Penelope's Web

by Christopher Rush

  ‘So you see, I learned a lot off the isle of Pharos. The Old Man sank back into his native salt, and as night in its mystery fell over me, I lay down to sleep with the surf-beaten shore sounding in my dreams. Next morning I followed the Old Man’s directions. I returned to the Nile, built a mound to the everlasting memory of Agamemnon and sailed back to my beloved Argos.’

  While all this talk was going on, the suitors back in Ithaca were enjoying themselves as usual, unaware that Telemachus had carried out his plan. They learned about it only when Phronius’s son, Noemon, approached Antinous and Eurymachus, asking for information about the ship Telemachus had borrowed for his expedition.

  ‘Do you happen to know when he’ll be back from Sparta?’ he asked. ‘Only I need my father’s ship, you see. I want to use it right now to reach Elis, where I keep a dozen mares. Their mules haven’t been weaned yet, and I need to break one in. Do you have any idea of when he’s planning to return?’

  Antinous raged.

  ‘Sparta? Ship? Why didn’t you tell us your father had lent him a vessel?’

  ‘I assumed you knew.’

  ‘Blast his eyes, I’ll kill him! He’s had the brass neck to bring the thing off. He’s actually done it, the pipsqueak, and left us looking like fools! But I’ll have him for this! Get me a nimble ship and twenty men, and I’ll hide out in the straits between here and the bluffs of Samos. I’ll waylay him on his way back, the insolent young pup, and I’ll put a quick end to his travels.’

  Antinous shot his mouth off so loudly that Medon the herald overheard every word, and he sped to Penelope with the news that Telemachus was in dire danger. She nearly fainted and for a time lost the power of speech. Eventually she asked, with tears in her eyes, ‘But when did he go? I never even knew about it.’

  ‘You weren’t meant to,’ said Medon. ‘He put us under orders. He didn’t want you worrying.’

  ‘Worrying! I lost my husband, and now my only son goes off on the high seas in search of him and is about to be ambushed and slaughtered! O god, god save him! God help me!’

  She uttered one loud long scream and collapsed in a heap. Down in the hall the suitors heard it and laughed.

  ‘Do I hear wedding music?’ one of them asked.

  ‘Yes, you do. I do believe that’s our tune she’s singing. The crafty daughter of King Icarius will be getting married quite soon, I think. Little does she know her precious son is for the chop.’

  ‘Shut your faces!’ shouted Antinous. ‘Pitchers have ears. If this gets out our plan may be scuppered. No blabbing. Let’s just do what we have to do.’

  Not knowing that Penelope already knew the truth, he strode off to the harbour, picked his twenty murderers, the same number as Aegisthus, and prepared to sail. Penelope lay in her room, surrounded by terrors. But at last she grew drowsy and the black thoughts receded as she lay down, entered the arms of Morpheus and succumbed to sleep.

  But the flashing eyes of Pallas Athene were too watchful to close in sleep. She decided it was time to pay Penelope a dream-visit. King Icarius had another daughter called Iphthime, who had married Eumelus and lived in Pherae. Athene spun a phantom to look like this woman and sent it to Ithaca to save the sleeping queen from further distress. The phantom arrived at the door of her lofty chamber, reached for the strap that worked the bolt, stood by her sister’s head and spoke softly.

  ‘No need for tears, Penelope, when you wake. Know that the gods have no quarrel with your son and are on your side.’

  Penelope heard Iphthime’s voice in her sweet sleep at the Gate of Dreams and answered the dim figure from behind the gate.

  ‘Surely you are a shadow sent by the gods? Or you have heard the voice of god? If so, and if you are immortal, you can tell me not only about my son but also about his father. Can my unhappy husband still see the sun? Or is he long dead in Hades?’

  The dim figure retreated from her.

  ‘Seek to know no more. This is not my mission. Of Odysseus, alive or dead, I can tell you nothing, and empty words are mere babbling in the dark.’

  The phantom slipped out between the door and its post and melted outside like breath into the wind.

  By this time, the suitors were out on the open seas with murder black in their hearts. Antinous arrived at the straits between Ithaca and the rugged bluffs of Samos. Here in the middle of the strait he found his hiding-place, the rocky little islet of Asteris, tiny, but with two mouths, and it was here that he moored, to lie up for his unwitting victim and murder him on the high seas.

