"What kind of presents?" Penelope glanced around to Ktimene in her window seat, waiting to learn a new style for her hair. She was blossoming and wanted to give up her childish braids.
"He brought me a hunting dog. Argus didn't like him," her son added with a grin. "He has gold bracelets for you and Ktimene."
"For me?" the girl squeaked. She started braiding her ember-colored hair with flying fingers.
"Gifts of jewelry from men not of the family are often dangerous," Penelope said. She hated to see the delight fade from her daughter's face, but warning was necessary. "If Antinoos comes bringing gifts when he has never been a friend, I can guess his reason quite well."
"Mother?" Telemachos frowned, puzzled.
"Your sister is lovely and becoming a woman. Antinoos is unmarried."
"I don't want to marry anyone!" Ktimene backed away, as if her brother would drag her downstairs to her suitor.
Penelope swallowed a chuckle. She remembered her own protests when she had been Ktimene's age. She beckoned for her children and put her arms around them. "I will not give you in marriage unless I know you will be happy. No one will force my hand. Or your grandfather's. Now, let us go meet our guest."
Telemachos preceded them down the stairs, with stiff stride and straight back. Penelope saw his father's wariness and pride. She kept her arm around Ktimene's shoulders, to comfort the girl and keep her from running.
Antinoos had taken the liberty of spreading his gifts on a table while he waited. The hunting dog, a mere pup, curled up at his feet. Argus lay on the hearth by the coals of last night's fire and glared at the pup. Penelope couldn't help smiling at the picture the two dogs made. Then she saw Antinoos watching her and her smile faded.
He was handsome, she had to admit. Young like Odysseus when she first saw him. Vibrant and full of life and energy. He was golden and slim, where Odysseus had been like a banked fire, stocky and solid.
"Antinoos, you bring presents, my son says." She sat in the chair reserved for her at the foot of the stairs, Ktimene on her right hand, Telemachos on her left. "You rarely come to Odysseus' hall. Why do you grace us with your presence now?"
"It would have been unseemly before. Everyone knows the tales of other queens led astray. I would not have anyone say I tempted our lovely queen." He bowed, a practiced smile curving his graceful lips.
"Other lords of Ithaka visit without scandal. I know your intent. Don't waste our time with pretty speeches."
"I can see the elders spoke the truth--a woman who speaks and thinks like a man. A marvel." Antinoos looked directly at Ktimene. "Your daughter is a blossoming flower. You will soon be overwhelmed with suitors for her."
"Ktimene is still a child."
"My father said the same," he countered. "Then he admitted many saw you as a child when Odysseus brought you to Ithaka."
"I was nearly sixteen. I prefer my daughter not marry until that age, or older."
"And have her shamed, when all her year-mates are brides and mothers before her?" Antinoos laughed.
"No one shames my sister," Telemachos said, his face flushing. "My mother speaks from wisdom and experience. If you laugh at her, you must leave."
"Telemachos, Antinoos is a guest, however short a time he stays," Penelope chided softly. She met the suitor's gaze and he nodded he understood the warning. "Even if I were agreeable to a marriage bond between our families, Antinoos, I cannot give my daughter without her father's blessing." Under her hand, Ktimene's stiffness slowly melted.
"The old ways still linger on Ithaka. You could easily invoke them and no one would criticize you," Antinoos countered, his gracious smile turning sly. "In the old days, mothers took husbands for their daughters. Men went to live with their brides' families."
"If you follow the old ways, Antinoos, why have I never seen you at the planting and harvest festivals?" She waited but he gave no answer. She expected none. "Believe what you will, I will not give my daughter without her father's blessing."
"The war has been over for years now and he has not returned. Would you have your daughter die unwed?"
"In the old ways you invoke, Antinoos, many maidens stayed maidens, their virginity regarded as sacred gifts to the Goddess." Penelope stood, signaling the discussion was over. She felt a small measure of relief when he picked up his cloak. She glimpsed the movements of servants who had been listening. The story would cross the island soon. "Tell your friends I will not consider marriage for Ktimene until her sixteenth year. He who speaks of it before then will be turned away. Understood?"
