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Synopsis
The third book in award‑winning author Claire North's Songs of Penelope Trilogy, a "powerful, fresh, and unflinching" (Jennifer Saint) reimagining that breathes life into ancient myth and gives voice to the women who stand defiant in a world ruled by ruthless men.
Many years ago, Odysseus sailed to war and never returned. For twenty years his wife Penelope and the women of Ithaca have guarded the isle against suitors and rival kings. But peace cannot be kept forever, and the balance of power is about to break . . .
A beggar has arrived at the Palace. Salt-crusted and ocean-battered, he is scorned by the suitors - but Penelope recognises in him something terrible: her husband, Odysseus, returned at last. Yet this Odysseus is no hero. By returning to the island in disguise, he is not merely plotting his revenge against the suitors - vengeance that will spark a civil war - but he's testing the loyalty of his queen. Has she been faithful to him all these years? And how much blood is Odysseus willing to shed to be sure?
The song of Penelope is ending, and the song of Odysseus must ring through Ithaca's halls. But first, Penelope must use all her cunning to win a war for the fate of the island and keep her family alive, whatever the cost...
Release date: June 4, 2024
Publisher: Orbit
Print pages: 400
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The Last Song of Penelope
Claire North
Of the many kingdoms that make up the sacred lands of Greece, it is generally agreed that the western isles are the worst. And of the western isles themselves, comprising many parts of some diverse merit, everyone concurs that Ithaca is the pits.
She rises like a crab from the sea, black-backed and glistening with salt. Her inland forests are scraggy, wind-blasted things, her one city little more than a spider’s town of twisted paths and leaning houses that seem to buckle and brace against some perpetual storm. By the banks of the twisted brooks she calls rivers there are shaggy goats who nip at scrubs of grass that sprout like old men’s beards between the tumbled boulders of a bygone age. At the mouths of her many coves and hidden bays the women push their rough boats onto the grey, foaming sea to catch the morning harvest of darting silver fish that play against her shores. To her west are the richer, greener slopes of Kefalonia, to the north the bustling ports of Hyrie, south the generous groves of Zacynthos. It is absurd, those who account themselves civilised say, that these richer lands should send their sons to pay homage in backwards little Ithaca, where the kings of the western isles have built their crooked excuse for a palace.
But look again – can you see? No? Well then, as I am mistress of war and cunning I will deign to share something of my insight, and tell you that the wily kings of these lands could not have chosen a better place to set their throne than on the back of mollusc-like Ithaca.
She sits like a fortress in a place where many seas meet, and sailors must travel beneath her gaze if they wish to ply their wares in Calydon or Corinth, Aegium or Chalcis. Even Mycenae and Thebes send their merchant vessels through her harbours, rather than risk a voyage through the southern waters where discontented warriors of Sparta and Pylos might plunder their barks. Not that the kings of the western isles have been above a bit of piracy in their time – not at all. It is necessary that a monarch occasionally demonstrate the power they can wield, so that when they choose not to wage war, but rather invite in the emissaries of peace, peace is especially grateful and cooperative in light of this merciful restraint.
Other accusations levelled against Ithaca: that its people are uncultivated, uncivilised, uncouth, with the table manners of dogs and a repertoire of poetry whose highest form is little more than a bawdy ditty about farts.
To which I say: yes. Why indeed yes, these things are true, and yet you are still a fool. Both things may be true simultaneously.
For the kings of Ithaca have made something really rather useful of their ruggedness and uncultivated ways: behold, when the barbarians of the north come with cargoes of amber and tin, they are not shunned at the mouth of the harbour, nor berated as ignorant strangers, but courteously they are led into royal halls, offered an inferior cup of wine or two – most wine on Ithaca is appallingly sour – and invited to speak of the misty forests and pine-dark mountains that they make their home, as if to say well, well, are we not all just salt-scarred children of the sea and sky together?
The civilised dolts of this world gaze upon the merchants of the west where they stand upon the shore in dirty robes, chewing fish with open mouths. They call them yokel and crude, and do not realise how easy this opinion makes it to prise silver from the greedy fingers of men dressed in silk and gold.
The palace of her kings may not be fine, no marble columns nor halls steeped in silver, nor why should it be? It is a place for business, for negotiations between men who append the word “honest” to their names, just in case anyone might doubt. Its walls are the island itself, for any would-be invader would have to steer their ships beneath jagged cliffs and through hidden shallows of biting stone before they could land a single soldier on Ithaca’s shores. Thus I say: the kings of the western isles made canny, shrewd decisions on where to lay their heads in this rough and ragged land, and those that condemn them are fools, for whom I have no time.
Indeed, Ithaca should have held for ever, defended by stone and sea against all intruders, save that the finest of its men sailed with Odysseus to Troy, and of all those who went to war, only one is now returned.
Walk with me upon the stone-glistening shores of Ithaca, to where a man lies sleeping.
Shall I call him beloved?
This word – this “beloved” – is murder.
Once, a long time before, I came close to saying it. I laughed in delight at the company of another, cried praise upon her, smiled at her jests and frowned at her sorrows – and now she is dead, and I her killer.
Never again.
I am shield, I am armour, I am golden helmet and ready spear. I am the finest warrior of these lands, save perhaps one, and I do not love.
Well then, here he is, this man who is everything – nothing – everything to me.
Huddled, knees tucked to his chest, head buried in the nook of his arms as if he would block out the bright morning light. When the poets sing of him, they shall say that his hair is golden, his back broad and strong, his scarred thighs like two mighty trees. But they shall also say that at my touch, he was disguised as a crooked old man, hobbled and limping, his great light diminished in a noble cause. The humility of the hero – that is important in making him memorable as a man. His greatness must not feel unobtainable, unimaginable. When the poets speak of his suffering, hearers must suffer with him. That is how we shall make a tale eternal.
