Ithaca Read online

  “Is there a tavern?”

  “The people in the tavern are bad.”

  “An empty house?”

  “Not here.”

  Polycaste says, “My father will be angry when he hears you turned us away.”

  The woman looks at her with a sour expression and clicks her tongue. I let her take the loaf of bread, climb back onto my mule, and turn its head away. I can hear the hooves of Polycaste’s mule behind me. It’s a moment before she catches up.

  “Why did you give her the bread?”

  “She needed it.”

  “She should have helped us.”

  I don’t want to argue about that. “Do you know the way to Sparta?”

  “She said there’s only one road.”

  “Is it dangerous?”

  “I’m not afraid if that’s what you mean,” Polycaste snaps.

  “I meant, is it sensible for us to go without a guide?”

  “Of course we’ll go!” She stops her mule, so I have to stop as well. “My father sent us to Sparta, so that’s what we’ll do! I’m not going home because we’re scared!”

  I force myself to stay calm, to sound reasonable. I know how to deal with angry people. “All I meant is, your father wouldn’t want us to go without a guide and no one to guard us. If it’s too dangerous . . .”

  “Who cares what my father thinks? We set out for Sparta, so that’s where we’ll go. What’s wrong with you? You can’t fight, you turn back at the first sign of trouble . . . anyone would think you’re a coward.”

  I don’t answer. Maybe I am. I look at her angry, flushed face and feel tears prick the backs of my eyes.

  “Don’t you want to find your father?” she says.

  “Of course I do.”

  “Then we go to Sparta.” And she turns her mule away from the town, toward Sparta.

  We spend the night in a ruined farmhouse just outside the town, surrounded by vineyards that are already being reclaimed by the forest. The mountain looms above us. It seems like the farmers left in a hurry. A child’s robe, bleached white by the sun, still flutters on a washing line. The track runs past the front door, plunging beyond it into a gorge from which we can hear the sound of running water. I gather sticks and make a fire. We eat staling bread and strips of dried fish, but don’t talk much. In the morning we wash in the stream, then ride on up the track, which climbs a narrow ledge along one side of the gorge, with pine trees falling steeply away to our left. When we look back, we can see, framed by the hills’ cleft, the sapphire blue of the sea and beyond it, blurred by morning haze, the shore of Nestor’s territory. I can even make out the little fishing village where we spent the first night.

  “Come on.”

  Reddish cliffs rise above us on either side. The track’s too narrow to ride side by side. It widens only when it leaves the gorge and turns into thick forests of oak and chestnut. From there we can see ridge after ridge of trees ahead of us, cut by gorges and rising to peaks of bare rock that gleam white in the morning sunshine. The track’s easy enough to follow, marked by deep wheel ruts through the undergrowth. Riding behind, I watch Polycaste sway easily to the motion of her mule. Her hair is tied up in a black ribbon, and her quiver of arrows hides a darkening patch of sweat on her back. I’m scared of her, I realize. Scared of her composure, her beauty and her anger. Scared that she seems to know so much more than I do, to feel so much surer of herself.

  I’m watching her so intently I don’t even see the men coming.

  They surge up from behind rocks above the path, eight or nine of them—it all happens so quickly I don’t have time to count. They’re wearing the remnants of armor and clutching short swords and spears. One grabs the bridle of my mule, another tears the sword off my saddlebag. I feel my leg pulled, and suddenly I’m pitching sideways off my mule. A knee lands heavily on my chest. A short, dark man with desperate black eyes is pinning me down, while hands grab at the locket around my throat.

  “Stop!”

  It’s Polycaste. She’s moved faster than me, and her commanding, flat voice freezes the little clearing where the ambush has taken place.

  Somehow Polycaste has dismounted and unslung her bow. Somehow she’s twisted an arrow out of the quiver at her back. And the arrow is pointing right at the throat of the outlaws’ leader.

  I know he’s the leader because everyone else is looking at him for orders. He’s taller than the others, with a brown, unkempt beard and a scrap of red cloth tied jauntily around his neck. His hands are half raised—he’s dropped his sword.

