Chapter 52
Jason
The next morning, after the party is finished and the bonfires have died down to ash, Jason faces a split in the road. He
must decide which to prioritize first: confronting Pelias, the killer of his father, or doing something even more terrifying.
Visiting his mother.
Jason elects for the latter; best to get it over with. He is none too sure what Alcimede will think of his new wife, but Jason
has a duty, and he heads with Medea to the shepherd’s hut in the foothills of Mount Pelion.
His mother opens the door with a look of suspicion that quickly melts into joy when she sees Jason with the Golden Fleece
around his shoulders. When Alcimede takes his face in her hands and kisses him, Jason can almost believe that his mother loves
him.
Alcimede is less enthusiastic about Medea, especially when Jason introduces her as his wife. Though Medea clasps her hand
and greets her with all the fine manners of an eastern princess, Alcimede’s face remains closed. Jason feels the prickle of
sweat on his back and hurriedly plasters a smile on his face before sweeping both women inside.
Medea lays out the feast of cheese and olives and fruit, and they all fall to it. Jason shows off the Golden Fleece and tells wondrous tales of the journey, like the sighting of the six-armed men and the appearance of Thetis (leaving out, of course, that Medea was supposed to marry Achilles).
For a while, the visit goes better than Jason ever dared hope. Medea and Alcimede exchange a few words, and Jason’s mother
even smiles once or twice. Jason allows himself to imagine that things might actually work out after all.
Then Medea steps out to use the privy, and the smile slides from Alcimede’s face.
“I do not like that girl,” his mother says. “Divorce her forthwith.”
Jason’s fledgling hopes shatter like an egg dropped from a high cliff. “Why?”
Alcimede’s eyes are hard as flint. “She is a foreigner and no advantage to you. Did she bring you a dowry? Troops? Land?”
“She brought me the Golden Fleece.”
“You brought yourself the Golden Fleece,” Alcimede corrects. “You are the hero. She is a foreign woman with no connections here.
I suppose she was not even lawfully given in marriage by her father?”
Jason hesitates, rubbing the back of his head in a nervous gesture. Alcimede nods primly, as if this tells her all she needs
to know, and pops an olive in her mouth.
“If she was not properly bestowed by her male relatives, then the marriage is invalid,” his mother says. “I saw it often when
I advised your father. Sailors marrying pretty harlots from foreign brothels, that sort of thing.”
A new feeling swells in Jason’s chest, one he slowly recognizes as anger. Medea is no harlot; she’s his partner and helpmeet.
She stood by Jason on the Argo’s journey and saved them all more than once. He will not stand for anyone speaking about Medea like that—not even his own
mother.
“Medea is my wife,” Jason says. “I made a promise to her in front of men and gods—”
“All the same,” Alcimede interrupts, dismissing his concerns with a wave. “Divorce her and marry one of Pelias’s daughters
instead. You may have the Fleece, but Pelias is a murderer and a thief, and you cannot depend on him to keep his word. Pick
one of his daughters and marry her, then he will not be able to deny you your rightful place on the throne.”
Jason stares at Alcimede, speechless, even as repulsion ripples across his skin at the thought of marrying any of his cousins.
Once, he might have capitulated to his mother’s commands, but submission does not come so easily now that he has sailed to
the ends of the earth and lived to tell the tale.
Besides, Jason has a wife to think of, one who is listening in the doorway even now with her hand pressed over her mouth and
tears in her eyes. Medea has heard everything.
That settles it. Jason hesitates for only a moment before taking to his feet, looming over a startled Alcimede. He sees now
what he is to his mother—a bargaining chip. His only worth in what he can accomplish, his only purpose to bring glory. Enough!
“All my life I have done what you asked of me, Mother,” Jason says. “Every action I took was for you and the memory of Father.
But I made my own choice when I married Medea, and I stand by it. You will respect this or I will never speak to you again.”
Alcimede goes white with rage. Medea gasps, looking up at Jason with tear-filled eyes, so soft and vulnerable that Jason wants
to scoop her up and hold her forever.
“You dare—” Alcimede begins.
“Yes, Mother,” Jason says with deceptive lightness. “I do dare. That was the entire purpose of the Argo’s journey, wasn’t it? To dare, and to be victorious. And now, if you don’t mind—or even if you do—my wife and I will take our leave.”
Jason grabs Medea’s hand and rushes from his mother’s house before he can lose his nerve.
The next day, Jason takes the Golden Fleece to Pelias, assuming that this interaction cannot possibly go as poorly as his
visit to his mother.
He is wrong. Oh, how very wrong he is.
The worst part is coming home afterward and telling Medea what happened. She greets him at the door with a kiss on the cheek,
the smell of burned cooking wafting around her. Though she is practiced at transforming one creature into another, Medea struggles
to turn ingredients into edible food.
“So, when will we move into the palace?” Medea asks. She flits about him like a bird, brimming with endless enthusiasm. It
fades when she takes in the look on his face.
Jason sits heavily on a rented stool in this little rented house, paid for using the currency of fame and Medea’s jewelry,
both of which will soon run out, leaving them nothing at all.
Haltingly, he describes how Pelias examined the Golden Fleece like a suspicious customer in the market. When no flaw could
be found, Pelias raised his chin and said, You have done well, Jason. I will give you the throne after my death.
Medea’s eyes narrow. “Only after his death? That wasn’t the agreement.”
“What does it matter?” Jason shrugs, disconsolate. “Pelias is the one with the army.”
Jason does not tell Medea what else happened: the titter of laughter that swept through the watching crowd, the cold triumph
in Pelias’s eyes. How Jason burned with humiliation and could do nothing, nothing at all, about any of it.
Was it all pointless, their journey for the Fleece?
The sacrifices and the challenges they overcame, were they really for nothing?
As his wife rubs his back, Jason wallows in his shame.
Pelias is an old man, but he is strong and might live another ten years or more.
Worse, he now possesses the Fleece with none of the appropriate veneration.
For Pelias, the Fleece is like the token children use to play snatch-away games; Pelias would have sent Jason to fetch Aeetes’s house slippers if he thought it would get Jason killed.
Perhaps, Jason considers with dawning horror, Pelias will still find a way to kill him. He killed Jason’s father, after all.
Perhaps Jason will find himself on the wrong end of an assassin’s dagger some fine day between now and the death of Pelias,
surviving a long, dangerous journey only to perish in his home city.
Suddenly desperate, Jason grabs Medea’s hands. She looks up at him in surprise, her uncanny gold eyes as unsettling as always.
“Help me, Medea,” Jason beseeches, though in a dim corner of his mind he knows it doesn’t do for a man to beseech his wife
for anything. “Save me from this wicked king the way I once freed you from Aeetes. Set a charm against ignominy and failure
the way you did against the fire of the bronze bulls. Rescue me like Ariadne saved Theseus from this labyrinth of deception
and intrigue, and give me the throne of Iolcus.”
He holds her knee with one hand and cups her chin with the other, the traditional pose of the supplicant. Medea’s expression
of astonishment hardens into something sharper.
“I think I know how to make Pelias give up the throne a little more quickly,” she says.
Jason gives a cry of relief and embraces his wife, burying his face in her shoulder. He doesn’t see the expression on Medea’s
face. But if he had, he would have recognized it from the journey of the Argo.
Specifically, the moment when she raised the axe above the body of Absyrtos, blade glinting in the sun.