Snakehead

by Ann Halam

  He hugged me, then Andromeda, tears standing in his eyes.

  “It’s not as bad as it looks” was the first thing he said. Then he seemed lost for words, and just stared at us. “So the monster didn’t eat you, Andromeda?”

  “Perseus saved me,” said Andromeda. “We’ll tell you everything, but it’ll wait. What’s wrong, Pali? Why are you looking like that? Where’s Anthe?”

  “She’s … she’s inside. Come on.”

  The Enclosure was so crowded I thought the whole town was in there. Then I realized it was mainly old people, young mothers, little children and babies. I was shocked. My heart sank; it was worse than I’d imagined. The armed camp of Seatown, which had always been there under the skin of our calm daily life, had been reduced to a last, helpless remnant.

  The boss was marshaling a bucket chain. He took off his round, hard cap, and beamed at us. “My dear young people, I’m so glad to see you safe. Well done, Kefi. Now, it is not as bad as it seems. We are the rearguard here. We’re waiting to evacuate the infirm. Our neighbor islands are not taking sides, but they’ve agreed to give the children and the old and sick a safe passage and temporary refuge.”

  “We have an army, Perseus,” broke in Palikari. “I should have told you, first off. The villages are empty; our troops are in the hills. Some of the matriarchs have holed up in the mountain caves; they’ll be our supply posts. The rest are here.”

  “Holy Mother intends to stay put,” said Dicty. “But I think now the Greek fire has appeared I’ll have to change her mind.”

  He looked somber, despite his cheerful smile, and very weary; but he did not look beaten. I would never have imagined it, but in a strange way war-hating Papa Dicty seemed in his element. There was such a purposeful bustle going on. Every able-bodied man and woman had something to do, even the children: I saw the boss’s style in that. It wasn’t all that different from the taverna kitchen on a big night.

  “Where is Anthe, Papa Dicty?” demanded Andromeda. “Where is lady Danae?”

  “They’re in the hospital,” said the boss. “Your mother’s well, Perseus.”

  “But Anthe? Is she all right?”

  There was a silence, long enough to terrify us.

  “Anthe was wounded,” said Pali. “We raided the High Place, and she was part of it. But she’s going to be all right.” He looked at the boss. “Isn’t she?”

  Andromeda had set off at a run for the hospital building.

  “I believe so,” said the boss. “I hope so. Let’s go and see her.”

  Anthe was lying at the end of the long, dim ward, which felt warm after the cold morning outside. Braziers glowed at intervals, and the air was full of the acrid sickroom scent of burning herbs. My mother, her hair bound up in the Summer Queen scarf, knelt beside the bed, with a bowl of water and a sponge, wiping our wildcat’s face and hands. I could see bandages in the neck of Anthe’s shift. Her eyes were half open and her head moved from side to side, but she didn’t know me when I bent over her and said her name. Andromeda was on the other side of the bed, holding Anthe’s wrist.

  “The pulse is fast and broken,” she muttered. “There’s a rash and the fever’s very high. Is it brain fever, my lady?”

  “We think so,” said Moumi calmly. “But she’s past the worst.” Her tired face broke into a beautiful smile.

  “Perseus, my son. Kore, my daughter. You came back!”

  “The little white wild convolvulus …” whispered Anthe, recognizing no one.

  The Holy Sisters moved about the ward, dosing patients, encouraging others or sitting quietly by some silent body for whom all the pain and fear was over.

  “We had trouble in Seatown,” said the boss softly. “It began soon after you left, Aten and Pali will have told you. The king offered to place armed troops in the town. I declined. He offered terms. We refused them, and held by the truce. He then decided to take his own people hostage.”

  “His own people?” I repeated. “Huh? You mean the people of Serifos?”

  “No,” said Pali, without taking his eyes off Anthe. “The dancing girls, up at the High Place. Some of the boys too. He said they were working for the enemy. Some enemy he’d invented … We all knew that it was the king’s own men who’d been organizing the ‘unrest.’ He was going to kill them if the boss wouldn’t let the soldiers into Seatown. So we organized a raid. It was mainly the Yacht Club kids, and Aten, but I was in it, and Anthe. We had inside help. We broke into the High Place; we almost got the hostages out without raising the alarm. But it went wrong. Gliko was killed; Anthe took an arrow in the shoulder. It wasn’t dangerous; she was fine. Then she got this fever.”

