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It is a sadness that pours from her chest.
There is longing, there is something she cannot place.
She sees him within his rags. She watches as he comes around the suitors with a bag in his hands, she watches from her window how the suitors come to mistreat him. It is only in the death of the day, when the men have come in the midst of their arguments, that Penelope steps in.
She with the veil that covers her head and the eyes that leave nothing unobserved, she with her head held eyes and her nose sharp and her frown etched deep into the lines of her face.
She sees him how he is.
She sees how his knuckles become white as snow as he claps them with such force.
He is still the same. She can recognise him anywhere.
She knows it is him before she has time to question herself.
Her little one comes, her beloved, her boy. He comes and he clasps his hands around her arms and he is so full of worry, and he says, "Mother, Mother, what are you doing here? Come, do not be exposed to such violence. Come, come inside and I will soothe your worries."
And Penelope clasps on the little hands she used to hold against her cheeks and she is speechless, without breath, until her feelings find her in the midst of her memories, and she grips onto him and smiles like she does whenever she needs to soothe him, "Oh, my beloved, let me be exposed to the ways of man. I have known them for all my life. They are not different to me."
Then he looks at her with eyes that are so much like his own and he tilts his head and he says, "Mother, but Mother, how can I protect you amongst the men? You are the thing that binds me to my place, you who's womb has brought me from nothing to the way I am now. You, mother, how dear you are to me. How can I see you amongst such filth?"
And with this, Penelope laughs, because she has never heard something so sweet. She tastes it in her mouth and she finds her heart coming alive again, coming forth from the shadows and clasps she has held around it for so many years. He always has a hand of doing this because he is her baby, even if she sees the wisps of hair that grip onto his chin. He will be a man soon, but men will always be the boys of mothers who cared for them in the same way this boy will always be the baby she held when he was barely a moment old.
So Penelope grins and kisses his forehead and she smiles and she says, "Oh, my beloved, flesh of my womb and everything so loved, I will be fine. Do not worry for me. Go to my room and find the cloth I have been weaving for you and wear it around your shoulders. I want to see how it fits you. Go, go now, so you can make my heart feel as sweet as your words, and you will see my smile from my cheeks and you will be delighted to know that you have delighted me."
And so her beloved, her baby, stares at her with eyes that are so much like his own and slowly his head comes down and up and down again, and his hands become still around her's, and then his hands start to leave her arms and then he is still staring at her. And Penelope comes and kisses him again, soothing the worry that has been pent up in his chest from the moment the suitors came into their halls. He has always been so careful. He has always been so delightful. It is Penelope who has made him this way, but Penelope thinks that he would have come up this way anyway.
He is so full of heart, this boy, her boy, her beloved. And so her boy, her beloved, her delight nods his head once more and turns and goes through the hall.
When he is gone, Penelope turns her lovely neck.
And there is he again.
He pretends not to look, but he is looking, because all he has ever been doing is looking.
This is what he always does, he looks and he observes things. He is good at noticing. He is good at seeing things how they are, seeing the curve of a beloved's back to the way the clouds dance around the sky. How he notices, how he points at things and lets words spill from his mouth. Words that make laughter spill from her mouth. Words that make her heart grow so full of sorrow.
She cannot help herself.
She comes towards him.
He is settled away from the suitors in his own perimeters, sitting on a small fallen peice of marble with his knees croutched. His beard is long and his hands are withered and his face is the face of a man who has known more years of more things and yet it is him, she knows it is her husband.
Because it is her husband who is so careful, it is her husband who notices, it is her husband who clasps such things so gently.
It is her husband who pretends he is so large and then becomes so unwoven whenever Penelope brushes her hand against his or when her lips brush against his neck. It is him who comes undone. It is her who falls against his arms. It his him who catchers her. It is her who strokes his hair. It is him who wraps his lovely arms around her waist and mumbles sweet phrases into her ears while his lips come all over her neck, her face, and he continues, even when Penelope tells him to stop because she never wants him to stop.
This is what she remembers when she searches his face. This is what she does.
She knows the eyes of the suitors come to her because the eyes of the dog will always come to what he desires most.
He knows the way they bark and look and point their arms and turn their broad chests, and yet Penelope still goes. She does not mind them. They keep their distance from her, even if their eyes are so full of hunger and they watch and think of things they wish to do to her. Penelope knows the minds of these men.
