"Is this your work?" she asked, going to the nearest loom. Helen's face brightened. With a glance for her sleeping daughter, she got up and followed her cousin.
"I've caught your trick, turning dreams into weaving." Her face took an expression that struck Penelope as strange. Part longing, part dreaming happiness, part despair.
The picture on the loom was one-third completed. It showed high walls, a city fortress and a flat, grassy plain leading to the sea beyond. A man stood in the foreground, finished from the waist up. He wore armor, dressed for battle, one hand holding a raised sword, the other grasping a spear. He wore no helmet and his head tilted back, mouth open in a battle shout. Golden brown threads made his sculptured face. Yellow curls descended from a noble brow.
"He is beautiful," Penelope murmured. The man wasn't Menelaos. This felt somehow dangerous.
"A hero from my dreams." Helen stroked the cloth with her fingertips, her eyes bright.
"Perhaps the son you will have someday?"
"Oh, he is too beautiful to be Menelaos' son," she said with an odd, uncomfortable laugh. "No, this is a dream from Aphrodite. The feelings in it are not fitting for a mother toward her son." She blushed, looking directly at her cousin. "Tell me honestly, Penelope. Do you have such dreams, even lying in your husband's arms?"
"No." A shiver passed over her. "My dreams warn me such joy cannot last. I heed the warnings and make sure not a day is wasted. I long to give Odysseus a son, but I will not let my desires poison the joy we have."
"Keep your dreams hidden." Helen gripped Penelope's shoulder. Her voice lowered, tight and intense. "Cousin, dreams are as often traps of the gods as warnings. Speak your dreams and you could lose all that is precious to you." With a guilty glance toward the man on the loom, Helen returned to the window seat and the cradle.
* * * *
"I think Menelaos torments her for not giving him a son," Penelope whispered in the quiet of the night. She welcomed the warmth of Odysseus' arms around her, driving away unwelcome thoughts she had gathered during the day.
"Without knowing what he does," he agreed. "We spoke after the war chiefs left. He fears for Helen's life if she ever quickens again. She was ill while she carried Hermione and her labor nearly killed her. Menelaos thinks to take a slave girl to give him a son, to spare Helen."
"He won't spare Helen by doing that. What love she does have for him will turn to hate."
"I think Menelaos fears Helen, a little."
"He would be wiser to fear losing her loyalty. It would do them good to share their lives with each other. Helen has her daughter, her weaving and the household. Menelaos has the city to rule and the troubles with Ilion to worry him. They share nothing except their bed." She shivered as she sat up. "My love, all this frightens me. I see how happy we are. I remember the gods are jealous and don't leave well enough alone. My life was often affected by what happened to Helen, and now she grows discontent."
"I will speak to Menelaos, one new husband to another," Odysseus said, reaching up for her. She let him draw her down next to him. "I know that look, that tone, Penelope. You worry because we have no children, don't you?"
"A little. I would welcome being as ill as Helen was, I think." She wondered if she should confess her newest fear, that the potion had made her unable to bear children.
"I would not," he snapped in mock anger. "I would rather have you than twenty sons."
"Less work to keep me fed and clothed."
"Woman, your tongue is too sharp." Swiftly, he rolled her onto her back and tickled her, smothering her laughter with kisses, holding her still under him so she couldn't escape. Penelope welcomed the laughter and teasing. It was warm and alive, driving away her fears.
* * * *
By the time they left Sparta to return home, Penelope had lost her worries. She had seen Menelaos with his wife and daughter. Despite the man's stumbling tongue, he adored his family and Helen knew it.
Odysseus told her how the councils concerning Ilion progressed. Many merchants found it more profitable to go overland around Troy. Despite the expense, they were better off risking bands of thieves than to go through the Dardanelles and lose their profit to tribute. Ilion learned its lesson slowly. Troy's merchants and wares were shunned or even evicted from some ports. Not all the kings and chieftains of the Achaians followed the accords set down by Agamemnon, but the pressure did work. Those merchants who risked passing by Ilion did not lose as much as the year before and the losses slowly dropped.
