by Debbie Rix
The evidence was conflicting and ambiguous, but Sophie was determined to clarify just how widespread the use of this fabric had been. And, at the same time, to understand what her own grandmother knew about it.
She arrived at her parents’ house just after six. Since she had moved to Gloucestershire, she had grown to love her Tuesday evenings at home with her family in Hampstead, watching TV, or going through old family photographs. She felt safe and freed from her normal everyday concerns – almost childlike, as if she had never left home. She slept in her childhood bedroom, surrounded by the toys she had left behind when she went to university over a decade before.
‘Ma, you really ought to clear out my room,’ she said one day as she came downstairs, after dumping her bag.
‘Well, you’re welcome to make a start,’ her mother had replied, ‘I’m really too busy. Besides, I rather like it – all those teddies on the bed, and teenage posters of unsuitable pop stars on the walls.’
Her mother made a point of not mentioning Sophie’s fertility treatment, unless her daughter first brought it up. Angela felt their weekly meetings should be islands of calm for her daughter. That it was best if Sophie was able to forget her desperate need for a child, at least for one evening a week.
‘Remember, Alex,’ she said to her husband before Sophie arrived each Tuesday, ‘no baby talk. Only if she raises it – OK?’
After supper that evening, her father asked Sophie how her research was going.
‘Oh, it’s fascinating. I’ve extended it to encompass the study of sea silk and the part it might have played in burial rituals.’
‘Sea silk…’ said Angela, ‘isn’t that the thing you thought Mother had mentioned?’
‘I don’t know if she mentioned it really,’ said Sophie. ‘I have no actual memory of a conversation with her about it. But I had this odd dream – I think I told you about it on the day of your party. I dreamt we were on holiday with Grandma, in a boat somewhere hot and she was telling me about sea silk and the water women. Maybe it was just something my subconscious made up, but perhaps it was a real memory.’
‘Oh yes… I do remember now. You were asking me about that holiday, weren’t you?’
‘Yes – we’d been to some island near Athens, you said.’
‘Agistri… Do you remember, Alex? That holiday we had with Mother and the children on that Greek island when they were both very small. And you insisted on taking us sailing in that deathtrap.’
‘It wasn’t a deathtrap,’ said Alex, refilling their glasses, ‘it was a lovely old boat… wooden, I seem to remember. None of this fibreglass nonsense you get these days. Quite good wind around there, I seem to remember. She went at a fair lick that little boat.’
‘Get the photos, Sophie…’ said Angela. ‘They’re on the shelf behind you in the bookcase. How old would you have been then? Three? Yes… about three. Find the one marked “1987”… they should be in there.’
Sophie brought out the relevant album and laid it on the coffee table. As she turned the pages, there were photos of herself – a serious-looking child with short dark hair – sitting next to her grandmother in the prow of the old wooden boat. Rachael, shading her green eyes with her hand, looking quizzically into the camera.
‘Grandma was so beautiful, wasn’t she?’ said Sophie. ‘I’d forgotten how dark her hair was then. It looked lovely swept away from her face like that. And those green eyes… you’ve inherited them, Mum, and so have I luckily. She was stunning. My real memories of her are of when she was older. Even then she was beautiful. But… oh… she was lovely then. How old would she have been here?’
‘In 1987?’ said Angela, leaning over to look at the album. ‘She would only have been… fifty-one. It’s no age at all, is it? Oh look,’ said Angela, ‘there’s the wretched boat. It was a pretty boat though, wasn’t it? I don’t seem to have taken many shots on board – apart from that one of you and Mum. I was too scared, I should imagine, or busy – winching in ropes, or whatever they’re called.’
‘Sheets,’ said Alex.
‘What?’ said Angela.
‘Ropes on boats… they’re called sheets.’
‘Anyway…’ said Sophie, ‘what I don’t understand, is how Grandma Rachael knew about sea silk. It’s a very rare fabric. Not something that crops up in normal conversation. Did she ever mention it to you?’