"I understand very well, Lady Penelope." He bowed, and she thought she saw a touch of respect in his eyes. "Will you accept the gifts I brought?" Antinoos gestured at the jewelry laid out on the cloth and the pup still curled under the bench.
"They are wooing gifts, and as such I cannot permit them in my house. If I accept them, I must consider a marriage for my daughter. Blessings on you, Antinoos." Penelope nudged Ktimene, who turned and hurried up the stairs ahead of her. Telemachos stayed to see their guest to the door.
"I am to serve the Goddess. I won't marry anyone!" Ktimene burst out when she and Penelope reached her room.
"I said the same when I was your age," she told her daughter. Penelope sat in the window seat and beckoned for Ktimene to join her. She put her arms around her daughter. "You're too grown up to hold on my lap. That makes me feel very old." A tiny chuckle escaped the girl, showing Penelope she had spoken exactly right.
"You married Father."
"I tried to run away when I learned I was to marry your father." Penelope laughed when Ktimene stared at her. "I liked him, but I didn't want to marry anyone, ever."
"But he loved you--you loved him. Didn't you?"
"I was a rebellious little girl, and I would sometimes dress as a boy at night, to wander the palace in Sparta, trying to raise my courage to steal a horse and run away. I wanted to become an Amazon."
"Why didn't you?"
"Laziness, I think. And fear. It is fine to dream and to hate how your life is controlled by others. Yet if you do nothing about it...I wanted to rebel, but I couldn't. Your father met me in my nighttime rambles and befriended me even after he saw through my disguise. He taught me about the world. He understood my fear when he caught me trying to run away, and he never grew angry or hurt."
"You're not lazy, Mother. And you're not afraid of anything," Telemachos said from the doorway.
"Because your father taught me to take care of myself. Because I have no time to be afraid. I've grown up. And I promise you, Ktimene, on my honor as priestess to the Goddess, you will never be given to anyone unless I know you will be as happy with him as I was with your father. Telemachos, if anything happens to me before your father returns, you must keep my vow to your sister, do you hear me?"
"Yes, Mother." He nodded and reached for their hands. "I promise, before the Goddess, my sister will never be given to a man she doesn't want." He sighed. "If my father were here, Antinoos would never have dared come here."
"We will wait for your father to return. He promised he would always come back to me. Not even death could keep him away." Penelope closed her eyes, trying to remember the sound of Odysseus' voice, the feel of his arms around her, the touch of his hand when he made his vow. It was hard to remember anything but the words.
"I will never marry," Ktimene repeated. There was no anger in her voice, only that stubborn, patient certainty Penelope had fought since she was a baby. "The Goddess promised."
Penelope took Ktimene to the Goddess that night. The cool summer air had a chill foretelling an early fall. They went in silence, cloaked in dark colors to be hidden in the night.
Penelope had thought long and hard, and she sensed undercurrents to Antinoos' wooing.
The women of Ithaka wanted a new king. The blessings she had brought to the island with the births of her children were fading. The men left to lead in Odysseus' place were older now. Antinoos had spoken of the old ways. Did he plan to clai
m kingship by marrying Ktimene? Would enough people support him and wrest the inheritance from Telemachos?
Antinoos had spoken no threats, but she saw the warnings in his eyes. She knew he or his friends might watch her house from now on. More than the fear that someone might kidnap and forcibly marry her daughter, she feared they would follow her and desecrate the rituals for the Goddess. Penelope didn't relax until they neared the cave. She heard no footsteps behind them, no rattling of stones from unseen feet or voices.
In the cave, she made the offering in silence, then knelt with her arms stretched over the altar stone, waiting and listening. When even the sound of her heartbeat had faded into the enclosing silence, she spoke.
"Goddess, we ask your help. Men who scorn your teachings now use them against my family. They would use my daughter to steal my son's place as his father's heir. Protect us. Intercede with the gods and bring Odysseus home to us. We have need of him. Ithaka needs the true king. My son is not old enough to lead. He needs his father to bring him to manhood. I need my husband, my love, who brought me here to serve you. Please, help us." Penelope raised her head and looked into the darker recesses of the cave. "Help us."
