Penelope's Web

by Christopher Rush

  It didn’t happen. Athene was still there. The grey-eyed goddess appeared alongside and showed me a small rock ahead. I managed to stop the onward hurtling by grabbing at it wildly as I passed and clinging hard to it while the monster wave rolled on and smashed against the reef in smithereens and salt. But I only managed to hold on for a few seconds. The colossal back-rush of the wave ripped me right off the rock again, stripping the skin from my hands and fingers. I saw it for a second – the skin left sticking there, like the suckers of a squid torn from its hole; and then the surge was over my head once more.

  And yet once more Athene came to my rescue. She pulled me to the surface, guided me clear of the rollers and found a natural harbour for me, a sheltered little river-mouth free from rocks. I drifted gently to shore, still clinging incredibly to the big timber-knot which was all that was left of the raft. I let it go, not forgetting to unwind Leucothea’s veil and hurl it into the sea-rushing river.

  Downstream it hurried, back into the hands of the lovely-breasted nymph. Athene also faded from the scene, and I knelt on all fours and kissed the wet ground. Then I dropped like a log among the reeds, salt water gushing from my mouth and nostrils, my body battered and swollen from nineteen days and nights in the sea. My lacerated hands streamed blood and stung with salt. I had to find shelter for the night, away from the hard frosts and chill winds and drenching dews that would follow. I forced myself to my feet, staggered to the nearest copse, found a likely thicket, crept in between two bushes and heaped myself up a quick couch and coverlet of dead leaves, thick enough to keep three workers warm in the worst of winters. Even then, sleep came hard at first. I was stark-naked and shivering. But Athene had still not deserted me. She hovered over me briefly in the darkness, laid a charm of Morpheus on my burning eyelids, and gave me rest.

  FORTY-SIX

  Nausicaa lies sleeping. The bed is sumptuous, because her father is Alcinous, King of the Phaeacians, on the island of Scheria. Once they’d been neighbours to the plundering Cyclops on the broad acres of Hypereia, but now they are settled here. They are a rarefied breed, close to the gods, and the king divinely led. Nausicaa is guarded by the two ladies of the bedchamber, stretched out at either doorpost of her room, both women gifted with great beauty by the Graces. Nausicaa herself is even more beautiful, in build and looks as bright and glorious as a deathless goddess.

  It is early morning, before dawn. The doors to the girl’s bedroom are solid and firmly shut, and the beautiful chambermaids bar the way. This means nothing to Athene, fresh from the sea, where she has been assisting Odysseus. Passing through the polished oak, easy as air, the goddess glides across the room to the bed and breathes into Nausicaa’s ear, the slightest sea-whisper in a beached shell asleep on the sands.

  Athene has not forgotten to disguise herself or her voice. Any young girl, should she happen to stir, would be blinded by the sight of a goddess turning up at her bed-head, especially unannounced, so she has taken the precaution of assuming the form and likeness of Dymas, the daughter of a sea-captain, a girl of Nausicaa’s own age and one of her best friends. It is the voice of Dymas, apparently, that is now whispering into the girl’s dreaming ear.

  ‘Nausicaa,’ says the voice in the shell, ‘shame on you, lazybones. Here you are, sleeping your young life away, while all around you lie all those lovely clothes, neglected and unwashed, and not only here but all over the palace. It’s littered with laundry. And you on the threshold of marriage, I should think, with every noble young man for miles around sighing out his soul for you. And why not? Who wouldn’t want a Phaeacian princess to be his wife, especially one with your looks? But not if all the guests turn up tricked out in dirty old duds that haven’t seen water for weeks. Unthinkable. You’d best avoid the shame of it and prepare for the wedding that’s just around the corner. Who knows, you may meet the man of your dreams any moment now. Say goodbye to your virginity – and start planning things this very morning; don’t leave it any later. I’ll tell you what, ask your father to set you up with a wagon and a couple of mules immediately after breakfast. In fact, with all those spreads and dresses and the many rugs and sashes lying about, why wait for breakfast? It’s a long way, don’t you think, from the town to the washing-pools? Better hurry.’

