Chapter Text
He figures it out between the third and fourth proposals.
Agamemnon is speaking. He’s the eldest, so he goes before his brother. Odysseus is thinking about how hard it will be for Menelaus to go after him. He won’t be able to list off the exact same stores of gold and cattle again without looking foolish.
Next to Tyndareus' throne, there is not one woman, but three, to make it deliberately confusing. Three heavily veiled women, three pairs of hands nestled neatly in each lap. The tallest must be Helen, daughter of the God. He knows one of them is Clytemnestra, the hot headed one who threw a bowl at a serving girl on the first day. He reckons it isn’t fair to make Helen choose a husband without being able to see him.
It’s the glinting that gives it away. Like code, like bursts of laughter from a crowd come the vectors of light from her ring. She can see them, all of her cousin's suitors, reflected in the diamond. Not Helen, sat in the middle. Not Clytemnestra. The other one.
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“Penelope,” he sounds the name out.
“Penelope,” she affirms. “And you are Odysseus.”
The bough in the garden is so thick with hyacinth it’ll give in a day later. The dark gleam of her hair against her neck. She looks at him. For the first time in his life, someone who isn’t God can hear what he is thinking. Time is a purr, a click. A trick with a ring lodged like an iron hook into tenderness.
“How is it you know my name?”
She does not look away from him. “You solved my uncle’s little problem. Everyone knows your name.”
“Yes. But not everybody knows what I look like.”
She’s smiling now. As if she knew she would be caught out. “You were in the hall.”
“You were veiled," too fondly. "There was no way you could have seen me.”
He doesn’t say it to make her confess; he says it by way of confessing he knows. She stands up. The ring on her finger, from up close, is not a diamond, but coloured glass. It is the same coppery blue as her peplos, pooling down to her ankles. He wants to look away and finds that he can’t. He knows that she is the daughter of a nymph. This must be why her olive skin gleams like clean water, why her eyes shimmer like wishing coins.
“I wanted to see who she’d pick. My uncle will probably pair Clytemnestra and I with one of the offcuts.”
“They told me that you were clever.”
“They told me the same thing about you.”
They are gazing at each other. Her face is lovely and strange, birdlike. Her nose is hooked, her cheeks are imperious and high. She has a perfect red mouth.
“And who would you choose?”
“I would pick the prince with the most gold.” She begins to walk away, and he almost trips in following her.
“And say, if the prince had no gold,”
“Then the prince with the most cattle.”
“And if the prince had no cattle?”
He has caught up with her. They are walking back toward the palace. Her smile is different now; full of humour, sharpness. “Then such a prince would have no business asking for my hand.”
“No,” he agrees. He feels drunk, can feel the smile on his lips. “But anything, say, anything else. What could a prince of a barren land offer you that would make him worthy of your hand?”
She considers him, and they stop walking. Something changes; a privacy reaches her eyes, a curiosity in her low, lovely voice. She notions toward his calf. “How did you get the scar?”
It surprises him. They are leaning against pillars now, facing one another. “Boar hunt. On Mount Parnassus. It was a test from the goddess.” He can hear the sea, just miles away from where they stand. The revellers are drunk and loud in the palace. He can not look away. It suddenly makes him sick to think that any of the other suitors would even try to marry her. “Tell me,” he hears himself say. “Tell me what it is you want.”
Miraculously, she reaches out and touches his arm, and a black curl falls into her face. He can smell her. Perfumed oils and sea salt. “Meet me in the garden tomorrow.”
/