[SPOILER: The slaughter is done, the hall is washed, the man who killed a hundred men is sitting at her hearth. She does not run to him. She crosses the room and sits on a stone bench, far enough that she can see his face clearly in the lamplight, and looks at him. She does not speak. Telemachus is undone by it — Mother, you turn from him? — but the bench is the precise distance a woman who has been wrong many times needs to be from a man who claims to be the right one. She has earned the right to not believe yet. The bench holds her there until she has set the trap of the bed. Then she gets up.]
The Stone Bench
A bench across the room from the man who claims to be her husband. Far enough to see his face clearly in the lamplight. Close enough to know.