The Songs of the Kings by Barry Unsworth

good build for wrestling. It suited his temperament too. There were stronger men in the camp, but he knew how to use the strength and weight of an opponent to defeat and disable him. And a man well oiled, who knew the holds, could slip out of any grasp.
    He was drawing near now to the place where the Singer was generally to be found, where there was an outcrop of rock to provide some shelter from the wind, in the open space between the Cretan, Locrian and Achaian encampments. That he so regularly chose this place had led all three of these to claim him as a fellow countryman; but there were others who said he came from Lydia or from Ephesus or from the island of Chios. It was not possible to find certain proof in his accent; and when asked where he came from, he merely gestured, sometimes towards the mountains, sometimes towards the sea.
    As Odysseus approached, he heard the high clear voice with its usual note of lament, and the sound of the lyre, at the same time swooning and vibrant. However, he was annoyed to find that the Singer, far from following instructions and promulgating the message of an offended Zeus as the sender of the wind, was singing about the early life of the hero Perseus, how he had been born in a brazen cell where his mother Danae was imprisoned, and where she became mysteriously pregnant, the very thing she had been imprisoned to prevent.
    None of this had anything to do with the wind, though it had much to do with Zeus; but there was a considerable crowd there, people were listening, he could not simply barge in and interrupt. All the same, it was infuriating. Early evening, when people were gathering, when it was cooler and more comfortable and minds were receptive. Prime time, in other words, and it was being wasted.
    His rank precluded sitting among the others. He waited standing, at some distance apart. Despite his annoyance—and the fact that, in common with many people there, he had heard the story before—he soon found himself drawn in. It was one of the greats, and the Singer was telling it well. She had been locked up there by her own father, Acristius, king of Argos, who had been told by an oracle that a son of Danae would one day kill him. She claimed that Zeus was the father of the child, that he had visited her in a shower of gold, but Acristius preferred to believe that some lecherous and burglarious human had picked the lock. “Where is the gold then?” he asked. “Why is there none on the floor? Why is not even the slightest trace left?” Questions to which there was no answer. “A likely story,” Acristius said, and he set both mother and child adrift in a chest. However, with his own hands Zeus guided the chest across the sea to the island of Seriphos, where it was beached up and found by Dictys, younger brother of the king of the island, whose name was Polydectes. The kindly Dictys looked after the castaways and it was here the Perseus grew to manhood. But then one day Polydectes happened to see Danae and he was smitten immediately and wanted to possess her, but she didn’t fancy him at all, she refused and Perseus backed her up. “My mother’s decision must be respected,” Perseus said.
    There were exclamations of approval at this from various parts of the audience, and the Singer observed a pause here, the customary pause for dangerous situations. He resumed with a rhetorical question. How did Polydectes react?
    By a cunning falsehood. He announced that he intended to ask for the hand of Hippodameia, daughter of the Pisan king, Oenomaus, and he asked for a gift of horses as part of the bride price. Knowing all the while that Perseus possessed no horses.
    This Polydectes was a shrewd fellow, Odysseus reflected. Part of the bride price, brilliant. The lustful king had always been his favorite character in the story, even though things had ended badly for him. He knew what he wanted and he worked things round. He had calculated on the