  “She isn’t going to die, Pali,” said my mother. “Yesterday I wasn’t sure; today I know she’ll live.” She set the bowl aside and stood up. “Well, Perseus?”

  “I did it, Mother.”

  I didn’t get any further. Holy Mother marched up with two sisters, smacking her cane down hard at every pace.

  “Ah, Perseus, here you are. What took you so long, eh? We’re ready for her now, Danae.” The sisters stripped the coverlet, censed Anthe with healing smoke and deftly moved her onto a stretcher. “Don’t panic, young man,” said Holy Mother to Palikari, who had gone bloodless. “We’re taking her to bathe. We’re not going to make a nun of her; you’ll have her back soon.”

  We left the ward with Anthe, but the boss took us to another of the wattle-and-daub buildings while Holy Mother led her stretcher bearers to the bathing place. Stores of all kinds were stacked high, blocking the windows. Women of Seatown were tallying reserves of oil and grain; others were busy at a long table. I thought they were sewing. When I looked twice, I saw that they were fletching arrows, which were being delivered in bundles by children.

  “Welcome to my taverna,” said Dicty dryly. “For the moment … The little gods are around here somewhere, and the mules are safe too. I know you care about those mules as much as if they were human, Perseus. Are you two hungry? We’ll have our welcome-home meal later. I have a caramelized onion broth, braised wild rabbit, a dish of spiced eggs and herbed barley bread. Greens are unavailable, alas, but I have a gratin of root vegetables, baked with fennel seed. I can give you good watered wine now, and toasted rolls with a very nice pâté of quince and figs. The sisters make excellent preserves.”

  We sat on baskets of dry goods. Papa Dicty mixed the wine, and Moumi and Palikari set out the bread and pâté. We had not realized it, but we were starving.

  “The raid to free the hostages was a victory to be proud of,” said the boss. “I don’t regret it. But it was a breaking point. Since the king had not committed any overtly hostile act, although we knew he was responsible for the ‘troubles’ in Seatown, the young people could be accused of attacking the High Place during a truce. Polydectes at once sent a herald to inform us that we were at war. But all would be well if the lady Danae agreed to become his bride. We thanked the herald and sent him on his way.

  “I ordered the Yacht Club contingent off the island at that point, before the king decided to demand that I hand them over. Then the Greek-fire bombardments began, and we moved in here. There’s been a lull: things were quiet for a day or two. Last night another herald arrived. The king demands that we give up Danae to him, ‘for her own safety,’ and then, or so he claims, hostilities will end.”

  “And if you don’t?”

  “If we don’t, he will come and take her.”

  “You have to let me go,” cried Moumi (it sounded as if it wasn’t the first time she’d tried this line). “This time you have to!”

  “My dear Achaean,” said the boss. “We will not give you up. You are our sister and our daughter; you have lived with us for years. It would be disgraceful.”

  “May I speak?” Balba the weaver stood up from the table where the munitions were being prepared, and folded her arms. “You have nothing to say in this, Danae of Argos. Seatown will not give you up; it’s a matter of self-respect. And if we did, it’d d
o us no good. The king has gone mad; he’s going to stop at nothing.”

  Papa Dicty nodded. “Thank you, Balba. She’s quite right, Perseus. We’ve reached the point where the only thing we can do is resist, by force of arms.” He sighed, hard. “Cost what it may cost.”

  This is why Polydectes got rid of me, I thought: so that he could do this.

  “What about me, and the Medusa Challenge? Does he remember sending me to fetch him a wedding present?”

  “I don’t know what he remembers,” said the boss with a wry grin. “We’ve heard no more about his courtship of Hippodameia. A while ago he told us you were dead, and perhaps he believed it. But he knows you’re alive now. The news that you two were on your way reached the Turning Islands days ago; the message must have been passed by faster ships than the Panagia. That’s when we sent Kefi to Paros.”

