Jason, p.34
Jason, page 34
Creon put his brown hand upon mine and said, ‘And nothing for him, Jason. Shall I tell you what is in my mind at this moment, friend?’
I did not answer but merely gazed at our hands, one on the other against the grey of my horse’s neck. Creon saw that look and clasped my hand even tighter.
‘King of Corinth,’ he said in a sort of mocking formality, ‘things are about to happen in Hellas. Certain kings are banding together for a great hunt, and Eurystheus is the beast they will drag down. Those who are in at the kill will gain much profit, for Mycenae and Tiryns are no mean cities to sack.’
I said, ‘Who will sit on the throne of Mycenae if you have the good fortune to bring your quarry down, Creon?’
He smiled, a splendid figure in the bright sunlight, and whispered, ‘Who but I, my lord? Who but I? My kingly comrades will get their plunder, and I shall get the land and what grows on it. A fair exchange, think you not? And all for a little riding and sword-play!’
I struggled for time, thinking that if Creon did as he said, his armies must come through my own kingdom to reach Mycenae; and, what is more, once he had taken that city, he would straddle my own place like the two legs of a colossus. It even crossed my mind to make war on Thebes myself, in the hope of preventing Corinth from being so overrun and so surrounded. But I said, ‘Tell me, Creon, as king to king, who rides with you on this hunt?’
Behind me I heard the flies buzzing at the horses’ tails, the men talking and laughing with each other, as though they were old companions, and our children shouting out as they scrambled among the rocks together. It was a warm, comradely day; the sort of day when men should speak of peace, of women and hunting, and not of war.
Creon answered, ‘As king to king, Jason, I will tell you. There will be Acastus of Iolcos, who is a cousin of yours; and there will be Theseus of Athens. Each of them is likely to bring certain other kinglets who are interested in making their fortunes at one easy stroke. You would be wise to join with us in the chase before our numbers grow too great, for those who ride at the first blast of the horn may look to gain the greatest rewards.’
So, it seemed that the whole north was on the move against southern Mycenae. Corinth would stand alone if I did not ride with them—alone and isolated. But I did not rush to Creon’s offer. I had heard too much of the man to seem anxious.
I said, ‘We have our corn harvests to fetch in and the grapes to tread. I had thought to ride about my kingdom this summer with my sons. They have not seen the peasants at their work, and it is good for princes to know what goes on in their father’s lands.’
Creon took his hand from mine and said smiling, ‘There speaks a good father. This year we have hastened with our crops because of the business that is soon to occupy us, and I saw to it that my little daughter, the girl who was so pert with you, took her turn in the corn-fields. With her shift off, a cloth about her middle, and her hair tied back, she looked no different from a boy—and she did a strong boy’s work, that I can tell you.’
I watched my son Medeius wrestling with her on a high rock, trying to hook his leg about hers and fling her down as Castor had taught him. She was standing up to the lad well; there was more in that squint-eyed little bitch than I would have given her credit for.
I turned as my son threw her at last and said, ‘Yes, I was thinking of passing the summer pleasantly, Creon. I was not thinking of war.’
He nodded and wiped his damp brow with a corner of his heavy cloak. ‘It is good to dream of pleasant things,’ he answered in an even voice. ‘Though we who are gifted by the gods with kingship often must lay aside our pleasant dreams to a later day. In this hard world only the common folk, the cowherds and the crow-scarers, have the time to dream. The kings must ride when the horns blow.’
I said, as evenly as he, ‘The king who does not ride when the horns blow may find himself a cowherd or a crow-scarer. Then he has all the time in the world to dream—but no kingdom to dream in. Is that how you mean it, Creon of Thebes?’
The king in the blood-red cloak nodded gravely in the sun, though the smile never left his fierce rough features.
‘You speak with the wisdom which all Hellas claims for you, King Jason,’ he answered gently.
Then I knew; he had not spoken the final humbling threat against me, but I knew. Unless Corinth came in with Thebes and Athens and Thessaly, we should lie stark and stripped as though the locusts had settled on us and eaten us up—finished as a kingdom.
