Читать книгу Jason (Mycenaean Greek Trilogy) - Henry Treece - Страница 14

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It was six miles, mostly downhill, to Iolcos, and we went along at a good pace that sunlit morning. Heracles was in great form and insisted on carrying my javelins so that I might conserve my strength for the trial which lay before me. He made light of what I had to do to Pelias, as though it were no more than wringing a hen’s neck.

‘We’ll have you king by mid-afternoon,’ he said. ‘And we’ll have the first shrine up to the Mother by evening. Of course it will only be a rough thing in the first place—a cairn or something like that, with perhaps a mare’s skull set into it. But we’ll do better later when you’ve collected a Mother tax.’

I grinned at him and said, ‘You are already running the kingdom of Iolcos—before I’ve got it, even!’

Heracles gave me a great nudge and laughed aloud. ‘Together, boy, we can beat the world!’ he said.

There were many folk on the road down from the mountain; all men, though, since this was a man’s festival. Many of them carried offerings—sucking-pigs tied by the legs, or lambs, or bags of grain and so on. These offerings they would lay on the palace steps for King Pelias to fling into the sea from the cliff-top later, as a gift to Poseidon, who looked after the rain, the rivers, the sea, and all the creatures that lived in river and sea.

There was one old fellow who drove a rickety ox-cart laden with olives and horse-hides. Heracles walked alongside this cart and every so often grabbed a handful of olives and stuffed them into his mouth. When he had eaten them he spat the stones at the old man’s back. Of course he did it once too often and the driver swung round and saw what was happening. His face went as red with anger as a Samian pot.

But Heracles simply snatched another handful of olives and said, ‘Take care, master! You travel in company with heroes. Say the wrong thing now and both you and your cart will go over the cliff into the sea. Your oxen I shall eat for my dinner!’

The old fellow put his whip about the rumps of the slavering creatures and rumbled off along the stony road without a word.

Heracles began to laugh again; then he sang a song which told in most impolite words how Poseidon was caught by Hera with his breeches down and how she caused a hyacinth to spring from his most secret place. I did not want Heracles to go on like that, because men were staring at him and muttering. Also, I do not care for that sort of thing myself. I don’t mind a bit of rough-and-tumble but I do not care for jokes about parts of the body. It is my opinion that a man can get into too much trouble with the gods by taking these things lightly. To me, they are very serious, and sometimes even terrible.

I told Heracles to shut his mouth.

He put his arm round my neck and began to kiss me then, like a drunken man. ‘Yes, beloved,’ he said, in a mincing voice, ‘I will do everything you say.’

That made the other passers-by mutter more loudly than ever. It also made me feel a fool. At that age I was very tall and heavy in the muscles. I used to wear my golden hair half-way down my back and I had a naturally stern expression on my face. I used to look at myself in the silver mirror that old Cheiron had and think that I was a very warrior-like fellow. I will not deny it, I was proud of my looks. And I might add there were many girls among the farms on Pelion who had confirmed my own opinion. That brings me to a strange thing. Yellow-haired girls, of the Hellenes, I was never afraid of. I would roll in the barn with them whenever they wished, without a qualm. It was the dark-haired ones, the Minoans—and even the Minyans, the cross-breeds who still held to the old Mother worship—who scared me. They were somehow deeper, more wily, more knowing, more dangerous. The flaxen ones always seemed simpler, more open. They asked no return. Or, at least, that is how I used to think of it in those days. But perhaps women are the same, under the skin, the world over. I don’t know. I was always better at fighting than at love-play, or at understanding women.

But, I tell you, when Heracles began to make mock-love to me on that road to Iolcos, I got very annoyed. I hate to be pawed about by anyone.

‘For the love of God leave me alone!’ I said to him so that the other men would hear.

We were coming down a little slope between the rocks that led to the river Anaurus. The stream was quite broad here but shallow, not more than waist-deep, and men had flung boulders into it so that if you were agile you could jump across without getting wet—unless, of course, you slipped or were pushed in.

And as I said those words to Heracles he stopped suddenly and let fall my two javelins. I thought my words had hurt his feelings at first but then I saw that he was staring down at the bank of the river.

An old woman was sitting there, her back to the water, staring up at the little gully down which we came. She was hardly more than a bundle of black rags but her face was very striking, as though it was carved out of veined white marble. Her black eyes burned in that mask as though they saw to the end of time.

Her left breast, pale and shiny as alabaster, hung limply from between the folds of her shift, exposed in the manner of aged widows.

I heard Heracles give a cry that was almost a sob, just behind me in the crowded gully.

‘That is the teat I bit the nipple from,’ he said. ‘That is the breast of the Mother, of Hera!’

