The Lost Sisterhood (18 page)

Walking on through the city, she looked for old people sitting in the shade of buildings—talkative codgers who had seen much and were happy to reminisce about it with strangers. Never lingering too long in one place, she asked about ships with black hulls, ships carrying greedy, apelike men to faraway coasts and returning with golden treasures.

But almost no one understood the languages Myrina spoke, and when she was finally introduced to an elderly sailor lying in a hammock, even this speaker of the Old Language had little to tell her. “Many ships have tarred keels,” he droned, fanning himself with a fig leaf. “They could be from anywhere. Probably the north, since you say the men had pale skin. My business was mostly in the south, which is why I know your language.”

Myrina decided to concentrate on the more pressing matter, namely how to feed her sisters and pay for their night in the harbor. “If I were looking for a free meal,” she said before leaving the sailor, “where would I go?”

He replied without hesitation. “The Eastern Harbor. That is where the big ships moor. Try the Trojans; if they are in, you will find them at the far end. I imagine they have something to spare.”

And so Myrina made her way there, blushing behind her scarf for behaving like a beggar. But she could see no honorable alternative. Since whoring or stealing were out of the question, and it was unlikely she could make herself or her sisters useful in other ways, Myrina was left with the humble hope of meeting some merciful merchant with goods to spare.

Elbowing her way through strange folk from distant lands—people who had arrived on ships so large she first mistook them for buildings—Myrina eventually arrived at the end of the harbor promenade, where the coast turned to beach again and seagulls circled fishing boats drawn up on the sand. Here, in the slanting orange light of the setting sun, she espied a gathering of men roasting whole chickens and vegetables on sticks over a bonfire, their merriment loud enough to convince her they were friendly. Could they be the Trojans the old sailor had told her about?

Stepping closer, Myrina saw they were engaged in a children’s game of throwing rocks into circles—a game she had played with her father when she was still too young to hunt with him, and which she had often played by herself to pass the time and improve her aim.

One of the men—a clean-shaven youth with a strong frame and handsome, embroidered clothing—was particularly good at landing
rocks at the center of the circles, and even though Myrina did not understand his language, it was clear to her that he was taunting the others, challenging them to outdo him.

Emboldened by the jovial atmosphere, Myrina picked up a rock of her own and tossed it into the game. It landed with a small thud in the nearest, easiest circle, not precisely at the center, but close enough to make the men turn to see who had thrown it.

When she saw the bafflement in their faces, Myrina pointed at the game, then at the young champion, then at herself to indicate she would like to challenge him. Her gesture set off a rumble of amusement among his mates, and the young man looked at her with eyes full of incredulity, as if he was entirely unused to such bold proposals.

Seeing his hesitation, Myrina pointed once again at the game, then at the chickens roasting over the bonfire, and finally at her own mouth behind the scarf. To which the young man said something she did not understand, his keen amber eyes searching her veiled face for a sign of comprehension. But Myrina merely bent down to pick up six rocks, three of which she held out to him … only to have her arms abruptly seized by his companions.

Shocked at the change in humor, Myrina bucked and kicked, anxious to free herself. But a burst of laughter from the young man, followed by a rapid exchange between him and his mates, had them quickly release her again. “Here—” He picked up the three stones she had dropped in the sand. “I will speak to you in the language of the desert nomads, for you look like a nomad to me. Do you understand?”

Myrina nodded. Even though she could have responded to him in words, she was determined to keep her silence lest her voice gave away her secret.

“Good.” The man bent his head to look at her sternly, the way bulls look at their adversaries before they charge. “You have challenged me to a duel, and that is no trifling matter.” But the sparkle of mischief in his eyes told her his gravity was just for play. “A chicken is at stake. And maybe a carrot. May the hungriest man win.” He nodded at the circles drawn in the sand. “After you.”

Myrina took aim and threw her first stone, doing her best to ignore
the heckling all around. It landed precisely in the center of the nearest of the five circles, putting her initial attempt to shame.

