A Sea of Sorrow

by Libbie Hawker

  The lovely serving girl was taking him on a route well away from the main gates and around to the back of the great house. They continued to walk away for some time until he became convinced that it had all been a ruse and perhaps she was leading him into a trap. “Not much further now,” she promised, glancing at him over her shoulder.

  She took him down a rise, the grass long and untended, the ground scrubby and thick with bushes. Amphinomus could hear the crash of not too distant waves and taste the tang of salt air on this tongue. “Where are you taking me?” he asked.

  “Here,” Danae gestured vaguely at a thick copse. She manoeuvred herself into it. “Try not to disturb it too much,” she said before disappearing out of sight, lost in the foliage and darkness.

  Beyond the copse was a short clearing that led to a door; it was tiny, coming only to his chest, but was re-enforced with bronze plating. Danae inserted a key and released the plate. It was a cunning design and Amphinomus wondered if Odysseus himself had come up with it.

  Amphinomus squeezed himself through the tiny opening, following Danae into the dimness. Danae reached up and took a flint off a ledge and, after several attempts, fired a torch. “Push the door to,” she said. Blinking in the sudden light, Amphinomus obeyed, after which she gave him the torch to hold and locked the door. “Come on then,” she said and made her way into the tunnels beyond.

  It was dank at first, drops of water making the torch hiss. The tunnels twisted and turned. Areas had been deliberately stoned off, making the confines tight and claustrophobic. Amphinomus’s warrior training told him that this was to make the passages more defensible. “This is marvelous,” he said, his voice bouncing around the blackness beyond the orange eye of the torch.

  “Odysseus thought of everything,” Danae said, glancing back at him. “Hard to find a way in here, harder to get through if you’re full of bad intent.

  They walked in silence for a time and he noted that the tunnels were now dry and sloping upwards. After a natural turn, another small door emerged. Danae unlocked it and pushed it open—again, there was no sound. She extinguished the torch in a bucket of sand next to the door and Amphinomus felt off balance as his eyes adjusted to the sudden gloom. But for all that, he could see a light coming from the other side.

  Danae crouched and went through and he followed. As he did so, he was struck at once by a beautiful perfume coming from the room beyond; soft and rich like flowers on a summer’s day.

  His heart began to pound in his chest and imagined this was how a man on the dawn of battle felt.

  The room was huge and grand, low lit and decorated beautifully. There was a large loom to one side and by it a shroud, its edges frayed and incomplete. There were couches too, and at the far end was Penelope. She sat by a low table, her feet—bare—daintily drawn up under her. Her hair was loose save for a single circlet of gold that served only to enhance the deep red of her chiton.

  She was beautiful. No, magnificent; Amphinomus had seen her many times, but never this close—it was akin to being in the presence of a goddess. It was hubris to think it, he knew, but he could not control his thoughts. The curve of her neck, the dark eyes, her full lips. Her mouth turned up at one side and he realized that his own had fallen open in wonderment.

  “Come,” she said, her voice soft. “Sit.” She gestured to the couch at her side. “Danae, pour for us. Then you may go.”

  Amphinomus swallowed and sat—carefully because he suddenly felt clumsy and unsure of himself. In his mind’s eye he could see Eros at Aphrodite’s shoulder shooting dart after dart into him. Both were laughing. “Thank you, lady,” he said in as deep a voice as he could manage, fearing that his words would come out as a squeak. Danae poured wine, first for her queen and then for him; she too wore a half-grin and Amphinomus was certain she winked before sauntering out of the room.

  “You have not been going out of your way to impress me in the nightly revels,” Penelope said, looking at him from under a hooded gaze.

  Amphinomus was crushed by the criticism; he was glad of the heavy shadows in the room because he felt his face turning red. “I…well…” he hesitated, “you don’t strike me as a lady who is impressed by boasting,” he managed. “You’ve had years of men telling you of their prowess.” He shrugged. “I’m weary of it myself, I can imagine you are too.”

