A loud clatter made me flinch. Eurycleia had dropped her basin,water spilling around her knees. She cried out, but her voice was instantly choked by the beggar’s right hand at her throat. He was on his feet now, thick fingers wrapped around Eurycleia’s neck as he growled at her, words too low for me to catch.
“Get off her!” I shouted, surging inside.
Though I harbored no love for Eurycleia, I could not simply stand by as a man harmed a defenseless woman.
The beggar released Eurycleia instantly, turning to me. “You again.”
“How dare you touch her like that,” I spat at him. “You need to leave. You have no place here. Get out.Go!Now!”
“Melantho.” Penelope’s voice was like a rush of cold water, dousing my rage.
I turned to find her standing in the doorway. Her eyes darted between the three of us, and there was something odd about her expression, a tightness I could not place.
“You are dismissed,” she said.
Eurycleia obeyed without protest, scarlet rings marring her throat as she hurried away. It took me a moment to realize Penelope was waiting for me to leave also.
“This man shouldn’t be here,” I said, holding my ground.
“I was told you had asked to meet with me, my lady,” the beggar interjected. His voice had shifted now, taking on a softer, more hesitant edge. His expression had changed, too, a strange shyness creeping over him.
Penelope nodded as she approached. “I hear from Eumaeus you are well traveled. I had hoped you might have news of my husband, and I thought it best we meet here so we may have some privacy away from my other…guests.”
“But—”
“That will be all, Melantho, thank you,” she said with a formality I was not used to.
“Penelope, this man tried to—”
“Please. Leave us.” The sting of her dismissal was soothed only by the guilt I sensed in her gaze. There was something else there, too, some message she was trying to convey. “Would you prepare my bedchamber for me? I will retire after I have spoken with my guest.”
I glanced back at the beggar, who was watching Penelope with an uncomfortable intensity, like he was a drowning man and she the glinting brush of shore on the horizon, beckoning him forward.
Then all at once, it made sense.
Why the beggar knew Argos’s name.
Why Eumaeus had treated him with such deference.
Why Eurycleia had reacted to the scar on his leg.
Why Penelope was looking at me now with such tension in her gaze.
I stared at the beggar, recognition seeping through me, accompanied by a slow rush of dread. He looked so much older than I remembered. The war had ravaged his features, though the starkest change of all was his eyes: Once sharp and alert, they were now hollow and worn, with an unnervingly wild glint.
This was not the man I had seen sail away twenty summers ago. Rather the rough, weathered shell of him, stripped of all that warmth and charm.
Penelope said something, though her voice sounded far away as I watched the beggar take his seat again by the hearth.
No, not the beggar.Odysseus.
The man who had left Penelope to fend for herself in an unfamiliar land with their newly born child. The man who had spentten yearsfattening his ego in a pointless war while Penelope dutifully raised his son and led his kingdom. That same man who had spent anotherten yearsdelaying his homecoming, risking Penelope’s life while he abandoned his throne to warm a goddess’s bed.
Now Odysseus had finally returned, and he was playing games, trying to hide his identity from the very woman who had held his land together. Did he truly believe Penelope would fall for such a trick?
“Melantho?”
I blinked, realizing Penelope was staring at me, a stark thread of urgency in her eyes.
