by K. T. Tomb
Paddy looked up at his father, who picked up his jaw again.
“In Euripides' play, Jason abandoned his wife, Medea, in Corinth when the king offered his daughter as his wife.”
“So...” Tim began.
“So, Laura had been right!”
“Laura?”
“Yeah, my new friend on Lesbos; I’ll tell you about her later. She’s been a really big help to me getting this idea off the ground.”
“Okay…”
“Anyway, if this family fairy tale has any truth to it,” Cash continued, “perhaps Marcus did travel to pre-Columbian America. Those people look like Mayans, which would explain why Aurelia’s golden statue is of a jaguar, wouldn’t it?”
“It would but what do the Argonauts have to do with this?”
“Marcus is being compared to Jason, a legendary traveler who was believed to be capable of any type of journey and it’s also telling us where Aurelia and her family were living when her son, Julius was born.”
“Where?”
Cash rolled her eyes at Tim; he was supposed to be the historian after all.
“Jason left it with Medea in Corinth, the myth says.”
“Yes.”
“Aurelia was living in Corinth when she was given the Jaguar God as a birthing gift by her uncle.”
Chapter Five
When Cash landed in Athens, she felt alone suddenly. Tim had taken charge of Paddy and was taking him back to Wales. It was by far the best solution now that it was settled she was going off to explore again. She would be much faster and less restrained than with her son in tow.
It was Monday. Sunday had been spent on the beach in Heraklion with Tim and Paddy. They didn’t have a lot of moments like that. Tim was in Barry as much as he could be, but he also had to be elsewhere for work as it demanded; sometimes that meant going back to Berkeley for a week of guest lectures. And Cash never traveled to California with him… ever. They had hit that snag a while back.
Cash would never demand Tim give up his job, nor did she want to give up her home. As it turned out, it worked well enough. Paddy was in his element there, and Tim managed to come home and be with them quite a bit. Usually, he managed to leave early on Friday and be there to pick up Paddy from school. After spending the weekend, he would go back on Monday evening or Tuesday morning. He had his classes to teach, of course, but a lot of the time, he could get away when he wanted. And it worked for them all.
Now though, Cash felt alone, standing at the airport without anyone by her side. Her son had been with her a lot for the past year, and it felt strange not to have him there.
She pondered on that and managed to get herself quite depressed. She sat down at the bar in the airport and ordered some ouzo, which she slammed back. It only made her feel worse.
Suddenly a familiar voice snapped her out of her growing depression.
“Bit early to be drinking,” Laura said, looking at her. She walked up to the bar and dropped her backpack. She ordered a coffee in rapid Greek and sat down next to Cash. “So what is it you wanted me here for?”
“I didn't tell you?” Cash blinked. She thought she had mentioned it.
Laura shook her head. “You said you found something and needed my help and would pay for the flight and cover the big expenses here.”
Cash blinked again. “Then why did you come?” She was taken aback by what seemed loyalty from the woman she had only met a week ago. Remembering what she had said previously, Cash suddenly hoped it was nothing more than that.
“Because being on Lesbos, doing what I do is depressing as fuck.” Laura flashed a grin. “If someone offers to pay for me doing something else, I'd be loath to pass up the opportunity.”
Cash laughed. She felt a hint of relief, but mainly she appreciated the humor and practicality in that statement.
Cash took her tablet from her bag and looked up the pictures she had taken. Tim had insisted she take pictures at the Hersonissos cathedral and had given her his phone to do so when she said she had left hers behind. Tim had emailed her the pictures straight away and right now she was happy he had done all of that.
“D'you reckon it's a depiction of Marcus’ travels and Aurelia receiving the Jaguar God?” Laura asked, looking through them.
Cash nodded. “Yeah.” She caught herself speaking in a broader Aussie accent than usual. Laura's hint of Aussie wasn’t doing her any favors.
“So what are we doing here?” Laura asked, frowning at Cash.
Cash took the tablet from her and scrolled onto the picture of the men carrying off the box.
“You reckon they took it?”
Cash nodded.
“But who took it?”
Cash pointed to the man with the fur. Laura recognized it instantly.
“Jason and the Argonauts!” Laura cried.
“Yes! Only it’s Marcus and the Argonauts, isn’t it?”
Laura swiped the series of pictures on, reckoning she knew what was coming. When the single woman left behind with the box showed up, she smiled at Cash. “Medea was left in Corinth.”
Cash smiled back, nodding and punching the young woman in the shoulder. “I knew you'd get that instantly.”
“Aurelia’s residence at the time! Brilliant!” Laura grinned. “So, that's why you needed me here?”
“And because you speak Greek.”
“Of course. So what's the plan now?” Laura asked her. “I assume we're not going to sit around in this bar forever and work it out by means of a thought experiment?”
“We go to Corinth, of course.”
