The Lost Sisterhood

by Anne Fortier

  I clapped my hands. “See? Bex has it all figured out.”

  “Hardly.” Rebecca shrugged a nervous apology at Dr. Özlem. “I am just guessing, like everyone else.”

  “So,” said Nick, “if it wasn’t layer 7a, which was it?”

  “Aha!” Rebecca held up a finger, eyes gleaming. “Now, as I said, if you look at the actual layout of the city, Troy 6 stands out as the most impressive of them all. This is where the tall walls are, and where the citizens lived in a fair amount of comfort. Furthermore, Troy 6 was destroyed about a hundred years before Troy 7a, namely around 1275 B.C.E., which makes far more sense to me. The only problem is that we believe Troy 6 was ruined by an earthquake, not by war. But suppose it was not actually an earthquake—” She flushed charmingly as she neared the climax of her theory. “Suppose it was a battering ram. Or, should I say, battering horse?” She pressed a hand to her mouth as if to contain her own exuberance, and looked eagerly around at us all, waiting for someone to get it.

  “I see,” said Nick, nodding slowly. “You think the famous Trojan Horse was actually a giant battering ram?”

  “Think about it!” Rebecca went on, in another rush of enthusiasm. “It can’t just have been a big, hollow horse made of wood. What Trojan would be so unbelievably daft as to think, ‘Aloha! What a nice parting present from those bloody Greeks’ and open the city gate to pull it into town? Seriously?”

  “I like it,” nodded Mr. Telemakhos. “But I always like crazy theories. What do you say, Murat? Could it have been an enormous battering ram rather than an earthquake that brought down Troy 6?”

  “I will have to think about it.” Dr. Özlem drew up his shoulders a bit. “After more than a century of digging, we have many theories, and I have heard them all.” He turned his head to stare out the window, which was grimy with dust and condensation. “Sometimes I wish this was all still just a farmer’s field. Why are we so eager to turn a beautiful myth into reality? I don’t understand.”

  Only when he left us to have a word with one of his employees, who had left a glass case unlocked, did Mr. Telemakhos get a chance to explain the circumstances that had so soured his old friend’s relationship with archaeology.

  “He spent twenty years writing to people all over Europe, trying to have all the Trojan artifacts returned to the area and put into this newly dedicated museum.” Mr. Telemakhos gestured at the modest building complex surrounding us. “And he was quite successful. Many things were sent here, among them these two bracelets. But unfortunately, only a few months after the museum opened, it was discovered that some of the most valuable artifacts had been removed and replaced with fakes … and suspicion fell on Özlem. For eight years he struggled to clear himself, always in danger of going to jail. Local authorities dropped the case against him only when he became ill, three years ago. Still today, he has enemies who call him a thief, and most of the valuable objects that were left in these buildings have been sent to other museums, where they have better alarm systems.” Mr. Telemakhos leaned closer, anxious that his old friend should not overhear him. “I fear they are going to close the museum. That would be his hemlock.”

  I turned to Nick, who stood right behind me with his arms crossed, looking suitably grave. “Treasures stolen by us evil Westerners,” I said to him. “Returned to their homeland, only to be then lost forever. Tell me again, is that really what you want?”

  “Oh, they are not lost forever,” said Dr. Özlem, rejoining us and carrying a tray of small teacups. “We know where they are. Mint tea, my friends? I’m afraid we have no chairs.”

  “Have you ever thought of applying to the Aqrab Foundation?” asked Nick, taking a cup.

  Dr. Özlem waved the empty tray in the air. “Oh, no. They are bullies. When they give money, they want to throw their weight around, telling you what to do.” He shuddered. “I don’t like to be told what to do. Not by bullies.”

  Nick didn’t look particularly insulted at the accusation; his wry smile suggested he had heard it before. “Maybe that’s what you need,” he said, swirling the teacup, which looked absurdly small in his hand. “A few bullies on your team.”

  More hunched than ever, Dr. Özlem glared at Nick as if he had not really noticed him before and was now wondering whether yet another plague was about to be unleashed on him. “Maybe. But I’m an old man—”

  “Excuse me,” I said, anxious to save Dr. Özlem and bring us back on topic, “but how do you know these bracelets are indeed fakes?”

