Ithaca (32 page)

As he moves in, I sense something's wrong. Why does Eurymachus push me aside to take my place at Odysseus's elbow? I'm too out of breath to complain, but when I look at Eurymachus, there's something odd in his pose. My mind's too tired to work out what. Eurymachus is still jabbing at our enemies, but he keeps glancing at Odysseus, to his right.

Watch their feet, Polycaste taught me. Watch their feet, and you'll know where they're going to stab next. Mechanically I look down at Eurymachus's feet. Twisted to one side, weight on the toes, ready for the kill. But to kill whom?

Then I know. Eurymachus doesn't even draw back his sword. The blow's disguised; no one in the hall will ever see who dealt it. But I know what Eurymachus is planning to do. “A good family,” my father said. “You can trust Eurymachus.” But I never did, despite all that friendliness, all the good humor. I knew all along Eurymachus was false.

As Eurymachus's knife sweeps upward toward Odysseus's heart, I throw myself in front of my father. I feel a blow against my side but stay on my feet. Clutching Eurymachus by the
throat, I bring my sword up, through soft clothing and flesh, and feel blood flow hotly over my hand.

Suddenly Eurymachus and I aren't standing together. I'm carrying him, supporting his weight. He smiles at me. His smile is as charming as ever. He's still smiling as the sense melts from his gaze and he slides down my chest to his knees.

I'm kneeling too. I'm not sure why. The edge of the hearth touches my cheek, and I put my hand on it. The stone's wet with rain. I'm clutching my own side. I see Eumaeus's face and feel the old man tug at my hand, but I don't let him pull it away. I don't want to, though I can't remember why it's so important to keep it there. Eumaeus turns me over, and I sit back against the hearth, looking up at the roof. Suddenly the roof seems too far away, or maybe too close—I'm not sure which. I can see my father now, sitting on the ground. There's no one else in the hall—no one alive.

“Easy.” I see Eumaeus's lips move before I hear the words—or perhaps I just imagined that. The lips move again.

“You're hurt.” There's a pain in my side. I stop resisting Eumaeus and let him drag my hand away. There doesn't seem to be anything else to do. I watch Odysseus drop his sword and pass a hand over his face like he's washing it. When he takes his hand away, his face is smeared with blood. That makes me want to laugh. I want to tell my father to wash his face, but the words seem too big for my mouth and my tongue's too dry, so I just nod, hoping he'll understand what I mean.

Then I see my mother, and the sight of her brings another wave of pain to my side, along with a wash of confused noise: women screaming in the distance and the drumming of rain on the roof. I'd forgotten it was raining. Penelope's wearing white. But as she walks slowly across the hall, the hem of her gown, trailing on the floor, becomes soaked in crimson, as if it's drawing blood up from the earth.

She doesn't seem to notice. I watch her drop to a crouch, not beside me but next to Odysseus. She takes his face in both hands. I watch my father's eyes slowly come into focus as he looks up at her. I don't see her lips move, but I can hear the words she whispers to him.

“My husband,” she says softly. “My husband.”

T
he sky is clear, the rain is gone, the heat has returned, scorching the houses of the town and plunging the benches under the plane tree into deep shadow. Sitting back in the chair they've made for me, I can feel my eyes closing. My father told me I'd feel faint. I'm no longer in danger, but I'll be sick and faint for a week, at least, from loss of blood.

My father's talking now. It feels like he's been talking forever. He's winning the town over, steering them toward him—and he's loving every moment of it.

So are they. If I half open my eyes, I can see them lining the benches, eyes fixed on Odysseus as he tells his tales. Such tales. A one-eyed giant who ate sailors. A monster called Scylla who
plucked men from the deck and devoured them. The witch Calypso, who kept him captive in her palace for five years.

I've learned a lot more about my father in the last twenty-four hours.

