The Lost Sisterhood

by Anne Fortier

  The moment I hung up, the phone rang again. “Hello?” I said hopefully, my mind still in Dubai.

  “Morg!” James’s joy in catching me was explosive. “Look, I’m so sorry! I really am! You hate me, don’t you? I can’t blame you. But listen—for old times’ sake.” He managed to lower his voice. “I’m in trouble. Your lesbo friends set me up big-time. Can we talk? Are you listening to me?”

  When I didn’t respond, James laughed nervously. “Fair enough. How about this: Money. I know things are tight for you. Name your price. All you have to do is come to Geneva”—he lowered his voice even further—”and tell these wankers that I didn’t kill Reznik. Okay? I’m at the central police station—I’m in fucking handcuffs, Morg!”

  I hung up.

  When the phone rang again, I unplugged it.

  Evidently, the Amazons had known precisely how to deal with James and with Reznik’s dead body, and frankly, I didn’t feel the slightest need to interfere with their justice.

  MY TEACHING OBLIGATIONS, AS it turned out, had been taken over by some overachieving grad student, and everyone I spoke to seemed extremely reluctant to go through the trouble of changing things back to the way they were. Apparently Professor Vandenbosch—the department chair who had long ago made it his mission to squash me—had personally signed the papers. There was even a suggestion that this industrious replacement of mine was now the rightful tenant of Professor Larkin’s quarters, and that I had better start looking for lodging elsewhere. I could see the point, of course, having neglected my duties for three weeks, but I was not in a frame of mind to give up my hard-won perch without a fight.

  It did not help that Katherine Kent had not yet returned from Finland. I had stopped by her office first thing, but there was no answer to my repeated knocking, and the porter had no idea when she might be back. “You never know with Professor Kent,” he said to me with a conspiratorial smile. “I think she works for MI5. But no one believes me.”

  On Tuesday afternoon I returned to college from a cathartic training session at the fencing club to find my apartment door ajar. My first thought was that the cleaning lady must have come, but when I heard no vacuum cleaner or clanging of trash cans, only silence, I felt a familiar frost on my spine.

  Opening my gym bag as silently as I could, I took out my foil. It was designed for sport only, with a flexible blade and a blunt tip, but it was better than nothing. In the right hands, even a sporting foil could be lethal.

  Taking a deep breath, I pushed through the door at last … and found myself face-to-face with Rebecca.

  “God!” she shrieked, clutching her heart at the sight of me. “Are you trying to kill me?”

  I lowered the foil, and we fell into each other’s arms. “What are you doing here?” I said after a moment. “Didn’t I tell you to sail away with Mr. Telemakhos?”

  Rebecca stood back and mashed away her tears. “If that’s the kind of friend you want, put an ad in the paper. You need help, and here I am. I received a courier envelope with your keys in it, and I thought I’d make use of them.”

  We compared notes over single malt at the Grand Café. Neither Rebecca nor I were whisky drinkers, but I am sure we both felt a change was necessary. Seated on tall stools at the bar, we worked together to unravel the tangle of people and events that had forced us apart … and now back together. Naturally, James Moselane loomed large in this motley mix of friends and foes.

  “I still can’t believe it,” said Rebecca at length. “To think we used to worship the louse. What do you think they’re going to do with him? Let him rot in jail? Chop off his head with a sword? Isn’t that what they used to do in Switzerland?”

  I shrugged and swirled my drink. “I have no idea how they managed to pin Reznik’s death on him, but you know what? He deserves it. If I ever see him again, he can have his golf ball back.”

  When we finally walked home together, arm in arm, Rebecca knew everything there was to know about my ordeals in Germany and Finland. And although she had peppered my regretful narrative with encouraging remarks such as “I’m sure he’ll be fine” and “Of course he loves you!” I knew her well enough to sense that she shared my fear I’d never see Nick again.

