by Will Adams
'Hardly,' smiled Franklin. 'It was a typical university house: big and old and falling apart.' He kept up his over-enunciation, turning to Knox whenever he spoke, making sure he could see his mouth at all times. 'Four bedrooms. Two of us in each, sometimes three, depending on who was sleeping with who. Everyone welcome, Greek or foreign, as long as you could pay your way and enjoyed intelligent late-night conversations. Good times. I wrote my thesis there. On the Doric Invasion, no less.'
'The Doric Invasion?' asked Knox politely, as they entered the site itself, crossing a cobbled courtyard to an ancient path of weathered grey slabs that led to the sacred hill. In the quiet morning, it was hard to imagine the furious euphoric bustle of the ancient festivals themselves, when all Athens would have been here, exuberant and exalted. He was not a religious man, Knox, but he had a strong affection for anything that celebrated the wonder and strangeness of the world.
'I know,' laughed Franklin. 'But it was in vogue at the time. Besides…' He gave a little wave to indicate the colour of his skin. 'I was a young black man striving to make my way in academia. In Greek academia. I needed to prove myself reliable. And what could be more reliable than arguing for the European origins of European culture?' He steered Knox between two of Eleusis's legendary symbols, the well beside which Demeter had mourned the loss of her daughter Persephone; and the Plutoneion, a grotto that had once led to the underworld. 'I take it that you know the broad thesis of the Doric Invasion?' he enquired.
'Aryan tribes sweeping down from northwest Greece or maybe the Balkans,' said Knox. 'Overthrowing the Mycenaeans and bringing classical Greek culture with them.'
Franklin nodded. 'A convincing scheme of history, with just one flaw.'
'No evidence,' suggested Knox.
'No evidence,' agreed Franklin. 'Of course, I knew it was thin even at the time. But I didn't think that mattered. All the minds I most admired were convinced of it, so it had to be true. After all, what reason could they possibly have had to lie? Or-more charitably-to fool themselves?'
'And then Petitier came along?' suggested Knox.
'Yes,' smiled Franklin. 'Then Petitier came along.'
IV
Edouard had woken at dawn, but he hadn't yet risen, lying enervated in bed instead as his room grew light around him. He'd suffered plenty of anxiety as a father, but nothing like this. His wife and children hostages, and no way of assuring himself that they were safe. Plumbing burbled; doors banged. He kept telling himself to get up, but still he lay there. Footsteps finally outside his door and then a perfunctory knock and Boris came in, looked with disdain down at him. 'Sandro Nergadze for you,' he said, holding out his mobile.
'For me?'
'Yes,' said Boris. 'For you.'
'Mr Nergadze,' said Edouard, sitting up anxiously. 'What is it? Has something happened to my children?'
'No.'
'You swear?'
'Of course. Your family are fine. They've just gone out riding with my father, as it happens.'
'What, then?'
A moment's hesitation. 'This fleece,' he said. 'I want you to tell me what it looks like.'
'I'm not with you,' frowned Edouard. 'We'll know what it looks like once we've seen it this morning.'
'That isn't good enough any more. I've promised my father a golden fleece by the end of this weekend, and I'm going to give him one, whatever happens at your end.'
'I don't understand.'
'Then listen. I've just ordered several kilos of gold. I've also arranged for an…artisan to come. Don't worry; we can trust him. He's done a lot of work for my family. He assures me he can make me a convincing fleece, as long as I can give him the right specifications to work from. Would it have been made exclusively of gold, for example, or would it include other materials? If so, which, and in what proportion? How heavy would it have been? What shape? What texture? What techniques did they know back then? Might they have used moulds, for example, or gold thread? How would it have handled? Could someone have worn it? What, in short, would it have looked like?'
'Oh,' said Edouard. 'No one knows. There are representations of it on ancient vases and artwork, but they're all works of imagination, and they look much as you'd expect: that is to say, they look like sheepskins, only coated with gold. And maybe that's what it actually was. Did you know that Georgians used to stretch fleeces out in wooden frames then set them in the river so that all the gold dust washing by would catch in the wool. Then they'd hang them up from branches to dry. They'd have looked exactly like the fleece was supposed to.'
