We lay beneath a spreading beech tree. The time of wine-treading was over and all about the island my men lay with their women, taking life as it came, laughing into the sunshine. The youngest ones sang, boys and girls, garlanded, moving in circles across the dancing-floor that was cut in the turf below the white cliff. Their voices came up to us, clear and strong, as though youth and summer would last for ever, the flowers never fade, the sea always run as warm and as blue, with the dolphins sporting about the rocks beyond the harbour wall.
My life had come to a standstill, its port of rest, I thought. I recalled my mother’s words at the skin-palace on Pelion, and so I took the necklace of amber from the pouch at my side and gently placed it about Hypsipyle’s neck as she smiled up at me, chewing a blade of grass between her strong white teeth, her blue eyes wrinkled against the bright light.
‘Wear these for ever, sweetheart,’ I said. ‘These are a sign between us, an amber chain to bind us together.’
I saw that the queen had been biting her finger-nails, and that they were ragged and torn, down to the quick of the finger. She had lovely slim hands and this spoiled them. But she was of that quick and nervous disposition that one finds in high-bred horses—a delicate temper which can flare out suddenly and destroy its owner. I saw the vein suddenly throb in her throat as I hung the necklace upon her.
Her smile went away and she looked over the sea and whispered, ‘If only life were simple,’ she said. ‘If we were only cows or geldings. Only sticks and stones, without feelings.’
I was troubled at her words and answered, ‘What is in your mind, my queen? Tell me and I will kill the serpent that crushes you.’
This was the first time since our marriage that I had seen Hypsipyle so troubled, and her sad face cast a shadow on my own pleasure.
She rose from the grass, fingering the amber, and said at last, ‘I wonder whether you can bind me to you by a string of beads, Jason.’
I followed her to the cliff-edge and made to place my arm about her, but she sensed what I was about and drew away a little.
‘Do you not love me still?’ I asked.
She nodded, speechless, and the warm tears ran down her smooth checks in the sunlight. She was like a sad goddess, or a ghost, that cannot join in the life of mankind about it.
I saw the youths splashing in the green shallows below us, teasing the girls, pushing them into the water and then diving after them to drag them out, laughing and spluttering. I saw the sea-birds, as small as sparrows from the height we were, skimming among the rock chimneys below. I saw all this as though I were a god, and all below me was in my grasp, my power.
‘Then if you love me, dear one, laugh,’ I said.
The queen sank down upon a tussock of grass and hid her face in her hands.
Slowly she answered, ‘Once I loved another man, he who was the King of Lemnos by my choice. Our vows to each other were no less strong than those we have made, you and I.’
I put my hand upon her brown shoulder and said, ‘That is all past, my dear. Your king left you for a Thracian girl, so the bargain is cancelled. What have you to reproach yourself with then?’
She looked up, and her face had changed to stone, stiff and without tenderness. Her voice had altered, too. It was like the voice of an oracle, speaking through a bronze mask, its lips not moving, its tones steady and without expression.
‘He did not desert me,’ she said. ‘I killed him at the Festival of Dionysus, a year ago. I drugged him first and then, when I had chewed upon the laurel, took a knife and killed him in his bed.’
The gay little world below me seemed to whirl about me, and for an instant I thought that I should fall from the cliff-top into the water, Poseidon’s water, Aphrodite’s water. . . . The water of Myrina, who was Aphrodite, who was Hypsipyle . . . She who sat before me, telling me this.
Suddenly, upon that high place, I felt the power run from me, the man leave me. I did not dare speak while the queen felt the Goddess come into her again. I feared for a moment that it was her will to cast me down, into the water. This was to be my end, then, I thought. Not the knife, but the fall from the high place . . . So my term was up, my kingship over and done with after all. Hypsipyle, my golden Hellene, was deeper than I had thought.
But she ignored my shrinking, my wide-eyed gathering-together of my strength to fling her back if she came at me, and said stonily, ‘I slew him and ate the sacred parts, according to the law. The taste of his blood was in my mouth for many days; the sickening smell of his flesh in my nostrils—until I never thought I should be clean again. The feasting happened up there, above the snows, at the time when the wine in the casks had matured and we all, the women of Lemnos, could drink away our nightmares.’
I said, in a voice that sounded to my ears much like her own, ‘So that is why there were no men? You all destroyed your husbands?’
She nodded, untouched by my horror.
‘They came, the Black Ones of Samothrace, the women of the Mother, and commanded us to do this. We drank from their libation cups and obeyed. What else might we have done, we who have known no other way?’
I sank down upon the grass, my short dirk in my right hand, in case she swung round and came at me then. It is a dread thing to be on the point of killing a woman one loves, loves and suddenly fears, all at the same time. It is not natural, certainly not to the simple folk I had come from—the rough and shag-haired wagon-dwellers, the beef-eaters who drank themselves stupid each night about their camp-fires, fought only with giants and bears, and treated their women as kindly as they treated their hunting-dogs.
