Ithaca Read online

  Now I’m the one who’s thrown off balance.

  “There was a ship waiting for you. Off Asteris, I think. Antinous tried to ambush you on your way home. I don’t know how you got past. Twenty of them. They were going to kill you, Telemachus. They want you dead.”

  He shakes my arm as if he’s trying to wake me up. I pull my sleeve away and he winces, as if I’ve hurt him. “This is serious, Telemachus. I don’t expect you to like me, but please trust me. Please. They want to kill you. You’ve got to take care.”

  One more squeeze of the arm and he’s gone, leaving me staring down the corridor.

  Perhaps my father was right about him after all. I’m still thinking about Eurymachus as I climb the stairs to my mother’s room. But it’s Penelope who needs my attention. Eurycleia will have reported my return by now, and my announcement. And I’m about to do something I’ve never done before—lie to my mother.

  If it weren’t for Eurymachus, I would have noticed the silence before going in. Penelope isn’t sitting at her loom. Instead, she’s over by the window, gripping the sill as if she can no longer hold herself upright.

  “It isn’t true!” she shouts.

  “Mother . . .”

  “He’s alive!” She’s across the room, gripping me by the arms. “It isn’t true!” Tears streak her face, trickling black makeup down her cheeks.

  “Mother, I’ve decided . . .”

  “He isn’t dead. Do you have proof he’s dead?” She shakes me. Penelope’s eyes are more focused than I’ve seen them in months.

  “No, but . . .”

  “Then he isn’t. I know he isn’t. You can’t tell people otherwise.” Penelope wipes angrily at her cheeks with the hem of her dress, staining it black. She scowls at the marks and goes to sit at the stool by her loom.

  “How do you know?” I ask.

  “I had a dream.” Penelope sniffs. Her anger has vanished suddenly, leaving her limp. “The goddess sent me a dream. Odysseus came back to Ithaca. He was poor. He killed all these men. He . . .” She looks down, blushing. “He made me his wife again.” She shivers suddenly and hugs herself.

  “It was just a dream.”

  “Dreams tell the future.”

  “They’re not real.”

  “The goddess sent it to me. Can you prove it isn’t true?”

  “No, but . . .”

  “So there you are—he’s coming back! He’s coming back,” she repeats, looking idly at the cloth on her loom. She reaches out one hand to touch it. “See what a stupid picture,” she says. “It doesn’t show anything.”

  “I think it’s very beautiful,” I say dutifully.

  “Do you?” Penelope shrugs and looks down at her hands. “You must tell them he’s coming back. Tell them about my dream.”

  “Mother . . .”

  “They tried to kill you.” Suddenly Penelope’s eyes fill with tears. She looks up at me, blinking. “They tried to kill you. There was a ship waiting. I couldn’t do anything about it. I spoke to Medon, he just shrugged. He said, ‘It’s more than my life’s worth.’ What does that mean?” She shakes her head, bewildered. “I put my oil lamp in my window to warn you. I knew you wouldn’t be able to see it, but I did it anyway. Now they’ll try to kill you again. You’ve got to go away . . .” She lays one hand on my arm. It’s the longest speech I’ve heard from my mother in a year. “Do you understand? You’ve got to get away before they kill you. Take a boat. Take this . . .” She fumbles around her neck, unclasping the gold pendant that always hangs there. “I’ve got jewels too, a box. Take it and go. Leave the island today. Go to my father’s house, or back to Pylos. Go . . .” She stops with a sob, hands crushing the pendant.

  “Mother . . .”

  “Go!”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” I say gently.

  Penelope seems to collapse then, like a puppet whose strings have been cut. For a moment she sits with her face in her hands, then looks up. I thought she was crying, but her eyes are dry.

  “Then they’ll kill you,” she says coldly. “I’ve lost my husband. Now I’ll lose my son as well. I’ll put you on the same pyre you build for Odysseus. I’ll put ashes in my hair and scratch my face until it’s bloody.” She looks curiously down at her own fingernails, as if checking how sharply they could rip flesh. “We did it when my grandfather died. We howled so long we were hoarse for weeks. The women at Troy must have buried husbands and sons every day, then worn black and waited for the grave to open for them. That’s what women do, isn’t it? It’s what I’ll do. I won’t let them marry me. I’ll be a widow. I’ll go to the shrine every morning until my legs get too fat to carry me. I’ll mutter to myself and everyone will start to avoid me. They’ll say I’ve gone mad.”

