Page 49 of Two Wars and a Wedding

So, apparently, did a lot of other people. On the day of the first session, Betsy trailed after Ava up the steps of the Grand Theatre, which had been donated to the Union of Greek Women for their war efforts, nodding to acquaintance after acquaintance. Half of Athens appeared to be there. No one wanted to be seen as behindhand in the war effort, even if they had just about as much interest in nursing as Betsy.

Betsy came to an abrupt halt. She clutched Ava’s arm. “Do you know who that is?”

Ava dutifully turned to look. “A woman and her daughter?”

“That is Sophia Schliemann. And her daughter.” Ava looked blank. Betsy bounced up and down on the balls of her feet, flapping her hands excitedly. “She and her husband discovered Troy. She smuggled Priam’s jewels out of Hissarlik by dead of night wrapped in her shawl. Can you imagine?”

Ava was craning her neck to try to see the stage at the front of the room, where Dr. Kalopothakes, the Radcliffe woman, had placed chalkboards with various drawings of the human form on them. “Oh, yes. I remember your talking about that.”

Betsy stared at Mrs. Schliemann, fashionably attired in a walking suit of plaid banded with velvet like any Athenian society lady. Twenty-five years ago, before Betsy had been born, the very young Mrs. Schliemann had been photographed wearing the jewels she had discovered at Troy, a gold diadem around her forehead, gold streaming past her ears, draped around her neck. Wearing the ornaments that had last graced the brow of a woman who had lived centuries ago, before Herodotus, before Homer.

Mrs. Schliemann was older now—and not completely covered in ancient jewelry—but it was unmistakably the same woman. “She’s been involved in—oh goodness—more major excavations than we’ve had hot dinners. It’s not just Troy. There was the treasury at Mycenae . . . and the tholos tomb at Orchomenos. . . .”

“I’ll just go find us seats,” said Ava, and did.

Over the next month, Ava worked diligently at bandaging, splinting, making plaster of Paris casts, caring for gunshot wounds, and properly applying anaesthetics. Betsy daydreamed and doodled through her anatomy lessons, failed to locate her own kidneys, confused the femur with the fibula, and secured an invitation to tea from Mrs. Schliemann.

Mrs. Schliemann’s mansion made Aikaterini’s look like a humble Boston brownstone. It was an enormous, rectangular building with a double colonnade and gratuitous statuary on the roof. Inside, the walls were rich with murals depicting scenes from the Trojan War. Of course, thought Betsy, craning her neck every which way so as not to miss any detail and tripping over her own feet in the process. What else would they be? This was the woman who, with her husband, had found Troy.

Even Ava couldn’t object to her spending an afternoon calling on one of the great names in Betsy’s field. Admittedly, it was her husband who had been the great name, but everyone knew that Mrs. Schliemann had been by his side every step of the way, had wheedled the workmen, transcribed the reports, and become, in her widowhood, a focal point of the classicist community, hosting gatherings and giving lectures on her—er, their—discoveries.

Here was a woman who could teach her more about excavations than Professor Richardson had ever begun to imagine.

“Is it true that you carried Priam’s gold out wrapped in your shawl?” Betsy asked eagerly, as soon as the proprieties had been observed.

Mrs. Schliemann, respectable and surprisingly ordinary, smiled kindly at her. “No. I wasn’t even there when they discovered it.”

“But—” Her father had loved that story, had repeated it to Betsy with such relish that she felt she’d been there, had seen young Mrs. Schliemann stooped protectively over the precious bundle in her arms.

Mrs. Schliemann handed her a plate of cakes. “It does make a pretty story, doesn’t it? My husband could never resist spinning a good story, whether it was true or not. Men are such romantics. Just look at them all go swoony over the notion of Helen.”

Betsy goggled at her, speechless.

“In real life, most of them probably couldn’t abide a Helen,” said Mrs. Schliemann thoughtfully. “But they all like the idea of her in theory. Goodness only knows to whom those jewels belonged. But once you claim they’re Helen’s, the world takes note. It made a nice symmetry, my smuggling the jewels out of Troy, just as Helen herself was once smuggled to Troy.”

“But you weren’t actually there?” Betsy was still trying to wrap her head around the fact that what she had always taken as truth was instead a prettily arranged fiction.

“I had been called away to Athens upon the death of my father and missed all the more exciting parts of that particular excavation.” Taking pity on Betsy, Mrs. Schliemann added, “But that doesn’t make the find itself any less valuable. Just a bit less . . . romantic.”

Betsy had a moment of panic that everything she thought was true might not be. “But—you did excavate, didn’t you?”

“Oh, my dear, yes. I was supervising crews of workmen by the time I was eighteen.”

Thank goodness. Betsy scooted eagerly forward in her chair. “At the American School—they’ve as good as told me that they’ll never let me into the field. But you worked in the field. How did you do it? How did you make them listen to you?”

“I had the authority of my husband. I spoke with his voice.” Betsy’s face fell. Mrs. Schliemann regarded her with tolerant sympathy. “If you truly want to excavate, the easiest way to go about it is to find yourself an archaeologist to marry.”

Betsy couldn’t tell if she was joking or not. She suspected not.

If Charles were free . . .

No. Not only was it wrong to think that way—although she did catch herself daydreaming about it more often than not—it was a betrayal of everything she believed to accede to the notion that a woman’s position depended on her husband.

“But what if I want to be someone in my own right?” Belatedly, Betsy realized how offensive it sounded, implying Mrs. Schliemann wasn’t. But hadn’t Mrs. Schliemann just said as much herself? “What if I want to excavate on my own account?”

The amusement drained from Mrs. Schliemann’s face. She pressed her lips together, making lines appear on either side of her mouth. “It is not an easy thing, being a woman in the field. I missed several seasons due to the care of my children. For a time, I could only dig in the vicinity of Athens, in case one of the children should fall ill or need me.” A glimmer shone in her dark eyes. “But I did still dig.”

“I don’t know if I’ll ever have children.” If she couldn’t marry Charles, Betsy wasn’t sure she wanted to marry anyone. There couldn’t be that many Charleses in the world, men who would love her for her mind and not just for the dowry she would bring or the children she might bear.