  After delivering this speech, the bright-eyes goddess speeds back up to Olympus, where the blithe gods spend their unending lives in the white radiance of eternity, undrenched by rains, unshaken by gales, untroubled by frosts or snows, untouched by the mortality that brings bitterness into the lives of men.

  Meanwhile the east grows roses. Nausicaa sits up, rubbing her eyes, still filled with her dream, and runs to find her mother. She is already sitting with her women, spinning the yarn that is stained with sea-purple, the rich dye of the deeps. Her mother listens and smiles.

  ‘It’s a good dream,’ she says.

  She tells her daughter to speak to the king. Being close to the gods, he at once understands what is afoot and arranges everything, including picnic provisions, so that his daughter and her entourage can breakfast at the washing-pools. He also orders olive oil to be taken along in a golden flask.

  ‘You’ll need to bathe after the washing, all of you, and after bathing you will want to anoint yourselves with a good soft oil.’

  And so it is contrived. Driving the mules with their cartloads of washing, Nausicaa and her maids come down to the clear pools so freshly fed by the swirling river that even the most stubborn of stains can be scoured clean of grime. They drop their bundles into the troughs, tread them hard, rinse them free of all dirt and spread them out cleanly in a line on the sparkling wave-washed shingle of the beach. Then they strip off their sweaty clothes and bathe naked in the giggling sea, rubbing themselves all over with olive oil, those sturdy-hipped, thick-haired girls with shaggy armpits, surrounding their cool nude princess and the honey-gold locks piled on her freshly washed head. Afterwards, they picnic and dance and sing and play ball while they wait for the clothes to dry in the hot noon-bright sun.

  Little do the light-hearted girls imagine Athene herself taking part in their game, but just as Nausicaa throws the ball to one of her maids, Athene’s invisible arm intervenes, deflecting the plaything so that it drops not into the girl’s outstretched hands but into the deep eddies of the current, causing all of them to shriek with laughter and exaggerated alarm. This wakes Odysseus from his long sleep in the leafy lair, where he still lies hidden.

  The screams were tearing my sleep apart. I was awake enough to imagine the worst from that shrieking. Rape? Murder? A raid? Where had I landed now? Not fucking savages again!

  Or perchance the cries of the mountain nymphs who haunt the rugged hills, the rivers, springs and fields, and had tripped light-footed down to the sounding sea so early in the morning to frolic in the tide?

  Only one way to find out.

  So it was that Odysseus emerged from his thicket, holding a verdant branch before him to hide his manhood. This caused the startled maids to shriek all the more, as if he were a mountain lion advancing on the herd, compelled by sheer hunger to attack the pens.

  And a mountain lion with flaming eyes might have proved a sight less frightening than the one the unprotected women now beheld: a naked male, long-haired, tangle-bearded and begrimed with brine, bearing down on them with a rustling branch for genitals. A wild man. Still screaming, they went scuttling off in all directions along the jutting sandy spits of the shore. All except Nausicaa, whose stillness made her stand out.

  As did her stature – taller by a head than the tallest of her maids, this unwedded girl. As for her looks, it was not unlike the scene in which Leto looks on as her daughter Artemis the Archeress comes down the mountain-tops along the high ridges of Taygetus or Erymanthus to hunt wild boar and follow the shy fleet-footed deer, with all the nymphs crowding round her, joining in the sport. All are lovely, all are divine, and yet Artemis surpasses each one of them and proves the paragon both in stature and in beauty. So it was with the Ph
aeacian maids and the radiant Nausicaa, loveliest of them all. She stood her ground and held her gaze, waiting calmly to see how Odysseus would act and what he would say.

  What the fuck do you say when you’re standing bare buff in front of a gorgeous grey-eyed girl with only a fistful of forest covering your cock? Not to mention the inevitable effect she’s having on you that even sea and circumstance combined haven’t quite suppressed.

  Penelope said it for me – as ever – and turned a plain-speaking peasant wench into a princess, an island tribe into a race of nautical aristocrats, a clay house into a bronze palace, the entire island into a Poseidon protectorate, and me into the most polite of orators, if one suitably embarrassed by his exposed and scruffy condition.