  Dr. Özlem put aside the tray and unlocked the glass cabinet. “There,” he said, handing me one of the coiled jackals. “Normally, it takes an expert to tell, but look at the inside, under the head. What do you see?”

  I stepped closer to the window and inspected the bronze. “Nothing.”

  “Precisely.” Dr. Özlem held out his hand, waiting for me to give him back the bracelet. “In the originals, there were tiny engravings. Three small symbols in that one, two in the other.”

  I was so excited, I couldn’t let go of the jackal. “What kind of symbols?”

  Dr. Özlem looked at Mr. Telemakhos, nodding as if they had planned the moment beforehand. “There you go. Now do your magic trick.”

  Mr. Telemakhos turned to the cloudy window and drew two symbols in the moisture with his finger. They were both familiar to me—were both from Granny’s Amazon alphabet—but the word itself was new. “This was inscribed in the first bracelet,” he said.

  Flabbergasted, I stared at the two symbols. Here finally, it seemed, was the proof that the bracelets and the symbols were indeed linked. Did all the jackals have these engravings? Did mine? It had never occurred to me to check. “Two syllables,” I said, breathless with excitement. “The owner’s name? It must be.”

  “It gets better.” Mr. Telemakhos drew another three symbols, then turned to me expectantly. “This was the name inscribed in the other bracelet—”

  Nick beat us to it. “Our three-syllable priestess queen,” he said, sounding strangely disappointed. “Myrina. She really did make it to Troy.”

  “This is incredible!” I felt like taking Nick by the shoulders and shaking him. “We really have been on their trail.”

  “Yes,” he said, with regret. “And this is where it ends. Poor Myrina, who came so far to die.”

  WE ALL WALKED THE ruins of Troy in the sunset, marveling at the idea that this remote hill surrounded by grain fields, with its confusing rudiments of ancient masonry, had once been a beacon of civilization.

  Perhaps in an attempt to spare Dr. Özlem a lecture he had undoubtedly given hundreds of times, Rebecca took it upon herself to walk us through the ruins. “As you can see,” she explained, leading the way through a maze of ancient walls and foundations—some still surprisingly tall, “the city expanded over time, and the ramparts spread out accordingly, like rings in the water, to accommodate the growth.”

  “So, which Troy is this exactly?” asked Nick, looking at the remains of a massive tower.

  “Troy 6,” said Rebecca, hands on her hips in a posture of ownership. “The Troy, in my opinion. That was when this entire outer wall was built, together with several enormous buildings. Don’t you agree”—she looked at me for support—”that these are the walls worthy of Homer’s Troy?”

  “The problem,” said Dr. Özlem, “is that nothing significant was found in that layer. At least not to my knowledge.”

  “Except a gigaton of brick,” muttered Nick, mostly to me.

  “It is possible,” Dr. Özlem went on, ripping a few weeds from one of the walls and absentmindedly stuffing them in his jacket pocket, “the Greeks came many times. And who knows, maybe the earthquake was what helped them take Troy in the end.” He looked at Rebecca, slowly but surely cheered by the opportunity to speculate. “Maybe you are right. Maybe it was Troy 6. It was certainly of great importance, strategically.”

  Mr. Telemakhos nodded. “You saw how narrow the strait is. This is where all the ships would come by on their way to t
he Black Sea. Sometimes they would be stuck here for weeks, waiting for the north wind to die down. A perfect place to run a business: Your customers can’t get away.” He picked his way through the weeds and jumped up on a grassy knoll ringed with rubble. “No wonder they were popular, these Trojans. Proud, stallion-breaking Trojans, lords of the eastern sea. Just think of the royal treasury”—he held out his arms at the imagined splendor—”the riches it must have held. No wonder the king of Troy needed his tall walls.”

