The ruse worked. Over the next several weeks, the fatherless and brotherless boys of the kingdom, as well as many of their sisters, poured into the palace and right into her hands. Their families called them the queen’s “guest-wards”.
Penelope called them what they were in truth: her hostages.
For no one would dare attack the palace now. Not with their own children inside.
It was also an investment in her son’s future. She hoped, over time, that Telemachus would forge bonds of loyalty with the next generation.
That was the plan.
She quickly discovered she had not accounted for the strange habits of energetic, competitive boys. Nor for their cruelty.
While the small number of girls who’d been sent gladly joined the camaraderie of her weaving centers, the boys were something else entirely.
Weeks after her “guests” had settled into their new lives, she joined them at an evening meal. The hall rang with so much laughter and yelling, she was sure the sound alone would vibrate the hall’s decorative shields right off the walls.
She stood, trying to get their attention. “Boys! Boys!” she called to no avail.
Penelope exchanged a glance with Danae, who scurried over to the new bard whom the queen had hired to help keep the unruly mob of boys entertained. The old straggly-bearded singer stood up, put his fingers in his mouth and let loose a piercing whistle so loud, it caused some of the boys near him to wince and cover their ears. It worked, though. The boys stopped their chatter and looked around.
“Thank you, bard,” she said to the man as he sat. “Now gentlemen,” Penelope began, but a couple of the bigger, louder boys interrupted her. She’d already learned their names—Antinous and Eurymachus.
“Wait, our beloved queen speaks!” they yelled in unison in high, false voices, then fell onto each other laughing as if they’d said something clever or funny.
She paused. There was something about those two she did not like, though she could never put her finger on what or why. They thought too highly of themselves, of course, but didn’t most boys? No, it was something else. She would have to watch them.
“Gentlemen, you are acting like wild animals rather than the boys of noble families that you are.”
“Everyone is trying to impress you, Queen Penelope!” a boy shouted from the back.
She smiled. “Well if you are trying to impress anyone—especially girls—I must inform you that it will not happen via a continual stream of breaking wind jokes.”
“How about demonstrations?” one boy called. “Will that work?” He stood up, exaggeratedly put his backside out and released a sound she hadn’t known was humanly possible.
Boys hooted and pounded the tables.
“Oh my princes! Princes! Please! You must—”
But Telemachus had shot up, sending his stool clattering on the stone floor behind him. “There is only one prince here,” he shouted over her. His face was crimson with outrage.
Everybody stopped. Even the servants froze, gazes flicking from Telemachus to her. Her son’s curls, the queen noted in that strange moment of silence, were overlong, which made him look younger and softer than the other boys. She made a mental note to send a barber to his chamber later.
“You may not call them your princes, Mother, for that is not what they are,” he repeated. “I am the only prince here!”
Her son’s expression told her to tread carefully, as did the reaction of most of the boys, who were smirking and exchanging disdainful looks. “Of course, you are,” she said. “You are the one and only true prince of Ithaca.”
He nodded and stomped out of the hall, his cheeks still aflame, his plate left unfinished.
Her heart sank at the low-guttural comments and laughs that filled the room. Oh son, that is not the way! Odysseus would’ve used humor to remind everyone of his status, not a tantrum! Actually, he wouldn’t have needed to remind anyone of his power. They would just know it by his bearing. But Telemachus seemed incapable of projecting that kind of unquestioning strength.
Penelope inwardly cursed her husband for disappearing and her father-in-law, Laertes, for abandoning his grandson to play with his fruit trees. Telemachus needed guidance. Male guidance. But, beyond his mother, he had no one. Even old Mentor, whom Odysseus had assigned to watch over them, had disappeared from the palace when times had grown difficult.
The queen swallowed hard. Why had all the men of this House failed her? Why couldn’t Telemachus see how his behavior encouraged disdain rather than confidence?
She closed her eyes, conjuring Odysseus’s flickering shade before her. I blame you, husband. Everything would’ve been different if only you had come directly home.
Her eyes pricked with heat.
For years, she’d tamped down the memories of her young husband. How he’d wept with joy over the birth of Telemachus and her own survival after a long labor. How he’d promised to protect them all their days.
But they were lies, weren’t they? Odysseus had broken every oath he’d ever made to her, to her son, to his people, and to his land.
So much of his charm had been his impulsiveness. She remembered how on a whim, in the early days, he would take her sailing to a remote isle where they could spend an uninterrupted afternoon in each other’s arms. Or wake her in the darkness so they could climb up a ridge to watch the sunrise, all the while spinning tales of gods who whispered stories directly into his mind.
What great tale will you tell me when I see you again in lightless Hades? Will you blame a god for what was surely your decision—and probably on a whim—to pursue more glory? Will you spin fantastical accounts that absolve you of the consequences from the choices you made? Of goddesses who seduced? Monsters which attacked? Beasts that betrayed?
Will your stories distract me until my own memories drift away before I can tell you of what your absence cost your son and me? Of the suffering of your people as farms failed, sickness spread, and poverty laid us low? How grief for an entire generation of our best men crippled your kingdom?
