“Because you are a prince, and the son of Odysseus. Because you respect the laws of gods and men. Because your father is dead, and my son the cause. Perhaps you think to try your hand at me as well. Or did you just want me to watch?”
My eyes shone and made their own shadows.
He said, “Lady, I bear neither you nor your son ill will.”
“How kind,” I said. “I am completely reassured.”
His muscles were not a warrior’s, bunched and hardened. He had no scars or calluses I could see. But he was a Mycenaean prince, honed and supple, trained to combat from his cradle. Penelope would have been scrupulous in his rearing.
“How may I prove myself to you?” His voice was grave. He mocked me, I thought.
“You cannot. I know a son is bound to avenge his father’s murder.”
“I do not deny that.” His gaze did not waver. “But that only holds if he was murdered.”
I lifted an eyebrow. “You say he was not? Yet you bring a blade into my house.”
He looked down as if surprised to see it. “It is for carving,” he said.
“Yes,” I said. “I imagine so.”
He drew the knife from his belt and slid it down the table. It made a raw, juddering sound.
“I was on the beach when my father died,” he said. “I had heard the shouts and feared a confrontation. Odysseus was not…welcoming in recent years. I came too late, but I saw the end. He had wrested away the spear. It was not by Telegonus’ hand that he died.”
“Most men do not look for reasons to forgive their father’s death.”
“I cannot speak for those men,” he said. “To insist upon your son’s fault would be unjust.”
It was a strange word to hear on his lips. It had been one of his father’s favorites. That wry smile, his hands uplifted. What can I say? The world is an unjust place. I considered the man before me. In spite of my anger, there was something in him that compelled. He showed no courtly polish. His gestures were simple, even awkward. He had the grim purpose of a ship, battened against a storm.
“You should understand,” I said, “that any attempt to harm my son would fail.”
He cast an eye to the lions in their heaps. “I think I can understand that.”
I had not expected it of him, that dryness, but I did not laugh. “You told my son there was nothing left for you on Ithaca. We both know a throne waits there. Why are you not in it?”
“I am not welcome on Ithaca now.”
“Why?”
He did not hesitate. “Because I watched while my father fell. Because I did not kill your son where he stood. And after, when the pyre burned, I did not weep.”
The words were calm but they had a heat to them like fresh coals. I remembered the look that had passed over his face when I’d spoken of honoring Odysseus.
“You do not grieve for your father?”
“I do. I grieve that I never met the father everyone told me I had.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Explain.”
“I am no storyteller.”
“I am not asking for a story. You have come to my island. You owe me truth.”
A moment passed, and then he nodded. “You will have it.”
I had taken the wooden chair, so he took the silver. His father’s old seat. It had been one of the first things that had caught my eye about Odysseus, how he’d lounged there like it was a bed. Telemachus sat up straight like a pupil called to recitation. I offered him wine. He declined.
When Odysseus had not come home after the war, he said, suitors had begun to arrive seeking Penelope’s hand. Scions of Ithaca’s most prosperous families and ambitious sons from the neighboring islands, looking for a wife, and a throne if they could get it. “She refused them, but they lingered in the palace year after year, eating up our stores, demanding my mother choose one of them. She asked them to leave again and again, but they would not.” The old anger still burned in his voice. “They saw we could do nothing to them, a young man and a woman alone. When I reproached them, they only laughed.”
I had known such men myself. I had sent them to my sty.
But then Odysseus had returned. Ten years after he sailed from Troy, seven after he left Aiaia.
“He came in disguise as a beggar and revealed himself only to a few of us. We devised an opportunity: a test of the suitors’ mettle. Whoever could string the great Odysseus’ bow would win my mother’s hand. One by one the suitors tried and failed. At last my father stepped forward. In a single motion he strung the bow and put an arrow through the throat of the worst among them. I had been frightened of those men for so long, but they fell to him like grass before the scythe. He killed them all.”
The man of war, honed by twenty years of strife. The Best of the Greeks after Achilles, wielding his bow once more. Of course they had not stood a chance. They were green boys, overfed and spoiled. It made a good tale: the suitors, lazy and cruel, besieging the faithful wife, threatening the loyal heir. They had earned their punishment by all the laws of gods and men, and Odysseus came like Death himself to deal it, the wronged hero making the world right. Even Telegonus would have approved of such a moral. Yet somehow, it was a queasy vision for me: Odysseus, wading heart-deep in the halls he had dreamed of so long.
“The next day the suitors’ fathers came. They were all men of the island. Nicanor, who kept the largest herds of goats. Agathon, with his carved-pine staff. Eupeithes, who used to let me pick pears from his orchard. He was the one who spoke. He said: Our sons were guests in your home, and you killed them. We seek reparation.
“‘Your sons were thieves and villains,’ my father said. He gestured, and my grandfather threw his spear. Eupeithes’ face burst open, scattering the dust with his brains. My father ordered us to kill the rest, but Athena descended.”
So Athena had come back to him at last.
“She declared the feud finished. The suitors had paid fair price and there would be no more bloodshed. But the next day, the fathers of his soldiers began to come. ‘Where are our sons?’ they wanted to know. ‘We have waited twenty years to welcome them home from Troy.’”
I knew the stories Odysseus would have had to tell them. Your son was eaten by a cyclops. Your son was eaten by Scylla. Your son was torn to pieces by cannibals. Your son got drunk and fell from a roof. His ship was sunk by giants while I fled.
“Your father still had crew when he sailed from my island. Did none of them survive?”
He hesitated. “You do not know?”
“Know what?” But as I spoke, my mouth went dry as Aiaia’s yellow sands. In the wildness of Telegonus’ childhood, I had had no time to fret for what was out of my hands. But I remembered now Teiresias’ prophecy as clearly as if Odysseus had just spoken it. “The cattle,” I said. “They ate the cattle.”
He nodded. “Yes.”
A year those eager, reckless men had lived with me. I had fed them, cared for their illnesses and scars, taken pleasure in watching them mend. And now they were wiped from the earth as if they had never lived.
“Tell me how it happened.”
“As their ship was passing Thrinakia, a storm blew in and forced them to land. My father kept watch for days but the storm went on and on, stranding them, and at last my father had to sleep.”
That same old story.
“While he slept, his men killed some of the cows. The two nymphs who guard the island witnessed them and went to…” He hesitated again. I saw him consider those words: your father. “Lord Helios. When my father set sail again, the ship was blasted to pieces. All the men were drowned.”
I could imagine my half-sisters with their long golden hair and painted eyes, bent on pretty knees. Oh, Father, it was not our fault. Punish them. As if he had ever needed urging. Helios and his endless wrath.