Read Online Jason and Medeia by John Gardner - Free Book Online Page B

shaping—he must have
    seen
    that the fault was his, not yours: you showed him what
    had to be,
    and gave him a plan. He’d acted upon it as gladly, that
    night,
    as he’d have changed places with you now. Or the fault
    was no one’s—love
    a turmoil prior to rules, and rumbling on beyond the last idea’s collapse. His eyes grew warmer then. And yours as well. No house was ever more happy,
    for a time—
    the twins babbling in their sunlit cribs, the master and
    mistress
    warmer than sunbeams arm in arm, sitting at the
    window,
    talking and laughing, or sitting in jewelled crowns,
    on thrones
    level with Pelias and his queen’s. If troublesome
    shadows of the past
    returned, you could drive them back.
    â€œBut soon time changed that too.”
    Her wide mouth closed, trembling, and her faded slate
    eyes stared.
    â€œPelias was a fool; perhaps far worse. And now, at times, when Pelias would hinder his will, Lord Jason would
    frown, speak sharply
    to you, or to us, or the twins. Your eyes got the she-wolf
    look.
    His slightest glance of annoyance, and up your poison
    seethed,
    old bile of guilt, self-hate, pride, love—black nightmare
    shapes:
    Aphrodite whispered and teased, cruel Hera, and Athena, gray-eyed fox. Seize the throne for him! — Jason’s
    by right!
    Would old Aietes hesitate even for an instant, dismayed by a sickly usurper of a nephew’s lawful place?
    Strike out!’
    I needn’t remind you of the rest. Screams in the palace,
    blood,
    the cries of the children awakened in haste when you
    fled. And now,
    for that, from time to time, his eyes go cold.”
    The slave
    came forward a little, tortuously moving her thick
    canes inch
    by inch. “I’ve lived some while, Medeia. There are
    things I know.
    Give the man time, and he’ll come to see, now too,
    that the fault
    was as much his own as yours. Let him be. Be patient,
    my lady.
    No woman yet has defeated a stubborn, ambitious man by force.”
    Medeia turned, smiling. But her eyes were wild.
    â€œI won’t win his heart with labor pains again,” she said, “barren as a rock, wrecked as the cities he burns in his
    wake
    with the same Akhaian lust.”
    â€œMedeia” the old woman moaned,
    â€œleave it to the gods! Let time sift it! Tell me, what wife in all the ages of the world has seized by her own
    hand’s power
    more than the staddle of a grave? Not even the
    mightiest king
    wins more in the end. Consider the tumbled columns
    of the bed
    of the giant Og. His fame is now mere sand, a ring of stones that startles the wilderness like a ghostly
    whisper
    of jackals crying in the night. My exiled people have a prophecy for those who trust in themselves. They say:
    Their horses are swifter than leopards,
    fiercer than wolves in the dark;
    their horsemen plunge on, advancing from afar,
    swooping like an eagle to stoop on its prey.
    They come for plunder, mile on mile of them,
    their faces searching like an east wind;
    they scoop up prisoners like sand.
    They scoff at kings,
    they laugh at princes.
    They make light of the mightiest fortresses:
    they heap up ramps of earth and take them.
    Then the wind changes and is gone.
    Woe to the man who worships his arm’s omnipotence!
    I would not wave it away as the noise of a beaten
    people
    shorn of all tools of war but the rattle of poetry. They were mighty themselves when they sang it first,
    though humbled now.
    Learn to accept! What sorrow have you more great
    than the fall
    of a thousand thousand cities since time began?
    You have sons.
    How can you speak of a ruined womb, Akhaian lust, when civilizations—races of men with the hopes
    of gods—
    are tumbled to fine-grained ashes, fallen out of history?”
    â€œEnough!” Medeia said. She turned, in her eyes a
    flicker
    like cauldron light. “Self-pity, you say. So it is. I’ll end it, tear all trace from my heart and stare, dead on, at night as the