  “You won’t go mad.” Out of habit I’m trying to make my voice light and cheerful. “No one’s going to hurt me. Everything’s going to be all right.”

  My mother looks at me without smiling, almost without love. “Go away,” she says at last. “I’m not going to make it worse by pleading. Go away.”

  I’ve never been dismissed like that before. I bow stiffly and close the door behind me. For a while I just stand there, back against the door. Should I go back in and tell Penelope that Odysseus has returned? Tell her my announcement was just part of a trick? I don’t dare. We agreed it was better to keep Penelope in the dark. I have to stick to that.

  A sudden noise from below breaks through my thoughts. I hurry down the stairs and stop dead on the landing, looking down into the hall.

  Odysseus is sitting on the ground against a column. He’s slumped like a beggar, shoulders rounded. His hair is covered in dust, and his clothes are rags. He holds a beggar’s bowl loosely in one hand and has an old leather satchel draped over one shoulder. His head is lolling on his shoulders like he’s drunk.

  Beggars are allowed into the great hall—that’s custom. It brings luck to give them food and drink. In return they joke and poke fun at the fighters in a way no one else is allowed. Quite often, there’s one beggar who takes up residence and becomes a kind of jester. At Ithaca, his name’s Irus.

  Irus is circling around Odysseus now. He’s angry, and you can see why—there’s another man on his patch. I guess beggars are as touchy as fighters, in their way. They have their territory, they have their pride. Odysseus is on Irus’s territory, and he’s not happy about it.

  The men in the hall love that.

  Antinous is in the middle of them, slumped in a chair with a cup of wine in one hand. His face wears a cruel little smile. You can see what’s on his mind.

  “Send him away,” Irus whines. “This is my place, my hall.”

  I never liked Irus much. He’s a big, bragging man with the kind of belly you shouldn’t see on a beggar. Beggars often have twisted legs or some other deformity, but there’s nothing wrong with Irus, he’s just too lazy to work.

  He’s carrying a staff, as he always does, and takes a vicious cut at Odysseus’s legs. Odysseus rolls clumsily out of the way, and the young men roar with laughter.

  “Why did you let him in?” whines Irus.

  Antinous says, “Because we’re bored.” He puts one hand over his mouth and screws up his eyes as if he’s thinking. He keeps pretending to think until he has the hall’s full attention, until all the young men are looking eagerly at their leader, waiting to see what he has up his sleeve. Then Antinous takes his hand away from his mouth and says quietly, “Fight.”

  They all take up the chant as they prod Odysseus to his feet, thrust a stick into his hands, and drag chairs into a rough circle to act as a ring. From the landing above, I watch bets being made. Odysseus stands stupidly in the middle of the ring, holding his stick as if he doesn’t know what to do with it. Irus stops whining and drops into a crouch, gripping his staff in both hands. Odysseus watches him dully, like a bear tracked by a dog. His hurt leg is slightly crooked. He turns himself with slow, shuffling steps as Irus dances around him, his stick trailing in one hand.

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nbsp; “He’s going to drop it,” someone jeers. There are whistles, catcalls.

  And then suddenly it’s over.

  It ends so fast I have to blink and play it back in my head to see what happened. Irus lunged forward, aiming a vicious blow at Odysseus’s head. It never landed. Faster than you could think, Odysseus stepped aside and whipped his own stick across Irus’s belly with such force that in a second the beggar was coughing and retching on the ground. That’s all I see: Irus kneeling in agony. Then the hall erupts. It’s like Irus’s pain triggers something in them. Young men swarm over the chairs and engulf the beggar like hounds bringing down a boar. Irus tries to crawl toward the door, covering his face with his arms, but he can’t shake them off. I can’t even see him as the men rain down blows, fighting among themselves to reach their victim. He gets halfway to the door but no farther. Someone kicks him onto his side, and I see a chair raised to smash down on his head. There’s a shriek of laughter as Irus screams.