“Well done,” said her competitor, making a face of feigned worry. “How am I ever going to match that?” But even as he spoke, his first toss flew through the air and landed right in the center of the second circle. “Ah. I am lucky. Your turn.”

Myrina gritted her teeth and threw her next stone, only too aware the man was mocking her. But something in his eyes assured her of an underlying kindness, and even as her second perfect shot was matched by his, filling the third and fourth circle in turn, she remained hopeful she would eventually walk away from this place with something to eat.

No sooner had she landed her last stone in the fifth circle, however, than he pitched the final stone of the game, knocking her right out of the center spot, laughing heartily at her misfortune. “Oh no—” He grimaced in false sympathy. “There goes your chicken, boy. But I will give you a carrot as compensation.”

Without a word Myrina bent to pick up another six stones and hand him three … but he did not take them. Instead, he said, “I am bored with this game. Shall we try something else?” He looked around for inspiration, egged on by his jeering companions, and his eyes fell on Myrina’s bow, sticking up above her shoulder. “Is that just a toy or do you know how to handle it?”

Myrina hesitated. Not only had she been unable to practice properly for months, but the wound in her back was still so excruciatingly painful she had barely shot an arrow since the temple attack, even when she was training with her sisters.

“Let’s see how good you are.” The man opened a small leather pouch and took out five chunks of bronze. Copper tokens. “They are yours,” he went on, “and so is the chicken, if you can hit the seagull sitting on that mast.” He pointed at a beached fishing boat lying in the sand some three hundred feet away, its mast at an angle.

Myrina shook her head.

“Why not?” The man looked at her with renewed interest. “I see.
You don’t wish to kill a bird for sport.” He smiled and made a face at his companions. “What a noble lad! Then how about this: I throw an apple in the air, and you shoot it down?” When Myrina did not protest, he held out a hand and was promptly given an apple by one of the other men. “Ready?”

Before she could even get the bow off her back, the apple sailed out over the water in a long arch … and fell into the waves unscathed.

The man shook his head. “You are too slow, boy. But I will give you another chance.”

This time, Myrina was ready. Her bow was free before he even had the apple in his hand, and her arrow came out of the quiver just as he withdrew his arm to throw. Had she stopped to think, she would have been too late, or missed. As it was, the arrow flew out with unwavering confidence to split the juicy apple in half before diving, gracefully, into the ocean.

The men were so taken aback by the perfect shot no one noticed Myrina swaying with pain. “What an eye you have!” said her smiling tormentor, slapping her admiringly on the back. “Let us test it further.” But when he heard her muffled groan—too unguarded to be anything but the sound of a woman—he pulled back his hand in horror.

Seeing the look of amazement on his face, and fearing the interrogation she knew would follow, Myrina quickly knelt down to gather up the five copper tokens he had let fall into the sand, clutched them to her chest with her bow, and fled. So desperate was she to run away with her prize before he found some new way of detaining her and tricking her out of her winnings that Myrina did not even stop to claim her chicken on the way.

“Wait!” The man came after her, his voice angry enough to make her run faster. Up the stone steps to the harbor she ran, and across the promenade of the Eastern Harbor, jumping this way and that to avoid others along the way. Looking back over her shoulder, she saw him following, his shoulders pulled up in fury, and she made a quick decision to run toward the busy market rather than the Western Harbor, where her sisters awaited her.

She was not sure why the man was tailing her, but suspected it had
never been his intention to let her get away with his five copper tokens. Had she stayed, no doubt he would have talked her into some new bet of sorts, and would have made sport of her to amuse his friends.

So busy was she with imaginary events she did not notice the walls of the city closing around her tighter and tighter, until at last she found herself in a dead end piled with oozing garbage. Grimacing at the place, she turned around….

