“All of them?”
Odysseus answered the question with his eyes; Eumaeus could not hold his gaze and looked to the floor. “My king,” he said at length. “Those men that are left here are old. Or crippled. Or both. Even if they were willing to rise up, which they should have done by now,” he threw a glance at Telemachus who didn’t notice, “they won’t be much good in a fight.”
“Men of Ithaca are always good in a fight,” he stated with kingly confidence he did not feel. “I have returned. I will rally all to my cause. And then I will slaughter these suitors and those that have aided them. Eumaeus…”
“I’ll put the word about,” he said. “Quietly. People still listen to me,” he added.
“I will go and inform mother of my…and your return,” Telemachus said, eager to be part of it.
“I do not wish her—or anyone else—to know.” Odysseus said quickly.
“But why—she will be overjoyed…”
“Son, how long do you think I’d last if the suitors got word that I was here—without spears at my back?”
“Oh,” Telemachus looked dejected. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Eumaeus will gather the men for a secret assembly,” Odysseus said. “You will return to the great house and tell your mother and these suitors of your journey…you will tell them what you told me. That the warriors of Troy are now old and gone to seed. That you are alone. That may play into our hands. When I have gathered a force, we will strike. When they are drunk and unready.”
“How will you know when that is?”
“Because Outis the Beggar will dare to go to the great house and learn of it,” Odysseus grinned. “If I was able to convince a man that knows me well—in my disguise—then I am sure that I will fool strangers too.”
“Father. Are you sure the men will follow you? What will you say to them?”
Odysseus blinked, confronted once again with the cost of his absence. The boy should’ve been absorbing the art of kingship at his knee.
He clapped his son on the back. “You will soon see.”
There were no torches—Odysseus had expressly told Eumaeus that the gathering was to be kept secret; there was to be one flame and one flame only and that was the fire before which he would stand. He had spent a while choosing the right location—by the sea, where the darkness was thick and he could stand at a cave-mouth, illuminated by the glare.
In the darkness, he waited, adjusting Eumaeus’s old armor. It was falling to pieces and they’d had to use twine to keep it in one piece, but at least the boar’s tusk helmet was still strong and the spear was tall, but blunted. Under the eye of the moon, he would at least look like a king.
He moved around the fire, standing in the shadows of the cave mouth, the smell of smoke and brine from the sea heavy in his nostrils. Beyond, Eumaeus’s quavering voice was telling the men to quiet, that soon all “would be revealed”. Which, Odysseus thought was as good a time as any to make his entrance.
He stepped out from the cave and, steadying himself with the spear, climbed onto a rock so that all might see him. With the light behind him, his eyes were not dimmed and he noted that there was a sizeable gathering. The murmuring stopped as all eyes turned to him.
“The king has returned!” Eumaeus lifted his voice over the night time hiss of the waves clawing at the shore.
Odysseus waited, letting that sink in. His eyes swept the assembled men and he nodded slowly. “Yes,” he rasped, his voice raw. “My countrymen. My brothers. My people…” he trailed off and took a shaky breath. He had not expected this sudden surge of emotion that clogged his throat. “I had thought never to see you or my beloved Ithaca again. Yet—by the gods—here I stand, hale and whole…and yet much has changed.”
“You’re right about that!” someone shouted. “The best of our men are dead across the sea! My son never returned…”
“Nor mine!” another shout, which was taken up by more of them. Odysseus let their outrage wash over him. He didn’t know why the gods had taken all his men but the least he could do for them was stand tall and look into the faces of grief of the families they’d left. He could almost feel the shades of every one of his men standing behind him, watching, just as bewildered as he was as to why he—and not they—had washed upon the rocky shore of their beloved homeland.
“The House of Odysseus is cursed!” someone called out.
“Peace!” Odysseus called, holding up one hand, the other reflexively tightening on his spear. Everyone stilled. Within the deep, hoarse timber of their king’s voice, they recognized the call of the warrior king whose brilliance had conquered Troy. It was their king and their land that would be immortalized by his gods-led actions. The sense that the gods themselves were watching their response to him humbled them and they quieted.
“That I stand here before you is—by the gods—proof that the House of Odysseus is not cursed. The gods have willed my return. Will you argue with them? Or see what they intend by my presence on this beloved shore: to put my house in order and bring prosperity back to the land that I love.”
“You’ve been gone twenty years,” Eumaeus said as Odysseus had instructed him to. “We know the war took half of that. But all the other kings that fought in Agamemnon’s War have returned home, their ships groaning with Trojan gold. King Odysseus…what happened to you? What happened to our sons? What happened to our share of the riches?”
“That is a long story,” Odysseus said, and sat himself down on the rock. “I hope you have brought wine, friends,” he added. They had—of course they had, they were Ithacans—and they too settled down on the sands. “Having brought about the downfall of Troy with my stratagem, we sacked the city. My hulls too were riding low on the water because as the king who had brought the Trojans low, I was granted a greater share. En route to Ithaca, my fleet was blown off course. Only through my efforts did we escape total disaster…at sea at least. Friends, we found ourselves on a foreign shore. I sent the men to gather supplies and fresh water…but the women of the island, eager and willing as they seemed, gave some of our number a magical plant that robbed them of their will and their senses… the Island of the Lotus Eaters should have been the end of us.