  But the victim was not unwitting. Little did the killers know that the goddess who watched over him had advised him of their plans. In fact, he’d known about them before he’d even set sail for Pylos, and he had no intention of returning to Ithaca by such an obvious route. He had his own instructions from the goddess about where to put in and whom to visit as soon as he landed. He fully intended to give the islands a good wide berth and sail on through the dark. He would land in Ithaca at the nearest point and disembark, sending the ship round to port. But he himself would proceed on foot to Eumaeus’s hut and spend the night there. The swineherd would go to the city and give Penelope the news that her son was in from Pylos and safely home. That was the plan.

  But to ensure that everything went smoothly, Athene now sped back to Lacedaemon and roused Telemachus early. Menelaus urged him to stay on for another dozen days, but there was no question of that. Nor could he afford to put off any time in Pylos on the return leg of the journey. Bigger things were taking shape, events that transcended the code of hospitality, and the gods had business on their hands, none more so than Pallas Athene.

  ‘Besides which,’ she said, ‘you can’t leave your mother alone with that rabble much longer. Eurymachus keeps raising the stakes for her hand, and her father and brothers are pressurising her to consent. Without your support, she may cave in at last. And in any case, you know what women are like. She might take all sorts of things out of the house with you being away and have them transported to her new husband’s home. You know what they say – one hour between the second wedding sheets, and a whole lifetime is wiped out, the previous marriage forgotten. An hour, a lifetime. Think about it. And don’t delay another second.’

  So Telemachus presented his apologies, and Menelaus presented him with a two-handled cup and a glorious silver mixing-bowl, rimmed with gold, which had been crafted by Hephaestus and given to him by the King of Sidon. Helen went up to the chests where she kept her embroidered dresses and handed him a garment which glittered like a star.

  ‘I made it with my own cunning hands,’ she said, ‘and it is for your bride to wear on the day of your wedding.’

  The pair of princes mounted their chariot and red-haired Menelaus went up and raised the golden wine cup to drink their health.

  ‘And whenever you drink from the bowl of Hephaestus and the two-handled cup, you will always, I hope, remember me.’

  ‘I will never forget your kindness,’ answered Telemachus. ‘I only wish I could be sure of telling Odysseus of your warmth and generosity.’

  At that moment, an eagle came swooping down the wind from the left, clutching in its claws a great white goose.

  ‘It’s an omen,’ said Helen. ‘Believe a child of Zeus. That goose was home-fed, a tame one from the yard. The eagle came down from the mountains and snatched it. So shall Odysseus swoop down on the suitors and rip them to shreds!’

  Telemachus laughed and drained the cup. He threw it back into the hands of Menelaus. ‘May your father, the Thunderer, bring his daughter’s words true!’

  They left Sparta and galloped back to Pylos, where Telemachus parted from Peisistratus, begging him to let him continue his journey home and not put off any more time revisiting Nestor ‘– who, indeed, would certainly see to it that you were detained for a dozen days, if not a dozen years by his reminiscences. But let me hear from you once you have reached Ithaca, now that we are friends.’

  Just before Telemachus set sail, he wa
s approached by a stranger called Theoclymenus. He had the reputation of being a prophet but was currently on the run after killing a kinsman, and he begged Telemachus for sanctuary and safe passage.

  ‘If you’re on the sea-road and dodging death and danger,’ said Telemachus, ‘then come aboard with us. My own father is a wanderer, if he’s still alive, and I’m not going to forbid my ship to any good man in trouble.’

  So they ran past Crouni and fair-watered Chalcis and, after sunset, pressed on for Pheae with the stiff wind behind them, sweeping them along past green and shining Elis, where the Epeians hold sway, after which Telemachus plotted a course for the spiky isles, wondering whether even with the good guidance of a goddess he would avoid the murder-ship and get through alive.

  FIFTY-TWO

  Back on Ithaca, I was supping up for the second night in the swineherd’s hut. I put out a feeler to see if I could count on staying there or if I’d outlived my welcome and should go to town in the morning to beg my bread and bacon. The suitors would surely slip me a few crumbs from all that food they were consuming, I said, and in return I was ready to do some work about the place – splitting logs, firelighting, carving, cooking, wine-bearing, anything at all.