And found him standing right there, blocking her escape. “Trapped,” he observed somewhat superfluously, head cocked to one side. “Unless you are also hiding a pair of wings underneath those scales?”

“Please.” Clutching the copper tokens in one hand, Myrina pulled the hunting knife from her belt with the other. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

The man held up his arms, although his face showed no sincere worry. “I don’t want you to hurt me, either. I just want to see your face.”

Myrina took a step backward, her heel sinking into something warm and soft. “Why?”

The man laughed. “And why not?”

“These tokens”—Myrina held out her fist—”belong to me. Do they not?”

He looked surprised. “Of course they do.”

“Then what is it you want?” Myrina took another step back, but lost her balance briefly in the slippery gore.

“I told you.” The man came closer, smiling as if the whole thing was but a game. “I want to see your face. That is all.”

Myrina held out her knife to stop his approach. “And then what?”

He shrugged. “Then nothing. You will be free to go.”

She hesitated, trying to gauge his sincerity. Then she put the knife back in her belt and quickly unwound the scarf. “There!” She lowered her eyes to avoid—she was sure—his contemptuous stare. “Have you seen enough?”

The man did not reply. And when Myrina finally looked up, she could not guess his thoughts. “May I go now?” she asked, draping the scarf across her face once more. “Please?”

At last, he stepped aside. Without another glance at him, Myrina ran away as fast as she could, the precious copper tokens pressed hard against her chest.

M
YRINA RETURNED TO HER
sisters just as the sun was setting over the ocean, to find them engaged in yet another argument with the fee collector.

“Wait!” she cried, striding down the gangplank to the outer dock where the boat was moored. “How many copper tokens to stay the night?”

“That depends,” said the man. “What do you have?”

Myrina opened her fist and showed him.

“Ah,” he said. “Let’s say two then. Plus two for tomorrow.”

“What?”
Kyme stepped forward, her face still flushed from the argument Myrina had missed. “Can we not pay those in the morning?”

The fee collector shook his head. “Then you must leave at sunrise. But you won’t be able to. Not the way that north wind is blowing.”

Later that evening, after an unfulfilling meal of small crab cakes—one copper token for the dozen—Myrina looked up to find a well-dressed older man standing on the dock next to the boat, staring openly at the women. “Greetings,” he said, in the Nomad Language. His accent and bearing reminded Myrina of the game-playing men she had met on the beach earlier.

“Can I help you?” she asked, rising politely in the hopes she was wrong.

“Possibly,” said the man, in a tone of dignified patience. “You are the archer who shot down an apple, are you not?”

“What is it?” asked Animone, pulling at Myrina’s sleeve. “What is he saying? We have paid the fee for tomorrow; make sure you tell him that.”

“Have no fear,” said the man to Animone, as fluent in one language as he was in another. “I have come to summon all of you to dinner”—his eyes were drawn to the sorry remains of their meager meal in the
bottom of the boat—”or perhaps I should say a banquet, hosted by my generous master, Prince Paris.”

When there was no immediate reaction, the man added, with a superior smile, “My master is commonly known as the royal heir of Troy.”

When he arrived at Crete … having a clue of thread given him by Ariadne, who had fallen in love with him, and being instructed by her how to use it so as to conduct him through the windings of the labyrinth, he escaped out of it and slew the Minotaur.

—P
LUTARCH,
Theseus

DJERBA, TUNISIA

T
HE PLANE TO HERAKLION WAS PRACTICALLY EMPTY. CLEARLY,
Crete was not much of a destination in early November, and the airline representative had only been too happy to change my ticket.

I had already made myself comfortable with my feet up on the empty seat beside me when a man in jeans and a suede jacket stopped in the aisle and began stuffing his duffel bag into the compartment right above my head.

Handsome, I thought to myself as I put my feet back on the floor. Only when he sat down next to me did I realize it was Nick. Without a beard.

“Don’t worry,” he said, in response to my eye-popping disbelief, “it’ll grow back.”

