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Since the siege had ended and the last battle was won, the Achaeans had already begun to divide both their remaining resources and their loot. It was all they could do. The winds were not strong enough, and showed no signs of change even after a few days. This was not a case of godly anger, but rather a case where the divine spoke and said they needed to calm themselves before they could sail and be home.
Many took up residence in their own ships, or stayed at camp and resorted to crossing the vast expanse of land and the ford every time they needed to sleep or communicate something. Others, namely command, took up residence in the halls of Illium’s palace itself. At the end of a certain hall which was otherwise empty, Penelope spent her days. Hardly anyone thought to disturb her in her malady- she had been stretched as thin as the men, and yet still had all those extra demons which ail women to battle with.
It was not for anyone to judge, the fact that she was so terribly melancholic and reclusive. When she left it was only to see Helen or to tend to her human needs, both rare occurrences.
It had been many days since Diomedes had taken the time to speak to her or hear her. Many more since he had touched her or held her. And even in his usual stoic face, Diomedes could admit to Sthenelus that he felt an unfulfilled need towards her. His attendant sighed at him with the patience of an older brother waiting for the younger to comprehend a simple concept.
Sthenelus told this to Diomedes:
“If you miss the queen of Ithaca, you may very well go to see her. I’m sure she misses you, the man who used to praise her without the feignest sign of criticism within audible distance.”
Hearing this just made the younger man uneasy.
“Sthenelus,” he replied, “given that variety of advice, I may crawl back here a dead man.”
Receiving only a shrug, Diomedes went about his day. In his unrest, he could not help but think about Athena’s other favoured mortal. His sweet, beloved Penelope. In the aftermath of all of this, he felt more than partially responsible for her misery.
/
Some more time passed in Troy, during which the queen of Ithaca was going through her daily paces. This routine consisted of lapsing between staring at the ceiling and caring for the infant. In all of this, Astynax was innocent. That only made her feel worse. Was she giving this child a good quality to its remaining days, or was she simply being cowardly? Should she have killed him as soon as she left Andromache? Penelope was brought to tears without fail every time she tried to consider these questions.
A promise between women was a sacred promise. A promise between mothers was even more sacred.
And feeding Astynax on her own breast, having the infant as her only companion, it made her feel like his mother. She longed in some way for her own baby. Albeit, she was unsure whether it was for Telemache, who would now be ten years old, or for Sophia, who would now be ten weeks old, had she lived.
She often gave too much thought to the anxiety that her child could be a Gello now. Forever sent to haunt and tug the souls of girls like herself from their cradle. Logically, she knew there was no way that could be true. The child had never breathed. And yet.
On this particular day, Penelope left her self-imposed prison to dispose of the pail of unclean napkins, wash her hands and face, and to get a piece of bread from the hall.
She had a large supply of fabrics which she cut with shears to the size she needed to make napkins for Astynax. This way, she never needed to perform laundry, and the many fabrics she had never finished weaving would not go to waste.
The summer heat had largely died by now, but it was still warm. The walls were thick, though, and there was not much sweat. Still, she felt the need to wash in even the slightest way whenever she left the room.
And food, of course, was a human necessity. As much as Penelope wished she wasn’t, she was still human. Pallas Athena had made that abundantly clear.
She couldn’t neglect herself to the maximum and expect to still achieve the one thing she wanted the most: to make it home.
Penelope couldn’t defy her mortal side, a thing few demigods had done in the past, no matter how much she wanted to. Becoming a full goddess would only further her problems, as well as the problems of others. Setting herself on fire would solve nothing.
She drank water, also, in her intermission.
On this particular day, when she made it back down the hall to the room, Astynax was still calm. She took the infant into her arms, and sat on the foot of her bed.
“You know,” she said to his young ears, “I get the worst thoughts sometimes. I am losing my mind. I swear it. This warrior of the mind’s mind is degrading.”
Athena came to her then, not in the form of any mortal person, but in her own godly image. This, Penelope felt, likely meant her message was not of comfort but of advice. Or perhaps, if it was a message of comfort, it would be one of the variety passed from a mother of one kind to a mother of another kind.
Pallas Athena spoke these words:
“Daughter of Icarius, the weaver of Agamemnon’s strategies and beautiful tapestries alike, my Penelope, I see what you do. I am not proud of how little you do for yourself, but I am not proud of how little I do for you, either. I know you hold incomprehensible grief in your heart and in your womb, but holding it where it is is not helping you.”
Penelope replied, “But goddess, how can I wash this unwashable blood from my hands? How can I wash my own blood from between my thighs? How can I forgive what I have done, and simultaneously forgive what I have not?”
The goddess sighed.
“Bathing is a start,” Athena said, pointing out the fact that Penelope had not washed her full body in weeks.
The mortal woman adjusted the way she held the baby, hyper-conscious of the fact he was still young enough that he could not hold the weight of his own head.
“And your lover, he could help soothe your anxieties and melancholies. Or so I hear.”
“Diomedes is not my lover, but my friend,” Penelope said, her voice tired.
“Then how do you know which man I speak of, or that I speak of a man at all?”
Her patronne sat beside her, parting the tangled strands of her ink-like hair, and pushing it behind her ear.
“All accusations and quips aside, he does care for you. And I care for both of you. That fact is inevitable. With this battle won- yet many lost and many still ahead of you, since a woman is a battleground -I wish you only well. I have failed so many of my heroes, but I have never wanted anything but for them to succeed. That includes you.
I may not have approved of the two of you engaging in ‘distractions’ such as romance, but that has nothing to do with your morality, nor Diomedes’. In earnest, I even disapproved of Odysseus courting you, just as my brother disapproved of you courting Odysseus. But Penelope, simply because I am not mortal and I do not understand your necessities , does not mean you should not engage in them.