'You think that's what Petitier has found? A sheepskin covered in gold dust?'
'No,' said Edouard. 'It's perfectly possible that that's where the legend originally came from, but it can't be what he's found. Sheepskin is organic. A real fleece would have disintegrated thousands of years ago. Unless it was left in an extremely benign environment, I suppose. Much more benign than anything Greece can offer. Perhaps in Egypt or some other desert land it might have-'
'I don't need a lecture,' said Sandro tightly.
'I'm just saying that a real sheepskin coated with gold would be a heap of dust by now. Valuable dust, yes, but dust nonetheless.'
'So if it has survived, what might it look like?'
Edouard hesitated. It was bad enough being asked to authenticate a fleece; it was another thing altogether to advise on forging one. 'It doesn't matter,' he improvised. 'You'll never get away with it. They can do all kinds of sophisticated tests these days. They can analyse a metal's chemical signature, for example, and pinpoint exactly where and when it was mined.' His heart was in his mouth as he said this, because while it was true that lead, silver and copper were traceable this way, gold wasn't; not yet, at least. But it had to be worth the risk.
'What if we refuse to let them test it?'
'And why would you do that, unless you knew it was a fake?'
The silence at the other end proved his argument had struck home. His relief didn't last long, however. 'I know,' said Sandro. 'We'll use your Turkmenistan cache. That's ancient Colchian gold, isn't it?'
'You can't!' protested Edouard, horrified. 'That cache is priceless.'
'Not as priceless as it's going to be,' observed Sandro dryly. 'And we'll use the gold I just ordered to make replicas of all the Turkmenistan pieces too, so that no one will ever know what we've done.'
'I won't do it. I won't help you.'
'You will do it,' insisted Sandro. 'Or have you forgotten that your wife and your children are my guests?'
The fight went instantly out of Edouard. He felt himself sag. 'I'll need some time to think about it,' he said weakly. 'And I'll want to speak to my wife too.'
'Are you bargaining with me?'
'I'm a father,' said Edouard wretchedly. 'I can't think about anything else until I know my wife and children are safe.'
'I already gave you my word that they're safe.'
'You abducted them from my home,' snapped Edouard. 'How can I possibly take your word for anything?' He knew he'd gone too far, but it was true, it was driving him crazy. 'Please,' he begged. 'I can't think straight. How can I help you if I can't think straight?'
Silence stretched taut on the other end of the line, like the wire of a garrotte. 'Very well,' said Sandro finally. 'You can speak to your wife when I call back. In the meantime, please work out how best to forge me a golden fleece.'
FIFTEEN
I
The ancient path took Knox and Franklin in a slow spiral up and around the natural pyramid of the sacred hill, the toppled ruins on either side covered in tall grasses ablaze with wild flowers, dandelions, buttercups and brilliant red poppies; while on the summit above them a dilapidated clock tower told the wrong time, and a Greek flag fluttered limply. 'Petitier wasn't like the rest of us,' said Franklin. 'For one thing, he was much older, and his academic career was far more advanced. He'd been teaching in Paris, as I recall, though his time there ended badly. A friend of his wangled him a job here with the French
School. They had their own accommodation, of course, but he fell out with someone there and so moved in with us. That was fine, as far as we were concerned. Another wallet to share the bills, fresh blood for our late-night debates. You know what student life is like.'
'Yes.'
'Though I don't know how he managed, if I'm honest. It was fine for the rest of us; we were all writing theses and things, so we could get away with the drunken all-nighters. But he had a day job. Not that it was particularly taxing, from what I could gather. Administrative stuff, mostly. Answering letters, that kind of thing. A waste of his mind, in truth, for he was brilliant in his own way. Take my Doric Invasion, for example. I'd soaked up the conventional wisdom without questioning a word. I'd taken it for granted that it must make sense, because so many people said it did, and they all had strings of letters after their names. But Petitier didn't think that way. He took it almost for granted that any established account had to be wrong. He kept asking me questions that he knew full-well had no adequate answers, and each time I stumbled over the gaps, he'd make fun of me, and my confidence would drain a little more, and I'd go to bed brooding. And one night as I lay there, I had what I can only describe as an epiphany, a sudden illumination of something utterly obvious yet previously unthinkable. There had been no Doric Invasion, no Aryan tribes sweeping down from the north. The whole thing was a fabrication, a work of political propaganda created not from the evidence, but in spite of it.'