The truth, of course, is that Odysseus, son of Laertes, king of Ithaca, hero of Troy, is a somewhat short man with a remarkably hairy back. His hair was once an autumnal brown, which twenty years of salt and sun faded to a dull and muddy hue, crackled with grey. We may say therefore it is of some colour that has been so much overgrown with disarray, shorn with stress and faded with travel that it is hardly a colour at all. He wears a gown that was given him by a Phaeacian king. The negotiations as to the quality of the gown were fantastically tedious, since Odysseus’s hosts had to insist that please, no please, their guest must be dressed in the finest, and he as guest had to reply that no, oh no, he couldn’t possibly, he was a mere beggar at their table, and they said yes, but yes you are a great king, and he said no, the greatness is yours oh great one, and thus it went for a while until eventually they settled upon this middling garb that is neither too fine nor too drab and thus everyone could come away feeling satisfied in their social roles. The slaves had fetched the gown long before the agreement was struck, of course, and laid it ready out of sight to be presented. They have too much to do in a day to waste time on these performances of civilised, song-worthy men.
Now he sleeps, which is an apt and suitable way for the wandering king to return to his island, indicative perhaps of the weight of the journey that he has experienced, the burden of it, the crushing passage of time, which now shall be redeemed by the peaceful breezes and sweet perfumes of dearest Ithaca and so on and so forth.
Vulnerability – that too must be a vital part of his story, if it is to live through the ages. He has performed so many vile and bitter deeds that any opportunity to embody some sense of the innocent, the man cruelly punished by the Fates and so on is absolutely essential. Throw in a few verses about meeting the hollowed form of his mother in the fields of the dead to really emphasise his qualities as a valorous man who keeps striving towards his goals despite the burdens of a creaking heart – yes, I think that will do.
That will do.
I do not expect you to understand these things. Even my kindred gods barely manage to think more than a century ahead, and save Apollo their prophecies are flawed, cripplingly naïve. I am no prophet, but rather a scholar of all things, and it is clear that all things wither and change, even the harvest of Demeter’s field. Long before the Titans wake, I foresee a time when the names of the gods – even great Zeus himself – are diminished, turned from thunder-breakers, ocean-ragers into little more than jokes and children’s rhymes. I see a world in which mortals make themselves gods in our places, elevate their own to our divine status – an astounding arrogance, a logical conclusion – though their gods will be vastly less skilled at the shaping of the weather.
I see us withering. I see us falling away, no matter how hard we rage. No blood will be spilled in our honour, no sacrifices made, and in time, no one will even remember our names. Thus do gods perish.
This is not prophecy. It is something far more potent: it is the inevitable path of history.
I will not have it, and so I put mechanisms in place. I raise up cities and scholars, temples and monuments, spread ideas that will last longer than any broken shield, but when all else fails I will have one more string to my bow – I will have a story.
A good story can outlast almost anything.
And for that I need Odysseus.
Now he stirs on the beach; naturally the poets will report that I was here to greet him, a good moment for Athena to appear at last, a revelation of my role, my support – let’s not call it that, let us call it… divine guidance – my noble presence that has always been with him. If I had appeared too soon it would have made his journey easy, a man overly aided by the gods – that wouldn’t have done at all – but here, on his home shore, it’s just the right moment, a kind of catharsis even – “Odysseus at last meets the goddess protector who has all this time guided his trembling hand” – it is the perfect narrative beat to insert myself into…
Well.
If the poets have done their work, I hardly need to recount this business further. If they have sung their songs as I intend they shall, then their audiences should now be tearing up, hearts fluttering, as Odysseus finally stirs, wakes, sees this land that he has not set eyes upon for some twenty years, struggles to understand, cries out in rage against betrayal, against the perfidious sailors who spoke so gently only to abandon him once again in he knows not what cursed place. The poets too can then describe how he slowly calms, steadies himself, looks about, smells the air, wonders, hopes, sees at last my divine form, standing above him.
I shall say, “Do you not know this place, stranger?” in a manner that is both irreverent – I am after all a goddess, and he a mere man – but also gently fond, and he at last shall cry out: Ithaca! Ithaca! Sweet Ithaca!
I will let him have his moment of passion, of purest delight – this is also an important emotional part of the overall structure of the thing – before guiding him to more practical matters and his still unfulfilled duties about the land.
This shall the poets sing, and when they do, I shall be at the heart of it. I shall appear when it matters the most, and in this way, debasing though it is, I shall survive.
I loathe Odysseus for that, sometimes. I, who have wielded the lightning, reduced to mere adjunct to the tale of a mortal man. But loathing does not serve, so instead, I swallow my bitterness, and work. When all my siblings are diminished, when the poets no longer sing their names, Athena will endure.
The poets will not sing the truth of Odysseus. Their verses are bought and sold, their stories subject to the whims of kings and cruel men who would use their words for power and power alone. Agamemnon commanded the poets to sing of his unstoppable strength, his bloody flashing sword. Priam bade the poets of Troy raise their voices in praise of loyalty, piety and the bonds of family above all else, and look where they are now. Wandering through the blackened fields of the dead, slain as much by the stories they sang of themselves as by the blades that took their lives.
The truth does not serve me, it is not wise that it be known.
Yet here my dual natures tug upon me, for I am the lady of war, as well as wisdom. And though war is rarely wise, it is at least honest.
Truth, then, to satisfy the warrior within my philosopher’s breast.
Listen closely, for this is the only time I will tell it.
A whispered secret, a hidden tale – this is the story of what actually happened when Odysseus returned to Ithaca.
At the edge of a sheer black cliff spotted with the nests of precarious birds, a stream tumbles, thin-fingered and glistening, to the sea below. Follow the water inland a while and one may find a pool where sometimes the maids of Ithaca bathe and sing the secret songs that the men will never hear, a woman’s voice being considered of impure stuff best left to funeral dirges. Here mossy rocks glimmer amongst the cool flowing water, and silver-limbed trees bend as if ashamed to be seen bathing in summer light.
Climb a little over scrubby branches and broken thorns that catch at the hems of wanderers, and one will reach a promontory that bulges from the land to peek up like a naughty child between fingers of faded leaf and broken stone, commanding a view upon sea and town, the crooked roofs of the palace and curling groves of rough-boughed trees. This is not usually a place disturbed by human voices, being a solitary kind of locale fit for a prowling lynx or yellow-beaked hunting bird. Yet now as we draw near, we may hear something truly remarkable for Ithaca – not merely voices, but that most unusual combination of melodies – a man and a woman, speaking together.
