part0012

She kept a monkey with light blue fur on a jeweled leash, his long, curious fingers trained as carefully as a child’s to pluck saffron. She, Ariadnh, would rest the leash on her rounded forearm among bangles of gold and jasper, languid, beautiful enough to make the saffron itself sigh and bend closer. When the court women went forth from the palace at Knossos to the fields above the Great Goddess’s shrine, along came the monkey, chattering, running to the end of his leash, eager to gently murder the slender flowers that formed the very lucrative crop. Saffron, blessed saffron, whose tender radiant stigmas formed mutably into medicines and perfumes, spices and cosmetics, and noble assistants to love—the tiny thing, the thread, that makes beauty of the larger whole. Some saffron was sold off island, to the shores of Mycenae, to Egypt and the Levant, even to the coast of the cold islands in the North, where amber came from. Always some was kept for the Gods.

Like all things in Crete, a portion of the best, the unblemished, belonged to the divine ones, the eternal ones. Zeus had been hidden as a child on the island and favored it still; their sleek trading ships with bright painted eyes ruled the waves. Above all was the rule of Rhea Magna Mater, the Great Mother. She of the labrys, the snake, and the bull. The priestesses of the Great Mother were frequently from the royal house, trained from girlhood in the processions, the dances, the hymns, the rites of ax and bull and blood. They would dance in the shrine courtyard, feet spurning a carpet of crocuses and lilies, a snake twining each arm, short jacket tight against upper arms, breasts openly presented by the formal dress, seven layered skirt flouncing in the bright Cretan sun. The royal women of the ruling house in Knossos were the very set of fashion and the envy of the world. If a woman from Crete wore a new jacket, amber and cinnabar earrings, jet and faience bangles, a net of gold and seed pearls in her glossy black hair, all the Aegean would desire exactly that within a month.

Chief among these women was Ariadnh, hair coiling like hyacinthine snakes about her shoulders, eyes like a night at sea, darkness moving liquid under the sheen of the Pleiades. Cousin to the queen, dancer before the shrine, she was one of the blessed Mother’s priestesses called the Melissae after the sacred bees that fed the infant Zeus with honey in the cave on Mount Ida. The court women of the House of the Double Ax swarmed forth to pick saffron in the fields that flanked the Mother’s shrine, above the cliffs where the sea rang and boomed against the crags. Thus the blue furred monkey on Ariadnh’s gemmed leash, picking wild saffron from the hilltop above the shrine, started the stone rolling down to the beach.

The beach was a ribbon between rock and wave, a shelf where the bull leapers trained, carrying large rocks rounded by the surf into the waves to strengthen their legs. Kitane, the bull leaper, was on the beach working with her team, laughing against the waves, heaving a great stone back into Poseidon’s embrace. The pebble, dislodged by the monkey on the cliff above, gained speed as it clattered down the slope and struck her in the right shoulder, rebounding from the curve of muscle. Kitane thought at first that she’d been stung; bees drowsily filled the fields above and might on becoming lost venture down to the shore.

She looked up, and saw it was not bees but Melissae, women of the court calling out to a naughty monkey balanced on the lip of rock and chattering, refusing the summons. In a heartbeat another head silhouetted against the brilliant blue sky, chiding the monkey. Ariadnh with the sun behind her.

In the advertising section of the paper, between a notice for work as a governess and a clergyman’s daughter seeking an engagement, ran this advertisement:

Peculiar Situation: Desired a respectable steady young woman of good character and industry to serve as travelling companion and assistant to a respectable Lady. Must have a fair hand at landscapes and scientific drawing. Knowledge of Greek and archaeology are exceptionally well desired, artistic temperament is essential. Must not be averse to theatre. Testimonials as to character and suitability unnecessary if you give the correct impression. Orphans preferred.

Lucy Braddon put the paper down, stung by the note. It was tailored for her, she felt, and might just be a joke or sport of some sort. To fall on it the very afternoon she returned from her botanist father’s funeral was grim enough humor that it must be staged. Lucy fit the requirements in every particular, though her Greek was fair; she was now an orphan and in need of a situation. She had travelled widely with her father, keeping his scientific journals and adding detailed drawings of specimens.