  “You have no idea,” she chuckled, her laugh soft and almost sensuous. “I find that it’s more about what a man does rather than what he says he can do.”

  Amphinomus willed himself not to blush at the allusion. And failed. Her tone made his pulse quicken. She was teasing him now—flirting even. He took a deep chug of the wine. It was sweet—almost too sweet. Not to his liking, but it would be rude to show it. “Well,” he tried to sound equable, “I’m a man who likes to get things done rather than talk about it.”

  “So I’ve heard,” Penelope said. “These past months they tell me that you have taken it on yourself to organize my fields and my workers. That you have instructed Danae and the others to clean up after your…fellows. I have to ask why?”

  Amphinomus drank again. “Because…because I felt that you were unimpressed by the antics of the suitors.” More wine to steady himself. It was going to his head—so strange for it to affect him this quickly. “Because I feel a measure of guilt that we suitors have done nothing but take and take and take. And,” he looked up at her, “because I thought it might please you to know that at least one of us has your…and your home’s…best interest at heart.”

  Her eyebrow arched. “My interest? Surely you and those other men have your own interests at heart. My hand grants you this kingdom—a kingdom won without having to lift a spear.”

  “I’m not interested in the kingdom,” Amphinomus tried to sound forthright but it came out as a blurted statement. “I mean to say that…of course the welfare of the island has become important to me. But not as important as…” he trailed off. How to say it without coming across as a callow boy. Or a fool. Or both. “I have come to admire you greatly, Lady,” he said at last.

  She didn’t answer and a silence hung between them that Amphinomus felt the urge to fill. “I heard a rumor that your son is on his way home,” he said.

  “And I heard that there was a plot to have him murdered when he does so,” she countered, raising one eyebrow at his expression of surprise. “You think anything that transpires on my island does not reach my ears?” She didn’t wait for a response. “I also heard that you…and you alone spoke up for him. That you argued for his life and carried the day. Your words would save my son’s life.”

  “I am a son too,” Amphinomus's heart surged that she knew of this. “I can imagine my mother’s grief if I was stabbed in the back and left for dead.” He hesitated. “Such a deed would cause you great pain, Lady. And that is a thought that I cannot countenance. I wish only happiness for you. Forever.”

  “The truth is that he’s likely dead anyway,” she cut him off, her voice suddenly harsh. “He and Odysseus both.” She looked away, clearly ashamed at this momentary loss of dignity.

  Amphinomus’s heart went out to her even as hope flared in it. “If so, I mourn for your loss, of course I do,” he said carefully.

  “Do you now?” she turned back to him. “Words, Amphinomus. Just words. Are you not here to win my hand? Does this situation not strengthen your position?”

  Amphinomus blinked, finding it hard to concentrate. Yet he must. “If I were a man without a heart, I would see it so,” he admitted. “But I have one. And…” he hesitated, “it is yours. It has been since the first moment that I became old enough to give it away.”

  “Such are the hearts of the young.”

  “I am not a shadow of…” he could not bring himself to say Odysseus’s name. “I am not a shadow of the king,” he said. “But I am here. I am flesh and blood. And if you chose me, my first duty would be…” He trailed off. There were so many things he could say. That he should say. That a prince must say. But hi
s heart, still thrumming from Eros’s arrows prompted him to tell the truth. “My first duty every day would be to make you happy. The rest…the rest would be easy after that.” He blinked and looked at the wine cup and somewhere far away he heard Penelope’s chuckle.

  The cup was empty, grains of sediment in the bottom. But he couldn’t recall drinking it. His senses seemed more acute now, the seductive, pungent smell of her perfume seeming to fog his mind. He looked over to her and her face seemed more beautiful than he had ever seen it, her eyes alight with a hidden fire that only he could see.

  “Antinous the strong,” she said. “Eurymachus the beautiful and sly. Amphinomus the earnest. The farmer. The caregiver. Such are my choices.”