All I could see was an old woman with a torn breast, but nothing out of the ordinary. I had been into villages after the Spartans had gone through—and I had seen worse than bitten breasts. I turned to Heracles and began to tell him to control himself or his madness would come on him again.

But he was not there. He was running as fast as he could among the men with their piglets and lambs, back up the gully, leaving me alone.

I picked up my javelins and went onwards towards the stepping-stones. It was my intention to go straight across and to let Heracles come back and catch up with me if he wished. I was in no mood to be delayed that morning. After all, I had trained for months for this moment and I could not let anything hold me up. This Feast of Poseidon came only once a year to Iolcos. I had no wish to sweat through another year at my javelin practice just because of Heracles.

But at the ford I was stopped, despite all my fine ideas. The old woman called out to me, ‘One-Sandal! One-Sandal! Come to me, darling!’

I looked the other way, away from that veined marble face and the gnawed, sagging breast; yet I was not to get away as easily as that.

‘Golden-hair! Sweetheart!’ she called again. ‘Do you ignore your mother in her old age, my son?’

I was quite angry at this, partly because she was not my mother but largely because the other men who approached the river Anaurus beside me began to look at me as though I were ashamed of my kith and kin, putting on fine warrior-airs without the right to do so.

I swung round and went over to the old woman. ‘Lady,’ I said, ‘I have never met you before. Why do you speak so to me?’

She gazed away over my shoulder towards the high mountain and said as though in a dream, ‘You have always known me, Diomedes—or Jason—whichever you choose to call yourself. And I speak thus to you because the one who should have led you to your kill today, that fat fool Heracles, has taken it into his crazy head to run away and desert you.’

I was so astounded at what she knew I could not say anything.

She said, ‘I have sat here at the ford since dawn waiting for you. I feared that Heracles might go into a fit before he had stood you in front of Pelias. I wanted to be sure.’

I answered, ‘Heracles is afraid of you, lady. That is why he ran away. He is no coward. He meant to take me into Iolcos.’

She swayed from side to side a little, like someone moving in time to silent music, and then said, ‘Heracles is afraid of me because they always told him he had bitten my breast. And because of that he thinks I have put madness on him, have made him fall in love with boys. But it is all inside his own head. It is nothing that I have the power to do. Only the Mother of us all could do it.’

I said, ‘He spoke of you as the Mother, as Hera. Are you not what he said, lady?’

She smiled and began to play with a piece of her black garment, twisting it in her wrinkled horny fingers.

‘I am a high-priestess of Hera, One-Sandal,’ she said. ‘No more. Just as your mother, Perimede the mock queen, is an ordinary priestess. There is nothing strange in that. True, I suckled Heracles when he was put out to nurse; but that does not make me a goddess. I am one of many and they are to be found all over the world, One-Sandal.’

By now there was quite a crowd around us, listening to what we were saying. I bent and whispered to the old crone, ‘What do you want me to do?’

She smiled up at me out of her black sloe eyes in that white-veined marble face and said, ‘Carry me on your back over the river. I would like to be there when you put the spears into Pelias.’

I whispered back, ‘But this is the Feast of Poseidon, lady. Only the women of the palace will be there. No other women.’

She laughed outright and said at last, ‘Sometimes poor Heracles thinks he is a woman. Take me with you and I will think I am a man. Or at least I will persuade others that I am. What is there to it but to cover my breast and my face? Then I am a black bundle of wizened age—nothing more. Do as I say, Golden-hair, and carry me over. It will be the better for you, I warn you.’

And so I carried her over the River Anaurus and at last set her down among the old men who clustered at the base of the long flight of stairs that led up to the Palace of Iolcos.

There is just one thing more; on the way there she said, ‘You are a simple young fellow, I can see. But that is as it should be. The simple ones make the best instruments for the gods. Fools have no notions of their own to get in the way of the divine planning. However, simplicity itself is not enough—any more than is skill with the javelins and sword. There must be fate behind any action or it will fail.’

I said, ‘The fate is that I gain a kingdom and then raise a shrine to the Mother. I see no difficulty, lady.’

She pressed so hard upon my shoulders then that I felt weak. It was as though she could change her weight at will. By doing this I think she was trying to impress me with her powers of magic. But I kept on and carried her as best I could.

After a few yards she said, ‘You see no difficulty, hey? Just because you have a strong right arm you see no difficulty. Well, I have always held that men are fools, and young men the biggest fools of all. Now listen to me. You have never been in Iolcos before. You do not know what it is like there, especially at a feast to Poseidon. It will be full of men, warriors, bigger than you are, more numerous than all the Horse-herders on the hill. And all of them sworn to give their lives for Pelias the Black and Blue. Every king has such a company, my young friend. Now do you see any difficulty?’