  “A girl,” he says. His expression is half-wary, half-amused, like part of him wants to laugh at her and the other part is thinking, That’s a real arrow.

  The tip of the arrow doesn’t waver. It’s no more than an arm’s length from his throat. One move and he’s dead before he can reach her.

  Polycaste says, “Let him go.”

  The man kneeling on my chest looks to the leader, who nods, then he slowly stands up. I get to my feet. The bandits are scattered about the clearing. One holds the mules. Two others must have been ripping open the contents of the saddlebags when Polycaste’s order rang out.

  “If anyone moves, he’s dead.” Polycaste sounds calm. Her eyes are narrowed, like she’s aiming at a target, not a man’s throat.

  Without taking his eyes off the arrowhead, the leader says, “Shoot the arrow, they’ll have you.”

  “You’ll be dead.”

  “So will you.”

  I can almost smell the tension in the air. The men are starving—I can see that now. They seemed terrifying enough in the first moment of attack, but now that I have time to look at them properly, I’m seeing ragged clothes and dirty bandages. They’ve only got three swords between them—the rest of the men are armed with sticks. One man is leaning heavily on a staff, his knee twisted awkwardly to one side.

  “Who are you?” I ask. Get them talking.

  The leader frowns. He’s concentrating on Polycaste’s arrow, the little bronze tip that could end his life.

  “Who are you?” I repeat.

  I know about angry men. I know about violence. I’ve seen it at home on Ithaca, felt the surge of it in the hall as wine is drunk and tempers flare, felt the moment when raised voices turn suddenly to weapons and blood. But I’ve also sensed that moment of sudden flatness when voices are still raised but the impulse of violence has passed. It’s like a wave flowing on up the beach—when men don’t want to back down but have lost their urge to kill.

  I can sense that now. The men in the clearing are scared.

  “My name is Telemachus,” I say, like I’m chatting to strangers in a tavern. “I come from Ithaca. My father is Odysseus. This is Polycaste, the daughter of Nestor, chief of Pylos. We’re traveling to Sparta to visit Menelaus.” Clear and steady. Sound weak and men become cruel; aggressive, and they’ll bristle at the challenge. The tone that works is calm. Talk steadily and confidently, and you can lead them to a quiet place just like you lead a bull back to its field.

  “Menelaus’s men are meeting us at the frontier. They’re expecting us. They’re waiting for us . . . actually we’re late. We ought to be there already. They may be coming along the path to find us. What’s your name?” I aim that directly at the leader. People can’t ignore a direct question, clearly put.

  Without taking his eyes off Polycaste’s arrow, the leader says, “Thoon.”

  We’re at a turning point. I can’t say how I know. I just sense it, like I can tell when two of the young men at Ithaca are going to fight and one’s going to back down. It’s like a waver in the air—an opportunity. Right now the leader is uncertain. He doesn’t know how to deal with the situation. He doesn’t know whether he can trust the others. Will they let Polycaste kill him? Maybe the men will think it worth sacrificing their leader to win these two prizes. I can almost see Thoon calculating, but I get to the answer first. The only way Thoon can retain control is by backing down but keeping his pride intact. So I have to make
that happen. I have to give him a small victory but set limits too—that way I keep control.

  “You look hungry,” I say. “There’s bread in the saddlebags. We’ll share it with you. There’s gold too, but you can’t have that. It’s for Menelaus. Would you like bread?” I don’t let the question lie—it’s important I’m the one doing the talking, setting the pace. “I’ll get it.”

  I walk across the clearing, not hurrying, to where the mules are cropping grass as if nothing is going on. The man by the saddlebags stands back to make space. I pull out a bag of rolls and give one to the nearest outlaw, who drops his weapon and starts tearing at it with his teeth, stuffing it into his mouth so fast he can hardly chew.

  As I walk around the clearing handing out bread, I keep talking in the same quiet voice. “You were fighters in the war, weren’t you? Perhaps one of you saw my father, Odysseus of Ithaca. Or maybe you fought alongside Polycaste’s father . . .” I’m giving the leader time to reach the same conclusion I did: that he has no choice but to back down.