  “Amphinomus who loves you,” he announced—somewhat against his own will. Yet, with the wine coursing through his veins, he was unperturbed and unembarrassed by the pronouncement. Again, it was the truth.

  “I remember when you were younger,” the queen said. “You—and you alone—tried to help my son with the other boys.” She regarded him with her peerless eyes. “I noticed it then and I see it now. You till the fields, working alongside the people—my people—a people that are not your own. Your actions speak, Amphinomus. They mark you as a man who could be king.” His heart leapt as she said these words, but she spoke again. “If there is to be a king at all.”

  Amphinomus pressed his lips into a thin line. “My suit aside, Lady, you know that I would accept your will and leave this place with a heavy heart. But I must tell you: if you renege on this…there could be bloodshed.”

  She smiled at him. “Such is my greatest fear, Amphinomus. And yet blood may spill no matter what I choose.” She rose to her feet and regarded him as he struggled to his own. “It seems I have much to think on.”

  The numbness was strange. Penelope stepped close to him—much closer than was seemly and her eyes held him. Amphinomus’s heart pounded as her lips parted and for a moment, he dared hope she might kiss him. But she did not. “It seems the wine has gone to your head,” she said with that half smile again. “You have pleased me greatly, Amphinomus. I will see you again.”

  “When?”

  “Soon.”

  Like a wraith from Hades, Danae appeared at his side and led him away, back into the stygian darkness of the tunnels. He glanced over his shoulder at the queen as she sat and saw her take a sip of her wine. It occurred to him that this was the first time he had seen the rim of the cup touch her lips.

  Once home, a great weariness—despite the euphoria of his conversation with the queen—overtook him. He drank water, a lot of water it, straight from the krater and staggered into the small room where he slept, lying down on the rugs expectant that Morpheus’s embrace would not be long in coming. Yet the god of sleep was strangely absent, kept away by the whirling tumult of thoughts in Amphinomus’s mind. Penelope’s visage swam before his eyes, her words thrumming in his ears—she would see him again. Soon! Love for her surged through him as did a sense of vindication: he had been right to take matters on Ithaca into his own hands. She had noticed. And she favored him for it.

  He could smell her still, the scent of her sweet perfume heady in his nostrils; he could almost taste it.

  Then he became aware of movement in the room; Amphinomus’s eyes flew open, the shock piercing through the fug of the wine, ready to defend himself. But then he saw her, standing silhouetted in the moonlight, a small krater held loosely in her right hand. And then he realized that it was not his imagination—the familiar scent hung about her, intoxicating and inviting.

  “Penelope?” he asked, praying to Zeus that this was not a dream. But this apparition wore, not the queen’s red tunic, but the simple white dress of Danae, her handmaiden.

  It is the queen in disguise his heart whispered, and he chose to believe it.

  She put a finger to her lips and moved towards him, kneeling on the blankets. She raised the krater and took a sip before passing it to him and he did likewise. It was the same wine that he had tasted in her rooms, sweet and cloying.

  They shared it in silence till it was gone and then she took it from him, placing it to one side. She kissed him then, her lips as soft as he had imagined, her tongue teasing yet urgent, the honeyed tang of the wine on her breath. Amphinomus felt a burning desire surge within him like nothing he had ever known. It went beyond the physical—his heart and his soul desired her—could not ever be fulfilled without her.

  Gently—but strong and firm—she pushed him down onto his back, straddling him. She tore her clothing away, casting it aside, and he gazed upon her, her exquisite beauty somehow enhanced by the darkness and shadows that swathed her.

  And then he was inside her.

  Amphinomus had never known such pleasure; it consumed him, fired him and filled him. It was as though he entered her flesh so she entered his soul. There was nothing in that moment, nothing aside from her. She cried out as he began to move inside her, collapsing forward and he crushed her to him, her breasts pressed to his sweat, slick chest as she bit and kissed his neck, whispering to him, urging him on, telling him that she was his. Time seemed to slow yet speed up and Amphinomus could not tell how long they lay, locked together as one.

