He was considerably surprised and not too pleased when she did not at first lift her head or give any sign that he was welcome. Then it occurred to him that she might be sulking because he had not come at once. Just as he was about to walk away to teach her that sulking gained no game with him, she looked up, hesitated, then shrugged and patted the blanket roll beside the one she was sitting on.
“Oh,” Orpheus said. “Have you finally deigned to offer me a seat on my own blanket?”
“Do not be so silly,” she replied, keeping her voice low. “I did not know whether it was safe for you to sit with me, but it is certainly better for you to sit down than to stand over me, making yourself more visible while glowering as if you owned me.”
“Visible to whom?” he asked indignantly. “I do not care what Hylas says, and he is the only one enough interested in nastiness to notice.”
“Hylas?” Eurydice repeated. “Who cares what Hylas says.” Then she lowered her voice again. “It is Jason who is too likely to notice your commanding air. I am afraid that Jason believes me to be a stronger witch than I am, and even before that, when he came to thank me for giving good directions, he gave you a look I did not like.”
Orpheus made no real sense of what Eurydice said. Her mention of Jason had brought back all his suspicion and a very strange sense that the hair along his spine was bristling. Automatically he repeated, “I have told you again and again that Jason will do you no harm.”
“I am not afraid he will do me any harm,” Eurydice retorted with considerable exasperation but still in a low voice. “It is you I am worried about.”
“Me?” Then memory of what she had said suddenly made sense. “You think Jason desires you and—”
“No! Well, not desires in the sense of wanting my body, but you told me yourself that Jason does not like to share control of anything with anyone.”
“I do not believe I ever said that,” Orpheus protested, although he suddenly realized that Eurydice had come close to the truth.
“Not in those words, but when you talked about why he did not wrest the throne from Pelias— Oh, never mind that. I made a terrible mistake and you may be in trouble for it. When Jason asked about the Hellespont, I told him what I remembered from a map I had seen. At first I did not mention the map because I did not think of mentioning it.” That was not true, but Eurydice did not want to put into Orpheus’ mind any more than she wanted to put it into Jason’s that she might be subject to a curse for leaving her temple. “I was trying too hard to remember what was on the map to think about where I had last looked at it. When I realized Jason thought I was Seeing the coastline… It was too late. He would not have believed me anyway if I denied it.”
“It is his nature and to our benefit that he be suspicious of anything he is told—or not told,” Orpheus said slowly. “He will think you are concealing your Gift out of fear. He will not hold it against you that you deny any great Power. And I do not think you need worry about Jason depending too much on your Gifts and getting us into trouble.”
“That is all true, but—” Eurydice enunciated each word slowly and carefully, as if she were speaking to someone feeble minded “—now that he thinks I am powerful, he will want to be the one to control me. Now, I am afraid, he envies you your…ah…rights to me.”
“And you want me to cease pretending you are my woman, hand you over to him?”
Face and voice had gone cold and quiet, but Eurydice never noticed. “Dear Goddess, no!” she exclaimed and shuddered involuntarily.
She looked down at the mending she had let fall into her lap, unable to meet Orpheus’ eyes. She did not dislike Jason. He was certainly handsomer than Orpheus and his body was more beautiful. But there was a cynicism in him, a ruthlessness she felt under the smiles and open speeches, that repelled her. Jason was too fixed on his own purpose to care how that purpose affected others. Sooner or later, she knew, Jason would demand what she could not—or would not—do, and when she refused he would turn on her. But was it right to use Orpheus as a buffer?
“Then what do you want me to do?” Orpheus asked, but now his voice was warm and a trifle amused.
Eurydice’s glance flicked up, took in his expression, and she could have kicked him. The responsibility for protecting him was still hers alone. For his own part, it was apparent that Orpheus was only too willing to stand between her and Jason.
“I do not know what to do,” Eurydice admitted with another shiver. “But I do not want to make trouble for you. I thought I had better warn you.”
