Ithaca (The Songs of Penelope, #1)

by Claire North

and so she runs, runs, runs for the hills, runs like Atalanta reborn,

Even in dawn’s thinly mirrored light, the perfect white that bounces in off the sea, the great hall is a shadowed pit of inequity. The stench of men, of spilt wine and chewed bone, of flatulence and bile mingled with sweat – I pause in the door to pinch my nose at it.

Antinous was five years old when Odysseus went to war, and stood on the docks and cried and stamped his foot and wanted to know why he couldn’t be a soldier. Now Achilles is dead, Ajax and Hector rot in dust, and Antinous asks no more.

These are the men of note. We regard them as one might regard a rash – hopeful that it does not spread further – and then move on.

They are ornamentations to this scene. If the poets speak of them at all, it will be in much the same breath as a pleasing vase or a nice shield – a sculptural detail, adding a certain flavour to the event. It is perhaps sensing this that the three women have arranged themselves as a picture of modesty.

Once upon a time, there were three queens in Greece. One was chaste and pure, one a temptress whore, one a murderous hag. That is the how the poets sing it.

Beauty is a whim, it changes as easily as the tide. I was once considered the most beautiful, until familiarity bred tedium.

Now Isis – that’s a woman with a bit of pluck, that’s someone who gets things done, she and I once played tavli for the soul of a manticore and both cheated so much it was practically fair!

The silence of men is a novel experience, and she is prepared to thoroughly enjoy it.

I was a queen of women once, before my husband bound me with chains and made me a queen of wives.

When the poets speak of Achilles, they do not mention a couple of things. They skim over how much time he spent weeping into Patroclus’s chest hair, and just how snotty all the tears were. They are a little hazy on how squishy the Myrmidons got when singing songs together about brotherly love, and the difference between a manly slap on the thigh and a caress of your neighbour’s leg. And they utterly fail to mention how much time Achilles spent being really rather clumsy with a sword, or that time he accidentally hit himself in the head with his own spear while he was twirling it dramatically like the wings of the sycamore, because it’s just not fashionable to have to work at being a hero.

To be patient is to feel burning rage, impotent fury, to rage and rock against the injustice of the world and yet – and yet – to hold one’s tongue.

You have nothing to gain here. Your plan will not work, and if you continue down this path, I will destroy you.”

“This is the world we live in. We are not heroes. We do not choose to be great; we have no power over our destinies. The scraps of freedom that we have are to pick between two poisons, to make the least bad decision we can, knowing that there is no outcome that will not leave us bruised, bloody on the floor. You have no choice. Your choices have been taken from you.

“The gods are foolish and blind – they think the greatest poems are the ones of death in battle and the ravishing of queens. But the stories that will live for ever are of the lost ones, the fearful ones, who through bitter hardship and despair find hope, find strength – find their way home.

In a far-off place, Helen stares at her face in a pool of still water, and does not breathe, does not exhale, for fear of disturbing its silvered surface. Yet the less it ripples, the more she cannot hide the truth of the wrinkles just below the almonds of her eyes, and she puts her fist in her mouth and bites so that she will not scream. So it is with the last of our three Grecian queens.

In the flash of your eye and the set of your mouth, in the steadiness of your step and the straightening of your back, you are a queen. My queen. I had never thought I would love one of Zeus’s bastards so much as I love you, glorious Clytemnestra.

I dabble my fingers in Clytemnestra’s brow, banish her pain, banish her fear. I bid the blood seeping from her grow thin, the breath slow. I will not let her linger long, but as her eyes close, I add my voice to the singing of the women, that she might be carried upon celestial music to her story’s end.