Danae and the girls threw sacred herbs upon the fire and moved, arms up, within and throughout the dark and heavily scented plumes of smoke. When the last of the herbs had been sacrificed to the fire, it was time for the queen to enter the sacred cave.
Someone put her offering basket in her arms. Cradling it against her chest, Penelope raised the basket lid and peeked inside. Her offering did not move and Penelope felt her heart squeeze.
Goddess, please don’t be dead. Not yet. Please.
She poked the snake’s head gently with one cautious finger and life returned to its dull eyes, its tongue flicking out in a slow, sleepy question. Penelope replaced the lid and breathed a deep sigh of relief. After what could have been three breaths, or half the night, Penelope entered the cave alone, but not before each girl embraced the queen for luck and safe-keeping, for there was no guarantee the temperamental Goddess would not choose to drag her down into the depths, keeping her for herself inside the belly of the mountain.
With the only light coming from a small earthenware oil lamp she balanced atop the offering basket, Penelope breathed in the cool, dank air of the first cave. Many years ago, at the height of all Ithaca’s troubles, a holy woman had taken her into these caves and shared with her the secrets of its passageways. Enter the far left cavern, and take the ancient rock-hewed steps down until you can go no further into the deepest center. There, you will hear the echoes of the drips from the weeping walls and in the center you will find the pale great mother as she stretches down from the high cave ceiling to touch and merge with the smaller phallus-rock jutting up from the ground.
Penelope placed her sacrificial offering before the cold, dripping formation and prepared the space for dreaming. She swept the ground clear of rocks and the small, scattered bones of prior sacrifices.
There she laid out her weavings—one for the ground and one for around her shoulders should she grow chilled. She knew the Mother blessed her weavings for the Goddess herself had planted in her mind the designs, patterns, and colors that had brought Ithaca such renown. And it was through the exports of her unusual designs and dyes that Ithaca’s economy had remained alive for all those long years of the king’s absence.
The queen sang words of praise until the tones echoed and thrummed into her breastbone, unsure whether she dreamed the sound or the sound dreamed her.
When the time was right, she asked the Goddess outright: was it true her husband lived and was returning to Ithaca? And if so, how did the Goddess want her to respond? What should she do to maintain the peace she had worked so hard to attain?
She waited in the cold, dripping space to receive either a vision, a dream, a word, or snatch of a song. Anything that the Goddess might use to guide her.
But nothing came.
Until she heard the ocean. The roar of angry waters. The hoarse voice of a man crying out to the gods.
Her heart raced as if she herself were struggling for breath in the raging sea. She coughed and gasped at the sensation of swallowing great gulps of cold, bitter brine. The same voice thundered in her ears: “I will not quit this life. Not when I am so close!”
Her heart pounded. She knew that voice. She hadn’t heard it in twenty years, but she knew it.
Goddess, what does it mean? What are you showing me?
Back under the fish-cold sea she went, as if the Goddess herself had dragged her down. When she bobbed back up, she gulped for air as the sound of pounding waves filled her ears.
What do you want from me? she cried aloud. Eerily, her long-lost husband’s voice cried out the same question at the same time and their combined voices echoed again and again throughout the cavern.
She opened her mouth to call out his name, but water filled her throat and she gagged.
Was this how her husband died? Or was the Goddess showing her what was to come? She panted, raising her mouth to the top of the cavern, as if she too fought waves of water. Only her waves were made of confusion and fear.
This man in the sea—my husband—is a stranger to me!
Did she want him to return? After twenty years? After learning he’d spent years in the arms of another woman?
No! He doesn’t deserve to come back! Punish his betrayal by flaying his skin against the rocks. Drag him into the maw of a gruesome sea monster.
But then she would never see him again. A deep groan echoed in the caves. Telemachus would never know his father. She would never again rest her head on his broad chest and listen to his ridiculous tales. She didn’t want that either!
Save him, Goddess!