I wanted to reply in kind, making light of my amazement with some crisp nugget of British wit, but for some reason the language center in my brain was utterly vacant. The unruly mop on top of his head had been trimmed, too, and what was left was pitch-black. It was the missing beard, however, which held me tongue-tied. There was something
absurdly risqué about the unexpected sight of Nick’s naked face; I was almost as shocked as if he had stripped down to nothing before my eyes.

“So,” he said, beating me to it, “what’s in Crete?”

His smugness brought me back to reality. Not only had this man been spying on me after we said good-bye at the airport—how else could he have known about my last-minute change of plans?—but he actually had the nerve to confront me as if
I
were the delinquent one, not he. “How dare you follow me like this?” I said, quickly shoving Granny’s notebook into my handbag. “Our business is over.”

“Actually—” Nick tapped his passport at my bracelet. “I’m not following
you.
I’m following
him.
For as long as that little doggie is on your arm, you
are
my business.”

It was such an outrageous statement, such an absurd situation … had we not been on a plane I would have stood up and left.

“Just think of it,” he went on, with an irritating smile, “as a little handcuff, linking you to me.”

We sat in silence while the plane took off, and I was grateful for the opportunity to rethink my strategy. Nick was here, it seemed, because he thought I had stolen the bracelet on my arm. Suppose I told him the truth? Or at least the bare bones of it, leaving out Granny’s notebook?

“Here’s the thing,” I began, hoping he could sense I was being honest. “I actually did
not
take this bracelet from the sarcophagus. Believe it or not, it belonged to my grandmother—”

Nick shook his head. “The memo I received on you said you have an IQ of 153. Now, either the memo is wrong, or you keep holding back. Why?”

I nearly choked on my own indignation. “Excuse me?”

“And I do. All the time.” Nick started leafing through an airline magazine, feigning interest. “What’s going on up there? Who’s in the prompter’s box?”

I sent him a withering stare, but he didn’t seem to notice. “Maybe when things stop blowing up around me,” I said, “and people stop spying on me … maybe then I’ll exude more intelligence. I’m not sure
you would know how to appreciate it, though. Men of your type rarely do.”

Nick batted his eyebrows. “Try me. Say something intelligent.”

Piqued, I opened my mouth to do just that, but a small, internal whirlwind of fury tore up every potential retort. Instead, I chose silence.

“After so much thinking,” said Nick, “it better be good. I’m still waiting to hear what we’re going to be doing in Crete.”

“Welcome to the club of unanswered questions,” I shot back, somewhat childishly. “What happened to your beard?”

“I don’t need it anymore.”

“Why not?”

Nick looked surprised. “I thought you’d have understood that by now.”

“We’ve already established I’m not that bright.”

“All right.” He turned toward me, his braggadocio gone. “Then let me brighten you up. Whenever there is discovery and invention, the parasites are not far behind. Government, of course, is the biggest of them all, but in the world of antiques trading there is a whole separate ecosystem of dealers, smugglers, and tomb raiders. They’re all the same; they’re all parasites who feed on other people’s history and hollow out their cultural heritage.” Pausing briefly, Nick found a map in the back of the airline magazine, took a pen out of his jacket pocket, and drew an X on eastern Algeria.

“Now, to the tomb raiders,” he continued, handing me the magazine, “I am the X that marks the spot. All they have to do is follow me, and they know I’ll take them straight to a new excavation. Even if they can’t access the actual site they will start digging nearby in the hopes of finding something we missed. And if they can get away with it, they bribe our diggers to smuggle out artifacts from the official dig before they are cataloged.” He rubbed his chin. “I thought a beard and grubby clothes would throw them off. Too bad it didn’t work.”

I stared at the map, unnerved by the implications of what he had just revealed. When I first met Nick, precisely a week ago, I had taken
him for a bumbling caveman to whom the transportation of an Oxford classicist was just another odd job. But as time went on I had begun to realize my mistake, and now I was certain. While Nick might like to appear as if he had crawled right out of the book of Revelation, he was, in fact, a big gun.

