*
The dining hall has never been so loud or full. Servants have dragged two more tables inside and lit only half the torches. The fire already smokes thickly, and the room grows warmer by the second.
Tyndareus sits at the head of the table on one side, old Nestor on the other. Most kings and princes are gathered around them, and their soldiers and guards fill the other two tables, seated on benches draped with lambskins. Clytemnestra is sitting between Helen and Penelope. Helen glows like the summer sun in her white dress embroidered with gold, her perfumed hair tied in long plaits; Penelope’s and Clytemnestra’s dresses are of a dark blue, like the sea at night. Opposite them are Philoctetes, his long hair brushed and his wrinkled face shaved clean, the king of Argos, Diomedes, and the man of Ithaca, whose name Penelope didn’t know. They eat eagerly, sinking their knives into the roast goose, cheese, and onions, their goblets filled to the brim with the best wine from the kitchen.
“Are all these yours?” Diomedes asks Tyndareus after he has swallowed a piece of meat. He is talking about the women. He has an ugly scar on his arm and a thick beard.
“Helen and Clytemnestra are my eldest,” Tyndareus answers, his tone warm and polite. “Timandra, Phoebe, and Philonoe are younger.” He gestures to the three girls, standing by his side. “Penelope is my niece, the daughter of Prince Icarius.”
“It is a long way from Acarnania,” Diomedes says to no one in particular. Is he afraid to address Penelope directly? Clytemnestra has heard that women in some Greek palaces don’t dine with men.
“Did you travel to Sparta all by yourself?” the man from Ithaca asks. He doesn’t seem to share Diomedes’s awkwardness and stares directly into Penelope’s eyes. He lifts his cup and drinks.
Penelope stirs. “Yes. I rode here alone.”
The man smiles. There is bright interest in his gray eyes. “Aren’t you afraid of riding alone?”
Clytemnestra frowns, but Penelope speaks with a friendly tone. “Would someone ask you the same question if you left Ithaca alone on a boat?”
Some soldier on the other table finishes telling a dirty joke and everyone around him roars with laughter, slamming their cups onto the table. The man from Ithaca snorts as though annoyed by the interruption, then refills his cup before a helot can do it for him. Perhaps he is not used to servants in his poor palace among the rocks.
“I am afraid I haven’t introduced myself properly,” he says, grinning as soon as he has emptied his cup again. He has a handsome smile and his eyes are clever, conspiratorial. “How foolish of me. Here we are, courting the most beautiful girl in all our lands,” he says as he nods to Helen, then he smiles at Penelope and Clytemnestra and adds, “in the presence of other wonderful women, and I haven’t even given my name. I am Odysseus, prince of Ithaca, but you won’t have heard of me.”
Penelope turns quickly to Clytemnestra with a small smile. Something in the way he talks reminds Clytemnestra of Tantalus, though she can’t say what it is.
“Ah, son of Laertes, you are too humble,” old Nestor says from the other side of the table. “They may not know your name, but everyone has heard of your cunning. They certainly don’t call you polutropos for nothing.” He uses the word for a man who is beyond ingenious, one who is clever and scheming. Clytemnestra suddenly recognizes the name. The many-minded, his brother had referred to him in the past. She studies Odysseus with more care, but as soon as she does so, he catches her stare, as one does with a disobedient child. She looks away.
Diomedes laughs scornfully. “What use are brains? The gods favor the strong.”
Odysseus’s smile doesn’t drop. “The gods favor whoever amuses them. And I can assure you that clever men, and women,” he adds with a quick nod to Penelope, Helen, and Clytemnestra, “are more appealing than brutes.”
Clytemnestra laughs. Diomedes turns red and sticks his knife into the goose as though to pierce a warrior’s chest.
“Are you insulting the strong, son of Laertes?” says a tall man sitting close to Nestor, his voice deep like the echo inside a cave. Clytemnestra recognizes Ajax the Great, the hero from Salamis. His cousin Teucer stiffens next to him.
“I would not dare to do that, Ajax, but the gods bestow on each of us different gifts, and we do what we can with them.”
“Wise words from a clever man,” Tyndareus says. Odysseus smiles at him, like a cat would.
“Speaking of the strong,” Diomedes says, his face still red, “I thought the sons of Atreus would be here.”
Clytemnestra turns to Helen, who is spreading honey on her cheese with too much care, her cheeks flushed.
“They will come tomorrow,” Tyndareus says. “They have recently retaken Mycenae, as you probably know, and have been busy putting things back to the way they were in the city.”
“What of their uncle, Thyestes?” Philoctetes asks. News travels slowly to Thessaly, it being so far north.
“He was executed,” Tyndareus answers, his face expressionless, like a slab of smooth stone. “But their cousin Aegisthus lives.”
Odysseus laughs. Most kings turn to him quickly.
“Does something amuse you?” Diomedes asks. He seems ready to strangle Odysseus.
“Forgive me, king of Sparta,” Odysseus says, “but from what you say, it almost seems that Aegisthus lives by the grace of the Atreidai.” He winks at Tyndareus, and Leda almost chokes on her wine. “And yet,” he continues, “from what I’ve heard, Thyestes was burned alive and Aegisthus fled with the help of a servant—who was later burned too, I expect—and now lives in the woods, homeless, planning his revenge after he was forced to hear his father’s screams echoing throughout the valley.”
Clytemnestra sees the horror on Helen’s face and feels a kind of satisfaction. It is like winning a match, only the son of Laertes did it for her.
“These tales are not fit for a dinner such as ours, Odysseus,” Nestor says. “We do not wish to upset the women.”
“Very little upsets the women of Sparta, my friend,” Tyndareus says quietly.
Clytemnestra leans forward. “Besides, the prince of Ithaca says nothing we don’t know already.”
“Ah,” Odysseus says and smiles. “The princess of Sparta doesn’t like the sons of Atreus.”
Clytemnestra smiles back. “We share that, I am sure.”
Diomedes finishes the food on his plate, like a lion pulling the meat off its prey’s bones. Then he turns to Clytemnestra.
“You are famous for your wrestling skills, even in Argos.” The sentence is a statement, and Clytemnestra doesn’t know how to respond.
Tyndareus intervenes. “She takes after her mother. Leda hunted lynxes and lions in the forests of Aetolia when she was younger.”
Leda smiles but seems unwilling to speak. Clytemnestra suspects she has been drinking again, and sure enough, she sees Helen take the cup from her mother as soon as she tries to have it refilled.
“In Salamis, all women do is moan and giggle,” Ajax the Great says. Perhaps that is what his comrades like, because Teucer cackles next to him, but few others, apart from Menoetius, Ephenor, and Diomedes.
“They do not fight?” Clytemnestra asks.
“Fight?” Ajax laughs, slamming a clenched fist on the table. “Women aren’t made to fight.”
“They weave and dance,” Teucer says, still cackling, “and fuck every once in a while.” This makes the men laugh more.
Diomedes’s face is red again, this time with amusement. “My father didn’t even see his bride until the wedding day,” he says. “She had never left the house.” Again, a roar of laughter.
Clytemnestra doesn’t understand the joke. Though she has grown up among vulgar warriors, she has never heard men speak like this. They usually joke about fucking goats and pigs or challenge each other out of nothing. Tyndareus doesn’t join in with the laughter, but he does nothing to stop it.
“How old was she?” Penelope asks politely.