said. “I’ve delivered the message. Do come,
tomorrow night,
if it seems to you you can do it without impiety. Oh yes—one more thing.” His head swung round.
“There are friends of yours
at the palace, I think. Men from the weirdest corners
of the world.
Merchants, sea-kings.” The old man chuckled, dark as
the well
the stairs went down. “All telling travellers’ tales—he he! Monstrous adventures to light up a princess’ eyes and
awe
a poor old landlubber king. It’ll be like old times!” He peered, smiling, at J
ason’s back. “You’ll come,
I hope?”
Jason turned from the window, eyes fixed on Ipnolebes’
beard.
“I’ll help you down. The stairs are steep.” He came
and touched
the slave’s arm and carefully took his weight. “You’ll
come,”
Ipnolebes said, and smiled. Lord Jason nodded, the
barest
flick. “Perhaps.” His eyes did not follow the black-robed
slave
to the gate. The street went dark for an instant; a
whisper of wind.
Medeia, standing in the garden with folded hands,
looked up
and winced. Take care, Hera,” she whispered. She
called the children,
pale eyes still on the sky. “I know your game, goddess.”
On a hill, late that night, in the windswept temple
of Apollo
ringed by towering sentry stones, immemorial keys of a vast and powerful astrolabe, stern heaven-watcher, Jason stood, black-caped. On a gray stone bench nearby a blind man sat, at times a reader of oracles and soothsayer, at times a man of silence. Corinth glittered below like a case of lighted jewels falling tier by tier to the sea. The palace, high and wide, like a jewelled crown at the center of the vast display,
shone
like polished ivory. The harbor was light as dawn
with sails,
the ships of the visiting sea-kings.
“I know pretty well what he’s up to,”
Jason said. “Better than he knows himself, perhaps.” The seer was silent, leaning on the staff of come! wood that served as his eyes. Whether or not he was listening, no one could say. Visions had made his face unearthly, stern cliffs, crags, the pigment blackened as if by fire, the thick lips parched. He was one of those from the
fallen city
of dark-skinned Thebes, old Kadmos’ city: the seer
Teiresias
who learned all the mystery of birth and death when
he saw, with the eyes
of a visionary, the coupling of deadly snakes. Men said he paid in sorrows. Heros Dionysos—majestic lord of the dead, son of Hades, snatched at birth from his
mother’s pyre—
sent curses from under the ground to the man who
had seen things forbidden:
changed Teiresias to a woman for a time, and for
seven generations
refused him the soothing cup, sweet sleep of death. He
was now
in his last age. Jason turned to him, not to see him but to keep from looking at the palace. He began to
pace, frowning,
bringing his words out with difficulty, by violence of will. “I’d win his prize. Terrific match, he’d think. Bold Jason, pilot of the mighty Argo, snatcher of the fleece,