‘No, I don’t think so,’ said Angela. ‘To be honest, I’d never heard of it until you mentioned it. What is it really – do explain.’
‘It’s an unusual fabric – very rare – made from the beards of the giant clam - the pinna nobilis. The beards are cut off from the clam, carded, and twisted together to produce a fine thread that can be spun and woven into a delicate fabric. They treat the thread with lemon juice, and cow urea, and when you hold it up to the sun, it gleams like gold. I’d never heard of it before either, and I’m an anthropologist. But when I started looking into it, it’s really fascinating. Its use was quite widespread in the ancient world. But hardly any of it is made anymore. There are a few women left on Sardinia who still make it – and that’s about it. I imagine it was made quite widely around the Mediterranean at one time. So, Mum… how on earth did Granny know about it?’
‘I really don’t know,’ said Angela, getting up.
‘Did Granny ever live in the Mediterranean – in Sardinia perhaps?’
‘No… I don’t think so. She never mentioned it to me anyway. No, of course not. Oooh… I’ve just remembered, I left a pudding in the oven; I must go and rescue it…’
As she reached the door of the sitting room she turned back.
‘She could be very… private… my mother – secretive almost. Those stories she used to tell… one never knew what was true and what wasn’t. I wouldn’t be surprised if sea silk was just something she made up. But if it really exists, maybe her father told her about it; he was an archaeologist after all…’
‘Do you remember much about him?’ Sophie asked her mother when she came back into the room with a dish of apple crumble and three bowls.
‘Well, we all lived together, so of course I remember him. But he died just before my sixteenth birthday. I just thought of him as my lovely old grandpa across the landing, who went to work each day at the university and told us funny stories when he came home. I was proud that he was a bit different and slightly exotic. He was Hungarian, after all, and an archaeologist; so few of my school friends had grandfathers who worked, or were so prestigious, but I didn’t really understand what he did each day. And sadly he died before I was old enough to have a proper conversation with him about it.’
‘I’m sorry I never met him,’ said Sophie. ‘Grandma used to say I reminded her of him.’
‘Yes… perhaps you are like him,’ said Angela as she handed out plates of apple crumble and cream.
That night, as she lay in her teenage bed, Sophie opened her laptop, and put the name of her great-grandfather, George Laszlo, with the words ‘sea silk’ into Google. As she trawled through the various references, she found one that led to an academic paper written a decade or so earlier. It referenced an archaeological dig, which had taken place nearly one hundred years earlier in 1912. A young Hungarian research student named George Laszlo had found a small piece of sea silk in the fourth-century grave of a young woman. The woman had been wrapped in linen cloth, and when the young student had unwrapped the body, he found the tiny fragment nestling between her legs. It turned out to be the oldest piece of ‘byssus’ silk ever discovered.
Tragically the piece of fabric itself disappeared during the war, but a magnified black and white photograph of the tiny fragment remained – a testament to its existence. As she studied the interlocking warp and weft of the piece of byssus, Sophie was struck by the significance of her great-grandfather making such an important discovery when he was still just a student. The picture seemed familiar, for some reason. Sophie had a sudden memory of herself as a child reading one of George’s books on Roman hi
story.
Her grandmother had found her curled up in a large armchair in attic, surrounded by piles of George’s precious reference books. ‘You remind me of him – your restless intelligence; your sense of enquiry,’ she had said then. ‘So borrow any book you like; read them and learn… just don’t break the backs, and put them back carefully.’
Remembering this exchange, Sophie got out of bed and went up the stairs to her grandmother’s bedroom in the attic. Against the wall was a small mahogany bookcase with glass doors. Inside were George Laszlo’s precious textbooks – leather-bound with gilded edges. Sophie removed the books one by one flicking through the indexes.
