The Lost Sisterhood

by Anne Fortier

  I was so shocked I started laughing. “Daddy, honestly!”

  “Well, what am I to think?” He looked almost angry as he sat there, hunched over the steering wheel. “You come home for three hours, ask about your birth certificate … and now you’re off to Amsterdam.” He glanced at me, and there was a flicker of genuine fear in his eyes. “Promise me this is not about some … man. Your mother would never forgive me.”

  “Oh, Daddy!” I leaned over to kiss him on the cheek. “You know I would never do that. Don’t you?”

  He nodded without conviction, and I suppose I couldn’t blame him. Although the subject rarely came up, I had no doubt my parents had deduced quite a bit about the motley handful of past boyfriends to whom Rebecca referred jointly as “the Horsemen of the Apocalypse,” although none of them deserved so fine a title.

  For whatever reason, I had never been good with men. Perhaps the culprit was my own particular preference for solitude, or perhaps—as Rebecca had once proposed, briefly forgetting my childhood crush on James Moselane—I had some genetic incapacity for romance, passed down from Granny. Whenever a relationship ended poorly, with tears and hurtful words, I would even occasionally be left with the suspicion that maybe I simply didn’t like men, and that maybe this was why I had a growing bundle of farewell letters in my desk drawer accusing me—in more eloquent terms, of course—of being a frigid bitch.

  Prompted by Rebecca, long-distance from Crete on occasion of my twenty-seventh birthday, I set out to determine whether my problem might be solved by a simple shift in focus from men to women. But after pondering the question for a week or so I had to conclude that women intrigued me even less than men. The sad conclusion, I decided, must therefore be that Diana Morgan was destined to be a loner … one of those ironclad ladies whose legacy did not consist in grandchildren, but in seven-pound monographs dedicated to some dead professor.

  Three days later Federico Rivera arrived.

  As a longtime regular at the Oxford University Fencing Club I was not easily impressed by posturing males, but I knew right away that the new Spanish master in residence was something else altogether. He was not handsome as such, but he was as tall as I and in excellent shape, and, more important, there was an explosive energy about him that was utterly intoxicating. Federico was a perfectionist, not only in fencing, but in the art of seduction as well, and although I am sure we both knew early on what the inescapable consequence of my private evening lessons with him would be, he spent several months focusing on my lunge and riposte and nothing else … before finally following me into the shower and teaching me the coup d’arrêt without a word.

  Our affair lasted all winter, and despite Federico’s insistence that we keep it secret, I fully believed him when he called me the love of his life. One day soon we would make it public … get married … have children…. It was never explicitly said, but always implied. And when he suddenly fled back to Spain from one day to the next, without so much as a goodbye, I was so shocked and heartbroken I thought I would never be happy again.

  Then came all the terrible discoveries: Federico’s many affairs around Oxford, the furious fiancée in Barcelona, and his ignominious dismissal from the fencing club … and yet I wrote him letter after tearful letter, pledging my love and understanding, begging him to respond.

  He did. Several months later I received a fat envelope sent from a fencing academy in Madrid; it contained all my letters to him—most of them unopened—plus five hundred euro. Since he didn’t owe me any money I was forced to assume it was his way of remunerating me for my services.

  I was so furious it took me weeks to decide that Master Federico Rivera, in his libertine wisdom, must have deliberately insulted me in order to cauterize my wound and—perfectionist as he was—complete my fencing lessons with the most honorable move of all: the coup de grâce.

  Even though I had never told my parents about him, they surely knew I had had my share of secret heartbreak. In fact, there were moments when I suspected that my mother’s persistent obsession with James Moselane was simply her own way of consoling us both. And what could be more soothing than the vision of an ideal future in which I lived at the manor just around the corner, happily ever after?

  WHEN MR. LUDWIG RETURNED with our coffee, I put away the magazine and moved my jacket so he could sit down next to me. “Thanks,” I said, taking one of the cups, relishing its warmth against my nervous hands. “By the way, you never told me the name of the foundation sponsoring our current luxury.”

