Circe Read online

  I felt as if I were untethered from the earth. Odysseus was gone, and Penelope was here, and I must make her broth. After all those times I had spoken her name, at last she was summoned. Vengeance, I thought. It must be. What other purpose would bring them?

  They reached my door. Our words were cream still, come in, thank you, will you eat, you are too kind. I served the meal: broth indeed, platters of cheese and bread, wine. Telegonus heaped their plates, kept an eye on their cups. His face was still taut with that guilty attendance. My boy who had presided so skillfully over a boatload of sailors now hovered, watching like a dog, hoping for any morsel of forgiveness. It was dark by then, the tapers lit. The flames shook with our breaths. “Lady Penelope,” he said, “do you see that loom I told you of? I am sorry you had to leave yours behind, but you may use this one any time you like. If my mother agrees.”

  Under other circumstances, I would have laughed. It was an old saying: weaving at another woman’s loom is like lying with her husband. I watched to see if Penelope would flinch.

  “I am glad to see such a wonder. Odysseus told me of it often.”

  Odysseus. The name naked in the room. I would not quail if she did not.

  “Then perhaps,” I said, “Odysseus told you also that Daedalus himself made it? I have never been a weaver worthy of such a gift, but you are famed for your skill. I hope you will try it.”

  “You are too kind,” she said. “I’m afraid whatever you have heard is much exaggerated.”

  And so it went. There were no tears, no recriminations, and Telemachus did not lunge across the table. I watched his knife, but he wore it like he did not know it was there. He did not speak, and his mother spoke only rarely. My son labored on, filling up the silence, but with every moment, I saw his grief rising. He grew dull-eyed. A faint convulsive tremor had begun passing over him.

  “You are overtaxed,” I said. “I will take you to your beds.”

  It was not a question. They rose, Telegonus swaying a little. I showed Penelope and Telemachus their rooms, brought them water to wash with and saw their doors shut. I followed my son and sat beside him on the bed.

  “I can give you a draught to sleep,” I said.

  He shook his head. “I will sleep.”

  In his despair and fatigue, he was pliant. He let me hold his hand and draw his head down onto my shoulder. I could not help finding a little pleasure in it, he so rarely allowed me such closeness. I stroked his hair, a shade lighter than his father’s. I felt the shiver run through him again. “Sleep,” I murmured, but he already did. I lowered him gently onto the pillow, pulling up the blanket and spinning a spell over the room to dull noise, to douse light. Arcturos panted at the bed’s end.

  “Where are the rest of your fellows?” I said to her. “I would have them here too.”

  She looked at me with pale eyes. I am enough.

  I closed the door behind me and walked through the night shadows of my house. I had not sent my lions away after all. It was always instructive to see how people would take them. Penelope and Telemachus had not faltered. My son had warned them, perhaps. Or was it something Odysseus had mentioned? The thought sent an eerie chill through me. I listened, as if I might hear an answer from their rooms. The house was still. They slept, or else kept to their thoughts in silence.

  When I stepped into my dining hall, Telemachus was there. He stood in the room’s center, poised as an arrow nocked to its string. The knife gleamed at his waist.

  So, I thought. It comes. Well, it would be on my terms. I walked past him to the hearth. I poured a cup of wine and took my chair. All the while, his eyes followed me. Good. My skin felt shot through with power, like the sky before a storm.

  “I know you plan to kill my son.”

  Nothing moved but the flames in the hearth. He said, “How do you know it?”

  “Because you are a prince, and the son of Odysseus. Because you respect the laws of gods and men. Because your father is dead, and my son the cause. Perhaps you think to try your hand at me as well. Or did you just want me to watch?”

  My eyes shone and made their own shadows.

  He said, “Lady, I bear neither you nor your son ill will.”

  “How kind,” I said. “I am completely reassured.”

  His muscles were not a warrior’s, bunched and hardened. He had no scars or calluses I could see. But he was a Mycenaean prince, honed and supple, trained to combat from his cradle. Penelope would have been scrupulous in his rearing.