Robert Braddon was accounted an eccentric, a kind way of referring to a man who thought his daughter needed an education and might even profit by it. No woman was accepted at the Universities, of course, so it was left to his own tutoring. He had kept her with him on his journeys after the death of her mother, not exactly sure what to do with a daughter. Thankfully this suited her temperament and fine, keen mind. Fascination with the natural world, the autodidacts’ eclectic blend of fact and insight, and the kindled light of a fierce intelligence Lucy got directly from him. Her elegant, surgical hand at drawing came from her mother. Many were the evenings this set of skills caused her father, looking up from reviewing his notes by oil lamp in a tent and finding his daughter, raw honey hair bound impatiently back as she bent over recording the samples from that day’s work, moments of pride mixed with the bitter knowledge that the world would not be kind to her. She was not one of those respectable young ladies brought up to sit in drawing rooms and practice the pianoforte.

There would be no emerging into society for her; as a daughter of the staunch middle class it was her duty to find a position and support herself, failing the achievement of a husband and losing the protection of a father.

A husband was something Lucy had spent years running full tilt from, the very prospect anathema to her nature. Over the years some men had approached her father, but the peripatetic and Spartan lifestyle of father and daughter eliminated fortune hunters. Lucy had a spring day’s loveliness with her pale honey hair and her father’s bright blue eyes, delicate rather than lush, retiring rather than inviting, but enough men found that enticing. None of them stirred anything in her but a revulsion that ranged from mild to consumptive. Some women are born to be spinsters, she reasoned, to live in the country and keep dogs. It would never do for her to share a man’s bed and board, no matter how well set he might be. So, at the ripe age of twenty, she had embraced the hope of her spinsterhood, fully willing to spin like Arachne even if she had to undo her work every night like Penelope. Her father had not neglected her classical education, even if her Greek was slight.

In a week a letter came to her rooming house.

I found your briefly sketched background to be intriguing and, as in all things, I follow the sting of intuition to the furthest possible ends. If you are willing, meet me at my country house in Blackbird Lane, Bromyard on Tuesday, the 5 th of June. I find the best possible chance of understanding and sympathy occurs when eyes meet eyes. I will explain the nature of the position and situation I offer over tea. We must be civilized while we are still in England; once we sail away from these green shores, we might take on all manner of other strangeness and customs.

Heading for the grand staircase from the Queen’s megaron, Ariadnh passed through the doorway under the bright blue mural of dolphins frolicking, past the light well and the crimson cedar columns along the balustrade. Ceremonial shields of cowhide and bronze adorned the walls, interspersed with the labrys symbol of the Goddess. She felt a powerful arm circle her waist and pull her behind one of the cedar columns.

“I will be late for the procession.” She twined her arms like snakes around the bull leaper’s naked shoulders.

“They haven’t brought the great red and white bull up from the field. We have time. Kiss me.” Kitane pulled the priestess in close. Ariadnh did with abandon, one hand holding the back of Kitane’s head, just under the clubbed braid banded tight with golden clasps the bull leapers wore. Both were clad for the ritual, Ariadnh in priestess’ garb, Kitane in the tight wasp-waisted kilt all her kind wore, male and female. Green scales framed with gold border formed the kilt, cinched by a wide leather belt covered in bronze plaques. Leather buskins bound her ankles, and rock crystal and bronze bands circled her upper arms and wrists. Both women burned bright in the madness of youth and adoration. The bull leaper drank honey from the lips of the Melissa.

“Will you seek me tonight after the banquet?”

Kitane shrugged. “I might have other offers.” She didn’t try to hide her grin.

After the bull ritual, the successful bull dancers were eagerly sought out as lovers, the sheen of power still clinging to them. Ariadnh put her lips to Kitane’s ear.

On June the 5th , Lucy Braddon was shown into Lady Washerford’s library by a butler. Standing by the mantle was Eulalie Wakefield, Lady Washerford, kindly absorbed in closely reading a small book, allowing Lucy to form an opinion of her before they spoke. Lady Washerford wore her hair rather carelessly, as if she’d just come in from riding in a strong wind. It was such a deep auburn as to look brown in shadow, and glowing red where it caught the firelight. Her dress was otherwise conventional, if ineffably elegant; down to the perfection of the cameo broach at her throat. Lucy wondered what the image might be, but it was nestled in the lace of Lady Washerford’s collar. She was tall and of a strong stature, the type of woman rarely called beautiful and easily called handsome. Lucy guessed her to be in her thirties.