  Then her hips pushed faster now, harder, and she rose up, head thrown back in ecstasy as she moaned with the completion of her desire. Amphinomus felt himself at the precipice too. He wanted it to last forever but it could not and he too cried out in a delirium of joy as though his very soul came into her, her body drawing him forth till he was utterly spent. Only then did she lay on his chest, kissing him, her fingers running through his sweat-soaked hair. He could feel her heart pounding in time with his own.

  “Tell no one,” she whispered. “But know that the queen has made her choice.”

  “I love you, Penelope” he murmured, exhaustion suddenly overwhelming him. “I’ve loved you from the first moment I saw you and will love you till the day I die.”

  She kissed him again. “Sleep now,” she whispered. “Sleep and dream of the queen.”

  As Morpheus took him, he murmured, “You are my queen,” even as the handmaiden smiled and disappeared into the night.

  Part II: The Reckoning

  * * *

  Ithaca! Oh my Ithaca!

  Odysseus fell to his knees, tears falling from his eyes, running down the cracks and lines in his face that had not been there when he had last touched the shores of his homeland. He filled his fists with her sands, crushing the grains into his flesh so that she—his Ithaca—could be at one with him again.

  The tide hissed about him, the sea so recently his nemesis now a balm to his soul; Poseidon—ever capricious—had one last swipe at him, sending the ship gifted to him by the Phaeacian king—and her crew—to the bottom. Only he had survived. Only he had the strength to cling to that lonely spar that kept him from the sea god’s embrace that night.

  Why it was that, once again, only he emerged from the miasma of death that consumed those around him at sea was beyond his understanding. He had stopped asking the gods why this should be so. Their ways were impenetrable. Perhaps this last survival was his “reward” for keeping his oaths to Calypso.

  If so, it seemed too high a cost for those that hadn’t made it. Yet what else could he think but that this was the final cleansing for all his wrongs and acts of hubris?

  Still weak, he staggered away from the cold waters, tottering up the beach before collapsing on the sands again, coughing and puking up brine. An omen, he thought—the sea, so long a part of him, was now being forced from his body, leaving behind a sour taste. Shivering, he rolled onto his backside and sat up, struggling out of the ruined, sodden tunic that robbed his body of warmth.

  Odysseus glanced up at the sky and then to the horizon, relieved to see the pink hue of dawn lifting the veil of night. He forced himself to his feet and turned his back on the sea, walking up a scrubby hillock to the land beyond. He looked this way and that, taking in a huge lungful of Ithacan air.
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  Home.

  He was home. After so many years absent, there was a part of him that had begun to lose hope that he would ever see her again. But here he was, Ithacan soil under his feet, her sands adhering to his still-wet legs, her breeze caressing his skin.

  He had long ago promised to sacrifice four black rams for all his fallen comrades. What would he sacrifice to honor the Phaeacians that had been so generous and had gone to Poseidon’s realm too for the crime of helping him? Perhaps the loss of this second treasure—the Phaeacian king’s generous gifts—was sacrifice enough.

  And yet somehow it seemed fitting that he returned to his homeland alone. This moment was his—only his.

  But is it still your home? The voice in his mind—Athena’s voice that had guided him these long years—spoke once again. She was right of course. So many years had passed, so much could have changed. Indeed, Ithaca could now be under the sway of another man entirely.

  And so could Penelope. The very real possibility of that made his gut clench. He would fight for her as hard as he fought for Ithaca for in his mind, they had merged into one entity. There could not be one without the other.

  His tactician’s instincts took over, knowing that he could not merely turn up at the great hall and announce that the “king had returned” if another now wore his crown. He would have to approach the situation the same way he had conquered Troy—with stealth and, if needed, trickery.

  The day was winning the battle with the night and Odysseus was able to get his bearings. Strange, he thought. So long away, yet a quick glance at the terrain and he knew his way again. Like steering a chariot, he guessed. You could not put your hand to one for years, yet step up in the carriage and feel the reins against your palm and it all came flooding back.