Finally, she found what she was looking for. In a book published just after the First World War was a reference to an archaeological dig in the Roman settlement of Aquincum, and the piece of byssus discovered by a young Hungarian archaeologist named George Laszlo; beside it was a grainy black and white photograph – the same photograph she had found on the internet.
Was this the entry she had read as a child? Perhaps her grandmother had drawn her attention to it? Rachael had encouraged Sophie’s interest in Roman history; she was keen that she follow in George’s footsteps. So the knowledge about byssus had been there, locked away in her subconscious all the time.
Was it synchronicity, or destiny that had led her to study something her own ancestor had been instrumental in discovering? Might she, in some small way, continue his work, and uncover new revelations? To tread in his footsteps. She would make him proud of her. She would make her grandmother proud of her too. And if the worst happened – if she could never have a child, if that was not to be her destiny, perhaps she could live on, and be remembered for her academic discoveries.
Chapter Thirteen
Sant’Antioco
May 1959
Rachael spent a sleepless night, following the incident with little Angela. She kept mulling over what might have happened if Tommaso hadn’t arrived… Angela’s ‘swimming lesson’ could have turned into a tragedy.
She sat brooding on the veranda the following morning, nursing a cup of coffee.
‘Darling…’ George said, pouring her another cup, ‘are you all right? You’re very quiet.’
‘What?’ she said, distractedly. ‘Yes… I’m fine. I just didn’t sleep very well.’
‘You need an outing maybe…’ he said, cheerfully. ‘We talked a few days ago of you coming to see what we are doing under the church; the dig is getting interesting.’
‘I’d like that,’ Rachael said, weakly, ‘but what would I do with Angela?’
‘Bring her too!’ said George.
‘Really… won’t she be in the way?’
‘Well, Peter or one of the other students could take her for a walk… I’d like you to
see it.’
‘I don’t think I should…’ she said, cautiously. ‘The students hardly know her and it’s unfair to give them such a responsibility.’
‘But she’s such a friendly little girl – she’ll be fine with one of them,’ encouraged George, ‘especially Peter. He’s very reliable.’
‘It’s just that she doesn’t know Peter very well,’ said Rachael, wishing she could tell her father what was really bothering her. ‘And what if she runs away? She’s quite headstrong.’
‘I will tell him to guard her with his life!’ George said, laughing. ‘He can take her for ice cream at the cafe. She will not run away from there!’
‘No… I suppose not,’ Rachael finally relented. ‘All right – I will come, and thank you. I’ll go and get us ready.’
Giles arrived in the truck, just after half past eight. Rachael was waiting outside the cottage, dressed in an old pair of slacks and a shirt of her father’s.
‘Do you need a lift to the market?’ he asked her.
‘Not today – but I am coming to town; my father wants me to see the dig.’
‘That explains the curious outfit…’ Giles said, noting her clothes.
‘Yes… well, I hear it’s rather dirty down there.’
They squeezed into the front seat of the truck – Rachael uncomfortably sandwiched between Giles and her father with Angela on her lap.
When they arrived at the town square, Giles parked the truck in front of the hotel. George’s students were gathered together in a huddle waiting for the professor to arrive and give them their orders for the day.
‘Ah, Peter,’ George said, ‘I wonder if I might prevail upon you to do something for me?’
‘Of course, sir,’ said Peter, helpfully.
‘Look after my granddaughter for an hour – would you? Take her to the cafe for ice cream or something. I want my daughter to see the dig.’ He pressed some lira notes into the young man’s hand. ‘Have a coffee yourself.’
Peter looked rather dismayed at this request, but nobly took the little girl by the hand, and headed for the cafe. Rachael watched him leave, nervously.
‘Don’t lose her,’ she called after him.
‘I won’t,’ he called back, over his shoulder. ‘I’ve got four younger brothers and sisters…I’ve had a lot of practice. See you later.’
The catacombs were entered via a long winding stone staircase that led from the transept of the church. George led the way, followed by Giles and Rachael. A pungent smell of damp rose up from the tomb, overlaid with something else, Rachael thought… a musty, earthy scent.