They took the train to Corinth and spent the almost two hours catching up. For only a few days, they had a surprising amount to talk about. Laura spoke about what had been happening on Lesbos. A number of bodies had washed up, some of which had gunshot wounds. The eyes of the continent turned to the Greek coastguard, but it seemed the people of Lesbos looked away. Laura mentioned the crews had not been paid and Cash knew what would happen there if they refused to work. Their work was a lot more stressful than that of the ferry crews, though, and while she couldn’t approve if they were to shoot at the boat, she could kind of understand why they would do it. With all their own trouble and stress, to help another load of people and spend hours processing them in the dead of night would be tough.
Cash talked about her journey and about the weekend with Tim and Paddy. She couldn’t stop talking about her son, even when she realized she was babbling. But Laura actually seemed to care about Paddy and let her talk on.
When they rolled over the canal through the isthmus, they were still talking.
From the train station, they took a bus to the center of the city and found their hotel. Cash had booked a room for the two of them. She didn’t want to spend the money on a second room for Laura, but as soon as she had booked it, she had second thoughts. She really didn’t want to make anything awkward for Laura. They were becoming good friends, and she didn’t want to risk damaging that, or hurt Laura's feelings. As a point, Cash ensured that there were double beds in the room.
They checked in and brought their bags up. Once they had settled in, they went out into the town. The first thing Laura went looking for was food. Cash had always thought of herself as the greedy sort when it came to food, but Laura seemed much worse. After Laura's third purchase of baklava from a street vendor, Cash remarked on it and Laura just chuckled, saying she had friends who were much worse. She told Cash a story of how they had been visited by a class from a Dutch school and they had shown them around Leuven. Her friend had run off at every opportunity to buy chips, chocolate and beer. The boys in that group had laughed at it, but all she had done was make Laura hungry.
When Cash had satisfied her appetite and Laura was no longer starving, they got on a bus to the old city of Corinth, some three miles from the modern city. They walked around a bit, but without knowing what they were actually looking for. Neither had an idea where to find proof of Aurelia having been there and what she might have
done with the box, if at all it had ever existed. Cash felt the rare ivory box was the very same which had been in the church carvings and that the clue to proving it or finding it was in Corinth; but what she didn’t know was what such a clue might look like. There had been no way to figure out where to start looking. Laura was much more knowledgeable than her on Ancient Greece, but she had not been to Corinth before, nor had she studied Corinth in any great detail. She knew the bigger moments in its history, but that was really where it all ended. While she had studied Athens and Lesbos' most famous daughter, Sappho, in depth, her knowledge of Corinth was comparatively limited.
As they walked through the ruins of the ancient city, though, Laura began explaining about the layout of the Greek cities. The polis was formed around a central square, the agora, around which all the main city buildings were placed. It was the gathering place for the citizens and where the markets were held.
They walked through the old streets and looked around. Laura could explain a lot about the layout of a city like this, which was a great help for Cash in understanding where they were and what they were doing. They stopped and looked around for a while as they stood by the ruins of what once had been the palace. Cash looked around for any hint of any clues similar to what she had found in Hersonissos. There were a lot of paintings, icons and drawings, even graffiti, but nothing that was remotely like what she thought she was looking for.
Finally, they sat down outside a harbor side restaurant and ordered a moussaka from the menu. Laura chose a local red wine with it and they shared the dish and the bottle as they looked out over the harbor and the cargo ships that were moving through the bay.
Both modern and ancient Corinth lay on that bay, on the western side of the isthmus that separated Attica and Pelonossos. It was around where the canal had been dug last century that the Spartans had built their great wall, which stopped the Persian armies advancing toward their heartland. Later, that same wall had served them well in their war against the Athenians. The Athenians might have held the seas with their navy, and the Spartans had been unable to take the Long Walls, but the Athenian army had been unable to advance past Corinth.
Corinth, Argos to the east and Thebes to the north had been the cities where everything met right in the middle, and it was no surprise then they turned out to be the real winners when the endless conflict between Sparta and Athens finally ended.
“So what do we do tomorrow?” Laura asked, still shoveling food into her mouth.
“Bugger all?” Cash shrugged. “Something, I suppose, but I have no idea how to find out what we're supposed to be looking for.”
“Museum?” Laura suggested between a bite and a sip of wine.
“Could try, but I'm not sure what that will end up bringing us. Didn't do much good in Heraklion either.”
“What do you mean no good? You and Tim got to get all dressed up and spend the night wandering the place rubbing elbows with the rich and famous. I saw that program, Cash. The Jaguar God is absolutely breathtaking… and definitely pre-Columbia American craftwork, just so you know!”
“Really? You could tell that just from a photograph?”
“Yup.”
“So you think we’re really on to something with this Marcus sailing across the Atlantic thing?”
Laura nodded. Cash sighed and looked out over the harbor, thinking.
“So now what?” Laura asked.
“Don't know yet.” Cash pursed her lips and then drank some more wine. “I actually have no idea what to do now. I usually just make it up as I go along. Something always comes up to help me on my way. It will again.”
“You're very calm about that. I can't stand not knowing things.”
“I'm used to it; been doing things on a whim for ages. It’s always gotten me where I needed to go and I’ve never had to worry about anything. Just about Paddy really.”
Laura grinned. “You really are a mother, aren't you? Were you a lot wilder than you are now?”
