Chapter 41
Penelope did not return.
As the morning wore on, I began to grow restless.
“You’ve been pacing like a caged beast all day,” Thratta said to me as she sharpened her knives at the table. “What troubles you?”
“Nothing,” I lied.
She threw me a flat look. “Is it because you were a drunken fool the other night? Worry not, friend. We are all drunken fools sometimes.”
“You were pretty funny,” Actoris chimed in from where she sat beside Thratta, gazing longingly at her weapons. “You tried to take your clothes off at one point.”
“Thanks for reminding me,” I muttered.
“Has Penelope forgiven you for what you did in her chamber?” Actoris asked.
Fear spasmed in my chest. “What?”
“For throwing up on her floor,” Actoris clarified. “Don’t you remember?”
“Oh. Yes, she’s forgiven me.”
I noticed Thratta and Actoris sharing a look as I returned to my pacing.
“Do you think it’s normal for a council meeting to last all day?” I asked.
Thratta shrugged. “Those old men love to hear their own voices. They talk too much.”
“Your pacing is getting irritating,” Actoris snapped. “What’s up with you?”
Before I could think what to reply, Hippodamia appeared in the doorway, her face slightly flushed.
“What is it? What’s happened?” I demanded.
“There’s going to be a public address. Everyone is to gather outside the palace,” she said, motioning for us to follow.
There had not been a public address in the ten summers since the war began. Perhaps there had been more bad news from Troy and Penelope wanted to reassure everyone. It was brave of her to face her people so openly, and I felt the dread inside me intensify.
The afternoon sun was hot on our backs as we gathered at the foot of the palace steps.
It seemed all of Ithaca had come to hear Penelope’s address, and I gazed out at the sea of bodies shifting uncomfortably beneath the heat.
Aside from the slaves, the crowd was predominantly women, with a gaggle of young men gathered at the front beside a smattering of elderly ones.
A cheer arose as Penelope emerged from the palace. Above, the sun hung low in the sky, bathing the palace in its honeyed rays. Penelope smiled at the crowd, her people, and it felt strange to think I had kissed those lips just this morning.
“Thank you for gathering on such short notice,” she began, her voice steady and clear.
The voice of a queen. “Recently, we heard the unfortunate news of the death of Achilles, son of Peleus, prince of the Myrmidons. I know his passing has unsettled us all, but further news has raced on winds from Troy and reached us just this morning. The news is this: Troy has fallen. Queen Helen of Sparta has been returned to Menelaus. The war is over. Greece is victorious.”
I suddenly felt very far away, the world around me growing dull and muted.
I could not hear the answering roar of the crowd, just the vibrations shuddering through my bones and the jostle of animated bodies as people danced and embraced.
It felt as if I were watching the scene from some distant, unknown place, and though I could see everyone’s happiness, as vivid as the blazing sun, I could not feel the warmth of it.
I felt only coldness and that interminable dread expanding inside me.
“I have yet further news: that it was your king, Odysseus himself, who secured this victory,” Penelope continued.
She did not falter over her words, not once.
They were as smooth and perfect as freshly carved marble.
“Through his cunning plan, Troy’s impenetrable walls were breached, allowing Greece to secure a swift and devastating victory. ”
More cheers erupted, led by the young men in the crowd. They began stamping their feet, splitting their king’s name into short, sharp syllables they repeated over and over: O-DYS-SE-US!
They had spent their childhoods feasting on stories of the mighty man. To them, he was a living legend, a god in mortal form. Their idol. Their king.
And now he was finally coming home.
“Odysseus and his army will leave Troy imminently, once they have shared in her spoils.” Penelope’s voice cut cleanly through the din. “And our king will finally take his rightful place upon Ithaca’s throne.”
More chants began then, lifting in the air, syllables intertwining wildly—Penelope! Odysseus! Penelope! Odysseus!
My mind flickered to the night before, when I had gasped Penelope’s name in the heated dark, murmuring it over and over against her lips. Now, the crowd had snatched her name away, ripping its intimate beauty between their frenzied teeth.
They loved her, and a part of me hated them for it.
In that moment, swathed in the adulation of her loyal subjects, she had never felt more distant from me, as unreachable as the gods themselves.
Across the feverish throng, Penelope’s eyes found mine, and I saw the unspoken apology burning inside her.
As I held her gaze amid the chaos, I knew that I had lost her.
***
Night had fallen when Penelope finally returned to her chamber.
I was standing by the window, watching the lights flickering in the distance like fallen stars, the sound of Ithaca’s festivities brightening the midnight sky. Even from here, I could hear their victorious, drunken chants dancing on the breeze.
The other handmaids had gone to join the celebrations, swept up in the infectious atmosphere. It had not yet dawned on them what Odysseus’s return truly meant, how much it would change our lives here.
Only Thratta did not join the revelry, choosing to retire to bed early. I did not blame her. After all, the Thracians had fought on the Trojans’ side. It must have been sickening to witness the celebration of her own people’s defeat.
I sensed Penelope’s presence without turning.