Above all, you did nothing wrong. You are not to blame for your lost child, nor for the fact that you must kill this one. A miscarriage is not a punishment, or a sign that you were immoral. It happens. It happens so much. And it is a tragedy. But you must understand: you were not at fault.”
Penelope began to weep.
Athena gently took the infant from her arms as it, too, began to cry. She placed Astynax in his cot, and waved her hand over his face. As soon as he calmed, the woman's tears dried and her sobs ceased.
This was why she had been avoiding tears in the first place. She knew that the baby would cry as well.
Once the goddess returned to her side, Penelope apologised.
“I don’t suppose you know what it’s like, to love… to be a mother. A failed one.”
There was a pause.
“I wanted to be a mother, when I was young. It’s clear that I have taken a very different route… but is it? I mentor people from youth, and try as I can to defend them. Isn’t that a mother? By that law, aren’t you this child’s mother?”
The woman stared blankly at her patronne.
“Think about it,” Athena said, “And try to forgive yourself. No one else can. He already has.”
/
The men were surprised that evening to see Penelope outside. She bathed with the help of a maid, something she could not do alone while her hands shook. She allowed the uncleanliness to wash from her hair, but still could not bother to have to go through with drying it. She ate a proper meal with the men. One that showed she still knew her worth. Meat, honey, what remained of her old supply of spices.
Diomedes was too afraid to speak to her, even then. He watched her across the hall, and the way she moved. She looked sick.
Water nymph children already had an unnerving air to them. A creepiness you couldn’t quite place. They were beautiful, sure. In the same way everyone knew Achilles had been beautiful, every man knew that Penelope was beautiful. But sometimes you couldn’t stop staring at the odd shape of their ears, or you could see the way their skin gleamed translucent in the light, or you were startled by the strange glow of their eyes and pseudo-gills in the dark, or near a certain type of water.
And knowing all of this, Diomedes nonetheless thought Penelope looked beyond ill for her normal self.
And long after everyone had retired to their rooms or their ships or to camp, he still couldn’t take his mind off her.
He rose from his bedroll, and walked slowly through the palace.
When he reached the end of the hall where Penelope resided, Diomedes hesitated at the door. He didn’t want to invade her space. He was worried that she wouldn’t want to see him. After all, she hadn’t made any effort to.
He counted to ten. Then to ten again. Then to fifty. Then to ten again.
He looked at her from the doorway. She was sleeping. Or rather, trying to sleep. It looked wrong to him, that such a strong woman could momentarily be so weak. He shut the door quietly, to the soft clicking sound of which she stirred. Penelope sat up to see him. The fact that it was Diomedes, as opposed to any other man, brought her great relief.
“Diomedes,” she greeted, her voice slightly hoarse. She cleared her throat, to follow.
What he was relieved by was that she greeted him as Diomedes and not Tydides , as she usually would have if she had been displeased with him.
“Penelope, my love…” he responded weakly.
He laid down beside her, immediately unable to resist the urge to hold her. Her hair smelled like the olives in their soap. She felt cleaner to him than she felt to herself. She cupped his face in her hands, feeling the slight stubble that remained there.
“You’ve shaved… everything.”
She was referring to the fact that since the end of the war, he had cut off most of his hair and shaved his beard.
“Yeah,” he breathed.
Penelope rested her head against his chest. Diomedes squeezed her tightly, as if resisting drift, like an otter. He was wondering, like he so often had wondered over these years, if she was thinking about Odysseus. He was right, of course. There was never a time in her life when Penelope wasn’t thinking about Odysseus, but that didn’t reflect on anyone, especially not Diomedes.
She made a soft, desperate sound. She wasn’t even sure what she needed from him, emotionally or otherwise. She wrapped her arms around his neck, and he slowly rolled on top of her as they maintained their silence. Caution was the element Diomedes proceeded with.
“I mean, do you really want this? Are you okay? How have-”
She interrupted him quietly.
“We’ll talk in a moment. But yes. Be certain: I do.”
They made love for what, as far as they knew, would be the last time. It was slow, and exceedingly gentle, but it was infected by that solemn quality which haunted them both.
When he spilled, he did not pull out, which worried him more than it worried Penelope. He asked softly when she had last menstruated.
“Not since before… before I was pregnant…”
“...that is… that’s concerning. Have you spoken to Machaon since…?”
“No.”
“You should...”
“I know.”
His heart sank at her words. She could feel this change in his demeanour as he pulled out, still holding her close. Still in her odd emotional state, that same one which saw her cry before the goddess for what she had felt was insufficient reason, she gasped shakily as if resisting tears.
“Shh….” she said, “Don’t… because then I’ll cry, and then the baby will cry… I just got him to sleep before you came in…”
Diomedes squeezed her tighter.
“I’ve missed you,” he admitted.
“I’ve been a fucking mess,” Penelope replied, “Such a fucking mess. I’m sorry… for not talking to you.”
They could both feel the wetness seeping through the top of her nightgown.
“For fuck’s sake,” she cursed yet again, her voice defeated and still on the verge of tears.
He shushed her, before whispering, “Do you need to…?”
“Not yet… not yet…”
Admittedly, he didn’t know anything about lactation.
“Does it hurt?” he asked.
“Yes. I mean, kind of. It gets sore but the… it doesn’t hurt in itself.” She paused. “Until a few days ago, I had never nursed before. I hadn’t nursed my daughter back in Ithaca, if you were wondering.”
He swallowed.
“...why not?”
“I wasn’t… it wasn’t out of coldness… it was more complicated than that.”
Diomedes nodded slowly, trying to understand something that wasn’t for him to understand.
“I love you,” he said softly, “So, so much.”
“I know,” Penelope murmured, “gods, I know.”