Blood Red City by Justin Richards Page B

documents, obviously assuming this explained everything.
    Guy looked at Miss Manners, who seemed to be trying not to smile. Leo cleared his throat.
    â€˜I’m sorry,’ Guy said at last, ‘all I know about Theseus is that he killed the Minotaur in the Labyrinth.’
    Elizabeth looked up, and caught Guy’s puzzled expression. She sighed. ‘Procrustes had a bed.’
    â€˜So do I,’ Guy offered. ‘Did he also have an axe?’
    â€˜Procrustes, also known as “the Stretcher”, was a son of Poseidon. He was a smith, and he waylaid travellers on the road between Athens and Eleusis. He forced them to try out his bed for size.’
    â€˜Doesn’t sound too bad,’ Guy ventured.
    â€˜If they didn’t fit the bed,’ Miss Manners said, ‘then he stretched them out and hammered at them until they did.’
    â€˜Hence “the Stretcher”,’ Leo said. ‘The process killed the poor travellers, of course.’
    â€˜Unless they were too long for the bed,’ Elizabeth went on. ‘In which case, he cut their legs off. With an axe.’
    â€˜Ah, I see. That axe.’
    â€˜Exactly.’
    â€˜So you had to be a perfect fit to survive,’ Guy deduced.
    â€˜Well, no,’ Leo told him, ‘because Procrustes cheated. He actually had two beds of different sizes. So he’d produce the one he knew you wouldn’t fit.’
    â€˜And how does Theseus come into it?’
    â€˜He got the better of Procrustes,’ Leo said, ‘which must have been a huge relief to everyone else. He made him lie on his own bed, and sure enough Procrustes didn’t fit either. So, according to one version of the story, Theseus took his axe, and cut his head off with it.’
    â€˜Theseus was trying to find a way to the underworld, and Procrustes guarded the Sixth Entrance to Hades. There is also a version of the legend that says Theseus used the same axe to slay the Minotaur,’ Miss Manners said.
    â€˜Ah, the Minotaur.’ At least Guy knew that story.
    â€˜But let’s not get carried away,’ Elizabeth told them. ‘These are just myths, after all. But it’s interesting that the axe was known as the Labrys, from which the Labyrinth took its name. And from that, it’s come to mean a maze, of course.’
    â€˜The double-headed axe has always been important in Minoan legend and ritual,’ Miss Manners said. ‘Which would tie in with the Minotaur and the Labyrinth.’
    â€˜I’ll tell you something else that’s interesting,’ Guy said, ‘if only to prove that I do know something about Greek history as well as their language.’
    â€˜And what’s that?’ Elizabeth asked.
    â€˜Well, it’s probably just a coincidence, but until very recently the double-headed axe was also the symbol of the Greek Fascist Party.’
    â€˜You never know,’ Leo said, ‘like the Nazi adoption of the Swastika, ancient symbols seem to have a resonance with the fascists. Harking back to an earlier, purer age or something, no doubt.’
    â€˜Perhaps the French manuscript will enlighten us,’ Elizabeth said.
    â€˜Finally we get to France.’ Guy smiled. ‘I was wondering what the connection might be.’
    â€˜The connection is a manuscript, as Elizabeth says,’ Miss Manners told him. ‘It is said to be a copy of writings by Plutarch, though he himself took the ideas from his grandfather, Lamprias, whom he almost certainly paraphrased.’
    â€˜So what’s it about?’ Guy wondered.
    â€˜It is unique,’ Leo told him, ‘in that it apparently brings together and reinterprets myths and legends from the ancient worlds of Greece, Rome, Scandinavia and Northern Europe.’
    Elizabeth nodded. ‘It seems to suggest a common thread, possibly a common origin, for all these myths. Which is obviously unusual. But Lamprias, the original author of much of