Читать книгу Medea - Kerry Greenwood - Страница 14

Even Tiphys, the helmsman, can't see any land. We're rowing blind through sea-fog. I'm colder than I've been since I was lost in a little boat off Skiathos for three days when that big fish broke my net and a wave carried away my oars. My hands are blistered and re-blistered so that each stroke makes the new sores break and bleed. I'm hungry and there's nothing to eat but thrice-baked, ash-cooked cakes as hard as wood, and I've run out of prayers to Poseidon.

I can't believe that we are going to find the Golden Fleece, though just now I would settle for any end to this journey apart from the salt-water grave which is the final destination of all but the luckiest mariners. And as I swoop forward again to bring my oar back, to the rack of every muscle and the sobbing breath of each man on board

Argo, I do not feel very lucky.

How did I come to this?

I was a child when he was a child - Jason, the great hero. Of course, he was a great hero even then, this son of Aison, King Pelias' brother, and rightful heir to Iolkos; while I was just Nauplios, the son of Dictys the fisherman. He was never afraid to say exactly what he meant, Jason. Punishment didn't deter him from truth.

Cheiron worried about him. 'Men use words to cloak truth in an acceptable dress,' he chided.

'But it is the truth,' insisted Jason. 'King Pelias has no claim to my father's throne.'

'Arguable,' said the centaur. 'As you get older, son of Aison, you will find that there are few truths graven in stone.'

'How, Master? Is not truth truth?'

'What colour is the sky?' asked the old man, settling back on his wooden bench and biting into an olive.

'Blue, Master.'

'And that is true?'

'Yes, Master.'

Master Cheiron spat out the stone and grinned, his old face wrinkling like a winter-stored apple. 'So if I said, "The sky is blue" that would be truth?'

'Certainly, Master,' said Jason.

'True for always?'

Jason thought about it. His brow furrowed as it always did when he thought deeply. He was a slim boy, already giving promise of great strength, with golden hair and bright eyes. I had been grooming one of Master Cheiron's small shaggy ponies, and put down the hoof I was cleaning to listen.

'No, Master, after dark the sky is not blue, and sometimes it is grey, and at sunset and dawn it is red and gold.'

'So it is true that the sky is blue, but it is also true that it is sometimes grey or golden or red or black.'

'Yes, Master.'

'So there you are,' replied the old man, reaching for another olive. 'It is also true,' he added, 'that horses have little patience with those who fail to attend them properly.'

The pony made a sideways plunge and I heard his hoof whistle past my head. I blushed and was recalled to my duty. But Jason sat on the green grass outside the centaur's cave, biting his lip, and pondering on the nature of truth.

They had brought me from the sea and my father's house to be a companion for Jason, son of Aison, brother of Pelias, who had usurped the kingdom of Iolkos.

Cheiron the centaur had demanded me of my father because the son of Aison required a companion. And I had found it all very strange when I had first ascended Pelion.

The centaurs are a small people - I was almost as tall as Master Cheiron when I was eight - and their ways secretive and strange. At first I missed my mother and I missed the sea, but Jason was glad that I had come, and comforted me as I wept for the sound of the tide and the taste of my mother's honey-cakes.

'We will go back when we are grown,' he whispered into the close, horse-scented darkness. 'One day, Nauplios, we will go back to your beloved ocean, and then your mother will be proud of you.'

The best thing about the centaurs was their stories. They were of short stature, clannish and uncleanly, compared to the wide-talking, frequently washed men of my childhood. Cheiron's people oiled their skin rather than washed it, and the smell of a centaur settlement was noticeable at first - wood smoke, flesh, horses - but the nose quickly grew accustomed. The food was basic and not very pleasant - how I longed for my mother's honey-cakes! I have seen a centaur plunge both hands into a steaming carcass, drag out the liver, and eat it raw.

I did the cooking for myself and the son Aison. I never learned to relish raw flesh, or raw fish, and I was not allowed to drink the fermented milk which made the old men drunk. In view of the way they all groaned in pain the next morning, this might have been a mercy.