  Andromeda nodded. “The news that we’d survived must have left Haifa before we did. But does the king know that Perseus has the Medusa Head?”

  Palikari and the boss stared at me. So did my mother.

  “You have it?” Palikari looked me up and down. “Then where is it?”

  “Right here.” I touched the kibisis. They peered at it, bewildered. The magic bag didn’t look big enough to hold a large apple. “I know it doesn’t look like much, but it’s Chaldean magic, like the harpe. Trust me, the Snakehead is in there.”

  “No,” said Papa Dicty slowly, seeing what this meant. “I don’t think he knows that you have the Head. What do you intend to do, Perseus?”

  The boss and I looked at each other, and I realized that everyone in the room, down to the kids with their bundles of arrows, was holding their breath, watching us and listening with intense attention. “I think he’ll talk to me, if I offer. I think he’ll let me walk in there. I plan to take him his wedding present.”

  The king’s brother, my good master, looked at the strange little pouch, looked at me and nodded. “You go with my blessing,” he said.

  We got as far as the cemetery, the old boundary of the truce, before we were stopped. We wore no wreaths or garlands. We carried no green branches, or anything like a herald’s staff. We had no company; it was just me, Palikari and Andromeda. The soldiers at the boundary were common troopers; they checked us for weapons and asked no questions. They treated Andromeda with decency, I have to report, but they were thorough. Naturally, they asked me to hand over Athini’s shield and the harpe.

  “No,” I said. “The shield is part of the gift I’ve brought for the king, and you can’t touch the knife. It’s been used in sacrifice: it’s sacred.”

  No one can say we didn’t give Polydectes warning.

  Some of the soldiers came with us. We passed through the gates, into the fortress, escorted by armed men. The High Place didn’t look much different from the last time we’d seen it, on a summer evening, though there was more going on in the armory and the forges. A fortress is a fortress; it’s always a place of war. A runner had been sent ahead to tell the king that Perseus was here and wanted to parley. We waited in the gray winter noon to find out how the king would respond.

  Polydectes was at his midday meal. We were invited to join him.

  We were taken to the banqueting hall where the wedding-plans feast had been held. We were not announced this time, or offered places. We were led into the center of the room, into the hollow square between the tables. Everything looked so much smaller by daylight, and compared with the palace of Haifa. The walls were dirty yellow. High up, I saw traces of a red-and-blue frieze; scallop shells and dolphins. It made me think of Popo the house painter.

  The king was alone with his commanders and chief officers. About thirty men, all told, and servants. No women. I scanned the faces and spotted the tall old ruffian with the ponytail; the fat slob; the scrawny young blood with the armlets and the goatee; the ones who had insulted my mother, last time I’d been here. It didn’t mean so much as it had. But I kept faith with the big kid I had been, so short a time ago; I remembered them. And there was Polydectes looking down from the high table, the sunburst mantle cast over his armor, a bronze circlet around his brow.

  He raised a finger and murmured something to the steward behind him. I remembered that smug individual too. The steward passed on the order. Our escort of troopers left the hall, as did all the servants except the steward. The king’s guards then barred the doors and stood in front of them…. This is beyond reason, I thought. He thinks he’s going to murder us in cold blood, and they’re all in it with him.

  We’d have had to be pretty stupid not to spot the barred doors as a threat. But we showed no alarm.

  Polydectes leaned on one elbow, and took a draft of wine. “Where’s your mother?” he said to me. As if he was talking to a little boy.

  “My mother is unwell; she sends her regrets. You know how it can be when people are short of clean water, and eating poorly. Fevers spread.”

  We were not short of clean water in the Enclosure. Nor of food, not at all.

  “So you left her behind, in concern for my health. I’m touched. Well, what else do you have to say? What’s this parley about? I’m listening.”

  “I want you to leave here,” I said. “You’ve gone too far. Serifos has chosen a different king. I want you to get out, right now. Take your personal goods, take your companions.” I looked around the tables. “Soldiers or nobles, anyone who chooses to stay will face punishment. Everyone here should judge his own guilt. If you know you’ve done things that merit banishment or death, then leave with Polydectes.”

