Stealing Athena

by Karen Essex

  “Do you mean to say that we have permission to remove the antiquities that we see?”

  “So many English and French have come before you and done this. We doubt there is anything left worth the taking, but do as you wish, with the pasha’s compliments. Consider it a sign of good faith as we enter upon the new relationship between our countries.”

  “And as a special favor to Lady Elgin,” added the pasha.

  The pasha wrapped Mary in an extravagant fur-lined cloak against the cold night air before sending his guests to be rowed over the waters back to their vessel. “I shall have it returned to you in the morning,” Mary said.

  “Only if you wish to insult a new friend,” he answered. “It is my pleasure to give you these small gifts.”

  Though the air was cold, the waters were calm and the skies were clear. Mary looked up at the stars as she relaxed against Elgin’s arm, but she felt him withdraw.

  “What is wrong?” she asked.

  “You are going to have to be careful in your dealings with these Turks,” he said.

  What on earth could he mean? She had just won over two of the most important men in the Ottoman Empire. How could that not serve their interests?

  “They do not have the restraint of Englishmen and Scotsmen,” Elgin went on. “You must resist the temptation to tantalize them. I do not want any incidents or scenes. I cannot afford any interference with the political mission.”

  “My husband, how can you suggest that anything untoward took place this evening?”

  “Do not pretend to be naïve, Mary. You know the effect you have on men. I had to witness the way you carried on with General O’Hara at Gibraltar. I wondered if you were going to come to Turkey with me at all or if you were going to stay there and be his concubine.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. General O’Hara is an elderly man.” Mary sniffed, hoping that she sounded outraged, but the fact was that she had flirted with the general when they stopped at Gibraltar. He was probably in his sixties—older than her father—but he still had the good looks and the manly charm that had long ago made his reputation as a breaker of ladies’ hearts. Because he was forty years her senior, she did not think that Elgin would take offense. Apparently, she was mistaken.

  “As for this evening,” she said, “I saw the opportunity to ingratiate myself with two men to whom you might have to turn for assistance while we are in Constantinople. All that I did, I did for you, I assure you. Besides, the Turkish men seem rather courtly and most respectful of women.”

  “Do not be naïve, Mary. If they possessed any control whatsoever, would they have to lock their women out of sight for their protection?”

  Sigeum, near the site of ancient Troy

  THEY SET OUT LONG before dawn on damnable donkeys. In Sicily Mary had prayed that she was making her last trip on one of these beasts, but now that hope seemed an innocent one. She probably had a good two years of donkey travel ahead of her, given the difficult terrain and primitive roads of the territories to which Elgin had been assigned, coupled with his thirst for exploration, adventure, and antiquities.

  The Learned Men, as Mary had come to call Elgin’s staff, set out with them, Homer in hand, ready to discover the location of the exploits that they had been reading about since boyhood. Accompanying them were Captain Morris, a few officers from the military contingent, and several Greek-speaking Turkish guides. Mary’s own saddle could not be found in the chaotic luggage-hold of the Phaeton, so she was stuck spending the day on a hard saddle devoid of padding or comfort of any kind. She was past the worst of the nausea lately, but the frequency with which the donkey needed to defecate threatened to bring back the days when she could barely hold her head up. Elgin had offered to leave her behind, but Mary could not bear the idea of spending the day in the clammy air of the ship while her husband traced the footsteps of Achilles.

  The morning had begun auspiciously enough. Before he set sail, the Capitan Pasha had sent twenty-five sheep and six oxen as a present for their ship, along with letters to Elgin. Nineteen guns were fired in salute as the Selim III sailed away, and Elgin ordered nineteen guns to be fired in return from the Phaeton. Mary grew so weary of the sound of the cannons that she wanted to curl up into a little ball, but she stood on deck with her husband smiling proudly, as if listening to the roar and blast was the most pleasant activity she could think to enjoy first thing in the morning.

