Telemachus shot up and turned to her. “By all the gods, Mother?” he cried. “You are queen in Ithaca. Act like it! I would not have my mother shame my father by showing her weakness…”
She blinked rapidly at him in surprise. Had he just yelled at her? In her own hall, in front of all the other young men? Everyone, it seemed, found his outburst interesting as well, for most in the hall quieted and turned to see what had irritated the son of Odysseus this time.
“Telemachus,” she said soothingly. “It is a wife’s duty to miss her spouse.”
“Duty, yes,” he agreed. “But do so in private. It is time for men to talk now.”
There was a long silence as mother and son stared at each other. Penelope swallowed. Her eyes burned as she fought the urge to slap him.
But she saw the momentary flash of pleading in her son’s eyes and understood. If she shamed him now, he would never have the respect of these men. His future ability to lead was questionable as it was. So she clenched her teeth, gave her son a slight nod and left the hall without another word.
When she reached her chambers, Danae took one look at her face and dropped the night tunica she was folding. “My Lady?”
Penelope released a sound that was half-growl, half screech. “He dismissed me! From my own hall!” Hot tears of rage flowed down her cheeks as she stomped up and down the small room.
Danae shook her head. “I don’t understand. What happened?”
The queen relayed the ridiculous scene until her rage was spent. After she’d brought the queen an infusion of steeped willow bark and chamomile buds, Danae cleared her throat. “I hate to bring this to you now but I also have news,” she said quietly.
“Oh, Goddess. What now?”
“I went to the docks today to speak to some of the travelers and their women.”
Penelope put her cup down, as a stone lodged in her chest. Recently, they had been hearing persistent rumors that her husband hadn’t died after all. That, after losing all his men and all the riches from Troy, he’d hidden in shame on a small, strange island behind the skirts of a besotted woman who didn’t know his true identity.
Of course, she’d heard stories about his survival for years but she’d always dismissed them. Traveling men often told tall tales in exchange for a meal or a cloak. But these rumors were too persistent to ignore.
Penelope pressed a hand against her stomach as if she could physically push away the idea of being betrayed and forsaken for a strange woman. Lying with camp whores while at war was one thing, but this…no. It just couldn’t be true.
“I believe them,” Danae said, taking the queen’s hand. “A fair number of the slave women from trading ships corroborate it. They weren’t even sure what port they’d stopped at so they had no incentive to lie or exaggerate.”
Penelope snatched her hand away. “Lies. They have to be! The war ended ten years ago.” Odysseus had been gone for a total of twenty years. Twenty. “If he were alive,” she insisted, “he would have come home to me, to us…to his only son!”
Another thought made her gasp. What if Telemachus wasn’t his only son?
“The missing king of Ithaca is the only one who can account for his absence,” Danae said, frowning. “But there’s more.”
Penelope stared at her friend with wide eyes.
“There are rumors that he left the island where he’d been hiding and is on his way back to Ithaca,” Danae said.
“He’s coming home?” Penelope said dumbly.
“That is the rumor. But my queen, my friend, you must plan for the possibility because if he does return, it would be catastrophic!”
Penelope blinked. “What do you mean?”
“Odysseus would most certainly misinterpret all the men in your hall. He would see them as a terrible slight to your honor and to his—and attack. The families would be rightfully outraged and demand blood vengeance, and everything you have done to strengthen and stabilize Ithaca would disappear in a breath.”
Penelope stood and paced in her small chamber. She had never intended, nor had been trained, to rule a kingdom on her own. She’d done it because she’d had to—because her husband had disappeared and her father-in-law had slunk away in shame. The idea of suddenly having the king back by her side, of not being the only one in charge was so appealing—she imagined it as such a relief—she nearly groaned in desire.
But just as quickly, she imagined being pushed back into the background and then silenced. Of being dismissed as powerless after all she had done for his people and his kingdom.
Goddess!
Penelope shook her head as if to clear it. “But…but if all this were true, why would he come home now?”
“Perhaps he didn’t choose to leave,” Danae said with disdain. “Perhaps his whore on Whore Island grew tired of his lies and kicked him out.”
The queen stared wide-eyed at her friend, not knowing whether to laugh or cry.
Danae’s face flushed. “I’m…I’m sorry, Penelope. I shouldn’t have spoken so crudely.”
“By the gods, what do we do?” Penelope asked. “How can I discover what is true? And what I can do—or should I do—about any of it?”
“Perhaps it’s time to seek guidance from the Goddess,” Danae said. “Only the Great Mother can help us now.”
And so, two days later, the queen, Danae and two maidens set out, barefoot and with hair unbound, on the ancient path up craggy Mount Neriton to confer with the Goddess in her secret cave.
The youngest girl steadied a basket filled with loaves of fresh barley bread on her head using her right hand. With her left, she palmed a small earthenware bowl of glowing hearth embers that the queen would use to light the sacred fire.
Danae and the other girl each carried baskets of figs and olives, along with skins of wine and jars of milk and honey. Penelope held to her chest the most important offering of all, the living sacrifice napping within its warm container, covered by her most ornate finely woven cloth, created by the queen’s own hand.
She patted the cloth-covered basket as if it were the plump bottom of a sleeping babe. Had her life gone differently—had the great Mother chosen a different path for her—Penelope might have been cradling her own late-life baby or even one of her many children’s newborns to her breast instead.
A deep longing washed over her, for a different life. For a house full of children. A hall echoing with the sound of her husband’s laughter. For bodies entwined and spent from lovemaking.
But this was the path the Mother of All had chosen for her—to live alone and rule alone. To have but one male child. To protect the people of this rocky isle, abandoned and battered by the male pursuit of selfish glory.
She thought she had made peace with it all—with the loneliness, with the grief, with the weight and pressures of being responsible for the well-being of her husband’s people. Of her people. Why then, would the Goddess change everything now?