  “How may I prove myself to you?” His voice was grave. He mocked me, I thought.

  “You cannot. I know a son is bound to avenge his father’s murder.”

  “I do not deny that.” His gaze did not waver. “But that only holds if he was murdered.”

  I lifted an eyebrow. “You say he was not? Yet you bring a blade into my house.”

  He looked down as if surprised to see it. “It is for carving,” he said.

  “Yes,” I said. “I imagine so.”

  He drew the knife from his belt and slid it down the table. It made a raw, juddering sound.

  “I was on the beach when my father died,” he said. “I had heard the shouts and feared a confrontation. Odysseus was not…welcoming in recent years. I came too late, but I saw the end. He had wrested away the spear. It was not by Telegonus’ hand that he died.”

  “Most men do not look for reasons to forgive their father’s death.”

  “I cannot speak for those men,” he said. “To insist upon your son’s fault would be unjust.”

  It was a strange word to hear on his lips. It had been one of his father’s favorites. That wry smile, his hands uplifted. What can I say? The world is an unjust place. I considered the man before me. In spite of my anger, there was something in him that compelled. He showed no courtly polish. His gestures were simple, even awkward. He had the grim purpose of a ship, battened against a storm.

  “You should understand,” I said, “that any attempt to harm my son would fail.”

  He cast an eye to the lions in their heaps. “I think I can understand that.”

  I had not expected it of him, that dryness, but I did not laugh. “You told my son there was nothing left for you on Ithaca. We both know a throne waits there. Why are you not in it?”

  “I am not welcome on Ithaca now.”

  “Why?”

  He did not hesitate. “Because I watched while my father fell. Because I did not kill your son where he stood. And after, when the pyre burned, I did not weep.”

  The words were calm but they had a heat to them like fresh coals. I remembered the look that had passed over his face when I’d spoken of honoring Odysseus.

  “You do not grieve for your father?”

  “I do. I grieve that I never met the father everyone told me I had.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “Explain.”

  “I am no storyteller.”

  “I am not asking for a story. You have come to my island. You owe me truth.”

  A moment passed, and then he nodded. “You will have it.”

  I had taken the wooden chair, so he took the silver. His father’s old seat. It had been one of the first things that had caught my eye about Odysseus, how he’d lounged there like it was a bed. Telemachus sat up straight like a pupil called to recitation. I offered him wine. He declined.

  When Odysseus had not come home after the war, he said, suitors had begun to arrive seeking Penelope’s hand. Scions of Ithaca’s most prosperous families and ambitious sons from the neighboring islands, looking for a wife, and a throne if they could get it. “She refused them, but they lingered in the palace year after year, eating up our stores, demanding my mother choose one of them. She asked them to leave again and again, but they would not.” The old anger still burned in his voice. “They saw we could do nothing to them, a young man and a woman alone. When I reproached them, they only laughed.”

  I had known such men myself. I had sent them to my sty.

  But then Odysseus h
ad returned. Ten years after he sailed from Troy, seven after he left Aiaia.

  “He came in disguise as a beggar and revealed himself only to a few of us. We devised an opportunity: a test of the suitors’ mettle. Whoever could string the great Odysseus’ bow would win my mother’s hand. One by one the suitors tried and failed. At last my father stepped forward. In a single motion he strung the bow and put an arrow through the throat of the worst among them. I had been frightened of those men for so long, but they fell to him like grass before the scythe. He killed them all.”

  The man of war, honed by twenty years of strife. The Best of the Greeks after Achilles, wielding his bow once more. Of course they had not stood a chance. They were green boys, overfed and spoiled. It made a good tale: the suitors, lazy and cruel, besieging the faithful wife, threatening the loyal heir. They had earned their punishment by all the laws of gods and men, and Odysseus came like Death himself to deal it, the wronged hero making the world right. Even Telegonus would have approved of such a moral. Yet somehow, it was a queasy vision for me: Odysseus, wading heart-deep in the halls he had dreamed of so long.