  By seven o’clock they were riding across the flat plains straight into the rising sun, which drove its rays into Mary’s eyes in defiance of her broad-brimmed straw hat. In the distance they saw the famous mounds of Troy, or that is what the Learned Men claimed, and it looked to Mary as if it would take the day to reach them. Still, it was exciting when Reverend Hunt waved at the sky, crying out, “We are on the very plains of Troy, riding into Homer’s ‘rosy-fingered dawn.’ Imagine! By the afternoon, we shall be pouring wine to the gods into the same soil as Achilles and Alexander!” Despite the discomfort of the heat and the saddle, Mary felt the chill of gooseflesh on her arms.

  At noon they arrived at the tiny Greek village of Sigeum. “Greek in populace, language, and custom, like so many of the coastal regions of Turkey,” Elgin told them. After washing up at the well of a Greek Orthodox church, Mary and Masterman laid out a picnic lunch of cold meats, bread, and wine from their basket while the Learned Men poked about the church grounds. Masterman swatted the flies away from the food as Mary waited impatiently for the men to return, her stomach empty and begging for a morsel. She picked up a slice of roast beef.

  “It’s not for me, you understand,” she said to Masterman. “It’s for the babe.”

  “And a bit for the babe’s nurse too,” Masterman said, joining her mistress. “It would be a shame to die of starvation in Turkeyland before the babe is born.”

  Suddenly Elgin came running toward them. He was alone, and his face was flushed and excited. Mary hoped that no one had met with an accident.

  “You must come! Cover the food. There is something you must see.”

  Mary opened her mouth to question him but he grabbed her arm, leading her toward the church.

  “Stay with the food,” he ordered Masterman. “We shall return.”

  Elgin led Mary around to the rear of the church, where a woman, perhaps forty years old, lay on an ancient-looking marble bench. A priest in a tall, flat-topped black hat and heavy black robes stood over her, reading from a book that looked like a Bible. The woman’s eyes were wide like a bug’s and unblinking. She writhed back and forth, clutching and twisting at her dress of dirty blue muslin. Her long black hair, unbound and streaked with gray, spread on the marble bench like Medusa’s snakes. Drool ran down from the sides of her mouth. Whenever the priest raised his voice, she threw her head back and screamed. Another priest, thin as a spider, put his hand on her forehead, trying to hold her still.

  “They are performing an exorcism,” Elgin whispered in Mary’s ear. The Learned Men stood off to the side, riveted to the scene.

  “We shouldn’t be watching,” Mary said.

  “It’s just ignorant superstition,” Elgin said. “There are no devils present, if that is what you concerns you.”

  Mary turned her eyes away. “We are intruding upon something private.”

  “Nonsense,” Elgin said. “The Orthodox, like the Roman Catholics, perform their sacraments publicly. Besides, it is not the exorcism I wished you to see. It is the two seats. They are magnificent.”

  “They look rather pitiful to these eyes,” Mary said. The slab upon which the woman was writhing had probably once been a pediment. As the woman tossed from side to side, Mary could see that the thing was covered in some kind of inscription, which looked almost stripped of its characters. The other seat was on the opposite side of the church door. It appeared to once have been a relief of sorts, but the sculpted heads had been chiseled away beyond recognition, or at least beyond anything that Mary could identify.

  “Reverend Hunt assures me that th
ey are of the utmost historical importance,” Elgin whispered, leading Mary away from the bizarre scene, much to her relief. “The guides told us that visitors have been making bids on them for as long as visitors have come to this place, but the priests will not let them go.”

  “So that is that.” Mary was anxious to get away from the horrible display and back to filling her stomach. She felt light-headed and dizzy, but she used her sweetest voice on her husband. “Eggy, I must eat. The baby is demanding his sustenance.”

  “The other visitors did not have the permission of the Capitan Pasha, now did they?”

  “I don’t know, Eggy. Why would we want the benches? What shall we do with such things?” Mary did not want to be in possession of these tools of exorcism and other superstitions. Surely it would not carry good luck to have such profane things in one’s home, though she had to admit that the beauty of the original was still apparent. The marble was worn down to an alabaster white, and on the unoccupied bench, fragments of angular, serene faces remained like stubborn guardians refusing to abandon their post.

