The Hadassah Covenant

by Robert Holdstock

  Jason was unsure about him.

  ‘An ancestor of mine sailed with you to Colchis in search of the fleece, many hundreds of years ago,’ the youth said.

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘You knew her as Atalanta. She hid her true nature from you, at the time, her true homeland. It would have been dangerous for her, otherwise. You were at war with her country.’

  ‘I remember her,’ Jason said. ‘She went ashore with Hylas at the mouth of the Acheron, soon after Heracles deserted us, looking for the boy. She didn’t return. She didn’t see the fleece. She didn’t take part in the fight at the end.’

  ‘She was going home. She was hitching a ride. As many of your new argonauts will do, she simply stepped into your life, then out of it. But she never stopped talking about the time she’d spent aboard this Argo. I would like to step aboard for a while.’

  ‘And your family has remembered this for more generations than I can imagine?’ Jason was sceptical.

  ‘Where I come from,’ Ullan said pointedly, ‘there’s not a great deal to talk about. A good story lasts. Am I to sail with you?’

  ‘You look skinny.’

  ‘We can’t all be as strong as Heracles, and slim Hylas helped pull his weight, didn’t he? And Tisaminas wasn’t exactly the best at getting the blade into the water, rather than just slapping its surface. So the story goes.’

  ‘Yes,’ Jason said, clearly impressed at the remembered detail. ‘Yes, it’s true. He was a good friend but a hopeless oarsman. Do you have any specialities?’

  Ullan smiled. ‘I can move unseen and unheard through the wildest wood: and bring you supper.’

  ‘A hunter.’

  ‘Am I to come aboard?’

  ‘You are.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  ‘Then it’s “huntress”. My name’s Ullanna.’ She pulled back her hood and blew Jason a cheeky kiss. ‘Just get me south.’

  Jason laughed. ‘With pleasure. There’s nowhere else to go!’

  The only arrival by horse was a Dacian of great stature, a man as old as Jason, his beard a nest of grey, edged with black. He dismounted, leading his horse to where Argo was propped, torchlit and half built. He slapped the unfinished hull.

  ‘Is there room on this ship for a horse?’ he demanded in Jason’s language.

  ‘What can the horse do?’ Jason asked.

  The Dacian laughed dismissively. ‘What can he do? He can gallop, turn on the spot, show fearlessness in battle. He’s faithful to his master, can carry a great weight … without complaint. He eats from the land, minds his own business, makes dung, makes a lot of dung … which is useful. Isn’t it? Some think so, at least. In short, I love this horse.’ He slapped the animal’s broad flank. ‘I certainly won’t go without him.’

  ‘What else can he do?’

  The Dacian glanced at Jason, then looked at his steed again, stroking the dark mane. ‘What else can he do? That’s not enough? Well, he’s warm at night. I can vouch for that. Yes. Very warm. Even in the worst snow, lost on a mountainside, you won’t be cold curled up against his back. And there’s room for a lot of men against my proud horse. A very warm beast!’

  More affectionate stroking.

  ‘What else can he do?’ Jason persisted.

  The Dacian looked irritated. After a long pause he asked quietly, ‘What else did you have in mind?’

  ‘Can he cook? Can he row? Can he sing to keep up our spirits as he gallops? Can he perform magic?’

  The horseman stared impassively at Jason for a moment, then said dryly, ‘I have no idea. It never occurred to me to ask him. I’d hoped strength, warmth and copious dung-making would be enough.’

  ‘Can he placate Poseidon?’

  ‘Poseidon? What’s Poseidon?’

  ‘Sea-god. Bad news when he’s in a temper. Big waves. Broken ships.’

  ‘Now that you mention it,’ the tall man said thoughtfully, ‘he’s a strong swimmer.’

  ‘We don’t need swimmers, we need oarsmen.’

  The Dacian’s stare was withering. ‘He’s a horse. He has no fingers. But is that a coil of rope I see? May I use it?’

  Without waiting for an answer he went to where bales of rope were stacked, ready for lashing the new Argo’s timbers. He tied two lengths around a thick-trunked and deep-rooted tree at the edgewood, then ran it back to his horse, twining the cord crudely around the beast’s shoulders. Turning the horse to face the lake he slapped its haunches.

