Danae, her favorite noble-born attendant, was suddenly beside her. “Much like your queen,” she said, crossing her arms and raising one eyebrow at the boy. “You should remember that.”
The courtyard grew silent as the queen’s women on the other side of the courtyard stopped their work and looked up, the musical clinking of their slowing loom weights tapering into silence.
“The House of Odysseus should burn,” the kicking boy spat. He was all elbows, wrist-bones, and kneecaps in his filthy, too-small tunic.
“You should suffer like we have,” agreed his wriggling companion.
The guard shook the boys so hard their teeth rattled like rocks in an earthenware bowl.
“Caught them trying to set fire outside the Great Hall,” the old warrior said. “We must send a strong message. Let me cut their throats right now. I’ll spike their heads out in front of the palace as a warning. Just give the command.”
One of the boys started crying. Tears furrowed tracks down layers of grime on his cheeks.
They’re Telemachus’s age, Penelope noted with a sinking heart. They were likely the desperate sons of the lost men of Ithaca. Like her son, they had probably been infants when their fathers had sailed for Troy thirteen years before. Both boys, she noted, had the rangy, desperate look of children who knew true hunger.
“Where is the retired king?” Penelope asked, trying to buy time. Could she really command the deaths of children? Normally, it was her father-in-law, Laertes, who handled cases of blood justice. But she already knew the answer. Odysseus’s father had withdrawn to his orchards.
He hid from his people in shame, for he was the father of the only Achaean king who had not returned with his share of Trojan gold. Three years after the fall of Troy and still not a single man had returned. Not the king, not an oarsman, not even a lowly camp cook. A whole generation of the best men of Ithaca, lost. And while all the other Achaean cities grew fat with their share of Trojan riches, only Ithaca starved. Surely, many believed, the house of Laertes was cursed.
Laertes blamed the gods for Odysseus’s “bad luck”. But Penelope was sure her charming and impulsive husband played a significant role in whatever tragedy befell them.
This was the third attack on the palace in as many weeks. It was clear desperate Ithacans had turned their rage against the king onto his House. And just as with everything else, she was forced to deal with the consequences of her husband’s mistakes.
On her own.
“Who are your people?” the queen asked.
“I am Agathon, son of Lemnos,” said the boy who had kicked at her loom. “My mother is dead and my aunt couldn’t feed me, so I’m out on my own now.”
“The sweating sickness took most of my family too,” added the other boy, Kyron. “There is no one left to work the farm. We’re all starving.”
“These hoodlums must be punished,” the old warrior said again. “Let me show the others what happens when they attack their queen and prince.”
Penelope’s mind whirred and she forced herself to breathe. Think. What would Odysseus or Laertes do?
Despite Odysseus’s claim of ruling as “gently as a father”, she knew that wasn’t the case. Her husband and father-in-law—indeed, all the men of the region—killed at the slightest threat to their honor. But it was that pursuit of honor that lead to this desperate situation in the first place, wasn’t it?
Do the opposite.
The thought came unbidden. It was the Goddess of course, reminding her of the wisdom of the Old Ways: that sometimes, surprising people with kindness could be just as unbalancing and effective as shocking them with violence.
“Take them to the kitchens and feed them,” she said. “When they’ve had their fill, escort them to the baths and when they are clean, have my women clothe them.”
Penelope glanced at Danae, who gave her a small, closed-lip smile of encouragement.
The wizened old warrior, though, sputtered in outrage. “They should die for attacking the royal house! If we don’t do something, others will think we are weak! We can’t have that—I won’t kill them in front of you if you don’t want their blood staining your courtyard!”
Penelope stared at the man as he whined on about the loss of honor that would befall him for not killing the “sniveling little pieces of shit” in retribution. The molten metal at her core hardened until even he seemed to sense her immovability. Finally, he stopped raging. The boys, for their part, had stayed quiet—too hungry and hopeful to risk making their situation worse.
Finally, the old warrior sighed, lowering his eyes. “Yes, my queen.” He dragged the boys with him toward the kitchens. “If it were up to me, I’d be throwing your tiny little balls to the dogs right now, so don’t you dare think about trying anything,” he muttered, shaking the boys by the neck like puppies.
One of the boys twisted around to lock eyes with the queen. “Thank you,” he mouthed, beginning to cry again, but this time, likely at the prospect of not having to pick through goat dung for his next meal.
This could not go on. She turned to her lady. Although a few years younger, Danae so resembled the doe-eyed queen, many assumed they were sisters.
“Danae, I need you to prepare a message to send to Sparta,” she said, barely above a whisper as the other women returned to their looms. “And I need for it to go out this very afternoon. But no one must know of it.”
The queen sent a coded message to her father, who ruled Sparta while King Menelaus and Penelope’s cousin, Queen Helen, secured trade deals around the region. Penelope hadn’t been to the land of her birth since her wedding nearly fourteen years prior, but that didn’t change the fact that she was still a royal daughter of hard-fighting Sparta.
It was time her people remembered that.
* * *
TELEMACHUS
Telemachus was on the open field beside the royal barn trying to get his father’s hunting dog, Argos, to fetch a stick he’d just thrown.
“Come on, boy! Come on!” he called.
Argos sat and yawned, looking away.
Telemachus sighed and put his hands on his hips. “Lazy dog,” he muttered.
“He needs a job to do,” Eumaeus, the pig herder called as he walked by with a squealing piglet under his arm.
Telemachus rushed over. “Oh, is that for me? Can I keep him?”
Eumaeus laughed. “He will be yours, later for dinner. The queen called for an ox to be slaughtered too—do you have guests? Who are they? It has been a long time since your mother hosted visitors.”
The boy shrugged. “Here. Lemme have him,” he said grabbing the piglet out of the herder’s arms.
“Wait, young master—”
Tucking the squealing trotter under his arm, Telemachus ran as fast he could, kicking up clouds of dust behind him. “Come on, Argos,” he yelled to the dog. “Come hunt this.”
Argos sprang up, ears pointing forward, eyes focused on the boy.
Telemachus put down the piglet. It ran in confused circles. “Get him, Argos!” the boy cried. The dog charged, running low and hard at the target.