by Anne Fortier
I approached Mr. Telemakhos, who was at the helm, laughing it up with Nick and Rebecca. “Excuse me,” I said, suddenly feeling like an interloper. “Where exactly are we going? It’s already ten o’clock—”
Mr. Telemakhos smirked. “I told you: We’re going to the place where it all ends.” When I kept peering at him, demanding more, he added more loudly, as if talking to someone with a hearing impairment, “We are going to Troy. I have abducted you, Diana Morgan. For the next few days the three of you will be the hostage of my obsessive need for intelligent company.” Seeing our shock at his boastful confession, Mr. Telemakhos broke into thunderous laughter. “In ten years, ask yourselves: Was he a pirate or an angel?”
“But you promised—” I began, almost choking on my own outrage.
“I promised to get you where you need to go,” said Mr. Telemakhos, nodding as if we were in agreement. “And that’s what I’m doing. Besides, what’s the point of taking you to the airport when you don’t have a passport?”
So furious I could have pushed the big man overboard, I turned to Nick. “Will you help me turn the boat around?” I asked him, fully intending Mr. Telemakhos to overhear me.
After a second’s hesitation, Nick folded his arms. “I’m not a sailor. Sorry.” Something in his eyes—a strange, devilish satisfaction hiding behind the apology—told me he was lying.
I looked at Rebecca, who was strangely silent. “Please explain to your friend”—I nodded at Mr. Telemakhos—”that this is absolutely unacceptable.”
Rebecca’s dumbstruck expression turned into irritation. “Do you really think he doesn’t know that?” She glared at Mr. Telemakhos, who smiled blithely in response, as if our argument was merely birdsong in his ears.
“Bex,” I said, struggling to contain my desperation, “for every day I don’t keep my commitments around Oxford, a cyclops by the name of Professor Vandenbosch rips another limb off my career.”
Rebecca looked away, apparently already resigned to her fate as abductee. “At least you have commitments. How wonderful that must be.”
Realizing I was completely alone in my ire, and that neither Rebecca nor Nick would help me persuade Mr. Telemakhos to return to Nafplio, I left them and stalked off to the bow of the boat. I had rarely felt this helpless, and I didn’t want them to see me like this, almost in tears with frustration.
It was true that I wouldn’t be able to board a plane without my passport, but that only made my need to return to shore so much more urgent. I would have to find alternative transportation, and even if everything went smoothly I couldn’t possibly hope to arrive in Oxford before the weekend. Truly, my situation was extremely distressing even without the added complication of my being currently trapped on the Penelope.
And yet … even in my wretchedness, I couldn’t help feeling a treacherous tickle of excitement at the prospect of visiting Troy. Was this not, after all, precisely what I secretly wanted? To continue on the Amazon trail? For all my determination to return to Oxford without further delay, I hadn’t been able to quell a strong feeling that by doing so I would forfeit my only chance to find the missing link between Granny and the priestesses from Algeria.
Standing in the bow, looking out over the Aegean Sea and the islands materializing in the distance, I decided I might as well come to terms with the situation. We were going to Troy, and there was nothing I could do about it; pouting was a nonstarter. As soon as I returned home, I would make up for all the canceled tutorials and lavish so much attention on my students that they would come to regard my absence as a blessing. With regard to Katherine Kent, I clung to the hope she would forgive me once I explained myself—she always had in the past.
When I finally felt confident of my poise, I returned to the others. By now, Rebecca was steering the ship, giddy with the thrill of it, and Mr. Telemakhos was busy giving her instructions. The only one who paid any attention to me was Nick, who gave me a sideways glance and said, under his breath, “I think you just broke the world record for sulking. Under ten minutes. Very impressive.”
Not quite ready to be chummy, I responded with curt detachment, “I don’t sulk. I calculate.”
Later that night, after putting on a patient face all day, I left Rebecca asleep in our shared cabin and crept up on deck to be alone. Dinner had been jolly—I had even laughed—but I was not yet over my anger. Mr. Telemakhos was so proud of his own power over us, so self-satisfied … A childish part of me wanted to teach him a lesson.