“What makes you ask that?”
“Because you sound like you’re still wild, but you're also a mother and very caring.”
Cash grinned. “Very perceptive.”
“So is it just your boy that changed it?” Laura asked, finally not following her words with a shovel load of food.
Cash shook her head and looked into Laura's questioning eyes. She had told Tim about the journey she had undertaken before the birth of their son, but he had not understood any of it. She reckoned Laura would understand it, though. And so she launched into that story.
Cash was still telling it when they got back to the hotel room. It was the first time she had told it since she had gone over it with Tim, and she didn’t skimp on the details. Laura asked her questions and seemed to understand the spiritual side of the journey as well. She understood it as a woman too. There was something that made Cash feel comfortable talking to her. And not just talking to her, she felt happy listening to her as well. She had a gentle, soft voice that had that strange blend of accent; the Flemish, Brabantian and Australian. It was a comforting voice to listen to.
Back in the hotel room, they both got ready for bed and then lay down. Things were very comfortable, seeing as the hotel had been able to provide the double room Cash had requested. It was well past midnight when Laura finally took her glasses off, having put those on instead of her contacts, and announced she would go to sleep. Cash rolled over and turned off the bedside lamp, then lay on her back, her eyes closed.
In the morning, Cash woke to find Laura gone. She looked at her phone and saw that Laura had texted her an hour before, saying she had gone to breakfast.
Typical, Cash thought, smiling.
Cash changed into her sports gear and headed down to the hotel gym for an hour. She felt she needed the exercise. She needed it to process some things that were wandering around in her mind.
After the hour, she went back up, took a quick shower and then headed to breakfast. She found Laura still sitting there, eating. She was amazed at the fact that she could have been eating for well over two hours.
Laura beamed at her when she came down.
“How come you're not being rolled away like a bloody barrel?”
Laura grinned. “You know, that waitress was asking me the same thing just half an hour ago.”
“Was she?” Cash asked as she sat down at the table.
Laura nodded happily. “We're meeting tonight to have a bite to eat.”
Cash grinned. “You scored a date over breakfast?”
Laura nodded again. “Not just that, she told me something interesting.”
“What did she tell you then?” she asked, frowning.
Laura smiled. “Well, she studied physics, got her Master’s and all, hoping to save up enough to go to Germany or England to find work there.”
“Nice as that is,” Cash interrupted, “did she also have something relevant to say?”
Laura chuckled. “She did, actually. She used to go hiking a lot as well, both with her family as a child and with other students.”
“Yes?” Cash prompted her.
“When I mentioned what we were looking for—not in too much detail of course—she said there is a cave in the hills between the ancient cities of Corinth and Argos. A friend once took her there and they spent the night there. Apparently there was something painted on the walls. She never paid much attention to it when they were there, she said, but she did remember one of the pictures was of a woman being left behind by a group of men. When I asked her about a box, she asked me how I knew that was there.”
Cash smiled broadly and began laughing. “See, I told you something always shows up!”
Cash rushed through her breakfast as Laura headed up to shower. When Laura came back downstairs, Cash drained her cup of tea and got up. They paused on the way out for a minute while Laura went to thank the waitress she had pointed out earlier.
“All freshened up and ready to go?” Cash asked her.
“Yeah, let
’s find this place!” Laura beamed happily. “I want to be back by six.”
Cash grinned. “Come on, let's go then.”
The girl—her name turned out to be Maria—had drawn the location of the cave on one of the maps of the area that was handed out at the reception desk. They got off the bus between Corinth and Argos at a point where they reckoned they would be closest and began their long hike into the hills.
First they crossed a plowed field, struggling to get through the loose soil and the rocks. When they got to the other side of the field, Cash cursed. It seemed there was just another field to cross, but Laura looked to the right and saw there was a path further up that led into the hills. Five minutes later they were on the path, a farmer's track, and heading upwards.
“My fucking legs are burning,” Laura complained after only a few minutes of walking the steep path.
“You need to work out more. Cycling, for example.” Cash grinned at her. “Don't you guys like that in Belgium?”
“Yes,” Laura said breathlessly. “I do actually have a mountain bike and a road bike at home. When I'm there, I ride a lot. But I didn’t bring them, did I?”
“Why didn’t you? It would beat that piece of crap bike you have on the island.”
“Don't have a place to put them. And it's not the nicest and safest place to ride alone as a woman right now.”
“Around where we are, it kind of is.”
“Sure, let's ride the same ten-mile lap over and over again. That's heaps of fun.”
Cash laughed and turned her attention to the hill path again. She wouldn’t admit it, but she was struggling too. Doing that workout in the morning might have been a bit of a mistake, but then she couldn’t have known a hike like this lay ahead.
On top of the hill, Laura looked at the map. The only thing to use as a reference was the farmhouse down in the valley. There was little relief even on the map. It showed some, but of course, it was never meant to be used as they were using it.
Cash checked her tablet for a signal, figuring they could find a map and, between the two, find out where they were and where they were headed. But, of course, there was no signal there.