  ‘Go for a swim.’

  The animal cantered to the lake’s edge, then stepped carefully through the icy shallows, soon reaching its depth and beginning to strike at the water. It took the full tension of the rope and at that moment I expected to see the animal stop and struggle back to the bank, but it kept on swimming, and behind us the tall tree creaked, bent, complained, groaned, then uprooted, crashed down, was dragged over the ground, its branches scattering us and whipping the side of Argo as it went.

  The Dacian called to his horse, which turned for the shore.

  Jason stared at the fallen tree, then nodded to the other man.

  ‘We’ll make room for the horse.’

  ‘Good. He’s called Ruvio. My name’s Rubobostes. I’m pretty useful too.’

  * * *

  Blush, Spark and Gleam were in the past; with Tree Fire the lake had cracked and begun its melt. Now the Opening Eye watched us mistily, the sun rising, half visible, semi-cyclopean and seemingly sleepy, for a prolonged period of every day.

  ‘Kainohooki has kicked away the door of his winter tomb,’ the mothers told their children. ‘He has slept for so long, digesting his last meal, now he’s lighting his farts to brighten the day. He has bear to hunt, reindeer to tame, fish to catch, and enniki voytazi to spear, hang up and dry out for the witches to use. Kainohooki is a friend.’

  I’d heard it all before. True, the shores of the lake, and the melting ponds, began to smell rank, the first outsurge of trapped stink from the long winter.

  I’d seen such marsh odour catch fire and burn with shocking, tragic results—boats burned to cinders as they were being constructed on muddy slipways, heron-hunters roasted alive as they lurked in the rushes, waiting for their prey, though this tended to occur more during the high summer on the river plains—so I felt a slight relief that only Kainohooki, and not the Pohjoli themselves, indulged in sparking their winter emissions.

  * * *

  Life came back to Argo suddenly and unexpectedly, when the spark of the new sun was at its brightest.

  Lemanku and two others were working inside the hull. The new keel had been laid, a fine piece of Pohjolan birch, beautifully carved and trimmed, part of it hollowed to contain the stub of the old Dodonian oak whose strength had taken Jason on his earlier voyage. Lemanku had gone to the spirit grove of Mielikki herself, the Lady of the Forest, and after a long ceremony, and the involvement of much drumming and singing, had cut down one of the tall ancestor birches. Mielikki would be our new protectress.

  Jason was somewhere at a distance, still recruiting, and I was helping the Dacian shape an oar. Fire burned around us, four dogs were playing noisy chase with each other, and the ringing of metal being forged was a steady, ruthless aggravation to the ears.

  Everything stopped, all movement, all sound, when Lemanku’s howl of pain and fear split the cold air. Startled, I stared at the half-hull of the ship. Lemanku came tumbling over the side, still howling. His eyes were raw, bloody pits. He crawled down the ramp, then stumbled towards the lake.

  Behind him, one of the Pohjolan workmen shouted, ‘He was in the prow. Something ripped him!’

  Lemanku, in his eagerness to finish fitting the keel, had disobeyed Jason’s strict instruction: that only he would work in this old and dangerous part of the vessel.

  I ran towards the wounded man. Lemanku fell into the lake, splashing his face with his hands. The water around him boiled! Still crying out in terror, he forced himself to kneel. A pattern r
adiated out from him, like snakes arrowing across the lake surface into the distance, streams of movement that vanished from him, flowing towards the far woods.

  Something else made the water bubble, the rising of the broad flat head of a voytazi. I ran quickly to Lemanku, just as the cold fish mouth was opening to strike. I was ready to sacrifice a little age to protect the shipwright, but the demon withdrew, perhaps remembering me from my dive, many days in the past.

  As best I could I helped the heavy man to his feet. He was sick as he stood, but was quiet, now, water and blood streaming from his punctured eyes. Lemanku’s days of seeing were over.

  ‘Come to the fire,’ I urged him, and he let me lead him back to warmth and relative safety.