For a while Orpheus was silent, then he reached out and patted her hands. “You worry too much,” he said. “Not that you are entirely wrong about Jason. He is a leader born, and I think his mother fixed in his mind that he had been deprived of his right and must use all his strength and will to recover it. Thus, yes, he does not like to share his leadership. But also, he is committed to this crew, to each and all of us. You may have judged rightly that he regrets he did not take you into his own protection so that you would be dependent on him—” Orpheus broke off to chuckle heartily. “Perhaps it is just as well he did not. He would have had a rude surprise when he discovered how little you are willing to be dependent on anyone. But even if he is sorry that you seem to look to me, he will do me no harm.”
“As long as we both obey him,” Eurydice muttered.
“We must do that in any case.” Orpheus shook his head at her and smiled. “He is the captain of the Argo after all.”
Eurydice was not as satisfied as Orpheus with this conclusion. He, she feared, was thinking about Jason’s orders to control the ship, but she was wondering when Jason would demand that she strike an enemy dead. Nonetheless, she said nothing and began to ply her needle again. Orpheus had stated the choices clearly enough. She could stay where she was and take the chance that Jason would strike at Orpheus in some way to use her more freely, or she could pick herself up and move to the prow of the ship—and surrender to Jason’s will without a struggle. And then, a new question rose in her mind: Would surrendering to Jason save Orpheus anyway? It might be that Jason would resent his “rival” all the more and feel a contempt for Orpheus for yielding that might make a vicious act more likely. No, it was far better for her to remain with Orpheus and stay on guard. Orpheus—dear man that he was—was entirely too honorable and trusting.
She relaxed slowly as the ship sailed on peacefully, realizing that she did worry too much. It was unlikely there would be any confrontation in the immediate future, since her purpose and Jason’s must be the same until they reached Colchis. To protect herself, she would have to do all she could to save the Argo and her crew.
When they came around the headland that bordered the Dardanian harbor, Mopsus and Idmon were standing in the prow straining every sense toward the shore. Eurydice had been summoned and joined them reluctantly. As soon as she faced the shore, she felt clearly both the interest and apprehension from the folk of the town. She said nothing, however, partly because of her surprise—she had not lied to Jason when she told him such reading was not her Gift, and she did not know why she was receiving the emanations. When Idmon began to relate aloud what she was feeling, she breathed a small sigh of relief. There was no need to expose that she had also been aware, so she only shook her head as if she felt nothing when Jason asked for her opinion.
By then it was clear that so large and bustling a place with docks built out into the water would be a good source of supplies. Jason ordered the sail furled and the oars readied, in case ships came out to pursue them, but he also ordered the small boat unshipped and sent three men—the best swimmers, in case their little boat was attacked and overturned—into the harbor. No attack took place. They were greeted at a dock and returned quite soon with a fourth man, who took the tiller and steered the ship through a crooked course to an empty dock where they were permitted to tie up the ship. The Dardanians did not want a shipload of strangers loose in their town, and Jason did not want his ship unmanned and vulnerab
le to attack. By common consent, most of the crew was confined to the Argo while Jason, Tiphys, Idmon, Heracles—and, of course, Hylas, who would not be left behind—went ashore.
Eurydice did not see what Jason took with him to trade, but he and the others returned before the sun set with a tail of porters carrying baskets of dried fruit and sacks of hard baked bread, with rope to replace some worn rigging and other items that Eurydice could not name. All were well pleased with their foray, except Hylas, who was whining about some piece of jewelry that Heracles had been unable or unwilling to buy for him.
* * * *
The next morning, after the Dardanian pilot had steered them safely out of the harbor and they were again running before the wind, Eurydice muttered fervent paeans of gratitude to her Goddess. In fact, there was no need now to worry about confrontation. Jason’s desire to control a powerful witch had melted like morning frost when it turned out that her warning about Dardanus had been unnecessary. She had been praying for help, although she had not the faintest idea what kind of help, and the Goddess had favored her with a better answer than she could have devised herself.