  “Why don’t you come to Ikiztepe with me?” she said, matching her pace to mine on the uneven cobblestones. “It’s a wonderfully exciting place, and Dr. Özlem says they’re desperate to hire people.” Rebecca glanced at me to see whether I was in a receptive mood. “I’m telling you, getting fired from Knossos was the best thing that ever happened to me. What about you? Isn’t it time to wean yourself off Oxford?”

  I shook my head. “Not until I’ve taken a course on self-defense.”

  Then I saw it. A delivery truck was idling in front of the college entrance, and beside it stood a figure I recognized only too well. In her long boots and tight clothing my Amazon friend Lilli stood out against the medieval street like a defiant perennial growing on a rock face.

  When she caught sight of us, she nodded to me as if we had a secret understanding and walked around the truck to get in on the passenger side.

  “Wait!” I cried, bounding forward, but it was too late. The truck rolled down the street and disappeared around the corner into Oriel Square. Standing there at the college entrance, Rebecca and I were left bewildered.

  “Honestly!” I stepped through the gate and hurried past the lodge, images of Professor Larkin’s Roman coin collection and ancient pottery shards flashing before my eyes. “What can they possibly have taken this time?”

  In my hurry to get back to my apartment I didn’t notice Frank the porter calling me until he came out into the quad in his shirtsleeves and suspenders. “There’s a delivery for you!” he yelled, clearly disgruntled at being pulled out of his man cave. “You’d better take it right away. I can’t even move in there.”

  He was not exaggerating. On the floor of the lodge sat three wooden crates the size of washing machines, and they were so heavy it would take several people to move them. “Came just now,” Frank told me. “For you personally. They wouldn’t leave until you were here.”

  “They who?” I asked, curious to know what exactly Lilli had told him. But Frank was already on the phone, trying to find some strong arms to help us.

  Half an hour later, the three crates were sitting on the floor of Professor Larkin’s office. “I’m not sure I would open them,” said Rebecca, chewing her lip. “Remember Pandora’s box? Unleashing sorrow on mankind and all that?”

  I riffled through the drawers in the desk to find something that could serve as a crowbar. “Call me an optimist, but I can’t imagine there being much sorrow left to unleash.”

  It wasn’t until I had borrowed a hammer and chisel from a headshaking Frank that we were at long last able to pry the lid off the crate marked “1.” A few creaking nails later, Rebecca and I peered into the sawdust, transfixed by the leather binder nested on top. “Let’s see.” I took the binder, which turned out to contain a longish, typewritten text, conveniently in English.

  “This is the story of Myrina”—read Rebecca, over my shoulder—”the first of the Amazons, founder of our sisterhood. Oh! Mr. Telemakhos will love that!”

  I sifted through the pages to see if an explanatory note was hiding somewhere. But of course not. The Amazon way was the silent way.

  Putting aside the leather binder, I stuck my hands into the sawdust and rummaged around for a bit, while Rebecca looked on with wide eyes. Whatever else was in the crate, it was cushioned extremely well, and I had to dig in deep before my fingertips brushed against something hard.

  “Hold on!” Rebecca pushed me aside as soon as she saw me straining to pull out the object. “Let’s proceed carefully.”

  Soon, the floor of Professor Larkin’s office was covered in heaps of sawdust as Rebecca embarked upon her excavation. And when the object was finally uncovered, she didn’t take it out, merely leaned over the edge of the crate to study it. “That,” she observed, “is ancient.
It must be.”

  We stood in silence for a moment, staring at the clay tablet. Then I went over to fetch a lamp and hold it over the crate so we could see better.

  “It’s not the Amazon alphabet, is it?” asked Rebecca after a while.

  “No, it isn’t.” I held the lamp as close as I could for the straining power cord. “I think it’s Luwian.” No sooner had I said it than the plug snapped out of the outlet, leaving us in sudden obscurity. But the vision left in my head was bright as day. “Oh, Bex!” I whispered, feeling the long-forgotten prickle of scholarly excitement. “Can this really be it?”

  Just then, the phone rang.