She waited until the cold of the stone soaked through her body, chilling her. Ktimene had to help her stand. Her daughter stayed quiet through the long hours of waiting. Penelope saw Odysseus most strongly in his daughter in dark times. Ktimene held herself quiet, gray eyes hooded and distant while she thought deeply, and then acted decisively. Like her father.
When they returned home, Ktimene stayed with Penelope instead of going to her own room. She curled up on the foot of her mother's bed and spoke quietly, but with a strength that worried Penelope.
"Mother, I will never marry. I will serve the Goddess by staying untouched."
"I said the same when I was your age." Penelope knelt next to the girl and wrapped her arms around her. "In the old days, a girl had the right to stay virgin if she wished. Her father had no right to force her into marriage. Yet, I found great joy in serving the Goddess by bringing new life into this world."
"Mother, it isn't the same. You love my father. He loves you, though he hasn't come home. Why hasn't he?"
"I don't know."
"Melantho says he doesn't care about us."
"And who is Melantho, that you suddenly listen to the foolish words from her mouth?" Penelope forced her voice to stay teasing, to keep the anger out. She wished she dared send Melantho away, to get her poison out of the house. It was still safer to keep the woman under her supervision.
"She was talking to some others and I overheard..." Ktimene looked away, blushing a little.
"I was very fond of listening around corners and from the shadows when I was younger," Penelope admitted. "It helped me to learn, and gave me pain, too."
"Father has been gone longer than I have been alive. I hear others speak of him and he's different from the stories you tell. They say he is a liar and a schemer, tricking people into doing what he wants. He is a great warrior, but would rather fight with words than with weapons. He is strong, and skilled in all the games, but he would rather get others to work for him, and cheat to win. Which man is my father?"
"Both. I love your father. I always will." She hugged Ktimene, rocking her as if the girl was a baby again. "Yes, he tells stories and lies when he feels he must. He uses his mind more than his strength. People call him a liar and cheater because he defeats them and wounds their pride.
"He was a grown man when he took me as his wife. Yet there was something still very young and unfinished about him. I grew to love him despite his flaws, and I know he loved me as much as such a man can love anyone. He still needed to grow up in his spirit. I nearly died birthing your brother, and that frightened him. He changed the way he thought and the way he saw the world.
"He told me once he would have sacrificed anything and anyone for Ithaka. He changed when he thought he might have lost me. So I know he loves me, still, no matter where he is. He loves you, though he has never seen you."
"What if he is dead, like some say?"
"Does death stop love? I will always love your father, and I will never take another husband. Not even for Ithaka."
"Mother, I'm afraid," Ktimene whispered.
"I know."
"I don't know how to love like that. I can't."
"That's because you're still young." Penelope released her and kissed her forehead. "You still have time before you are grown. The world changes. You will change. Pray to the Goddess for help and wisdom. She will send a solution. There is always an answer, even if not the answer we prefer."
"Always?" Ktimene blinked away the tears threatening to fall from her eyes, and tried to smile.
* * * *
Ktimene fell ill with the first of the fall storms. First a dragging weariness, a loss of her usual healthy color, then dying appetite. Penelope dosed her daughter with everything her aunt had taught her. A half-remembered dream prompted her to set Eurykleia to watch the girl at night. They caught Ktimene slipping from the house to the cave of the Goddess. She went every night to pray and make offerings. In the damp cave, she had taken a chill to her bones.
They kept Ktimene from going out at night. Her illness faded slowly, despite the medicines Penelope mixed with her own hands. Whenever Ktimene regained strength, she tried to escape her confinement to go to the cave. Penelope posted a servant outside Ktimene's door, to keep her in her room. Her daughter fashioned a ladder of ropes and climbed out her bedroom window. Laertes caught her.
"As stubborn and devious as your father," Penelope confided to Telemachos the next evening. Ktimene had retired to her room to sulk. "If I could send her away, where the men of Ithaka couldn't find her, I would."
