Medea (9 page)

I could not move. She slid closer, her belly rippling over the prickly ilex leaves, and then rose to more than Trioda's height, towering over us. Her mouth opened pink and she flicked a forked tongue as long as my forearm at Trioda and me.

She was patterned like a tortoise-shell, mottled and magnificent. I would have fallen to my knees except Trioda had cautioned me to make no sudden move, lest the guardian be startled. I was awed and terrified at the power of the great goddess, who kept such a creature in subjection to guard her grove.

Trioda opened her basket and produced a bowl, into which she poured milk as prosaically as any housewife. The great head dipped, the tongue flicked, and the guardian drank.

'You may touch her,' said Trioda. Trembling, I laid one hand on the smooth scales, and felt them not wet as I had expected from their sheen, but dry as a pine-cone, slippery as enamel, and warm.

The custom of serpents is to sleep through the winter. They are creatures of two gods, belonging to both Ammon and the Mother. During the summer when Ammon is exalted, they worship him. During the winter they seek the warmth of the Mother's breast, in darkness under the ground. To see this creature awake and alive in the cold winds of autumn, when the leaves fall ragged into the river, the sky lowers and herdsmen bring in their flock, was as astonishing as her size.

'She is unique,' said Trioda softly, as the guardian drank delicately, flicking her grey tongue into the milk. 'There is no other serpent in the land of Colchis. She has grown, daughter, since last I saw her - yes, see? She has lately cast her skin.'

Hanging in rags between two close-grown holly trees was the serpent's cast cloak; complete, even to the scales over the eyes.

'Walk slowly, daughter, gather that skin, and bring it to me,' said my mistress, and I did as I was bid. The skin was dry, thicker than papyrus, and very light.

'Strip and don the skin, daughter,' ordered Trioda, and I did so. Against my own human skin the scales of Ophis dragged and scratched, like the glass paper which craftsmen use to burnish bronze. Yet it was smooth over my breasts and so cold that all my nerves flared, and I flushed and then shivered. I was desperately afraid.

But I was a priestess of Hekate, and she would protect me.

If I was worthy.

It was darkening in the grove. Outside the moon would be rising, Selene, who is also a maiden. Trioda ordered me to lie down. Then my mistress knelt, very slowly, and thrust something against my mouth. It was alive, no more than a handful, and it was clammy and squirming. I knew what it was. A toad, companion of Hekate, a sacred creature. I forced myself to kiss its slimy back. My lips numbed instantly. I felt something very strange beginning to happen to me.

Ophis' discarded covering, which had been cold, warmed into life, wrapping me as securely as my own skin. The chill receded, and the fear grew. I felt the snakeskin curl and enfold me, so that my limbs were confined and then forgotten. For a moment, I rolled helplessly on the leaves. Then I found the muscles and nerves of Ophis. I moved as Ophis moved, by shifting my scales. I saw as she saw, through the strange lidless eyes which know no night.

The ilex grove reddened to blood, against which a bright figure glowed; Trioda the priestess of Hekate, burning brighter than a hearth-fire. Little lights moved on the ground, and I leaned forward, counterbalancing my weight with my tail, flicking my tongue to taste the air, which was full, not of scents but of vibrations. The world sang.

In Ophis' ears we all had our own tone, our blood hummed through our veins, and our life felt warm or cold in the air. The toad which Trioda held burned cool, dependent on the temperature of the air; a greenish glow. In the branches of the trees were the points of light which were roosting birds. They were golden.

Then there was the bulk of the great serpent herself, turning to regard me. Ophis was a column of white fire, so hot I could hardly bear to look at her, and I could not close my serpent's eyes. I heard her shift over the crackling leaves, and her tongue flicked out at me, tasting my breath. I could not speak while in serpent form, but in my mind I chanted the invocation to the Goddess for protection, as a weight passed over my body, a monstrous weight. There was an instant of blind terror, then she twined herself around me.

Sweet, sweet! The touch of scale on scale thrilled through my nerves. The clasp was strong but not crushing, her touch was delicate and soft as water. She slid and I twined myself around her, and I burned too, as bright as the great serpent. I would have cried for joy but I had no tears. The inexorable embrace melted us together, one body, serpent and priestess.

