Darling Ava,
Look on ye mighties and despair! I’ve been walking in the steps of the Titans this week—gods and heroes and Cyclops.
Don’t mind me. I’m antiquities drunk. It’s intoxicating, seeing all of this in situ and not just in fuzzy photographs and artists’ illustrations. It feels quite different when you’re standing in the midst of it. That’s when the true wonder of it all hits you. These were people, Ava. Actual people, not just creators of vases and myths left for future generations to puzzle over. They lived and ate—and bathed! Oh, the baths I’ve seen. I’m giddy with it.
We saw Tiryns today and we’re bound for Mycenae tomorrow, Professor Sterrett, the Harvard boys, Ethel, and me. There is also a scholar from the French School who has happened to join us. The boys call Ethel the Coffee Angel. She managed to coax the beverage into being over a spirit lamp and served it in a Minoan jar (all right, it wasn’t actually a Minoan jar, but it was its near descendant) and they’re now her devoted slaves and carry her pack for her in the hopes of future favor.
More anon. Don’t you wish you were here? You could be here; I’d arrange it all.
All my love,
Betsy
—Miss Betsy Hayes ’96 to Ava Saltonstall ’96
Athens, Greece
October 1896
The morning chill felt like heaven on Betsy’s flushed cheeks.
She’d been late, of course. She’d had to run like anything for the steamer, but she was here now, and had been clouted amiably on the shoulder by one of the Harvard boys, frowned at by Ethel, and harrumphed at by Professor Sterrett, although she thought she’d gotten the better of that one when she’d pointed out that she was proving her stamina for the rigors ahead by showing how she could run. He’d been bemused rather than cross, which Betsy thought boded well for their future association.
“Pardon me—excuse me—” Betsy wove her way past an entire herd of goats, holding her bag high above her head so they wouldn’t scent the treats Aikaterini’s cook had pressed on her.
She did love living with Aikaterini, and not just because of the cakes.
“You don’t have to apologize to the goats,” Ethel pointed out, as Betsy joined her at the rail.
“It’s really more their boat than ours.” Not just the goats, but at least one bewildered cow, several chickens, and an entire regiment of soldiers. There were old ladies in rusty black with their heads veiled carrying straw baskets, and irritated donkeys laden with pallets, and the clothes, oh, the clothes! The men sported wide red sashes and baggy trousers and sometimes a sort of skirted garment. Athens was marvelous, with its antiquities jostling against the grand, modern marble mansions that had been erected in the past few decades, but this—this felt like Greece as she had imagined it.
Betsy elbowed Ethel, too excited to pretend to be blasé. “Look at that man over there, the one in the beard. Doesn’t he look straight off an Attic vase?”
“That one’s more a marble head,” said Ethel. “He looks like a bust I saw once in the Metropolitan Museum.”
Betsy tried to look everywhere at once, drinking it all in. “I wonder what all those soldiers are doing here. Ought we expect pirates?”
“Not pirates,” said a voice behind them. “But possibly Turks.”
Betsy turned too fast and tripped over her own skirts. Monsieur de Robecourt caught her before she could fall, his hands warm on her upper arms.
“We seem destined to collide,” he said, smiling at her from beneath the brim of his hat.
Betsy tilted her head up at him. “Only because you keep sneaking up behind me.”
“Shall I depart?” he offered, his hands sliding down her arms to her elbows.
“Certainly not.” Betsy suppressed an absolutely ridiculous impulse to rise up on her tiptoes and wrap her arms around his neck. “It’s safer to keep you where I can see you.”
Monsieur de Robecourt looked deeply into her eyes. “But am I safe from you?”
“You can always call the soldiers,” Betsy suggested breathlessly.
He held her out at arm’s length, examining her with mock seriousness. “You make a very unconvincing Turk.”
“It’s never been one of my aspirations,” said Betsy, basking in the admiration in his eyes. “Is that what they’re here for, these soldiers? To fight the Turks?”
Monsieur de Robecourt looked at her in surprise. Even worse, he let his hands drop. “But who else? The revolution wasn’t so very long ago.”