  Mr. Ludwig eased the lid off his own coffee. “I’m a careful guy.” He took a tentative sip and made a face. “What is it with you Brits and coffee? Anyway, here is a name for you: the Skolsky Foundation. Sugar?”

  Moments later, while I was frantically Googling the Skolsky Foundation, I heard Mr. Ludwig chuckle and looked up to find him shamelessly spying on my phone. “You won’t find anything online,” he informed me. “Mr. Skolsky prefers to fly under the radar. It’s a billionaire thing.”

  Perhaps it was meant humorously, but I was not amused. Around us, the gate was bustling with airline representatives and travelers hoping to preboard the plane, but I was still largely in the dark about our voyage. “I’m embarrassed to say I’ve never heard of the Skolsky Foundation,” I said. “But I am assuming its offices are in Amsterdam?”

  Mr. Ludwig bent down to put his cup on the floor. “As I said, Mr. Skolsky is a private man. An industrialist with an interest in archaeology. He sponsors digs all over the world.”

  I stared at him, waiting for him to elaborate. When he did not, I leaned forward a bit, making it clear I was expecting more. “Such as—?”

  Mr. Ludwig smiled, but something in his predatory eyes told me he was getting irritated. “I can’t tell you until we get there. Skolsky protocol.”

  I was so upset by his dismissive attitude that I had a sudden revisitation not only of the vile coffee but also of the well-meant words of warning James had spoken the night before. The supposed Amazon inscription might be a hoax … or worse. That was how he had phrased it, and I found myself once again wondering what my own role was going to be. It was becoming painfully clear that Mr. Ludwig no longer felt the need to ingratiate himself with me, and I suspected the rapid decline of his manners foreshadowed the week ahead. Any normal person would heed the flashing signs and walk out while there was still time … except I couldn’t. Granny’s red notebook hidden in my handbag had long since overthrown my common sense.

  “Ready?” Mr. Ludwig took out his boarding pass. “Let’s go.”

  Moments later we were walking down the Jetway. I was still not sure why we were flying to Amsterdam, but by this point I knew it would be futile to ask. It did not lessen my confusion when Mr. Ludwig—instead of stepping on board the plane—stopped to exchange a few words with a man wearing a boilersuit and large orange earmuffs.

  The man shot me a suspicious look before opening a door in the side of the Jetway and leading us both down a set of rickety metal steps until we were standing on the tarmac, next to the plane. Even outside, the air was dense with noise and exhaust, and when I opened my mouth to ask what was going on, I found myself choking on the jet fumes, unable to make myself heard.

  After a short ride in a utility vehicle, weaving between catering vans and fuel trucks, we pulled up next to another plane. Only then, when I saw my suitcase changing hands and disappearing into the baggage compartment, did it dawn on me that our apparent flight to Amsterdam had been nothing but a carefully planned decoy.

  There was no time to question Mr. Ludwig about our change of destination, however, for we were hastily ushered up the back stairs to the plane after only the most perfunctory security check.

  “Some bangle,” said Mr. Ludwig, when the wand beeped next to the bronze bracelet on my arm. “Do you use it as a weapon?”

  “Not yet, but I might,” I replied, pulling down my sleeve again. He did not need to know that the bracelet had belonged to my grandmother, and that I
had excavated it from my underwear drawer only a few hours earlier, as a way of initiating this unexpected adventure. As far as Mr. Ludwig was concerned, I had come along for the money and the possibility of academic glory; I didn’t want him to know exactly how personal the trip was to me. If Mr. Skolsky could fly low, so could I.

  As the plane taxied to the runway with us both safely strapped into first class, I said to Mr. Ludwig, “Perhaps now would not be an entirely unreasonable moment for you to tell me where we are going?”

  Mr. Ludwig touched his champagne flute to mine. “Djerba. Here’s to a productive trip. Sorry about the hocus-pocus, but there is too much at stake.”

  I was itching to take out my phone and look it up, but we were only minutes away from takeoff. As far as I knew, Djerba was a small island in the Mediterranean, off the coast of Tunisia, and known primarily for its resort hotels and pleasant climate. It had never struck me as having much of an archaeological scene, but then, I doubted Djerba was where the actual excavation was. It was most likely in mainland Tunisia.

