Heroes

by Stephen Fry

  Jason nodded. He was content to keep his distance. He had never seen a dragon before. Were they all as huge as this one? It raised its head high and gazed down at them.

  Medea stepped forward. The dragon hissed. Medea threw up a hand and sang out some words that Jason could not quite hear. The dragon lowered its head so that it was level with Medea. She stared deep into the vertical slits of its yellow eyes, the eyes that could never close, chanting her incantations all the while. The dragon froze, its mouth sagged open and great strings of drool dropped to the ground. The grass and moss below hissed and steamed as the venomous saliva hit them. Medea took dried herbs, roots and flowers from her satchel and rubbed them into a ball in the palms of her hands. The dragon was frozen and immobile, but Jason could hear the slow panting of its breath.

  Medea pushed the ball into the dragon’s open mouth. It fizzed on its tongue; with a sigh, the creature lurched and tottered to the ground.

  ‘He’s sleeping,’ said Medea. ‘Now let’s take the Fleece and go.’

  ‘But where is it?’ said Jason, gazing up at the oak in confusion.

  ‘The other side, you idiot.’

  Jason moved round the trunk. The Fleece was hanging from the lower branches, but still too high for him to reach.

  Medea leapt on his shoulders, reached up and threw it down.

  It was a fleece of rough and ragged sheep’s wool, of the kind you might see draped on the hedges of any field. But it was gold, so very gold. It shimmered when Jason stroked it. A million sparkles of light glittered as he ran his fingers through its shining fibres.

  ‘Plenty of time to play with it when we are safely aboard your ship,’ said Medea. ‘Come!’

  They stepped round the sleeping dragon and, hand in hand, ran laughing down the grove, the Golden Fleece slung across Medea’s shoulders like a peasant’s shawl.

  ESCAPE FROM COLCHIS

  The Argo floated down the Phasis, the river’s current strong enough to speed them away from any pursuit.

  The crew had found their ship securely hidden under her camouflage netting. When the Argonauts saw Jason and Medea coming through the dark and the Fleece gleaming and streaming they had let out a great cheer. Now, as they glided down the river, each Argonaut came up in turn to touch it.

  When he had finished feeling it, Orpheus had tears in his eyes. ‘Men will sing of this through the ages,’ he said, ‘but let me be the first.’

  He tuned his lyre and softly sang as the other Argonauts approached one by one to admire the Fleece.

  The grandsons of Aeëtes and young Absyrtus were open-mouthed with astonishment.

  ‘Only seen it from a distance,’ they said.

  ‘Never thought this day would come.’

  Nestor was as profoundly moved as Orpheus. ‘Yet there is a long distance, and a long time, between here and now and Iolcos,’ he warned. ‘Aeëtes will surely pursue us. They say he has a navy second only to that of Minos of Crete.’

  Jason had long grown accustomed to relying on Nestor’s wisdom. When everyone had finished paying homage to the Fleece, he took Nestor and Ancaeus the helmsman aside.

  ‘I agree that Aeëtes will come after us with all the force he can muster,’ Jason said. ‘What do you advise we do about it?’

  Nestor considered awhile before speaking, a habit of his that irked many but which guaranteed that nothing foolish ever came from his mouth. ‘Aeëtes is certain to discover that the Symplegades are no longer blocking the Bosporus. News that the passage between the Propontis and the Euxine Sea lies open will have spread through all the ports and towns in the region. He will pursue us there. Therefore we should go another way.’

  Jason stared. ‘What do you mean “another way”? There is no other way. The Euxine is an inland sea. The Bosporus is the only connection with the Propontis and thence the Hellespont, the Mediterranean and home.’

  ‘What about the Istros?’ said Nestor.

  ‘The Istros!’ Jason leaned forward and kissed Nestor on the forehead. ‘You are a genius, my friend.’

  ‘Yes,’ cried Ancaeus. ‘Istros! Why didn’t I think of that?’

  The Istros was a long river that flowed through many strange kingdoms to the north of Greece. It rose somewhere in the barbarian west, but its great delta drained through the northwestern shore of the Euxine Sea. We call it the Danube today.