  “I have a journalist on the line,” said Frank, sounding appropriately suspicious, “who wants to talk to the person responsible for finding the Trojan tablets. Is that you?”

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  THE ISTROS RIVER

  TALLA WAS BORN UNDER THE FULL MOON.

  She was healthy and hungry, and had her father’s eyes. For days and days, Myrina did nothing but lie with her in her arms, looking into those little eyes whenever they were open. “Have you seen him?” she would whisper, letting Talla hold the tip of her finger. “Is your father looking at us? I think so.”

  They had spent autumn traveling up the Istros River. These northern lands were a world without grandeur, without sophistication of any kind. The people they met were simple and easy to understand. Sometimes they were friendly, sometimes not; there was nothing puzzling about their ways.

  So far, Myrina and her sisters had come upon neither witches nor wolf men; in fact, whenever they arrived at a new village, it was evident that they were the unnatural ones: women with different faces, different hair, different clothes, but most important, women with different customs….

  Women without men.

  They decided to spend winter in a valley, a place where there were not too many other hunters to contend with. Here, they built huts for themselves and for the horses, and buried King Priam’s precious tablets in nests of straw underneath the floors.

  Not a day went by where they did not speak of the future. They had one dream in common, namely that of a fertile and welcoming land where they might farm and hunt in peace without the constant fear that what they had would once again be taken away. “When we get there—” they would say, to themselves and to one another, and none doubted that one day, they would.

  “It is out there, waiting for us,” Lilli always maintained, smiling at the horizon she couldn’t see. “We shall have our village, nay, our city. A city of women.”

  Through the long winter, they spent evenings around the fire, huddled under pelts and skins, laying out that city in words. The question of men arose occasionally, but since no one could imagine ever desiring any intimacy with the inarticulate males that roamed these northern lands, the response was usually laughter.

  “I will never ask you,” Myrina said once to her sisters, stoking the fire with a stick, “to live without such pleasures. But I do believe men and women are so different we should not try to live in each other’s worlds. If you must, go and frolic with a herdsman under a starry sky, but do not attempt to share his daylight. For the sun works on men as an elixir—it blears their eyes to the worth of women and makes them dare to think they should rule over us. Even the kindest of men”—she bent her head as the memories stirred—”will think they are doing us a favor by locking us away.”

  “Surely not all men are tyrannical masters,” objected Pitana, busily carving a wooden toy for Talla. “I for one remember how you used to smile.” She looked up at Myrina, gauging her mood. “I should like to know how it feels to smile that way. It seems to me men bring out sides of us that would wither away if we lived our lives without them.”

  “Had it not been for the Trojans,” agreed Klito, “Kara and I would still be enslaved in Mycenae. Surely some men deserve to be praised as liberators.”

  “I do not deny it,” said Myrina. “Many good men, I am sure, have lost their lives—or at least their happiness—because of a woman. This is why I say that the kindest thing we can do for them is to leave them be. We, too, will benefit from such precautions. For man’s primitive response to our complex power is to yoke us and make us believe we should be yoked. He calls it an act of love and protection—so speaks the cunning tyrant. And when we believe him and willingly leash ourselves and our sisters”—she sighed deeply and shook her head—”then our tragedy becomes his ultimate triumph.”

  “Indeed,” agreed Kara, who had embraced their new life more heartily than anyone. “Love is a treacherous thing. We give men strength, but they do not return the favor. Even those of us who consider ourselves superior in spirit lose our bearings when a male spreads his plumes. It is a noxious spell they cast on us, is it not?” She looked around at the others for confirmation.

  “Once again I am the lucky one,” said Lilli, smiling as she rocked baby Talla in her arms. “I cannot see those noxious plumes that lead you astray. Count yourselves fortunate, sisters, that you have at least one person in your midst who can maintain a steady course.”