  ‘I’ve been around – there’s not a man to touch me in any of these departments. Old soldier, you know.’

  Eumaeus snorted. ‘Holy fuck, man, are you mad? These men are violent bastards, without a shred of respect for beggars, and so are their flunkeys and the hangers-on. They’re nancy boys, slimy shits, all of them, the sort that don’t get their mitts greasy, you follow me? The only grease you’ll see on that lot will be on their fucking arses, or their snouts. But it doesn’t mean they won’t be handy enough to give you a good thrashing if they feel like it. They’d piss on you as soon as look at you. No, you stay here with me. You’re no nuisance to anybody here, and when Telemachus drops by he’ll see that you’re properly looked after before sending you on your way.’

  I thanked him and asked him about the youth’s grandparents. Odysseus’s folks must have been approaching old age already when their son was called up, surely? ‘Are they still with you by any chance? Or are they no longer in the land of the living?’

  A short pause. I could see that Eumaeus was emotional.

  ‘One is, one isn’t. Laertes is still with us, but he won’t be for much longer, he’s so crushed by the loss of his wife and son he just wants to die, that’s all. He’s had enough.’

  ‘And the mother?’

  ‘Anticleia. Sheer grief for her boy, that’s what put her to her grave. There was no illness. She just died one day. As folk do. It’s known in the trade as a broken heart. They said heart attack, but I reckon her heart just broke. Hang on, are you all right?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘I was thinking of my own old folks just now. Couldn’t help being reminded of them, couldn’t stop the tears. Carry on.’

  ‘That’s all right. Gets to you sometimes, doesn’t it? There’s not much more to be said. But I can tell you, Anticleia always had a soft spot for me, as I did for her. A lovely lady she was. I miss her. I miss her kindness, I can tell you.’

  ‘Yes, but surely Penelope treats you just as well – or well enough?’

  More snorts. ‘I get on with work and I’m paid for it – meat and shelter, and that’s as far as it goes.’

  ‘What else is there?’

  ‘What else? Fucking hell, there’s more to life than food and a roof, isn’t there? I miss the soft word, the personal touch, you know, the face-to-face chatter, a bite and a sup in the palace and a titbit to take home. There’s none of that nowadays, fuck all. But it’s not her fault altogether, it’s the situation she’s up against with these shitebags. They’ve changed everything. They rule the fucking roost.’

  As we bunked down for the night, I pictured the brains of those bastards spattering the palace walls. This gave me sweet dreams.

  Early next morning we were getting breakfast ready when I heard somebody approaching – a bush, a pebble, a twig. I got up from the fire. Eumaeus looked at me, surprised.

  ‘Footsteps, you say? Fucking good ears you have at your age. I can’t hear a fucking thing myself. But look, the dogs are wagging their tails and they’re not barking. It must be somebody we know.’

  He’d hardly got the words out when a young man showed up in the doorway and the dogs ran to him. He looked like any other youngster, but I knew it was my boy. He hadn’t changed all that much. Still a bit of a weakling, I thought – a decent enough weakling, but a weakling all the same. Or at least not somebody you’d want on your right side – or your left – if you were facing the Trojan charioteers or breaking the battleline. No substitute for Achilles or Ajax or Diomedes. Yet there was something about the way he walked, the slight swing to that left leg . . .

  He was well through the door of his teens when I left for Troy, but I couldn’t help thinking much further back and remembering the little pink blob I’d seen at Penelope’s milky tits, those blue-veined udders with streaming nipples. What were they like now, the breasts I’d lain between on my last night, before it all began? How far would they have sagged? Mother’s milk had seen him off to a good start, and he’d grown tall, a good head above his father now. But he didn’t have my build. I looked for the old block in the chip – the sturdy bulk, the broad shoulders and thighs and calves, the barrel chest, the wrestler, the runner who’d whopped Ajax in the foot race at Troy and taken the Sidonian silver bowl – but I wasn’t there. Well, it had only been a few years. How could I expect a metamorphosis in that short time? And yet he must be – what age now – twenty?