Lucy stood, waiting to be noticed. Lady Washerford seemed unaware of her presence. The fire popped and hissed.

“Are you familiar with the bean nighe ?” Lady Washerford turned the page, not looking up at her yet.

“Pardon, Madame?”

“Bean nighe . Gaelic. Along certain rivers you must be careful, if you come upon a monstrous woman washing bloody clothes in the stream. If you recognize the clothes it means you are going to die. Terrible omen before a battle. The Washer at the Ford.” The red book slapped shut; Lady Washerford looked up at Lucy. Her eyes were the most magnificent black Lucy had ever imagined, deep as the night sky. Her voice was in contrast rather rough, what might be termed, Lucy thought, husky. The sound of it disturbed the ear and then reshaped expectations until the listener had been molded to the sound and left enthralled.

“I was not aware.” Lucy’s hand touched her collarbone absently.

“One of my husband’s ancestors stomped about Scotland oppressing everyone until he saw the Washer at the Ford. The family title derives from this. Or so the legend goes.” Lady Washerford took Lucy’s hand and led her to one of the chairs before the fire. “Now, is that a myth, or is it true?”

Lucy sensed that this was no idle question. She considered carefully. “Don’t all myths have within them the core of truth?” Lady Washerford had not released her hand. Now she clasped it in delight.

“Just so! Just so, my dear. Do you mind travel?”

“Not at all. I spent most of my life travelling with my father on his expeditions.”

“Ever been to Greece?”

“Twice, though for short stays.”

“And you have no aversion to theater? Acting, I must add.”

“I can’t imagine anyone having such an aversion.”

“Chilton!” Lady Washerford stood. “Miss Braddon will take the peacock room. Thank you.” She turned to an amazed Lucy. “You will accept the employ, I believe.”

“I would be grateful.”

Lady Washerford accepted the tea service that Chilton brought in, then waved him out of the room. “How do you take it?” Lady Washerford poured out two cups of tea.

“Any way you serve it.”

“Miss Braddon—“

“Very well, Eulalie. I have a feeling, and I am accused of always heeding my emotions over my reason, that we will get on splendidly. You needn’t always agree with me; that’s not what I am seeking in a companion.”

“What are you seeking?” Lucy accepted the bone china cup, a delicate spray of crocuses and lilies enameled along the outside.

“An assistant to accompany me on an archaeological dig in Crete. Someone to do the drafting, the scientific recording. Someone with an artist’s eye and a scientist’s touch.”

Whatever Lucy might have been expecting, this wasn’t it. “I did specimen drawing and kept the journals for my father,” she stammered.

“Mm. Botanist, wasn’t he?”

“Yes.” It hadn’t been long enough; the spear went right through her heart at his mention. Lucy’s eyes fell.

Lady Washerford put down her cup and took Lucy’s hands in both of hers. “How horrid of me. It can’t be two weeks since his funeral. I am so very sorry, my dear. I will strive to lift the shadow on your heart.”

Lucy cast about for a change in topic. “Will Lord Washerford be joining us on the expedition?”

It was the first time she heard that dark and heady laugh, the unbridled bark of humor escaping from Eulalie’s throat. “Cecil has been dead these thirteen years, poor old monkey. I’ve been a widow since my first year of marriage. But yes, he will be joining us on the journey.”

The night before they were to take steamship to the Italian coast, Eulalie, with Lucy’s help, had undergone a great transformation. Her magnificent auburn hair was sheared away by Lucy, who hesitated with the blades in hand, feeling the weight of the beautiful braid slide across her palms. Then the blades closed, and the short crop of unruly auburn became a boy’s crown, then a man’s.

“Women travelling alone are in for a great deal of potential trouble. Even with the masque we maintain, Eulalie Wakefield would not be allowed to head an archeological dig. I might be allowed to accompany one, if my husband were rich and present. Therefore, and I am certain you will understand and be of perfect sympathy, my husband Lord Washerford must accompany us.”

Eulalie ran her fingers through it, looking at the glass. “I will have to wear a hat; it will never stay down. What do you think?”

“I think you look like the most handsome man who ever lived. Your face is suited for it, if you will allow me to say so.”

“Your great transformation begins as well, my dear.”

“Am I to be a boy?”