  I can’t watch after that. They aren’t men. They’re animals—animals singling out the loser, who becomes the target, becomes prey. A bird with a broken wing, a dog with a hurt leg. Weakness triggers something that belongs not to people’s rational minds but to those crueler and darker instincts that relish blood, forget danger, crave violence. For a moment, as he lies under the blows, Irus’s terrified eyes catch mine, and I shy away from their contact.

  Because I know I can’t help? Or because I can see myself there if things go wrong tomorrow—myself twitching under the same mob, a deer brought down by wolves.

  I look at my father instead. Odysseus has sunk to the ground, holding his leg as if he’s been hurt. I’m thinking, He made it too easy; he should have spun the fight out. Then I notice Antinous watching him too. Alone among the young men he hasn’t gone after Irus.

  “He hurt me,” Odysseus quavers.

  “He didn’t touch you,” Antinous says contemptuously, and cocks his head. “You know how to fight.”

  “I fought in the war.”

  “Who with?”

  “Nestor.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Aethon.”

  “Why do you beg if you can fight like that?”

  “My leg. I was wounded in the war.”

  “Your leg.” Antinous looks away. I think he’s going to ask more questions, but suddenly he seems bored. “You can stay for the evening,” he announces, like it’s up to him. “Someone lay him a place. It’s time we ate. Other people fighting makes me hungry.”

  The second part of our plan is accomplished: Odysseus is inside the palace. Tables are set in order. Melanthius leads cooks in from the kitchen, carrying wooden trays of meat and bowls of olives. Cups are filled. Irus is still lying in the corner of the hall, his face unrecognizable under a mask of blood. He’s still alive, twitching, so I send two of the servants to do what they can for him. Then I see my father go up to Antinous.

  I catch something odd in his expression. I can’t place it at first. Then I get it: his eyes are gleaming with mischief.

  He sits down and takes a roll from a basket. Antinous frowns.

  “Did you ever meet Odysseus?”

  My mouth is dry. This wasn’t part of any plan.

  “Once,” Antinous says shortly.

  “Did you fight him?”

  “I was a child. He gave me a toy dagger.”

  “Did you thank him?”

  Antinous doesn’t answer. My father leans forward and—to my astonishment—prods Antinous with the tip of his staff. “You should have thanked him.”

  Antinous looks around again, his eyes narrowing. Then he looks back at his plate. “Don’t push your luck, beggar man,” he says in a low voice.

  I can’t stand any more. I clap my hands and get the feast under way, but I don’t let it last long. I send them away early, and for once they listen to me. There’s no chance to speak to my father. When the torches are out, I climb the stairs to my room and close the door. In the corner there’s a trapdoor leading to the roof, and I clamber onto the clothes chest and thrust it open.

  A shaft of moonlight strikes me full in the face. When I haul myself up to the roof and stand up, Ithaca lies spread out around me, bathed in moonlight. There isn’t a breath of wind. Above, Nirito towers into the air. Its valleys drop toward the sea in thick clefts of shadow. I can see the roofs of the town, glinting silver, and beyond them, the flat expanse of the sea, waveless and bright as a polished mirror. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Ithaca so still. The hot night air feels as if it’s welded to the land, as if the whole scene, mountain and sea, would ripple were a gust of wind to blow through it. The cicadas are silent. Shadows hang like sleeping bats around the cypress trees.

  The island’s asleep, its people and creatures sleeping with it. Suddenly I feel something wet on my cheek. I didn’t even know I was crying. But this is my home and I’m not ready to leave it yet. I look up at the familiar stars: the Bear, Cassiopeia, Andromeda. I want to show Ithaca to Polycaste. I don’t want to die in a brawl in the great hall.

  There’s no point giving in to hopelessness. I’m not going to die, I tell myself. We’ll make a fight of it, however hard the odds. I feel the anger still burning steadily within me, and that gives me some comfort. I settle down to wait. Gradually the courtyard falls silent and the sentry makes his last rounds. I can see the flicker of flames on the courtyard wall and watch it grow dim. An owl hoots softly from the olive groves. Only when the palace is silent do I get up to go.

