Without knowing it he had dropped a little lower. The swishing of the blade awoke the vipers on Medusa’s head and they began to spit and rear. Changing the angle of the shield, Perseus saw they were looking directly at him and hissing. At any moment Medusa would wake – and perhaps her indestructible sisters too. He closed in on Medusa’s sleeping form, weapon at the ready. In the shield he saw her stir and her eyelids flutter.
Her eyes opened.
He didn’t know what he had expected, ugliness and horror, perhaps, certainly not beauty. But Medusa’s eyes, for all their blaze and fury, had a quality that made him want to turn from the reflected image and look deep into them for real. He pushed the feeling down and raised his blade higher.
Medusa was staring into the shield. She lifted her head to look at Perseus directly, giving him a clear sight of her throat. The harpe swept through the air and he felt the blade slice through the flesh of her neck. He lunged down to snatch away the head and pushed it into his satchel before the thrashing, dying snakes could fix their fangs into him.
He tried to fly up and away, but something was tugging at his ankles. The other Gorgons, Stheno and Euryale, awake and screaming, were pulling him down. With a mighty effort he kicked and kicked, urging the sandals up. The screeches of the outraged sisters rang in his ears as he rocketed through the ceiling of fog and into the clear moonlit air, with never a backward glance.
Perhaps he should have looked back. A most remarkable sight would have met his eyes. Since the day Poseidon violated her in Athena’s temple, Medusa had held in her womb twins from that union. With her head removed, they had at last a place from which they could be born. The first to rise out of the gaping wound was a young man bearing a weapon of shining gold. His name was to be CHRYSAOR, which means ‘Golden Sword’.
Another form now emerged from the open throat of the dead Medusa. Not since the lovely APHRODITE arose from the frothing seed and blood of Ouranos’s severed testicles was something so transcendentally beautiful born of something so appallingly foul. Chrysaor’s twin was a shimmering white, winged horse. It pawed the air and flew up into the sky leaving its brother and the two shrieking sisters behind.
The name of the horse was PEGASUS.
ANDROMEDA AND CASSIOPEIA
‘I did it! I did it! I did it!’ Perseus shouted to the moon.
Indeed he had. With Medusa’s head safely stored inside the satchel he had originally dismissed as so uninteresting, he flew on in a state of intoxicated excitement. Indeed, so excited was he, so high on the thrill of his achievement, that he took a wrong turn. Instead of turning left he turned right, and soon found himself flying along a strange coastline.
Mile after mile he flew, not tiring, but growing increasingly bewildered by the unfamiliar shore. And suddenly, in the first light of dawn, the most extraordinary sight met his eyes. A beautiful girl, naked and chained to a rock.
He flew up to her.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘What does it look like I’m doing? And I’ll thank you to keep your eyes up on my face, if you don’t mind.’
‘I’m sorry … I couldn’t help wondering … is there any way I can help you? … My name is Perseus.’
‘ANDROMEDA, pleased to meet you.’
‘How are you staying up in the air?’
‘It’s a long story, but more to the point, why are you chained to this rock?’
‘Well …’ Andromeda sighed. ‘It was my mother, really. It’s a long story too, but I’ve nothing better to do so I might as well tell you. My parents, CEPHEUS and CASSIOPEIA, are the king and queen.’
‘Where are we exactly?’
‘Ethiopia, where did you think we were?’
‘Sorry, go on …’
‘It was all mother’s fault. She remarked out loud one day that I was more beautiful than all the NEREIDS and OCEANIDS in the world.’fn12
‘Well, you are,’ said Perseus.
‘Oh shush. Poseidon heard this boast and he was so outraged he sent a monstrous sea dragon called CETUS to ravage the shoreline.fn13 No shipping could get through and the people began to starve. We rely on trade, you see. The priests and priestesses were consulted and they told my parents that the only way to appease the god and call off Cetus was to have me chained naked to the rocks. Cetus would devour me, but the kingdom would be saved. Oh no – there he is now – look, look!’
Perseus looked round and saw a great sea beast arching through the waves towards them. Without a moment’s thought he dived into the water to confront it.
Andromeda looked on with feelings of admiration and relief that slowly turned to despair when, as the minutes passed, Perseus failed to surface. She could not know that he held the Seriphos underwater breath-holding record. Nor could she know that he was in possession of a blade so keen it could cut through even Cetus’s hard horny scales. She let out a great cry of relief when Perseus’s cheerful and triumphant face finally burst up through the waves, surrounded by a boiling mess of blubber and blood. He waved shyly before flying up to Andromeda once more.
‘I can’t believe it,’ she said. ‘I just can’t believe it! How did you do that?’
‘Oh, well,’ said Perseus, breaking her shackles with two swift strokes of the harpe. ‘I’ve always been at home in the water. Just swam underneath him with my blade up to slice through his belly. Fancy a lift?’
By the time they landed at the royal palace Andromeda was as hopelessly in love with him as he was with her.
Cassiopeia was overjoyed to see her daughter alive and thrilled to think of the handsome young hero becoming her son-in-law.
Cepheus the king said meekly. ‘Don’t forget, my dear, that Andromeda is already promised to my brother PHINEUS.’
‘Oh poo,’ said Cassiopeia, ‘a loose agreement, no kind of a binding engagement. He’ll understand.’
Phineus did not understand. As a brother of AEGYPTUS and descendant of NILUSfn14, he believed that an alliance with Andromeda would allow him to unite the most powerful kingdoms of the Nile. He was not about to let some puppy with a scythe take that away from him. The rumours of the puppy being able to fly he discounted.
So it was that the music and laughter of the betrothal banquet in the great hall of the Ethiopian palace was silenced by Phineus and a large body of men storming in, armed to the teeth.
‘Where is he?’ roared Phineus. ‘Where is the boy who dares come between me and Andromeda?’
Up on the top table where the royal party was feasting, Cassiopeia and Cepheus looked on in some embarrassment as Perseus rose uncertainly to his feet. ‘I think there may have been some mistake,’ he said.
‘You’re damned right there has,’ said Phineus. ‘And you made it. That girl was promised to me months ago.’
Perseus turned to Andromeda. ‘Is this true?’
‘It is true,’ she said. ‘But I was never consulted. He’s my uncle, for heaven’s sake.’fn15
‘What’s that got to do with it? You’re mine and that’s an end to it. And you,’ snarled Phineus, pointing his sword at Perseus, ‘you have two minutes to leave the palace and the kingdom, unless you want your head to decorate the gatepost.’