“Ithaca is very rocky. So, um…chariots cannot be driven in my kingdom,” he lied. There were plenty of areas where one could drive a chariot, but it was a father’s duty to teach his son such skills.
“Ah. So what is your preferred weapon? I excel with the sword but will fight with a bow too if needed. How many men have you led into battle? When did you kill your first man? Do you go raiding often?” The young prince of Pylos clearly wanted to trade stories of heroic deeds. The shame of his inexperience made Telemachus stumble over his words.
“Ithaca has no real…well you know…all our warriors were lost. We do not have—”
“Do you know my father made me captain after my last victory against the Lycians when I led the raid on their shores?”
“You’re a captain?” He was younger than Telemachus. How was that possible?
“I have been fighting battles since I was fourteen,” the sixth son of King Nestor said. “My brothers trained me and let me join them on raids. Are you saying you’ve never been on a raid or fought in battle? At your age?”
Telemachus could only shake his head. Peisistratus, he noticed, grew quieter as the trip wore on.
Worse, when they got to the palace and requested an audience with Icarius, Telemachus’s grandfather, they were denied.
“What do you mean Icarius won’t see prince Telemachus?” said Peisistratus. “He is Icarius’s grandson—his own blood!”
The messenger, a young boy dressed in the patterned cloth of the House of Menelaus, shrugged as if embarrassed. “He is old and sick and barely remembers who he is. The physician feels that introducing you while he is having one of his spells would be bad for everyone involved. The king, however, invited you to dine with him in his hall later for the evening meal.”
With that, they were led to rooms normally reserved for traders.
“This is an outrage,” Peisistratus said, his face flushed.
Telemachus blinked. What had he missed?
“Never have I been treated like a mere trader! I should…we should be staying in the section reserved for royals.” He paced the corridor, feet pounding hard on the stone floor. “Perhaps the steward didn’t understand that I was with you. The House of Nestor is always respected in these halls. I will speak to him and fix this.”
Peisistratus did not return until it was time to bathe before joining the king in the main hall. He barely looked at Telemachus and he didn’t say a word about switching to the more respected quarters—all of which filled Telemachus’s belly with dread. Especially since his new friend was refusing to look him in the eye, almost as if he were blaming Telemachus for the insult.
At the king’s great hall, he pair were ushered into a large, glittering room, crowded with richly adorned men, some of whom Peisistratus knew. He left Telemachus’s side to greet each man warmly. Fortunately, when it was time to be seated, Nestor’s son took the chair beside him and he was so relieved Peisistratus hadn’t abandoned him to sit elsewhere, he did not ask why he hadn’t introduced him to the other nobles.
Menelaus, kingly in his thick robes and golden crown, welcomed them all with a nod. The old king’s hair was nearly white, though strands of copper still caught the torchlight. As servants laid platters of loin, roasted fowl, soft cheeses and warm bread before them, the old king bid them to eat and drink.
As everyone fell to, Telemachus had to nearly force himself not to gawp at his surroundings. Leaning over to Peisistratus, he said, “My friend, I have never seen anything of the like! The sheen of bronze, the blaze of gold and amber, silver and ivory—this place rivals Zeus’s own hall!”
Unfortunately, the room had quieted at just that moment and the High King overheard him. Telemachus flushed hot as his friend smirked and Menelaus and his chancellors turned to him.
“No man alive could rival Zeus, dear boys,” the great king said, “though I have amassed many riches. But believe me, I suffered much for every glimmer that you see shining here.”
“Tell us your stories, O great king,” someone from the court called and Menelaus spoke at length about his long wanderings after Troy and of the many deals he made to strengthen and enrich all the Achaean kings. Murmurs of approval and thanks rolled up and down the long tables.
Menelaus continued with story after story of his adventures. Peisistratus leaned over to Telemachus—while the hall filled with laughter at some well-worn joke made by the king—and said, “He feels compelled to retell these tales, even though it has been years since he has returned. We will just have to bear it. It’s a small price to pay to sit in this high-vaulted hall.”
Telemachus agreed but wondered why the man’s bard did not do the singing for him. After some time, Telemachus’s ears pricked up when he heard his father’s name.
“No one, no Achaean labored harder than Odysseus to achieve victory in Troy,” the old king said with a side-glance toward Telemachus, which he took to mean the king knew that the son of Odysseus was at his table. “And yet some say his story has not ended.”
“Oh, it ended all right,” a man yelled drunkenly. “It ended with him face-first between the legs of a foreign whore!” Everyone laughed. Some men slapped the table.
Telemachus’s ears burned. He took a huge swallow of wine to hide his embarrassment. But of course others had heard the rumors, he told himself. It didn’t mean the rumors were true.
And yet one or two of the men spoke so confidently about how “the great oath-breaker Odysseus is hiding away in shame with a woman on an empty isle after losing all his men and all his Trojan gold.” It began to make Telemachus uncomfortable. He shifted in his seat, grateful then, that Peisistratus had not introduced him as the son of Odysseus.
But Menelaus knew who Telemachus was—that was clear given the side-look the king had given him. And, it seemed, Menelaus was subtly letting the son of Odysseus know what his court thought of his father. A warning?
Peisistratus must have felt sorry for him. He bawled a little drunkenly into the fray: “Yes, but we must not forget that the great trickster found a way to get the best of the Achaeans inside the walls of Troy!”
“Hear, hear!” called out some of the men. “To the great trickster who tricked himself out of a fortune!” yelled out one man, reigniting the hall with laughter.
Telemachus’s wine grew less and less watered as the night wore on. Dionysus’s brew, it turned out, was supremely effective in taking the edge off the shame he felt over his father’s mistakes.
In the morning, Peisistratus kicked him awake. “We’ve been granted an audience with the king,” he said. “Get up and make yourself presentable.”