  There are trapdoors all over the roof, above staircases and corridors. On the far side, there’s one that reaches the stair where Eurycleia stood to listen to my speech this morning, and where I watched the beggars fight. From there I can get to the armory, where I had all the weapons taken this morning. I’m going to take weapons for the three of us—me, Odysseus, Eumaeus—and hide them in the hall. The rest will be locked up to stop anyone from using them in the fight tomorrow. The visitors will have the weapons they always carry, but nothing else.

  Crouching, I hurry across the roof, staying well away from the parapet above the courtyard. Beyond it I pull open the trapdoor and lower myself down, scrabbling with my feet until I touch the rung of a ladder.

  That’s when I hear voices.

  They’re coming from below. One person on the landing where I was standing earlier, the other in the hall. The voice in the hall is too faint to make out, but the one on the landing I recognize straightaway. My mother.

  I ease myself down the stair until I can hear properly, with my mother’s voice close below me.

  “Sixteen years,” she’s saying. “He left sixteen years ago.”

  “Sixteen years,” a man’s voice echoes, and suddenly I’m gripping the balustrade, because it’s my father talking.

  I peer down into the hall. Odysseus, still in his beggar’s rags, is sitting in dark shadow under one of the columns. His face is out of sight—I guess that means Penelope can’t see him either. I can just make out his legs sprawled in the glow of firelight and the open satchel next to them.

  “Did you ever meet Odysseus?” Penelope asks.

  “Yes.” His voice sounds low and grating. Can’t she recognize him? Did Odysseus look so different, sound so different, sixteen years ago? All at once I realize that I’m never going to know my father. This beggar, this old man, maybe. But I’ll never find the Odysseus—young, strong—who left Ithaca for Troy.

  “I fought alongside him,” he says.

  “Tell me a story about him.”

  My father clears his throat. “We were making a night attack. Waiting in a ditch near Troy, the walls in front of us. It was cold, frost on the ground, frost on the bushes. Our cloaks were thin. I thought we’d die of cold even if the Trojans didn’t get us. Odysseus kept thinking about Penelope . . .”

  “How do you know?” my mother laughs. “How could you tell what he was thinking? You’re just saying what I want to hear.”

  Odysseus doesn’t answer.


  “Whenever strangers come here,” Penelope says, and I notice how normal—how sane—her voice is. “Whenever ships come into port, I always ask them, ‘Have you seen Odysseus?’ ‘Did you meet Odysseus?’ You’d be surprised how many did. So many men fought in the war. So many had stories about him. Tell me more.”

  No answer from the hall.

  “Was he clever?” Penelope prompts.

  It’s a moment before I hear Odysseus’s voice from the shadows. “Always.”

  “Brave?”

  “Mostly.”

  “Was he honest?”

  For a long time there’s no answer. “No,” Odysseus says at last, and I hear him sigh. “He told lies.”

  Penelope laughs, a shrill sound from close below me. “People always said that about him. I told them, ‘They’re just stories.’ I pay no attention.”

  “He needed to be loved,” Odysseus says. “He wanted everyone to hang on his every word, and they did. It was the look in their eyes, the way he could hold them when he talked. He sat outside his tent, on the shore at Troy, he started talking, a crowd would gather. He’d see their eyes in the firelight, the way they listened. His voice was like the crackle of flames. His stories warmed them. It didn’t matter whether they were true or not . . .” His voice breaks suddenly. “But they weren’t. Or weren’t always.”

  “I knew that.”

  “He told me . . .” There’s a deep sigh from the shadows in the hall. “He told me he betrayed his wife and son.”

  I listen until the silence seems so tense it might almost crack.

  “He kept a woman in the town,” Odysseus goes on. “He had a child.”

  “I know about that too.” Penelope’s voice is suddenly cold.

  “Didn’t you mind?”

  “Of course I minded.”

  “Did you think of leaving him?”

  “If he’d stayed, I would have left him.” She pauses. “When I had the whole of Odysseus, losing half of him seemed like the end of the world. When he was gone, half seemed better than nothing.”

  “How could you still love him?”

  “People can’t decide that.” Her voice mocks him. “You can make yourself like someone or respect them. But you can’t make yourself love or not love.”