“Sshhhhhh,” she whispered, placing a hand gently on his forehead.
He stilled, sighed, and mumbled something that sounded like “Clemency.” Or, it could’ve been, “Penelope.” She smiled sadly. The two, apparently, sounded very much alike in his sleep-heavy mouth.
The queen climbed up to the rooftop of the palace. Strong sea gusts washed away the smoke of countless pyres. Still, the smell of death hung heavy in the air. She stared up at the vast expanse of glimmering stars.
All those years of longing. All her efforts to keep the peace and avoid bloodshed. To keep Ithaca—and its noble young men alive. All gone in an instant. Why? What did it all mean?
The sounds of soft weeping echoed in her ears and for a moment Penelope wondered if it was the shades of all the dead lingering in her palace. Did they blame her? Could she have done something to stop the slaughter? She shivered, imagining a sea of gray, newly dead faces staring at her accusingly through the veil between the worlds, as thin as a water bubble readying to pop.
But no. This crying was real. There, in the corner, a figure huddled in a blanket. She recognized the shape of her.
“Danae,” she whispered, as she walked toward her handmaiden. “I’m so sorry.”
“Why are you apologizing?” she asked, wiping her eyes with the ends of a blanket she’d wrapped around herself. “You did not slaughter our friends or murder Amphinomus and all the others.”
Penelope sank to the ground next to her handmaiden. “No. I did not.” She didn’t say what she thought, though. That she had appealed to the Goddess in her deathless cave for help in avoiding bloodshed and had been found wanting. The Goddess had turned her face from her. And when the Goddess retreated, the world of men—of murder, bloodshed, honor, and glory—violently rushed in, like floodwaters raging in a violent storm.
“I will never…never stop seeing his death before my eyes,” Danae said.
“Whose death?” Penelope asked, absently. There had been so many.
Danae whipped her head toward her, her sorrow turning into fury in an instant. “Whose do you think? Amphinomus’s! He was running toward us—toward me—to save me. He looked directly into my eyes and told me to run. He was a good man and now he’s gone!”
Penelope’s eyes widened and her mouth opened slightly. After a moment, understanding dawned. “You…you were in love with him,” the queen whispered.
Danae nodded, sobbing.
“But…” was that why she pleaded his case to her? Why she worked so hard to convince her of his goodness? The question slipped out before she could stop herself. “But then why did you urge me so strongly to select him as husband if you wanted him?”
Danae made a strangled noise in her throat. “Oh, Penelope. You were never going to marry any one of them,” she said. “Everyone knew it but you. But by convincing you to consider him, I made a case for his suitability.”
“I don’t understand.”
“For me,” she sobbed. “His suitability for me. Did you think I never yearned for what had been denied to you—a husband, a family, a kind, caring man?”
The queen swallowed, at a loss for how to respond.
“He fancied himself in love with you, but it was me he wanted,” she continued. “Me he had.”
Penelope knew to tread carefully here. “What was it you hoped would happen?”
Danae stared up at the moon, her eyes shining silver with tears. “That you would stand up and proclaim the truth—that you would never marry anyone else, that you would continue ruling Ithaca and ruling her well, and that you would finally send all the young princes packing, as was your right. Then I would ask you to give me to the only one of them worthy of being called prince. A good, kind, hardworking man.”
“Ah, I see. If I’d known I would—”
But Danae was not finished. “I will never, ever forgive Telemachus,” she cried, tears of rage clogging her throat. “To attack him from the back like that, when he was only trying to save us! Even as boys, Amphinomus was the only one to ever try to help him. But Telemachus never saw it. And he paid him with a coward’s spear in the back.”
The anger seemed to drain out of her. Her shoulders slumped. “Poor, sweet Amphinomus,” she said, her voice cracking.
Penelope smoothed Danae’s hair in a motherly gesture. The young woman turned to her like a child and Penelope drew her in, making soft murmuring noises as she gently rocked her.
Eventually, the weeping stopped. In the silence Danae said, “There’s a chance I could be carrying his child.”
Penelope blinked, surprised. “Oh.”