'Isn't that a little strong?'
'Look at me, Mr Knox. Do I look European to you?'
'As it happens, yes.'
Franklin laughed. 'Well, I don't feel it. I never have. America was different. I felt at home there, ordinary. My father was black; my mother was Greek. So what? Mixed race families were nothing in Washington DC. But then my mother's mother fell sick and we came here to look after her. It was supposed to be for just a few weeks, but she proved a fighter. Six months passed. A year. My father hated it. Blacks were a real rarity here back then. He was a highly intelligent man, but he couldn't find work, certainly not as a teacher. And my mother refused to leave, not with her mother dying, so finally my father packed his bags and fled back to DC. I hated him for that. I used to burn with anger, though I was skilled at suppressing it. But now I realise it can't have been easy for him.' He waved a hand, to indicate the stresses that all families faced. 'It was hard enough even for me, with a Greek mother and speaking the language reasonably fluently, because my mother had always spoken it with me at home. My fellow pupils mocked me for being different, as children will. I was never an athlete or a fighter, so I had to get my own back in the only way I could: exams.' They passed several massive blocks of marble column lying by the side of the path, and the battered bust of a Roman emperor; probably Hadrian, to judge from his beard. 'I was the most conventional of students until Petitier arrived. I studied diligently and behaved myself. I tried so hard to fit in. But despite that-or perhaps because of it-I had a terrible anger burning inside me; resentment at being thought inferior just because of the colour of my skin. I think Petitier must have sensed it. He teased me with radical ideas. He suggested that Hannibal might have been black, for example. Cleopatra, too. Even Socrates. Think of it: that great icon of philosophy and wisdom, a black man.'
'I hadn't heard that,' said Knox politely.
'For a very good reason,' smiled Franklin. 'It's not true. Or, more accurately, there's precious little evidence to support it. But it spoke to a greater truth, one for which there's all the evidence you could want.' He paused to admire a pair of lovebirds swooping and frolicking in the spring sunshine. 'We Westerners think ourselves special, don't we, Mister Knox? We have this image of ourselves as born and nurtured in the cradle of Classical Greece, heirs to its great traditions: democracy, science, philosophy, medicine, mathematics, technology, architecture, universities. Everything that's best in western culture, we credit to the miraculous flowering of genius right here two and a half millennia ago. But Petitier made me look again at this image. He made me see that all these undeniably great things, all these wonderful discoveries and inventions…You see, they weren't actually Greek at all. No. They were African.'
II
Gaille was still feeling despondent from her spat with Knox when her flight took off for Heraklion. But it was a cloudless day and she had a window seat, and she found herself growing enraptured by the brilliant green of the Aegean islands set far beneath in the astonishing blue of the Mediterranean. But then almost at once they began their descent into Crete and her spirits came back down too. She had no idea what to do on landing, particularly if Knox's friend Iain Parkes wasn't waiting. But fortunately he was waiting. Or, at least, a tall, cheerful and good-looking thirty-something man with short straw-coloured hair was standing outside the arrivals gate holding up a large cardboard sign with her name scrawled in red marker pen upon it. 'Doctor Parkes, I presume,' she smiled, walking up to him.
He grinned as he put away his sign. 'Always wanted to do that, for some reason. Though I'd pictured myself in the full chauffeur's rig, you know, with the uniform and the peaked cap.'
'So much more glamorous than archaeology,' agreed Gaille.
'And better paid, too,' he laughed. He had a charming, unaffected laugh that put her instantly at ease; and she was comforted, too, that he looked more like a field archaeologist than an academic, with his deep tan, khaki photographer's trousers and short-sleeved blue shirt.