King Nestor shared the same news when they stopped overnight in Pylos. Penelope marveled that the man was still so healthy and strong, with all his years behind him. Polykaster had married and was hugely pregnant. Penelope would have been depressed, but Polykaster told her of a powdered root she had taken to make her fertile. She gave generously to Penelope.
They reached Ithaka in midsummer. Work waited for them, taking up their daytime hours. Spring storms had ravaged the coastline and fishermen had been lost. The plentiful spring rains had vanished with summer and now the fields were dry and cracking.
Penelope went twice as often with Eurykleia and the other faithful women to make offerings to the Goddess. Underneath the chanting and the sweet oil burned to bring help to their island, she sensed the unrest and worry, tasted and smelled the fear in the air. She heard the whispers. More than once, she turned to catch a woman gesturing at her flat belly, a look of frustration on the other's face. Penelope knew more people blamed the bad summer on her. If the queen wasn't fruitful, the land would be barren as well. She took Polykaster's powder and went every morning to Athena's shrine, pleading for help.
Eurynome watched her carefully, at Penelope's request. Antikleia and Eurykleia were included in the secret of Polykaster's gift. The four women spent hours together at a time discussing Penelope's health, the slightest change she felt in her body. When her moon flow came after returning from Sparta, Penelope cried. She knew her concern showed clearly because Odysseus often told her, for no reason at all, they had plenty of time for children. She loved him more for that, and loved Laertes that he never spoke of his longing for a grandson.
* * * *
Fall approached, with signs that it would be a rough, stormy winter. Odysseus took regular trips to the other islands, braving the seas in a smaller ship. Reports came of raiders scouring the coastlines and smaller islands, and he went to help the people prepare their defenses. He always set a specific limit for how long he would be gone and made sure Penelope knew the route he and his men planned to take. It was common sense in such bad seas that searchers knew where to look for delayed voyagers. And, Odysseus told her when he was in a teasing mood, she was prone to jealousy. If she knew where he was, she would not suspect him of climbing into other beds. Penelope laughed every time he said it, comforted by his teasing.
Fall came in with rain that made the late crops flourish, and made the seas treacherous. Penelope barely heard when her husband and his father worried and complained about the dangers. She concentrated on the green fields, food for the winter, and the changes in her body.
Odysseus took a trip to Kephallenia, promising to be home in four days. Penelope waited until the ship was gone from the harbor, then sent Eurynome for Eurykleia and Antikleia. The four women talked and compared, and agreed.
Her child would be born with the return of spring.
Penelope spent the next four days in euphoria, planning and waiting, walking her rooms, trying not to give the rest of the household an inkling of what she knew. She had not thought of Antikleia being a weak link in the secret until Laertes came to visit her one dismal, blowy afternoon.
He came up to the door of her weaving room, refusing to let the maids announce him. Penelope worked several more passes of thread before she realized he was there. When she looked up at him, startled, Laertes laughed.
"Forgive me. I needed to really look at you." He stepped into the room. "Could we speak alone for a moment?" he asked, looking at Melantho and Au
tonoe, the only servants there at the moment. She nodded and the maids left. Laertes waited until they were gone, then brought a small ivory box from under his cloak. "Are you truly well, Penelope?"
"Very well, Father." She wondered at the brightness in his eyes. She knew how the cold and wet made his knees and elbows and fingers ache, yet he seemed unaffected today.
"Good, that is very good." He handed her the box. "A gift, given in joy, to my son's most precious wife."
"How did you find out?" she said, holding the box on her lap. Penelope smiled, despite her disappointment. Laertes looked joyously ready to burst, and twenty years younger. "Mother said she wouldn't tell anyone."
"She didn't. I read it in her face. She smiles continually. Her eyes shine. She sings. And she and Eurykleia reminisced about Odysseus as a baby, when they thought I couldn't hear." Laertes bent and kissed her forehead, his gesture like a blessing. "I will tell no one. Oh, but to be here and see my son's face when you tell him!"