‘That is all over, my queen,’ I said. ‘It cannot happen again, now that we are here, the men of Argo. We are strong and different. We are the chosen of Zeus and Poseidon.’
Hypsipyle stared away from me and gazed over the broad seas that stretched to the far and misty islands.
‘I wish to Poseidon-Father that I could be sure,’ she said. ‘The burden is too much for us to carry, we women of Lemnos. Still, though my body has been happy with you, my dreams are filled with that awful day, the men lying before us, white and drained, the blood upon our lips as we stared foolishly at each other. And then that night, when we wandered above the snows, calling out that Adonis was dead. “Poor Adonis!” some of us called, like wraiths, shrill among the snows. “Poor, poor Dionysus!” the others called. We did not know who was dead, or why. We only knew that there was some dark thing in us, in the island, that had taken the man-seed from us.’
Then she began to weep so bitterly, the wall of the temple broken down, that I rose and, putting my dirk back into its goatskin scabbard, took her in my arms and hugged her to me, all fear of her, all anger with her, dissolved, as water can dissolve hard limestone.
‘Hypsipyle,’ I said gently, feeling my strength coming back, ‘you have lived in a world of terror and of darkness. But now there is no fear, now there is only sunlight. For we, the men of the Argo, are with you and will always shield you from such things. Lemnos is free at last, the ancient spell is broken.’
She clung to me then as though she were a little girl and not a queen, a priestess with knowledge of the Mysteries.
‘May your arms be as strong, your courage as high, your faith as great, when you come face to face with the Black One herself,’ she said, shuddering.
I eased her wet face from my chest and asked, ‘What Black One, dearest?’
She said, ‘The Mother-priestess of Samothrace. She is here on this island once more. Her boat landed in the night while we were sleeping, and lies hidden in the Cove of Silence, at the far end of the island.’
I stared down at her. ‘She has come upon the same errand again?’ I asked.
My heart stood still when Hypsipyle replied.
‘She has come to remind us that the Feast of Dionysus approaches,’ she said. ‘And she has brought with her the potions, the cups and the laurel-herbs.’
Then I did something which I have regretted all my life. I suddenly drew back my hand and struck Hypsipyle across the mouth, knocking her down upon the coarse grass with the force of my blow. She fell, limp and half-senseless, weeping and laughing with hysteria, all at one time, and stretched herself, shivering upon the turf in the sunshine, which had suddenly grown so harsh.
I walked away and left her there, striding down towards the village where my men should be. It was in my mind for a while to get out the javelins and swords and to put an end to this island of women for all time.
But as I got nearer the beach where the young men and girls still ran and sang, my resolution left me. Instead I sent for Atalanta and said to her, ‘There is a wrong here which you can put right. If you do not earn your keep as I command, then neither you nor your friend Meleager will see this day out, I promise you. I shall feed you to Poseidon’s fishes, priestess.’
Atalanta shrugged her slim shoulders and smiled at me, drawing her purple shawl about her head.
‘Don’t threaten me, Jason,’ she said. ‘I have more knowledge and more power than you know. I am not afraid of swords, or of Poseidon’s fishes—if indeed they be his, and not Aphrodite’s. But that can wait. You have a pattern before you which I can see, but which your earth-born eyes are too blind to know of.’
I was about to say something harsh and commanding to her then but she held up her hand and silenced me easily.
‘I know that the Black One of Samothrace has come here,’ she said. ‘And I know for what purpose. I am not a fool, Jason.’
I got down from my throne chair and stood on the ground beside her, the fury gone from me and only fear in its place.
‘Will you help me, Atalanta?’ I asked, calmly now.
She smiled and nodded. ‘A little, Jason,’ she said. ‘Just a little. Enough to let your pattern fulfil itself, but no more.’
I asked, the fear raising the hairs on my neck, ‘The Feast of Dionysus—it will not take place here this time?’
She turned from me and moved her bare toes on the dusty floor, as though sketching out a design of some sort.
Then she said, ‘For one, it will. For one alone, and no other.’
I dared to ask at last, ‘Will that one be—close to me, Atalanta?’
She walked slowly away and at the door turned and whispered, ‘Some things I cannot tell you. But I will tell you that Argo shall make the voyage to Colchis. Now are you satisfied?’
I had to nod then. After all, how could Argo sail without me? I thought. I should be safe—and that was what really concerned me at that moment, cowardly as it may seem.
I hoped that the Queen Hypsipyle might also be safe, for though I had struck her down on the hill-top, yet I still loved her, but in a strange and twisted way now.