“Who is she?” I demanded. “Your new wife.”
King Creon’s daughter, as it transpired. Oh, what a fine thing that was, I thought, a teenager marrying a man of nearly forty! And very tidy too, since it would make Jason king eventually.
Bile choked me, and my vision swam. But it was what Jason said next that truly destroyed me.
“What an opportunity this is for our boys!” Jason said, his voice just a little too loud. The whites of his eyes shone with false enthusiasm. “Creon has offered to adopt them. Imagine it, Pheres and Mermerus will grow up as princes!”
I stared at Jason slack-jawed, wondering if he truly believed the falsehoods that fell from his lips.
“Our sons are in horrible danger,” I said, stunned that he could not see it. “Do you not remember the story of the Golden Fleece you once came seeking? Why the ram came to Phrixus and Helle in the first place? Their mother, Nephele, sent it to save them from their cruel stepmother, who hated the children from her husband’s previous marriage. She sought their deaths, since they would always be in competition with her own children for the throne. Do you really think Creon will allow our sons to live once his daughter has her own?”
“Creon isn’t like that. He’d never hurt a child.” Jason looked offended.
I laughed hollowly. “So Creon suddenly has morals, after telling my husband to abandon his wife?”
Jason sighed again, as though I were being difficult.
“Don’t,” I whispered, sliding from the bed and taking to my knees before him. “Send me away, yes, but don’t take my children, please. Whatever you think of me as a wife, do not insult me as amother.” I tried to take Jason’s hands, but they slipped out of my grasp.
“Well,” Jason began, stroking his chin, “some of the natural philosophers say it’s the man who’s the true parent, since he provides the vital essence, like a seed in the damp earth... but no matter,” he finished, seeing my darkening expression. “I’d like to reach an understanding, Medea. I’d rather not involve the courts.”
I felt again the eyes that burned into me as Pelias’s daughters took the stand in Iolcus. The humiliation of it. No, a foreign woman like me would not do well at all in a Greek court of law.
Jason was still talking, his words blurring together like the buzzing of bees, but I could not hear him over my growing anger. I had left my home for this man, killed for him, sacrificed my magic for him, and this was how he rewarded me? All those years of dishes and diapers and darkness, of filing down my sharp edges and breaking my bones to fit his expectations, and this was how it ended? I’d been a model wife, only to have my children stolen from me and given unto their deadliest enemies. I had chosen Jason over Atalanta, andthiswas the result?
Bitterer than the betrayal was this: Jason was leaving me for another woman, after I had left mine for him.
Before I could say anything, Mermerus came into the room crying, begging for comfort after a bad dream. I had to play the good mother and soothe him, all while silently planning how to burn Jason’s world to the ground.
Jason
All in all, he thinks, the conversation with Medea goes remarkably well.
There is some shock, of course, and a barrage of questions. Butby the end she is calm, wiping away her tears. The clenched knot within Jason eases; at least their parting will be an easy one. He is stalwartly determined to see Medea comfortably settled in whatever city she chooses. As long as it is not Corinth, of course.
What surprises Jason most is Medea’s reaction to the boys staying behind. Jason assumed that she would be glad to get rid of them, especially since Eirene does most of the childcare anyway. He didn’t expect she would be soemotionalabout it all.
Eventually, though, Medea sees reason. When she returns from comforting Mermerus, she tells Jason that she has thought about it and will accept his offer of a villa in the country and copious gold.
“Just, please, let me stay here a few more nights,” she begs.
Later, Jason will think that he should have seen through her. He should have known better than to trust this false calm, like the surface of a lake where water snakes hide.
Instead, Jason says, “Stay as long as you like.”
70
Medea
“But I don’t want to go,” Mermerus wailed, clinging to my waist. “I want to stay with you, Mama.”
“I know, I know,” I whispered into his hair, biting back the way his cries tugged at my heart. “But we must all do things we don’t wish to do sometimes.”
Pheres was more subdued than his brother, submitting his cheek for a kiss but never tearing his gaze away from the figures standing on the steps of the palace, waiting to receive him into his new life.
Lifting my head, I fixed them with a malevolent stare: bearded Creon, and his demure wife Glauke, and faithless Jason, flicking between them. No sign of his bride, the virgin girl Creusa. Probably she was safely sequestered within the palace, her innocence guarded from this scene of children being torn from their mother.
My lips peeled back in a snarl. Thieves, all of them, stealers of my sons. How long would it be before Creon discreetly disposed of my boys? Probably no longer than it took his daughter to birth a male heir.