'Daniel got hold of you, then?' she asked.
'Not exactly. But he left about fifty messages on my mobile. I never keep the damned thing on, if I can avoid it. People do insist on calling me.'
'A terrible thing to have friends, isn't it?'
He took her bag and slung it easily over his shoulder. 'The car's this way,' he said, striding towards the exit with such natural authority that the crowds seemed to part ahead of him without him even noticing.
'It's really good of you to collect me like this,' said Gaille, breaking into a little jig as she struggled to keep up. 'I'm sure you're very busy.'
'Not a bit of it.' He must have realised he was walking too fast, for he slowed down for a few paces, though it didn't last. 'Nothing much going on at Knossos. Everything always shuts down over Easter week.'
'Really? I'd have thought it would do huge business.'
'The tourist site does, yes,' he agreed. 'I mean our excavation work. All our local staff always bunk off home anyway, so we made a virtue of necessity this year, gave everyone the week off. I'm really just keeping an eye on things; but at least it means I can give you a hand with whatever you and Knox are up to, if you'd like?'
'That would be fantastic.'
'Grand,' he grinned. 'I've been following your adventures with enormous envy. About time I joined the fun.' They passed through automatic doors out onto a sunlit concourse hazy with fumes, already hotter than Athens had been, though it was still early. It was easy to forget that Crete was almost as close to Africa as to Athens.
'Wow!' murmured Gaille, as they reached a gorgeous scarlet Mustang. 'Archaeology can't pay that badly here.'
'A Christmas present, sadly. My father-in-law's one of those Wall Street big swinging dicks. At least, I'm not so sure about the big or swinging, but the rest's about right.'
The passenger seat had been baking in the sunlight, leaving it uncomfortably hot on the backs of Gaille's legs through the thin cotton of her trousers, so that she had to keep shifting. 'He can't be that bad if you keep finding these beneath your Christmas tree.'
'My wife finds them, not me.' He didn't bother with seat-belts or looking around, just turned on the ignition and put it into gear. 'I always got fountain pens. His way of letting his little darling know how far beneath her she married.'
'Nothing to do with trying to make her happy.'
'You haven't met the man,' he said, moving off so abruptly that a blue van driver had to brake sharply, offering his middle finger in apology when the driver tooted angrily. 'And before you take
his side too much, let me warn you that he won that particular battle. His little darling is back in the States on an extended break, and she's taken my son with her, and I'm more than a little sore about it.'
'Oh,' said Gaille. 'I'm so sorry.'
'But at least I've got the car, eh. Big swinging dick keeps asking me to sell it and send the proceeds. But fuck him, right? If his little darling wants the cash so badly, she can come back here and sell it herself. She owes me that much.'
'What went wrong?'
He let out a long breath, letting his anger go with it. 'Being an archaeologist's wife wasn't quite what she expected, I guess. Though god knows I didn't make any great promises. And Crete can be a tough place to live, especially if you don't like the heat. She kept getting rashes, she found it hard to sleep. And then she got pregnant. She couldn't find a doctor here she entirely trusted, which I suppose is fair enough, so she went back home for the delivery. And of course they made everything so damned comfortable for her there, it was easier to stay. But mostly it was the life. The lack of glamour and excitement. I reckon she thought I'd be digging up at least one new treasure a week, just like you and your man Knox.'
'You exaggerate.'
'That should have been me, you know,' he smiled. 'I was always the star student at Cambridge, not Daniel. And now look at the two of you. First Alexander, then Akhenaten.' He shook his head in mock reproof. 'Seriously, couldn't you at least move onto the Bs, give the rest of us a chance?'
Road-works had closed the carriageway opposite, forcing both directions of traffic over the same narrow stretch of tarmac. Without lights or policemen to manage it, it was bedlam, everyone driving aggressively in an effort to force oncoming cars to back off. Gaille feared they'd never get through, but then Iain spurred his Mustang through the merest blink of a gap, and they were out the other side. 'Christ!' she muttered. 'Rather you than me.'