A Thousand Ships(70)

Her island is in the middle of nowhere, far from Ithaca and far from everywhere. She lives in a large cave, which sounds practically bestial to me, but apparently she has a hearth and burns cedar logs for the warmth and the homely scent. You used to have a home on Ithaca, of course, but perhaps our logs weren’t quite up to your current standards. Her cave is surrounded by thick woodlands, apparently, which sounded so much like a euphemism when the bard first sang it that I threatened to have him flogged. He assured me he was describing nothing more vulgar than poplar and cypress trees, home to owls and hawks and other birds. I can’t decide whether he is laughing at me or not. It all sounds positively idyllic – as jails go, I mean – with a vine full of ripe grapes growing around the mouth of the cave, and springs murmuring with fresh water bubbling up nearby. Meadows of parsley grow outside, dotted with violets, because I presume she likes the colour. Or perhaps she eats them. With your dalliances, Odysseus, it becomes increasingly hard to guess.

And Calypso seems to have been the perfect hostess, so long as you overlook the part where you are – and it seems almost quaint that I still remember this – my husband, and not hers. The bard describes her excellence at weaving, at her golden loom, for example, which I’m sure you appreciated as much as anyone. You probably needed a new cloak after your shipwreck, I would imagine.

I also have been weaving, in case you were interested. You’re probably wondering what else I have been doing with the last twenty years: I could have woven cloaks for the whole of Ithaca in this time. And perhaps I would have, if I were not engaged in weaving an endless shroud. No, don’t despair: your father has not yet journeyed to meet your mother in the Underworld. Laertes lives, though he is old, and frail, and bent almost double from the grief of waiting for his son to return.

But you have been gone so long, Odysseus, that Ithaca no longer regards you as its king. Some of the old families do, of course. They remain loyal to you, as have I. But there are many more young men, vying to take your place. If you could see them, brawling with one another like stags. I hoped that Telemachus would be strong enough to see them off, but he is a quiet, cautious young man, prone to tears. He grew up without a father, of course, and it has left him uncertain of how he should be. For many years, I was strong enough to keep them at bay, calling on your reputation. The tales which came back to us from Troy were so impressive. You were a warrior king, no one would dare disobey your wife.

But those stories have not been fresh for a long time now. When did we last hear news of you? Seven years ago, and you were facing an array of impossible, implausible obstacles, one after another. By the time the bards had done their work, none of us knew whether you lived or died. Seven years of silence means that most Ithacans are sure you have died. I find myself unable to accept that you are dead, but equally unable to believe that you are alive. Perhaps it is your shroud I’m weaving. The noblemen’s sons, who were too young to sail with you all those years ago, have grown up to be spoiled, entitled men. Each is convinced he should replace you. Each knows the best route to that goal is marriage to your widow. And so, Odysseus, I find myself with a houseful of young men who are eating and drinking everything we have in our stores.

Remember the wine, and the grain, and the oil, which we kept in casks beneath the great hall? I used to hug myself – do you remember – when we went down the cool stone steps, out of the heat and light, to the storeroom? The first time it happened, you thought I was shivering from the cold. You loosened the pins of your cloak and swung it around my shoulders. The smell of you on that soft wool made me almost cry with delight (I was pregnant, of course. I am not usually such a sentimental fool). So I clothed myself in you and breathed deeply. But the next time, and the next, you noticed that I always wrapped my arms around myself in the storeroom, whether I was cold or not. You didn’t have to ask: you just knew that it came from an abiding sense of happiness. Of satisfaction that no matter what the winter brought, we were ready. We had so much, stored away from the mould and the mice, in our cool, dry storeroom.

Well, those stores are almost gone now. These boorish, cavernous men have invaded my home and demolished everything they can find within. They sleep with my serving-women, so I no longer know who to trust. And if the thought of your wife in jeopardy does not stir you to action, they also plot to kill your son. He has gone travelling in search of news about his father: to Pylos, I think, and perhaps Sparta. So he is safe for now (as safe as a man who travels away from home can ever be. I am hoping you are an exceptional case). But eventually, he will return, and they will not leave him alone for long.

Telemachus’ best hope is that I marry one of these young, handsome, greedy men, and thus reduce the threat he poses to them. Is that what you would want, Odysseus, if you were alive? I cannot pretend I haven’t considered it. They are so very, very young. And I am not. The thought of their hard, youthful flesh is a tempting one. It’s not as if you have been faithful, after all. Your infidelities are the subject of song all over Achaea and beyond. There are children learning to play the lyre who can sing of your other women. And nymphs. And goddesses.

You have humiliated me, and I am sorely tempted to return the favour. A young man would be delicious. And grateful. But, oh, Odysseus, they are all so stupid. I cannot abide it. I would rather my clever old husband came home than set myself up with a witless young one. What would we ever talk about? Although I suppose they would not want to talk much. Young men so rarely do.