Now the Wanderer glanced round him like a man taken in ambush, who sees on every hand the sword of foes shine up into the sunlight.
“The bow, Lady?” he answered readily enough. “I got it strangely. I was cruising with a cargo of iron on the western coast and landed on an isle, methinks the pilot called it Ithaca. There we found nothing but death; a pestilence had been in the land, but in a ruined hall this bow was lying, and I made prize of it. A good bow!”
“A strange story, truly—a very strange story,” quoth Meriamun the Queen. “By chance thou didst buy the armour of Paris, by chance thou didst find the bow of Eurytus, that bow, methinks, with which the god-like Odysseus slew the wooers in his halls. Knowest thou, Eperitus, that when thou stoodest yonder on the board in the Place of Banquets, when the great bow twanged and the long shafts hailed down on the hall and loosened the knees of many, not a little was I put in mind of the song of the slaying of the wooers at the hands of Odysseus. The fame of Odysseus has wandered far—ay, even to Khem.” And she looked straight at him.
The Wanderer darkened his face and put the matter by. He had heard something of that tale, he said, but deemed it a minstrel’s feigning. One man could not fight a hundred, as the story went.
The Queen half rose from the couch where she lay curled up like a glittering snake. Like a snake she rose and watched him with her melancholy eyes.
“Strange, indeed—most strange that Odysseus, Laertes’ son, Odysseus of Ithaca, should not know the tale of the slaying of the wooers by Odysseus’ self. Strange, indeed, thou Eperitus, who art Odysseus.”
Now the neck of the Wanderer was in the noose, and well he knew it: yet he kept his counsel, and looked upon her vacantly.
“Men say that this Odysseus wandered years ago into the North, and that this time he will not come again. I saw him in the wars, and he was a taller man than I,” said the Wanderer.
“I have always heard,” said the Queen, “that Odysseus was double-tongued and crafty as a fox. Look me in the eyes, thou Wanderer, look me in the eyes, and I will show thee whether or not thou art Odysseus,” and she leaned forward so that her hair well-nigh swept his brow, and gazed deep into his eyes.
Now the Wanderer was ashamed to drop his eyes before a woman’s, and he could not rise and go; so he must needs gaze, and as he gazed his head grew strangely light and the blood quivered in his veins, and then seemed to stop.