Jason and Medeia Read Free

but the shoals of
    home.
    Kreon would hardly have slighted such men in the old
    days,
    they said. They’d burned men’s towns for less.
    The lords of Corinth
    smiled. The king was old, and the wealthiest Akhaian
    alive.
    It gave him a certain latitude, as one of the strangers saw more clearly than the rest. He spoke to his
    neighbors—a fat man,
    womanish-voiced, sow-slack monster of abdomens and
    chins—
    a prominent lord out of Asia known as Koprophoros. His slanted eyes were large and strangely luminous, eyes like a Buddha’s, an Egyptian king’s. His turban was gold, and a blood-red ruby was set on
    his forehead.
    I heard from one who claimed to know, that if he
    stamped his foot
    the ground would open like a magic door and carry him
    at once
    to his palace of coal-black marble. He wore a scimitar so sharp, men said, that if he laid the edge on a tabletop of solid oak, the blade would part it by its own weight. I laughed in my hand when I heard these things, yet
    this was sure:
    he was vast—so fat he was frightening—and painted
    like a harlot,
    and his eyes were chilling, like a ghost’s.
    He said:
    â€œBe patient, friends, with a good man’s eccentricity. We all, poor humble traders, have got our pressing
    affairs—
    accounts to settle, business mounting while we sit here cross-legged, stuffing our bellies like Egypt’s pet baboons, or fat old queens with no use left but ceremony. And yet we remain.” He smiled. “I ask myself, “Why?’
    And with
    a sly wink I respond: ‘His majesty’s daughter, you’ve
    noticed,
    is of marrying age. He’s not so addled in his wits, I hope, as not to have seen it himself.’” The young man
    chuckled, squinted.
    â€œI’ll speak what I think. He’s displayed her to us twice
    at meals,
    leading her in on his arm with only a mump or two by way of introduction. Her robe was bridal white impleached with gold, and resting in her golden hair, a
    crown
    of gold, garnets, and fine-wrought milleflori work. Perhaps he deems it enough to merely—venditate’— not plink out his thought in words. These things are delicate, friends. They require some measure of
    dignity!”
    They laughed. The creature expressed what had come
    into all their minds
    at the first glimpse of Pyripta. What he hinted might
    be so:
    some man whose treasures outweighed other men’s,
    whose thought
    sparkled more keen, or whose gentility stood out white as the moon in a kingdom of feebly blinking stars, might land him a lovelier fish than he’d come here
    baited for—
    the throne of Corinth. Even to the poorest of the foreign
    kings,
    even to the humblest second son of a Corinthian lord, the wait seemed worth it. For what man knows what his
    fate may bring?
    But the winner would not be Koprophoros, I could pretty
    well see,
    whatever his cunning or wealth. Not a man in the hall
    could be sure
    if the monster was female or male—smooth-faced as a
    mushroom, an alto;
    by all indications (despite his pretense) transvestite, or
    gelded.
    And yet he had come to contend for the princess’ hand—
    came filled
    with sinister confidence. I shuddered, looked down at my
    shoes, waiting.
    And so the strangers continued to eat, drank Kreon’s
    wine,
    and talked, observing in the backs of their minds the
    muffled boom
    of thunder, the whisper of rain. Below the city wall, the thistle-whiskered guardians watching the sea-kings’
    ships
    cursed the delay, huddled in tents of sail, and cursed their fellow seamen, hours late in arriving to stand their stint—slack whoresmen swilling down wine like
    the hopeful captains
    packed into Kreon’s hall. The sea-kings knew their
    grumbling—
    talked of that nuisance from time to time, among
    themselves,
    with grim smiles. They sent men down, from time to
    time,
    to quiet the sailors’ mutterings; but they kept their seats. The stakes were