“I went to him,” she explained. “I let him think it was you. But I figured it wouldn’t matter in the end. He would have come to love me over time. I’m sure of it.”
“Absolutely,” Penelope agreed, trying to understand the implications of her lady’s actions. As well as her hopes and dreams. How had she not known what her beloved handmaiden wanted? Dreamed of?
She tucked Danae’s head under her chin as she held her. An idea struck her. “As queen of Ithaca, I proclaim you officially married to Amphinomus, son of Nisos of Megara,” she said.
Danae disentangled herself from her queen, her eyes wide and confused.
“It was a secret marriage, you see,” Penelope continued. “One that had already been consummated. And since you may be carrying his child, I will send you to his father’s house where you will be treated as a beloved and respected widow and cared for all your days.”
Danae blinked. “You…you want me gone?”
“No, no, my darling friend. But it is clear that this place has been forever poisoned for you. You will never be able to look upon my son without anger and grief—nor my husband for that matter. Eventually, you will never be able to look upon my face either—”
Danae opened her mouth to protest, but Penelope held up a hand. “And if you are with child,” she continued, “his family deserves to know and should help you take care of the child. Not to mention that your son will be raised as a prince in the home of your beloved.”
Fear, doubt, hope, grief, love—emotions appeared and disappeared from Danae’s face like clouds chasing each other on a windy day. “You would do this for me?”
“Of course,” Penelope said. “You have served me well. You deserve a chance to be happy. And who knows, you may yet love again and fulfill the dreams of home and family you’ve secretly cherished.”
Goddess, she hoped Danae really was with child. Amphinomus had been such a good man. What had Danae liked to call him? Amphinomus the Hardworker. Amphinomus the Earnest. The idea that his essence might yet live was like a soft melody of hope breaking through the cacophony of violence still ringing throughout her house.
“But what about you?” Danae asked. “You will also be haunted by the bloodshed in your hall. Not to mention war as outraged families seek retribution.”
Penelope released a slow, tired breath. “Further bloodshed will be contained, according to my husband…” she paused, the last word feeling and sounding strange in her mouth. “You saw how he rallied all the old islanders to his side.”
Besides, who was left to avenge these poor, lost boys anyway? Their aged parents? Families in far away lands who sent their younger sons away to be rid of them? There would be terrible grieving. Yes. And rage. But she did not doubt that somehow, some way, Odysseus would turn all of his people and allies back to him. Wasn’t that the special gift of “wily Odysseus?”
Hadn’t he already, despite her best efforts to resist, succeeded in winning her over too?
“And,” she added finally, “according to Telemachus, the king of Sparta will send spears to defend Odysseus if he asks for it.”
Danae chuckled sadly. “So, your Spartan ruse comes to pass in reality. Life. The gods. Who can make sense of any of this?”
“True. I hadn’t thought of it that way,” Penelope murmured. It had been years since she and Danae had tricked her people into handing over their sons for saf
ekeeping by implying that she could call upon her Spartan father to send a force of arms to keep the peace. And she had kept the peace and the boys safe. Even when they grew into men and their insufferable antics disgusted her. But how could she feel anything but motherly toward them after all this time? And now they were all gone. And so many of her innocent ladies too. Washed away in an ocean of blood.
As if caught by the same wave of grief, the two women, so alike in build and looks they could be sisters, wept for the loss of so many.
Eventually, exhausted by their sorrow, they rose to return to their own chambers.
Beside her marriage bed once again, the queen sighed and looked up. As the sky lightened ever so slightly, she spotted a small shape in the tree she hadn’t noticed before.
Her fingers brushed the slippery roundness of a ripening olive. Amazing. Her husband had hacked at this living thing so long ago—had shaped it, and molded it and twisted it into something useful to him—yet it still lived, still brought forth new life.
Wasn’t she like this—hewed and twisted by her husband’s actions into a life she could never have predicted? Could she be like this tree—ignored for so long and yet somehow, still standing, stubbornly and defiantly bloom with new life?
Penelope put her hand on her belly. She didn’t know if it was still possible, but if she’d learned anything lately, it was that life had an endless capacity to surprise.