  ‘When I first saw you, I took you for Artemis among the Immortals, but now that I stand so close, I have to confess, the comparison fades. In fact it’s worthless – there’s no comparison at all. Not with any girl I’ve ever seen. Or goddess either, for that matter. Your parents and brothers must be bursting with pride and pleasure, not to mention that luckiest of men who has the good fortune to win your hand in marriage, if such a man lives and breathes, for I cannot even imagine one worthy enough in the worlds of men or gods.’

  Nausicaa blushed under the shower of compliments.

  ‘And I can tell you, only once have I seen anything even approaching your elegance, only once in my life, but it’s that one beauty that remains with me, now I’m reminded of it.’

  ‘Oh? And who was she, eloquent stranger, who made such an impression on you?’

  Odysseus shook his head. ‘No, it was no woman, for no woman could compare with you. It was not even a she. It was long ago, in Delos.’

  ‘In Delos. How lovely that sounds. In Delos. It sounds so far away.’

  ‘Far enough. I saw a young sapling there once, a palm tree, standing straight and tall and lovely as you – nearly. It was growing by the temple of Apollo, and it was an attendant fit only for a god. In fact, it was against this tree that Leto leaned when she gave birth to the twins, Artemis and Apollo. Perhaps that is why they call Delos the shining isle.’

  ‘Well, you’re a long way from Delos now.’

  ‘And a long way from home.’

  ‘And you seem to have lost your clothes along the way.’

  ‘That’s right. Beaten up by the sea, stripped and robbed of all I had. That’s Poseidon for you.’

  The grey eyes glanced down and up again, a fraction.

  ‘Not quite all. Poseidon left you with the main equipment, I see. Better hold on to it. Don’t lose it, whatever you do.’

  Shrieks from the girlfriends who’d come back up from along the beach, aware that I wasn’t a danger to them. I waved my branch at them.

  ‘Put it back!’

  ‘Don’t threaten us!’

  ‘Who’s threatening you?’

  ‘Don’t tempt us then!’

  Yes, these were peasant girls all right. They’d seen a thing or two.

  ‘So what happened to you, then?’

  Odysseus dropped to his knees and told his story, but only the most recent events – how he’d steered for seventeen days and nights on the wine-dark sea, alone under the stars. On the eighteenth day he’d seen the coast, had been struck by a storm and rescued by a sea-nymph, with the help of a goddess. Then he had swum for two more nights and a day before making it to shore.

  ‘In the sorry condition in which you see me now.’

  ‘It’s amazing.’

  ‘Nineteen days from Ogygia – and this is the twentieth – and I’m still alive.’

  ‘It’s epic.’

  And Odysseus begged her for some of the linen that was lying out to dry, first inquiring of her if he might know her name.

  ‘Nausicaa is my name, and my father rules here – Alcinous. My mother’s name is Arete. They are the king and queen of Scheria. You have reached the country of the sea-kings. I notice, though, that you have not yet given your own name.’

  Odysseus cleared his throat. The princess saw his hesitation and stopped him.

  ‘Forgive me, sir, I was forgetting my manners. It’s enough that you are a shipwrecked sailor, swept upon our coast, a man battered by gales and gods. Names are nothing to us. You are a soul in distress. You need help.’

  She directed her maids to conduct Odysseus to a sheltered place and bathe him in the river, but being too gallant a man, he begged for privacy.

  ‘I’d be reluctant to bathe in the presence of you braided-haired ladies of breeding. Be kind enough to stand apart while I, with fresh river-water, sluice the brine from my skin and scrub the sea-scurf from my hair.’

  And the scum from my arsehole – the last of Poseidon’s parting presents, along with the stabs and gashes, and the skin from my fingers left sticking on some godforsaken rock, somewhere out in that godforsaken sea. How I hated that fucking sea! How to get it out of me?

  How? Apply the usual old wine, a flask of olive oil, and a comb to tease out the beard and order the long thorny locks, now bushy as a hyacinth in bloom. Add a cloak and doublet, freshly laundered and a touch of Athene’s invisible fingers, and once again it’s a new man that steps out from the bushes, magically transformed. Nausicaa was impressed.