“Do you think that is why?” I heard myself asking. “I mean, do you suppose tomb raiders were behind the explosions?”

Nick looked at me, yet I had a feeling it was not really me he was seeing. “Smart parasites generally don’t kill the host. The explosions still don’t make sense to me. But I have a feeling that’s about to change.”

I wanted to laugh, but the result was rather sad. “I sincerely hope you’re not suggesting I had anything to do with it?”

Nick held my gaze for another few seconds, then shrugged and looked away. “My boss is down hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost efforts. You’re up ten K and a bracelet. Not to mention you’re the only academic who ever laid eyes on the temple and that you
own
the story now. But no, I’m not suggesting anything, just making sure you get home safely.”

R
EBECCA WAS WAITING AT
the rain-battered Heraklion Airport, her red curls splashed against her freckled forehead. As she stood there in her rubber boots and faded flapper dress, waving impatiently from behind the metal barrier, my faithful old friend looked as if she were just about to explode from sensation overload. When she spotted Nick, however, and realized we were together, her agitation quickly turned into speechless bewilderment.

“Bex!” I threw my arms around her. “You’re soaking! Thanks for coming out in this ghastly weather. This is Nick Barrán.” I moved aside to allow the two to shake hands. “He just won’t go away.”

“That’s what happens,” said Nick, “when you start stealing stuff.”

For all her signature nonchalance, and despite the blast of rain that hit us as soon as we left the airport building, Rebecca did not recover her cool until we were all crammed into the scratched bench seat of her little van. Nick had offered to sit in the back with our luggage, rocking
and rolling in a trail mix of stone fragments, rusty tools, and the odd stick of dynamite. But Rebecca, still at a loss to understand the brassy dynamic between him and me—never mind who Nick was in the first place—had insisted on squeezing him in up front with the both of us. “Apologies for not living up to the tourist brochures,” she said, handing out damp squares of paper towel. “I’m afraid you’ve arrived in the middle of the rainy season.”

As the city of Heraklion was presently nothing but a gray blur, we skipped the scenic tour and drove directly out to the archaeological site at Knossos, the squeaky windshield wipers going at maximum speed.

Last time I had been there—a shocking ten years ago, traveling the continent with Rebecca before either of us knew she would end up living in Crete—the weather had been so hot and crispy dry that even the cicadas fell silent. We had walked around in shorts and bikini tops, our burned shoulders a patchwork of pink and peeling brown, until it finally occurred to us that we needed to put a layer of fabric between ourselves and the sun. For lack of better, we had bought a pair of men’s shirts and folded them to fit, and in this less-than-fashionable state we walked out to the ancient ruins of Knossos, swaying under our top-heavy backpacks and the pile of library books on ancient Greece I had insisted on bringing along.

Needless to say, I didn’t recognize anything in the mint jelly landscape we were currently driving through, least of all my erstwhile thrill in being there.

“Sorry about this,” Rebecca kept saying as she leaned forward to frantically rub steam off the window with fistfuls of paper towel. “Normally you can get a good view of the north entrance.” Glancing nervously at Nick, she quickly went on to explain that part of the ancient palace had been reconstructed, with striking red columns, and that the dig site was not just the mountain of creamy rubble one might expect. “We even have a monster,” she added proudly. “The fearsome Minotaur. But I’m afraid you won’t see him tonight; apparently, he doesn’t like to get his hair wet.”

“The Minotaur?” said Nick. “That sounds familiar.”

“Half man, half bull. Used to live here in the olden days.” Rebecca
shot him another quizzical glance. “Just ask Dee; she’s the expert on mythology.”

When we eventually pulled into a parking lot, I looked around in vain for the stately villa Rebecca had described to me so often. All I could see was the bleary outline of a whitewashed motel-like complex encircling us in the shape of a horseshoe.

