“Gentlemen, you are acting like wild animals rather than the boys of noble families that you are.”
“Everyone is trying to impress you, Queen Penelope!” a boy shouted from the back.
She smiled. “Well if you are trying to impress anyone—especially girls—I must inform you that it will not happen via a continual stream of breaking wind jokes.”
“How about demonstrations?” one boy called. “Will that work?” He stood up, exaggeratedly put his backside out and released a sound she hadn’t known was humanly possible.
Boys hooted and pounded the tables.
“Oh my princes! Princes! Please! You must—”
But Telemachus had shot up, sending his stool clattering on the stone floor behind him. “There is only one prince here,” he shouted over her. His face was crimson with outrage.
Everybody stopped. Even the servants froze, gazes flicking from Telemachus to her. Her son’s curls, the queen noted in that strange moment of silence, were overlong, which made him look younger and softer than the other boys. She made a mental note to send a barber to his chamber later.
“You may not call them your princes, Mother, for that is not what they are,” he repeated. “I am the only prince here!”
Her son’s expression told her to tread carefully, as did the reaction of most of the boys, who were smirking and exchanging disdainful looks. “Of course, you are,” she said. “You are the one and only true prince of Ithaca.”
He nodded and stomped out of the hall, his cheeks still aflame, his plate left unfinished.
Her heart sank at the low-guttural comments and laughs that filled the room. Oh son, that is not the way! Odysseus would’ve used humor to remind everyone of his status, not a tantrum! Actually, he wouldn’t have needed to remind anyone of his power. They would just know it by his bearing. But Telemachus seemed incapable of projecting that kind of unquestioning strength.
Penelope inwardly cursed her husband for disappearing and her father-in-law, Laertes, for abandoning his grandson to play with his fruit trees. Telemachus needed guidance. Male guidance. But, beyond his mother, he had no one. Even old Mentor, whom Odysseus had assigned to watch over them, had disappeared from the palace when times had grown difficult.
The queen swallowed hard. Why had all the men of this House failed her? Why couldn’t Telemachus see how his behavior encouraged disdain rather than confidence?
She closed her eyes, conjuring Odysseus’s flickering shade before her. I blame you, husband. Everything would’ve been different if only you had come directly home.
Her eyes pricked with heat.
For years, she’d tamped down the memories of her young husband. How he’d wept with joy over the birth of Telemachus and her own survival after a long labor. How he’d promised to protect them all their days.
But they were lies, weren’t they? Odysseus had broken every oath he’d ever made to her, to her son, to his people, and to his land.
So much of his charm had been his impulsiveness. She remembered how on a whim, in the early days, he would take her sailing to a remote isle where they could spend an uninterrupted afternoon in each other’s arms. Or wake her in the darkness so they could climb up a ridge to watch the sunrise, all the while spinning tales of gods who whispered stories directly into his mind.
What great tale will you tell me when I see you again in lightless Hades? Will you blame a god for what was surely your decision—and probably on a whim—to pursue more glory? Will you spin fantastical accounts that absolve you of the consequences from the choices you made? Of goddesses who seduced? Monsters which attacked? Beasts that betrayed?
Will your stories distract me until my own memories drift away before I can tell you of what your absence cost your son and me? Of the suffering of your people as farms failed, sickness spread, and poverty laid us low? How grief for an entire generation of our best men crippled your kingdom?
“I shall sing a song of the beautiful, faithful queen who weeps for the love of her lost husband,” the bard announced and Penelope’s eyes flew open.
Everyone was watching her. She quickly wiped her wet cheeks with the heels of her hands. But as the bard strummed his lyre and crooned about the “soft, sweet, endless love for her lost husband, of the faithful, lonely queen,” more hot tears stung her eyes and rolled down her cheeks.
Without saying another word, she dashed out of the room and up the stairs to her chamber where she let her tears of frustration flow freely. Because that’s what they were.
Yes, she was lonely, but more than that, she was angry. Angry at being left alone. Angry at being made responsible—against her will—for the lives of all his people.
And it was a good thing she’d made it out of the hall when she did because she wasn’t sure she could’ve kept her hands from flying to the bard’s scrawny chicken-neck and choking the life out of him for making her sound so simpering and simple.
* * *
TELEMACHUS
“Oi, prince Antinous,” called one of the boys, looking insolently at Telemachus all the while. The son of Odysseus, leaning in the shade of the gardener’s shed near the empty field, willed himself not to react.
“Why don’t you wrestle someone else besides the ‘true prince of Ithaca’?” continued the boy. “You’ve already beaten him three times now. We want to see a real match.”
Telemachus’s face and neck grew hot, despite his best attempts to ignore the idiot. It had been weeks since he’d taken offence at his mother’s use of “prince” for anyone else but him. But the boys would not let him forget. He had a feeling they’d never let him forget.
“Come now, let us go practice our javelin throw,” said a freckled, red-haired boy named Amphinomus, pulling him away. Telemachus shook him off. He did not need the help of some freckled hayseed.
“Control your temper,” his mother had warned him weeks ago. “Others will see it as a softness and bait you with it.” But his temper and his title were all he had. It was the only source of dignity he could muster in this new world of boys who lived by rules he hadn’t known: Only the strongest matter. Only the fastest are admired. Only those who can physically dominate are worthy of love.
Well, he wasn’t physically dominating. He hadn’t known that either until his house had been invaded.
“Make them go home,” he’d told his mother after the first week. “I don’t like them. And there are too many of them.”
“I cannot,” she’d said. “I have sworn an oath to feed and care for them. To break such an oath would enrage the gods.”
He was sure some of the boys must have heard that exchange because it was soon after that they all began calling his father the great “oath-breaker”.
“He must have run away with all the Trojan gold,” one of the boys taunted.