I thought for a while and then told her that I was a Chosen One, and so must succeed, even if Pelias had a thousand men about him.

She laughed, a dry cracked laugh, and her stale breath came down to me almost like the smell that had come from the Spartan I killed out on the hill-side that day. I wondered whether I was already bearing death on my shoulder.

‘Look,’ she said, ‘there have been many Chosen Ones—and sometimes they do not succeed first time. Sometimes they do not succeed at all, but end as white skulls grinning on the sand. But at last the Mother gets her will for she chooses another, and another, until that will has been achieved. So try not to be so certain, Golden-hair. The Mother will have victory at last—but you may not. She is prepared to wait.’

I had never thought of it like that and I must admit the possibility shook me. I felt more prepared to listen to the old crone after those words.

‘What am I to do, Hera?’ I asked at last.

She said, ‘You must take your chance as it comes, naturally. That is man’s lot. But you must have a plan to work to; it is no good hoping to walk up to Pelias and put the javelin in him as easily as you might pluck an apple from a tree as you passed. No, it will go like this: you will fall into line with all the other men who are in from the villages, bringing their offerings to Poseidon. And at last it will be your turn to stand before Pelias the Black and Blue. Don’t forget, there will be soldiers on either side of him, watching all the time. And when you present yourself with no pig or lamb or sack of olives they will wonder all the more. But they will not rush you as they might a black-haired one. Your golden hair will tell them that you are of the Hellenes and they will trust you—at least for long enough.’

She began to cackle to herself, as though the idea of my having golden hair but working for the Mother were a great joke.

Then she went on, ‘At last Pelias will call out to you, “What do you bring for Poseidon, stranger?” And you will say, “I bring two javelins, my king.” “Then lay them at my feet,” he will say. This is your moment for he will be a little off his guard. Now you must take the javelins as though you are about to step forward and lay them both at his feet; but see that you hold them with the points to your left hand for you must make a swift movement as you put your foot forward and plunge the first one in without fail. If you are lucky the second one should go in while the guards are still too shocked to act. Then a fast rush forward and off with his head! Waste no time. But do not cut the black fleece Pelias will be wearing on his head. Snatch that off first and cry out, “I am the son of Aeson! I am your king brought to you by Poseidon!” And put on the black fleece. They will not touch you then for it is a sacred relic.’

What she was saying so unnerved me that I had to rest and put her down for a while and lean against a rock.

I said, ‘Heracles did not say it was so tricky.’

She snorted. ‘Heracles cannot carry any message straight. That is why I waited for you at the ford, Golden-hair. But have no fear, you stand a good chance. You see, there is something else you do not know about: you have two uncles, Pheres, King of Pherae, and Amathaon, King of Pylus. They will be standing, one on either side of the tyrant-king, at this festival. That is their place. They would be pleased to see their kinsman butcher the usurper, have no doubt! They both have loved your mother, Perimede, since Pelias took away old Aeson’s manhood so that he could not produce an heir. They will hold back the guard if they can until you can slip on the black fleece, Golden-hair.’

I gazed at her, breathless in astonishment.

‘I did not know that Pelias had unmanned Aeson,’ I said when I could speak again. ‘That is a fearsome thing.’

She grinned and said, ‘A king must protect his succession, by whatever means, Golden-hair. Do not bewail old Aeson’s loss; he was too senile to suffer much. That is why your mother has been giving herself to half Hellas for many years—hoping to bear sons who will take revenge for her.’

I did not know whether to be shocked or angry. I said, ‘How many has she borne?’

The old crone shook her head. ‘Only you, Golden-hair,’ she said. ‘It seems that a curse is on her for something she hasn’t done right. This is often the way with priestesses. So it rests with you.’

She waited a while, then said, ‘It would be a shame if what happened to Aeson might happen to you. Those goatskin breeches of yours are very old and worn, and that might put an idea into Pelias’s mind, for he is a sly one too. Here, I have a gift for you which might be of some use.’

From a little wallet inside her shift she pulled out a leopardskin kilt, nicely pleated and edged with silver balls all round.

‘Wear this,’ she said. ‘It will add to your warrior-looks.’

I put it on, leaving beneath it my own small pouch in which lay the string of amber beads my mother had given me to buy a wife.

Then we went on our way among the thickening crowd. I did not feel like saying any more but old Hera on my back whispered once again as we drew near to the meeting-place, ‘Suppose all does not go as I have said. You are a simple fellow and may not have the quickness of wit to change your plans. If things go wrong look towards me as I sit among the old men and I will put words or deeds into you. I will get you out of trouble, if I can. No one can promise more, not even the Mother.’

And then we were at the foot of the steps themselves.