She had been proven correct, but not infallible. Her advice that the harbor was not clear for anyone to sail in was accurate; on the other hand, Dardanus was not a town to be avoided. Goods were plentiful and, from what she had overheard Jason saying to Ankaios, cheap. Nor had her warnings been justified by any attack during the night; however, it might have been the special precautions taken because of those warnings that kept all safe and quiet. All had slept aboard, cramped but secure, with five men on two-candlemark shifts keeping alert watch.
They sailed past Abydus, which was at the tip of a broad peninsula but nonetheless had a well-sheltered beach for a harbor. Eurydice smiled to herself; again she had been proven half light, half wrong—not so wrong as to make her information useless, but not so right as to make it indispensable. In any case Abydus was much smaller than Dardanus and could offer nothing they had not already obtained, so they did not stop.
Eurydice could have guessed where Arisbe and Percote were, but Jason did not ask and she saw no need to volunteer the information. She felt a touch of anxiety when Hylas came aft and stridently demanded that she serve the midday meal. She wished to avoid Jason, but that worked out well too. Her confidence increased when he paid no more attention to her than he would have to Hylas as she carried around the bread and cheese—Orpheus accompanying her with the wine. And later that afternoon, she was delighted to be ignored again when Jason called Tiphys (Ankaios was steering), Idmon, Mopsus, Castor, and Heracles together to ask whether they should land to spend the night at Lampsacus.
The men were in the stern so that Tiphys could be near his tiller—he kept an eye on how the ship ran no matter who was steering, and Eurydice saw Heracles roll his eyes.
“Not for me,” he said. “If the town is smaller than Dardanus, Hylas will weep over his last chance for adornment. If it is larger, he will drag me through every shop.”
“Not for me or the other men, either,” Castor said. “We are still too close to our sojourn with the women of Lemnos to need to seek relief in a town—” He paused and grinned. “And all of us, not only Heracles, will have to listen to Hylas.”
“If it were my choice, I would go on,” Tiphys said. “It is still early enough in the year that only the gods know what the weather will be from one hour to another. As long as the horizon is clear and the wind holds, we should sail.”
“I am willing to agree with the others,” Idmon said. “I have a very faint sense of good will, not from Lampsacus—not that I feel evil from them but the warmth, the welcoming, is ahead, not for tonight but for tomorrow.”
Mopsus shook his head. “I have nothing to add. Lampsacus will do business with us, but we have none to do. I agree with Idmon that they send no sense of welcome.”
So they sailed by and, even though the sun was low in the west, also passed another inhabited place. This was much smaller and none of the men thought of stopping. It would mean another night packed aboard the ship, keeping strict watch. An uninhabited beach was safer by far. Beyond that village, however, the coast was not only uninhabited but rocky and precipitous; however, before any could regret passing a safe harbor, a broad headland thrust out into the sea cupping a welcoming beach.
The sail was furled and the men pulled hard at the oars to bring them closer until Lynkeus, scanning sea and land, told them the way was safe. Then the yard was let down from the mast and unfastened, the mast lifted from its seat and stored while they rowed toward the shore. When white caps topped the waves that became low breakers on the beach, they turned the ship, stern to the land. Orpheus no longer played the flute but called each stroke of the oars according to Jason’s signals, and Tiphys, who had taken back his charge, raised the steering oar from the water.
At the grating sound of the keel touching the sand, the stern ladder was let down. The men stroked once more with a will, as Heracles ran down and seized the rope thrown by Lynkeus, who had come to the stern to watch for rocks. Polydeuces and Polyphemus followed Heracles, carrying shovels with which they hastily dug the sand away from behind the keel. Again, when Jason saw a substantial incoming wave, the rowers stroked, Heracles pulled; the ship climbed higher on the beach and the rowers left the benches to pour down the ladder onto the land.