  ‘The spark has gone,’ he whispered, shuddering, as he sipped a bowl of broth. ‘She was so fast. She came out of nowhere. Such shimmering, brilliant woods. She came out of nowhere and took the spark away. Only night. Only dark. She’ll kill me if I go back aboard…’

  She? Did he mean Argo? Gentle, protecting Argo had done this terrible thing? I couldn’t believe it, but Lemanku added, ‘I must go to her grove. I must beg for my life…’

  ‘Whose grove?’

  ‘Mielikki. Mielikki is in the ship, now. Jason wanted such good wood, and birch from that grove is the finest. I thought she would spare just the one tree. Such good birch. I thought I’d done everything right. I’ll pay for that mistake with my life as well as the dark. You all will. You’ll need gentle gods to help you if you sail in that ship now.’

  Lemanku’s wife and two daughters arrived, the youngest weeping uncontrollably as she saw her father’s ruined face. His wife attended with quick and methodical efficiency to the wounds, but her eyes, on me, were cold. ‘You should have known. You could have stopped him, your friend, that ghost.’

  She meant Jason.

  ‘Stopped him?’

  ‘He wanted the tree too badly. He tricked this man with charming words. But you … you see further than the rest of us. I can smell it in you. You could have stopped him. That ship will kill you all, now.’

  How quickly she had intuited the situation. Perhaps, unknown to Jason or me, there had been argument after argument in the lodge of this unhappy ship-builder, desperate attempts to persuade him not to take wood from the sacred grove of Mielikki, Lemanku answering that the Lady of the Forest always offered her boughs and trunks for boats. It was the way it was done.

  Boats, yes. Boats for her people. Boats for those who hunted her forests and sailed the lakes and rivers of her own kind. But not ships that had sailed from beyond the Watching Eye. Ships of strangers, with alien spirits in her keel.

  Mielikki was capricious. And she was in Argo, now, and she was not happy.

  I had expected that Jason would respond in a typically Jason manner on hearing what had happened, which is to say with blistering fury and angry recrimination; in fact, he responded in another typically Jason way: with great concern for Lemanku, tempered with the practical observation that: ‘He still knows what he’s doing when it comes to ships, doesn’t he? He can feel his way around the hull, can’t he? If he tells me where to hammer a nail, I’ll hammer the damned nail! Get him better and get him back to work.’

  And he was typically dismissive when it came to the danger posed by the new guardian of Argo. ‘Capricious? They’re all capricious! Tell me something I don’t know. Do you think we couldn’t have sailed to Colchis, stolen the fleece and returned to Iolkos in less than a season and without loss? We could have done it easily if the goddess had been so inclined to let us. She wanted her fun. She was playing an elaborate game with other gods, other spectres, other shadows on the mountain! I learned about such games before I even had my beard. It’s a risk we take on any voyage, and the reason why so few among us are born suited to the challenge. How old did you say you were, Antiokus?’

  ‘Very old.’

  ‘So don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about.’

  I knew very well what he was talking about. I murmured, ‘Odysseus shared your view.’

  ‘Odysseus was arrogant,’ he said quickly, a hard look in his eyes as he took the jibe and turned it back. ‘Odysseus challenged Poseidon’s power and was punished. I’m not challenging … I just say that I know. I know and I accept. I challenged nothing in my life but Medea’s right to my sons. And Medea was a witch, not a goddess. And she’s dead, now, rotten: food for gorse and thistle! I don’t pretend to be better than the gods, Antiokus. You can’t compare me to that fool Odysseus.’

  ‘He was no fool.’

  ‘He was cunning, I accept. But he shouted his mouth off. That makes him … foolish. He deserved his fate.’

  ‘He invited his fate.’

  ‘Deserved, invited, what’s the difference? His strategy—that upturned ship, with its hollow hull, dragged by horses along the beach—yes, it was a trick, and a good one, and it broke the walls of Troy when it was captured and taken inside. He was a clever man. I have no doubt that he worked it out on his own—how to hide men in a ruined ship—in that bright world inside his clever head. I give him his due. But instead of sacrificing to the gods, instead of giving them their undue due, he ignored them. And that is not the behaviour of a clever man … I will never make that same mistake. Are you listening, Mielikki? Help us in our voyage and I’ll cut any throat you want over a fire in a brazen dish! My life on it.’