The queen shrugged out of her tunic and let it fall at her feet again. She slid naked beside the body of the man she’d been consecrated to in what seemed like another lifetime. She snuggled against this stranger’s, yet not stranger’s deliciously warm body, and he turned to her, murmuring her name.
Realizing she had not yet said these words, she pressed herself against him and whispered, “Welcome home, Odysseus.” He sighed and they came together again slowly, softly, as if in a dream. When they finally slept, not even the caresses of rosy-fingered dawn, nor the noises of a grieving house trying to put itself in order could draw them up from their ancient, but still living marriage bed.
Notes from the Authors
Song of Survival and Epilogue
by Vicky Alvear Shecter
Normally, the first story in a collaborative novel introduces the other characters readers will meet in subsequent stories. That was impossible in this case because Penelope and Telemachus were isolated on Ithaca. They had no idea whether Odysseus was alive, let alone what he was up to, or with whom he was contending. So instead of introducing characters that readers would see again, Penelope and Telemachus introduced themes and ideas that expressed themselves in later stories—of Odysseus’s penchant for storytelling and of his charisma (both charming and deadly), as well as of the cost, in human terms, of his hubris and mistakes.
Both Penelope’s and Telemachus’s characters sprang from a series of questions: How did Ithaca survive when their neighboring Achaean kingdoms were flush with Trojan riches? How did Penelope keep the kingdom stable financially without their king and their share of Trojan gold? What would’ve been the cost psychologically and emotionally to losing all of the “best of men” of Ithaca? From there, it became easier to imagine that Penelope would’ve needed to protect herself and her son from angry Ithacans, hence her solution for housing young men as guest-hostages. Young men who would later see themselves as “suitors”.
Her skill at weaving, of course, is legendary, which informed my characterization of how she kept the economy stable. I was fascinated by Duane and Letitia Roller’s article in The Classical Journal, where they explored why Homer described Penelope’s hand as “thick” or “stout”. It turns out that descriptor is usually reserved for men and/or warriors—a thick or stout hand meant excellence with the spear or javelin. It was rare for any mortal woman to earn such an epithet and they concluded that it referred to her excellence as a weaver; in this case, her literal and artistic craftiness which kept Odysseus’s kingdom stable during his absence.
John Churchill’s article, “Odysseus’s Bed; Agamemnon’s Bath” in Johns Hopkins’ College Literature magazine was also an excellent resource; it informed the way I imagined Penelope related to the reality of her marriage bed in the Epilogue.
As for Telemachus, at twenty, he should’ve been married and ruling Ithaca. Why wasn’t he? Either he was incapable or he was too immature. I chose the latter, imagining that Penelope shielded him as a youth from angry Ithacans who would likely have blamed him in his father’s stead for all their losses. Homer also states clearly that Telemachus’s grandfather, Laertes, withdrew from his duties to tinker in his orchards. That left Telemachus abandoned by both his father and his grandfather. The psychological and emotional cost of that, I imagined, would have been significant.
Special thanks to Stephanie Thornton, an early reader, and the wise input from H-Team founders, Eliza Knight, Stephanie Dray, and Kate Quinn.
I particularly want to thank fellow collaborator Russ Whitfield, who created Odysseus and Amphinomus whole-cloth at the same time that other team members were creating their reinterpretations of Homer’s “monsters” and “witches”. As a result, he worked in the dark and was forced to recast his story a number of times to match the others. Usually, we avoid this kind of problem, but the episodic nature of the Odyssey meant there was less collaboration up front, and more readjusting on the back end. As usual, Russ handled it all with his trademark cheery quips and masterfully creative storytelling.
As we did in A Song of War: A Novel of Troy, we removed the supernatural (though not the character’s belief in the gods and the supernatural) as we explored the human cost of war and ancient concepts of honor. I was completely and utterly blown away by the talented and outrageously creative re-interpretations of the witches and monsters in Amalia Carosella’s Sirens, Libbie Hawker’s Circe, Scott Oden’s Kyklops, and David Blixt’s Calypso. Hats off to my uber-talented fellow authors!
