The Fox Knows Many Things: An Athena Fox Adventure

by Mike Sweeney

  “Or my hat.” If there was anything my fictional mentor had taught me, it was always go back for the hat.

  “Hey, everyone!” Jack said excitedly. “I have Internet again!”

  “Oh, that is totally my cue.” I knew what was coming.

  “This is what I was talking about!” he continued, holding his phone up so everyone could see and thumbing the volume all the way up. The theme music Detlef had written for my show crackled out of the tiny speaker.

  I hoped it wasn’t Episode 3, but I knew my luck. I made a last wave to everyone and a hasty retreat down the dock and towards the ferry.

  Part IV

  Owed on a Grecian Urn

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  ATHENA FOX STOOD tall and still amid the bustling crowds of Emou Street, the sad state of her khaki pants and battered fedora witness to her struggle to arrive here, in Athens, on her search for the mysterious Enceladus Calyx.

  And yawned. It had been a long bus ride from the Port of Patras.

  Atlantis Gallery waited silently. Lights were on, the sea lilies waved in faded Minoan pastels.

  I needed to confront Ariadne, but I wasn’t ready. There was something dirty going on, and she was at the center of it, but I think I was a little afraid of finding out what her connection was.

  I didn’t know enough, not nearly enough. I turned on one heel. My boots were still damp and horribly uncomfortable, and I stunk. No. Before I confronted Ariadne I needed to know where and when the calyx came from and why it mattered and to whom. And I was in the best city in the world for finding that kind of answer.

  The National. The National Archaeological Museum. The greatest collection of Greek antiquities in the world. If I couldn’t find the answers there, I’d hang up my Archaeologist hat for good.

  The National, then. After I checked back into my hotel and had a long hot bath.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  THIS WAS A different side of Athens. I hung on to the grab bar, twisting around to look out the window. The National Museum of Archaeology was far from the milling tour buses of Syntagma Square. The streets were busy with traffic and the buildings busy with graffiti. Fast-food joints, auto shops, torn up sidewalks awaiting repair, and trash. It made me homesick.

  Of course there were differences. More people on foot. Much of the graffiti was primitive, hasty scribbles of paint, although some pieces had the skill and flair I was used to. And the trash? Athens was dirty, no question. But San Francisco, my current home, was filthy. There was something about that ground-in grime of discarded food and who-knows-what that stood out.

  Well, that and Athens had probably seen some serious pressure-washing around the time they hosted the Olympics. Maybe that was it. All in all, from sidewalks awaiting repair to abandoned buildings, what it felt like wasn’t an endemic lack of care but instead a temporary lack of funds.

  Panepistimio? Is that what the announcement had just said? If my memory was right, I was still going in the right direction and I was about four stops away.

  I was rather enjoying going hands free. No GPS, no Google. Just me and my powers of observation and a willingness to ask stupid questions. I had freedom, now, freedom to make mistakes; I was finally free of my pursuers.

  The two were not unrelated. I’d called Drea after I’d had my long, hot, and soapy bath. My hair was going to be unmanageable for weeks. I mean, more than usual.

  “Look, the phone got wet, okay? So no texts until I can get a new one.”

  “Drop it in a canal?”

  “Yes, but it was the Adriatic that did it. Never mind. Long story.”

  Drea made a sound of pity. “No internet, then? No Twitter, no Facebook? I couldn’t do it.”

  “Facebook? Since when am I on Facebook?”

  “You’re telling me? I’ve had to do all the work to keep your page updated.”

  “You….wait, roll that back and tell me this slow.”

  And then’s when I figured out Herr Satz’s secret. “Ve haf ways,” my ass. He’d been sneaking a look at my profile. No wonder he’d been so out of breath in Venice. He didn’t know where to look until Drea had posted on Facebook the very name of the restaurant I was at.

  I was about two kilometers north of the Acropolis by now. We’d just turned on to Oktovriou. Or Οκτωβρίου, if you preferred. Yes, I could read the signs now. That had been a long bus ride from Patras. I now knew my omicron from my omega (little o and big o; obvious when you thought about it).

