Chapter 39
I woke to Penelope’s scent.
It took me a moment to realize I was in a bed. Her bed. What was I doing here? I squinted against the harsh morning light, a headache splitting open behind my eyes.
The room was empty, but there was a blanket crumpled on the chair beside the bed, as if someone had sat there for a long while. Perhaps all night.
I winced, sitting upright and tasting the acrid remnants of vomit in my mouth. The memories came in faded bursts like a flame sputtering to life.
I had been a fool, a drunken, embarrassing fool.
I groaned and buried my face in the pillows. I wanted to stay there, to rot quietly in my shame, but the pillows smelled too strongly of her.
I had to get away.
Once I had managed to drag myself from Penelope’s bed, I slipped out of the palace, grateful it was too early for anyone to witness my escape.
I wandered over the hills of Ithaca as the world awoke, the waves below playfully mimicking my restlessness. I felt untethered, like a ship without a crew, left to the mercy of Poseidon’s currents, its destination hopelessly unknown.
Normally, when I was in a mood such as this, I would have sought out Eumaeus, finding refuge in the reassuring security of his love, a place to hide from my own self.
If only I could have loved him back. It would have made everything so much simpler.
I should have gone to find the others: Hippodamia’s soothing warmth, Autonoe’s calming quietness, Thratta’s and Actoris’s distracting banter, or Eurynome’s motherly affection.
But I was too afraid.
What if they wanted answers? What if I told them?
A deep shame had grown within these emotions I battled.
Penelope was a wife, a mother. And she was a woman.
I had never known anyone ever to speak of such a thing, of feelings like this between two women.
Was that because such a thing did not exist?
Did it mean something was wrong with me?
I realized that for the first time in a long while, I felt truly alone.
Somehow, I found my way to a familiar olive tree, one that grew just outside the palace grounds, overlooking the sea beyond. I sat down and watched the clouds roll by, fat and heavy with the promise of rain, their wispy bellies hanging low enough to brush the waves.
It was here that Odysseus and I had made our deal so many moons ago.
As I gazed across the hazy sea, my thoughts reached for my mother. Her absence was a constant ache inside me, but today that pain was sharp and searing, refusing to be ignored. Could the spirits feel our grief down in the Underworld? Did our love haunt them as they did us?
How I longed to be a child again, wrapped in my mother’s arms, letting her steady hands guide my path, show me the way.
I can never be yours.
Of course Penelope could not be mine. How could I ever have been foolish enough to believe otherwise? How could I have deluded myself so completely? I had allowed my emotions to eat away at my rationality, driving myself slowly insane with this senseless dream.
“You and Mother are fighting.”
I glanced up to find a slight figure towering over me, gangly limbs etched in the late morning light.
“Hello, prince.” I sighed. “Would you like to join me?”
Carefully, Telemachus set himself down on the ground, crossing his spindly legs. He had recently shot up and was still figuring out how to navigate his awkward, lolloping limbs.
“You and Mother are fighting,” he repeated.
I kept my tone level. “What makes you say that?”
“She is upset. She is only upset when you argue.”
“How do you know she’s upset?”
He gave me a flat look. “Mother is easy to read.”
“You think so?”
“Yes. If you know how. Every person has their own tells. You just have to learn how to read them. Like understanding different languages.”
He was frighteningly smart for a boy of ten.
“What are my tells?”
“You’re the easiest person to read, Melantho.”
“Excellent,” I sighed.
“I think it is brave. You never hide.” Telemachus’s smile was so genuine it made my heart squeeze. “So what are you fighting about?”
He tilted his head in the exact same way his mother always did, dark curls flopping over his eyes.
“It’s complicated.”
“I like complicated.”
I laughed, and the sound eased some of the weight inside my chest.
“Do you?”
He shrugged. “Simple is boring. Complicated matters require thought, and that is far more interesting.”
“You don’t talk like a kid, you know.”
He considered that. “Perhaps that is why I prefer speaking with adults. I find children uncouth.”
I bit back a snort. “Uncouth?”
“It means uncivilized.”
“I know what it means.”
He shot me a look, eyebrows slightly raised. “Then why did you ask?”
“I just… It seemed a funny thing to say is all.”
He shifted to regard the view, and I watched the way he turned my words over in that brilliant mind of his.
“I am not sure I see the humor in my statement.”
I laughed again. “Your mother was the same, you know. She never spoke like a kid either.”
“I cannot imagine Mother as a child,” he admitted. “What was she like?”
Memories flashed in my mind, of that gray-eyed girl with the secretive smile.
I found myself smiling as I said, “She was mischievous.”
Telemachus seemed to like that answer, repeating the word under his breath.
“I heard you were very drunk last night,” he suddenly said. “Is that true?”
I stifled a groan. “Who told you that?”
“Actoris.”
“Of course,” I muttered, tickling grass beneath my fingertips.
Telemachus watched my hands for a moment as if he were reading some secret code within them.
He lifted his attention back to my face. “Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why were you drunk?”
“I was…feeling sad.”
“And drinking wine helps that?”
“Sometimes,” I admitted.
He nodded as if I had said something very wise.
“Perhaps I shall drink wine too.”
I met his gaze. “Are you…sad, Telemachus?”
“Sometimes.”
He began playing with the grass as I had done a moment ago. I had the sense there was more he wanted to say, but perhaps he did not know how to.
“Because of your father?” I ventured.
He turned to look at the horizon, the answer lying plainly across his face.
“Achilles is dead. People say my father will be next.”
I drew in a breath. “I would not listen to what the people say. I would listen to your mother.”
Telemachus nodded again, fingers stilling in the grass. He looked so young then, just a boy longing for his father. It was strange to think Odysseus knew nothing of him, had no idea how smart and kind and wonderful his son was, how proud he would be of the young man he was becoming.
“Do you…think he thinks about me?” Telemachus whispered, glancing at me and quickly away again.
I reached for his hand and squeezed it tightly.
“Every single day.”
A smile hinted at his lips, eyes brightening, and in that moment, I had never wanted Odysseus to return more. If only to see that smile always grace Telemachus’s face.
We sat quietly for a little while longer, Telemachus’s hand soft and small in mine.
“You should reconcile with Mother,” he said after a while, rising to his feet.
My smile faltered as I squinted up at him, shielding my eyes from the glare of the sun. “You make it sound simple, Telemachus. I thought you did not like simple?”
He did not laugh at my words; instead, he spoke to me in a firm tone, as if he were the adult and I the child. “Whatever has come between you, I cannot believe it is more important than what you share. Your love is the kind the poets would write about.”
In Greek, we have many different words for “love.” Telemachus used the word philia, denoting the truest form of friendship, a soul-to-soul bond. I had once believed my love for Penelope was like this, intimate yet platonic. But over time, I had realized that was just a hopeful lie.
Eros was love built on desire and longing, named after the god who presided over such torture, and pragma was an everlasting romantic bond rooted in a committed relationship. Both of these words, I knew, would have suited better.
And therein lay the very problem Telemachus wished me to solve.
“Nobody writes poems about slaves,” I said.
Telemachus mulled that over as if he had never considered it before. “Well, maybe I will write one about you one day.”
My smile widened. “You will be a poet and a king?”
“Mother says I can be anything I wish to be because I was born a man. And that is a gift I should not squander.”
“She’s right, you know.”
He nodded. “I know. Mother is always right.”