"Ktimene will not be happy until no one wants to marry her," he retorted. "She told me yesterday, she wishes she had been born a boy, or could become one."
"If that were possible." Penelope shivered at the memory that came to her.
"Something is wrong?" Laertes joined them at the hearth.
"My aunt taught me many lessons I wish I could forget." She picked up her sewing and tried to push the words from her memory.
"How to make a maiden into a boy?" Telemachos guessed.
"Somewhat. Long ago, there was a sect that served the Goddess as virgins all their lives." She paused, thinking she heard a footstep in the shadows. But no one appeared. "They drank a potion which made them unable to bear children. For every five who drank it, three died." She shook her head. "I will not talk of it."
Chapter 23
* * *
"Mistress!" Dairee stumbled into Penelope's garden and nearly fell into the tiny pool. "Mistress, come quickly!"
Penelope didn't ask. She saw the terror that made the girl's face pale as ice. Dairee was Ktimene's personal maid. She followed the girl to Ktimene's room. Eurykleia hurried down the hall ahead of her. The tight frown and the fright in the old nurse's eyes terrified Penelope.
Ktimene knelt on the floor, arms around her middle, retching. A greenish pool of bile streaked with blood spread out before her. Penelope smelled the bitter, burned odors before she saw the tiny brazier, the mortar and pestle shoved under the table to hide. She knelt next to the girl, wrapping her arms around her. A quiet corner of her mind noted the bits of roots and leaves, the dried herbs and sand scattered on the floor.
"Mother!" Ktimene gasped, her voice broken. Her face streamed hot sweat, then turned bloodless white. "Help me?" She shivered, bending double as more retching shook her.
"Eurykleia, send them away." Penelope felt the presence of too many bodies in the doorway of her daughter's room. She tried to move Ktimene away from the puddle of her vomit. The girl cried out in pain and she gave up. "Ktimene, what did you do?"
"Tried--I heard--" Her voice broke into breathless, whistling whimpers.
"Mother, what's wrong?" Telemachos shouldered his way into the room, shoving aside the more stubborn onlookers.
"Help me carry
Ktimene to my room. She drank something--it's killing her." Penelope's voice broke. She looked up, straight into Melantho's eyes. The woman's face was somber, but Penelope thought she saw a glint of delight in her servant's eyes. She opened her mouth to rebuke the woman, but Ktimene screamed and clutched at her. She held her daughter, tears blurring her eyes as the girl convulsed, then went still and limp in her arms.
They moved Ktimene to Penelope's room. Eurynome sent the other servants back to their work. Telemachos wanted to stay with his sister, but Penelope sent him to fetch Laertes. Eurykleia helped her undress Ktimene and clean the filth of her sickness. Penelope wracked her memories for a purgative, a general antidote of some kind to give to Ktimene. A specific antidote would have to wait until she could examine the scattered materials in her daughter's room. Penelope doubted she had the time.
"Where's that girl?" she muttered, kicking Ktimene's stinking, sweat-soaked dress to one side. "Her maid--she could tell me."
"Dairee is likely crying herself sick," Eurykleia said. "She often does that."
"Ktimene never complained." Penelope knelt at her daughter's side, holding her hand, feeling more helpless than she could remember.
"I've heard Ktimene was the one who made her cry, most times. Not to be cruel, but she could never stand fools or silly girls who frighten easily."
"What have the two of them been doing?" She shook her head, knowing Eurykleia couldn't answer. "Bring her here. I need--"
A choking gasp escaped Ktimene. She convulsed again, her back arching. Blood trickled from her ears and mouth. Sweat darkened her clean dress. Four times, the straining body spasmed, limbs stiffening, back arching, and then collapsed. On the fourth, Ktimene fell still like one of her forsaken dolls. The breath escaped her in a slow sigh and did not return.
Penelope moaned once, softly, as she gathered her child into her arms. She still sat there, eyes dry and staring, silent, clutching Ktimene's empty body, when Laertes returned.
THE DREAMER'S LOOM Page 31