  Reckless man. I watched him watching me, his face full of strength and determination and challenge. He had been young, when he had quested for the fleece; and Odysseus had been older and wiser and more arrogant. Now Jason was older still, and angry. He had aged, but like wine in a wreck on the sea bed, without sampling life, or being sampled by it. He was a man in two parts: still young for the fight, yet old with thought and cunning. His middle years were hollow, like that broken but cunningly hollowed ship, tethered to horses, which the Trojans had dragged through their walls, only to have it spill out murderous Greeklanders from between its double hull; hollow, perhaps, like Argo herself, with her secret space that so far was denied to us, yet which contained a ghost in a ghostly world of brilliant forest, that could strike and blind any man or woman who came too close.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Departure

  The rebuilding of Argo was finished, though she had not yet been dedicated to her new, protecting goddess. And as if aware of this moment of transition from dead wood to new ship, the first flights of swans came, emerging from the glow of the slowly rising sun itself, silent but for the murmur of their wings. They passed over us, wave after wave of them, black-throated, red-billed, circling out over the frost-speckled forest then gliding in formations back towards the lake. Hundreds of them, aerial spirits signalling the coming of spring. They continued to come down on the water for an hour or more, fighting, squabbling, noisy, waiting for fish and spirit-fish to rise, so that they might feed.

  I stood on the lakeside with Urtha and Jason, in awe of the spectacle. Niiv darted here and there, a child about to burst with some inner delight. The argonauts staggered unkempt and weary from their beds around the shipyard, peering at the swans as they circled and settled to the lake, discussing the likely taste of these big and angry birds.

  The Pohjolis danced and sang; they danced with Niiv’s delight, and the swans’ movements; they sang like the dead arisen, a babbling, ululating celebration, mostly women’s voices, that was so infectious it even had our surly Volkas making tentative and half-humoured dancing motions with each other, a mock in part, but also a signal that they too felt the rising of the new season and the completion of something that ranged beyond the years: our ship! Our Argo.

  She was leaner than the old ship, but she still had the same Greekland grace about her, steep-prowed, single-masted, decorated from prow to stern with shield-shaped patterns, in glorious colours, that represented the new argonauts who would take her oars. Her eyes, on each side of the hull, were canny; she would watch both river and sea with care.

&
nbsp; Niiv brought her uncle, empty-eyed Lemanku, to complete the ship. His sons dragged the oaken image of Mielikki, Lady of the Forest, to the stern of Argo, to the slot for the carved head. Lemanku had worked feverishly at the figure, his fingers feeling their way across the rough wood. He had insisted that the task should be his and his alone.

  The face that regarded us, when the image was raised, was sinister, the eyes narrowed, the nose slender, the mouth half twisted in a smile that might have signified contempt or pity. Hair had been carved, tumbling to the small breasts; bear’s teeth had been fixed around the neck in a protecting band; the skulls of small birds were tied with leather twine, a grim necklace. But feathers and dried flowers ringed the crown, softening the malevolent aspect of the face.

  Gutthas of the Germanii and Urtha of Alba lifted the wooden figurehead into position, and Jason hammered home the wooden pegs to hold her firm. Because of his need for ropes, ropes were tied about the statue, knotted firmly, then coated with pitch.

  The moment Mielikki was in position, Argo shuddered on the ramp, but unlike at Iolkos, she remained calm, not straining at the hawsers. The Dacian’s horse was harnessed and ready to take the strain if the ship struggled before Jason was ready.

  While several of the argonauts hollowed out the bank for a slipway, laying birch rollers to the edge of the lake, Jason and Lemanku prepared an altar for the dedicatory sacrifice, a simple affair of dry wood piled to make a platform at waist height, wide enough to take the offering. Lemanku scratched an image of Enaaki on birch and laid it down; Jason whittled a crude effigy of Apollo and painted it black. He tied swan feathers into a bundle for Athene, last protectress. A bigger offering would be needed for Mielikki.

  To get this, Urtha rowed him out on to the lake in a shallow boat, moving cautiously among the swans. Jason used a rope loop to snare and draw a great bird to the boat, then broke its wings with a paddle. Pursued by angry birds, Urtha struck for the bank, the broken swan dragging in the water, dragged alive to the altar, tied, and prepared for the fire.