  Which made perfect sense.

  Modern-day Tunisia is a relatively small country wedged between Algeria and Libya, but two thousand years ago it was the archrival of the Roman Empire. As a consequence, its ancient capital, Carthage, was eventually destroyed by the Romans, who sold its inhabitants into slavery and annihilated its historical records. Almost no written sources escaped this consummate cultucide; the land of Hannibal might as well have been a myth.

  But these were all relatively recent events compared to the time when—according to some—the heroes of Greek mythology walked the earth. Famous figures such as Hercules, Jason, and Theseus belonged to a prehistoric world of monsters and magic … and Amazons.

  It was true that most ancient writers—regardless of whether they believed in the legends or not—placed the Amazon homeland in the east, most often on the Black Sea coast of northern Turkey, but a few claimed this nation of women warriors originated in North Africa. Part of the problem was that the Amazon tradition fell more or less into three periods, all of which differed enormously, both in time and space.

  The last of these three periods had the Amazons entrenched in and around Themiscyra, their legendary capital on the Black Sea, and saw them gradually squeezed from all sides until they either died out or became absorbed by surrounding tribes. One might say this period was a long, slow autumn culminating in one last blossom around the year 330 B.C.E. when an Amazon queen allegedly paid a visit to Alexander the Great, asking that she and her female entourage might spend a fortnight with him in the hopes of conceiving children by this living legend of a man. By the time the Romans showed up—only a century or so later—the Amazon nation was nowhere to be found.

  Without a question, their heyday was the middle period, namely the age of the Trojan War, which most scholars would place about three thousand years ago, somewhere between 1300 and 1100 B.C.E. This was the time when the Amazons were skewered by Achilles before the tall walls of Troy, and where Hercules roamed the Trojan hinterland to get his hands on the Amazon queen’s girdle as part of his Twelve Labors. It was also the time when the Amazons supposedly raided Athens and finally earned their place on the Parthenon frieze—also known as the Elgin Marbles.

  But before that, there was an Amazon springtime of sporadic shoots, the most significant of which grew out of the legendary Lake Tritonis in North Africa. Some claimed this was the homeland of the first Amazons, who were said to have gathered a large army and invaded neighboring countries.

  Compared to the later Black Sea Amazons, though, these early shoots came with far less historical framework, and I had often seen Amazon fanatics rolling their eyes at the Lake Tritonis myths, not realizing, perhaps, that to Amazon skeptics it was a little bit like seeing Tooth Fairy believers scoff at the Easter Bunny.

  The issue, of course, is complicated by the fact that the climate of North Africa has undergone tremendous changes since the Bronze Age, and that Lake Tritonis—if it ever existed—is long gone. I knew of many archaeologists who were desperate to dig in the area … but where to start? The Sahara Desert is an enormous duvet covering all your sweetest dreams of undiscovered civilizations, but your chances of going out there with your shovel and bucket and finding as much as a bedbug are next to nil.

  Therefore, the fact that we were presently on our way to Tunisia, which, according to some, was where Lake Tritonis used to be, was exciting indeed. Was it possible the Skolsky Foundation had found evidence of a matriarchal society with women warriors? The potential payoff was staggering.

  “Djerba is where Homer’s Lotus-Eaters used to live,” Mr. Ludwig said, interrupting my thoughts. “Scary zombie types, drugged out on local foliage.” He put on his eyeshade, but it only partially covered his smugness. “Sounds to me like the perfect place for an academic.”

  The observation was so obviously intended to provoke me that I found it quite easy to laugh off. “I have to defer to your expertise on the subject. But you didn’t invite me along for the foliage, did you?” I stared at his face, tempted to peek underneath the eyeshade to make sure he was paying attention. “This is about the Amazons, correct?”

  Mr. Ludwig adjusted his inflatable headrest and managed to add a few more layers of chin to his ample jowls. “Don’t ask me. I never have anything to do with the excavations. Not even sure why I’m in Europe when the Amazon jungle is in South America. But”—he folded his hands over his belly with a shrug—”when Mr. Skolsky tells me to do something, I do it. I don’t let my brain get in the way.”

