An old young man with herbs bandaged across his eye-holes. One orb gone, a screaming white pit of blackness, knife-keen anguish, pulsing with agony, burning like the sun, burning like remorse. One eye remaining, but dark as yet, aflame as yet, one eye ascream with sympathy for the other that is gone, hot as the other, furiously remorseful as the other, chattering, shouting to be pulled out to join its lost fellow, its brother, its other self.
I tore at this remaining eye, lying on a sweat-drenched pallet in my room at Corinth. But slaves held my wrists, and the soft-voiced Egyptian physician whom Creon had had sent to me in my mad agonies after the battle placed warm herbs across my brows, binding them there with strips of fine linen.
Someone played music to me on the little Dorian flute. Sometimes a harp strummed deeply in the shadows that lay about me. Once a singer, a boy or a woman, I do not know which, sang some verses. I came out of my swirling whirlpool torment to recognize one phrase of the song. It began, ‘And this it is to be a king. . . .’
Madness took me in the form of laughter and I tore again at my bandages, wrestling with the hide-thongs that kept me in my bed. I heard the sound of blows above my shouting and somehow knew that they had driven the singer away for so disturbing me.
It went on like that for many days. I do not know how long. The Egyptian gave me potions to drink, bitter drinks that sometimes set me shuddering before my limbs went numb and lay like chill stones upon the sodden flock of the bed.
Merciful it was when he gave me those drinks which turned the mind to unfeeling stone. But only too often the mind lived on while the body lay dead. Then I knew the wrath of the gods. A lance thrust would have been pleasure. I craved for the short passport to completeness with the earth.
I prayed once, ‘I am a stalled ox waiting for the last kind blow of the axe. Zeus, give it to me now, I beg you. Father, hear me and be gentle.’
A voice said, ‘We shall have you well again, Jason. Then you will marry my daughter and be king once more, sitting on the golden chair.’
I said at last fumbling for the words, ‘You are Creon of Thebes. Because of you I lie like this.’
The voice said, ‘It is your Moira, Jason. No wish of mine. Do not blame me. Who am I to weave a man’s pattern?’
I said, ‘End my pattern, Creon. Put your knife into my side now, while I wish it. You can have the gold chair. It is nothing. Only quietness, freedom from agony, is of value now.’
But the voice went away from me and I was left only with my gibbering eye-socket again. It called so loudly that I could no longer hear flute or harp or singer; only its calling, in the mad language of despair.
Then another day, or another week, a softer voice spoke to me. It said, ‘Jason, husband. Jason, Jason.’ Only that. That, but warm and gentle, like a shower of rain in early summer. Not the harsh and biting rain that rides on the winter wind. I mean the rain of summer, which lies on a man’s head and shoulders like the kisses of his lover, and he puts out his tongue and sips the sweet drops in gratitude.
I said, ‘Are you the Queen of Lemnos, lady?’
The voice said, ‘I shall untie your right hand. Then I shall place it on my breast. So you shall tell me who I am.’
And when this was done, I wept, for one breast is so much like another. I could not tell. I shook my furnace-head and shuddered as the salt tears fell into my socket once again, like a mountain stream tumbling into a cavern.
Gently the woman’s hands tied my hand, for fear an even greater madness might come upon me and cause me to destroy myself, I think.
Then a light flowed behind my eyes, a pale blue gentle light, and I said, ‘You are Medea. The woman I brought from Colchis. You killed your own brother. You bore me sons. You tried to murder me. I almost had you whipped. You once kneeled in the snake-pit and let the adders come as close to you as breathing.’
The voice said, ‘Yes. And for all you speak I suffer still. Snakes come into me and out of me incessantly, in my dreams. That is all I have to show for all my pains, all my life, husband. That, and a furrowed back, where the black-skinned Libyans used their whips in the market-place even though you countermanded the order.’