It did not take long before the Argo was stable, her keel resting in a trough, her hull shored up with stones, and mooring lines out from her sides. Relieved of duty, the crew set out in small parties to look for water, although that was not yet an urgent necessity since only four or five casks had been emptied. They also sought any game that might be hiding in the woods. That, too, was not a necessity—there was dried meat from which a stew could be made—but even a long day at the oars could not make anyone prefer stew over a succulent roast, which a hunt might produce.
Eurydice was frankly more interested in the water than in the roast, although she knew she would eat it gladly if there was one. What she wanted was a bath. Like the men, she had barely washed her face and hands since she had boarded the ship. It did not seem to bother them, but Eurydice was accustomed to washing herself daily, even if only with sand from a riverbed, and she could feel the salt and sweat on her skin.
She had been particularly conscious that she smelled more like the crew than a woman the previous night when it had been necessary to huddle close to Orpheus because of the crowding on the deck. His quickness in finding a space for her right against the bulkhead, so that no other man would be crammed body to body against her, at first seemed to imply he was jealous. If the implication was true, however, he was playing dog in the manger since he gave no sign of wanting her himself. He had been so close that she touched him each time she moved, and the proximity had not seemed to disturb him, but it had disturbed her—which brought her back to the way she smelled then…and now.
The motive for what she was doing had not become clear to Eurydice at first. A vague discomfort about her lack of cleanliness was enough reason to whisper a water-finding spell—it was a very small spell, akin to herb-lore, and not likely to be noticed even by Idmon and Mopsus. When she found the water, only a stream this time, not a river, she told Orpheus about it so he could tell Jason, and then followed it to a secluded spot, where she could wash. In fact, she had scrubbed herself and the gown she had been wearing, put on her new, mended tunic, fluffed her short curls, and found some spring flowers with which to scent herself. She slipped several into the bosom of her tunic before she realized that she was decked out, as well as she could be under the circumstances, to seduce a man.
Eurydice sat down rather hard on a nearby stone. Out of spite? she asked herself. That was not very nice. She thought about it carefully—she had been trained to consider any negative feelings she might have toward others because those feelings could taint her spells. As she thought about Orpheus, her lips curved gently upward. No, she did not feel spiteful toward him. She wished him no ill at al
l. In fact, thinking directly about him had made her smile. Then was she combed and perfumed because he had not responded to her as she had responded to him? Eurydice sighed. That, she feared, was closer to the truth. She was annoyed by his indifference. She wanted him to want her—and that was really stupid.
Even if she were frantic with love herself—and she was not—this was a ridiculous time and place to try to tempt him. To set herself to seduce him, merely to soothe hurt pride, was worse than ridiculous: it was dangerous. What if Orpheus responded? She would have to refuse him and he would be rightfully furious. She got to her feet and stood staring into nothing. Yes, she would have to refuse him because of that stupid conversation they had had about love. If she tempted him, he would think she was offering more than a few days or weeks of easy pleasure and pleasant companionship. How she regretted those words, meant at the time to fend him off and prove she was not a whore. Now she was in a trap.
There could be no permanent relationship between a Greek and a witch. Orpheus might be able to hide his Gift because, even without it, his music was so enchanting that no one would notice a little extra compulsion. The other Gifted among the crew had the same kind of ability, like Lynkeus’ keen sight. The moment she really showed the Power she had, Orpheus’ countrymen and his own training probably would insist she must be sacrificed. Perhaps she could explain that to Orpheus, admit she found him attractive and would like to be his woman—as long as it was safe… Eurydice thought about that for a while, then sighed again.
In any case, it would be singularly unwise to go apart with Orpheus to make love. There was something about a coupling pair, a kind of invisible miasma, that communicated itself to other’s and often woke their senses. Although the other men accepted that she “belonged” to Orpheus, most were not stirred to envy because that sensual aura was lacking. Once more Eurydice sighed. Then she started off upstream, her eyes searching the banks and the nearby ground for edible plants.
Enchanted Fire Page 10
