Penelope rarely felt happier than when she was visiting the pig farm at the southern end of Ithaca. The sight of the fat swine trotting through the mud in the wide pens, their tiny eyes half hidden by their flapping ears, always brought a smile to her face. Even better was to be free from the confines of the small palace and out in the open air, where the sky seemed to go on forever and she could gaze south-east towards the horizon – the direction Odysseus would return by when the war in Troy eventually ended. But as she leaned against the wooden timbers that kept the noisy beasts from wandering off, she felt ever more sharply the absence of her son.
She looked down at Argus, sitting faithfully at her side with his ears pricked up and his tail wagging. He was looking expectantly towards the road that came down from the north, passing through fields of gnarled and windswept olive trees.
‘What is it, boy?’
The boarhound gave a bark and stood on all fours. Penelope followed his gaze and saw a horseman approaching along the road, leaving a trail of dust behind him.
‘Looks like Mentor, my lady,’ said Eumaeus, the swineherd, who was standing among his pigs and throwing out handfuls of wild nuts and berries from a leather satchel at his hip.
Moments later the horseman had reached Eumaeus’s hut and was tying the reins of his mount to a post. A tall black dog came out of the hut and advanced growling towards him, followed by four black puppies yapping noisily in high voices. Then, when their mother recognised Mentor and allowed him to run a hand over her ears, the puppies turned on each other and began fighting among themselves.
‘Good morning!’ Mentor called.
Eumaeus threw a last handful of feed to the grunting pigs, then climbed the fence and went to meet him. Penelope propped her elbow on a timber post and watched them embrace. Eumaeus said something she did not catch then disappeared inside his hut. Mentor spotted his queen and strode toward her.
‘So here you are, my lady,’ he said, greeting her with a smile and a kiss on the cheek. ‘You’ve been avoiding me since the Kerosia, I think.’
‘You’ve been away.’
‘A few days in Samos, looking after the king’s business. But every time I’ve called at the palace you’ve been busy or absent.’
She shrugged apologetically, conceding the point. ‘I just knew you’d have some awkward questions, which I didn’t want to have to answer with so many servants around.’
‘Don’t you trust them?’
‘Some, but not all. And too many of them are inclined to gossip.’
‘So what don’t you want them gossiping about?’
‘My reasons for agreeing to Eupeithes’s proposal,’ she answered, turning and leaning her forearms on the fence. ‘That’s why you’ve come out here to find me, isn’t it?’
‘Of course,’ he admitted, joining her. ‘Well, are you going to tell me?’
She sighed. ‘For one thing, I want my son back here. At my side. While Telemachus stands to inherit the throne he’s in danger, but under Eupeithes’s proposal that danger is gone.’
‘Don’t you think Eupeithes might have been offering you a reason to bring him back so he could try to kill him again? With Telemachus dead there’ll be no other challengers to the throne.’
‘No, he won’t risk upsetting the balance of things. At the least he’ll wait until I remarry. And I would have thought you’d be pleased to have him back under your tutelage. You’ve taught him all he knows, Mentor, and he loves you like a –’
She faltered.
‘Like a father?’
Penelope smiled wanly. ‘Yes, I suppose so. That’s what you’ve been to him in Odysseus’s absence.’
‘Odysseus will return soon,’ Mentor said. ‘The oracle will confirm that. Antinous and I depart in the morning, you know.’
‘I know.’
Eumaeus reappeared from the hut with a cup of water in his hand. His guard dog and her puppies came leaping after him and Argus trotted out to meet them. The swineherd handed the small wooden bowl to Mentor, who drained the cool liquid in one draught and placed the cup down on top of a flat-headed fencepost. Eumaeus swung himself over the low barrier and resumed feeding his pigs, while Penelope hooked her arm through Mentor’s and led him in the opposite direction.
‘Have you already forgotten the oracle that was given to Odysseus twenty years ago? If he went to Troy, he’d be doomed not to come home again for twenty years.’
‘You know about that?’ Mentor asked, surprised.
‘He told me before he left,’ she replied. ‘It wasn’t easy to take, but he also insisted a man has the power to change his destiny if he really wants to. And I believe him.’
‘So what are you saying? You agreed to Eupeithes’s proposal on the grounds of an oracle you don’t think will come true?’
Penelope shook her head. ‘If I’d refused altogether, Eupeithes might have been tempted to force his way into power again, especially in his current mood and with that pack of wolves growling away behind him. We can’t allow that to happen. But you’re missing my point about the oracle. I don’t believe Odysseus is bound by the Pythoness’s words – I can’t afford to believe it, even though the war has already lasted ten years – but if she predicted then that he wouldn’t return for twenty years, surely she will now say he’ll be gone for another decade? By the oath we all took at the Kerosia, and which was announced publicly, that means Eupeithes can’t force me to do anything for ten more years. Not without civil war, and I’m gambling he hasn’t the courage for that if there’s a peaceful alternative.’
Mentor looked at her admiringly.
‘Odysseus chose well when he married you, Penelope. Your cunning may have bought him ten more years, and the war will never go on for that long.’
‘Find a daughter of Lacedaemon and she will keep the thieves from your house,’ she said, quoting the second half of the Pythoness’s riddle. ‘That’s one part of the oracle I’m determined will come true. And the best way I can defend Odysseus’s kingdom is to keep gaining us time until he returns.’
Eperitus, Odysseus and Omeros leaned against the bow rail of the beached galley, watching the defeated army return to their tents. Filthy and exhausted, many of them wounded, they trudged down the slope from the gates with their heads low, dejected by the betrayal of the gods who had promised them victory. For all their faith in the oracles, the walls of Troy stood as strong as ever and the bodies of hundreds more Greeks lay littered in their shade, carrion for the gluttonous birds and dogs.
The appalling aftermath of another defeat left Eperitus feeling cold. More men sent needlessly down to Hades’s halls, where it was said the joys of the living world were stripped away and the soul was left with nothing more than the idea they had once been alive. In that dark place there was no memory of the events or emotions they had experienced in their bodies of flesh, only a sense that something wonderful was lost to them for eternity. And yet, if Odysseus was right, their sacrifice was a necessary one so that thousands more could keep their places at life’s feast. Eperitus gave the king a sidelong glance. He had changed since their encounter with Athena in the temple, become more grim with the loss of the goddess’s patronage. Though whether it was despair or a determination to end the war without her, he could not tell.
‘Go and prepare the wine, Omeros,’ Odysseus said. ‘They’ll be here soon.’
The squire nodded and went to the galley’s stern, where skins of wine and water hung from the twin steering oars. A short while later, they heard the sound they had been expecting – heavy footsteps on the gangplank leading up from the beach. Agamemnon stepped down onto the deck, his breastplate spattered with gore and the pure white tunic beneath filthy with dust. His red cloak was ripped and one of the cheek guards of his helmet had been torn away to reveal a fresh cut across his jaw. Behind him came Menelaus, Nestor and Diomedes, all similarly begrimed. Further footsteps announced the arrival of Idomeneus of Crete, Menestheus of Athens and Little Ajax. Last of all came Neoptolemus, whose divine armour gleamed as if newly made, though his face and limbs were smeared with blood and dirt. His eyes stared out from the unnatural mask, angered by the reversal but not dispirited.