  Nestor explained to the two helmsmen, Ancaeus and Euphemus, that they could sail up the Istros, across the top of Thrace and westwards along the river courses almost to Galatia; from here they could voyage south along the western coast of Italy, round Sicily and the Ionian islands, thence to the Peloponnese and north along the east coast of Greece for Thessaly and Iolcos. This would entirely fool Aeëtes, who would be certain to go the direct route – the route the Argo had taken on her outward voyage.fn63

  They reached the port of Phasis without incident, stocked the Argo with as much food, water and other necessary provisions as they could barter or buy and, barely four days after Jason and Medea had passed Aeëtes’ three tests and won the Fleece, they were sailing across the Euxine Sea heading northwest for the Istrian delta.

  By the afternoon of the first day out from Phasis, it was apparent that a ship was in hot pursuit behind them. Keen to disguise their intentions, they changed course, as if heading to the Bosporus. Medea looked back and recognised the prize galley of the Colchian fleet.

  ‘It is my father,’ she said. ‘His is the fastest ship in the world. It has three banks of oars.’

  ‘He’s gaining on us,’ said Jason. ‘Damn. We’ll have to turn side on and fight.’

  ‘He has a catapult on board. He will happily toss balls of flaming pitch onto our decks. He stops at nothing to get what he wants.’

  ‘But he would burn the Fleece along with us.’

  ‘That wouldn’t worry him. He’s fighting for pride, not the Fleece. But fear not, my darling Jason, I stop at nothing too.’

  She took Jason’s face in her hands and kissed him hard. ‘Back in a moment.’

  Jason turned back to watch the Colchian ship bearing relentlessly down upon them. It was close enough now for him to be able to make out the brightly coloured prow, dipping and rising in the waves. It was painted to look like the face of the guardian dragon of the Golden Fleece.

  Medea returned to the sternpost, arms around her young brother Absyrtus.

  ‘Look, there’s daddy’s ship,’ she said, pointing.

  Absyrtus’s eyes widened. ‘He’s going to be so cross when he sees me.’

  ‘Upset rather than cross, I think,’ said Medea, cutting open the boy’s throat with one swift stroke of a curved knife.

  Jason stared in horror as the blood gushed from the child. ‘Medea!’

  ‘The only way,’ said Medea. ‘Fetch me an axe, and hurry – they’re gaining on us.’

  The boy’s head was the first to go overboard. It bobbed along in the Argo’s wake. Jason and Medea watched as the ship of Aeëtes slowed down, raised its oars and came to a stop.

  ‘He loved that boy,’ said Medea, looking on with satisfaction. ‘He will never allow his soul to go the underworld unless the body has been purified and all proper funeral rites observed.’

  Jason said nothing. Medea was beautiful. She was devoted to him. But there were limits. Surely there were limits.

  THE JOURNEY HOME

  By the time the last pieces of Absyrtus had been dropped into the water at careful intervals, Aeëtes’ ship was far behind, out of sight below the horizon. Night had fallen when Jason and Ancaeus felt confident in altering course back to their original destination.

  A week later the Argo slipped safely and unobserved through the marshes that fringed the mouth of the Istros and entered into Thrace.

  Their route swung, as Nestor had explained when he told the other Argonauts of his plan, in a wide arc west and north through the strange kingdom of the Hyperboreans – through what we would call Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Sloveniafn64 – until they str
uck south around Italy and the Peloponnese.

  The talking figurehead, though, began telling Jason that they had no chance of reaching Iolcos.

  ‘What are you saying?’ said Jason. ‘The Colchians lost us weeks ago, there’s fair weather ahead and our route is clear. What can stop us?’

  ‘The gods can stop you,’ said the figurehead. ‘The weather may be fair, but your behaviour has been foul.’

  Jason looked over his shoulder to be sure that Medea was not within earshot. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You know very well,’ tutted the figurehead. ‘A blood crime of the most abominable kind has been committed. Did you think such a thing could go unpunished? If you fail to cleanse yourselves, Zeus and Poseidon will send storms and sea serpents until there is nothing left of this ship and its crew. Nothing left but me, of course …’

  ‘How can we cleanse ourselves?’

  ‘Put in at Aeaea and seek the help of the sorceress Circe.’