  “They are precious relics of an illustrious history. These Greeks do not value them or preserve them as they should if they were civilized, but allow devil-struck peasant women to wriggle all over them, wearing down the inscriptions. Reverend Hunt says that the writing is in the rare, antique style where one line is written from the left to the right, and the following line is written backwards. In ancient times, that is how messages both sacred and profane were inscribed. Look at the other, with its heads chipped away, suffering the worst exposure and neglect. They require a protector,” Elgin said. “They should be preserved properly.”

  “Whatever you think is best,” Mary said. Could he not see that she was fatigued and hungry?

  Elgin smiled. “Come. Let us get our baby his sustenance. Perhaps when he’s had his lunch, he’ll inform his mother of the significance of his father’s mission to retrieve these precious specimens from antiquity.”

  Suddenly, all went quiet. The priest had stopped reading from his book, and the woman lay breathing heavily, eyes shut. A peasant man and two small girls, presumably the woman’s husband and children, rushed to the priest, falling upon their knees and kissing his hands. The priest dispassionately accepted the gratitude, distracted, it seemed, by the sight of Mary and Elgin. Catching Mary’s eye before she turned to walk away, he snatched his hand from the man’s grasp and, picking up the big silver cross of strange shape that lay against his chest, raised it toward Mary, who could not discern whether the gesture was a blessing or a warning.

  During their picnic lunch, Elgin, eyes aflame, speech rushed and excited, made plans with the officers for procuring the benches. He made Captain Morris swear that he would manage to load the things onto the Phaeton, even if it meant leaving behind some of the sheep and oxen sent by the pasha. According to the guides, numerous travelers through the years had tried to procure the benches, only to be defeated by the lack of means to cart them off and back to Europe, or by the protests of the locals.

  “We will inevitably encounter some resistance, my lord,” said Captain Morris.

  “But they did not have my advantage of being accompanied by military commanders,” Elgin responded.

  Nor did they have the advantage of the Capitan Pasha being enchanted with their wives, Mary thought as she watched her husband execute his plan for capture of the benches like some mad general after coveted turf. She knew the part she had played in the pasha’s permission to allow Elgin to remove what he liked. The pasha desired to establish good relations with Elgin, but it was obvious that, as a man, he also wanted to please Mary.

  “And you must insist that I have permission from the Capitan Pasha to remove whatever I like,” Elgin instructed Major Fletcher, handing him a coin purse to hire villagers and carts to transport the benches.

  “Do you require a nap before we move on in search of Troy, my dear?” Elgin asked Mary, who was resting in the shade of a tree. “The sun will only be with us another four to five hours.”

  “No, no, I am quite rested,” Mary lied. She was tired after her lunch, but the donkey’s jerky gait would surely keep her alert.

  The party packed its supplies. One of the officers would escort the captured artifacts back to the ship, while the other officers and the guides would catch up with them after the transaction was completed.

  The sun was directly overhead, and the heat of the afternoon was upon them. Mary opened a fine purple parasol, finding that she could easily ride the lumbering animal with only one hand on the reins. Her arm would lose its strength soon enough, but she welcomed the relief from the sun. They were not a quarter of a mile from the village when they heard someone yelling, and then the sound of footsteps behind them. They turned to see the priest running toward them, chased by the officers, who were chased by the guides. The priest spewed a litany of angry words at Elgin, who stared impassively at him as if he were not real, but an apparition conjured at a magic show. The priest’s right hand pointed to the skies as if he was invoking God. His vociferous words brought with them spittle, which Elgin leaned backwards to avoid, watching it land at his feet.

  “What is he going on about?” Elgin looked up, asking no one in particular.

  “He says that if you take the benches, you will bring death and destruction upon the village,” translated one of the Greek guides.

  “What nonsense,” Elgin said.