All throughout the night, Penelope struggled for air, fighting the cold water and stinging salt of twenty years of longing, desire, fear, and rage at being left.
She must have slept for she jerked awake, her eyes snapping open. The blanket was tangled around her legs. She kicked and pushed it away and stood, trembling, trying to make sense of the Goddess’s refusal to answer her.
Did Odysseus live? Or had he drowned at sea? In either case, what was she to do? How was she to respond?
The silence in the dank cave felt heavy with the Goddess’s silence.
A movement caught her eye. She returned to the spot where she had lain. She blinked. Blankets didn’t move, so why did this one?
At first she refused to see, refused to believe. Until the snake’s head poked out of a corner of the heavy fabric. The snake. There. Coiling into the warm imprint her body had left on the cloth.
The snake was meant to disappear into the Goddess’s inner caves or die from the wet and cold. That it lived—that it was by her side—was proof that her sacrifice had been rejected.
The Goddess would not help her. The Goddess, like her husband, had disappeared, leaving her without guidance, without support.
The snake had escaped its basket and sought out her warmth. Her own body had preserved it. It hadn’t been blankets wrapped around her legs, but the snake.
The cavern seemed to fill with a red haze as hot tears burned her eyes. The Goddess would not help her. Her breath seared.
Why, why, was she always left to face the world and all its challenges alone?
She dropped to her knees and scrabbled at the loose stones until she found a sharp-edged rock that fit her palm. Her breathing rasped in her ears. Crouching like an animal, she approached the coiled bundle in her blankets. Her fingers sought out the creature’s head. Raising her trembling arm high, she smashed the rock down with all her might.
Over and over again, she pounded the twisting, turning, flailing thing as memories flashed in her mind like far-off lighting: Odysseus leaving, swearing upon his heart to return to her. Telemachus baring his teeth whenever she tried to guide him. Danae whispering that her husband lived, but in the arms of another woman.
Every betrayal. Every loss. Every moment of despair poured out in a rhythm of rock against flesh until the blanket was flattened and smeared with gore.
Penelope dropped the rock, breathing hard, head bowed. There was nothing left to do but emerge from the cave and do what she’d always done: handle it all. Alone.
The queen lifted the blanket and shook out the creature’s battered remains, smearing herself with dark, sticky liquid and bits of skin and gore, and wrapped the soiled thing around her shoulders.
Straightening, she grabbed the small lamp and began the long climb up from the depths of the Mother’s sacred center.
The queen of Ithaca emerged from the dark of the cavern like Eurydice ascending from the underworld. But unlike Orpheus’s doomed bride, she stepped out into the sunlight, squinting and blinking and furiously alive.
Danae rushed to her. “My queen!” Her maidens stared wide-eyed at the shreds of snakeskin clinging to their leader’s arms. “What…what has the Goddess shown you?”
She shook her head, unable to speak. How could she explain that the Goddess had rejected her offering? That she didn’t know what was going to happen or what the gods wanted her to do?
“We must return right aw
ay,” she finally managed, her voice gouged and raw.
“Is the king returning?” Danae asked. “How are we to prepare?”
“I do not know,” Penelope finally answered, throwing off her now ruined blanket. “I know only that we will do as we have always done—face the challenges coming our way—alone.”
* * *
TELEMACHUS
It turned out to be the perfect time to set sail. The winds were right and the sea was calm. Telemachus poured a libation of his best stores directly into the glittering wine-dark sea in thanks to great god of the sea. Perhaps this was a sign that things were finally going to go his way.
He had finally done it. He had taken action. Odysseus, he was sure, would’ve been proud.
The sailors and oarsmen that Mentes had employed on his behalf had stared at their prince as if he were a strange creature from a foreign land when he’d boarded the ship that would take him to his new destiny. Telemachus had kept his face serene and blank—the last thing he needed now was for the kingdom’s sailors to spread the word that the great Odysseus’s son shamefully had no sea legs.