The man says: “But they are gods.”
The woman says: “While still living?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Not children of gods? Children of gods are a fairly common feature of Greek nobility, you see.”
“No – they are the actual god.”
“But what if they are fools?”
“They are not.”
“Of course they are – some of them, I mean.”
“Well, in that case the Pharaoh who supplants them erases their monuments, steals the gold from their tomb and scours their name from the temple.”
“So they are gods until it is decided otherwise.”
“Exactly. If they were bad Pharaohs and the flood failed, then clearly they were not gods.”
“How… flexible.”
“And Egypt has stood for eternity, and shall stand an eternity more, no?”
Let us look a little closer at this pair, resting by the water’s side. The man is called Kenamon, sometime a soldier of Memphis. The woman is Penelope, queen of Ithaca.
When she introduces herself, this is not what she says. She is Penelope, wife of Odysseus. The stone she sits upon, the water she drinks, the sunlight that touches her skin in the morning – all of these, she says, are his. She is but the steward of his land, for she herself is his too. It is very thoughtful of you to call her queen, but she is simply the humble wife of a king.
She too has tacked her fortune to the name of Odysseus, and by that name she lives or dies. We have much in common, in that regard.
Wives of kings, of course, do not sit alone with soldiers from far-off lands as the sun rises above the isle. Such a thing would be scandalous for even an ordinary woman of some meagre propriety. Penelope knows this, and therefore two concessions have been made to this encounter. Firstly, they are seated high above the town, far from the eyes of her people, and came here both by separate ways, and will by separate ways depart when their conversation is done, he to wander the island and think of home, she to inspect her flocks and her groves, maybe call in on her revered father-in-law or conduct such business as a good steward must.
The other concession is the two women sitting nearby, at far enough remove to not intrude on the conversation, but near enough that they can say under oath, why yes, I was there, I saw all that happened, and by the gods attest that not a fingertip brushed another, not a breath was shared in too much proximity, and when our lady laughed – if she did – it was in a sad sort of manner as though to say “Well, one must laugh at adversity, no?”
These two women are Ourania and Eos, and of them we shall have more to say anon.
“It does strike me,” the man called Kenamon concedes, “that there are certain… similarities in some of our divinities. The details may change, but there always seems to be a rebirth, an afterlife, a great battle, and a promise of something more to come.”
“A promise of something more to come is extremely useful,” Penelope agrees. “There is nothing quite like being told that the lash you endure is but a fleeting shadow on the way to some Elysian field to encourage meekness in your torment. Remarkable how much people will endure for unproven promises.”
“You sound… not entirely orthodox in your opinions on this, my lady.”
“The songs of the priests are… useful.” She says this word as I sometimes do – useful. A useful plague upon an enemy camp, a useful murder in a shadowed hall, the son of a king smothered in his swaddling garb, a daughter dragged by the hair to the marriage altar – barbaric, of course, unhallowed and cruel, but yes: useful. Useful cruelties to bring about a satisfactory end.
Wisdom is not always kind, truth not gentle, and neither am I.
Kenamon’s skin is the colour of sunset, his eyes flecked with amber. Aphrodite calls him “dishy”, mingling appetites for food and physicality in a way I find frankly distasteful; Artemis remarks that his hands are more suited to the spear than the bow, then loses interest. The men of the isles do their best to ignore him entirely, for they cannot help but suspect that he has actually done some of the deeds of which the petty boys of Ithaca merely boast. He came to these isles looking to woo a queen. The queen politely informed him that of course, he was welcome here. She was a woman alone, a widow in all but name, and Ithaca needed a strong king to guard its shores. This being so, naturally she would not turn away anyone who sought her hand, not least because if they were busy wooing, they would not be busy plundering, raiding or enslaving her peoples.
Equally, her husband’s body had not been found, so naturally she couldn’t marry any man who came to try his luck, but he shouldn’t be disheartened by such a thing, insurmountable as it was. No one else had been, after all.
“Though Ithaca cannot afford the riches of many other lands of Greece,” Penelope continues, “when I was a girl in Sparta I remember hearing that there were nearly five times more men and women living in bondage than roamed free through the streets. The warrior men punished and tormented extraordinarily any who dared show even the slightest whiff of disobedience, to cow the population with terror. But the priests… the priests offered a whisper of something else – they offered hope. I never forget the potency of those chains.”
When Kenamon left his home, far to the south, he had a shaved head, jewels about his arms and neck, and a commandment from his brother not to return until he had made himself a king. This commandment was of course absurd. There was no world in which a foreigner would ever win the hand of the queen of Ithaca – but that was not the point. Kenamon’s absence was desired, and in the moment in which he was sent away he had to choose between staying and fighting against his own family, raging in blood and quarrel until his brothers, his cousins, maybe even his sisters too were slain; or slinking across the ocean to a land where no one knew his name. He chose what he thought of as the path of peace. He had seen too much war, and for so little consequence.
His hair has grown now, dark and curled. He wanted to shave it, as is the proper way – but in this land there seems to be some significant weight given by the menfolk to the quality of their natural locks and the magnificence of their beards. At first Kenamon thought such vanities ugly, but as the time has rolled by he sees now that it is nothing more and nothing less than the usual business of jostling comparison that the men of his home country would perform, whether that be expressed through hair or teeth or strength of arms or width of leg or set of jaw and so on. The ways mortals have to set themselves up or push others down are so numerous even I am sometimes amazed.
“I took slaves, when I was a soldier,” Kenamon blurts, and is surprised to hear himself say it. Kenamon is often surprised by the words he speaks when in the company of this woman – she has that effect on him, at once exhilarating and terrifying to his heart. Penelope waits, listening, curious perhaps, any judgements she may have hidden beneath her plaster smile. “I remember telling them that they were lucky to be taken by me. I was angry that they were not more grateful.”
No poets sing the songs of slaves. It would be extraordinarily dangerous to give voices to the less-than-people of this world, lest it turn out they were people after all.
War is not merciful, wisdom is not just, yet people still pray to me for kindness.
They would not if I were a man.