  I felt in my bag for the Ath.ena card. I’d been about to board the bus, a handful of change in my hand, when I realized I didn’t hear any coins dropping when the other passengers boarded but I did hear lots of beeps. So they had a transit card here, too. Asked around, ducked into the nearest Metro and bought one.

  And…this was my stop.

  The museum building was a sharp-edged neo-classical one from the 19th century. Parts of the facade were painted, though, unlike your typical bank — a lot more typical, I reflected, of an actual Classical building.

  Set back on curving walkways with people sprawled out on the grass and seated on the benches. Another way you could tell it was an old building; it could afford to leave that much open space.

  First things first. Figure out what period Giulio’s pot came from, and who was really on the sherd. No, look at the archaeological record and finally put to bed those damned Dorians.

  No…find a chair and some coffee and drink it while I made a plan. Because I needed a plan if I was going to make good on my promises.

  A tropical depression was making its way north towards the coast of Greece. My flight back to San Francisco left in three days. And some instinct told me the clock was ticking on the calyx, too.

  If I was going to find it in time, I needed to move smart.

  It was a Herm. And he was missing his “little herm.”

  “Damn you, Alcibiades!” I laughed under my breath.

  The courtyard of the National was filled with the scents of a wide selection of native plants. I knew this because I could see the little place cards typical of a botanical garden on some of the ones near me. An olive tree shaded the cafe table I was at.

  Sculptures lurked in the greenery like someone’s Lost Temple set. A stone lion at the corner. A mosaic that looked rather Byzantine. Either that, or mosaic art always made me think Byzantines.

  “Is this seat taken?”

  “Ist hier noch frei?” flashed through my mind. Too many languages crammed into too short a span.

  A young man had stopped by my table. I sized him up quickly. Nice smile, trim mustache and that sort-of-a-beard that was popular in certain circles. Tanned and just the right side of muscular and dressed in that kind of classy casual Greeks had down to an art. Yeah, he had it going on. And he damn well knew it.

  “Go for it,” I gestured.

  I was sort of regretting my own dress choice. After sweltering through so much of Italy in Archaeologist Chic I had welcomed the chance to break out shorts, sandals, and open shirt worn over a sleeveless blouse.

  Plus, after ten hours in wet boots my feet were ghastly. They needed drying out as much as the boots did. Hey, I’d dragged all that stuff through TSA. I was going to get some use out of it! But it wasn’t what the locals were wearing, and it marked me.

  “Thank you,” the young man said. “What’s the joke? If you don’t mind me asking.” He put down coffee in a paper cup and a small sketch pad.

  “Art student?” I pointed at the pad.

  He nodded, smiling as if pleased I had noticed. I would put even money on the pages being blank. Okay, that was catty, but still. “You too?”

  “History,” I said. “I don’t suppose you go to Vakalo, do you? I know a guy there.”

  Oh, that landed. I could see him re-evaluating quickly. I wasn’t quite the innocent tourist he could effortlessly charm. Oh, sure, no illusions here. I wanted what he wanted. I wasn’t going to lie and say the fantasy of a vacation fling hadn’t crossed my mind when I
was buying an airline ticket to Greece. But I was at the National to work. And if he wanted to play, he was going to have to do a little work, too.

  “Yes, I do,” he said. “Industrial Design.” He was watching my eyes carefully. That’s something I had noticed about the Greeks. They were the most self-aware people I’d ever encountered. Comfortable in their skins, but always this interest about what others thought of them.

  They also had no problem at all with looking back. I felt the heat rising in me. Dropped my glance. Damn, but he had it. Now to see if there were any brains back behind those intent eyes.

  “The Herm,” I explained. “I couldn’t help but think of Alcibiades. Although I’m pretty sure he was actually innocent.”

  “Herm?” I pointed my gaze at the narrow plinth of stone topped with a bearded head. “Oh, that. So why did you laugh?”