  “We’ll take the bread,” the leader says, getting there at last. “All of it.”

  That’s what I was waiting for. Thoon needs to keep status in the eyes of his men. Otherwise they’ll kill him.

  “We need enough to get us to the border,” I say. “You can take the rest.”

  From the way the men are eating, that’ll be enough of a victory for Thoon to keep control of them—at least for the moment.

  “You need to go now, though. Before Menelaus’s soldiers arrive.”

  Thoon looks at Polycaste and takes a step backward. She doesn’t fire. He takes another step back. The arrow is still aimed at his throat.

  “Take the bread,” the leader orders the others, his voice false-jaunty. “We’ll let these two go for now. I knew Odysseus.”

  One by one the men pick up their weapons and back away, toward the town. The tip of Polycaste’s arrow tracks them out of the clearing. She only lowers her bow when they’re out of sight.

  For a while neither of us says anything. Two eagles are wheeling across the sky overhead. Their distant mewing is the only sound in the clearing.

  “I’m sorry,” Polycaste says.

  “Sorry?”

  There’s an odd, troubled expression on her face. “Sorry I called you a coward.”

  That night we camp against a rock face by a stream. Branches close above the cold, brown water that tumbles over stones, tugging at stray branches caught on the current. In a clearing beyond the stream there’s a little half-ruined shrine with a wooden statue of the goddess, its walls hung with dusty offerings from travelers. The floor is covered in owl droppings, but there’s an oil lamp burning on the altar. Some passing traveler must have lit it for protection against the dangers of the journey.

  Polycaste watches me break sticks for our fire and heap them up on a flat patch of earth next to the stream.

  “How did you know what to do?”

  “I’m used to men fighting.”

  “Why?”

  I look down at the half-laid fire, not at her. “What do you know about Ithaca?”

  “What people say.”

  “Which is?”

  “There are a lot of men there.” I can hear awkwardness in her voice. “Who want to marry . . . Penelope.” She was about to say “your mother.”

  “They live in my father’s house.” Mechanically I straighten the sticks on the fire. “They drink a lot. They fight. There are no other men to help. I’m the only one. I have to keep them under control.”

  “How long’s it been like that?”

  “Years. When my grandfather was alive things were easier. Then he died, and my mother became ill. Then it was just me.” I ball a handful of dry grass and thrust it into the fire.

  “What do they do?” Polycaste’s voice is quiet.

  “Whatever they want. They’re guests. We can’t turn them away. They eat. They drink and argue. They pester my mother, and I do what I can to protect her. It isn’t much. I can’t fight them. I don’t know how to fight.”

  “But you have protected her, haven’t you?”

  “So far. Maybe we’ve just been lucky.”

  “I don’t think so. You know what to say. You knew what to say to those men back there.”

  “I said the first thing that came into my head. You were the one who fought back.”

  “I didn’t think. I just wanted to kill them.” Polycaste drops her chin onto her knees, hugging herself. I spark flame from tinder until the dry ball of grass smolders and a thread of smoke rises up into the evening air.

  “Tell me what it’s like in Ithaca.”

  The fire crackles. I stay on my knees in front of it, watching the first flames catch at the grass, then at the smaller sticks and kindling. The smell of burning wood spreads through the clearing.

  Almost without thinking, I start to talk. I tell Polycaste about the courtyard, about my father’s wrecked storerooms, the feasts, the young men sprawled across landings and corridors each morning. I tell her about my mother. I tell her about the humiliations: Antinous’s contempt, Eurymachus’s phony friendship. Maybe I sound bitter, or angry, but I don’t care. Suddenly I’m telling her things I’ve always kept to myself, things I never imagined being able to share: the way they forced me to drink, until my words slurred and they roared with laughter. The way they dressed me up. The time one of the young men tried to get into my room and I had to push a cupboard against the door and spend the whole night awake, begging the goddess for help.

  “Did anything happen?”

  “No. He was drunk. He went away.”

  “I can’t imagine what you’ve been through.”