I trail my fingers through the gentle sea breeze, let its coolness play upon my skin, feel the warmth of the sun upon my back. It is the most pleasure in physicality I permit myself, and even that is dangerous.
Penelope, queen of Ithaca, was given the slave-girl Eos as a wedding gift. How lucky, everyone said to Eos, how lucky you must feel, to be taken from your squalid little rat-hole of a home and your common little family, put upon a ship to a far-off land and given a nice gown in which to serve a queen.
Eos’s name will not be sung; her story would add a complexity that will only confuse the hearer at a time when I need their attention fixed upon other matters.
By the edge of the water, there is silence a while. It is a silence that is strange to both people sitting upon this promontory. They are of course used to many other kinds of silence – the silence of loneliness, of loss, of distant yearning for impossible things and so on. But a silence shared? A silence held in contented company? It is alien to both of them, if not entirely unwelcome.
At last: “Amphinomous invited me to spar,” says Kenamon.
“I trust you said no?”
“I am not sure. He will not be seen to eat or drink with me, as that might acknowledge that I am in any way his equal or that my friendship could offer any value to his cause about the court. But if we are two warriors engaging in matters that transcend courtship or politics – matters of war, I mean – then that is acceptable without being meaningful. I think he means well by the invitation.”
“I think that if he cannot recruit you as an ally, he would be wise to maim or wound you in some accident upon the training field,” she replies, her eyes half wandering to a flash of colour in a nearby bush, perhaps the wing of a butterfly, the back of a glistening beetle; a lovely thing of brilliant crimson is more of a novelty to the queen of Ithaca than casual talk of betrayal and death.
“I am not convinced that is his intention. He seems… sincere. Ever since the affair with Menelaus and the children of Agamemnon, I think he has felt a certain obligation.”
“Well, he did aid Antinous and Eurymachus in trying to raise a fleet to murder my son upon his return to these islands,” muses the queen, her eyes still searching for that flicker of light, that dance of life moving in the air about them. “He has a lot of work to do if he wants to redeem himself from that particular undertaking.”
“Has there been any word from Telemachus?” Kenamon does not ask this question as much as he would like. He would like to ask it all the time, to hop up and down outside Penelope’s door demanding to know, how is Telemachus, where is Telemachus, is the boy I helped train in the sword safe? Is there news? He is surprised how much he worries for the lad; he tells himself it is merely some passing affection, a kind of lonely fantasy concocted from being far from home. He tells himself that whenever he talks with Penelope too, and worries that he might be going mad.
“Ourania has a cousin in Pylos who reports that my son recently returned from his wanderings to the court of Nestor and is looking to take ship again. To where, she is not sure. Telemachus himself… does not send word.”
Telemachus, son of Odysseus, set forth nearly a year ago to find his father.
He has not succeeded.
Sometimes he thinks he should send some message to his mother, let her know that he is well. Then he does not. This is a greater cruelty than if he had not thought of it at all.
“Be careful with Amphinomous,” sighs Penelope, a little shake of her head as if all of it – the talk of her son, of violence, the sight of a butterfly’s wing – can be brushed away in a thought. “Spar with him if you must, but if Antinous or Eurymachus make the same offer, they will absolutely be conspiring to murder you upon the training ground, where they can say it was an accident rather than a violation of the sacred laws of the land.”
“I am aware,” sighs Kenamon. “And I will politely decline should they ask. Say that I am no warrior fit to match with them. But I believe Amphinomous is in his own way not too dishonourable. And it will be pleasing to talk at the feast with someone who is…” His words drift away. There is no good ending to this sentence, rich in possibilities though it be. Someone who is not a drunkard suitor, pawing at Penelope’s hem? Someone who is not a wheedling boy, desperate to win the crown of absent Odysseus? Someone who is not a maid, rolling her eyes as the men call for more meat, more wine! Someone who is not a queen who must be conversed with only in secret, and to whom there are things that no man will ever be allowed to say?
Perhaps none of these. Perhaps all. Kenamon has not heard the tongue of his people for well over a year, save in odd snatches at the wharves. When the Egyptian traders come, he is at once there, babbling with them like a fool, nothing of any meaning to say but delighting, revelling in the ease of the language of his birth as it flows from his lips. Then they sail away again; then he is alone once more.
For a while he wandered through the hills of Ithaca by himself, and in his loneliness he could perhaps close his eyes and imagine he was not in this place at all, but back upon the waters of the great river that scythes his homeland. Then he wandered these hills with Telemachus, before that young man sailed; then Telemachus left to forge his own story, to grow from a boy to a man in a journey across the sea – that at least is how the poets will tell it – and Kenamon was alone again. But now the queen of Ithaca – shall we say rather the wife of Odysseus – sits by his side. And Kenamon is perhaps a little less alone, and even more lost than he was before.
“I should go,” Penelope declares with a shake of her head. Every time they meet, she is on her way somewhere else. The isles are full of groves and herds of goats, fishing boats and busy workshops that toil in her husband’s name – busy, busy, busy, always so busy. And yet every time, her departure is a little slower, her business a little less urgent. Nothing should alarm a monarch more than the moment she realises that the people she has promoted will be absolutely fine labouring without her. Such thoughts should raise uncomfortable questions about the value of kings and queens. (Very few monarchs have these thoughts, and thus do their dynasties die.)
There was a time when I had no interest in Penelope, queen of Ithaca. Her role was merely to serve as motivation for her husband, her existence justifying his sometimes more questionable deeds. My eye was entirely on Odysseus. It was Hera, of all people, who pointed out that the women of Ithaca – mere shadows to his tale – might be something more. Hera who suggested that Ithaca’s queen should merit some of my attention after all.
Here then, let us peek inside the mind of Penelope:
She tells herself that she sits with Kenamon because he has been of service to her. He defended her son, defended her, in a time when violent men came to her isle. He has kept secrets that she might otherwise have had him killed for knowing; he does not wheedle for her hand, when they converse, but speaks to her – how remarkable this is – almost as easily as if she were a man!
She tells herself that she has no interest in him as a husband. Of course not. It is entirely unacceptable to even imagine such a thing, and so she does not. She does not imagine it when she sees him walking by the shore, or hears him singing in the little garden beneath her window, where only he and the women go. She does not imagine it when he says thank you to a maid, nor when she catches him sparring with shadows, a bronze blade gleaming in his hand.