“No. But a respectable young lady cannot be travelling with a man unless—“

“I am his wife.”

So it had been. Cecil Wakefield took passage, accompanied by his wife. Now the salt wind bit at Lucy’s cheeks as she stood along the rail of the steamship’s upper deck. She felt the presence behind her before the hand, gloved in dove grey, touched her arm. “My dear.”

Cecil Wakefield, Lord Washerford, was a rather dashing figure to the other passengers, a man of adventure and mystery. He wore brand new Italian suits, didn’t play cards or smoke cigars in the gentleman’s lounge, but doted uxoriously on his young bride, a sweet and very lovely honey colored girl. Off to Crete for some exploring, he was heard to say. His laugh was frequent, his devoted young wife always on his arm. It was the firm opinion of the Bulgarian mistress of the Roman captain that they had not been married long; they had the gentle air of newlyweds, and clearly the lady was entirely besotted with her lord. Presuming the journey to be a coded honeymoon, the other passengers allowed them greater leeway and let them have some privacy. Now, at the rail, might be glimpsed the pair, the lord holding his wife’s hand, the two dreaming out toward the rise and spray of the waves off the bow. How charming an image of matrimony.

“It is in the Iliad, the Catalogue of Ships. Homer lists all the kings and princes and nobles sending ships to Troy, and their home ports. A hundred cities he lists from Crete! Think on it; if Homer was right, then there is a great civilization on Crete waiting to be discovered. Buried beneath the dusty feet of Time, the sandals of the rude Mycenaeans who came to burn and loot and conquer. The Palace of Minos, the Labyrinth.” Lord Washerford looked out over the night sea with a sigh, as if the coast of Crete were visible before the ship’s keel. As if the drums of war summoned forth the ships, again, to avenge the insult to Menelaus before the walls of Troy.

“Troy itself isn’t a real place. Might Homer not have been indulging in the romantic poetry his listeners expected?” Lucy pulled the night-black eyes back to her. A thrill shot through her. She was enjoying being Mrs. Wakefield, Lady Washerford, more than she could say. Matrimony had seemed a pitiable state to her, but now she pitied all the world who did not have this person’s light of intellectual fire and passion directed toward them. Pitied all who were not wife to Cecil Wakefield even if, particularly if, he was Eulalie. They had, even when alone, quickly adopted the habit of exclusively calling one another by endearments to minimize the risk of being overheard. Or so they asserted.

“My dear, I think Troy is real as well.”

Lucy took in her breath. “The Iliad is real. Achilles, Hector, Hecuba, Priam—think of it!” She held the dove grey gloved hand in her excitement.

“In some part, surely. Dionysus might not stalk the hills outside Thebes, Athena might not stand atop the Acropolis, but when you have stood in the high city and looked out toward the sea, when the sun reveals the plain below in a gilded pouring out of light on the olive groves and vineyards, how can you not feel the presence of the Gods just behind you? Athens is real. I expect the Cretan cities to be as well.”

“Why begin in Crete then? Why not strike out for Troy?”

“Two reasons. One, Homer is remarkably vague about the exact location of the city and plains of Ilium. Two, I have been to Crete. Last season, a farmer tending his vineyard turned over what turned out to be a dressed stone. Underneath was a terracotta figurine of a woman with snakes bound about her arms, and this.” From inside the greatcoat Eulalie drew out a ring. The band was simple bronze, but it held an intaglio done in carnelian. Lucy took the ring and looked closely at it.

“Three figures, one before and one behind a running bull, and an acrobat leaping over the bull. Is this from Theseus and the Minotaur?”

“Something associated I would guess. It is my contention that this is the bull dance, a rite of the Cretans. Perhaps for their Goddess. Can you tell me anything about the acrobats?”

Lucy held the ring up to the moonlight. “Very little. They are all stylized, all dressed alike.”

“I need to find this vineyard again. I think a tomb is nearby, perhaps for a bull leaper. If I can find evidence it would be the first in history to prove the Cretan civilization isn’t just a fancy of Homer’s. That, my darling one, is our goal.”

“The core of truth in the myth. We begin with Crete, then perhaps Troy. Why not Mycenae, Agamemnon’s seat?”

“That is how I know you are the perfect companion for me, my dear; you take up my madness and run with it so I must chase after, like a child drawn by a kite.”