Betsy was vaguely aware that at some point the Ottoman Empire had occupied Greece and gone on occupying it until Lord Byron had made them stop. Or something of that sort. Betsy didn’t much care. She wished they could go back to the bit where he was holding on to her arms and teasing her.
“It’s rather like Leonidas and Themistocles, casting Xerxes back into Persia,” said Betsy, trying to twist the conversation back onto familiar ground. “Two thousand years on and the heart of democracy still stands stalwart against the tyrant.”
“Greece is a monarchy now,” said someone to Betsy’s left.
Ethel. Betsy blinked. She had forgotten all about Ethel. Ethel was standing there with her arms folded across her chest looking distinctly put out.
“Only a very mild sort of monarchy,” Betsy said hastily. “Oh, goodness, where are my manners? Miss Ethel Lewis, Monsieur de Robecourt. He’s one of those vandals from the French School that stole Delphi from us.”
Ethel gave her a long, measuring look before holding out her hand to Monsieur de Robecourt. “Monsieur.”
Monsieur de Robecourt bowed over her hand, but he glanced at Betsy as he spoke. “Are you, too, determined to prove that skirts don’t prevent one from pursuing archaeology?”
“No,” said Ethel crisply. “I have no interest in digging up the dead—only their words.”
“A sanitary and sane pursuit.” Something about the way he said it, however gravely, made Betsy feel like they were in a conspiracy together, the ones who didn’t bow to the sanitary and the sane.
“Have you dug?” Betsy demanded.
“What she means,” said Ethel, giving Betsy a look, “is have you participated in excavations.”
“From here to the Valley of the Kings. I dabbled in Egyptology before following my heart to Greece.”
Betsy burned to know just whose heart it was he had followed, but she couldn’t ask, so she demanded instead, “You never did say what you’re doing here. On this boat, I mean.”
“Going on a trek to the Peloponnese, of course,” Monsieur de Robecourt said lightly.
“With us?” That had sounded a little too eager. Betsy made an attempt at sangfroid. “Isn’t this old hat for you?”
“Greece?” He held her gaze just a moment too long. “Greece never grows old. He who is bored with Greece is bored with life.”
“You stole that from Dr. Johnson,” said Betsy severely. She had to work very hard at being severe. His presence gave the cool morning air a fizz like champagne. Betsy could feel it going straight to her head.
“Did I?” He moved closer to avoid a pack of goats on the move. Betsy could smell his cologne and feel the warmth of his skin through the fine wool of his sleeve as his arm brushed against hers.
“Pure thievery.”
Monsieur de Robecourt bent his dark head to speak to her above the din. “But he’s dead; he’ll never notice the loss of it. Besides, isn’t that what archaeologists do? We rob the dead to delight the living.”
Betsy thrilled to that we. “I think of it more as safeguarding their remains for them, making sure they’re studied properly. It’s for their own good, really.”
Monsieur de Robecourt raised a brow. “Theirs? Or yours?”
“Does it matter?” asked Ethel, sounding rather exasperated about being left out again. “They aren’t here to complain.”
“An intriguing point.” Something Betsy couldn’t read passed across Monsieur de Robecourt’s face. He took a step back, nodding to Betsy and Ethel. “I should pay my respects to my host before he thinks me impossibly rude.”
And with a tilt of his hat, he was off to Professor Sterrett, leaving Betsy with Ethel, feeling bemused and slightly giddy.
“He does flirt,” said Ethel calmly, and Betsy came back down to earth with a thump.
“Well . . . the French,” said Betsy, as though she’d never thought anything of it, and went off with Ethel to join the Harvard men, although their company felt distinctly flat after the intoxicating worldliness of Monsieur de Robecourt.
They docked that night off Nauplion, and went the next morning to Tiryns, trekking up to the ancient city in the clear, pure light of dawn.
“Famed for its walls,” murmured Betsy, staring up at the massive fortifications, kissed with the light of the rising sun. Every now and then, Homer did get something right.
“It doesn’t actually say famed,” pointed out Ethel. “A more accurate translation would be well-walled.”
There went romance. Betsy frowned at Ethel. “That’s like saying Versailles was well-gilded. It doesn’t convey the awe of it at all.”