“I know it’s not Villa Ariadne,” said Rebecca, reading my thoughts. “But I thought it would be better—” She hesitated, probably realizing it was unwise to go into detail in front of Nick, and continued more cheerfully, “The upside is that most of the rooms are empty, plus we’re a stone’s throw from the actual site. When the fog clears you’ll be able to see the palace ruins from here.”

D
ESPITE MY GRIMACES AND
whispered hints, Rebecca put Nick in the guest room right next to mine. It was not that she didn’t notice my antics; she simply chose to ignore them. “I’ve just about had it,” she hissed, when we were finally alone. “What on earth is going on?”

Only too aware that we were separated from Nick by nothing but a few square feet of plaster wall, I filled her in as best I could, confirming that this was indeed the same Nick I had told her about over the phone—the trickster who had never disclosed that he worked for the Aqrab Foundation. “I still don’t know why he is here,” I concluded, “but I’m confident the bracelet is just a pretext. He’s probably trying to figure out why I changed my flight, and whether it has anything to do with what happened in Algeria.”

Rebecca did not look convinced. “I still don’t understand. Did you really steal that bracelet?”

“Bex!” I started laughing, but she did not laugh along. In Rebecca’s world, archaeologist that she was, keeping excavated artifacts to oneself was in line with murder.

“Well, maybe not murder,” she had said once, realizing she had been carried away by a tidbit in a weekly, “but when I read about these things—how some inestimable artifact has been found in the rambling
estate of a dead collector—it’s like reading about an abducted child who has been kept in someone’s garden shed for fifteen years.” Naturally, her shock at discovering that her best friend might be one such abductor was considerable.

“Don’t be absurd,” I said, feeling a twitch of anger that she thought me capable of such a thing. “It was Granny’s bracelet; don’t you remember?” I held out my arm to show it to her.

“Yes,” said Rebecca after a moment. Then she looked up at me, her eyes full of accusation. “I just never knew you had inherited it.”

I walked over to the window. Outside, the rain had long since turned the small parking lot into a lake, fed from all sides by rivulets of mud, and a clingy afternoon fog prevented me from seeing more than the silhouette of the units across the yard. Although we were at Knossos, an ancient Minoan palace and the greatest tourist attraction in Crete, the place seemed oddly deserted; notwithstanding the miserable weather this was clearly the time to be here if one wanted to avoid the crowds.

I had walked the site only once, on that glorious day ten years earlier with Rebecca. Interestingly enough, back then it was
I
who had been most passionate about the place; thanks to Granny, I had long since decided on a career in ancient history and already fancied myself a bit of an expert on Bronze Age civilization.

Armed with half a dozen books, plus our shared water bottle, Rebecca and I had spent many hours studying the palace foundation, marveling at the reconstructed royal chambers and the findings from the underground storage rooms. Scoffing at the tourists who hurried to and fro with their guidebook blinkers on, we made our way around the entire perimeter of the site, determined to fully appreciate the enormity of the original building. We had even toyed with the idea of staying behind when the place closed down for the night, in order to get the full moonlit effect of the ruins.

“I swear to God,” Rebecca had said, walking wistfully backward as the security guards locked the metal gate behind us, “we will be back, and we will spend a night here, even if it kills us.”

As I stood by the guest room window now, peering out into the mist, those merry, sun-kissed days seemed far away indeed. “Well,” I said at length, realizing Rebecca was still waiting for an explanation, “it came in the mail one day. I suppose Granny always wanted me to have it.”

Rebecca was so shocked, she stood up abruptly. “I can’t believe you never told me! Why didn’t you … how did she—?”

“Bex,” I said, suddenly weighed down by fatigue. I had barely slept the night before, and it was all catching up with me—the horror in Algeria, the long drive to Djerba, and the shock of seeing Nick again. “Let’s not waste time on this now. Tell me about the clay disk. You took a photo?”