The Lost Sisterhood (58 page)

Inside the building were dozens of empty horse stalls and heaps of soiled straw on the floor. More than anything, an overturned wheelbarrow and a broken sack of fodder suggested a hasty evacuation.

At the back of the stable, another door stood open. On the other side of it was an enormous empty room with a concrete floor. My first impression was that something crucial had been kept in this grand space with cathedral ceilings—something that was now gone. But then I noticed the three ropes hanging from roof rafters and … the trapezes.

I suddenly heard Otrera describing the traveling circus that had once been the Baltic chapter of the Amazons, and I understood that this lofty room had indeed held something special: women training. Not a single mirror or floor mat softened its severity; this had not been a showroom, but a place for focus, exertion, and pain.

The graffiti covering the walls supported my suspicion. Most were in languages I didn’t understand, but two were in English. One read,
“They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” The other read simply, “A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.”

Walking over to a chin-up bar on the wall, I grabbed hold of the cold metal and tried to pull myself up. I couldn’t. I had done it as a child, playing Amazons with Rebecca in the garden, but then … as an adult I had happily listened to those who said women weren’t expected to do that kind of thing.

Walking back through the stable, I looked everywhere for forgotten items—any small souvenir to give me strength to go on. But everything had vanished. In the end I picked up a handful of grain from the leaking fodder bag and put it in my pocket.

Where was the Baltic chapter of the sisterhood now? I wondered. And what had happened to James? Did he go up in smoke like the other Amazon secrets in the house?

Chilled at the memory of the bloody conclusion to Reznik’s war with the Amazons, I turned to walk back outside. As I did so, I caught sight of something hanging from a nail next to the door. My coat. Baffled, I took it down and inspected it. And sure enough, there they were in my pockets, all the things I thought I had lost: my money, my passport yet again … and Granny’s letter.

Sitting on the overturned wheelbarrow, I opened the envelope then and there. The letter was not long, and the shaky handwriting suggested Granny had been weak when she wrote it.

EQUINOX

Then much-enduring Odysseus, in his hand accepting it, easily strung the bow, and sent a shaft through the iron. He stood on the threshold, and scattered out the swift shafts before him, glaring terribly, and struck down the king Antinoös. Then he shot his baneful arrows into the others, aiming straight at them, and they dropped one after another.

—H
OMER,
The Odyssey

OXFORD, ENGLAND

W
ITH RAIN-STREAKED INDIFFERENCE, THE DREAMING SPIRES
greeted me as if I had never been away. The November air was a bit cooler than it had been when I left three weeks ago, and everyone looked a tad more miserable as they scuttled from building to building, hugging their books. Apart from that, everything appeared much the same. The porter barely looked up from his sports section when I stopped at the lodge to get my mail.

“Hello, Frank,” I said as I excavated my pigeonhole, amazed at the scarcity of letters after what felt like a long absence. “Any news to report?”

He shook his jowls with feigned commiseration. “Can’t think of any. We’re supposed to have sun today. But we’ll see. Oh—I almost forgot.” Frank stretched to pluck a note from a bulletin board. “James Moselane called last night. Said it was urgent. He left a number.”

We both looked at the digits scribbled in lead pencil. “Switzerland?” I asked, staring at the country code in surprise.

Frank shrugged. “Just said it was urgent. Here.” He handed me the scrap of paper with a grimace, eager to rid himself of the responsibility. “Better call him right away.”

Professor Larkin’s office was no more welcoming than the lodge. A haze of dusty abandonment hung in the air, and the poor guppies were belly up in the fish tank. Dropping my mail on the desk, the first thing I did was march out into the bathroom and flush James’s number in the toilet along with the guppies. Coming back a little calmer, I turned on every working lamp and filled up the teakettle in preparation for a long afternoon of beating down my misery and getting my life back in order.

I had spent the weekend looking for my parents in every B&B in Cornwall and had finally found them in a tearoom in Falmouth. We had driven back to the Cotswolds together last night, talking about Granny all the way. After eighteen years of damming it all up behind a wall of nervous silence, my parents’ world was now so flooded with memories they barely knew which to cling to. Together we established what we already knew and patched it together with what I had learned in Finland. The picture of Granny that emerged was of a woman marred by loss and hardship, who was a lot stronger, and a good deal saner, than they had hitherto believed.

As heartsick and exhausted as I was, I should have liked to stay at home with my parents for a while, hiding in this refurbished world of memories. But I couldn’t stay away forever. I had students to face, colleagues to appease: It was a battle I could postpone no longer.

And so I had taken the Monday morning train to Oxford I knew so well, hoping to fall right back into my old routine. But as I sat there in my usual window seat, it felt as if everything had somehow changed around me—the colors were darker, the air strangely dead. Even the sounds of other people had changed from major to minor.

Before leaving Finland, I had tried to call Nick’s second speed dial … only to discover that his account had been canceled. No matter what I did, all I got was the same brief automated message in Arabic. I
didn’t understand the words, but the meaning was clear: I had been cut off.

While crisscrossing Cornwall in search of my parents I had hogged every Internet connection I could find, searching for a direct number for the Aqrab Foundation office in Dubai. When I finally found it, I had jotted it down on a piece of paper in preparation for calling as soon as I returned to Oxford.

Staring at the number now, poised to make my big call on Professor Larkin’s antiquated telephone, I felt a familiar twinge of revulsion at the memory of my clash with Mr. al-Aqrab. But I couldn’t allow it to delay me any longer; my concern for Nick was so great I couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep—I felt as if my soul was at war with my body, calling it a traitor for defaulting to Oxford rather than scouring the streets of Dubai.

The telephone rang only once before a receptionist picked up and transferred me to a Frenchman who—probably from his corner office, looking out over the Persian Gulf—made it abundantly clear the Aqrab Foundation and the Aqrab family were two separate entities. “I have no information to give you,” he said repeatedly, clearly following office protocol, “but I can connect you with our press office if you are interested in learning more about the foundation.”

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.

M
Y 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?”