  I turned to Nick and caught him staring at my jackal bracelet. On the boat I had felt his eyes on me many times, to the point where the sensation made me as breathless as if he had actually touched me. But now we were once again on solid ground, walking through yet another grass-covered legacy of human endeavor, and his face bore signs of nothing beyond detachment. Did it even occur to him, I wondered, that the shell game he was playing with his enemies might have vast real-life consequences for all of us—not just for Rebecca and me, but potentially also for Mr. Telemakhos and Dr. Özlem, whose sincerity and dedication cast Mr. al-Aqrab’s guile into brazen relief?

  “You should know,” I said to Nick, “that this was the birthplace of the Amazon Hoard. The treasure was believed to consist of gold from the Trojan treasury.”

  “Not just any old gold,” interjected Mr. Telemakhos, who had overheard my remark, “but the centerpieces of Trojan civilization. Salvaged by the Amazons before the city fell.” He smiled whimsically, as if even he, believer that he was, had never fully bought the idea of such a treasure.

  “But my point,” I said, turning once again to Nick and lowering my voice, “is that anyone out there mad enough to think the Amazon Hoard ever existed—and still exists—just may come knocking on Dr. Özlem’s door very soon. And they may not be so nice about it. Not if they’re the same people who like to mug women in dark labyrinths.”

  Nick looked at me with raised eyebrows. “Why don’t you tell that to the Oxford scholar who started writing letters to Reznik in the first place?”

  Still not quite ready to acknowledge my own guilt in the matter, I walked briskly up to the others, saying, “So, do we all agree that the beautiful-Helen story was pure fiction? That to Achilles and all those Greek heroes who gave their lives, the Trojan War was all about gold?”

  Dr. Özlem shrugged. “Who knows what their leaders told them. Men always like to blame women for everything that goes wrong. Look at Adam and Eve.” He sighed. “If only we had some historical records … but we don’t. We do have a few ancient treaties made with other countries, but they don’t tell us much, and the names are confusing. Could the Alaksandu that is mentioned be the historical Paris? Is the ‘Great King’ of Ahhiyawa possibly Homer’s Agamemnon? But where is Hector? Where is Achilles? Were they actually ever here, or were they part of a different story, which later became fused with the legend of Troy?”

  “I certainly wouldn’t miss Achilles,” Rebecca chimed in, as we all continued down a muddy path toward the older ruins. “I mean, what kind of hero rapes the body of a dead opponent in the middle of the battlefield?” Seeing Nick’s grimace, she laughed and added, “I am referring to the Amazon queen at the time, Penthesilea. According to tradition, the Amazons sided with the Trojans in the war, to fight against the Greeks. In Homer’s Iliad, the Amazons are called antianeirai, which means ‘those who fight like men.’ The story goes that Achilles didn’t even realize he had been dueling with a woman until she was dead and he peeked underneath her body armor.”

  Nick turned to me with a frown. “Could Penthesilea be another name for Myrina? Or did the Amazons have two queens at the time?”

  It was an excellent question, but his hypocrisy made me cringe. Whatever his reason for being there, and putting us all at risk by his presence, I was convinced he cared little for the actual history of the Amazons. As with the invading Greeks, it was all about the gold. Nick kept joking about the Amazon Hoard as if it was merely a fiction, but I was no longer fooled. He had been after it all along. His recent offer of an additional ten grand to help him beat Reznik to the treasure certainly suggested as much.

  “Diana!” boomed Mr. Telemakhos. “Here we are, faced with the question of questions: Did our Algerian Amazons make it all the way to Troy, and was their queen, indeed, called Myrina? To which Homer replies …” He gestured for me to complete the thought, but I was too distraught to understand what he wanted from me.

  Mr. Telemakhos held up a pedagogical finger. “Never forget your Homer. He is the one who comes to our rescue. He specifically mentions our queen when he describes a small hill on the Scamandrian Plain.” Walking up an overgrown staircase ahead of us, arms wide, Mr. Telemakhos recited the passage with panache: “Men call it Batieia, but the gods call it the mound of Myrina, light of step.”

  I was so taken aback, I felt riveted to the spot. “You believe that verse refers to our Myrina?”

  Mr. Telemakhos looked out over the old battlefield with a squint, as though he were a surviving officer returning to the scene of a devastating defeat to figure out what he had done wrong. “What do I believe? I believe Homer’s Iliad is a code, encrypted for the worthy—”

  “And the Trojan War?” asked Nick. “Did it really happen?”