We were sitting around the smoking dung fire one night when Cheiron took Jason's hand in his own. This was uncommon. They were not touching people, the centaurs. He lifted a brand from the fire and quite deliberately burned the hand he held, so that Jason winced and cried out.

'Why?'

'So that you will remember what I am about to tell you.'

I could never read those wrinkled faces. He was concentrating, intent, his shaggy brows shading the bright brown eyes.

'Whenever you see this scar, you will recall the tale of Phrixos and the Golden Fleece.'

'Master,' said Jason. I watched a red weal rise on the smooth surface of his wrist and winced in sympathy.

'It was a woman's doing, of course,' said the centaur, slowly, spitting into the fire. 'A wicked woman - a woman's lies. All women lie. Remember that.

'Phrixos, grandson of Minyas - that is why your kin are called Minyans, boy - and his sister Helle lived happily until their father married again,' Cheiron began.

A tall young man he was, this Phrixos, dark and beautiful, and the woman desired him. The woman wanted him for his curly hair and his hands - she watched him with the horses, saw how skilfully he touched them, imagined her own flesh so gentled and smoothed, and burned with lust.

Perhaps it was Ishtar, whom you call Aphrodite, who possessed her - I do not know. But she came to him in the stable, calling his name, offering him wine, then slipped close to him so that he could smell the scent of her femaleness, like a mare in season, and she said, 'I love thee, Phrixos. Lie with me here in the straw and thy father shall never know'.

He was shocked, and pushed her away. Then she tore her garment - deceitful bitch!- and ran from the stable, crying that the king's son had attempted violence on her honour.

The air was cold. I drew my goatskin cloak closer, and rubbed my hands over my face. The hatred in the old man's voice stung my ears. I knew no harm of women - how could I? My mother was a woman. But Jason was drinking in the voice, mouth open. The stars were blazing, close as lanterns.

They bound him and carried him up the mountain to the high altar - Phrixos, the king's son, betrayed by a cruel woman. His sister Helle followed him, keening him as though he was already dead, tearing her hair. She was fair, they say, and she scattered strands of bright gold along the stone, and the priest took a bronze knife.

It was noon, hot and still. Even the birds were silent. It seemed that the world was holding its breath. The priest raised the knife over the defenceless throat, stretched like a beast's for sacrifice. Then…

He stopped speaking to swig from a wineskin. Jason and I held our breath, like the world. I could almost feel the heat of the midday sun, scent the crushed grass under the feet of the witnesses to this sacrifice. The pause lengthened, so that I could hardly bear it, but it was not my place to speak.

'Master?' asked Jason in a strained whisper.

Cheiron grinned and resumed the story.

There was a crunching in the scrub, something coming towards them along the mountain path. Something heavy and strong and determined. The knife poised in the air. Phrixos had not made a sound. Helle stilled her weeping, wild with sudden hope. The creature came to the brow of the hill.

It was a man. Not tall, but very strong; wearing a lion's skin and carrying a club. A young man he was then; ah, I remember, Herakles the Hero, when the world was young as well. He can't have been more than seventeen. His hair was tangled back from a broad brow, a wide nose, a generous mouth, now shut like a trap. There were burrs in his beard, and grass in his hair. But his shoulders later bore the weight of the whole earth, and even then he was scarred with many adventures.

'You woke me,' he complained. 'I thought at least the top of the mountain would be secluded. What do you here, men of Minyas, at this altar, with this most unholy of victims?'

'This is Phrixos, the king's son, who is guilty of rape, and we will sacrifice him to Zeus,' said the priest.

Herakles yawned, scratched his chest and then shook his head.

'No,' he said patiently. 'No, you won't do that. Zeus does not accept human sacrifices. You cannot elevate your own killing of this boy to a religious rite, Minyans. If you kill him, you kill him on your own, and on your own consciences must your deed lie.