Still, he couldn’t help but overhear some of the comments. “He does take after the old captain-king a bit around the face,” one of the older sailors noted. “But not around anything else,” another quipped. “Needs to put some meat on those soft bones.”
Telemachus ignored their words as well as their stares. He’d earn their respect well enough when he had grim-faced warriors shaking their spears behind him. Once out of the harbor, he noted with satisfaction, some of the old sea dogs began to nod and smile in his direction. Especially when they passed some of Mentes’s young men heaving helplessly over the side.
Sailing was clearly in his blood. The bracing sea air promised adventure and he was finally ready to seek it out.
In Pylos’s harbor, they came upon a great shore-side celebration. It seemed the entire city had come out for a festival to Poseidon. Decorative flags flapped in the breeze. Altars were being steadied on the sand. The air was thick with the smell of sea-life, smoke, and the dried sweat of men working under the harsh sun. Men sang songs to the father of the seas, accompanied by the lowing bulls unhappily shuffling through sand as they were prepared for sacrifice.
Telemachus spotted the old king—despite the wind-swept white hair and beard, looking as severe as the god of the seas himself—at a table set high on a promontory overseeing the sandy shore. He noted the king’s cloak was real Tyrian purple and suddenly felt like a child wearing pretend-royalty clothes.
Just keep your head up.
A young man wearing a circlet rushed to his side. “I am Peisistratus, son of Nestor,” he said. “Welcome to Pylos. It is an excellent omen to have visitors of your caliber step ashore during our day of honor and sacrifice to Poseidon, the Great Earthshaker and Wavemaker.”
Peisistratus was a few years younger than he was, Telemachus noted, which meant he’d probably been conceived in Troy by one of the king’s slaves. Hadn’t King Nestor’s eldest son, fast-running Antylochos, fallen during the war?
Suddenly, Telemachus wondered if his father had borne other sons in Troy. Why hadn’t he thought of that before? It was possible. That, of course, reminded him of the persistent rumor that Odysseus was actually alive and living on a remote island with a beautiful witch. Perhaps she’d given him strong sons and that’s why he never bothered to return.
No, that is foolish. Focus.
Peisistratus introduced him to his father, King Nestor, and the king bade him sit at the long banqueting table as prayers and sacrifices were made. Soon black smoke from countless altars blackened the sea air as mounds of fat and thick thigh-bones were offered to Poseidon and the other deathless ones.
Telemachus marveled at the beauty of the Pylos coast. The golden sand, the crystal waters darkening to a brilliant blue—it was so different than stony Ithaca with its craggy hills and mountains of scrub that seemed to fall directly into the ocean.
As crisped skewers of meat were passed, Telemachus noticed a girl on the women’s side of the royal table staring at him. She flushed and looked away when he stared back and Telemachus was charmed by the smatter of freckles across the bridge of her small nose. Her eyes shone brightly, like the bright green of new grass.
“That is my little sister, Polycaste,” Peisistratus whispered in his ear. “She may look sweet,” he continued, laughing, “but she will tear your eyes out if you try to steal her fig cake.”
Telemachus and Polycaste continued to trade glances—his growing bolder with every cup of wine—before the women of the noble house were escorted back to the palace at dusk.
Mentes was right, he thought a little drunkenly. It’s time I found a wife.
As torches flared on poles stuck deep in the sand, Telemachus dreamily imagined a future where he was a well-respected king, with all the men of Ithaca bending knee to him. It was a familiar enough dream, but now, he added sweet Polycaste, princess of Pylos, standing beside him as his bride. How wonderful it would be to be loved by a beauty like her—and to be aligned with such a powerful and respected kingdom. A bubble of hope and optimism warmed his chest. For the first time, he could see a future for himself that didn’t involve powerlessness and humiliation.
Old Nestor, as the night wore on, grew increasingly nostalgic, sharing story after story about the privations and challenges at Troy. Telemachus appreciated the king’s flattery of his father.