  “Something certainly happened here.” Dr. Özlem zipped up his waxed jacket against the chill of late afternoon. “We’re just not sure what it was. But I highly doubt it was caused by a woman.” He looked at his wristwatch. “It’s getting late. My wife has made dinner. Would you like to join us?”

  As we all headed back toward the parking lot and the large wooden horse marking the entrance to the site, the silhouette of a man emerged from the setting sun, walking toward us in a determined manner. Tall and athletic, hands in his pockets, he looked like a reluctant Apollo or some other ill-disguised divinity, dispatched from Mount Olympus to do one last round of duty sorting out yet another errant human.

  “Uh-oh,” said Rebecca, all her extremities—head included—receding into her flight jacket. “Now we have trouble.”

  “What?” I began, but then I recognized him, too.

  It was James.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  EPHESUS

  MYRINA WAS SO SHOCKED AT THE SIGHT OF PARIS SHE FORGOT TO hold on to the chicken she had finally managed to catch, and it fluttered from her grip with a few indignant clucks.

  “Here—” He threw her a toy dagger made of wood, but she did not have the wherewithal to catch it before it fell to the floor at her feet, throwing up a little puff of dust. “I am not going to teach you how to fight like a man because you are not a man. You are a woman, whether you like it or not, and as such you have some natural limitations. Never forget that.”

  Still too stunned to speak, Myrina watched Paris as he held up a wooden toy sword of his own—twice as long as the dagger he had given her—and a long pole with a ball of cloth stuck onto one end. His expression was perfectly serious, perfectly serene; it was as if their long separation had successfully cured every weakness he had once felt for her.

  And yet, as soon as Myrina reached up to gather her hair with a string, she saw him struggling to keep his eyes off her body … and losing the fight with a grimace. “Never do that,” he said, his voice gruff, “in front of a man. One way or another, he will run you through.”

  Leaving her hair as it was, Myrina picked up the toy dagger and held it in front of her. “And this is how you will have me defend myself? A kitchen knife against that”—she nodded at his own two weapons—”and that?”

  “If this were real,” said Paris, showing her the wooden sword, “it would likely be as dangerous for its owner as for the victim. Many a man, in his desire to appear invincible, will carry a sword too long for his strength and meet an untimely death in the backswing. Let not woman, clever woman, repeat his mistake. And this”—he held up the mock spear—”is another weapon your enemy will kindly carry for you. A throwing spear, of course, will fly once and be gone; a thrusting spear, more often th
an not, will share its fate. For believe me: To withdraw its head from a dead body wearing a leather harness in the middle of a battle, in time to fend off the next assault, is no pleasant exercise.”

  “And yet,” said Myrina, “you would go to battle thus.”

  Paris nodded. “As a man, I must do what is honorable, even if I know it will be my doom. As a woman, you may freely run away, and no one will ever scoff and say you should have done otherwise. But Queen Myrina is not content with that. So come”—he smiled at last, opening his arms—”and strike me dead.”

  They circled each other a few times, Paris smiling, Myrina still not sure what to make of his presence. Then she stopped, lowering the knife. “You are sporting with me. I know that smile of yours. As soon as I approach with my little wooden claw, you will slap me with those sticks and laugh.”

  Paris nodded. “Remember what you are doing right now, the way you look. That is how you should always open your fights—by looking as if you have already surrendered. One of the most important rules for a woman is this: Always make sure they underestimate you. They will be naturally inclined to think you a weakling, and that is your greatest advantage.”

  “A weakling?” Myrina stormed forward, charging at last. But as soon as she did, the wooden sword came between them, right across her throat.

  “That was rule number two,” said Paris, still smiling. “Here comes rule number one: Never underestimate them.” With that he pushed her away, and Myrina stumbled backward, nearly tripping over a hayfork.

  Just then, as she was contemplating her next move, a third person appeared in the door. It was Lady Otrera, looking far too elegant for the barn and clearly mystified by the sounds of panting and rushing feet. “Nephew?” she called, peering into the dusty shadows. “I heard you had arrived. What a pleasant surprise.”