And all was prepared for this war against Mycenae, all was ready in the north, the crops in, the armies out; whereas we of Corinth were still living as though this were but another year, like the hundred that had gone before it. . . . I cursed my blindness in not having spies in the north as I had them in the south. There I had blundered stupidly, like a fool who thinks that all the gods are on his side and deaf to the entreaties of other men.
I swung my horse round and said to Creon, ‘I can ride with you within the week, bringing chariots, javelin-men and archers. Will that do?’
He patted my horse’s neck gently, just as if it were his own beast. I did not like that. Then he said, ‘That will do well, Jason. And for my part I shall see that the armies, passing through Corinth, do no more harm than they do in their own places.’
I said, as though the answer to my question was of little consequence to me, ‘Where are your armies now, comrade?’
King Creon of Thebes looked down at his pommel and said, ‘For the past five days, while I have waited to speak with you, they have been camped along your eastern border, in the Isthmus. It will not hurt them to wait a further week before we move. My soldiers have learned patience under me. It is a good virtue for a fighting-man. Too often wars are lost through haste, not cowardice.’
I did not answer him. I knew now what I had feared—that I was in the grasp of Creon of Thebes whatever I did. There was only one way out for me—to ride with him against Mycenae.
When we got back to the place where we had left our men, I found Creon’s daughter Glauce sitting on a rock, nursing little Argus who had fallen and cut his knee and was crying.
I said, ‘One day you will make a good little mother, princess. A good mother and a good wife for some strong young king!’
I meant it only as a passing token of good-will.
She grinned up at me, as though she knew some secret that was denied to others. But Medeius burst out and said, ‘Father, this girl says that she is to be our mother. She says we shall be her children, to beat when we are naughty, to love when we are good, and obey her.’
I saw Creon frowning at his daughter, and saw her staring impudently back at him.
I said, ‘She is only teasing, Medeius. Don’t forget, all girls tease boys like that. All girls do it. That is what makes them so interesting to play with; they are so different.’
But Medeius shook his head and said, ‘No, Father, she was not teasing. She swore upon the breasts of the Mother that she was to marry you and to become Queen of Corinth. She swore and swore again. That was why I wrestled with her, to show her who was right.’
I said, ‘Well, you proved who was right. You threw her down, did you not, Medeius?’
He nodded, looking at the ground. ‘Yes, Father,’ he said, ‘I threw her down—but that proves nothing, only that I am stronger than she is. It does not change the truth, the will of the gods.’
I bent over Glauce and said softly, ‘Is this a dream you have had, little one, that you shall marry the King of Corinth?’
She shook her head and gazed up at me steadily.
‘No, Jason,’ she answered. ‘It is no dream. It is something my father has been telling me for almost a year now—that I am to be the Spring-queen of Corinth, and, whether you like it or not, you shall be my corn-king.’
I turned to look at Creon, who sat above me on his white horse. He was staring at me, the smile twisting his mouth corners. He did not bother to speak but only smiled, silent and powerful.
I swung my leg across my saddle and said to him, ‘Farewell for the moment, King of Thebes. We shall have much to talk about within the week, it seems. A great deal seems to have been happening, here and there, and I have been blind to it.’
King Creon returned my salute, a little mockingly I thought, and said, ‘Yes, a great deal—and discussion will not change it now, my friend. The embroidery of this pattern cannot be unravelled by words. Only the knife may cut through the threads of which the cloth has been woven.’
40
Acanthus
Have you watched the acanthus grow? First there is nothing in the chill soil of winter. Then, as the sun mounts higher and loses his red frost-nipped face, little green daggers push up from their hiding-place, at first weak in colour and too thin to stand all but the kindest of breezes, it seems.
But the year’s wheel turns and you go once more to the sheltered place among the rocks. Behold, a wonder! The acanthus stands as tall as a man’s knee! Its little daggers have grown to leaves broader than a man’s hand, and from each leaf nine other daggers have unfolded, each formed beside its fellow, and each with a separate strong life of its own. Even the green is stronger now, as though the acanthus has gained courage and dares to declare itself to the world’s eyes.