  It’s starting to get dark now. Firelight winks on the stream as it bubbles over the rocks next to us. Fireflies glow on the bank opposite.

  “We ought to eat.”

  “There isn’t much left.”

  We share two rolls and some dried meat the outlaws didn’t find, and drink from the stream, the water so cold it numbs our lips.

  “What about you?” I ask.

  “What about me?”

  “What’s it like being at home with your father, when he’s so . . .”

  “Old?” Polycaste laughs softly. “You might as well say it. He was already old when he left for the war. I was like you. He left before I was born. I grew up without any father at all. People talked about him. My brothers and sisters joked. To me he was just a name. Then they all came home, and there he was, this old man. They made me kiss him. He smelled old and dirty, but I made myself do it. He gave me a present, a piece of silk. He said, ‘This is from the greatest of their temples.’ It still had blood on it. I was eight.” Polycaste pauses, her mouth twisted.

  “Then I watched the slaves landing. All women. Their hands still tied, some of them. Dresses torn. You can imagine what it was like on the boats. Crying. And filthy, with bare feet and breasts. Some of them were children, girls my age. No men. That’s what happens when they sack a town. The men killed, the women . . .” She falls silent, her face dark, then says very quickly, “That was when I knew what I had to do. I said to myself, ‘That’s never going to happen to me. If they come to Pylos, I’ll fight too. I’ll be killed rather than carried off as someone’s slave.’ I got one of my father’s men to teach me. Aiming a bow, fighting with a sword. My brothers laughed, but I didn’t care.” She tosses her hair back. “All we hear about is the war. Their war. The fights, the glory . . . To hear the storytellers, you’d think it was . . . fun. I don’t think it was fun. I think they were all destroyed by it. Look at them . . . the men who attacked us today. The women who were left behind . . . your mother. Your father never coming back . . . it’s us who pay for it, isn’t it? And keep on paying . . . it doesn’t end. It’s what happens afterward . . . like what happened to Agamemnon, the biggest chief of all.”

  “What did happen?”

  “You don’t know?”

  “Some of it. I don’t know everything.”
r />   Polycaste takes a deep breath. “It started while he was away. His wife, Clytemnestra, was left behind. Agamemnon told his cousin, Aegisthus, to mind the kingdom. Eight years he was away. Aegisthus and Clytemnestra started an affair. Then the war ended and Agamemnon came home. You can imagine . . . the great warlord, leader of the Greeks in the great victory. He comes back to his palace . . . ships full of treasure, rows of slaves . . . And Aegisthus and Clytemnestra murdered him. Killed him in his bath. The leader of the Greeks killed naked without even a sword in his hand.” She pauses.

  “Agamemnon and Clytemnestra had two children. I played with Orestes when he came to Pylos once. He was a bit older. The daughter, Electra, was our age. What could Orestes do? Code of honor.”

  The code of honor. Iron law across the mountains of Greece, among shepherds and farmers as much as chiefs and warlords. A death can only be wiped out by another—or by blood money, calculated by priests and paid, sometimes, over many generations. A stain on a man’s honor is visible to all, as vivid and disfiguring as a scar on his face—until he kills in his turn and wipes his honor clean. On sleepy Ithaca, where most men work the sea, you don’t much come across it. But we all know how powerful a grip it holds.

  “So Orestes killed Aegisthus and Clytemnestra . . . slaughtered them both. And now he’s on the run, with Aegisthus’s people searching for him. A death for a death . . . He was a sweet boy, I liked him, but they’ll kill him sooner or later, it’s the only way it can end. So you see? We, their children, are still paying for what happened in the war.”

  There’s a silence. The fire crackles. Somewhere, away in the woods, an owl softly hoots. We can see the dark mass of the shrine in the trees across the stream.

  “It’s not as if we’ll be any different,” Polycaste says.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’ll be a fighter, like your father. You’ll find some war to go to, some town to burn. You’ll fight duels. You’ll get your hair plaited and have a tattoo.”

  “No.”

  She’s laughing, but her voice is serious. “What else is there?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What, then?”