A storm pitched the ship like a child’s toy, keeping everyone below for two days, until Poseidon’s rage had abated and the air hung still on the gray wasteland, murmuring down to silence. They came across a smaller vessel from the Italian coast, bound for Sicily, damaged beyond repair in the toss and crash of foaming waves. The Roman Captain, sentimental with satiation from his Bulgarian mistress, kindly welcomed the bedraggled extras aboard for the short leg of the journey, a Berber family from North Africa, a Venetian and his dogs, and an older Englishman. Lucy popped her head out of the cabin door for desperately needed air just as they were embarking. The night was still, the stars out again, the sea a sheet of glass as the new passengers wrung out sodden clothing. The Englishman took off his coat and twisted it violently, sending a waterfall onto the deck. He glanced up at Lucy, who quickly withdrew behind the door.

“We’ve taken on some new passengers. Poor wretches stranded by the storm.”

“I expect just till Sicily.” The auburn head was bent over a map and notes. “Inland from Heraklion. Just a few kilometers. I purchased the digging rights from the farmer last season for a fortune.”

Lucy sat down next to her on the bed. “That should occupy us, looking for the tomb. Once we have evidence we publish it in one of the journals of the scientific societies and raise money to mount a full expedition to seek the cities. Oh darling, it is wonderful!”

Eulalie looked up from the notes. “I would lay my life down that I was your darling from the way you say it.” Lightly said, with a smile to soften any sting, but Lucy felt it and dropped her eyes.

“It is a masquerade, I know. For the work.”

“Wear a masque long enough and it reveals the person beneath. Come now, no sadness.”

Lucy felt her face drawn up, a touch on her cheek, for all the world a devoted husband comforting his wife.

“Would that I were your wife!” The words escaped before she could reason with them, a burst of passion pent up in close quarters for too long. It was entirely true even as it was entirely impossible, but suddenly Lucy understood the stories, and poems, and longing letters written from wives to husbands, the myths of devotion and completion. What then was the core, the truth within? That she longed to have her, Eulalie Wakefield, Cecil, Lord Washerford, as her female husband. It didn’t matter that nature and religious opinion stood in the gap and shouted against it. It was the drum of her blood, leading on the ships to conquest. She longed to lie in Eulalie’s arms, every night.

“You may be, if you dare.”

The words stopped Lucy’s heart. It was partly the freedom of the masquerade, giving the bridge for them to begin, partly feeling so deeply that nothing under heaven could move her from where she was. “I would dare anything with you at my side.”

Eulalie picked up the carnelian intaglio and placed it on Lucy’s finger. “Be my most beloved. My wife.”

That night, the masquerade became a face of the eternal truth, and Lucy lay in Eulalie’s arms, wife and beloved.

All the passengers departed in Sicily, with Lord and Lady Washerford eagerly striding down to the dock to meet their next ship, a much smaller sailboat bound for Greece. The old Englishman followed them, deliberately Lucy thought, but seeing her looking back he exited abruptly in the opposite direction. A coincidence surely, a tourist lost on his journey.

When she thought she saw him again in Athens, she put the idea aside as a mirage or fancy of the heat. The spray of the Aegean leapt under the keel of their ship, fleeing away like a wild horse from Piraeus across the narrow way to the island. Crete before them, Lucy quite forgot about the man. He had never even spoken to them. They landed at Heraklion, from there renting horses for the last few leagues.

The vineyard was on a gentle rise, the remains of a stark crag that had long fallen into the sea in one of the great convulsions that shook the island over the millennia. Volcanic soil from the eruption of Thera threaded with the local limestone. The rough, terrible youth of that cliff Time had ground down into a mellow hill with the mantle of age upon it, crowned with vineyards where surprisingly large, drowsy bees kept the grapes. Beyond was an olive grove, trees old enough to have witnessed two thousand years march by. The remains of a Venetian fortress weathered away into dust between the trees. Every season, the plow overturned a Roman coin, a piece of Ottoman cannon, shards of pottery more ancient than both. The ages lay on one another like sated lovers.