  “No, it is true,” the guide said. “These were put here by the heroes of old, thousands of years ago, to honor the gods. The last time an Englishman took an old inscription from the church, the village was infested with the plague.”

  “Ask your priest if he still worships Apollo and Athena,” Elgin scoffed.

  The guide posed the question to the priest, who responded quickly. The guide translated. “No, but to think that they do not still exist and protect what was once theirs would be a mistake. God presides over the earth, but the ancient ones are angry that they have been replaced. They can still prevent the crops from growing. If you take the seats, the olives on the trees will shrivel, and the local doctors will no longer be able to treat disease.”

  “Inform your priest that his ideas are ludicrous and dangerous. He is supposed to be a man of God. He must act like one. These are precious artifacts and must be put under the protection of someone who will shelter them properly. If he wishes to impede us, he will have to answer directly to the Capitan Pasha.”

  What village priest would want to confront the second or third man in command to the Sultan? Mary thought.

  While the interpreter explained Elgin’s position to the priest, Elgin let it be known that the conversation had ended. He remounted his donkey, and the rest of the party followed.

  They rode for a few minutes in silence, the wails of the priest lingering behind them. On the plain, there was little to see but the mounds of Troy in the distance, and a few camels grazing off the path.

  “Was that the proper thing to do, Eggy?” Mary asked.

  “What?”

  “Remove their talismans? Perhaps the villagers will turn on the priest when they find out what has happened.”

  “Let them turn on their Turkish oppressors. These priests are revered. No one will harm them. Anyway, it’s about time that they shed their superstitions. Such ignorant barbarians do not deserve to be in possession of things as precious as those we have just acquired.”

  Mary knew that Elgin was right. If left at the church another hundred years, the inscriptions would be worn beyond any recognition. Or perhaps another collector, or Napoleon, who was always threatening to invade these shores, would take them, depriving the English of the glory of possessing them, and perhaps not caring for them as only the English could.

  Still, it was unsettling to hear the cries of the priest dissipating into the warm, moist air, as they left him and his village behind.

  In the city of Constantinople, November 1799

  CARRIED IN A GOLDEN chair by f
our Turks over the muddy and uneven paths of the city, Mary wondered what she would do when, returning to Scotland, she would have to negotiate the sidewalks on her own two feet like a mere mortal. She felt like a goddess, high above the heads of those relegated to the streets, such as they were, with their ruts and dung and assorted filth that one must by-step to arrive at one’s destination unscathed.

  She knew that a sensible Scottish girl should not allow herself to become accustomed to being carried like a queen on a glimmering throne padded with soft cushions the colors of spices—cinnamon, paprika, clove. But her illustrious Turkish hosts would not even consider an alternative method of transportation for their new ambassadress.

  At the moment, she was dressed neither as an ambassador’s wife nor in the drapes of a deity, but in a man’s riding habit, a beaver hat, and a bulky woolen coat, with huge epaulets, that hid both her sex and her pregnancy. Carried next to Mary on a less decorative chair was Masterman, costumed in a similar gentleman’s habit that Mary had contrived for her. Masterman’s pale, rigid face was pointed ahead as she tried to hold herself straight as a pin while the chair jostled back and forth on the shoulders of her carriers.

  “Isn’t it exciting?” Mary asked, trying to ignite at least a bit of enthusiasm in her lady’s maid. “We are attending Lord Elgin’s formal presentation to the Grand Vezir, who is the most powerful man in the empire next to the Sultan.”

  If the Capitan Pasha was the first man in the military, the Grand Vezir was the first man in the political scene. He presided over the Divan, a council of ministers that kept him informed on, and debated with him, the politics of the Turkish Empire. The Grand Vezir then took their counsel to the Sultan.

  “Relations between myself and the Sultan will rely largely upon the relationship developed with the vezir,” Elgin had explained to Mary.

  Masterman had no response, but clutched her coat against the early-morning dampness as she continued to stare straight ahead into the slowly rising sun.