Penelope has spent a long time learning how not to imagine all sorts of distracting and unhelpful things. It is another of the qualities she and I share.
Now she rises.
Now she will depart.
Any moment now…
… any moment…
I nudge her in the small of her back.
You are no use, I breathe, if you permit yourself to dream.
She staggers slightly at my touch, a movement that becomes a step, that becomes walking away. But as she does, a question forms on Kenamon’s lips, a thing that will perhaps hold her here a moment more, blurted at the very moment she was to leave: “I heard a ship was wrecked on the eastern shore, a Phaeacian?”
She is grateful that his question s
She rises like a crab from the sea, black-backed and glistening with salt. Her inland forests are scraggy, wind-blasted things, her one city little more than a spider’s town of twisted paths and leaning houses that seem to buckle and brace against some perpetual storm. By the banks of the twisted brooks she calls rivers there are shaggy goats who nip at scrubs of grass that sprout like old men’s beards between the tumbled boulders of a bygone age. At the mouths of her many coves and hidden bays the women push their rough boats onto the grey, foaming sea to catch the morning harvest of darting silver fish that play against her shores. To her west are the richer, greener slopes of Kefalonia, to the north the bustling ports of Hyrie, south the generous groves of Zacynthos. It is absurd, those who account themselves civilised say, that these richer lands should send their sons to pay homage in backwards little Ithaca, where the kings of the western isles have built their crooked excuse for a palace.
But look again – can you see? No? Well then, as I am mistress of war and cunning I will deign to share something of my insight, and tell you that the wily kings of these lands could not have chosen a better place to set their throne than on the back of mollusc-like Ithaca.
She sits like a fortress in a place where many seas meet, and sailors must travel beneath her gaze if they wish to ply their wares in Calydon or Corinth, Aegium or Chalcis. Even Mycenae and Thebes send their merchant vessels through her harbours, rather than risk a voyage through the southern waters where discontented warriors of Sparta and Pylos might plunder their barks. Not that the kings of the western isles have been above a bit of piracy in their time – not at all. It is necessary that a monarch occasionally demonstrate the power they can wield, so that when they choose not to wage war, but rather invite in the emissaries of peace, peace is especially grateful and cooperative in light of this merciful restraint.
Other accusations levelled against Ithaca: that its people are uncultivated, uncivilised, uncouth, with the table manners of dogs and a repertoire of poetry whose highest form is little more than a bawdy ditty about farts.
To which I say: yes. Why indeed yes, these things are true, and yet you are still a fool. Both things may be true simultaneously.
For the kings of Ithaca have made something really rather useful of their ruggedness and uncultivated ways: behold, when the barbarians of the north come with cargoes of amber and tin, they are not shunned at the mouth of the harbour, nor berated as ignorant strangers, but courteously they are led into royal halls, offered an inferior cup of wine or two – most wine on Ithaca is appallingly sour – and invited to speak of the misty forests and pine-dark mountains that they make their home, as if to say well, well, are we not all just salt-scarred children of the sea and sky together?
The civilised dolts of this world gaze upon the merchants of the west where they stand upon the shore in dirty robes, chewing fish with open mouths. They call them yokel and crude, and do not realise how easy this opinion makes it to prise silver from the greedy fingers of men dressed in silk and gold.
The palace of her kings may not be fine, no marble columns nor halls steeped in silver, nor why should it be? It is a place for business, for negotiations between men who append the word “honest” to their names, just in case anyone might doubt. Its walls are the island itself, for any would-be invader would have to steer their ships beneath jagged cliffs and through hidden shallows of biting stone before they could land a single soldier on Ithaca’s shores. Thus I say: the kings of the western isles made canny, shrewd decisions on where to lay their heads in this rough and ragged land, and those that condemn them are fools, for whom I have no time.
Indeed, Ithaca should have held for ever, defended by stone and sea against all intruders, save that the finest of its men sailed with Odysseus to Troy, and of all those who went to war, only one is now returned.
Walk with me upon the stone-glistening shores of Ithaca, to where a man lies sleeping.
Shall I call him beloved?
This word – this “beloved” – is murder.
Once, a long time before, I came close to saying it. I laughed in delight at the company of another, cried praise upon her, smiled at her jests and frowned at her sorrows – and now she is dead, and I her killer.
Never again.
I am shield, I am armour, I am golden helmet and ready spear. I am the finest warrior of these lands, save perhaps one, and I do not love.
Well then, here he is, this man who is everything – nothing – everything to me.
Huddled, knees tucked to his chest, head buried in the nook of his arms as if he would block out the bright morning light. When the poets sing of him, they shall say that his hair is golden, his back broad and strong, his scarred thighs like two mighty trees. But they shall also say that at my touch, he was disguised as a crooked old man, hobbled and limping, his great light diminished in a noble cause. The humility of the hero – that is important in making him memorable as a man. His greatness must not feel unobtainable, unimaginable. When the poets speak of his suffering, hearers must suffer with him. That is how we shall make a tale eternal.
The truth, of course, is that Odysseus, son of Laertes, king of Ithaca, hero of Troy, is a somewhat short man with a remarkably hairy back. His hair was once an autumnal brown, which twenty years of salt and sun faded to a dull and muddy hue, crackled with grey. We may say therefore it is of some colour that has been so much overgrown with disarray, shorn with stress and faded with travel that it is hardly a colour at all. He wears a gown that was given him by a Phaeacian king. The negotiations as to the quality of the gown were fantastically tedious, since Odysseus’s hosts had to insist that please, no please, their guest must be dressed in the finest, and he as guest had to reply that no, oh no, he couldn’t possibly, he was a mere beggar at their table, and they said yes, but yes you are a great king, and he said no, the greatness is yours oh great one, and thus it went for a while until eventually they settled upon this middling garb that is neither too fine nor too drab and thus everyone could come away feeling satisfied in their social roles. The slaves had fetched the gown long before the agreement was struck, of course, and laid it ready out of sight to be presented. They have too much to do in a day to waste time on these performances of civilised, song-worthy men.