We had cast anchor in a quiet bay, and the only sounds I could hear were the waves lapping the hull of the boat and an occasional flapping of wings against water. Earlier, in the golden glow of sunset, the bay had appeared uninhabited, but now, long after nightfall, a few distinct lights shone from windows in the hills. How far away were the houses? I wondered. Were there people on this island who might be able to help me? Or were the specks of light in fact stars, just rising over the forested ridges? Despite the moon, which gave a bit of structure to the darkness around me, I couldn’t quite tell where the earth ended and heaven began.
As I sat there on the deck, hugging my knees and meditating on fanciful escape plans, Nick appeared. I hadn’t heard his approach, for he was barefoot and, as always, moved completely silently. After a moment’s hesitation he sat down next to me and nodded at the gibbous moon. “Almost full.”
When I did not reply, he continued, “A wise bosun once told me there is a guardian angel who watches over young men. To me, that angel was always the Moon. She has saved my life many times.”
“Really?” I said. Despite the fact that Nick had done nothing whatsoever to help me reason with Mr. Telemakhos earlier, I still preferred his company to my own grumpy solitude. “Did she ever deliver you from boats with mad Greek captains?”
I sensed him smiling in the darkness. “We can try. Maybe she will grant you a wish. What do you want? To be back in Oxford right now?”
For some reason, my affirmative “yes” got stuck in my throat.
“Don’t worry.” Nick spoke directly into my ear. “I won’t tell anyone.”
A little annoyed with him for thinking I was won over so easily, I leaned away and said, “I promised everyone I’d be home today.”
“Here.” Nick handed me his phone. “Call and explain.”
“Thanks. Maybe tomorrow. My parents are in bed now.”
“What about Boyfriend? Doesn’t he pick up after ten?”
Not knowing what to say, I shook my head and gave him back the phone. Nick chuckled. “Relax! They’re not going to fire you. They need you. You’re smart. In my experience, beautiful women are only attractive until they open their mouths. With you, the more you speak, the more—” He broke off abruptly, then said, more quietly, “I wish I had your ability to focus. To sit in a library for days … months … and just read. But I’ve never had that kind of patience. And so I’ve never become really good at anything.” Perhaps realizing he was doing himself an injustice, he elbowed me teasingly. “Well, a few things I do well, or so I’ve been told.”
The words, although spoken in jest, crept all the way into my imagination and caused a quiet burst of chaos. “And what else are you good at?” I heard myself saying.
Nick straightened. “Taking risks. I’m a pro at that.”
“Give me a for instance.”
He pondered it briefly, then said, “How about free-climbing? Or canoeing the Nahanni River in November?”
I frowned. “I don’t even know where that is. What else?”
“Oh.” He slouched a little, as if he wasn’t terribly proud of himself after all. “The usual. Trying to push the limits. Impress my friends.”
I unfurled my arms, no longer as chilled as I had been before. Part of the warmth, I realized, emanated from Nick’s body and lingered in the narrow space between us, luring me closer. “Somehow I imagined you out there in the service of mankind,” I joked, grateful for the increasingly humorous trajectory of our chat. “Trucking food aid to s
tarving villagers—”
“I did that, too.” He spoke calmly, with a shrug, and didn’t even bother to look at me to see whether I believed him. “Until I realized the only people I was helping were the warlords and the pig-headed politicians who had caused the problem in the first place.”
“I see.” I studied his profile, wondering whether I was finally seeing Nick the way he really was, or whether this, too, was just another role in his seemingly endless cast of characters. “You were demoralized by the malfunctions of civil society and so flung yourself into frivolous pleasure seeking as a result?”
He thought about it for a moment. “More like pain seeking. But yes, that sounds about right. Hey, if you ever get demoralized by the malfunctions of academia, you should go into public relations.” He lowered his voice conspiratorially. “I’ll hire you as my spokesperson.”