  “Oh. Dear. You really want to know? I’m no expert, but I can give you the Athena Fox lecture. No charge.” Impishly. Let’s see if this scared him off.

  “Let’s hear it.” His smile had faltered, but he was still in the game.

  “So. Start with a pile of rocks at a crossroads. You see that in cultures across the world. Crossroads are always magic, often scary magic. Maybe it is a human instinct to pile up rocks at key points on a long road; our way of leaving our mark on where we’ve been. Or maybe it is just that travelers can use help finding the path after there’s been a foot of fresh snow.

  “So this got associated with Hermes, god of travelers, merchants, and thieves as well as being the winged messenger of the gods. Evolved into a simple plinth topped with a carved, bearded head. Soon they were being used as official boundary markers. And since they were in effect a good-luck charm, they started showing up in front of private residences, until there were hundreds or thousands of the things around Athens.

  “This would be the more archaic Hermes, before he became the smooth-faced athletic young man in the petasus and the winged sandals. Same hat Jay Garrick wore as the original Flash, but anyhow. I left off one little detail. The Herms were, um, anatomically equipped. They didn’t have bodies, but they did have a dingus. The Classical world was a lot more open about that sort of thing. The Romans, in particular, are basically dick-obsessed.”

  I took a long drink of coffee as an excuse to gather my thoughts. How in Hades had I ended up lecturing a Greek on his own history? Well, he didn’t seem too appalled at how I was botching it. So on to the fun part.

  “Now we come to the Peloponnesian War. And Alcibiades; Athenian general, statesman, and renowned party animal. He got involved in a three-way battle for political power in which all three tried to use and were in turn threatened by ostracism. Ostracism was always a gamble. You never knew which name the people would actually write on their clay sherds.

  “Well, one night someone went around Athens and — there’s no delicate way to put this — knocked the dick off all the herms. Alcibiades was blamed. Well, for that and some other religious improprieties involving the Elysian Mysteries. What improprieties, nobody really knows. They don’t call them Mysteries for nothing.

  “They still let him go off and direct his fleet in the next battle. Held a trial in absentia and sent someone to drag him back. ‘Sure,’ says our man, ‘but let me take my own boat.’

  “Which he does. To Sparta. When politics got to him in Sparta, too, he went to Persia. The Delian League had originally been formed to defend the Greek islands against Persia until Athens figured out it was more cost effective to buy them off instead. By the time they clashed with the rising Peloponnesian League Persia had figured out it was more cost effective not to try another war in that direction anyhow. Alcibiades eventually returned to Athens, and died in poverty, but you had to admit he’d had a hell of a run.”

  “Wow.” He seemed a bit stunned.

  “Um…” I said, a little abashed now. “That kind of got away from me. That’s the trouble with history; every bit connects to some other bit and you never know where to stop.”

  “Well,” he was recovering. “I didn’t expect the lecture. I think you mixed up a couple things there. But I liked how you told it.”

  What was that my commenters kept saying about my show? That they loved it when I geeked out? At least he hadn’t called me “cute.”

  “Markos,” he said.

  “Penny.”

  “What was that name you used earlier?”

  I tried not to wince. “Athena Fox is the name of a character I play on YouTube. I have a history program there.”

  “I’ll bet you have a lot of fans.”

  More than I expected, sometimes. I thought of four men and their very fast boat.

  “Athena,” he turned it over. “That’s a good name. You should use it.”

  “Here?” I waved my hand vaguely, encompassing all of Athens. “I think it is in use already.”

  “So call yourself Ath.”

  “No.”

  “Athy.”

  “No.”

  “Theenie.”

  “No way in hell.”

  Another deep look. “I have angered you.”

  “No. Fine. Call me Athena if you like. Look, I’ve got a job to do. So can we stop flirting long enough so I can get to it?”

  He stood. “Lead on, Macduff.”

  He had the quote all wrong but I wasn’t going to tell him that. I lead on.

  Markos seemed surprised I ignored the signs pointing to the Antikythera Mechanism exhibit, and with only a long lingering glance towards the halls of statuary (was that Poseidon I could just glimpse through the archway?) I headed upstairs to the pots.

