Chapter Text
/
Odysseus has told her the story of the boar hunt countless times. Penelope knows it as if she were there. She knows it as if she were the cedar tree that formed the first trap. As if she were the bow in his hands.
She knows exactly the moment the goddess appeared to him. He had outrun his uncles, outrun his father. Argus, then only a puppy, had gone quiet at his side. She came to him undisguised. She is taller than any woman or man in the world. Her armour burns the air. Her helmet’s plume cuts through the sky like a black nightmare. Her eyes are entirely steel coloured; no whites, no irises. Odysseus says that when she comes, a certain hush falls over everything. That hush is the low hum of her mind.
She knows how Athene helped him that day. Odysseus tells her how he felt her draw his arm back, how he felt her fingers tighten over his. This is how he, as a child, trapped and shot a violent boar with a bow that was too heavy and complex for any grown man to use. A bow that bends backwards.
Now, she watches her husband under a sun that is so ripe and high it looks black. She watches as no goddess comes to help.
Odysseus drives the plough. He has yoked to it an ox and a donkey. It makes the plough lurch terribly. Flies pick at her husband’s shoulders, which are drenched in sweat. And the men are snarling at him like dogs.
Palamedes has taken Telemachus out of her arms before she can even scratch or bite or scream. She watches him drop their baby into the dark soil. The speed of everything is like a dying man wading in mud. With horror, she sees that Odysseus’ eyes do not change. His eyes are always sharp, always gleaming, always right. Now, they are like glass. He keeps driving the plough forward. She bites down on her tongue and draws blood with the effort of not screaming. Our son. Our son. Our son.
When it stops, her husband’s chest is heaving. His shoulders are slumped. Their baby is shaking his fistfuls of soil. And the silence holds all of them.
“King Odysseus,” Palamades finally says to him. His smile cuts across his face. “I have been hearing tales of your cleverness for years now.”
Her husband finally looks up at the men. She watches the truth– his hatred, his horror, the fear– drain out of his face. His smile transforms him. Even like this, bare chested, hair matted, hands clutching at the plough, that smile turns him into a diplomat.
“You flatter me, Prince Palamedes. Until now, I had never heard a word about you.”
/
The conversation is over in less than an hour. There is nothing left for them to try. Neither she nor Odysseus try to lie. They don’t even try the truth. She doesn’t say, there is no point in fighting this war. She doesn’t say, if you take him from me, his parents will die of grief, and my son will grow up without a father. She doesn’t say that without the quirk of his crooked smile, or the steady measure of his voice, her body is like an empty hive. She doesn’t say, if you take him from me, I will crawl to a space beyond death and spend every minute there until he returns.
They tell him that he is to go with them, and to send for his men separately. They tell him that the Phthian prince’s name is Achilles, and they need his help in trying to find him. They say that once they have Achilles, they can leave for Troy. They tell him all sorts of other things. Odysseus is polite and brief, like a man with a blade between his teeth. She speaks only once, and it is to Nestor.
“How much longer will you give us?”
For the first time this week, one of these men is kind to her. He says, “We will give you until sunrise tomorrow. We will wait in our ships.”
/
Don’t go. She says it to him over a thousand times. She watches his jaw tighten under the black beard. She watches the tears fall from his eyes like he is an animal that is dying. Do not go. She says it as if it means anything. As if he has a choice. They hold each other as if horror will not find them like this.
“I will never stray from you;” he is saying it now. “Not once. I told you four years ago. You have ruined all others for me. There is no one like you. There is no love like yours.”
Crying feels like breathing in these hours. She tries to argue. “I would not mind it. I would not mind even if you did. I just want you to come back. Do anything to come back. I don’t care what you become.”
“Penelope,”
“No. You must listen to me. I do not care what you have to do. I will forgive you for anything. Do whatever you must do, cheat whoever you must, kill whoever you must, and come back to me.”
He is shaking his head at her. “It will be so long. I will be an old man when I return. I will be different.”
She is trying to commit each fold near his eye, each curl on his head, to memory. His hair is as black and unruly as the ocean. His skin is like gold. “You are already different. You change every day.”
“You must remarry,” the steel of his eyes is like a fever.
Penelope nearly spits at him. “Do not insult me.”
“If I am gone for so long, if it is long enough that Telemachus has a beard,” he is saying. The thought is preposterous. “Then you must-”
She breaks away from him. He reaches after her and his face is muddled with tears. She shakes her head. “Do not ask this of me. I will not do it. I didn’t marry until I was twenty because there was nobody like you. I will take nobody but you for my husband.”
He finds her again. They kiss. Their foreheads are pressed together. He says, “Please. Please. Only if Telemachus grows into a man before I return. Please, Penelope.”
He has asked something of her. She can scream and beg and plead, but she cannot refuse. It is him, and he has asked. She eventually nods. He takes her into his strong arms. He touches her face with his broad hands. Neither of them sleep. They whisper to each other and weep. They remember Sparta, four years ago, where they met. They remember the night they first made love, under an olive tree. They remember their wedding. Their marriage has always bent backward; always that motion, of going back through years to find one another. He is pressing kisses to her shoulders, to her throat, to her palms. “Penelope,” he says. “Penelope, Penelope. My wife.” And then, as if hours have been blown through with an arrow, dawn rises to greet them.
/
She watches him hold their son. She watches as their baby pulls at his beard with his little hands. As he grabs at his nose. Her husband kisses their son, presses his nose to his. He murmurs something to him that she doesn’t catch.
Odysseus holds her, briefly, and releases her. Everything blurs and wobbles. She says, “I will be waiting. Come back to me.”
He gives her their son. He takes in her face a final time. His eyes are firm, and he says, “I will.”
/