Penelope decided she wasn't upset that he had guessed. She knew he could have made her miserable the last two years, pressing for a grandchild, making her feel inadequate as a wife. She loved the man as if he were her true father. When she opened the box, the jewelry inside took the breath from her.
Sapphires and emeralds, mounted on thin silver wires formed a necklet, thicker than her thumb, with a cunning latch to hold it closed. Thin bracelets of silver clashed and chimed, and at the bottom of the pile lay several rings, set with tiny chips of sapphires and emeralds. Penelope looked up from the sea-colored hoard at Laertes.
"I'm afraid of disappointing you," she whispered. "Father, such beauty--"
"Hush." He gently pressed a finger against her lips. "I bought these to give you at the winter festival. Now simply seemed a more appropriate time. They are for my son's wife, not the mother of his child. There is a vast difference."
Penelope nodded that she understood and kissed him in thanks. Only when Laertes had gone did the tears come.
* * * *
On the fourth day, Penelope prepared herself for Odysseus' return. She chose a new dress, in celebration--white, embroidered with blue and green threads to match the jewelry Laertes had given her. She gave instructions for a special meal, to be started when Odysseus came through the door. Her thoughts wouldn't stay on anything but the news she had to give him. Penelope knew she would be useless to the rest of the household, so she settled herself in her weaving room to plan designs for blankets and clothes for the child.
Morning passed with no word of sails in the harbor. Noon came and she ate out of habit, not hunger. The afternoon dragged. Storm clouds gathered, slowly leaching gold from the light. She thought she measured every second with her heartbeats. When dusk fell, Penelope went to her room and had Eurynome bathe and perfume her. She put on the new jewelry, then removed it again. The thin chiming of the bracelets was over-loud in the waiting silence and she wanted to hear every footstep that approached the house.
Evening came. She ate only because Eurynome ordered her to. Penelope stayed in her room, sitting in the window that looked out over the garden. She concentrated on the coming child, trying to recall every dream to decipher what he would look like. She was determined her firstborn would be a son. Though a daughter would be a gift from the Goddess, to inherit her mother's duties, Odysseus and Ithaka needed a son. The world was a warrior's world and Ithaka needed a man to defend her.
At the back of her mind, she knew it was foolish to dwell on such things. She had little control over the issue of her womb. Penelope preferred a vain exercise to the alternative. Despite her concentration, visions of Odysseus' ship wrecked on the rocks or beset by raiders plagued her. When sleep finally caught her, she welcomed it.
Penelope sat sleeping in the window, her head tilted back against the thick frame so she faced into the room instead of out to the garden. Moonlight cast stark shadows across her garden, elongated streaks of black against white made it a place out of delirium dreams. Odysseus found her there. She didn't wake until he had carried her four steps away from the window.
"Go back to sleep," he murmured, his voice touched with laughter. "You're only having a dream."
"Good dream," she mumbled thickly. Her eyes flickered open. She managed to slide her arm around his neck.
Her mind and body stayed half-asleep while he carried her to her bed. Her senses felt strangely acute in this state. Every shadow and beam of moonlight stood out in stark relief. She could feel every individual hair on Odysseus' neck, under her arm. He smelled of the salt damp of the sea and of his ship--tar and wet wood, sweat and damp rope and fresh air.
Penelope buried her face in his shoulder and inhaled deeply of his scent. A ripple of desire went through her body, quelled by weariness, but waking her. She kissed his neck and managed to lift her head enough to find his mouth as Odysseus set her down. Her arm wouldn't tighten enough to keep her hold on him when he stepped back.
"You need your sleep."
"I waited for you."
"So I see." His smile went crooked and he sat on the edge of the bed. "The tides and winds were against us all the way."
"But you did come back in four days, as you promised." For the first time, Penelope didn't want another tiny lesson on the vagaries of sailing. Her hand strayed over her belly and now she didn't frown and silently scold herself for her unconscious reaction. "It hurts to see you go, but I know you always come back. You always keep your word."