There were only the bare remnants of rooms remaining, the outlines of walls and scraps of frescoes, but Betsy could see them growing, becoming whole again. They ran around like schoolchildren, shouting and pointing, speculating and guessing. There, that had been the circular hearth in the megaron, or great hall. There, those were the remains of the temple of Hera, built onto the megaron—but later, so therefore less interesting. And there, that was what Professor Dörpfeld, who had excavated after Herr Schliemann (and was very careful not to be critical, although one could tell he wanted to), said was a bathing chamber. And, goodness, was that a sort of public latrine over there?
“Look,” said one of the Harvard boys, forgetting to be superior in his excitement. “This is what old Dörpfeld was talking about. See that stone slab? They tilted it like that so the water from the bath would drain down there.”
Ethel had her copy of A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities open to the section on Tiryns. “This says the bath itself would have been made of red clay decorated in a spiral pattern.”
They wandered off together toward the women’s quarters, bickering over Ethel’s guidebook and fighting over how many pillars would have held up the main room. But Betsy lagged behind, looking at that perfectly tilted, smooth sanded stone floor, marveling at the wonder of prehistoric engineering that had been expended, not on the defenses of the fortress, not on stone carvings for the glorification of the ruler, but so that they could have a nice bath, with scented oils in stone jars, and not worry about the floor being all sloppy afterward.
Someone, three thousand years ago, had soaked here in a red clay bathtub, toes sticking up out of the tub, scrubbing off the sweat of a summer day.
Someone touched her shoulder.
“What?” Betsy turned, looking for Ethel and the boys, but found Monsieur de Robecourt instead. Flustered, Betsy scrabbled for her self-possession. “Did you say something?”
“Nothing of importance. You were away in the moon.”
Betsy looked at the stone slab. It was just a stone slab again now. “Not the moon. Just three thousand years ago.”
“Where’s your hat?” Betsy felt her head. She didn’t remember losing it. Monsieur de Robecourt set his own panama hat upon her head. “Here. And drink this. You look sun-dazed.”
“Not sun-dazed. Antiquity dazed.” Betsy drank the water without tasting it, staring out at the countryside falling away around them. The palace was at the very top of the citadel. In the fields below, a man was pushing a plow that might have been used in Homer’s day. Past and present wove around each other, the boundaries uncertain. “Does one become acclimated through long acquaintance?”
Monsieur de Robecourt stood beside her, looking with her over the fallen walls of the once-great citadel. “A bit. But, no—not truly. It still awes me. This was old when Charlemagne was young.”
“And Boston not even thought of yet. We’re just specks in time. But this—it makes everything we’ve built feel so flimsy, so fleeting.” Betsy thought about the ancient craftsmen who had built these walls, men toiling to get these stones into place, cursing as they jostled them, breaking off for a skin of wine, only to be yelled at by the foreman. “They lived on a different scale than we do.”
“In the days of heroes—and goddesses.”
Betsy could almost see the armies gathered below; the gods in state on Mount Olympus. She didn’t realize she had swayed on her feet until Monsieur de Robecourt put a hand to her back to steady her.
He looked sideways at her. “It is dizzying, is it not? It’s said that the Cyclops built these walls. No mortal man could have moved them.”
“But someone did.” It was hard to think sensibly when she was so very aware of Monsieur de Robecourt’s fingers fanned out across the small of her back. “I’m more likely to believe in a pulley and tackle than a Cyclops.”
“There speaks the cold pragmatist, plucking the heart out of old mysteries.”
Betsy didn’t like being called cold. She put her hand impulsively on his arm. “I didn’t say I don’t like the old myths! They’re fascinating. But that doesn’t mean I need to believe in them. I just need to believe that the Ancient Greeks believed.”
“But you, mademoiselle, are above such base superstitions?”
“I wouldn’t say that. I’m sure I’m crammed full of what people two thousand years from now would consider base superstition. But they’re my superstitions and not anyone else’s.”
Monsieur de Robecourt’s lips twisted in a wry smile. “You don’t bow at the altar of Zeus, then?”
Betsy crinkled her nose at him. “He wasn’t terribly reliable, was he? I don’t want to be turned into a swan or visited with a shower of gold.”