They stopped at the farmer’s home, a building of white washed walls of gypsum under a flat tiled roof. He greeted Lord Washerford delightedly, revealing to Lucy that he had had no idea his lordship was married. The land in the vineyard was ready for the dig, a few local men solicited for aid. Lord Washerford paid very well, but wanted to keep the crew small. They were of course given a small whitewashed building of their own for their use, a converted animal shed hastily kitted out with rough chairs, a long table, and a bed. Most nights, Lord Washerford explained, they would remain with the dig, in tents. Not unlike the life Lucy was used to with her father, the snap of canvas in the breeze from the ocean, a cot to rest on and an oil lamp to see by at night for the compilation of the day’s finds.

The workmen didn’t mind, spending most of the day lounging in the sun for a week’s pay while the odd English lord ran about. It was frustratingly slow for Lord Washerford, but to Lucy it was the golden heart of her life. Each day spent in combined work, seeking the great finds, the evidence, shoulder to shoulder together. Each night spent reviewing and noting the day’s work, meticulously, and talking about everything.

“I sat in Churchill Babington’s lectures at Cambridge until the other students threw me out in a rage. Archaeology was no study for a female mind! It made little matter that I endowed an expedition to Karnak. Donation is one matter, participation another. Did you know that learning weakens the female constitution?”

Lucy, gilded bronze from the sun and alive to the tips of her fingers, shook her head. “I had no idea I was so frail.”

“You are stronger than a team of oxen, my dear. They called me the Roaring Infidel.”

Lucy looked down at the sketch in her hands and smiled. “Well, it is apt. This trench has yielded us nothing. Do you want to position the next at an angle from the first?”

Cecil, Eulalie, stood up and tossed the notebook on the cot. “Blast it! I was so sure that the original find was a paving stone, part of a sacred way. An approach to a temple or tomb. But the landscape has changed so much over the centuries. How do we know what we seek isn’t under the sea? We can’t just peer into the ground like a looking-glass and say, ‘oh, here is where the Cretans built, we shall have our dig there!’”

Lucy covered her mouth to keep from laughing. The fit of temper was glorious to her, another chance to see how very much Eulalie trusted her. Clasped to her bosom in abandon at night, at work in the sun all day, every moment was more than she thought life would ever grant her. Aphrodite became her patron. She would die before going back.

The flash of insight struck, handed to her whole from years working with her botanist father.

“Look for fennel!”

“Why?” Eulalie turned toward her, hands on her hips.

“Fennel has exceptionally long roots and likes to appear in places where the soil has been turned over the years. Find clumps of fennel and we will find the past.”

“Fennel is our looking-glass! My dear, you are brilliant.” Eulalie strode to her and kissed her soundly.

Fennel clustered in tufts on the edge of the rise, a waving crown for a dreaming green head. They started digging, and the dressed stone came free at last from the ages. Lord Washerford struggled to keep an iron grip on his wild enthusiasm and move slowly, agonizingly slowly, to document every inch of soil lifted away. Thankfully his young wife was there, sketching every day, cataloging finds by oil lamp at night. The stones, their soil veil pulled back, lay exposed to the sky for the first time since civilizations long past had fallen away from man’s collective memory.

It became clear that, more than just a sacred way, it was the roof to a chamber-tomb. Lord Washerford shoveled alongside the workmen, his enthusiasm infectious, uncovering the keel-shaped vault and stone lintel, the bronze bound cedar doors long since gone down to dust. The dromos was revealed, halfway into the hillside. Late afternoon revealed the limestone walls of the fore-hall lined with gypsum benches. Beyond the doorway was a limestone slab. The last rays of the sun showed the tomb itself still sealed. Evening forced a halt.

Lord Washerford broke out bottles of wine, toasting the diggers, the tomb, the sea beyond the rise, and his devoted Lady. He poured out a libation to the residents of the tomb, distributed bonuses, and declared that tomorrow at first light the limestone slab would be moved. The workmen departed for the evening, drunk and happy.

In with the sifted soil they had uncovered a chalcedony seal showing two figures and a lion, pottery pieces that gave evidence of Egyptian origin, a gold ring with a motif of ecstatic dance by female votaries in a field of lilies. And above the limestone door, still sealed against time, were stylized stone bull’s horns and the image of an apotropaic double ax. Lucy recorded it all, the sketches of the doorway and the outer hall, the dromos, the lintel with symbols intact.

“Tomorrow,” Eulalie said, pacing like a lion on a leash. “Tomorrow we let in the sun and greet our Cretan hosts. The symbols, the bull’s horns, the labrys!”