The morning after the fight, I woke in my bedroom to the smell of burning. They were fumigating the big house, purging it, and cleaning out the smell of death. When I lifted my head to look through the open door, I could see a brazier burning on the landing. Servants went from room to room, scattering dried lavender. Smoke billowed from the courtyard, where they were burning the tents. In the afternoon they carried me out to the garden. A pall of smoke hung over the harbor. They'd fired the pyre built for Odysseus and were burning the bodies of the young men. The smoke hung over the town in the windless air, choking the streets and dropping oily black soot on the sand.

That wasn't all Odysseus did to purify his house. He killed the servants who had helped the intruders. I watched a group of boys, dressed only in their shirts, led out to the orchard with wrists bound. I wasn't strong enough to protest. Later I watched Melantho, my mother's maid, killed in the courtyard. She'd slept with two or three of the young men, Agelaus and Eurymachus among them. Odysseus ordered a rope to be slung between the galleries, and Melantho was brought out. She was struggling, and kept struggling as they looped the rope around her neck and tautened it. She went on struggling, toes scribbling frenzied messages in the dust, until her body sagged suddenly and Odysseus let the rope fall slack.

I can still smell dead fire as I lie under the plane tree. It's a rottenness in the air like the sour smell of old meat. I wonder how long it'll take to wash away. I wonder how long it'll be before anything feels normal again. But perhaps I'm too tired to wonder anything. I feel soaked in exhaustion, like a rag
dipped in water. I let my head drop back against the chair and look up into the canopy of leaves.

This morning I watched Odysseus bargain with the parents of the young men who died—those parents who live on the island, that is. Others will arrive from the mainland in the next few weeks. The parents demanded blood money, threatened feuds. Odysseus was as masterful as a lawyer, arguing, persuading, cajoling, until hands were shaken, backs slapped, and the threat of an island riven by blood feuds was lifted. When the other families arrive, he'll deal with them just as skillfuly. He can do that, just like he can lead, and fight, and tell stories.

Which he's doing now. He's describing Troy, its walls rising sheer from the plain like cliffs, and the Greek camp on the beach. Listening to him, you can almost hear the blare of the Trojan trumpets, see the banners fluttering as the soldiers come out to fight. He describes the wooden horse and Troy's last night. When he talks of their departure for home, he chokes up, and Penelope has to reach out a hand to comfort him.

Before the meeting, the villagers came into the square hesitantly. I saw knots of them gathering outside the tavern, talking in hushed voices. But as soon as Odysseus began to speak, they were his. Leaning forward in their chairs as he talked. Women covering their mouths as he described the men he had led and lost. It was as if he cast a spell over them. One thing I can see—he needs them more than they need him. Odysseus doesn't just want a majority to support him as chief. He needs them to leap to their feet, to pledge him everything. He needs them to love him—and they will.

I close my eyes. My head's aching, as if it's carrying an odd weight. I managed to walk most of the way down to the square, but Eumaeus and Eurycleia had to help me the last few steps and maneuver me into this cushion-lined chair under the tree. Eurymachus's sword cut deep—another inch and I wouldn't
be here now. The night after the fight, I woke up screaming. When I came to myself, Eurycleia was sitting over me, moistening my forehead with a cool cloth. She dipped the cloth in a bowl of water and wrung it out. The dribble of water in the bowl reminded me of when my mother cooled me during hot nights when I was a child.

I watch my mother stroke Odysseus's hand. I've barely seen her since the fight, but I've heard her laughter coiling along the corridor like a girl's. It's been years since I heard my mother laugh. I've seen her holding Odysseus's hand as we dine together, and the shy smile she gives him when he drains his cup and leads her upstairs. Penelope has her husband back, and I've never seen her look so young, or so alive.

Am I jealous? I suppose so. The truth is, my father's come home and my mother doesn't need me anymore. And it's not just her I've lost. It's my home. My father's voice fills the hall now. His laugh echoes along the corridors. The house isn't mine anymore. Odysseus has returned to Ithaca, and suddenly this island I call home has become too small.