I said, ‘I am sorry, and I am not sorry. It was a lovely back, but mine was a lovely eye, too. We lose these things. Nothing lasts for ever, Medea. No, not even the iron that the trading Phoenicians boast will outwear the sun himself.’
Medea said, ‘I think life is too long, Jason, husband. If the gods would only take us in the first year of marriage, then all would be well. One would go into the shades with the sweet tang of honey on the lips.’
I said, ‘Forgive me. I tried to be a god, but I was only a small man. And now I am a stalled ox, awaiting the pole-axe.’
Medea said, ‘Lie still. Heal and be a king again. The axe will not fall yet awhile, not if you lie still.’
I said, ‘So you forgive me, Medea?’
‘Forgive is only a word,’ she said. ‘There is more in life than forgive. Life is a rich melody and forgive is but one of its notes. Rest and know that I am still your wife, that of all men I need you the most. Once a queen, I am now only something alive, something under the sun; but something that wants Jason to be healed and laughing again. We share each other’s sin.’
I said, ‘Medea, if that is love, then you love me; and I love you. Though we may destroy each other, yet we are still meant to be together, man and wife, woven in the pattern, lacking completeness if apart.’
Medea said, ‘For too long we have listened to the poets. They seek only sweetness, gentleness, unity and freedom. Yet the gods are not always sweet or gentle; nor is the life they order unified and measured to a perfect dimension. And freedom is only a dream. No thing is free, not the great pine tree which is constrained by its roots; not the deer, which must move where the grass grows greenest; not the lion, which sighs upon the burning rock and dies, still waiting for its prey.’
I said at last, ‘Even the free birds fall from the sky when the thunder rolls, Medea. Bring my boys to me, I beg you.’
After that there was a day, or a week, of silence. The pain came back and back, waves on the beach at Pagasae. . . . Then a small warm hand lay on my forehead, and a voice said, ‘Good when we ride the horses again into the wind, King-Father.’
I cried so much that the salt tears ran down as far as my matted chest.
I tried to say, ‘You are my love, my son, Medeius.’ But I could not speak those words. And then another hand tugged at my leg and a smaller voice said, ‘Have you forgotten Argus, King-Father? Argus wants you to play with him again. Come out of the bed soon. I have a new bow. Show me how to bend it.’
I thought: So had the boy at Mycenae, who put a dart into my eye, no doubt. So have all young boys. A new bow, and an old father . . . And I could not speak.
The Egyptian came and between my teeth forced a tube, down which he blew a powder. It was dry and acrid on my tongue. Then I slept again.
And when I woke, hands were caressing me where I did not desire them, and there was a weight on my chest. I could scarcely breathe. I thought they were preparing me for a sacrifice.
This must be the end, I thought. Zeus has come at last, though tardily. So like the gods!
But a new voice spoke and said, ‘I am offended, husband-to-be. My women have taught me how it is done. And I have practised it on the slaves. But it does not work with you. That must mean you do not love me. Is that why all lies cold and dead under my hand?’
I said, ‘You are Glauce. And you come to me in a bad time, little one. It would need the thunderbolt of Zeus, together with the sea-foam of Aphrodite, to move my dry tree-trunk of a body now. I beg you, leave me. Say a prayer for Jason and then go back to your father.’
Glauce said, ‘I do not think I care for you, either, Jason. You are thin and dirty, and you stink of sweat. Your arms are like sticks and the bed you lie on is drenched through and through. This room smells like a goat-pen. They say that when the bandage comes off, your eye will only be a hole, and you will have to wear a patch across it to keep the dust out, in the summer. That is not the king I dreamed of.’
I said, ‘Go gently now, Glauce, and find yourself another slave to practise on. You must be ready for the next husband they find for you!’
The weight went from my chest; the warm hand from my body. It was so sudden, I heard myself laughing. I heard someone else laughing, someone not Glauce. A gentle warm voice.
Medea said, ‘I sat beside you, listening, husband. The little fool thinks she can do what I cannot do. Young girls always think so. She, a thin bean-pole! Yet it was funny; it made you laugh; for the first time since Mycenae you have laughed. That is a good omen, husband.’