“I shall sing a song of the beautiful, faithful queen who weeps for the love of her lost husband,” the bard announced and Penelope’s eyes flew open.
Everyone was watching her. She quickly wiped her wet cheeks with the heels of her hands. But as the bard strummed his lyre and crooned about the “soft, sweet, endless love for her lost husband, of the faithful, lonely queen,” more hot tears stung her eyes and rolled down her cheeks.
Without saying another word, she dashed out of the room and up the stairs to her chamber where she let her tears of frustration flow freely. Because that’s what they were.
Yes, she was lonely, but more than that, she was angry. Angry at being left alone. Angry at being made responsible—against her will—for the lives of all his people.
And it was a good thing she’d made it out of the hall when she did because she wasn’t sure she could’ve kept her hands from flying to the bard’s scrawny chicken-neck and choking the life out of him for making her sound so simpering and simple.
* * *
TELEMACHUS
“Oi, prince Antinous,” called one of the boys, looking insolently at Telemachus all the while. The son of Odysseus, leaning in the shade of the gardener’s shed near the empty field, willed himself not to react.
“Why don’t you wrestle someone else besides the ‘true prince of Ithaca’?” continued the boy. “You’ve already beaten him three times now. We want to see a real match.”
Telemachus’s face and neck grew hot, despite his best attempts to ignore the idiot. It had been weeks since he’d taken offence at his mother’s use of “prince” for anyone else but him. But the boys would not let him forget. He had a feeling they’d never let him forget.
“Come now, let us go practice our javelin throw,” said a freckled, red-haired boy named Amphinomus, pulling him away. Telemachus shook him off. He did not need the help of some freckled hayseed.
“Control your temper,
” his mother had warned him weeks ago. “Others will see it as a softness and bait you with it.” But his temper and his title were all he had. It was the only source of dignity he could muster in this new world of boys who lived by rules he hadn’t known: Only the strongest matter. Only the fastest are admired. Only those who can physically dominate are worthy of love.
Well, he wasn’t physically dominating. He hadn’t known that either until his house had been invaded.
“Make them go home,” he’d told his mother after the first week. “I don’t like them. And there are too many of them.”
“I cannot,” she’d said. “I have sworn an oath to feed and care for them. To break such an oath would enrage the gods.”
He was sure some of the boys must have heard that exchange because it was soon after that they all began calling his father the great “oath-breaker”.
“He must have run away with all the Trojan gold,” one of the boys taunted.
“Maybe he killed all our fathers and brothers on purpose so he wouldn’t have to share the riches,” another one said.
He’d charged at that boy, but it hadn’t gone well, as evidenced by his still swollen, purple left eye. Worse, it had taken his grandfather’s old guard to save him from the melee.
The elderly guard, he’d noted, always managed to be nearby, which only shamed him more because it meant either his mother had sent him to keep watch, or the man had such little confidence in Telemachus’s abilities to defend himself, he’d appointed himself his protector.
Among boys who were supposed to serve him! And yet they dismissed him with such disdain. And he couldn’t do anything about the attack because he’d learned it wasn’t manly to “tell”. So he bore it, even though he constantly seethed.
After stalking off the playing field, Telemachus snuck into his own silent, empty hall. Staring up at Odysseus’s bow, he whispered, “What was your secret, father? How did you command men who were bigger and stronger than you?”
His mother said he used charm and humor. But what did that mean? And how could he employ something that didn’t come naturally to him? Telemachus closed his eyes and prayed under the symbol of his father’s great strength for what seemed like the millionth time, “Please bring my father home, mighty Zeus, Lord of the Sky and of Justice. I need his help. I need him.”
* * *
PENELOPE
It seemed like months rather than years, but Penelope had only to look out among her wards to be reminded of the passage of time. Seven years since taking on her guest-hostages. Seven years to transform her palace from a sanctuary for silly boys into a den of drunkards.
She continued to be amazed at the sight of so many bearded men crashing through her hall. And that night, the funk of man-sweat, stale wine, and roasting meat was so great, it was a wonder she could still smell the oil of iris Danae had dabbed on her forehead before she’d headed downstairs.
Where had all her young princes gone? Yes, they’d been silly and crude in the beginning, but now…she shook her head. Now it seemed her house had become a barn overcrowded with immense shaggy bulls, lowing and spitting and sweating and trying to rut any creature that walked by.
Out of habit, she scanned the tables for Telemachus. There. He was talking to Mentes, the old family friend who had taken her son under his wing. Antinous had, thank the Goddess, finally finished his “song”—which was more of a caterwaul—and he and Eurymachus were now challenging each other to see how much wine they could ingest in one go without pausing for breath.
The queen sighed.
For years, her plan of keeping the peace with her “guest-wards” had gone well. The arrangement had diffused the people’s rage. And although it had been challenging for Telemachus, the plan had also succeeded in stabilizing Ithaca and helping the economy recover somewhat. Still, she held out hope her son would find the inner strength to lead rather than demand, a distinction she’d not been able to impress upon him.