  “I propose, then,” said Myrina, when at last the discussion waned and she was nursing Talla, “that our city shall admit no men, lest some plumed cock tries to lord it over us. We will all be free to come and go, of course, and spend our nights howsoever we choose; no jealous Moon Goddess shall rob us of that choice.” She pointed at the raised scar on her breast—the permanent reminder of her initiation at the Temple of the Moon Goddess. “From now on, these scars shall mean freedom, not enslavement. Our days shall be ours alone, devoted to industry and improvement; while the sun is up, no male and no stone deity shall be allowed to confine us.”

  AS TIME WENT ON, their numbers increased. Even the world of forests and mountains had no shortage of women ready to exchange a husband for a horse and halter. Always on the move, Myrina and her growing band of sisters refused to settle down until they found the perfect place for their city.

  It eventually fell to Talla to challenge her mother’s nomadic nature. “We cannot be hunters forever,” she said one day, when they were all gathered around a stag roasting on a spit. “Aunt Lilli is right, some hands have a need to plant and harvest. I know we are reluctant to found our city only to have it move again, but is that not the way of the world? The tide will come in, and go out, and we will be in another place.” She looked at each of them in turn. “Let us not be enslaved to an inflexible idea—”

  Myrina silenced her daughter with a tired gesture. “The ages to come hold no shortage of enemies, I am sure of it. To survive we must be ever ready, ever lithe of foot—”

  “And we will be!” exclaimed Talla, throwing up her arms. “But even the strongest runner needs to rest. Let us not imitate those animals who expire from exertion. We may be the Amazons, but we cannot be at a gallop from here to eternity.”

  And so they settled for a while, and moved, and settled again, never fully rooting in one place, always merely passing through. And wherever they went, the clay tablets from Troy—which none among them could read—served as a symbol of their promise to King Priam and to themselves: Never forget.

  Through the years they worked hard to remember the writing Kyme had taught them, but more than anything, they never stopped telling their stories. Even as time went on and their group split into many, each chapter stubbornly clung to the history that was their common root. For in that history, they knew, lay the wisdom that would protect the seed from the hungry beetle—the promise of a new and better world.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  There still may be another Troy.

  —EURIPIDES, The Trojan Women

  OXFORD, ENGLAND

  THE SHELDONIAN THEATRE WAS ABUZZ WITH GUESSWORK. IT WAS rare the humble field of classical philology attracted worldwide media attention, but the press conference had turned out to be one such occasion. Less than a month earlier, Mr. Ludwig had promised me I was about to write history. In his lie, he had been absolutely
right after all, I thought to myself as I walked to the podium.

  “Thank you, Professor Vandenbosch.” I smiled at the poor old backbiter, who had been given less than twenty-four hours to compose a eulogistic introduction listing my credentials, personal virtues, and inestimable value to the scholarly community at Oxford … in fact, from this day on, to scholarship everywhere. Despite a little muscle spasm at the corner of his eye as he spoke to the ladies and gentlemen of the press, the venerable department chair was pleasingly convincing in the role of my committed friend and colleague.

  Over the previous three days, since the crates had arrived, Professor Vandenbosch and everyone else with a stake in the ancient world had run me through an understandable gauntlet of questions, accusations, and insults, and he in particular had been terribly disappointed when I emerged alive on the other side. From being the self-anointed anchorman of the whole affair, he had soon been sidelined by journalists and authorities who had no patience for his patronizing mediation. In the end, the vice chancellor had stepped in, and a press conference had been arranged overnight.

  “As you already know,” I continued, looking out over the swaying field of faces, “an anonymous Swiss collector has entrusted me with twelve clay tablets inscribed in Luwian—a language spoken throughout the Hittite world in the second and first millennium B.C.E. My working theory is that these tablets contain historical records from ancient Troy—records that were removed from the city before it was destroyed more than three thousand years ago. The significance of such records is enormous. As you all know, the legendary Troy continues to intrigue not just scholars but everyone with an interest in ancient civilizations. I hope these tablets will lay a foundation for rewriting what we know about King Priam’s city.”