Odysseus has visited me often. He sits on the end of my bed, hands on his knees, talking about my future.

“You fought well. You must see some proper fighting now. A brawl around the hearth is nothing to boast of. I'll send a message to Menelaus. He'll find an army for you to fight in. You'll travel to Egypt or to Crete. You must feel the quiver of a chariot under your legs and the pull on the reins as horses charge into a line of archers. You must see ships landing on a beach and a town in flames.”

When I don't say anything, he looks down at me, frowning, puzzled. “You need to rest,” he says. “You'll be better after a week's rest.”

I've spent most of the time thinking about Polycaste. About our journey across the mountains—the owls hooting in the
twilight as our fire burned low, the cold sheen of dew as we woke to morning mists. I've thought of how we talked as we sat by mountain streams, watching the spray flick up from rocks and the rainbows fanned by the sunlight. There is another way. Polycaste and I both know that.

I can go on learning to fight, but I don't want to. I could choose my father's world if I wanted, but I don't want it. There was a flame of anger inside me, but the anger's burned out.

Yesterday morning, I had them carry me down to Mentor's house. He was sitting outside with his sons, eyes closed in the sunlight. His sons welcomed me. Their wives ran indoors for jugs of wine and trays of bread while Mentor's wife piled cushions on a soft chair.

“He hasn't been the same since they beat him,” she whispers. “He's tired. Don't make him talk too long.”

I put my hand on Mentor's, and he opened his eyes. “I'm going to leave.”

He nodded, tongue moistening his dry lips. “Good . . . good.”

“Will you come with me?”

“Where will you go?”

“Somewhere in the west. We'll find an island, start a colony. Others have done it.”

Mentor nodded again and closed his eyes. “Good,” he repeated. “Good.”

His sons helped me gather the rest of our crew. Together, painfully, we went from house to house. I wasn't sure they'd accept me as leader, but no one objected. Eumaeus is coming—I was surprised by that. But he's had enough of fighting, enough of war. He wants a quiet place where he can raise his pigs in peace and watch the sun set over the sea each evening. We've got half the crew who sailed with us to Pylos. My half sister's coming, and her mother too. They were never accepted in the town; they want a new home. There are farmers from the
mountain who've pledged to sign up, and boys with too many brothers who want new seas to fish.

We'll sail to Pylos first. I hope Polycaste will join us. Then we'll sail west until we find an unsettled island. Mountains full of game, seas where no one has fished. An empty island with untouched forests, some pasture where we can graze our sheep, a beach with headlands that jut out to protect us from the winter storms. We'll make decisions together, sitting on the hillside in the evening. We'll grow old together.

My mother cried. “One comes home, the other leaves.” What else could she say? She clutched my hands, and I watched the tears coursing down her cheeks, streaking them with her eyeliner, just as my death would have furrowed them with ashes.

My father tried to stop me from going. “Your place is here, with me. You'll become chief in your turn. You'll make a name for yourself as a fighter, just as I did.”

When I shook my head, he looked as if he was about to say something, then simply shrugged. He knows he can't command me.

This morning he woke me at dawn with a knock on my door.

“I've got something for you.” A charm—a little boar carved from olive wood. “You should leave an offering before you go. We could go to the shrine together.”

“No.”

“The gods watch over you.”

“Did they watch over you all those years you were wandering?”

Odysseus smiled—that mocking look I can't endure, and that almost makes me love him. “Haven't you heard the owl hoot outside your window? An eagle falling from the sky to snatch a dove from the air? The prophet in Sparta told you I was alive. He was right, wasn't he? Didn't you see a swallow in the hall during the fight? The goddess's messenger, bringing
me courage in battle. You're clever, Telemachus, cleverer than I am, but sometimes I think you're a fool.” He laughed and pressed the little boar into my hand. “For luck!”