I said, ‘I laughed, yes. But much as Poseidon must laugh when a little boy first plunges from the high rock above Laurium. The laugh of mockery, of death.’
Medea answered then, ‘No, not the laugh of death. There is about you now the look of a man who will soon wish to sit in the saddle again, to hold a javelin and knock down a wild pig on the uplands. I have seen this before, and I know how soon sickness can swing about and turn to strength again.’
She gave me a sweet honey drink from a thin glazed cup. It tasted good; the first drink to pass my lips and taste good after many weeks of darkness. Later she washed my face and body and untied my hands and feet. I clenched my hands and bunched up what was left of the muscles of my arm. She patted me on the back, encouraging me, but did not speak while I did this, while I found myself again.
I was soon tired and slept. But when I awoke, she was there, washing my face and turning sweet herbs upon the brazier.
After a while I reached up and gently unwound the bandages from my eyes. For a moment the light was like a dagger striking me again and again through the head; but that gradually went and I saw the room I lay in—the hanging curtains, the square window-hole with two tall green-black cypresses against a blue sky, the white plaster of the walls with their black frieze of horsemen and archers. All clearer than ever before. And Medea, too. Dressed like a mourning matron in a woollen robe of purple dye, her thick hair covered by a black cloth.
I said, ‘Medea, it is as though I see you for the first time. You are so lovely.’
She came to me then and put her arms about me and let her warm tears run down my cheek.
‘We have burned the hatred out of ourselves, husband,’ she said. ‘Before, we moved like blind moles beneath the ground, not knowing what drove us onwards. Now the gods have taught us what life is, you by a chance dart, I with the lashes in the market-place.’
I tried to raise myself and to say how much I grieved at having treated her so; but she put her hand over my mouth, smiling, and said, ‘All has to be. That is the Moira, the pattern, and no one can escape it. But we have come to the other side of the great wall of suffering now; now we can glimpse a little of what lies before us again, and can set our feet on the path towards life. I would not have missed a single lash the Libyans gave me; for each one wiped away a year of my wickedness and brought me nearer to rebirth, to cleanliness and happiness again. All was intended to that end by the gods, husband. Suffering, we are their pupils; acting, we are their agents. That is all.’
I said, ‘I know now. And I do not wish to be a king again. A king stands above others and is the first to be struck by the lightning when gods are angry. You see, I killed a blind king—or let my men kill him, which is the same thing—and for that I suffer the loss of one eye. That is a warning, wife. From this time forward, I wish to live such a life that the gods will not find need to punish, to make even the score, to humble my pride. Now there must be no pride ever again.’
She nodded and said, ‘We are fortunate. Some men die without learning their lesson. But we have been given another chance, husband. The gods are kind, in their way, and if a man has only the sense to listen to their silent voices.’
I answered, ‘Are you prepared to give up this kingdom, Medea?’
She nodded, smiling now a little bitterly. ‘It is a small thing to give up. During the months you have lain here Creon has sat on the throne; his men have raped our women, have crunched the city in their jaws like hyenas with bones, or poured it into their bellies. Corinth would never be ours again, husband. He is the tyrant here now. So we give away nothing.’
I made a wry jest. ‘It could be mine again if I married ox-eyed Glauce as we arranged, Medea!’
Medea also smiled and said, ‘Would that not be too great a price, with her father snuffling over your shoulder, even in the marriage-bed, commanding you what to do? Besides, Creon has clenched his mastiff-teeth upon this bone, and there will not be an easy letting-go. I will tell you, Jason, soon after you were brought to bed, he asked me to become his queen. He said that together we could rule Hellas, not merely Corinth. He said that he had waited all his life for a woman of my strength.’