  “The next day the suitors’ fathers came. They were all men of the island. Nicanor, who kept the largest herds of goats. Agathon, with his carved-pine staff. Eupeithes, who used to let me pick pears from his orchard. He was the one who spoke. He said: Our sons were guests in your home, and you killed them. We seek reparation.

  “‘Your sons were thieves and villains,’ my father said. He gestured, and my grandfather threw his spear. Eupeithes’ face burst open, scattering the dust with his brains. My father ordered us to kill the rest, but Athena descended.”

  So Athena had come back to him at last.

  “She declared the feud finished. The suitors had paid fair price and there would be no more bloodshed. But the next day, the fathers of his soldiers began to come. ‘Where are our sons?’ they wanted to know. ‘We have waited twenty years to welcome them home from Troy.’”

  I knew the stories Odysseus would have had to tell them. Your son was eaten by a cyclops. Your son was eaten by Scylla. Your son was torn to pieces by cannibals. Your son got drunk and fell from a roof. His ship was sunk by giants while I fled.

  “Your father still had crew when he sailed from my island. Did none of them survive?”

  He hesitated. “You do not know?”

  “Know what?” But as I spoke, my mouth went dry as Aiaia’s yellow sands. In the wildness of Telegonus’ childhood, I had had no time to fret for what was out of my hands. But I remembered now Teiresias’ prophecy as clearly as if Odysseus had just spoken it. “The cattle,” I said. “They ate the cattle.”

  He nodded. “Yes.”

  A year those eager, reckless men had lived with me. I had fed them, cared for their illnesses and scars, taken pleasure in watching them mend. And now they were wiped from the earth as if they had never lived.

  “Tell me how it happened.”

  “As their ship was passing Thrinakia, a storm blew in and forced them to land. My father kept watch for days but the storm went on and on, stranding them, and at last my father had to sleep.”

  That same old story.

  “While he slept, his men killed some of the cows. The two nymphs who guard the island witnessed them and went to…” He hesitated again. I saw him consider those words: your father. “Lord Helios. When my father set sail again, the ship was blasted to pieces. All the men were drowned.”

  I could imagine my half-sisters with their long golden hair and painted eyes, bent on pretty knees. Oh, Father, it was not our fault. Punish them. As if he had ever needed urging. Helios and his endless wrath.

  I felt Telemachus’ eyes on me. I made myself lift my cup and drink. “Go on. Their fathers came.”

  “Their fathers came, and when they learned their sons were dead, they began demanding their sons’ shares of the treasure won fighting at Troy. Odysseus said it was all at the bottom of the sea, but the men did not give up. They came again and again, and each time my father’s rage grew. He beat Nicanor about the shoulders with a stick. Kleitos he knocked down. ‘You want the true story of your son? He was a fool and a braggart. He was greedy and stupid and disobeyed the gods.’”

  It was a shock to hear such blunt words put into Odysseus’ mouth. There was a piece of me that wanted to object, say that it didn’t sound like him. But how many times had I heard him praise such tactics? The only difference was how plainly Telemachus told it. I could imagine Odysseus sighing and holding out his empty hands. Such is the commander’s lot. Such is the folly of humanity. Is it not our human tragedy that some men must be beaten like donkeys before they will see reason?

  “They stayed away after that, but still my father brooded. He was sure they were plotting against him. He wanted sentries posted all around the palace, day and night. He talked of training dogs and digging trenches to catch villains in the dark. He drew up plans for a great palisade to be built. As if we were some war camp. I should have said something then. But I…still hoped it would pass.”

  “And your mother? What did she think?”

  “I do not claim to know what my mother thinks.” His voice had stiffened. They had not spoken to each other all night, I remembered.

  “She brought you up herself. You must have some idea.”

