“Come,” I said. “You must be hungry.”
That night Penelope left dinner early again. I wondered if she meant to make a point, but her weariness seemed real enough. She was still grieving, I reminded myself. We all were. But the swimming had done my son good, or maybe it was Penelope’s attention. He was red-cheeked from wind and wanted to talk. Not about his father, which was still too much a wound, but his old, first love: heroic stories. There had apparently been a bard on Ithaca who was skilled at such tales, and he wanted to hear from Telemachus the versions that he’d told. Telemachus began: Bellerophon and Perseus, Tantalus, Atalanta. He had taken the wooden chair again, and I the silver. Telegonus leaned against a wolf on the floor. Looking between them I felt a strange, almost drunken sense of unreality. Had it really only been two days since they had come? It felt much longer. I was not used to so much company, so many conversations. My son begged for another story, and another, and Telemachus obliged. His hair was windblown from our work outside, and the firelight lay along his cheek. So much of him looked older than he was, but there was a sweetly made curve there that might almost be called boyish. He was no storyteller, as he had said, but that made it more enjoyable somehow, watching his serious face as he described flying horses and golden apples. The room was warm and the vintage good. My skin had begun to feel soft as wax. I leaned forward.
“Tell me, did that bard ever speak of Pasiphaë, queen of Crete?”
“The mother of the Minotaur,” Telemachus said. “Of course. She is always in the tale of Theseus.”
“Did anyone say what happened to her when Minos died? She is immortal, does she still rule there?”
Telemachus was frowning. It was not displeasure but the same face he had made when he examined my sheep wash. I saw him following the threads of genealogies through their tangle. A daughter of the sun, Pasiphaë was said to be. I saw when he understood.
“No,” he said. “Her and Minos’ line no longer rules. A man named Leukos is king, who usurped from Idomeneus, who was her grandchild. In the story I heard, she went back to the halls of the gods after Minos died and lives in honor there.”
“Whose halls?”
“The bard did not say.”
A giddy recklessness had seized me. “Oceanos’ most likely. Our grandfather. She will be terrorizing the nymphs as she used to. I was there when the Minotaur was born. I helped cage it.”
Telegonus gaped. “You are related to Queen Pasiphaë? And you saw the Minotaur? Why did you not mention this?”
“You did not ask me.”
“Mother! You must tell me everything. Did you meet Minos? And Daedalus?”
“How do you think I came by his loom?”
“I don’t know! I thought it was, you know…” He waved his hand in the air.
Telemachus was watching me.
“No,” I said. “I knew the man.”
“What else have you kept from me?” Telegonus demanded. “The Minotaur and Trygon, and how many others? The Chimera? The Nemean lion? Cerberus and Scylla?”
I had been smiling at his wide-eyed outrage and did not see the blow coming. Where had my son heard her name? Hermes? Ithaca? It did not matter. A cold spear-point was twisting in my guts. What had I been thinking? My past was not some game, some adventure tale. It was the ugly wrack that storms left rotten on the shore. It was as bad as Odysseus’.
“I have said all I will say. Do not ask me again.” I stood and walked away from their startled faces. In my room, I lay on my bed. There were no wolves or lions, they had stayed with my son. Over us somewhere was Athena, watching with her flashing eyes. Waiting with her spear to dart at my weakness. I spoke into the shadows. “Keep waiting.”
And though I was sure I would not sleep, I did.
I woke clearheaded, determined. I had been tired the night before and drunk more than I was used to, but now I was firm again. I laid out breakfast. When Telegonus came, I saw him eyeing me, waiting for another outburst. But I was pleasant. He should not be so surprised, I thought. I could be pleasant.
Telemachus kept his own counsel, but when the meal was finished he took his brother out to begin fixing the ship.
“May I use your loom again?”
Penelope wore a different dress. This one was finer, it had been bleached to a pale cream. It showed off well the dark tones of her skin.
“You may.” I thought of going to the kitchen, but I often cut herbs at the long table near the hearth, and I did not see why I should relegate myself. I brought out the knives and bowls and all the rest. The spells that protected Telegonus did not need to be renewed for another half a moon, so what I did was only for my own pleasure, drying and grinding, distilling tinctures for later use.
I thought we would not speak. In our place, Odysseus might have gone on concealing and jockeying, just for the pleasure of it. But after so long alone, I think we had both come to appreciate the value of open conversation.
The light slanted through the window, pooling on our bare feet. I asked her about Helen, and she told me stories of when they were children together, swimming in Sparta’s rivers and playing at her uncle Tyndareos’ court. We talked of weaving and the best breeds of sheep. I thanked her for offering to teach Telegonus how to swim. She was glad to do it, she said. He reminded her of her cousin Castor, with his eagerness and good humor, his way of easing those around him. “Odysseus drew the world to him,” she said. “Telegonus runs after, shaping as he goes, like a river carving a channel.”
It pleased me more than I could say to hear her praise him. “You should have known him as a baby. There was never such a wild creature. Though if I am honest, I was the wilder of the two of us. Motherhood seemed easy to me, before I had a child.”
“Helen’s baby was like that,” she said. “Hermione. She screamed for half a decade but grew up sweet as anything. I worried that Telemachus did not scream enough. That he was well behaved too soon. I was always curious how a second child might have been different. But by the time Odysseus came home it seemed that was finished for me.” Her voice was matter-of-fact. Loyal, songs called her later. Faithful and true and prudent. Such passive, pale words for what she was. She could have taken another husband, borne another child while Odysseus was gone, her life would have been easier for it. But she had loved him fiercely and would accept no other.
I took down a bunch of yarrow that had been hanging from a roof beam.
“What is that used for?”
“Healing salves. Yarrow stops bleeding.”
“May I watch? I have never seen witchcraft.”
It pleased me as much as her praise of Telegonus. I made room at the table. She was a flattering audience, asking careful questions as I named each ingredient and explained its purpose. She wanted to see the herbs I had used to turn men into pigs. I dropped the dried leaves into her hand.
“I am not about to turn myself into a sow, am I?”
“You would have to ingest it and speak the words of power. Only those plants fallen from divine blood need no spell to summon their magic. And, I think, you would have to be a witch.”
“A goddess.”
“No,” I said. “My niece was mortal, and she cast spells as strong as mine.”
“Your niece,” she said. “You do not mean Medea?”
It was strange to hear the name aloud after so long. “You know her?”
“I know what is sung by bards and played in courtyards for kings.”
“I would hear it,” I said.
The trees outside clattered in the wind as she talked. Medea had indeed escaped Aeëtes. She had traveled on to Iolcos with Jason and borne him two sons, but he recoiled from her sorceries, and his people despised her. In time he sought a new marriage with a sweet, well-loved princess from home. Medea praised his wisdom and sent the bride gifts, a crown and cloak that she had made herself. When the girl put them on, she was burnt alive. Then Medea dragged her children to an altar and, swearing that Jason would never have them, slit their throats. She was last seen summoning a chariot drawn by dragons to take her back to Colchis.