This was the mystery of the grove, which Trioda had brought me to experience, and it was cruelly sweet. I wanted to lie with Ophis forever, on flesh, all skin, but then I was blinded by a starburst, and became Medea again, lying on the dead leaves, slick with sweat and weeping because the joy had departed, leaving me shaking and vomiting into the thorns.

Ophis withdrew from me. I heard her overturn the empty milk-pot and slither away to the other side of the grove, deeper into darkness.

Trioda lifted me to my feet and wrapped my priestess' gown around me. It was dark. She led me into the marsh again, and gave me water in which
menthe
had been steeped. I immediately threw it up again. Trioda let me lean on her shoulder, something she seldom did, as I coughed.

'That was the mystery, Medea,' she said.

'Oh, lost,' I mourned, shuddering through all my body.

'Not lost forever,' she said calmly. 'You will join with her again, at the festival of the grove, at this time every year. For you are the guardian's chosen one. She has accepted you. Be happy, Princess! You are fortunate.'

I followed Trioda along the winding paths through the marsh. As my nausea retreated, a thought occurred to me.

'Mistress, if She Who Is A Serpent had not accepted me, what would have happened?'

'You would have died,' said Trioda. 'She would have killed you.'

 

I bathed in warm water, as I had been instructed. The scales had made razor-thin cuts along my belly, back, breast and thighs and the outsides of my arms. They made the water pink and I sluiced until I was bleeding freely, lest any contamination from the floor of the grove had entered my blood. I was still cold, though the memory of the embrace of Ophis tingled along my nerves.

My body, to which I paid little attention, was changing. I had grown taller. There was a scribble of hair under my arms and between my thighs. My chest, which had been flat, was curving with breasts and the nipples rose under my touch.

I shuddered anew and extinguished my new body under a wide linen towel. I was approaching the first bleeding. Now I must watch the moon and, in her cycles, my blood would spring. I would become penetrable, able to conceive, and would need to be ever more vigilant. No more could Medea play innocent games with Melanion the son of Phrixos. I was the dedicated maiden of the Dark Mother, and no man must possess me.

I dried myself, lay down in my bed, and hugged Kore and Scylla, who lay either side of me. No rapist would get to Medea over my guardians. The serpent of the grove had accepted me, and no man would ever lie with me.

I knew I had wept in my sleep, because I woke with Scylla licking my face.

Two weeks later I was tending the sacred fire with slivers of fungus. The temple was cold. I wore two black tunics and a black gown and cloak and my feet were clad in leather boots, and I was still cold. I could not seem to get warm. Scylla lay across the threshold - she could never believe that humans could not see as well in the dark as she - and I heard Trioda stumble over her as she came in.

'Daughter, make a light. The old women were right. This will be a winter to freeze the heart.'

I lit the big oil lamp and the flame flared then settled, casting a pleasant orange light. My mistress cast off her own cloak, speckled with snow, and shut the door.

Trioda rubbed her elbows and commented, 'You look pale, daughter. Build up the hearth fire. Medea? Are you ill?'

'I'm cold,' I muttered, laying logs on the ever-burning hearth, then kneeling and spreading my cloak to catch the heat as it flowed out from the burning wood. Trioda sat down in her chair and I leaned on her knee.

'Where does it hurt, daughter?' It was so unlike her to show concern for me that I felt tears prick my eyelids.

'All over, Mistress.'

'Hmm. Sit by the fire, Princess.' She lifted me into her chair and inspected my eyes, tested my forehead for fever, felt down over my body, and then pushed a hand into the hollow of my stomach. Something cramped and I winced. Trioda smiled.

'Maiden, you are maiden indeed, and about to sacrifice to Selene. A very fortunate time indeed, past the dead of winter and the central mystery of Ammon. For the bull ploughing will coincide with your third bleeding, Medea, and that ties you to power.

'Come, maiden. I will make you an infusion and prepare cloths to absorb your blood. You share the fate of all women, Princess, do not weep.'

I could not explain why I was crying, except that I felt suddenly ordinary, not a princess or a priestess, just a common girl with a pain in her belly.