But a little while later the leaves have unfurled entirely and thrust outwards, glorious in their deep greens, their flaring bronze, even their dead pale white, as though some already wore a shroud, like men.
And above them all, like the banners above a proud army, rise the flowers; tall, heavy stalks garnished their length with deep purple shields, as though they are held up against the sky in warning of a hail of arrows. From beneath these purple shields, shy as young roe deer, peep out the delicate pink petals, tender, strange in such a furious growth, like a lovely woman in the wagon village of a northern cattle chief. And for each flower there is a ring of spikes, hard and unbending, the spears that protect such a woman, but so merged in the green that the hand is on them, plucking at the flower, suffering the wound, before it knows.
And soon the clump which covered a space no bigger than a boy’s ox-hide buckler has consumed land on which a feast-hall might be built, in its growing. And all standing thick and arrogant, as though it would outlast the world. Now the flowers have lost their prettiness, their delicacy, and have all faded to white as though they no longer care what man thinks; for they are secure, harsh with their browning spikes, and almost too tall for a common man to reach. No longer do the winds of late summer put fear into them; they can withstand a gale, a thunderstorm, an earthquake.
That is how my own life grew, from nothing to fierce profusion. And that is how the plot against Mycenae grew in Hellas of the north. Each day new leaves coming out from the parent shoot, new shields, new spikes, and always losing their softness, growing more arrogant. No man may halt a natural growth.
This I thought of as I paced the market-place of Corinth, considering our situation, talking to one chief or another—asking if the harvest was in, the swords tempered, the horses shod. And I also thought briefly of the winter again, when this proud luxuriant growth of green and bronze and purple sinks back into the ground, its strength and warlike pride humbled as the oxen set their heedless hooves upon the rotting stalks. . . . When all becomes mud and mulch again.
But this image I cast aside almost as soon as it came to me. No man must try to foresee his end, try to push aside the curtain which the gods have hung before him to keep him blind and humble like the stalled ox before the butcher comes with his axe.
I was watching a girl dancing outside a red-striped booth set up by the Phoenicians, who now came every market-day, so clear were our seas for their long galleys. She was olive-skinned and, though sinuous and lithe, very full in the breast and hips. I stood and admired her great wide black eyes, tinted with blue, her delicate straight nose, fine as an Egyptian’s, her long mantle of thick dark hair, her pretty writhing hands, thin and fragile as the first acanthus of spring.
They had decked her well, to attract the crowds before they sold their pots and pans and rolls of unbleached linen. About her brown forehead glittered a circlet of gold set with agates of all colours; above her breasts bobbed a string of blue Libyan beads; her arms and legs flashed and jingled with a score of silver bangles.
As she swayed and stamped in the dust among the pots and pans, the glazed bowls from Crete, the red amphorae from Naxos, I called over the hook-nosed fellow in the blue robes who seemed to be the head-trader of this band and said to him, ‘How much for the girl? My wife could use her in the house.’
He placed his hand upon my arm, in the way of Phoenicians, who seem not to regard the pride of kings in the outlying places to which they bring their wares, and he said in his lisping voice, ‘Ah, Jason, my dear man! Trust you Corinthians to pick out the best we have! This girl was once a princess in the land of the Hittites, She cost us a fortune, I can tell you! We would never have got her, whatever we offered, but her poor father’s crops had failed and he needed money badly to equip an army against the marauding Scythians.’
I said, ‘I don’t want her life history, fellow. How much is she?’ I was thinking of myself, not Medea, I must confess.
The man began to shake his head as though in despair. ‘Oh, King,’ he said, ‘how can I put a price on what is priceless? How can I bring myself to part with the finest treasure of our collection? There is not enough money in Corinth to buy such a one. And your wife would only beat her for her beauty and her love-tricks. And think how lonely we old men would be without the companion who helps to shorten our long voyages.’