“No one there could hope to rival Odysseus,” Nestor said more than once, recounting Troy. “Not for sheer cunning. At every twist of strategy, he excelled us all.”
When the king eventually turned his attention to him, Telemachus made his request. “As a fellow royal, I am in need of a strong force of men to return with me and help me restore order to my father’s house,” he said, trying hard not to slur his words. “I do not need a large force—most of my mother’s suitors would run at the first sight of armed men and—”
Nestor acted like he hadn’t heard. He raised his golden goblet, turned to the center of the table and went on, in colorful detail, about how Agamemnon, King of Mycenae, was murdered in the bath by his own wife. Whenever Telemachus started to make the request again, the old king jumped in with yet another tragic tale of what befell the family of the accursed king.
Which, Telemachus, supposed, was the old king’s way of delivering an answer: No. Admiration for his father notwithstanding, he would not send a force of arms.
Peisistratus, sensing Telemachus’s frustration, jumped in to help. “Father, our guest friend is of royal Spartan blood via Icarius,” he said. “Why don’t we give him an escort to Sparta, where he might ask his own people for assistance? If Sparta chooses to help him, Menelaus might be grateful to Pylos if we too assist in his endeavor to claim his rightful patrimony.”
Telemachus looked from son to father. A wine flush had crept up Nestor’s neck, which made his flowing white hair and beard stand out even more dramatically in the torchlight. The great king nodded his head and then chuckled, holding out his cup to his youngest son. “Well done, boy. That is fairly proposed. We will send the prince of Ithaca to Sparta with men and supplies as a good host should. And depending on what the High King says, we may reconsider our position.”
“Excellent,” Peisistratus said. “And I will accompany the son of Odysseus on his journey to help his case.”
The king laughed again. “You are always ready for adventure. You have my permission,” Nestor said, before turning to speak to another son.
Telemachus turned to Peisistratus. “I don’t understand exactly how you did what you just did, but…” he paused, fighting his first impulse, which was to demand that he explain his manipulation, but forced himself to be gracious. “Thank you,” he managed.
Peisistratus held out his silver wine cup to Telemachus and grinned.
On the trip to Sparta, the prince of Pylos asked the prince of Ithaca if he wanted a turn at driving the horses of their chariot.
/> Telemachus colored. “No. I’ve…um, I’ve never—”
“You’ve never driven a chariot?” the son of Nestor asked, bushy eyebrows almost touching his hairline.
“Ithaca is very rocky. So, um…chariots cannot be driven in my kingdom,” he lied. There were plenty of areas where one could drive a chariot, but it was a father’s duty to teach his son such skills.
“Ah. So what is your preferred weapon? I excel with the sword but will fight with a bow too if needed. How many men have you led into battle? When did you kill your first man? Do you go raiding often?” The young prince of Pylos clearly wanted to trade stories of heroic deeds. The shame of his inexperience made Telemachus stumble over his words.
“Ithaca has no real…well you know…all our warriors were lost. We do not have—”
“Do you know my father made me captain after my last victory against the Lycians when I led the raid on their shores?”
“You’re a captain?” He was younger than Telemachus. How was that possible?
“I have been fighting battles since I was fourteen,” the sixth son of King Nestor said. “My brothers trained me and let me join them on raids. Are you saying you’ve never been on a raid or fought in battle? At your age?”
Telemachus could only shake his head. Peisistratus, he noticed, grew quieter as the trip wore on.
Worse, when they got to the palace and requested an audience with Icarius, Telemachus’s grandfather, they were denied.
“What do you mean Icarius won’t see prince Telemachus?” said Peisistratus. “He is Icarius’s grandson—his own blood!”
The messenger, a young boy dressed in the patterned cloth of the House of Menelaus, shrugged as if embarrassed. “He is old and sick and barely remembers who he is. The physician feels that introducing you while he is having one of his spells would be bad for everyone involved. The king, however, invited you to dine with him in his hall later for the evening meal.”
A Sea of Sorrow Page 6