And yet she goes and she walks and she stands in-front of this man.
He keeps his head down. Penelope notices the overgrown nails of his feet, the largness of them, the veins that come through the sides.
And yet their is a long scar that comes between his large toe and smaller one.
Penelope remembers tracing it with her finger and she remembers the words he would weave into the air and she remembers laughter. She remembers stories. She remembers platefuls of figs and silk to weave and the soft cries of an infant to string them all together. She remembers strong hands, she remembers love.
This is all she knows when she stands in-front of him.
And yet he is hidden from her. He does not look at her when she comes.
He is disrespectful when he does this but Penelope knows the game he is playing.
A smile tugs at her lips and she does not say anything of this. She knows he will come back to her in the way he knows.
He has always been like this.
And so instead she lifts her delicate chin and she turns her head to the suitors who stare at her with their hungry eyes that lament the ways of dogs. She sees as they stare at her as if they have always known hunger and thirst and things that divide them from the gods and they do not care, because they are dogs and even the dogs have more empathy than them.
They are without loyalty, belonging to no owner. They are wanderless souls.
Penelope knows their end will come shortly.
Her soft voice rings through the courtyard as the maids pour wine into their wine glasses.
And Penelope lifts her voice and begins to speak.
"Men of my palace, men who have come without purpose and have disturbed me for the many, many last years of my life, why do you come and harm a beggar who has done nothing to you? He is looking for food and drink and you do not give him this, even when I have gifted these things from my halls to you? You come and you eat and you drink and you spear nothing. Like dogs, you chew and you leave nothing. And this beggar? He has nothing."
"Queen of Ithaca," One bold man, who has been here longer than all the others, steps forward. Penelope does not know his name and does not wish to. Her eyes come over his form and they do not note anything different from the dogs that her boy, her beloved, used to care for when he was a child. Even those dogs were kinder than the hearts of these men. "We do not wish to obtain your dislike. This man has intruded on our feast and we did not expect him, is all."
"And? He is here now. You have seen him. Here he is. Do your eyes betray you now? Have you forgotten how to see?"
"Queen Penelope-"
"You play a strange game," The beggar speaks. Penelope's head turns as she stares down at him, watches as his hands come to clasp together, resting on his knees. She is almost taken to tears to how much he seems like her husband, how much they are alike. Oh gods, she thinks, and somehow she keeps herself.
"Hunger is beneath my people."
"Do not argue with them, queen of all the people, they are beneath you."
"There is no need to defend myself in a court of men who have continuously made themselves guests at my expense."
And then the beggar is quiet for a moment. Penelope stares at him, wills him to speak, and when the words leave his tongue, they are soft and nearly bring her crumbling, "I do not mean to offend you, ruler of the people. You are a woman of greatness and have been keeping them within your courts for some time. And yet they soak the expenses of the king, who has been absent for the past twenty years, and they eat and they drink and they sleep in a home that is not their own."
"You bring him to my ears, my long, beloved husband," Penelope mumbles. "You bring him to my attention. Twenty years, these years I have felt within my chest and my heart and my soul. You speak of them so lightly."
There is silence again. He was never this quiet with his words. Always he was quick, always he knew what to say.
"Pardon my words, queen who possesses a great mind. These are the stories I have heard from my travels."
"So far you have travelled to hear them."
"Oh, you cannot imagine."
"And what of your wife, your children? What must they make of you?"
"I am an exile."
"An exile? And yet you find yourself in my halls."
"Ithaca is known for it's sanctuaries."
"You must mistake us for Phthia."
"Perhaps. And yet I have heard so much good of Ithaca by many all over Greece, and of you, of the queen, of how smart and kind and delicate she is. Of how wonderful and beautiful-"
"Your flattery will find you nowhere."
"Ruthlessness brings me everywhere else."
"Is this why you have brought fighting to my halls?"
"Ah, these I cannot control, for we are the follies of the men."
"You are a man of culture, it seems."
"I am an exile who has once known for his stories."
"And will this exile allow himself to reveal these stories to listening ears?"
"For you," The beggar says. "I will say all you want to hear."
And Penelope begins to smile.