“I am sorry,” she whispered, voice worn. She sounded exhausted. “I wanted to tell you first, but the council forced me to make the public address. They wanted to quell the panic that had spread after Achilles’s death.”
A silence settled, seeping into those cracks we knew had already begun forming between us.
“Please say something,” Penelope breathed.
I forced myself to turn and meet her gaze, my smile numb. “This is good news. I am happy for you.”
Her surprise was lined with a shimmering thread of sadness. “You are?”
I nodded. “With Odysseus coming home, the throne will be safe. You will be safe, and Telemachus too. Nothing is more important than that.”
My words were true, though they rang with a hollow ache inside me.
Penelope’s smile carried the heaviness in her eyes. “And you will finally be granted your freedom.”
Freedom. The word no longer seemed as beautiful as it once had. Whereas before it had evoked so much possibility, so much hope, it now felt…lacking, as if a piece had been carved out of it. The only piece I had ever truly wanted.
“I would understand…if you chose to leave,” Penelope continued. “But please know there would always be a place for you here if you wanted it.”
Did I want that? Could I stand by and watch Penelope play the dutiful wife? Could I simply forget all that had passed between us?
No. I could never forget, and I knew that ugly, poisonous jealousy would eat me alive. To see her day after day with him, to know each night she shared his bed… And yet what was the alternative?—To never see Penelope again? Both paths were too painful to think of.
Were these really my only options—being tortured by Penelope’s presence or the absence of it?
“Thank you,” was all I could reply.
“I will do everything I can,” she whispered, “to protect what we have built here.”
She lifted her gaze to the sky, looking nothing like a wife rejoicing in her husband’s imminent return. Rather, she looked as though she were in mourning, a stark sorrow cradling her face.
Instinctively, I reached up to cup her cheek. I could not help myself. Penelope leaned into my touch, her eyes fluttering closed.
“Melantho.” My name was a whisper steeped in sorrow. “He’s coming home.”
“I know.”
“We cannot…not anymore.”
“I know.” The words burned in my throat.
She was right. Of course she was.
Punishment for a wife’s adultery was severe, sometimes even deadly.
What if it were worse for infidelity between women?
We had been foolish enough to indulge our desires the previous night.
The last ten summers had made us reckless with our freedom.
But once Odysseus returned, it would be a death sentence to continue anything between us.
He was too clever, too sharp, and the palace would once again be infested with those loyal to him, men who would be all too eager to gain their king’s favor.
It made me sick to my stomach, to think my love for Penelope could put her in danger. I would sooner have carved my own heart out than risk her safety.
My hand fell back to my side, and Penelope slowly opened her eyes.
“I will always be his wife,” she whispered, voice broken and aching. “What I feel for you cannot change that.”
This should not have hurt me, for I had always known it to be true. But the heart is a foolish thing, and I felt Penelope’s words spear through mine, fracturing it into tiny, jagged pieces that cut me from the inside.
Penelope stared at me, her expression so calm.
A part of me could have hated her for it, yet I knew this was her way.
This was how she survived. She would never fall apart, because she could not fall apart, not when so much rested on her shoulders.
I had never learned to master myself like her.
My emotions were wild and untethered, and that made them all the more dangerous.
I pressed the heels of my palms into my eyes, willing the tears not to come.
“You can never be mine.” The words were an aching echo of Penelope’s own from just a few days ago.
Carefully, she peeled each hand away from my face, forcing me to stare up into her piercing gray eyes. I knew they would haunt me forever, those eyes.
“You own every part that matters,” she whispered.
I think she meant the words as a comfort, but they only encouraged more tears to spill.
How could we love each other so greatly and the world still deny us? I wanted to scream at the hopelessness of it all.
“We wasted so much time,” I choked.
She reached out to brush away my tears. “I know.”
I was certain some god or another was laughing at us, delighting in the tragically cruel timing of all this. Perhaps it was their doing. The gods did always relish such suffering.
I turned to look at the night sky. Soon it would be morning, and with that first, tentative breath of a new day, I knew everything would change.
“When?”
Penelope followed my gaze as she replied, “A few weeks at most.”
A few weeks. The last ten summers seemed to spiral away between those three simple words.
A few weeks and Odysseus would return, and everything we had built here would be his.
A few weeks and he would take Penelope in his arms and kiss her and claim her, and she would be forced to accept his love and offer hers in return.
I winced as images seared my mind, visions of her and him and all the things a wife was expected to do for a husband…
The room seemed to shrink around me, growing too small, too airless, too much…
“I will leave you to rest,” I said abruptly. “You have had a long day.”
Penelope gripped my hands tighter, that calmness fracturing as she whispered, “You do not have to go.”
Carefully, I pulled my hands free from hers.
“Good night, Penelope,” I whispered.
She went very still as I moved to leave, each step feeling heavier than the last.
“I will see you in the morning…won’t I?”
As I turned to look at her, I felt the pieces of my heart slipping through my fingers like sand.
“Of course you will,” I lied.