“Yes, beloved. From the position of the tomb in the landscape, I would wager that it isn’t the end of the sacred way, but positioned alongside. The road wound beyond it.”

“Beyond it, into the sea. Whatever knelt on the crag of that cliff has long since fallen into the waves, perhaps in an earthquake. We might owe our intact tomb to that great earth-shifting. The land fell away, the remaining ruins were covered.”

“You are on the cusp of greatness.”

Eulalie seized her up and spun her about in an impromptu dance. “We are! Well, Cecil Wakefield is, when he publishes his results. I never would have found it without you.”

“I wonder if it is possible to die from too much happiness. I don’t know how to live with it. Do you suppose it will ever be possible to publish under our own names?”

“My imagination runs backward, my dear. I leave the dreaming about the future to you.”

“Do…do you think we might spend the night in the cottage? But I know you must want to stay with the tomb.”

Eulalie looked at her closely. “One night of privacy might be acceptable. We have been consumed in the journey; surely on the cusp of success we might celebrate a bit. After all, this is our honeymoon.”

The whitewashed walls allowed a change of pace, a letting down of walls kept up in company. Lucy couldn’t believe that she’d asked, on this night, or that Eulalie had accepted and understood. But this night of triumph she wanted to lie naked in her husband’s arms and drink other wine. Lucy dreamed of fish playing between the columns of a lost temple, of ecstatic women, hair flying, spinning before the open colonnade holding stalks of fennel, of a magnificent red and white bull charging. In the morning Eulalie dressed again as Cecil. Lucy helped her knot the cravat, button the waistcoat. Even at a dig certain things were expected, of men, of women. They hurried to the site, expecting to find the workmen waiting for them. Silence lay over the tomb, dew gleaming on the leaves of crocuses in the field on the rise’s left flank. Tools lay scattered, pickaxes and shovels tossed about randomly. Limestone shards littered the formerly cleared fore-hall. The slab was destroyed, sledged into pieces. A limestone larnax sarcophagus had been dragged half into the light, tipped over, the lid levered off and the contents scattered. Bones and the dust that had been cloth spilled from it. The tomb had been looted.

The shock was too great for Lucy to compass, a blow she couldn’t feel yet. She looked immediately at Eulalie in horror. If they had spent the night at the dig, if she hadn’t asked to go back to the shed, they would have heard the destruction. Perhaps even been able to stop it. Guilt ravaged her.

Eulalie was looking not at the tomb, but away from it. At the edge of the dig site stood the old Englishman from the ship. He was looking at Eulalie with a mix of anger and contempt, his mouth drawn up and back like that of a foaming dog.

“Mrs. Wakefield.”

He wasn’t speaking to Lucy.

For the first time, Lucy heard Eulalie become every inch the frozen aristocrat.

“Ambrose. The last I heard you were on the foreign service in Africa. What are you doing in Crete?”

He walked toward them, picking his way between the scattered tools. “I had heard my dear old friend Cecil Wakefield was travelling to Crete when he has been more than a decade in the grave. There must be some mistake.”

“I think there have been many mistakes,” Eulalie said, and the tone froze Lucy’s marrow.

“So I waited to get a good look at the wretch impersonating my friend, abusing his good name. Never could I have imagined this, this unnatural charade.”

“You lack imagination, Ambrose. You always did.”

“You were always a hellion, Eulalie, but to make mock of Cecil’s good name, to ruin this young girl, to play at man’s work?” He gestured widely at the site.

Lucy took Eulalie’s hand. Ambrose noted the movement and shook his head.

“This unnatural rebellion is finished. I have given out word that Cecil Wakefield is dead and an imposter is abroad. Your workmen have been paid off and dismissed. I gave them their freedom to take their own bonus.”

“You bastard .” The aristocratic control was cracking.

The old man stood, wide as an elephant, pulling light from the landscape into him. On his jacketed shoulders rested all the power and authority in the world, the reminder to Lucy that no matter the joy they had taken these past few weeks, his world still held all the trump cards. Everything they had could be taken from them.

“And if you continue, I will ruin you and your consort.”

This broke the dam and brought out the lioness. Eulalie stormed forth, her right hand crashing into Ambrose’s teeth. She stood over him, trousered legs spread wide. “Breathe a word against her and I will kill you with my bare hands.”

