or else kept to their thoughts in silence.
When I stepped into my dining hall, Telemachus was there. He stood in the room’s center, poised as an arrow nocked to its string. The knife gleamed at his waist.
So, I thought. It comes. Well, it would be on my terms. I walked past him to the hearth. I poured a cup of wine and took my chair. All the while, his eyes followed me. Good. My skin felt shot through with power, like the sky before a storm.
“I know you plan to kill my son.”
Nothing moved but the flames in the hearth. He said, “How do you know it?”
“Because you are a prince, and the son of Odysseus. Because you respect the laws of gods and men. Because your father is dead, and my son the cause. Perhaps you think to try your hand at me as well. Or did you just want me to watch?”
My eyes shone and made their own shadows.
He said, “Lady, I bear neither you nor your son ill will.”
“How kind,” I said. “I am completely reassured.”
His muscles were not a warrior’s, bunched and hardened. He had no scars or calluses I could see. But he was a Mycenaean prince, honed and supple, trained to combat from his cradle. Penelope would have been scrupulous in his rearing.
“How may I prove myself to you?” His voice was grave. He mocked me, I thought.
“You cannot. I know a son is bound to avenge his father’s murder.”
“I do not deny that.” His gaze did not waver. “But that only holds if he was murdered.”
I lifted an eyebrow. “You say he was not? Yet you bring a blade into my house.”
He looked down as if surprised to see it. “It is for carving,” he said.
“Yes,” I said. “I imagine so.”
He drew the knife from his belt and slid it down the table. It made a raw, juddering sound.
“I was on the beach when my father died,” he said. “I had heard the shouts and feared a confrontation. Odysseus was not…welcoming in recent years. I came too late, but I saw the end. He had wrested away the spear. It was not by Telegonus’ hand that he died.”
“Most men do not look for reasons to forgive their father’s death.”
“I cannot speak for those men,” he said. “To insist upon your son’s fault would be unjust.”
It was a strange word to hear on his lips. It had been one of his father’s favorites. That wry smile, his hands uplifted. What can I say? The world is an unjust place. I considered the man before me. In spite of my anger, there was something in him that compelled. He showed no courtly polish. His gestures were simple, even awkward. He had the grim purpose of a ship, battened against a storm.
“You should understand,” I said, “that any attempt to harm my son would fail.”
He cast an eye to the lions in their heaps. “I think I can understand that.”
I had not expected it of him, that dryness, but I did not laugh. “You told my son there was nothing left for you on Ithaca. We both know a throne waits there. Why are you not in it?”
“I am not welcome on Ithaca now.”
“Why?”
He did not hesitate. “Because I watched while my father fell. Because I did not kill your son where he stood. And after, when the pyre burned, I did not weep.”
The words were calm but they had a heat to them like fresh coals. I remembered the look that had passed over his face when I’d spoken of honoring Odysseus.
“You do not grieve for your father?”
“I do. I grieve that I never met the father everyone told me I had.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Explain.”
“I am no storyteller.”
“I am not asking for a story. You have come to my island. You owe me truth.”
A moment passed, and then he nodded. “You will have it.”
I had taken the wooden chair, so he took the silver. His father’s old seat. It had been one of the first things that had caught my eye about Odysseus, how he’d lounged there like it was a bed. Telemachus sat up straight like a pupil called to recitation. I offered him wine. He declined.
When Odysseus had not come home after the war, he said, suitors had begun to arrive seeking Penelope’s hand. Scions of Ithaca’s most prosperous families and ambitious sons from the neighboring islands, looking for a wife, and a throne if they could get it. “She refused them,