Now he sleeps, which is an apt and suitable way for the wandering king to return to his island, indicative perhaps of the weight of the journey that he has experienced, the burden of it, the crushing passage of time, which now shall be redeemed by the peaceful breezes and sweet perfumes of dearest Ithaca and so on and so forth.
Vulnerability – that too must be a vital part of his story, if it is to live through the ages. He has performed so many vile and bitter deeds that any opportunity to embody some sense of the innocent, the man cruelly punished by the Fates and so on is absolutely essential. Throw in a few verses about meeting the hollowed form of his mother in the fields of the dead to really emphasise his qualities as a valorous man who keeps striving towards his goals despite the burdens of a creaking heart – yes, I think that will do.
That will do.
I do not expect you to understand these things. Even my kindred gods barely manage to think more than a century ahead, and save Apollo their prophecies are flawed, cripplingly naïve. I am no prophet, but rather a scholar of all things, and it is clear that all things wither and change, even the harvest of Demeter’s field. Long before the Titans wake, I foresee a time when the names of the gods – even great Zeus himself – are diminished, turned from thunder-breakers, ocean-ragers into little more than jokes and children’s rhymes. I see a world in which mortals make themselves gods in our places, elevate their own to our divine status – an astounding arrogance, a logical conclusion – though their gods will be vastly less skilled at the shaping of the weather.
I see us withering. I see us falling away, no matter how hard we rage. No blood will be spilled in our honour, no sacrifices made, and in time, no one will even remember our names. Thus do gods perish.
This is not prophecy. It is something far more potent: it is the inevitable path of history.
I will not have it, and so I put mechanisms in place. I raise up cities and scholars, temples and monuments, spread ideas that will last longer than any broken shield, but when all else fails I will have one more string to my bow – I will have a story.
A good story can outlast almost anything.
And for that I need Odysseus.
Now he stirs on the beach; naturally the poets will report that I was here to greet him, a good moment for Athena to appear at last, a revelation of my role, my support – let’s not call it that, let us call it… divine guidance – my noble presence that has always been with him. If I had appeared too soon it would have made his journey easy, a man overly aided by the gods – that wouldn’t have done at all – but here, on his home shore, it’s just the right moment, a kind of catharsis even – “Odysseus at last meets the goddess protector who has all this time guided his trembling hand” – it is the perfect narrative beat to insert myself into…
Well.
If the poets have done their work, I hardly need to recount this business further. If they have sung their songs as I intend they shall, then their audiences should now be tearing up, hearts fluttering, as Odysseus finally stirs, wakes, sees this land that he has not set eyes upon for some twenty years, struggles to understand, cries out in rage against betrayal, against the perfidious sailors who spoke so gently only to abandon him once again in he knows not what cursed place. The poets too can then describe how he slowly calms, steadies himself, looks about, smells the air, wonders, hopes, sees at last my divine form, standing above him.
I shall say, “Do you not know this place, stranger?” in a manner that is both irreverent – I am after all a goddess, and he a mere man – but also gently fond, and he at last shall cry out: Ithaca! Ithaca! Sweet Ithaca!
I will let him have his moment of passion, of purest delight – this is also an important emotional part of the overall structure of the thing – before guiding him to more practical matters and his still unfulfilled duties about the land.
This shall the poets sing, and when they do, I shall be at the heart of it. I shall appear when it matters the most, and in this way, debasing though it is, I shall survive.
I loathe Odysseus for that, sometimes. I, who have wielded the lightning, reduced to mere adjunct to the tale of a mortal man. But loathing does not serve, so instead, I swallow my bitterness, and work. When all my siblings are diminished, when the poets no longer sing their names, Athena will endure.
The poets will not sing the truth of Odysseus. Their verses are bought and sold, their stories subject to the whims of kings and cruel men who would use their words for power and power alone. Agamemnon commanded the poets to sing of his unstoppable strength, his bloody flashing sword. Priam bade the poets of Troy raise their voices in praise of loyalty, piety and the bonds of family above all else, and look where they are now. Wandering through the blackened fields of the dead, slain as much by the stories they sang of themselves as by the blades that took their lives.
The truth does not serve me, it is not wise that it be known.
Yet here my dual natures tug upon me, for I am the lady of war, as well as wisdom. And though war is rarely wise, it is at least honest.
Truth, then, to satisfy the warrior within my philosopher’s breast.
Listen closely, for this is the only time I will tell it.
A whispered secret, a hidden tale – this is the story of what actually happened when Odysseus returned to Ithaca.
At the edge of a sheer black cliff spotted with the nests of precarious birds, a stream tumbles, thin-fingered and glistening, to the sea below. Follow the water inland a while and one may find a pool where sometimes the maids of Ithaca bathe and sing the secret songs that the men will never hear, a woman’s voice being considered of impure stuff best left to funeral dirges. Here mossy rocks glimmer amongst the cool flowing water, and silver-limbed trees bend as if ashamed to be seen bathing in summer light.
Climb a little over scrubby branches and broken thorns that catch at the hems of wanderers, and one will reach a promontory that bulges from the land to peek up like a naughty child between fingers of faded leaf and broken stone, commanding a view upon sea and town, the crooked roofs of the palace and curling groves of rough-boughed trees. This is not usually a place disturbed by human voices, being a solitary kind of locale fit for a prowling lynx or yellow-beaked hunting bird. Yet now as we draw near, we may hear something truly remarkable for Ithaca – not merely voices, but that most unusual combination of melodies – a man and a woman, speaking together.
The man says: “But they are gods.”
The woman says: “While still living?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Not children of gods? Children of gods are a fairly common feature of Greek nobility, you see.”
“No – they are the actual god.”
“But what if they are fools?”
“They are not.”
“Of course they are – some of them, I mean.”
“Well, in that case the Pharaoh who supplants them erases their monuments, steals the gold from their tomb and scours their name from the temple.”
“So they are gods until it is decided otherwise.”
“Exactly. If they were bad Pharaohs and the flood failed, then clearly they were not gods.”
“How… flexible.”
“And Egypt has stood for eternity, and shall stand an eternity more, no?”
