‘I will go.’ He tried a different approach. ‘I will say you are ill with a fever. We can keep you hidden that way. Like that old woman who Clymene visits, whose fever has lasted since the last feast of Ares.’
‘Perseus —’
‘You cannot go to a banquet of his. You know he will do this. He will announce it, and you will be trapped. Bound to this tyrant king.’
‘Perseus, my love,’ Danae’s touch was as gentle as a petal on his skin. ‘You are a strong boy. A mindful man, but you know so little of the world. I spent my youth captive in a tower.’
‘I know this, Mother.’ The roll of his eyes caused the flicker of a smile on his mother’s lips.
‘Well, then you will know that for those years, I believed I was forsaken. That the gods had abandoned me. That I would never walk upon the ground or feel the breeze upon my cheek again. Then I had you. My beautiful boy, I feared so greatly, for both of us. There are so many ways my story could have ended. My father could have chosen a knife above the sea and chest. We could have died at the hands of Scylla or Laomedon. But there was no knife, and the waters were calmed by Poseidon. We arrived here, where the kindest man on all the island took us in without question. From all my fears have come nothing but joy. I have birthed and raised the most beautiful of all Zeus’ sons.’ Her speech stopped as her gaze lingered on Perseus. ‘Perhaps the gods will be kind to me again. Or perhaps they believe my time of luxury has come to an end. Either way, it matters not. I must do this. I must go to him. And I would like you at my side as I do so.’
And so, they had ridden the length of Seriphos to dine at the table of Polydectes.
The banquet was unlike any that Perseus had ever experienced. Gargantuan tables of deep mahogany stained with lacquer were adorned with a myriad of delicacies. So many meats, of birds and beasts and fishes, of sizes and colours that Perseus could only have imagined. Before this time, he had thought himself a worthy fisherman, looked upon kindly by Poseidon and the Nereids. Now he feared he was mistaken; fish of that size would have broken his nets. The earth had given a full harvest, and Polydectes had taken it all.
‘You will sit with me.’ Polydectes clasped his wrinkled hand around Danae’s wrist. It was a gentle gesture in appearance, although Perseus saw how the skin beneath his fingertips whitened from the pressure and how his mother’s lips paled as they turned upwards in a smile.
‘You honour us, Your Majesty,’ she had replied.
Perseus, by contrast, kept silent.
Polydectes chewed his food slowly, carefully grinding each mouthful to a pulp. Every inch of his face that could be seen beneath the tangle of coarse, white hair was crinkled and creased, with skin so thin it looked like it could be blown away by a strong wind. Despite his age, he laughed a hearty, full-bellied laugh that exposed his yellowed teeth and produced sprays of fat and wine that spread into the air around him or else stuck to the hair of his beard. Perseus had been placed at the same table, only two seats down from the aging King, bookended by two young women. One had skin like marble and hair flecked with gold, which shimmered as though granted the rights by Helios himself. The other one’s skin was the colour of a roasted chestnut and a pinkness like raspberries to her lips. At any other time the two women would have proved the distraction that Polydectes desired, but, for Perseus, there was only one woman at the table, and his eyes refused to leave her.
For years he had heard Danae’s stories of Argos; of how she had dined at feasts and entertained the wealthy of the island, but never before had he seen that side to her. He’d only seen the side that gutted fish, scrubbed floors, and cleaned out clamshells after they had eaten the contents. Any hope he had had of Polydectes becoming disenamoured of his mother was a dream, he realised, as she smiled demurely and drew the gaze of all those around them. There would have to be another way.
When the meats were removed, cheese and figs and olives drizzled with honey were brought to replace them. Since they were so much sweeter than any that grew on the hillsides beside them, Perseus had to wonder how a king managed to procure such items, although procurement, he had come to realise, was Polydectes’ specialty.
When fingers had been licked clean of the nectar, and fresh wine was brought to the table, Polydectes drew his eyes away from Danae and laid them instead on her son.
‘Perseus.’ His goblet had been overfilled, and wine sloshed onto the table. A servant hurriedly wiped it away. ‘I hear that you are a son of Zeus.’
Excited tittering erupted from the girls at his side.
‘That is what I have heard.’ He answered without a hint of the animosity he felt. ‘Although my father has paid me no favours.’
Polydectes frowned. ‘No favours? You are dining at the table of a king. Surely, the gods must play a part in such a fortunate fate?’
The pressure in Perseus’s mouth caused his muscles to flex and twitch.
‘You are right,’ he said. ‘We have been fortunate. We were fortunate to be housed with such a man as Dictys.’
Polydectes snorted.
‘Luck in the home of a fisherman? I am sure the son of Zeus could not be content with such menial living.’
‘Menial living has given us no cause for complaint,’ Perseus commented. ‘By all accounts, we are probably happiest among the simple pleasures in life.’
Polydectes’ eyes narrowed,
