Ithaca (The Songs of Penelope, #1)

by Claire North

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.

“Fucking pirates. Fucking pirates! There was a day, you know, there was a day when – fucking pirates!” “Thank you for that strategic assessment, Peisenor.”

Hades, who has a more sensible grasp of these things, looks into the mist and murmurs: “Some families never can find north.”

“They were incompetent. We will not be incompetent.” Telemachus seems very sure of this, which based on the last eighteen years seems optimistic.

“Isn’t it just? I imagine he is interested in the amber that sails through my harbours.” “That’s not a metaphor, is it?”

Your pharaohs simply erase the history of those they dislike, drowning inky words in silence; our living poets are far more dangerous, for they know how to make a monster from a man long after he is dead.

“Ah,” mutters Penelope. “I see. Medon, forgive me. I find myself overcome with womanly weakness and must retire.” “I have always admired the exquisite timing of your weaknesses, my lady.” “I am glad someone appreciates it.”

I will say this for Artemis – she can hold a fantastic grudge. That at least is something we have in common.

“If she’s anything like her mother, she’ll seize the armoury and have us at spear-point if she doesn’t get what she wants,” warns Eos. “If she’s anything like her mother, she’ll leave the armoury untouched and slaughter us all in our sleep with a butcher’s knife,” corrects Autonoe,

“Artemis will be…” “Artemis bid Agamemnon kill her daughter. However the gods move in our lives, good sister, let us not imagine they move for any whims save their own.”

“I would be a good king.” What may one hear in Andraemon’s words? A promise? A threat? A truth? Something of all three, perhaps, depending on how one is inclined to listen.

Troy burns, and Leaneira sometimes wonders why she did not have the courage to burn with it.

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. Victory should always have a price.

“His friends are dead. His vaunted militia routed. His valour… questioned. Which of you intends to approach my son and tell him that a hidden assemblage of women is going to do that which he, the son of Odysseus, could not?”

Sorrow unmans him. He will never look upon it, never wash it away with cool balm, nor name it, nor call it his own, and so instead inwards, inwards, inwards it curls like the weedy root that becomes a tree within the unwatched soil of his heart.

“Penthesilea, for example, fought against Achilles himself…” “And died!” “Against Achilles – everyone died against Achilles, it was his predominant characteristic.”

“How do you hide an army?” “Medon,” Penelope tuts, “what a foolish question. You hide them in precisely the same way you hide your success as a merchant, your skill with agriculture, your wisdom at politics and your innate cutting wit. You hide them as women.”

“And you are proposing the women kill them? Drive arrows through their eyes, rip out their hearts and flay their skin from their still-bleeding flesh and so on?” “I hadn’t quite got to the flaying, but in principle, yes.”

“Well then. I suppose we’re stuck being family.” “What an unpleasant notion,” she replies, without rancour or regret. “Quite.” “A bond that is, if anything, even more irrational than friendship.” “I couldn’t agree more.” “And yet somehow we give it sanctity.” “Indeed.”

Artemis says: “What? Oh yes, killing men. That was nice. Anyway, doing other things now, other things to do, you know.”