  It wasn’t just that I wasn’t there. I couldn’t find that other thing either, the thing that should have been inside me, the expected surge of joy, the flash of recognition. There was no lump in the throat or tear behind the eye, just this sudden depression. Why wasn’t I glad to greet my own flesh and blood, my only son, for fuck’s sake? Was time, that stubborn tricksy bastard, to blame? Or was it Troy? Or was it me? It was all happening so fast now after so long, and with such banality. A boy was coming through a gate. He was crossing the courtyard and entering the hut. There he stood in the doorway, with four dogs lolloping round him, their muzzles nuzzling his dangling fingers. So what? What did any of it mean?

  But I lightened when I saw how Eumaeus rose to welcome him and how easily and pleasantly the young man greeted him.

  ‘How are things, uncle?’

  Uncle. I liked that touch. And I liked the way he greeted the pauper. He didn’t flinch when he saw the thing in the corner that got up to offer him his place, a pile of filth in blackened rags.

  ‘No, no, keep your seat, sir, this’ll do well enough for me.’

  He made for a stack of green brushwood, and the swineherd quickly threw a fleece over it before he could sit down. Some men think you’re a prince if you plant your pampered arse on soft cushions, but Telemachus wasn’t like that.

  He was carrying a spear, too lightweight for my liking, which Eumaeus propped in a corner, and a bow and quiver. I could gauge the care he’d taken of the bow; it looked supple and strong, and the arrows were polished and sharp. These were all good signs. Maybe he wasn’t my son for nothing. Eumaeus introduced me as a Cretan who’d tramped the world and fought at Troy and had known his father.

  ‘Fought at his side, sir – and heard news of him since then. In Thesprotia.’

  Eumaeus shrugged, and Telemachus threw a quick glance at me, nodded and smiled. This filthy scarecrow, steaming blackly by the fire, a hero of Troy and his father’s comrade. Hardly. But his courtesy didn’t fail him.

  ‘Well, I’ll bet you can tell us a tale or two then, old man. It’s always good to hear news from abroad. But in the meantime, what can I be doing for you?’

  Eumaeus cut in to say he’d already explained the unusual and difficult circumstances that would make it a bad idea for me to go to town on my own.

  ‘Quite right, uncle. I’ll certainly kit him out with
everything he needs to see him back on the road – but not at the palace, where I can hardly call the house my own these days. And they’ll have grown bolder in my absence, those bad lads. Could you keep him here with you at the farm? And I’ll send stuff up to you. Now I know you need to get to work, but one last thing – please let my mother know I’m coming to see her. Could you do that for me?’

  Eumaeus took his leave. Telemachus turned to me courteously.

  ‘Apologies for this, but I fancy if I took you home with me as you are, you’d have to face the mockery of that mob in the palace right now. They treat the place as their own, and, as I’m sure Eumaeus will have told you, they piss on hospitality, but they help themselves to anything they want. They slaughter the beasts, the wine runs like water. Worse than that, they mock my mother with their loose talk about bedding her. They’re screwing her maids – I might as well be blunt with you – not all of them, but there’s a hard core of harlots that are working against my mother and giving these bastards the run of the place. They’re a riotous lot, a rabble, and they’ll be out of control as I’ve been away for a while, and I’ve no support.’

  ‘That’s where you’re wrong,’ I said.

  He looked at me, his face a question – but a nice open one, not a frown.

  ‘What’s that you say?’

  ‘I said you’re wrong. You do have support.’

  I said it quietly but firmly, so firmly he looked hard at me, finding my eyes, picking them out from among the matted hair, the blackened skin, the surrounding wreckage. He nodded at me, smiling slightly.

  ‘Right, I see. And where is it, can I ask, this support?’

  ‘You’re looking at it, my boy, right here in front of you. I’m your support.’

  He didn’t lose the little smile.

  ‘You’re my support?’

  ‘I am.’

  A deep sigh.

  ‘Look here, I know you’ve probably seen a bit of action, possibly even at Troy, if you say so – you look like you’ve lived hard. But I don’t think I’m explaining this well enough. Let me put it to you this way, my old friend –’