“Maybe I’ll start by canoeing the Nahanni River,” I countered. “In July.”
“You’ll be eaten alive by blackflies. Or grizzly bears.”
I touched a gamesome fist to his thigh. “I’ll hire you as my guide.”
Nick chuckled. “You may regret that. I wouldn’t shave, and we’d be sharing a sleeping bag.”
The image went straight to my cheeks, and I was grateful all he could see of me were shades of gray. “Why couldn’t we have one each?”
His sweatered shoulder bumped teasingly against mine. “Why do you want to go camping with me in the first place?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” I cleared my throat, astounded by the flirtatious turn our conversation had taken. “You are quite the amusing conversationalist.”
I couldn’t help it, there was something about his eyes that made me lean a bit closer, and for a few breathless seconds I was certain he would kiss me. As a matter of fact, at that precise moment—despite how fundamentally at odds we were—I was rather hoping he would.
Instead, he reached for something and handed me a flat, familiar-feeling object. “There. I took the liberty of removing it from your bag this morning, before we left the house.”
It was Granny’s notebook.
“But—” I was so flummoxed by the reappearance of my most prized possession I burst out laughing. Clutching it to my chest, eventually I worked up the wherewithal to thank him, although a small part of me was dismayed at the fact that he had gone through my bag.
“After the attack in Crete,” Nick began, the tone of his voice suggesting he wasn’t too proud of himself, “I had a hunch your shadowy thief would try again. I’ve been meaning to talk to you about it, but we’re never alone.”
“This is all a bit … shocking,” I stammered, my perception of Nick doing somersaults in my head. If there had been the tiniest part of me thinking it just might have been him, and not the Rollerblade gang, who had made my tasseled bag disappear, then that possibility was now thoroughly buried under a rather clammy avalanche of shame.
“Just be happy,” Nick went on, teasing me again, “I haven’t paid you yet. I’m not sure I can keep up with the pace of your losses—”
“Ah,” I said. “Money again.”
“What’s wrong with money? Isn’t that why you’re here … with me?”
I shook my head, still too frazzled to play my cards with discretion. “There’s nothing wrong with money. In fact, I’m a great fan of it, but it’s not why I’m here.”
“Then tell me.”
I looked at his face, made even graver by the moon shadows. Sitting close to him like this, it did not seem right to have so much deception between us. True, he had his own secret agenda with the Amazons, but then so had I. In fact, I suddenly realized, Nick’s perception of me could well be no more flattering than my perception of him; perhaps in his eyes, I, too, was nothing but a weasel working for the wrong team.
“In Crete,” I said, “you asked me how I did it. The translation. You assumed there was a trick to it. Well—” I rose and walked away from him. “You were right.”
Standing by the railing, looking at the moon’s reflection in the inky water, I told him of Granny and the notebook and bracelet she had left behind for me. She had likely been an archaeologist, I explained, who had encountered the Amazon writing system in some other dig and been able to translate it into English. “And yet even she,” I concluded, “for all her obsession with the Amazons, never tried to teach me this strange language; in fact, she never even mentioned it. She just left me this bloody notebook.”
When I finally stopped talking, Nick came over to lean against the railing beside me. I fully expected him to berate me for not telling him the story earlier, but instead, he simply asked, “How did your grandmother die?”
I flinched, frosted by a familiar sense of guilt. “The thing is … she disappeared. My parents were about to send her away to an asylum, and she—” I stopped, unable to continue as I meant to. On the rare occasions in the past when I had been forced to tell the story, I had said that Granny ran away, glossing over the locked doors and her being entirely without means. “The truth is,” I now heard myself saying, to Nick of all people, “I gave her all the money I had, and walked her to the high road, and helped her on a bus.”
“To where?”