Let us look a little closer at this pair, resting by the water’s side. The man is called Kenamon, sometime a soldier of Memphis. The woman is Penelope, queen of Ithaca.
When she introduces herself, this is not what she says. She is Penelope, wife of Odysseus. The stone she sits upon, the water she drinks, the sunlight that touches her skin in the morning – all of these, she says, are his. She is but the steward of his land, for she herself is his too. It is very thoughtful of you to call her queen, but she is simply the humble wife of a king.
She too has tacked her fortune to the name of Odysseus, and by that name she lives or dies. We have much in common, in that regard.
Wives of kings, of course, do not sit alone with soldiers from far-off lands as the sun rises above the isle. Such a thing would be scandalous for even an ordinary woman of some meagre propriety. Penelope knows this, and therefore two concessions have been made to this encounter. Firstly, they are seated high above the town, far from the eyes of her people, and came here both by separate ways, and will by separate ways depart when their conversation is done, he to wander the island and think of home, she to inspect her flocks and her groves, maybe call in on her revered father-in-law or conduct such business as a good steward must.
The other concession is the two women sitting nearby, at far enough remove to not intrude on the conversation, but near enough that they can say under oath, why yes, I was there, I saw all that happened, and by the gods attest that not a fingertip brushed another, not a breath was shared in too much proximity, and when our lady laughed – if she did – it was in a sad sort of manner as though to say “Well, one must laugh at adversity, no?”
These two women are Ourania and Eos, and of them we shall have more to say anon.
“It does strike me,” the man called Kenamon concedes, “that there are certain… similarities in some of our divinities. The details may change, but there always seems to be a rebirth, an afterlife, a great battle, and a promise of something more to come.”
“A promise of something more to come is extremely useful,” Penelope agrees. “There is nothing quite like being told that the lash you endure is but a fleeting shadow on the way to some Elysian field to encourage meekness in your torment. Remarkable how much people will endure for unproven promises.”
“You sound… not entirely orthodox in your opinions on this, my lady.”
“The songs of the priests are… useful.” She says this word as I sometimes do – useful. A useful plague upon an enemy camp, a useful murder in a shadowed hall, the son of a king smothered in his swaddling garb, a daughter dragged by the hair to the marriage altar – barbaric, of course, unhallowed and cruel, but yes: useful. Useful cruelties to bring about a satisfactory end.
Wisdom is not always kind, truth not gentle, and neither am I.
Kenamon’s skin is the colour of sunset, his eyes flecked with amber. Aphrodite calls him “dishy”, mingling appetites for food and physicality in a way I find frankly distasteful; Artemis remarks that his hands are more suited to the spear than the bow, then loses interest. The men of the isles do their best to ignore him entirely, for they cannot help but suspect that he has actually done some of the deeds of which the petty boys of Ithaca merely boast. He came to these isles looking to woo a queen. The queen politely informed him that of course, he was welcome here. She was a woman alone, a widow in all but name, and Ithaca needed a strong king to guard its shores. This being so, naturally she would not turn away anyone who sought her hand, not least because if they were busy wooing, they would not be busy plundering, raiding or enslaving her peoples.
Equally, her husband’s body had not been found, so naturally she couldn’t marry any man who came to try his luck, but he shouldn’t be disheartened by such a thing, insurmountable as it was. No one else had been, after all.
“Though Ithaca cannot afford the riches of many other lands of Greece,” Penelope continues, “when I was a girl in Sparta I remember hearing that there were nearly five times more men and women living in bondage than roamed free through the streets. The warrior men punished and tormented extraordinarily any who dared show even the slightest whiff of disobedience, to cow the population with terror. But the priests… the priests offered a whisper of something else – they offered hope. I never forget the potency of those chains.”
When Kenamon left his home, far to the south, he had a shaved head, jewels about his arms and neck, and a commandment from his brother not to return until he had made himself a king. This commandment was of course absurd. There was no world in which a foreigner would ever win the hand of the queen of Ithaca – but that was not the point. Kenamon’s absence was desired, and in the moment in which he was sent away he had to choose between staying and fighting against his own family, raging in blood and quarrel until his brothers, his cousins, maybe even his sisters too were slain; or slinking across the ocean to a land where no one knew his name. He chose what he thought of as the path of peace. He had seen too much war, and for so little consequence.
His hair has grown now, dark and curled. He wanted to shave it, as is the proper way – but in this land there seems to be some significant weight given by the menfolk to the quality of their natural locks and the magnificence of their beards. At first Kenamon thought such vanities ugly, but as the time has rolled by he sees now that it is nothing more and nothing less than the usual business of jostling comparison that the men of his home country would perform, whether that be expressed through hair or teeth or strength of arms or width of leg or set of jaw and so on. The ways mortals have to set themselves up or push others down are so numerous even I am sometimes amazed.
“I took slaves, when I was a soldier,” Kenamon blurts, and is surprised to hear himself say it. Kenamon is often surprised by the words he speaks when in the company of this woman – she has that effect on him, at once exhilarating and terrifying to his heart. Penelope waits, listening, curious perhaps, any judgements she may have hidden beneath her plaster smile. “I remember telling them that they were lucky to be taken by me. I was angry that they were not more grateful.”
No poets sing the songs of slaves. It would be extraordinarily dangerous to give voices to the less-than-people of this world, lest it turn out they were people after all.
War is not merciful, wisdom is not just, yet people still pray to me for kindness.
They would not if I were a man.
I trail my fingers through the gentle sea breeze, let its coolness play upon my skin, feel the warmth of the sun upon my back. It is the most pleasure in physicality I permit myself, and even that is dangerous.
Penelope, queen of Ithaca, was given the slave-girl Eos as a wedding gift. How lucky, everyone said to Eos, how lucky you must feel, to be taken from your squalid little rat-hole of a home and your common little family, put upon a ship to a far-off land and given a nice gown in which to serve a queen.
Eos’s name will not be sung; her story would add a complexity that will only confuse the hearer at a time when I need their attention fixed upon other matters.
By the edge of the water, there is silence a while. It is a silence that is strange to both people sitting upon this promontory. They are of course used to many other kinds of silence – the silence of loneliness, of loss, of distant yearning for impossible things and so on. But a silence shared? A silence held in contented company? It is alien to both of them, if not entirely unwelcome.
