But then, I never asked for more. It was our silent compact. I had given him life. In return, he served me, he whose brilliance outshone mine like the sun does a lamp. With that damning smile, he had given me all I did not know to ask for—architecture and poetry, crop rotation and irrigation, walls and wells. He had trained my sons to be better men than any. He had done everything in his power to make Ogygia prosperous and independent and happy.
Everything, that is, save one. He ever refused to advise about sails, or hulls, or even knots. His knowledge of the sea he kept to himself. Lest, I think, he be tempted to use those skills and leave.
I was his test. Could he keep his vow to me? The strain was invisible, unless one knew to look. He tested himself, tasked himself. Could he keep his oath? Could he prove his fidelity to anyone?
And if I was his test, then to what end was he testing himself? For whom?
It is the role of a goddess to accept prayers. To be the object of veneration. To receive duty, and homage, and reverence. So why was it galling to be the vessel of his fidelity?
Because I was not its source. I was an object, but I could not object. While I could call him mine, I had no cares.
For seven long years I had held him. Seven is a lucky number, they say. They did not say that eight was wholly unlucky—only because it followed seven. Coming after luck, even greatness is shallow.
“Balance!” cried Nausithous, and my Odysseus clapped his hands and pointed at the cheering boys.
Lifting my cup, I drew his attention. “I have one.”
His brows raised, he turned his soulless smile to me. “Lady my queen? We should be indebted.”
“‘We hurt without moving. We poison without touching. We bear both the truth and the lies. We are not to be judged by our size. What are we?’”
“Words,” said Odysseus at once.
“Yes. Words.” No, I could not fool him. But perhaps I might yet surprise. In an easy yet formal tone, I said, “And another?”
His cheating smile broadened. “Please.”
“‘When you need me, you throw me away. When you are done with me, you bring me back. What am I?’”
This took him only a moment longer than before. “An anchor.”
“Just so. Now, one last. A man plucked up from the waves, always fearful yet ever so brave, out of anguish he once made an oath…” Throat tight, I had to draw in a breath. “…from which he must now free us both.”
It was worth the hurt, worth seven years of hurts, to see the smile struck from his face. “Your majesty.”
My turn to smile. “That is not the answer. Who is he?”
He answered without any expression, an utter blank. “Odysseus.”
“Just so. But I believe we require a fuller answer.” I raised my voice, employing the carrying tone of the goddess. “Before you finish with your anchor here, Odysseus Wave-Rider, we wish words from you. Words of truth. Tell us who have loved you, on this, the eve of your departure, who is Odysseus, that we may have him to inspire us in your absence.”
Shock rippled all around the table, around the hall. One servant dropped her bowl. Another began weeping. My younger son’s skin turned to ash. My grown son’s mouth opened, then shut. Tears stood forth in his eyes.
But Odysseus’s eyes were dry. I could imagine his heart was pounding in his breast. For the first time he smiled at me, not with his lips, but with his eyes.
A goddess cannot weep. A queen cannot show despair. A woman cannot break her pride. To be granted that thing I wanted most, and to know that only by depriving myself of love had I been made worthy of love, was an exquisite pain. One that I would gladly suffer for all my days and nights to come.
He rose from the table, my faithless champion, as a bard might before launching upon an epic tale. “In keeping with the evening, I shall unriddle myself with a riddle:
The ancient giant from the east
Was slain by man and by beast
And laid to rest upon his pyre
To feed a ravenous desire.
He’d swallowed a woman whole
Then, feeling hungry still, he tried
To swallow a horse, and thus he died.
“The answer, my friends, is Troy. And that is just the beginning of my tale.” Wetting his lips, he spoke his full name for the first time. “I am Odysseus, King of Ithaca, son of Laertes, great-grandson of Hermes through the thief Autolycus, husband of Penelope, father of Telemachus, champion of Athena, enemy of Poseidon, friend of Achilles, confounder of Troy, sire of horses, slayer of giants, dismayer of witches—and the debtor to Calypso, goddess of shelter, redemption, and deliverance.”
Gasps. Cheers. Applause. When I could, I said, “You must do more than that. It is time, I think, to hear your story.”
Within minutes word went round, and all the palace flooded into the open-air court to hear his tale, which he told with all the gusto of an actor donning a forgotten mask, or a harpist touching a lute for the first time after a long illness.
It began with the abduction of a princess called Helen by the great hero Theseus. “If one can abduct the willing. For her flight was but a taste of what was to come.” He laughed at his advice to the girl’s father about which man this beautiful but willful woman should wed—none other than Menelaus, brother to Agamemnon, king of kings. “Would that I had been less forthright, and had insisted she marry a farmer with dirt on his heels instead!”
For Helen had run off with the next handsome man she found—not her husband. “Of course, the truth of her flight was not made public. No, as with Theseus, Agamemnon insisted she was abducted. For it provided him with the perfect excuse for a war. A great war. The war to end all wars. Which is said of every war, until the next one.” He paused, then shook his head as if to clear it of gnats.
“They came for me at once. Let me tell you, a reputation for cleverness is far more troublesome than one of strength. There are a hundred strong men for every clever one, and the truly clever does not let on that he is so. No, he plays the brute, and only acts when compelled. My pride was my downfall, sharing my supposed cleverness with all and sundry. I even tried to clever my way out of this.”
“How?” demanded a breathless Nausithous.
“By feigning madness,” he said, and had us all laughing as he put on a lively show of insanity. “It was a shock to everyone in the palace at Ithaca, let me tell you. But the moment I heard what Helen had done, in that instant did I begin to babble, and drool, and stare, and rave. For I knew what was coming. When Agamemnon and his besotted brother came for me, they found me jerking along behind a plow hitched to an ox on my right hand and a mule on my left.”
“You showed them unbalance,” I said, as it was on my mind.