“The gods aren’t kind to those they love,” murmured Monsieur de Robecourt.
“I don’t think you can call it love,” said Betsy. “Not Zeus and his women. He only wanted them until he had them. That wasn’t love; that was just desire.”
Monsieur de Robecourt looked at her intently. “Just desire?”
Betsy was suddenly very aware of her hand on his sleeve, his on the small of her back. As if they were about to waltz. Or embrace. If either of them were to lean the tiniest bit forward . . .
“It doesn’t do to underestimate desire.” Monsieur de Robecourt’s hand fell from her back. “One might as well say these are just walls.”
He began walking and so Betsy did too, picking her way carefully around the fallen masonry. She felt dizzy, and not just with antiquities. Flirting, Ethel had called it. Betsy had done more than her share of flirting in the past, but she’d never felt anything like this, this elemental urge, this . . . desire.
Betsy cleared her throat. “Did you see the bath?”
“The bath?”
“Yes, that big stone slab I was looking at when you found me.” Before she had gone mildly mad. “It’s really rather marvelous, isn’t it? Someone, three thousand years ago, soaked in that bath and rubbed oils from those jars on her skin. . . .”
“I saw the stone,” said Monsieur de Robecourt slowly. “I knew that it was meant to have been a bath. But I did not see it. Not until you showed me. And now I can see it as if it were here before me, every drop of water, every trace of oil.”
Betsy felt as though she were in that bath, her limbs soft with scented oil, the steam rising around them.
“There you have it. That’s what archaeology is meant to do,” said Betsy briskly. “We make people see the past. People slept and washed and ate here. If we looked, I’m sure we could find bits of the jars they stored their oil in, the plates off of which they ate their meals. . . . Maybe even combs and bits of buckles from their clothes. All the bits and pieces we throw out and don’t even think about after.”
“Wouldn’t you rather find royal regalia and treasures of state?” They’d come out of the palace complex now, onto a projecting bastion with a marvelous view of the countryside below. Betsy felt as though she were floating on the top of the world. “Think of the shaft graves Herr Schliemann found at Mycenae. Wouldn’t you rather a golden mask than potsherds?”
Betsy stopped, leaning against the old bastion. “Those were stunning finds, and they look very well in a glass case. But don’t you see? The treasures are the exceptions, the rarities. That makes them less valuable—from the point of view of figuring out how people lived, I mean,” Betsy said hastily.
“So you shall search for . . . kitchen things?”
She’d never really thought of it quite like that before, but now that he’d said it, Betsy felt a wonderful sense of rightness, like stepping into the proper pair of shoes after trying on ones that pinched. She could pioneer a new sort of archaeology, not jostling for showy finds but painstakingly putting back together the lives of ordinary people, people like her.
Betsy glowed up at him, alight with her new inspiration. “Didn’t your own Napoleon say an army marched on its stomach? An army marches on its stomach and everyone needs kitchen things.”
Monsieur de Robecourt looked at her wonderingly. “Napoleon never said that.”
“No, I did.” Betsy beamed at him, dazzled by her beautiful new idea: the history of ancient Greece, told not through epics, but through the little daily things.
Monsieur de Robecourt lifted her hand, as if it were something infinitely rare and precious. Betsy thought he meant to kiss it, as he had before, in Aikaterini’s drawing room. But he didn’t.
Holding her hand in his, he said softly, “Wait until you see Mycenae tomorrow before you swear off royal regalia. Or better yet . . . come to Delphi with me next month. We’ll see if one of the most sacred places in Greece can make you change your mind about kitchen things.”
Betsy tilted her head back, looking Monsieur de Robecourt in the eye. “I don’t change my mind easily. But you’re welcome to try.”
His fingers twined with hers. Betsy closed her eyes against the glare of the sun, letting herself sway forward.
There was a pointed cough behind them. Ethel tapped Betsy sharply on the shoulder. “Betsy. Betsy. You dropped your hat.”
“Bless you,” said Betsy, feeling thoroughly bemused. “Now Monsieur de Robecourt can stop courting sunstroke.”
“Are you sure sunstroke is all he’s courting?” asked Ethel.