Xenia in the Court of the Winds
by Scott Oden
I’ve spent the last seven years writing about monsters. Literal monsters—creatures of myth and legend which I’ve taken from their niches in folklore and shoehorned into actual northern European history. It’s been an interesting journey; rich and rewarding, if not in money then in the healing coin of the soul. This is perhaps what prompted Russ Whitfield to invite me to participate in A Sea of Sorrow. It came at a watershed moment: my fourth book was being prepared for a summer release, and my fifth was in outline form...but I wanted a moment of respite from the grim broodings of my monstrous protagonist, Grimnir. And there was Russ. His pitch went right to the heart of my imagination: “Take a monster from The Odyssey,” he said, “and make it human.”
And like an arrow shot from blessed Apollo’s bow, I flew straight for one-eyed Polyphemus. The Kyklops. A ghastly, flesh-eating beast who imprisoned Odysseus and his crew in his cave, and would have made a great meal of them were it not for the sharp cunning of the wily king of Ithaca. But, more than just a good monster story, the tale of Polyphemus served as a parable on the duties and penalties of guest-friendship—xenia—in the Greek world.
But, I asked myself as I read and re-read James Lattimore’s translation of The Odyssey, what if all of this was just a pack of lies, a spin campaign to make Odysseus look good? What if the dreaded Kyklops was no monster, but simply a foreigner from a land whose ways weren't Greek ways? What if Polyphemus wasn’t even his name? From there, details seemed to fall into place.
Xenia in the Court of the Winds marks my first extended foray into using first-person point-of-view in storytelling. As I wrote it, and as I read it now, I hear Glaukos son of Lykaon speaking with a combination of voices—chiefly that of my father mixed with inflections swiped from Morgan Freeman. I did not mean for him to sound thus. He just did. Indeed, I stumbled across my narrator quite by accident one morning, as he was sitting alone in a walled garden on ancient Sicily. He wanted to talk, to tell this story; I listened, and I wrote it down. And because he was alone in that gar
den, I gave him a precocious granddaughter, Eirene, so he might have an audience beyond himself. I would like to hear more from good Glaukos. Perhaps he’ll have other tales to tell.
My thanks to Russ for the invitation, to Vicky, Amalia, David, and Libbie for their support and the generosity of their myriad gifts, and to Glaukos son of Lykaon for telling me this story of a poor, misunderstood Egyptian… .
Hekate’s Daughter
by Libbie Hawker
When we wrapped up A Song of War, the H-Team’s 2016 collaborative novel depicting The Iliad, the members of our merry band of historical fiction authors discussed a variety of settings and characters we might explore for 2017’s project. My fingers were crossed for ancient Egypt, a possibility floated by Kate Quinn and voted on with some enthusiasm by several H-Team members, but ultimately, I had to agree that it made more sense to follow A Song of War with a depiction of The Odyssey. I mean, what could be more logical? The Odyssey always comes after The Iliad. Always. Everybody knows that. So I signed onto our Odyssey project with no small amount of trepidation; despite hinting in my author’s notes in A Song of War that I might explore ancient Greece more in my fiction, I hadn’t yet done so, unless you count a trilogy of novels set in twenty-fifth dynasty Egypt, which, in my defense, was heavily influenced by Greek culture. But let’s be real: it’s still ancient Egypt, my home turf, my Easy Street. 2016’s intentions be damned: I still know as much about ancient Greece as I did when I wrote The Bow, my contribution to A Song of War—which is to say, nothing.
I had assumed that I would find this piece slow going and difficult to write, simply because I am still such a stranger to the setting. However, nothing could have been further from the truth. Almost from the minute I called “dibs” on Circe, the character began speaking to me, all but shouting her story into my ear. I was under a particularly nasty deadline with another book and couldn’t turn my attention to Circe’s story for some weeks, yet she would not let me rest; I lay awake at night imagining her origins, her history, the trials she faced that had led her to exile and to the stigma of being called “witch”. I have, in fact, never felt a character take on such a vivid and distinct life of her own inside my head, though I am the author of more than thirty novels under several different pen names, and no stranger to the curious intrusions and insistences of fictional characters.
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