‘Aphrodite has blessed you indeed. She will be pleased to call you sister.’ The queen stared at him wordlessly. He knew the goddess differently, or perhaps he did not know her at all.
‘If I hurt you, it is not on purpose.’
He kissed her then. He was so big. He was made from giants and though she was generously formed, everything about him dwarfed her. His mouth encircled hers, his tongue was thick and claiming. Again, he was gentle, but he was big, too big. He sought to cover her breasts with one hand, her buttocks with the other, tried to compress her and succeeded. She shrank to limp stillness. He guided her hand down to where he, erect, brushed his stomach.
He formed her hand into the precise shape he wanted, tightened it to the right grip and wrapped it around himself. Her old lessons returned to her and she became compliant, never asserting but moving where instructed. He led her to the bed and his mouth began to work at her chest, suckling at her like a newborn baby. The princess wondered if that was the last time he had felt close to a woman. He stood, beckoning her once more, stroking himself when her breasts swung. His hands were soft but firm on her hips, and he flipped her, so that she was on all fours, faced away from him.
‘Stay like this, please.’ He paused and then, ‘It will hurt but I will be careful.’
He spat and she jumped as the wetness hit her sex, but she remembered things she had heard in a previous life and knew this was a mercy. When he pushed at her entrance and she felt the first sharp friction, she wished he would spit again but she said nothing. Perhaps she believed that she deserved the pain. When he pushed again, she felt a tear, something falling away and out of reach. When he drew back, he did it slowly and she muffled her cry in the bed. He was, indeed, careful. But it was not enough.
20
Tiryns
After Serifos, there was Larissa briefly, for the games. The princess remembered similar activity in her home, the slick bodies of athletes doing and doing and doing. In Larissa they competed naked, boxers blooming crocuses on the flesh of their fellows and the princess would freeze when blood darkened the sand, clumping it to solidity. She had thought she would enjoy the spectatorship, the eddying bodies drawing attention away from her, vibrant and dark and eye-catching among all these pale nut tones. But she did not. Her passivity wore at her here. Presented with such vitality, she felt lethargic and drowsy and wished to simply sleep the day away.
But her first duty was to her husband, and he launched himself at the games with all the restlessness of one god-born and tired by mortality. He had a tendency to fixate on new passions and projects, first sword play, then his skill with the bow and arrow, and now thequoit, a game he had invented. He would throw heavy rings, made of copper, and they would land easily over the spikes he set up at some distance. They had only intended to pass through Larissa, but Perseus could never resist a physical challenge. He took up various sports, competing as though he had trained all his life, cheered andapplauded by his mother, who delighted in him, this thing she had created.
The memories came in unbidden flashes. The princess yearned to dream, willed them to visit her in the privacy of her sleep, but her nights were yawning maws of nothing and it was only in waking that they found her. She watched the equestrian events and twitched with anxiety. She was nervous of the horses, with their shying and rearing, and the lead and tin of their hooves. Her fingers gripped the sides of her seat. Her mother-in-law looked at her kindly.
‘You do not like horses?’
‘What if they break free of their riders? Trample us?’
Danaë patted her hand. ‘They won’t and if they came so much as a breath towards us, Perseus would spear them with his javelin.’ She smiled proudly. ‘He would not let anything hurt us.’
The princess felt somewhat reassured. It was true that the Lady Danaë had succeeded in raising one of the better men that she had met. He was not cruel, he did not seek power through abuse. He was a little slow at times; his cheerful, determined good nature lent itself to brawn not brains, but she realized, over time, that his blithe neglect could be a useful thing.
He did not see, for example, the way that she leaned forward to watch the swimmers. He did not compete in these races – Perseus was wary of the water. The princess clutched her chair tighter, her knuckles white, her teeth biting down on her lip. Perseus patted her other hand, soothingly.
‘It is all right. There are no sea monsters here.’
The princess stiffened and said nothing. She dislodged her hand from the chair and rested it in her lap, cupping the smallpouch fastened to her belt. The wrestling came next. The bodies sliding over each other, the close press and the dimples made by skin and impact. She was breathless watching them. They struggled for dominance, legs tangling, a hand spread over an expanse of back the way that a bird’s wings span the horizon. The cord that tied back the hair of the victor snapped, allowing dark curls to fall forward and curtain the triumphant smile. The princess swayed in her seat. She swooned so prettily that Danaë was almost moved to tears.
‘It is hot, poor girl, I will take her for some shade.’
They were inside when it happened. Perhaps if they were not, it would not have happened, because Danaë might have seen her estranged father and addressed him. Or perhaps the course of things would not have been changed, could not have been changed, because it was always supposed to be this way. Instead, Perseus may have confronted his grandfather over his abandonment and the result would have been the same. But it was as it was. Perseus, playful and excited, showing his new friends his new game. And the singing of heavy metal through the air was not heard by the old King of Argos until it was close enough to his impaired ears to strike his head, shattering his skull.
It was, on balance, a good thing, then, that the princess was inside. She had met her edge and could not withstand more shattering, without going over it.
And so after Serifos, Tiryns. And to work, at last.
Perseus, in his manslaughter of his grandfather, would have become King of Argos, had a rule against kin slaying not prohibited this from being the case. An exchange was arranged and a cousin took the throne of Argos and gave Perseus hisown. And so they became King and Queen of Tiryns. There was not much there when they three arrived, accompanied by a few companions of their own, from Serifos, and a few more from Argos, who remembered Danaë as a girl. It was a small and meagre kingdom in those days, the palace no more than a large house, flat, faded and crumbling. It was immediately clear why the cousin had been so keen to trade. But it was well placed strategically, high up on a hill overlooking the gulf of Argolis, tucked in snug against the land, away from the might of the Aegean Sea. The people were wary and mistrustful of the outsiders, though they knew the couple’s radiance for divinity and whispered to each other hopefully. Perseus wanted grandeur. He wanted the immortal fame that had crowned his hair with light and there was no reason he should not have it. His wife was meeker, more practical. She had learned something of fame, she felt still the great, grey eyes blinking owlishly at her from afar, watching, and instead thought of the immediate.
She found she could work, and work well, and the people came to love her for it. She was their queen but she was happiest in the mud. Some would say such things were inappropriate but in those days of building and labour, they admired her. They redoubled their efforts, each swearing that if one so lovely and cosseted could lift and dig and sweat then it would shame them not to at least match her. They loved Perseus too, as it is hard not to love a bounding, golden puppy. He would leap about, pointing to those who scurried to take note of his desires and carry out his orders, collecting coin and harvest to set them in motion.
‘Here and here and here!’ he would say and clap his hands in childish glee when he saw his plans unfolding before him.
‘I cannot fathom,’ he declared, collapsing into her bed one night, ‘why there are any unhappy kings. I think to be a king is the greatest thing in the world.’
‘I am sure you are right, my lord.’
‘Did your father enjoy being king? How was he as a ruler?’
The queen blinked slowly, returning from where it was that she went whenever she heard him knocking at her door, calling, ‘Oh, wi-ife!’ as if the title were a song.
‘He was not ambitious. But he liked it well enough.’