Trioda said sharply, 'A common fate is to be gloried in, daughter. All women share the body of the goddess, who is Hekate, the Dark Mother, She Who Meets. No woman is apart. That is the sin of men, who consider that they are superior to their own mortality. Kings in the glory of their pride fall prey to gripes, to fevers, to wounds. No woman could ever think that she was apart from her own body and cycle, disconnected from the earth and the moon.' She busied herself with making an infusion of the heat-inducing root which comes from Libya, and I sat by the fire and stared into the flames, feeling the pain gather in my back and belly and blood trickle warm between my thighs.

While I bled, I lay in the temple, on a pallet before the fire, and Trioda tended me. The dogs, grateful for the warmth of the fire, lay sleeping on either side of me, warm bodies sure of their integrity, which had deserted mine. Trioda instructed me while I lay slightly drugged and forbidden to touch anything.

'You are in a sacred state for the first three bleedings, Princess. The goddess' touch is tentative, at first, testing your strength. Therefore, as you will have noticed, daughter, you are weak, clumsy, pained and a little lost. But that will pass. In future, Medea, if you have dark spells to cast or poisons to compound, the week before your bleeding is the time to make them. Then women are full of black energy; ideally, a little of the blood should be mingled with the poison. In the five days before the moon possesses us, we are moon-powerful, crackling with power. Then, however, healing spells will be weak and may even be harmful.

'Compound your healing brews after the blood has gone. For you are cyclical now, daughter, not steadfast like a child. Your moods will flow with the moon.'

'What if I need to make a healing potion, and I am in the wrong cycle?' I asked drearily from my nest of sheepskins by the fire.

'Then you must concentrate, daughter, and if you need to change your state for some very urgent reason, and not just a desire to be relieved of the goddess' blessing, then you may take this.'

'What is it?' I asked, eyeing the flask marked with the triple seal.

'It is made of certain berries, which I will show you, and the urine of pregnant women. It mimics in its action the moon's cycle, and can alter your state; but it is very venomous. Use it only at great need. It will stop the flow of blood, dry up the fountains of the goddess. It can prevent conception.'

'This is the potion used by the queen?'

'It is. We would use it, perhaps, if a great plague struck Colchis - do you remember the plague at Poti, when the priestesses went down the river to treat the stricken? You were five, I think.'

I remembered seeing the river barges loaded with black-clad women, and hearing the wailing which followed them. Each temple of Hekate is tended by two or three women; there are many in the city of Colchis. The women in their sable garments, I remembered them, like a flock of crows. I nodded.

'It was haemorrhagic fever, Medea, which came from the sea, like all evil things. We went, all of us, to tend the fallen, bury the dead, comfort the dying. We carried with us all the herbs that we knew would be of use, though an unknown fever is the most alarming thing a healer can face. Each one of us risked death and the goddess' disfavour by taking the potion before we left, so that we should heal, not curse. Ah, I remember, little Medea, I left you with Chalkiope and you cried after me.'

I did not tell her that I had cried not because Trioda was leaving but because I did not want to stay with Chalkiope.

'How did we defeat the fever?' I asked.

She settled back in her chair and looked into the fire.

'We tried all the usual compounds - feverfew, marsh leaf, and then all-heal and the Libyan herbs. Nothing worked. The fever burned them away, skin and bone they were after the third day, and so they died. Then we tried sun-herbs - but that was not successful. The pirates had brought it, the Achaean pirates trading for gold. Your father ordered the river closed with chains, so that no boat would bring death down Phasis to slay in his own city. We despaired and called on the Black Mother to relieve us of our lives, for we were weary. The priests of Ammon smoked the streets with their offerings. When I think of that time, all I can smell is burning bull's flesh and the stink of death.'

'Mistress, what happened? Did we find a cure?'

'No cure, daughter, but as I meditated in the temple of the Mother I recalled that some herbs can stop digestion altogether, and that would be a boon, for the sufferer's guts ran fluid and they could retain no food or even water. So I compounded the Egyptian poppy with henbane and fed it to the plague-struck, and although it did not destroy the fever, it stopped the flux. With careful nursing, the stricken lived. When more lived than died I lay down in the temple and slept for the first time in a week.'