  “There is no one who can guess what my mother is doing until it is done.” There was not just stiffness in his voice now, but bitterness. I waited. I had begun to see that silence prompted him better than words.

  “There was a time we shared every confidence,” he said. “We plotted each night’s strategy against the suitors together, if she should come down or not, speak haughtily or conciliate, if I should bring out the good wine, if we should stage for them some confrontation. When I was a child we were together every day. She would take me swimming, and afterwards we would sit beneath a tree and watch the people of Ithaca go about their business. Each man or woman who passed, she knew their history and would tell it to me, for she said that you must understand people if you would rule them.”

  Telemachus’ gaze was fixed upon the air. The firelight picked out a crook in his nose I had not noticed before. An old break.

  “Whenever I fretted for my father’s safety, she would shake her head. ‘Never fear for him. He is too clever to be killed, for he knows all the tricks of men’s hearts, and how to turn them to his advantage. He will survive the war and return home again.’ And I was comforted, for what my mother said always came to pass.”

  A true-made bow, Odysseus had called her. A fixed star. A woman who knew herself.

  “I asked her how she did it once, how she understood the world so clearly. She told me that it was a matter of keeping very still and showing no emotions, leaving room for others to reveal themselves. She tried to practice with me, but I made her laugh. ‘You are as secret as a bull hiding on a beach!’ she said.”

  It was true Telemachus was not secret. The pain was drawn clear and precise across his face. I pitied him, but if I were honest, I envied him as well. Telegonus and I had never had such closeness to lose.

  “Then my father came home and all of that was wiped away. He was like a summer storm, lightning bright across a pale sky. When he was there, everything else faded.”

  I knew that trick of Odysseus’. I had seen it each day for a year.

  “I went to her the day he beat Nicanor. ‘I fear he goes too far,’ I said. She would not even look away from her loom. All she would answer was that we must give him time.”

  “And did time help?”

  “No. When my grandfather died, my father blamed Nicanor, the gods know why. He shot him with his great bow and threw the body on the beach for the birds to eat. The only thing he talked of by then was conspiracy, how the men of the island were gathering arms against him, how the servants were colluding in treacheries. At night, he paced the hearth, and every word from his mouth was guards and spies, measures and countermeasures.”

  “Were there such trea
cheries?”

  “A revolt in Ithaca?” He shook his head. “We don’t have time for that. Rebellion is for prosperous islands, or else those so ground down they have no other choice. I was angry by then. I told him that there was no conspiracy, there never had been, and he would do better saying three kind words to our men than plotting how to kill them. He smiled at me. ‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘that Achilles went to war at seventeen? And he was not the youngest man at Troy. Boys of thirteen, fourteen, all did themselves proud in the field. I’ve found that courage is not a matter of age, but true-made spirits.’”

  He did not imitate his father, not exactly. Yet the rhythm of the speech caught Odysseus’ confidential, luring mildness.

  “He meant I was a disgrace, of course. A coward. I should have fought off the suitors single-handedly. Was I not fifteen when they first came? I should have been able to shoot his great bow, not just string it. At Troy I would not have lived a day.”

  I could see it: the smoky fire and the tang of old bronze, the must of pressed olives. And Odysseus, expertly wrapping his son with shame.

  “I told him we were on Ithaca now. The war was finished and everyone knew it but him. It enraged him. He dropped his smile. He said, ‘You are a traitor. You wish for me to die so you can take my throne. Perhaps you even think to speed me along?’”

  Telemachus’ voice was steady, nearly expressionless, but his knuckles showed white on the chair’s arm.

  “I told him that he was the one who shamed our house. He could boast all he liked of the war, but all he had brought home was death. His hands would never be clean again and mine would not be either, for I had followed him into his lake of blood and I would be sorry for it all my days. It was finished after that. I was shut from his councils. I was barred from the hall. I heard him shouting at my mother that she had nursed a viper.”

  The room was silent. I could feel the place where the fire’s warmth faded and died against the winter air.