  ‘What a good idea,’ said Medea, who had heard everything. She had very sharp hearing. ‘She is my aunt and knows even more than me about potions, enchantments and cleansing rites.’

  Circe welcomed them on her home island of Aeaea with warmth and genuine happiness. Wolves and lions came out with her to meet them, but they proved to be as tame as domestic dogs and cats, licking them and nuzzling around their ankles. She lived a lonely life, taking most of her pleasure in turning sailors unfortunate enough to land on Aeaea into domestic animals.fn65

  Circe took great delight in performing the rituals, chanting the appropriate incantations and piacular prayers, for the purification of her niece and the proper propitiation of the gods.

  Overnight, however, the truth of what Medea had done was revealed to Circe in a dream and the following morning she cursed them off her island with shrieks of disgust.

  ‘In the name of all that is holy, he was your younger brother, my nephew! It is only because I fear committing a blood crime like yours that I let you leave unharmed!’ she yelled after them. ‘Go and never return!’

  ‘I thought that went rather well,’ said Medea sweetly as they sailed south, hugging Italy’s western coast.

  They were upon Sirenum Scopuli, the Siren Rock, before they knew it. The strains of sweet music were wafted into the ears of everyone on board as they approached. Members of the crew began to snatch at the air trying to catch the sound, like puppies snapping at butterflies. They stood at the gunwales of the Argo and leaned out, straining to get closer.

  Jason was ready for his – ‘Now!’ he shouted to Orpheus, who stood high on the foredeck, picked up his lyre and began to sing his own song.

  The two most enticing sounds in the world intermingled. Orpheus’s music, being in closer proximity to the Argonauts, won the day. He had been saving a special song, his most perfect, for just this occasion. Jason and the others turned away from the Sirens on their rock and let the rippling of Orpheus’s lyre and the sublime tones of his voice enter their minds and hearts.

  Only one member of the crew was immune to the competing sounds of Orpheus’s lyre. A Sicilian king named BUTES had been recruited solely for his prodigious skill with bees. Each time the Argo had occasion to put in to shore he would go inland to hunt out honey, giving the crew a chance to sweeten their often unappetising rations. The song of the Sirens, no one later could explain why, maddened him more violently and uncontrollably than anyone else and, wresting himself free of the others, he threw himself overboard and started swimming towards their island.

  The tender beauty of the Sirens’ music was inversely proportional to the vicious cruelty of their purpose. They sang to entice sailors – birds and wildlife too – and draw them onto the rocky cliffs of their home. They would hop from their crags to the wrecked ships and feast on their transfixed crewmen. Orpheus’s competing song had frustrated them, but when they saw Butes floundering on the waves they knew that they would at least have something to eat that day.

  Even that small snack was to be denied them, however. Aphrodite swept down, whisked Butes from the waves and carried him to Lilybaeum in his home island of Sicily.fn66

  As soon as the Argo sailed clear of the Siren Rock, Jason was faced with a difficult choice. To the west lay the channel that passed between the fearsome SCYLLA and CHARYBDIS. Scylla was a dreadful six-headed monster who would lean down from a cliff to pluck up and eat six crew members of any ship that passed too close to her. But try to steer too far away from her cliff and a vessel would be pulled into the path of Charybdis, a fast churning whirlpool that could suck down an entire ship.

  Instead, Jason ordered Ancaeus to veer away, avoiding Scylla and Charybdis altogether, but taking them towards another danger – the infamous Planctae, or Wandering Rocks.fn67 These were turbulent waters close to Mount Etna, whose fury caused them violently to froth and churn between dangerous reefs, bubbling with flame and smoke.

  Once the Argo was caught in their currents, there could be no turning back. Ancaeus fought to steer as they were flung towards streaming black volcanic boulders. The Argo was a large ship but now she was nothing more than a toy boat hurtling through foaming white rapids.fn68 Above the roar of the torrent, Jason could hear the precise nagging tones of the figurehead. When he was finally able to make out what it was saying, he pulled Ancaeus round and yelled in his ear.

  ‘Don’t try to steer! Let go!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Let go of the tiller bar. Just let go!’

  ‘Are you mad?’