On his back Ambrose was deflated like a pricked bladder. “How dare you, how dare you! This is not yours!” He looked his age, grey haired and fragile suddenly. The illusion of power had melted. The angry child remained.

Eulalie stepped away and turned her back, dismissing him. She walked into the tomb. Lucy waited until he climbed painfully to his feet and shuffled away, his image sinking into the curves of the road. Lucy followed Eulalie into the shadow. The sun cut across the floor in a triangle, showing where the limestone box had stood, a few large clay jars broken and shattered about the edges of the small rectangular room. Eulalie was on her knees, hands full of bones and dust, weeping.

“Gone. It is all gone. We will never know.”

“Darling.” She knelt and gathered Eulalie into her arms, crying herself. “Can you ever forgive me?”

“For what?” Eulalie sounded genuinely bewildered. “It is you must forgive me. Ambrose is right. I care not a whit for my reputation. But you will be destroyed. “

“You think I am worried about my reputation? I am an orphan; I have no father to shame. And there is no shame, for me, in being known as your wife.”

“Cecil’s wife. I was a fool to use his name. Of course someone would realize he was dead eventually. We would never be able to publish our findings.”

“Darling, look,” Lucy said. The triangle of light had shifted subtly around them. The sun now revealed the tomb’s walls. The contents were stripped, but the walls remained. Lime washed frescoed walls in brilliant blues, deep scarlet, gold, and saffron. Eulalie stood, mesmerized. There were figures marching in a line, bearing tall jars, lilies and crocuses; women with bare breasts, arms wreathed in snakes, long, serpentine hair down their backs in curled locks.

“It is a procession. See, the jars, the flowers are offerings. Look at the clothing! The statuette was true, see how the women are clad. The men in kilts and jewelry. My dear, get your sketchbook!”

It was Lucy who pointed out that while the procession was headed and filled with women, their skin was painted pale white. The men were represented in a deep red brown. Some of the figures in kilts were marked dressed as men but represented as women. These were mixed in with the other fellows in kilts and armbands, leading a bull with gilded horns. Eulalie touched the fresco. “It is as fresh as if it were painted yesterday. I recognize her, this one, this priestess. She has a monkey on a leash. How magnificent is her hair caught up in that crown! She walks with the bull dancer, the woman. Perhaps this is her tomb?”

“It might be. Read this as a story. It begins here, left of the door. The procession begins; all walk and carry offerings. The bull is led. Here, the corner is turned. The women dance, spinning, hair flying. I am not sure, but that may be a goddess, winged, on a temple roof.” Lucy narrated as she walked. “Then, we turn again, and it is the bull dance! The women watch, the dancers before and after the bull, head tossed back. One holds the horns, red, so he is male. There, leaping, white. Female. Same arm bands as before.”

“Astounding. Women bull leapers? But the iconography is clear.”

“Now we turn. The bull leaper stands with the priestess, who has the monkey on the leash. They clasp right hands, walking. Part of the ritual?”

Eulalie shook her head. “No, the procession is gone. They are alone. The fresco wends here, at the doorway again, and is finished. I think this is their tomb.”

“That handclasp, the right hands? I have seen it in Etruscan burials. Man and wife.”

“Both figures are painted white.”

Eulalie smiled. “Such things are known to happen. Do you have it all?”

Lucy held up her sketchbook. “I have it. Let us gather their bones, set the larnax back up. They deserve the right to rest together, again.”

It took the rest of the daylight, until the sun sank away into the West. They left the tomb in silence. Lucy clutched her sketchbook. “No one will ever believe it.”

“Women cannot publish.”

“And Cecil is dead.”

Eulalie looked out over the rise, past the crown of fennel, toward the ocean. “I always liked the name Augustus better.”

“A man who never existed can’t be unmasked,” Lucy took Eulalie’s hand.

“You know we stand outside the law. Outside custom.”

“To achieve greatly one must dare greatly. We keep our faith, we keep our work, and we wait for the world to catch up,” Lucy said.

In the next season, an expatriate Englishman named Augustus and his beloved wife went looking on the coast of Turkey for the plains of Ilium. Their work was foundational for the eventual discovery of Troy. An earthquake shook the island of Crete, dropping a certain crag into the sea. The palace at Knossos and the Cretan civilization would wait for decades to be uncovered again. The man who did so was convinced that he was the first to do so.