At last: “Amphinomous invited me to spar,” says Kenamon.
“I trust you said no?”
“I am not sure. He will not be seen to eat or drink with me, as that might acknowledge that I am in any way his equal or that my friendship could offer any value to his cause about the court. But if we are two warriors engaging in matters that transcend courtship or politics – matters of war, I mean – then that is acceptable without being meaningful. I think he means well by the invitation.”
“I think that if he cannot recruit you as an ally, he would be wise to maim or wound you in some accident upon the training field,” she replies, her eyes half wandering to a flash of colour in a nearby bush, perhaps the wing of a butterfly, the back of a glistening beetle; a lovely thing of brilliant crimson is more of a novelty to the queen of Ithaca than casual talk of betrayal and death.
“I am not convinced that is his intention. He seems… sincere. Ever since the affair with Menelaus and the children of Agamemnon, I think he has felt a certain obligation.”
“Well, he did aid Antinous and Eurymachus in trying to raise a fleet to murder my son upon his return to these islands,” muses the queen, her eyes still searching for that flicker of light, that dance of life moving in the air about them. “He has a lot of work to do if he wants to redeem himself from that particular undertaking.”
“Has there been any word from Telemachus?” Kenamon does not ask this question as much as he would like. He would like to ask it all the time, to hop up and down outside Penelope’s door demanding to know, how is Telemachus, where is Telemachus, is the boy I helped train in the sword safe? Is there news? He is surprised how much he worries for the lad; he tells himself it is merely some passing affection, a kind of lonely fantasy concocted from being far from home. He tells himself that whenever he talks with Penelope too, and worries that he might be going mad.
“Ourania has a cousin in Pylos who reports that my son recently returned from his wanderings to the court of Nestor and is looking to take ship again. To where, she is not sure. Telemachus himself… does not send word.”
Telemachus, son of Odysseus, set forth nearly a year ago to find his father.
He has not succeeded.
Sometimes he thinks he should send some message to his mother, let her know that he is well. Then he does not. This is a greater cruelty than if he had not thought of it at all.
“Be careful with Amphinomous,” sighs Penelope, a little shake of her head as if all of it – the talk of her son, of violence, the sight of a butterfly’s wing – can be brushed away in a thought. “Spar with him if you must, but if Antinous or Eurymachus make the same offer, they will absolutely be conspiring to murder you upon the training ground, where they can say it was an accident rather than a violation of the sacred laws of the land.”
“I am aware,” sighs Kenamon. “And I will politely decline should they ask. Say that I am no warrior fit to match with them. But I believe Amphinomous is in his own way not too dishonourable. And it will be pleasing to talk at the feast with someone who is…” His words drift away. There is no good ending to this sentence, rich in possibilities though it be. Someone who is not a drunkard suitor, pawing at Penelope’s hem? Someone who is not a wheedling boy, desperate to win the crown of absent Odysseus? Someone who is not a maid, rolling her eyes as the men call for more meat, more wine! Someone who is not a queen who must be conversed with only in secret, and to whom there are things that no man will ever be allowed to say?
Perhaps none of these. Perhaps all. Kenamon has not heard the tongue of his people for well over a year, save in odd snatches at the wharves. When the Egyptian traders come, he is at once there, babbling with them like a fool, nothing of any meaning to say but delighting, revelling in the ease of the language of his birth as it flows from his lips. Then they sail away again; then he is alone once more.
For a while he wandered through the hills of Ithaca by himself, and in his loneliness he could perhaps close his eyes and imagine he was not in this place at all, but back upon the waters of the great river that scythes his homeland. Then he wandered these hills with Telemachus, before that young man sailed; then Telemachus left to forge his own story, to grow from a boy to a man in a journey across the sea – that at least is how the poets will tell it – and Kenamon was alone again. But now the queen of Ithaca – shall we say rather the wife of Odysseus – sits by his side. And Kenamon is perhaps a little less alone, and even more lost than he was before.
“I should go,” Penelope declares with a shake of her head. Every time they meet, she is on her way somewhere else. The isles are full of groves and herds of goats, fishing boats and busy workshops that toil in her husband’s name – busy, busy, busy, always so busy. And yet every time, her departure is a little slower, her business a little less urgent. Nothing should alarm a monarch more than the moment she realises that the people she has promoted will be absolutely fine labouring without her. Such thoughts should raise uncomfortable questions about the value of kings and queens. (Very few monarchs have these thoughts, and thus do their dynasties die.)
There was a time when I had no interest in Penelope, queen of Ithaca. Her role was merely to serve as motivation for her husband, her existence justifying his sometimes more questionable deeds. My eye was entirely on Odysseus. It was Hera, of all people, who pointed out that the women of Ithaca – mere shadows to his tale – might be something more. Hera who suggested that Ithaca’s queen should merit some of my attention after all.
Here then, let us peek inside the mind of Penelope:
She tells herself that she sits with Kenamon because he has been of service to her. He defended her son, defended her, in a time when violent men came to her isle. He has kept secrets that she might otherwise have had him killed for knowing; he does not wheedle for her hand, when they converse, but speaks to her – how remarkable this is – almost as easily as if she were a man!
She tells herself that she has no interest in him as a husband. Of course not. It is entirely unacceptable to even imagine such a thing, and so she does not. She does not imagine it when she sees him walking by the shore, or hears him singing in the little garden beneath her window, where only he and the women go. She does not imagine it when he says thank you to a maid, nor when she catches him sparring with shadows, a bronze blade gleaming in his hand.
Penelope has spent a long time learning how not to imagine all sorts of distracting and unhelpful things. It is another of the qualities she and I share.
Now she rises.
Now she will depart.
Any moment now…
… any moment…
I nudge her in the small of her back.
You are no use, I breathe, if you permit yourself to dream.
She staggers slightly at my touch, a movement that becomes a step, that becomes walking away. But as she does, a question forms on Kenamon’s lips, a thing that will perhaps hold her here a moment more, blurted at the very moment she was to leave: “I heard a ship was wrecked on the eastern shore, a Phaeacian?”
She is grateful that his question s
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