Chapter 35
I began visiting Eumaeus regularly.
At first, I told myself it would be a brief distraction, something to keep my mind occupied, to stave off the madness Penelope had unwittingly infected me with. But then one night bled into another then another, spiraling away in a haze of soft midnight kisses and early morning whispers.
I felt guilty for using his love as a distraction, but I buried that guilt deep inside me, in the graveyard of all the other ugly pieces of myself I had learned to live with.
And truthfully, I did care for Eumaeus. He was kind and sweet and allowed me to feel a sense of safety I had never known with a man.
He told me of his past, how he had once been a prince of a distant land but had run away from home as a young boy, lured by one of his father’s slaves, a beautiful girl he had thought he loved.
That girl had betrayed him, selling Eumaeus to pirates to pay for her own safe passage back to her homeland.
“What of your family? Do you not wish to return to them?” I asked when he recounted this story to me. “You are a prince—”
“I was a prince,” he corrected somberly. “And I lost any right to that title the day I disowned my family for a stranger.”
“But you were just a child. Surely, they would understand—”
“What I did was wrong, Melantho. Slavery is my penance, and I am grateful for this opportunity to redeem myself in the eyes of the gods.”
I wanted to tell Eumaeus the gods were sadistic monsters if they believed slavery was a just punishment for a manipulated child, but I had a feeling that would not go down well.
“Through my servitude, I have learned the importance of loyalty,” he continued, reaching out to cup my cheek. “And for that, the gods have rewarded me. With you.”
He would say things like that often, with such pride in his eyes. His love was so gentle, so genuine, the kind many men and women would dream of holding in their hands.
Yet still, I could not return it. Not in the way he deserved.
I believed there was something wrong with me; perhaps it had been since birth, or perhaps my heart had grown crooked after being broken so irreparably as a child.
Perhaps I simply could not love someone in that way.
But then I would hear Penelope’s laugh or see her smile, and I knew that was not the case. It was not that I could not love but that I loved the wrong person far too much.
And it was destroying me.
***
The seasons turned, and the war did not end.
Though I was relieved, the feeling was marred by Telemachus’s utter dejection. Every day, I watched him rush to Penelope’s side to ask, “Any word?” and every day, Penelope would respond with the same shake of her head.
The prince’s hope was beginning to wither, like the summer leaves crushed beneath autumn’s chilling fist.
When we entered the tenth summer of war, the news reached our shores.
Achilles was dead.
Achilles, the finest warrior this world had ever seen.
Achilles, the divine hero, born of a goddess.
Achilles, slain by Prince Paris of Troy, a mortal man.
The news wrapped Ithaca in a suffocating grief. Without Achilles, they believed the war was lost and were already mourning their beloved Odysseus.
Though I dreaded the thought of his return, Ithaca would be left dangerously vulnerable without Odysseus as king. With Laertes too old to rule and Telemachus too young, the throne would be ripe for the taking, with no army to defend it.
All we could do was wait while Ithaca’s future was woven upon foreign shores.
Wait and pray. Though the latter was of less interest to me.
It was Eumaeus who dragged me to the temple of Athena each day to entreat the goddess to watch over our “noble and beloved master.” I would kneel beside him as he set offerings of food and wine before an indifferent statue.
Then Eumaeus would pray while my mind wandered along with my eyes, drifting around the lofty space draped in incense and unanswered pleas.
One such afternoon, my gaze wandered to a shadow I instantly recognized.
Narrow and stooped, Dolios’s figure was unmistakable.
These days, I rarely saw him around the palace, and I was surprised by how much older he looked, familiar features lost between thick creases.
Instinctively I turned away, as I always did when I saw him.
But as I watched Eumaeus beg for Telemachus’s father, I found my eyes creeping back to my own.
Dolios must have felt the heaviness of my gaze, for he turned and caught it. That usual awkwardness tightened between us, though neither of us looked away.
Fueled by something I could not rightly name, I found myself walking toward him.
“Hello,” I said, the word absorbed by the temple’s somberness.
“Hello,” he murmured.
It was the first time we had spoken in years.
“Are you…well?”
He nodded, shoulders drawn slightly inward as if bracing himself. “Yes…and you?”
I mirrored his nod. “I am.”
We both glanced away, searching for something else to say. I swore I could feel the blank eyes of Athena staring down at us, judging our ineptness at basic conversation.
Dolios motioned to Eumaeus, lost in prayer behind me. “I hear you two are…”
“Yes.”
“Eumaeus is a lucky man.”
I said nothing, that blade of guilt sinking deeper into my gut.
“It’s good…to have someone,” my father continued, looking to Athena’s stony face as if the goddess had called his name.
Something in his eyes made me ask, “Who were you praying for?”
“People lost long ago,” he said, and I was struck by how little I knew of the man standing before me. The ghosts of his past were strangers to me. All except one.
“I’m sure they appreciate it,” I managed.
“I have little to offer the Goddess of Wisdom,” he admitted, a touch sheepishly. “But still, I pray she asks Hades to watch over their souls in the realm below. Your mother’s too.”
“What…what did you just say?”
There was a sudden stillness then, one that stiffened the air between us like that first spark of winter’s chill. Dolios turned to me slowly, face paling.
“Your brother never told you?”
“Told me what?”
Dolios looked away, his face shadowed by something timeworn and aching.
“I thought you knew,” he murmured to the ground. “I’m sorry.”
I grabbed his wrist, my voice taking on a harsher edge. “Knew what?”
“Melantho?” Eumaeus called from behind me. “What’s wrong?”
“Knew what?” I was shouting now, the words ricocheting around us. Somewhere, distantly, I was aware of a priestess shushing me.
Dolios flinched. “Y-your mother…”
“What about my mother?”
When he finally met my gaze, Dolios’s eyes were glazed with guilt.
“She’s dead, Melantho.”