I opened my mouth to say it was not true. But how often had I lain beside him, aching because I knew he thought of Penelope? That had been my choice. Telemachus had had no such luxury.
“There is one more story I should tell you,” I said. “Before he returned to you, the gods demanded that your father journey to the underworld to speak to the prophet Teiresias. There he saw many of the souls he had known in life, Ajax, Agamemnon, and with them Achilles, once Best of the Greeks, who chose an early death as payment for eternal fame. Your father spoke to the hero warmly, praising him and assuring him of his reputation among men. But Achilles reproached him. He said he regretted his proud life, and wished he had lived more quietly, and happily.”
“So that is what I must hope for then? That one day I will see my father in the underworld and he will be sorry?”
It is better than some of us get. But I held my peace. He had a right to his anger, and it was not my place to try to take it. Outside, the garden rustled faintly as the lions prowled through the leaves. The sky had cleared. After so long among clouds the stars seemed very bright, hung in the darkness like lamps. If we listened, we would hear the faint twisting of their chains in the breeze.
“Do you think it was true, what my father said? That the good ones never liked him?”
“I think it was the sort of thing your father liked to say, and truth had nothing to do with it. After all, your mother liked him.”
His eyes had found mine. “And so did you.”
“I do not claim to be good.”
“You liked him, though. Despite all of it.”
There was a challenge in his voice. I found myself choosing my words carefully. “I did not see the worst of him. Even at his best he was not an easy man. But he was a friend to me in a time when I needed one.”
“It is strange to think of a goddess needing friends.”
“All creatures that are not mad need them.”
“I think he got the better bargain.”
“I did turn his men to pigs.”
He did not smile. He was like an arrow shooting to the end of its arc. “All these gods, all these mortals who aided him. Men talk of his wiles. His true talent was in how well he could take from others.”
“There are many who would be glad for such a gift,” I said.
“I am not one.” He set down his cup. “I will tax you no further, Lady Circe. I am grateful for the truth of these stories. There are few who have taken such pains with me.”
I did not answer him. Something had begun prickling at me, lifting the hairs on my neck.
“Why are you here?” I said.
He blinked. “I told you, we had to leave Ithaca.”
“Yes,” I said. “But why come here?”
He spoke slowly, like a man coming back from a dream. “I think it was my mother’s idea.”
“Why?”
A flush rose on his cheek. “As I have said, she does not share confidences with me.”
No one can guess what my mother is doing until it is done.
He turned and passed into the hall’s darkness. A moment later, I heard the soft sound of his door closing.
The cold air seemed to rush through the cracks of the walls and pin me to my seat. I had been a fool. I should have held her over the cliff that first day and shaken the truth out of her. I remembered now how carefully she had asked after my spell, the one that could stop gods. Even Olympians.
I did not go to her room, rip the door from its hinge. I burned at my window. The sill creaked under my fingers. There were hours till dawn, but hours were nothing to me. I watched the stars outside dim and the island emerge, blade by blade, into the light. The air had changed again and the sky had veiled itself. Another storm. The cypress boughs hissed in the air.
I heard them wake. My son first, then Penelope, and last Telemachus, who had gone to bed so late. One by one they came into the hall, and I felt them pause as they saw me at the window, like rabbits checking at the hawk’s shadow. The table was bare, no breakfast laid. My son hurried to the kitchen to clatter plates. I liked feeling their silent glances at my back. My son urged them to eat, his words heavy with apology. I could imagine the speaking looks he was giving them: I’m sorry about my mother. Sometimes she is like this.
“Telegonus,” I said, “the sty needs fixing and a storm comes. You will attend to it.”
He cleared his throat. “I will, Mother.”
“Your brother can help you.”
Another silence, while they exchanged their glances.
“I do not mind,” Telemachus said, mildly.
A few more sounds of plates and benches. At last, the door closed behind them.
I turned. “You take me for a fool. A dupe to be led by the nose. Asking so sweetly about my spell. Tell me which of the gods pursues you. Whose wrath have you brought upon my head?”
She was seated at my loom. Her lap was full of raw, black wool. On the floor beside her lay a spindle and an ivory distaff, tipped with silver.
“My son does not know,” she said. “He is not to blame.”
“That is obvious. I can spot the spider in her web.”
She nodded. “I confess that I have done what you say. I did it knowingly. I could claim that I thought because you are a goddess and a witch that the trouble to you would not be much. But it would be a lie. I know more of the gods than that.”
Her calmness enraged me. “Is that all? I know what I have done and will brazen it out? Last night your son talked of his father as one who takes from others and brings only misery. I wonder what he would say of you.”
The blow landed. I saw the blankness she used to cover it over.
“You think me some tame witch, but you were not listening to your husband’s stories of me. Two days you have stayed on my isle. How many meals have you eaten, Penelope? How many cups of my wine have you drunk?”
She paled. A faint graying along her hairline, like the creeping edge of dawn.
“Speak, or I will use my power.”
“I believe you have used it already.” The words were hard and cool as stones. “I brought danger to your isle. But you brought it to mine first.”
“My son came of his own accord.”
“I do not speak of your son, and I think you know it. I speak of the spear you sent, whose venom killed my husband.”
And there it was between us.
“I grieve that he is dead.”
“So you have said.”
“If you are waiting for my apology, you will not get it. Even if I had such powers as could turn back the sun, I would not. If Odysseus had not died on the beach, I think my son would have. And there is nothing I would not trade for his life.”
A look passed across her face. I might have called it rage, if it were not pointed so inward. “Well then. You have made your trade and this is what you have: your son lives, and we are here.”
“You see it as a sort of vengeance then. Bringing a god down on my head.”
“I see it as payment in kind.”
She would have made an archer, I thought. That cold-eyed precision.
“You have no ground to make bargains, Lady Penelope. This is Aiaia.”
“Then let me not bargain. What would you prefer, begging? Of course, you are a goddess.”
She knelt at the foot of my loom and lifted her hands, lowering her eyes to the floor. “Daughter of Helios, Bright-eyed Circe, Mistress of Beasts and Witch of Aiaia, grant me sanctuary on your dread isle, for I have no husband and no home, and nowhere else in the world is safe for me and my son. I will give you blood every year, if you will hear me.”
“Get up.”
She did not move. The posture looked obscene on her. “My husband spoke warmly of you. More warmly, I confess, than I liked. He said of all the gods and monsters he had met, you were the only one he would wish to meet again.”
“I said, get up.”
She rose.
“You will tell me everything, and then I will decide.”
We faced each other across the shadowed room. The air tasted of lightning. She said, “You have been talking to my son. He will have implied that his father was lost in the war. That he came home changed, too soaked in death and grief to live as an ordinary man. The curse of soldiers. Is it so?”
“Something like that.”
“My son is better than I am, and better than his father too. Yet he does not see all things.”