I put my hand over my eye, to shut out this new sharp world, and groaned. ‘What had he in mind for me?’ I asked. ‘Was I to be poisoned, here in my bed? Was the Egyptian to put a quiet end to me and to tell the people that Jason had died honourably of his wound, got at Mycenae?’
Medea came to me and said softly, ‘It was not to be as easy as that, my love. You were to be openly declared as a traitor to the city and to be flung over the cliff above the Isthmus. It is being put about that you and Heracles were plotting, even in the battle.’
I said, ‘And you refused him, to let me live?’
She said in a whisper, ‘See, you are still alive, husband. I told Creon that he would get little good from me as his wife, that a poison came from me which would shrivel him or any man, that in taking me he would be accepting the slow death. That answered him, and so he has turned once more to gaining Corinth by wedding you to his fool of a daughter.’
I answered, ‘Up above Mount Ossa lies the valley of Tempe. There it is green always, and the winds do not disturb the frailest of Spring’s blossoms. A river flows there, too, the Peneus. Children wade into it, taking the fish in their hands with the blessing of Poseidon upon them. No child has ever drowned there; no herd has ever suffered drought. A man carries the shepherd’s crook in Tempe, not the javelin. Youth and time stand still and there is only laughter on the hills. There, away from the runnels of cities and the smell of flesh burning at the altars, we could be young again, and our children could know happiness. Once, when I was as small as Argus, I remember diving into dear Peneus and coming up with a fish in my mouth. Old Cheiron called the other lads to see me, and told them that this was a true sign that I was a son of Poseidon. Shall we go up there, Medea, with our children? Shall we go and be done with kingdoms and bloodshed?’
Medea held my hands tightly now and nodded. ‘Yes, Jason, that is where we must go, if you want it so badly. I can see it all in my head, now that you have told me. We should be happy there, a farmer and his busy wife.’
I laughed and said, ‘And our little princes and princesses going barefoot, the wind in their uncombed hair, driving sheep and geese with hawthorn sticks! And never a thought between them of kings and battlefields!’
Medea was silent for a while, then said, ‘It is the will of the gods. We will go there and be reborn into the world. This is a vision which has come to us both. Zeus be praised that we are able to receive his message.’
She paced the little room a while, then turned to me and said, ‘It will be some weeks before you are strong enough to make the journey, Jason. During that time you must not let Creon know that you have been reborn from the dead. Let him think that your marriage with Glauce shall go forward as planned. Otherwise he would have you killed, and our children, too, in case one of them should rise and push him from his throne as the years pass by. Look, I have an idea; you must seem to marry Glauce, but then something will happen, and you and I will leave Corinth while everyone is amazed. Yes, I will gather our children and hold them safely at the shrine of Hera, on the hill above the town, and there you will come to us and we will go to Tempe.’
I felt my head reeling again and asked, ‘What will happen at the wedding, Medea? I do not understand. And how shall we get down, all of us, from the high hill-top, when the city is held by Creon’s butchers?’
Medea came to me smiling. ‘I cannot answer the first,’ she said. ‘What will happen at the wedding has not yet been told to me by the Mother. But how we shall escape from Corinth is easy to tell you. A tunnel leads down from the altar of the shrine, and comes out above a little gully that goes towards the sea. We could pass down that and then take a boat across to Phocis; the sailors ask no questions when there is gold to put into their palms.’
I said, ‘You have given me life, Medea—you who once seemed to want only my death.’
She held me close and said, ‘That was another Medea, not the woman who holds you now, husband. Those times have passed, my dear. So sleep and become strong enough to walk with your children down to the sea. Sleep and dream with laughter of your wedding to be, of your new wife who will never hold you in her thin arms! Dream of ox-eyed Glauce, and much good may it do her!’
Then she placed the bandage back about my eyes, as it had been before, and went from the room. The Egyptian came in soon afterwards and I heard him clucking above me as I made pretence of being asleep. He seemed dissatisfied with the progress I was making—but not I! My heart was bounding like a young stallion’s as he first feels the level plains under his new-shod hooves. . . .