An empty wine bladder shot up the high-vaulted ceiling, catching Penelope’s eye. Who had thrown it and for what reason, she could not guess. Still, she cringed as it almost hit Odysseus’s famous bow on the way down. She really should have removed it years ago, but it did serve to remind all her “little” princes that she was still married.
It was an important reminder. If she could’ve lit it up in a circle of hanging oil lamps without worrying about setting it aflame, she would. As a coarse roar filled the hall, Penelope considered how much had changed over the last several years. She had not anticipated, indeed, could not have even imagined, how reaching sexual maturity would transform her sweet, silly, playful boys. It was as if once the daimon of the ceaseless drive for Aphrodite’s pleasure hit them, they lost all sense of humility, reasonableness, and straight-thinking. They pursued her women—and some of the houseboys—endlessly. They growled at each other like mindless beasts. And they drank until they pissed and vomited all over themselves. Penelope had been wholly and completely unprepared for the tidal wave of aggression and priapistic competitiveness that the newly bearded young men displayed daily in her halls.
Most shocking and distressing of all, however, was the fact that they’d convinced themselves, to a man, that they were not her guest-wards at all, but her suitors.
Suitors!
The unmitigated gall of it. She had nurtured them as their queen mother and saved many of them from starvation after being abandoned by their own families. And now they wanted to bed her? And take her throne?
But she’d had to tread carefully. She could not insult them lest their families considered rebellion again. So she put them off. They’d fallen easily for her best trick—telling them she would make a decision on which suitor to take after finishing her father-in-law’s shroud (sadly, Laertes had not taken the hint). But really, she’d been working out designs and patterns and dyed-wool combinations to meet the demand for her workshop’s high-quality textiles. It was the products from her looms, after all, that had kept Ithaca afloat in Odysseus’s absence.
Eurymachus had once spied her unpicking one design that had displeased her and had made a great infantile fuss about how she was “tricking and misleading” them about Laertes’s shroud. She’d rolled her eyes and let him go on as she tried to work out the problem of how to create a pattern of white-winged creatures emerging out of a dark blue background. If she could perfect a technique that her women could easily follow, she had no doubts her rich Achaean neighbors would pay handsomely for it.
She took a sip of well-watered wine and noticed one young “suitor” across the hall staring at her with moon-eyes. Ah, yes. Amphinomus. She could tell he fancied himself in love with her, as did one or two of the others. They were still young enough not to have learned how to disguise that lovesick look. But she’d always had a soft spot for the admittedly graceless, stocky young man since the day she saw him trying to guide her son away from his foolhardy entanglements with some of the bigger, stronger boys.
There was something about his stocky, barrel-chested build too. His resemblance—in form anyway—to a young Odysseus often caught her off guard. She would catch him sitting in a certain way and be flooded with memories of resting her head on Odysseus’s broad shoulders or of snuggling into his strong chest to sleep.
The bard plucked his strings and began yet another interminable ballad about lost kings and lonely wives. Penelope brought two fingers to the bridge of her nose as the bard’s yowling continued.
Finally, she could take it no longer. “Bard, by all the gods, sing a song of joy instead,” she commanded over the din.
Telemachus shot up and turned to her. “By all the gods, Mother?” he cried. “You are queen in Ithaca. Act like it! I would not have my mother shame my father by showing her weakness…”
She blinked rapidly at him in surprise. Had he just yelled at her? In her own hall, in front of all the other young men? Everyone, it seemed, found his outburst interesting as well, for most in the hall quieted and turned to see what
had irritated the son of Odysseus this time.
“Telemachus,” she said soothingly. “It is a wife’s duty to miss her spouse.”
“Duty, yes,” he agreed. “But do so in private. It is time for men to talk now.”
There was a long silence as mother and son stared at each other. Penelope swallowed. Her eyes burned as she fought the urge to slap him.
But she saw the momentary flash of pleading in her son’s eyes and understood. If she shamed him now, he would never have the respect of these men. His future ability to lead was questionable as it was. So she clenched her teeth, gave her son a slight nod and left the hall without another word.
When she reached her chambers, Danae took one look at her face and dropped the night tunica she was folding. “My Lady?”
Penelope released a sound that was half-growl, half screech. “He dismissed me! From my own hall!” Hot tears of rage flowed down her cheeks as she stomped up and down the small room.
Danae shook her head. “I don’t understand. What happened?”
The queen relayed the ridiculous scene until her rage was spent. After she’d brought the queen an infusion of steeped willow bark and chamomile buds, Danae cleared her throat. “I hate to bring this to you now but I also have news,” she said quietly.
“Oh, Goddess. What now?”
“I went to the docks today to speak to some of the travelers and their women.”
Penelope put her cup down, as a stone lodged in her chest. Recently, they had been hearing persistent rumors that her husband hadn’t died after all. That, after losing all his men and all the riches from Troy, he’d hidden in shame on a small, strange island behind the skirts of a besotted woman who didn’t know his true identity.
Of course, she’d heard stories about his survival for years but she’d always dismissed them. Traveling men often told tall tales in exchange for a meal or a cloak. But these rumors were too persistent to ignore.
A Sea of Sorrow Page 3