  The ceramic arts collection formed a serpentine wrap around the Eastern half of the museum. That was the first thing to notice about the National. Other museums, they had two or three pieces. Just enough to illustrate the period or culture they’d based that particular exhibit around.

  The National had a surfeit. So many objects they crowded into each other, pots in rank after rank, shelf after shelf. It was overwhelming.

  The first room announced itself as Proto-Geometric. But even before that was a short display, set off slightly. “Post-Mycenae?” I tried it out.

  These were short, stubby-looking vases, crudely decorated. They looked, well, like something that would be made after the apocalypse. Made by people just crawling out of their caves and bomb shelters after the world had fallen. According to the placards they were all grave goods, and they looked it.

  “The books call it the Greek Dark Ages,” I told Markos. “Maybe one day that will be seen as much a misnomer as the European Dark Ages. Something happened around 1200 BCE. The Hittite Empire collapsed, the Egyptians fought off waves of some mysterious ‘Sea Peoples,’ and the Mycenaeans just plain stopped writing. That, and their palaces burned.”

  “You’ve studied this?”

  “Not enough,” I said, frustrated. “Back then I was, well...I was looking for Atlantis. I was younger then, okay? I hadn’t learned any better.”

  I remembered the rush when I’d read that the Mycenaeans, those ancient proto-Greeks, might have been the heroes of Homer. Heinrich Schliemann had dug in Turkey and discovered Troy had been an actual place.

  And that oh so evocative name, “Sea Peoples.” But the timing was all wrong. The Minoans had collapsed hundreds of years earlier. So I’d gone looking elsewhere for Atlantis and now I regretted my foolishness.

  “Too early for the piece I’m trying to identify,” I told Markos with a sigh. “Onwards.”

  The simplicity and openness of the Proto-Geometric, mostly horizontal lines with lots of unmarked space, bled slowly into the Geometric. The designs became more elaborate, more and more bands appeared and began to crawl with dentitions and dots and lines and the first meanders.

  “You are serious about this,” Markos said at that point.

  “Yes, I am. Now be a good sidekick and shut up and look suitably awed.”

  “I stand in awe of your beauty already.” I tried to glare
at him but couldn’t keep it up.

  The next room over was different. “Orientalizing,” Markos announced. “Eighth century.”

  “You…what?” I looked at him.

  “Vakalo College,” he said simply.

  Okay, fine. So his sketchbook wasn’t entirely blank. “Care to elaborate?” I asked.

  “Plants and animals,” he said. “New motifs from the Phoenicians and the Egyptians and I guess the Syrians.”

  “Trade had resumed,” I said. “Across the Mediterranean. Possibly as far as Iberia, the Black Sea, even Germany. And this is about when the written form of the Greek Language shows up, right? From those same Phoenicians?”

  “I suppose.”

  “And Homer is, when?”

  “Earlier.” He made a sort of shrug. Apparently, comparative chronologies wasn’t really a thing with him. “This is the birth of Attic pottery,” he said then, proving me wrong once again. “Before, it was Corinth. From this point on, Athens led.”

  I looked at the pots some more. It certainly didn’t feel like an invasion. Instead, the last days of the Geometric felt like they’d imploded of their own excesses. The final vases in that room had been so crammed with lines and shapes and repeating patterns and hatch-marks almost none of the red-brown underlying glaze was visible through it all. Now it was washed away with a new certainty, a newer and more assured simplicity. But it still felt continuous.

  “You ever see the Mycenaean copies of Minoan art?” I asked Markos. I went on without stopping. “There’s the one large cooking pot I saw that had the lamest-looking octopus on it. It missed everything that made the Minoan export ware so special.”

  “The Mycenaeans had great artists,” Markos said. Simply, not defensively, just a statement of fact.

  “Yeah, sorry. It was just my emotional reaction to one moment in time. That’s what I don’t see here. This is more like they saw the motifs somewhere else, but they digested them and made them their own and executed them as part of the art they were developing.”