'You do see that I can't allow you to do this, don't you? Such blasphemy will bring a curse on innocent ones, women and children, not just on you alone.'

He never boasted, that hero. His voice was even and gentle. But he was tapping a club made of the best part of an olive tree against his broad calloused palm as he spoke. And he wiped his brow. Battle fury came on that hero with a wave of heat.

'Remember that,' Cheiron warned. 'If you meet Herakles. Beware of him when he speaks gently and you see sweat break on his skin. Once his anger is loosed, no man or god can call it back - not even Herakles himself.' The centaur returned to his story.

The Minyans quailed - for they had heard of Herakles, of his strength and his battle-madness - but they had orders from their own king. They gathered, spears raised. Helle threw herself at her brother and untied his bonds, hoping for escape.

Then the gods, who are just and weigh all actions in the scale of Themis, sent a winged golden ram from heaven. Hera sent it, she who is the protector of Herakles and guardian of families. Hermes made it, who is the messenger of the gods. Phrixos and Helle climbed onto its back and flew away into the air, above the astonished faces of the wicked Minyans. Phrixos was saved.

I couldn't stop myself from asking, 'Master, Master, what about Herakles? Didn't the Minyans attack him?'

'He had great presence, even newly woken and dusty,' said the centaur.

There were only twenty Minyans there, and they knew that he might overcome them. For Herakles could leap like a goat and run like the wind; his eye was keen as a lance and his hands were stronger than tree roots that can rip through stone. He stared at them, and they at him, after they had watched the golden ram bear the king's son away. Then, they say, he gave a sigh, nodded to the heavens, hefted his club and walked away, quite slowly, down the mountain. They did not dare to follow or assail him. He was Herakles the hero.

'Remember that, son Aison. Authority is a great shield.'

Jason nodded impatiently. 'And Phrixos?' he prompted.

The old man's voice was flat with displeasure - though he allowed Jason to interrupt him more than he did me - but he continued.

As to Phrixos, he flew on the golden ram across Thrace, even in the sky as no one but birds, gods and Daedalus, the architect, and his sons have flown before. When passing over the strait, his sister Helle lost her grip on his waist and fell. They call that water the Hellespont now.

Women are weak, and she was a tender maid, too young to leave her mother's house. Phrixos cried after her as she fell, but the blue closed over her and she was gone.

The ram flew on to Colchis, the white city on the River Phasis, which flows into the Euxine Sea, and there landed, safely, the royal son of Minyas. He immediately showed his piety by sacrificing the ram to Zeus, his deliverer.

'Hera sent it, not Zeus All-Father,' I interrupted, 'and why kill the ram? It would be wonderful to be able to fly.'

'The actions of heroes are not to be questioned by boys,' snarled Cheiron, and I closed my mouth.

'That is the Golden Fleece, Jason, which rests in the sacred grove at Colchis, guarded by a serpent. It is a holy treasure beyond price, the rightful property of the rightful king of Iolkos.

'Phrixos met a princess there: Chalkiope, daughter of the king Aetes. She saw him and loved him, the fair hero, and she lay with him and bore him four sons. But the king disliked these boys, having no son of his own, and when Phrixos died, he did not adopt them - or so they say.

'That king holds the Golden Fleece without right. Zeus punished him by taking his queen, though they say he took another woman. She only bore him another daughter, Medea, before she died too. The hand of the gods is heavy on blasphemers. That is the tale of Phrixos, cousin of Aison - your father, and Pelias - your uncle. Remember it when you come into your own.'

Jason was alight with the tale; he told it to me over and over again as we lay down in the goatskins, and as I drifted into sleep I heard him whispering in the darkness over the snores of the centaurs.

'Rightful property - the Golden Fleece is the rightful property of the descendants of Phrixos, who rode on the golden ram from Mount Laphystios to Colchis.'

With my last conscious thought, I still considered that sacrificing it at all, and especially to the wrong god, was very unfair on the ram.