  ‘I think the gods have sent him here,’ she told her white-armed women, ‘to be my husband. Strangers so seldom light on us here, so far out are we across the surging sea, and now that he has come, I pray that he stays.’

  She advised Odysseus to let her reach home ahead of him with her maids and to conceal himself meantime in a grove of poplars sacred to Athene, so as not to attract attention to himself among the islanders, who were friendly enough in general, but who were Poseidon’s people, wedded to the sea, and didn’t take too kindly to foreigners, especially if it looked as if one of them was interested in their princess, she having already turned down so many good men of her own race.

  ‘If you don’t mind my mentioning that fact,’ she said with a smile.

  Odysseus said he didn’t mind and that it didn’t surprise him.

  ‘Good. After that, you should head straight for the high-battlemented city, passing the temple of Poseidon until you reach the palace. You can’t miss it. Enter and walk straight up to my mother, who will be sitting spinning the sea-purple in the firelight with her back to a pillar, her usual place, and all her maids about her.’

  Odysseus said it sounded idyllic.

  ‘My father’s throne will be nearby, and he’ll be sitting drinking his wine like one of the gods, as if Hebe had just filled his cup. But you must ignore him and slip past and clasp the queen’s knees. That’s if you value your wish to get back home safely and in good time.’

  Odysseus did exactly as the girl had dictated. And to make certain he didn’t miss his way, a tellingly bright-eyed girl carrying a pitcher just happened to cross his path and offered to direct him. Athene was taking no chances. She even poured out around him an invisible mist to protect him from the local seamen who give cold looks to strangers, and she repeated Nausicaa’s instructions that he should go straight up to Arete.

  ‘She is a goddess in Scheria, for she is of the same blood as Alcinous, who married her after her father Rhexenor fell to silver-bowed Apollo. Both were the sons of Nausithous whom Periboea bore to Poseidon. And among the sea-god’s great gifts to Alcinous is an orchard of pears and pomegranates, sweet figs, grapes and olives, fruiting all the year, as does the vineyard where the west wind always blows, and everything is laid out in a four-acre garden outside the courtyard – so you can’t possibly miss the palace.’

  Indeed, it was hard not to spot it. Even without the silver lintels and the doors of beaten gold guarded on either side by two dogs doomed never to doze or die, or even to grow old, sentinels forged in gold and silver by Hephaestus – even without all this, the building, with its bronze walls and blue-glazed lapis tiles, stood out.

  Within the palace entrance, fifty maids were busy, some cleaning and polishing the gleaming bron
ze and gold artefacts, others grinding the apple-golden corn, and others again sitting at the loom or twisting the yarn, their quick fingers flitting like aspen leaves. Soft olive oil dripped from the thickly-woven fabrics they had just finished making, for the Phaeacian women weave as skilfully as their menfolk navigate, and handle a loom as lovingly as their seamen do a tiller or a sail.

  Further in, the sea-kings sat round the walls on seats spread with lush purple coverlets. Others were seated at tables, eating and drinking. Odysseus ignored them and walked straight up to Arete and placed his hands on her knees, begging her to take pity on an unhappy wanderer, to show him some hospitality and send him on his way. Then he went and sat like a suppliant among the ashes.

  His entry had been concealed by the mysterious mist, but this now dissolved and everyone stared at him in astonishment. The venerable lord Echeneus, the elder statesman of the palace, spoke to the king.

  ‘Alcinous, it’s up to you of course, but in my opinion it’s unseemly that a guest should be sitting there among the ashes like a beggar. In the name of all-thundering Zeus who watches over strangers, will you offer him a seat and some food and drink?’

  The king got up at once and took Odysseus by the hand, placing him personally in his favourite son’s seat right by his side. A maid brought clear fresh water in a golden ewer and poured it into a silver basin so that he could rinse his fingers. Another brought fresh bread and meat from the larder, and a young man served him the heady-honeyed wine. Odysseus was struck by the extent of the hospitality as the sea-kings were not famed in legend for their love of strangers but were a world unto themselves and a breed apart. But only after wining and dining the stranger and courteously refraining from inquiring as to his identity did they now wait with obvious curiosity to see if he would tell them his story, as was only natural.