I swallowed, ambushed by holed-up emotions. “I don’t know. I was ten years old. For the entire rest of my childhood I was tortured by thoughts of the terrible things that might have happened to her. Whenever there was a strange letter in the mail or an unexpected phone call I was afraid it had something to do with Granny. That she had been found dead somewhere.” I shuddered at the memory of my old fears. “Only later I discovered that my parents employed a private investigator for two whole years. He came up with absolutely nothing but a horrendous bill.”
Nick pulled off his sweater and draped it over my shoulders without a word, folding the sleeves around my neck.
“Sorry about the long epic,” I said, staring out over the black water. “I’ve never actually told anyone about all of this before. Not even Bex.”
When Nick finally spoke, his voice was unusually gentle. “Are you sure she was really crazy?”
“I … don’t know.” Once again, the path of his inquiry took me right back to questions I had been wrestling with for years. “The doctors thought so. She was certainly not normal by anyone’s standards, whatever that means.”
“Do you know if she had any friends? Communicated with anyone?”
I felt a tiny sting of suspicion. “What do you mean? I hope you’re not taking Mr. Telemakhos’s talk about modern-day Amazons seriously.”
“Why not? What do you prefer to believe: that it was all in her head or that there was something to it? You just told me she had an archive, too, with newspaper clippings … that she kept seeing evidence of Amazon activity around the world. What makes you so sure she was wrong?” I felt Nick studying my profile in the darkness as he waited in vain for my response. Then he went on, saying, “Apart from all the tough talk, did your grandmother ever actually behave like an Amazon? Did she hurt people?”
“Well.” I cast my mind back to that stolen day so many years ago, where I had been sitting on the floor with Rebecca, going through the papers in my father’s desk. Among them had been a psychological evaluation that recounted the tragic events leading to her initial hospitalization. “Only in the beginning, I am sure, before they realized she was mentally ill. They didn’t really have a name for it in those days, but I think Granny had a postpartum depression that spiraled out of control. In any case, she was convinced she had given birth to a girl rather than my father and absolutely refused to hear otherwise. She locked herself in a room with the baby—my father, that is—and wouldn’t come out. In the end, they had to use force, and she … well, she defended herself with a poker from the fireplace. It was all quite terrible. A police constable ended up in the hospital.” I shuddered, as I had so often, at the thought of Granny drawing blood from another human being. Then, realizing how shocking this must all sound to Nick, I hastened to add, “I’m s
ure she didn’t mean to hurt anyone. Apparently, she had a delusion that it was wrong to have a boy, and that if they found out, they’d take him away.”
With his back to the moon, Nick was little more than a dark silhouette, and I felt more than saw the intensity of his stare. “Who was ‘they’?”
“Her fellow Amazons, of course. Can’t raise a boy, can you now, if you’re a true Amazon. Haven’t you read your Strabo?”
Nick didn’t answer but merely stuck his hands in his pockets and did a little tour of the deck, perhaps thinking I needed time to recover. When he returned, I took off the sweater and gave it back to him. “Sorry to go on like that. I probably should have told you before, but—”
The sentence hung between us for a while. Then Nick slung the sweater over his shoulder and said, “You were right not to trust me. I am not even sure I trust myself anymore.” After a pained pause, he added, “Besides, you did try to tell me about the bracelet. But I wouldn’t listen. I thought you had stolen it. I’m sorry.”
“Wait a minute.” The photos on his laptop did a little bitchy catwalk in my head. “You took it. Didn’t you? You even took a picture of it!”
The accusation did not provoke the hoped-for confession. Instead, Nick said, “When we first opened the sarcophagus, we found fourteen bracelets.”
“What?” I stared at his solemn profile, unable to keep track with him.
“They were just lying there. They were all”—he nodded at my arm—”exactly like yours. And yes, I took photos of them. But I decided to leave the one on the skeleton, because I wanted an archaeologist to do things properly.”
I was so baffled by this news I felt an irrational urge to embrace him. “So, if neither you nor I stole that last bracelet … who did?”
“How do you know it was stolen?” Nick scrutinized me in the darkness. “Because the sarcophagus was open?”