‘The tombs were uncovered a while back during some renovation work,’ explained George, holding up an oil lamp to light their way. ‘They had, until that day, been quite hidden from view. The workmen were trying to lay some drains and they excavated some of the earth – just here on the left – and realised there was a complete tomb hidden behind this wall. The rest you know… it was decided they warranted further investigation and here we are!’ He turned round and grinned impishly at his daughter.
‘Come, come,’ he said eagerly, crawling through the low opening that led to the tombs.
Her father shuffled forward, squatting on his haunches, making room for her. ‘Sit next to me…’ he said, patting the earth floor. ‘Don’t worry about your trousers – they will get dirty. There is nothing you can do about it…’
Giles lit a couple of oil lamps that had been left in the tomb, and the strong acrid smell of oil mingled with the musty earthiness.
Rachael looked around her. It was a low-ceilinged earthen space. At first sight, there appeared to be nothing remarkable about it.
‘So what do you see?’ asked George.
‘Me… nothing,’ said Rachael. ‘It’s just an empty… room?’
‘Giles… hold up the lanterns so Rachael can see better…’
As the gloomy light from the oil lamp illuminated the red earthen walls, a design became visible.
‘What’s that?’ asked Rachael.
‘It’s a menorah,’ said George, delightedly. ‘In fact, there are two – here and over here.’
Giles adjusted the lamp so its light fell on the second wall painting.
‘What’s a menorah?’ asked Rachael.
‘A very important symbol of the Jewish faith,’ said George. ‘Go on, Giles – you can explain.’
George rocked back on his haunches, clearly delighted at the opportunity for Giles to show off his knowledge.
‘Well,’ said Giles, equally delighted to be able to reveal his academic prowess to Rachael, ‘this island has long been inhabited by people of the Jewish faith. At least four thousand Jews were exiled here, by successive Roman Emperors. When Rome became a Christian Empire, this was a convenient place to send them. They worked in the tin and lead mines on the island and settled well… They were also useful at keeping the local pirates under control, who terrorised the waters around here.’
‘Very good,’ said George.
‘So perhaps these are Jewish tin miners buried here,’ suggested Rachael.
‘No,’ said Giles. ‘That’s what I thought, but the professor has another theory. You should tell h
er, sir…’
‘Well,’ said George, eagerly taking up the tale, ‘there are many Jewish burials on this island, but these tombs are special. The people buried here were clearly very important. They are buried as a pair, for a start, which usually indicates a couple who wish to lie together for eternity. And their tombs are marked, which also suggests they were people of high birth.’
‘Marked with what?’ asked Rachael.
‘Well, it’s quite a story. One day, as we scraped away the surface layers of mud and dust and filth, Peter called me over. He had found the beginning of a word. It was the letter “B”. We brushed very carefully, and it took most of the day, but finally the whole word was revealed.’
‘And what was it?’ asked Rachael, genuinely excited now.
‘Beronice!’ declared George. ‘Beronice was an unusual name. In fact, the first Berenice, spelt with an ‘e’ in the middle, was a very important lady indeed – the Jewish Queen, great granddaughter of King Herod, sister of King Agrippa, lover of Titus – the Roman Emperor from 77–79 AD.’
‘Could it be her?’ asked Rachael. ‘Why would she be buried here… on this tiny island?’
‘I agree it is odd, but not impossible,’ George continued. ‘She lived in Palestine, but she followed her lover to Rome when he was appointed emperor. Now, the Romans had had enough of their emperors marrying outside the faith. Caesar and Cleopatra left a terrible legacy, and they were not going to allow another emperor to marry a foreign queen. So his advisors forbade the marriage and poor Berenice left Rome, broken-hearted. It’s long been a mystery as to what happened to her. The records show no evidence of where she went after Titus rejected her.’
‘But why would she come here?’ asked Rachael.
‘That is the question. Why would she come here?’ George muttered to himself.