Medea - Kerry Greenwood The Delphic Women

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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.'

      'A great feat, Mistress,' I said with respect. 'Did you find the cause of the fever?'

      'Poti has too much contact with the outside. It is on the sea and many strangers come there. The people had left their faith, seduced by foreign ways, and thus had earned the enmity of our gods. Ammon sent the burning fever, and Hekate the watery humour. After the city had been cleansed of foreigners - they all died, for we did not tend them -then the gods smiled on Poti once more, content with their warning. No strange ships' crews can leave the narrow strip of houses and taverns along the sea, now. They are confined in their influence, and Poti is healthy. How do you feel now, daughter?'

      'Strange. But better.' I leaned up on one elbow. Kore complained briefly, scratched an itchy ear, and lay down again - she was serving as my pillow.

      'Good.' Most unusually, she stroked my forehead. With my moon-bleed, a softness had come to my mistress, who had always been distant with me.

      'Tell me a tale,' I dared to ak, as Scylla wriggled closer into my arms, her warm back pressing pleasantly into my sore stomach. The snow flowed down outside the temple, muffling her voice, and the fire burned up hot and bright. We had a great store of fuel, cut by sweating labourers in the forests and hauled into the heat and Trioda's voice underlay my quietness.

       There was a great queen, Cerlithe of the Fortunate Island, a place many day's journey distant, at the back of the north wind. She is the mother of Ishtar, Isis, whom the Achaeans call Aphrodite; the old woman, the crone, Hekate our own Dark Mother. But in those places they call her Cerlithe.

       She was a woman of knowledge and sorcery. She began a powerful working for the sake of her son, for whom she would risk sanity and life, to make a potion of inspiration for him, so that the gods would breathe wisdom and power into his mouth.

      The fire flickered. I closed my eyes. The pain in my back and belly had ebbed under her influence. Her voice was even and low, blending with the hiss of falling snow outside, until it seemed to be part of the darkness.

      Many days Cerlithe gathered and distilled herbs. Many days she laboured, first making the clay mould and then smelting the metal. She called upon many gods, pleading for their help, and the gods gave their help, because she was a woman skilled and commanding. The cauldron was made, a bronze cauldron such as we, too, know how to construct. Such a krater can do many things - with the help of the gods. It can make potent remedies to heal the sick and soothe wounds. It can make poisons of such venom that they must be handled through five layers of leather. It can make the acid that bites a design into metal.

      And there is one other thing that such a cauldron can do.

      But in the making she had exhausted her energy. For a priestess puts some of herself, her own essence, into everything she makes, and the cauldron was a mighty task, even for such as she. So she bade a child stir the cauldron while she slept, and keep the fire stoked; and thus was her ruin and a strange making.

      I was almost asleep, lapped in warmth, but something of Trioda's horror crept into my mind. I looked up at her, lying still so as not to disturb the hounds.

      'What ruin, Mistress?'

       While the priestess slept, three drops flew from the cauldron and fell on the child's finger, scalding the skin. He sucked his finger. Thus her year's work was wasted, and the inspiration she had designed for her son stolen, gone into another.

       She woke, and in her rage, transformed, as you, daughter, were transformed into Ophis. The boy was so terrified that he used his stolen gift to fly from her just rage, and turned into a hare and ran for his life.

      'And Cerlithe?'

       She turned into a hound and hunted him. They say the chase lasted for days. He turned into a fish, and she dived after him as an otter. He flew up from the water as a starling, and she swooped on him as a hawk. As a frog he hid beneath a lily leaf; as a heron her beak stabbed for him, seeking his life. He flew as a hawk; she pursued him as an eagle. Whatever he did, he could not escape her.

      'What happened in the end, Mistress?' I asked, imagining the sleek flash of scale and fur, the blend of claws and hands and paws, flowing like water in the green meadow beyond the north wind.

      'He fell from a tree into a heap of wheat as an ear of wheat, and thought himself safe.'

      'So he escaped with his stolen blessings?' I was outraged.

      'No, daughter,' Trioda's voice was rich with satisfaction. 'She transformed herself into the shape of a hen, clawed through the heaped grain, caught him and swallowed him.'

      'So he was dead?'

      'No, Medea. She carried him for nine moons and bore him in her own image; the rebel and thief reborn as poet and singer. They called him Radiant, the priest of Apollo, son of Orpheus, the sweet singer.'

      'And her own child, Mistress, for whom she brewed the miraculous potion?'

      'His fate was hard. All fates are ruled, not by Zeus or Hekate but by Ate, and she is unaccountable. But, daughter, your lesson is this. Women's magic cannot be avoided, for it is made of the earth and the fire, of sky and water. The thief could not survive his theft unchanged, and finally she incorporated him as her acolyte.'

      'Mistress,' I acknowledged.

      'And that cauldron has this property. Renewal. If a great priestess and blessed of Hekate is willing to put her whole being into the spell, then a dead creature can be resurrected, and an old woman become young again.'

      'Then why have we not done this?' I asked, sleepily.

      'The price of Hekate's gift of life is death, daughter. It would require something very important - something so imperative that the priestess would challenge Fate and Time to defy them - to make it. Few human objectives are that important, daughter. Now sleep, Medea. I hope that in your life you will never have to make such a choice. For to make the cauldron of renewal needs skill and wit, and most of a woman's life force, and Hekate may need you for other purposes.'

      I slipped into a drowse, pondering on Cerlithe and the thief. One method of conquering a man, it seemed, was to take him whole inside one's body, and bear him again anew.

      Kore snuffled me, and we settled into sleep.

      --- VI ---

      NAUPLIOS

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