  I cannot believe that the king had no sense of doom. He knew who I was. He’d sent me to fetch him the Medusa, assuming the quest would kill me, and I was back again, alive and well. But he laughed, as if the world was on his side.

  “This is my brother’s idea of a challenge! And who delivers it? An overgrown baby, a cocktail waiter and”—he bared his teeth, leering at Andromeda—“a rejected sacrifice. We won’t call her by a worse name. But they do say, around the docks of the Middle Sea, that the priests discovered you and your big boyfriend had, shall we say, anticipated your wedding vows? You were no longer fit for the God.”

  “Oooh!” lisped one of my pet hates, the creep with the goatee. “Look at him thnarl! We’re so fwytened, Perseus!”

  “You and your damaged goods will stay here, boy. The cocktail waiter will have his nose and ears docked. We’ll send him back to fetch the lady Danae.”

  “Go on,” hissed Palikari. “Before he runs out of talk. Go for it, our kid.”

  I looked at Andromeda. Call me a coward, I needed her consent. She stared back at me, black eyes hard as the king’s laughter, and her lips moved.

  Do it.

  “Well,” I said, unslinging the shield and loosening the drawstring. “If you won’t leave, then stay. Polydectes, you sent me to fetch you the head of the Medusa. In the name of Great Athini, here she is.”

  Andromeda and Pali dropped to the floor, burying their faces in their mantles, when they heard me call on Athini. The snakes wrapped themselves around my hand, dry and warm, welcoming my touch. I turned the shield as I held up the severed head so that I was looking at the grievous beauty of the Medusa, but the king and his chosen companions met the terror of her unreflected gaze. The king died at once, in the act of starting backward, his hands thrown up. Some of them had time to jump up from their seats or dive under the table, but the guards had no time to unbar the great doors. The king’s men tried to hide their eyes; they ran around the hall screaming. But the Medusa Head compelled them, the way she’d compelled those fleeing warriors on the twilight plain in Africa. They had to look at her.

  I hunted them down, until they were all stone. Not one of them escaped.

  I stowed the Medusa back in the kibisis and sat on the floor, because my knees had given way. Everything was dark, a darkness of mind and body. You don’t use a weapon like that and feel nothing. “It’s over,” I croaked. “You can open your eyes.”

  Pali and
Andromeda raised their heads. We huddled together, staring at the appalling, silent carnage, unable to speak or move, as if we’d been turned to stone ourselves. “I’m sorry, Pali,” I mumbled. “I promised we’d both be armed when I came up here again. Not much of a scrap.”

  “We aren’t out of this yet,” said Pali.

  “We can’t arm ourselves,” Andromeda realized. “All the weapons are stone.”

  Palikari jumped to his feet.

  “Come on! We’re wasting time.”

  When we got the doors unbarred, the soldiers were waiting on the other side. Pali and Andromeda were behind me. I had the harpe and Great Athini’s shield. They must have heard all the screaming. I don’t know what they’d thought had been going on, but they were thrown into confusion when I leapt out. I drove them back into the corridor, out of the antechamber of the hall, disarming one man and slicing another’s sword arm to the bone. Pali and Andromeda grabbed the weapons that those two let fall. So then it was three of us armed, in a narrow space, facing maybe twenty. They decided they were outnumbered, and fled from the king’s house.

  We had the man with the sliced arm. I took him to the doors of the banqueting hall while Pali and Andromeda guarded my back. He fought like a hooked fish, but I made him take a good look…. We burst out of the building, hauling him with us, and stood in the open, backs together. I was still gripping the terrified soldier.

  The space around the king’s house was full of the king’s men. There must have been a hundred of them, fully armed; and they were still coming, running from all over the fortress. But they did nothing; they just stood and stared. I yelled as loudly as I could: “Polydectes the king is dead! Serifos has chosen another ruler! Spread the word, all of you. Those who fear punishment, get yourselves to the usurper’s port at Megalivadi. Leave the island now, and you won’t be harried!”

  I shook our eyewitness. “Tell them, soldier. Tell them what you saw.”