  ‘Do as I say!’

  Ancaeus obeyed. In truth controlling the tiller had been like trying to catch a tiger by the tail, and he was more than glad to let go and commend his spirit to heaven.

  They were all in the hands of the gods now – and that was just as the figurehead intended. Hurled this way and that, slammed sideways and spun round and round, plunging down and rearing up, the ship somehow threaded her way through without once touching a rock. When they were at last vomited out of the mad ferment into calm sea, the Argonauts fell to their knees and thanked the gods for their miraculous salvation.

  All but one.

  ‘That was fun,’ said Medea, looking back at the smoke, steam and spray raising from the reefs. ‘Can we have another go?’

  ‘It was Hera, Queen of Heaven,’ said Jason. ‘She guided us through. When next we make landfall, we must sacrifice a great heifer to her.’

  They made landfall a few days later, on the green and fertile island of Scheria, home of the Phaeacian people.fn69 Their king and queen, ALCINOUS and ARETE, welcomed them, feasted them and provided them with the animals that allowed them to send up their grateful prayers and sacrifices to Hera for their deliverance from the Planctae.

  They had been on Scheria a week when five strange ships dropped anchor in the harbour. Ships from Colchis. Aeëtes himself was not on board, but their leader presented himself before King Alcinous and insisted that Medea be handed over.

  ‘She is the property of King Aeëtes, not of the pirate Jason. Aeëtes demands her return.’

  ‘But my understanding is that Medea does not wish to go back to Colchis.’

  ‘It is the wishes of the king her father that are paramount. She and this Jason are not man and wife. She is also in possession of a valuable and sacred object belonging to our kingdom.’

  ‘What object is that?’

  The deputation conferred. ‘We are not at liberty to state.’

  In another part of the palace Medea was kneeling before Queen Arete.

  ‘You do not understand how cruel my father is,’ she wept. ‘He is a monster.’

  ‘But Jason sounds like a monster too,’ said Arete. ‘The Colchians tell us that he kidnapped your young brother and chopped him up, dropping pieces into the sea. Can you really want to live with a man like that?’

  ‘That is a lie!’ sobbed Medea, letting her hair fall over the queen’s feet and waving it backwards and forwards as she wailed. ‘My brother died of fever and Jason was the first to i
nsist we lose valuable time to give him a proper funeral.’

  Arete’s heart was moved. ‘I shall go to my husband immediately,’ she said.

  She arrived at the throne room in time to hear Alcinous delivering his judgement. ‘If Medea is a virgin,’ he ruled, ‘she belongs to her father and must return with the Colchians. If she is not, she must stay with Jason. I have sent for a venerable and wise priestess who lives in the north of our island and who knows how to determine the … er … the state of female parts.’

  Arete left and ran to Medea and Jason. ‘There is no time to lose. I must ask you this. Have you slept together? By which I mean … have you coupled?’

  Jason blushed. ‘We have had no time … on board ship it has hardly been possible …’

  Arete turned to Medea. ‘My dear, are you still intact?’

  Medea dropped her head. For once she had no need to lie. ‘I am.’

  ‘Then tonight you must put that right,’ said Arete. ‘Tomorrow morning a woman will arrive and inspect you. If she finds you are still intact, my husband will deliver you into the hands of the Colchian legation.’

  It was a tableau of rare power and beauty. Jason and Medea spread out the Fleece and made love on its soft and golden wool.

  The next morning the frustrated Colchians departed. Alcinous summoned Jason to his throne room.

  ‘My ships will escort you until you can be sure of your way home,’ said the king. Now that he had made his decision, he was not of a mind to let the Colchians ambush the Argo when they left Scheria.

  The Argonauts sailed under the Phaeacian escort for three days and nights before saluting a grateful farewell and threading their way round the islands of the Ionian Sea.fn70 They neared Crete having sighted no Colchian ships for days, only to be faced by the most extraordinary threat they had yet encountered.

  As they approached Souda Bay great surging waves rocked them until the Argo nearly capsized. On the Cretan shore they saw a huge man … not a man … a machine made to look like a man and formed entirely of bronze. It stamped its great bronze feet up and down and sent waves crashing against the Argo’s hull.