"Penelope?" He frowned and gently cupped her cheek with his hand. "Beloved, why is it so important that we speak now, and not in the morning? Eurynome was adamant that I come up to you. Finding you in the window like I did, I was glad I listened."
"We wanted you to know before anyone else guessed." Penelope sat up, shifting to her knees and reached out for him. Odysseus frowned, his curiosity changing to worry and he drew her onto his lap. "The Goddess has heard my prayers." She laughed when his frown turned into a comical mask of dawning comprehension. "I carry your son," she whispered, the words trembling on her lips.
Penelope had thought long and hard on how she would tell him. The four words she chose satisfied her, speaking all her dreams and hopes.
Odysseus' arms tightened around her. He gasped her name, then hid his face in her hair. His body shook as soft laughter escaped him.
"Oh, my sweet Penelope." He leaned back and stroked the hair away from her face. His touch was gentle, slightly trembling. "The relief on your face. Were you that worried about having children?"
"We have been married more than two years." She let him lay her back down in the bed. This time, Odysseus stretched out next to her, keeping her close in his arms.
"There is time, more than enough time."
"No. This year was hard, and more of our people blame me. I blame myself."
"There's no need."
"Yes, there is." She nearly told him of the potion, but Odysseus kissed her, many soft kisses to cover her face. She laughed weakly when he kissed the tip of her nose.
"My love, the lean times were here before you arrived. A bad year does not make you a bad queen. Or a barren one, as you have proven." He tucked her head under his chin. "There is more than enough time, though I would not send this child back to the Goddess."
"No, neither would I. Yet still, we have so little time." Penelope tried not to let the slight chill wash over her again, as it had done every time she thought of her dreams. "Helen agrees with me. Many of my dreams hold the truth. My dreams tell me I shall give you a son. Dreams tell me our days of happiness together are limited. I see you sailing distant seas, walking distant shores. I see myself waiting, my hair gray with the frost of years."
"The gods shall send me on many journeys, then. But I will always come back to you. I promise you that. I swear on my life and my love for you." Odysseus gently laid his hand flat on her belly. "I swear on our child, I will always come back to you and not even death shall stop me."
She nodded, refusing to let the tears
touch her eyes again. Penelope pressed herself close against him and said, "Tell me about your journey."
"I would rather talk about the child."
"There is more than enough time for that." A tiny laugh escaped her at the irony of her words. "Tell me about Kephallenia and what you brought back, and we shall decide what to set aside for him when he is grown."
"You are so sure you carry a son?" His voice had a sleepy rumble.
"I am sure. Now, tell me." She turned onto her side, pressed against him, her head resting on his shoulder.
Odysseus drifted off to sleep before he finished his tale. Penelope lay awake in his arms only a few breaths before she too fell asleep.
Chapter 16
* * *
"I think you've frightened them all away," Penelope said, voice low, as she looked up from her stitching.
On the floor at her feet, Odysseus fit a brace for the new loom. He frowned and scanned the weaving room. They were alone, no company but the muffled hiss of the coals in the brazier and the howl of the winter storm beating the walls.
"Why would they be frightened of me? Am I an unkind master? Do I beat the men and rape the women?" He tried for an aggrieved tone but failed, breaking out in chuckles.
"You did shout at Nerilia when she slipped and fell against me."
"The girl is dead from the knees down and blind into the bargain," he retorted, returning to his work. "Any fool could see the paving tile was crooked and slick."
"No damage was done and she was frightened enough for my sake before you shouted." Penelope leaned down, wrapped her arm around his neck and kissed his ear. "I should be flattered you're so careful of me."
"Yes, you should be." Odysseus caught at her hand when she released him and pressed a kiss against her palm. "Even if I were hard-hearted, I would still be careful of you. Eurynome is a harpy, watching and scolding and swooping down on the least offender. The woman frightens me."
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