I said, ‘Stop this babbling, man, and sell me the girl. You can find another one to warm your beds and to attract village fools to your booths. Indeed, I will find you half a score myself, Hellenes with bright hair and blue eyes, girls who itch to see beyond their villages, who cannot find a rich husband among the dry hills.’
The Phoenician made a wry smile and answered, ‘There is no market for straw-haired Hellenes, now, master. Their skin gets red in the sort of sun we travel through, and they adore garlic. This treasure here is worth two score Hellene wenches—and what space have we on the galleys for two score women? We find that one woman is more than a match for thirty men, if she is of the right metal. No, King, much as I would wish, I cannot sell you this girl. My fellow-traders in this venture would cut my throat as I slept if I did so. I am so sorry; I bend and kiss your feet in sorrow, King. But I cannot sell her.’
I spat on the ground, as one always does with these folk, and pretended to turn as though to leave the booth. He let me go a step or two, as they usually do, and then plucked me by the sleeve and said in my ear, ‘But I can sell you something even more precious than this lovely Hittite, Jason. I can sell it for the rude dirk you carry in your belt. Yes, I would even accept that dirk, poor as it is.’
I said, knowing these bargainers, ‘What rubbish do you wish to foist upon me now, fellow? I have told you what I want from you, and nothing can take its place.’
The man said, looking into my eyes closely, ‘You will want this, and it is not rubbish, King. Or let me say it otherwise—if you do not want it, and if you do think it rubbish, then King Jason of Corinth is near the end of his days. His spool will have run out, the well of his life will be dry.’
I said in a low voice, so that the peasants and soldiers about me should not hear in that crowded place, ‘You have news?’
He nodded, his eyes shut, his long face serious now. ‘Give me the dagger first,’ he said.
I answered, ‘I am a king, fellow. I could have you blinded or put into a pit of adders. Then you would tell your news without my dirk.’
He nodded and said with a strange smile, ‘Yes, that is so, for I cannot bear pain. But what news would I tell you, Jason? The truth—or the first thing that came to my tongue in its agonies?’
I pulled the dirk from its sheath and held it out to him. I had a hundred more in my armoury. His hand came forward and then halted. ‘The sheath as well, King,’ he said, smiling. ‘It is a poorly made thing, but will be regarded as curious in Egypt when we set up market. The princes there are fond of these rough shepherd things from Hellas. They wear them for their quaintness. It is only a fashion of the moment. Later they give them to the children to play with.’
I gave him the sheath, which was decorated with Thracian silver thread-work, and he drew me gently to the back of the striped booth.
Then, whispering so low that I could hardly hear him above the bleating of sheep and the twanging of Assyrian lutes, he said, ‘The men of Mycenae are ready for you all. They have fortified their citadel. I was there a week ago. Creon will not find the prize easy to get.’
When he stopped, I said, ‘Is that all I get for my dagger, you old fraud?’
The Phoenician shook his head and answered in despair, ‘Why do you Hellenes always think we mean to trick you? Surely, you know now that we give value for money. We have tried long enough to prove it.’
I took him by the throat and squeezed it a little. He went very red in the face and his cone-shaped hat fell off. When he had done coughing, he said hoarsely, ‘Let me go on, Jason. I was coming to the important parts. You Hellenes are so hasty. That is no way to do business, King.’
I put out my fingers again and he began to talk fast, his veined eyes wide. Phoenicians were always like that; and their trade among the Hellenes was always hazardous, I must admit, for in those days we were a hardy folk, fresh from the northern plains and not used to being kept waiting in a bargain.
He said, ‘It is known as far as Cythera that Creon means to eat you up after you have helped him against Mycenae. First he will make you marry his fool of a daughter and then he will poison you and sit on your throne chair.’
I said, ‘Is that all, fellow?’
His confidence had come back. He smiled and rubbed his hands as though their palms were itching with some skin disease.
‘I should remember more if I had, say, the amethyst seal that hangs about your neck. It is a poor thing, but this ancient Cretan ware has a ready sale in certain lands which still try to live as men did when Minos ruled the roost.’