  It was probably fortunate he dozed off after this little exchange, for we were beginning to get on each other’s nerves. Despite his apparent generosity—or at least his readiness to spend Mr. Skolsky’s money—there was a self-satisfied pettiness to Mr. Ludwig that was truly offensive.

  It did not help that I was aching to take out Granny’s notebook. Ever since finding it in the attic a few hours earlier, I had been desperate to test whether any parts of the wall inscription on the photo corresponded with words in the notebook. But between then and now, I had not had a single moment to sit down and break out my magnifying glass.

  Perhaps it was silly of me to keep the notebook hidden from Mr. Ludwig, but as I sat there rolling and unrolling the in-flight magazine, listening to all his jerks and snorts as we went through layer after bumpy layer of English weather, I truly felt he was not a man to be trusted. Never mind his worrying flair for secrecy, if not downright dishonesty; was it just my imagination, or had he looked at my bracelet with more than common curiosity?

  Shaped like a snake but with a peculiar, doglike head with pointy ears at one end, the bronze band had been forged to coil twice around a woman’s wrist, and, to be sure, I couldn’t blame my travel companion for being intrigued. But the circumstances of my having inherited this particular piece of jewelry were such as to make me exceedingly uncomfortable with his questioning, however innocent it might have been.

  Granny had worn the bracelet as constantly as one would wear a wedding ring, and for all my parents knew she had taken it with her to the grave. I had never dared tell them that one day, about a year into my graduate studies at Oxford, I had found a small padded envelope unceremoniously jammed into my mail slot in the college lodge. The envelope had contained no message, merely this jackal bracelet of hers, which she had once told me “only a true Amazon may wear.”

  Receiving this special treasure so unexpectedly from an anonymous sender in Berlin had filled me with a noxious blend of fear and bewilderment. Did this mean Granny had died? Or was the bracelet a summons? If so, surely an explanation would follow.

  But none came, and I eventually squirreled the envelope away in my underwear drawer without a word to anyone. Once or twice I toyed with the idea of showing it to Rebecca in the hopes she might be able to subject it to some scientific analysis or other … but then, that would have meant reopening a troublesome subject. And for all our shared childhood secrets, the truth about Gran
ny’s disappearance was something I could never share with anyone, not even her.

  IT WAS DARK BY the time we landed in Djerba. As soon as we emerged from the plane and started down the narrow staircase, we were enfolded in a warm, fragrant breeze that made me almost giddy, despite the hour. It had been many years since I had last felt the thrill of the southern climes, and until this moment it had not even occurred to me how much I missed it.

  Rebecca always blamed Oxford for turning me into such a tea-toddling homebody, and I never contradicted her. The truth was, I should have liked nothing better than to jet off regularly like everyone else, to read ancient scrolls in Jordan or scrutinize disputed folios in a grand old library in Rome … but I couldn’t afford it. Writing convincing applications for funding, apparently, was not my strong suit. And so I stayed where I was, limiting myself to subjects within bicycle range and living vicariously through the postcards on the shared fridge.

  “Hanging in there?” asked Mr. Ludwig, as we walked together through the sleepy airport. “Don’t worry, it won’t be long before you’re rid of me.”

  A brief taxi ride later, we pulled up in front of a white building that looked rather less majestic than most of the mushrooming resort hotels we had passed along the way. But despite appearances, the modest front door of Hotel Dar el Bhar opened into an alluring realm of elegance and tranquillity, and although its whitewashed walls and porticoes had none of the gargoyle gothic of Oxford, I felt immediately at home.

  Beyond the reception area was an inner courtyard with tall trees growing in large flower beds and flickering lanterns sitting directly on the tile floor. Here, more than ever, the air was full of spices, and from somewhere in the darkness of this enchanting garden came the trickling sounds of a fountain.

  I am not sure how long I stood there, staring at a potted plant with large yellow fruit and wondering whether I was looking at my first lemon tree, but eventually Mr. Ludwig passed me a room key and said, “You are registered under the name of Dr. Mayo. Just a precaution. If I don’t see you tomorrow”—he stuck out his hand—”good luck. My colleague will take over from here.”