It was impossible to tell, in that mild voice of hers, if the comment was pointed. If it were, I supposed she was entitled.
She said, “He told me how you helped him on his way. He would not have survived without your advice.”
“You give me too much credit. He was wise.”
“Sometimes,” she said. Her eyes were the color of mountain ash. “Do you know that after he left you, he landed with another nymph? Calypso. She fell in love with him and hoped to make him her immortal husband. Seven years, she stayed him on her isle, draping him in divine fabrics, feeding him delicacies.”
“He did not thank her for it.”
“No. He refused her and prayed to the gods to free him. At last they forced her to let him go.”
I did not think I imagined the trace of satisfaction in her voice.
“When your son came, I thought perhaps he was hers. But then I saw the weave of his cloak. I remembered Daedalus’ loom.”
It was strange, how much she knew of me. But then, I knew about her too.
“Calypso fawned over him, and you turned his men to pigs. Yet you were the one he preferred. Do you think that strange?”
“No,” I said.
It was nearly a smile. “Just so.”
“He did not know about the child.”
“I know,” she said. “He would never have kept that from me.” That was pointed.
“I spoke with your son last night,” I said.
“Did you?” I thought I heard a flicker of something in her voice.
“He explained to me why you had to leave Ithaca. I was sorry to hear it.”
“Your son was kind to bring us away.” Her eyes had found Trygon’s tail. “Is it like a bee’s venom, that stings only once? Or like a snake?”
“It could poison a thousand times and more. There is no end to it. It was meant to stop a god.”
“Telegonus told us that you faced the great lord of sting-rays himself.”
“I did.”
She nodded, a private gesture, as if in confirmation. “He told us that you took further precautions for him as well. That you have cast a spell over the island, and no god, not even Olympians, can pass.”
“Gods of the dead may pass,” I said. “No others.”
“You are fortunate,” she said, “to be able to summon such protections.” From the beach came faint shouts: our sons moving the boat.
“I am embarrassed to ask this of you, but I did not bring a black cloak with me when we left. Do you have one I might wear? I would mourn for him.”
I looked at her, as vivid in my doorway as the moon in the autumn sky. Her eyes held mine, gray and steady. It is a common saying that women are delicate creatures, flowers, eggs, anything that may be crushed in a moment’s carelessness. If I had ever believed it, I no longer did.
“No,” I said. “But I have yarn, and a loom. Come.”
Chapter Twenty-two
HER FINGERS RAN LIGHTLY over the beams, stroked the threads of the weft like a stable master greeting a prize horse. She asked no questions; she seemed to absorb the loom’s workings by touch alone. The light from the window glowed on her hands, as if it wished to illuminate her work. Carefully, she took off my half-finished tapestry and strung the black yarn. Her motions were precise, nothing wasted. She was a swimmer, Odysseus had told me, long limbs cutting effortlessly to her destination.
Outside the sky had turned. The clouds hung so low they seemed to graze the windows, and I could hear the first fat drops begin to fall. Telemachus and Telegonus gusted through the door, wet from hauling the boat. When Telegonus saw Penelope at the loom he hurried forward, already exclaiming over the fineness of her work. I watched Telemachus instead. His face went hard and he turned away abruptly to the window.
I set out lunch, and we ate in near silence. The rain tapered off. I could not bear the thought of being shut up all afternoon and drew my son out for a walk along the shore. The sand was hard and wet, and our footprints looked as though they had been cut with a knife. I linked my arm through his and was surprised when he let it stay. His tremor from yesterday was gone, but I knew it would return.
It was only a little after midday, yet something in the air felt dusky and obscuring, like a veil across my eyes. My conversation with Penelope was tugging at me. At the time, I had felt clever and swift, but now that I ran it back through my mind, I realized how little she had said. I had meant to question her, and instead I found myself showing her my loom.
He had talked his way past the witch instead.
“Whose idea was it to come here?” I said.
He frowned at the suddenness of my question. “Does it matter?”
“I am curious.”
“I can’t remember.” But he did not meet my eyes.
“Not yours.”
He hesitated. “No. I suggested Sparta.”
It was the natural thought. Penelope’s father lived in Sparta. Her cousin was a queen there. A widow would find welcome.
“So you said nothing of Aiaia.”
“No. I thought it would be…” He trailed off. Indelicate, of course.
“So who first mentioned it?”
“It may have been the queen. I remember she said that she would prefer not to go to Sparta. That she would have a little time.”
He was choosing his words carefully. I felt a humming beneath my skin.
“Time for what?”
“She did not say.”
Penelope the weaver, who could lead you over and under, into her design. We were passing through thickets, angling upwards beneath the dark, wet branches.
“It is strange. Did she think her family would not have wanted her? Was there a rift with Helen? Did she speak of any enemies?”
“I don’t know. No. Of course she did not speak of enemies.”
“What did Telemachus say?”
“He was not there.”
“But when he learned you would come here, was he surprised?”
“Mother.”
“Just tell me her words. Say them exactly as you remember.”
He had stopped on the path. “I thought you did not suspect them anymore.”
“Not of vengeance. But there are other questions.”
He took a deep breath. “I cannot remember exactly. Not her words, nor anything at all. It is gray like a fog. It is still gray.”
The pain had risen in his face. I said no more, but as we walked my mind kept picking at the thought, like fingers at a knot. There was a secret beneath that spider-silk. She had not wanted to go to Sparta. Instead she had gone to her husband’s lover’s island. And she wanted time. For what?
We had reached the house by then. Inside, she was working at the loom. Telemachus stood by the window. His hands were tight at his sides and the air was stark. Had they quarreled? I looked at her face, but it was bent to her threads and showed nothing. No one shouted, no one wept, but I thought I would have preferred it to this quiet strain.
Telegonus cleared his throat. “I’m thirsty. Who else would like a cup?”
I watched him broach the cask and pour. My son with his valiant heart. Even in grief, he sought to bear us all up, to carry us through one moment to the next. But there was only so much he could do. The afternoon wore on in silence. Dinner was the same. The moment the food was gone, Penelope rose. “I’m tired,” she said. Telegonus stayed a little later, but by moonrise he was yawning into his hands. I sent him off with Arcturos. I expected Telemachus to follow, but when I turned he was still at his place.
“I think you have stories of my father,” he said. “I would like to hear them.”
His boldness kept taking me by surprise. All day he had hung back, avoiding my gaze, diffident and nearly invisible. Then suddenly he planted himself before me as if he had grown there fifty years. It was a trick even Odysseus would have admired.