John Powys - Atlantis

“In the first place, my Lord Telemachos, what puzzles me is that the ancient Dame of whom I caught a glimpse just now, and with whom I had the honour of a brief conversation when your revered Father took me into her presence, I am speaking of course of your old family-nurse, should have allowed a girl as young as Eione to go off on this wild adventure alone with Arcadian Pan and those two terrifying Goddesses who no doubt ruled over Ithaca and Achaea and Argos and Boeotia and Lakedaimon in the primeval far-away times before our mother the Earth gave birth to the Gods or the Titans or even to the mortal or immortal nymphs.

“In Thebes where my youth was spent a girl as young as Eione would still be in the care of her parents. Are your customs in this Island of Ithaca completely different from those on the mainland?”

There was a general silence. With what was quite clearly the faintest possible flickering of a smile at the left corner of his crafty mouth and with what was a definite movement of his beard in the direction of the Corridor of the Pillars, Odysseus saved his son, whom these significant questions had obviously embarrassed a good deal, from having to be the interpreter of local custom, by making use of the most primitive and also the most royal of all forms of summons.

Loudly, vigorously, and several times, he clapped his hands. Had he been a King in Jerusalem, or a Pharaoh in Egypt, he could not have clapped his hands with quicker effect. All the four guests present at that table, Telemachos, Zeuks, Okyrhöe, Pontopereia; not to speak of the attendants, including Arsinöe, who were holding wine-jugs and water-bottles and bread-platters behind the backs of these four persons, became as alert as if they expected this startling and oriental summons to result in the appearance of a troop of Harpies.

But, after a deep silence, the husky, hoarse voice of the old Nurse Eurycleia was heard from the end of the long dark passage leading to the kitchen. “What do you want?” were the direct and downright words that reached their ears.

“Send up Tis,” was the king’s imperative answer; and when Tis arrived, clearly somewhat disturbed and uncomfortable, Odysseus told him with a rough, humorous, blunt emphasis upon the word maid , to explain to the Lady Okyrhöe from Thebes how it was that he allowed a maid as young as Eione to go off on such an adventurous excursion alone with Arcadian Pan and two such formidable goddesses as Eurybia and Echidna.

Tis came forward to the left of the king’s chair upon the arm of which he boldly rested his hand as he spoke. It was as clear to Okyrhöe and Pontopereia as it was to Zeuks that he was accustomed to doing this, and although feeling awkward and uncomfortable was so thoroughly used to speaking his mind before Odysseus that he was by no means tonguetied in the king’s presence or in the presence of any guests.

“My little sister,” he said, “like the rest of us, has been brought up to take care of herself. We have never been people to be afraid of the gods and where there are a lot of sheep-folds there have always been occasional visits from the great god Pan who likes the company of mortal girls as much as he likes the company of mortal or immortal Nymphs. My little sister Eione has always looked after her maidenhead shrewdly enough as well as briskly and boldly among the lads of the farms round us. So at our end of the island, if you understand, we would never be worried or scared if a sister of ours made friends with Arcadian Pan. Us all do know, ye must understand, that ’tis natural for Arcadian Pan to want a maid like she, and us all do know too that if Arcadian Pan did take she’s maidenhead, and she did bear a child to he, that child would be, whether it were a he-child or a she-child, half a god and half of an ordinary person; and what we do feel at our end of this dumb little island is that when once a girl has got through her labour-pains and has laid her baby, whether that baby be a man-child or a god-child, a mortal child or an immortal child, safe on the steps of the altar, she’s done pretty well for herself and has got a very nice start in life.

“Life’s a hard game is what us do think at our end of this rocky isle, and if a girl like our Eione gets through the hard part of being had by a man and the still harder part of having a baby-man, what us do feel, at our end of this funny-shaped island, is that she hasn’t done so badly for herself.”

Having thus spoken Tis looked at his island’s king, seated in the throne of Laertes, and wondered in his insular heart how it was that in so simple a matter as Arcadian Pan’s attraction to Eione and her rural predisposition to his thin goatish shanks compared with the more human limbs of other possible lovers it should have been necessary to have called him from the scullery to set the mind of this strange Theban lady at rest. Did the woman think that compared with the great fashionable courts of the main-land the royal palace-cave of Ithaca was a poor thing, and its girls poor things and its herdsmen uneducated clowns? By Hades! I’d larn her to think poorly of Ithaca if I were Odysseus the son of—

His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a crashing fall in the Corridor of the Pillars, the door leading into which had been left ajar.

“See what that was!” commanded the king; while Zeuks, who was beginning to grow sleepy after the well-cooked food and good wine, jerked himself up, and fumbling under his coat for his dagger sat sideways against the back of his chair, watching Tis descend the couple of steps, push open the door, and pass into the corridor. The door swung back and there was silence. Tis wore, for his indoor work in kitchen and scullery his softest sandals; so that the silence round that dining table at this moment was profound.

Then Telemachos deliberately got up. Having risen from his chair he crossed the room as noiselessly as he could. All the while he had been so intensely struggling to get his philosophical ideas into focus so that he might explain them to Pontopereia his eyes had been fixed on an ancient sword suspended from an iron nail in the wall. It was a sword of a completely different make from the sort used by Odysseus. It had been part of a collection of foreign weapons made long ago by the father of Penelope, who, like Zenios of Thebes, was a great picker-up of antiques.

Engraved upon the handle, as Telemachos remembered well from his childhood, was the word “Sidon”; but there had once been a travelling merchant at their table when Telemachos was a little boy who assured Penelope from certain metal-marks he knew that this unusual weapon must have been made in Ecbatana. Of this sword Telemachos now possessed himself; nor did he fail to note with a thrill of more natural and simple pride than he had allowed himself to feel for years — well! anyway since the death of his mother — how firmly and strongly and yet how lightly and easily, he found himself able to wield it.

Without looking at Zeuks, for he kept his eyes on his father with a quaint deprecatory half-smile, he managed somehow to convey to the humorous kidnapper of the divine horses that with two such broad-shouldered men as they were to guard that throne-room neither of the old king’s lady-guests, however attractive, was in any danger of violence to her chastity.

Pontopereia, however, in place of catching such whimsical thoughts from her host’s son, fixed her beautiful eyes upon Zeuks who, although he had screwed his head round against the back of his chair in the hope of being able to follow the movements of Tis in the Corridor, was quite capable of giving her a wink.

Nor was the daughter of Teiresias unaware of all it meant just at that moment to get a wink from “Zeuks of Cuckoo-Hill”, as the king’s mother would certainly have called him, although in reality Cuckoo-Hill never came down as near to the actual harbour as was the man’s dwelling.