Page 6 of Two Wars and a Wedding

“A translator, then,” said Dr. Richardson hopefully. “A trained classicist, familiar with the language, can be a great aid to the men in the field.”

There was no point in being subtle. “I don’t want to transcribe other people’s finds. I want to find them myself.”

Dr. Richardson chuckled benignly. “My dear, the rigors of the field . . . the strenuousness of the endeavor . . . None of these are the least suited to the gentler sex. What was that, Miss Hayes?”

“Nothing.” Betsy bit back a sharp retort. She needed Dr. Richardson’s goodwill. As the director of the American School, he had the final say. And she refused, absolutely refused, to have come all this way to do nothing more than read the same texts she could have read back in Massachusetts. What was the point of being in Greece if one couldn’t dig?

She could hear Ava’s voice in her head, saying that the point was climbing the Acropolis, walking where Plato and St. Paul had walked (not at the same time, of course; that would have been ridiculous, and quite possibly acrimonious; she really didn’t think they would have got along), attending the lectures given by the professors of the various schools, enjoying the company of other scholars.

Yes, the American School had a brand-new dig site in Corinth that was just begging for a talented excavator to come along and explore its mysteries. But it was only one facet of the school’s offerings. And she was in Greece! The land of Homer. The land of so much still undiscovered.

Betsy meant to uncover it.

She had been eight when her father had first given her Schliemann’s report of his excavation at Mycenae. She could remember the weight of the volume in her hands, the maroon cover embossed in silver and gilt, that precise moment when it dawned on her that the ancient world wasn’t merely a charming tale to be told at bedtime. It was still there, under the soil, waiting to be discovered. It had felt like reaching out to a mirror to find the figure in the mirror reaching back to you, something static and flat suddenly coming alive.

Betsy had known then and there that this was what she was meant to do, and she wasn’t going to allow anyone to stop her.

Cunningly, Betsy said, “I hear Dr. Sterrett is leading a trek in the Peloponnese.”

Dr. Richardson eyed her warily. “Yes. He means to take a party to Tiryns and Mycenae. The excavations there . . .”

“Yes, I read Herr Schliemann’s reports.” Drat, that had been too curt. Betsy tried again. “I’d like to go with them.”

“My dear, this is not the sort of travel to which you are accustomed.” He looked at her shirtwaist with its puffed sleeves, the elaborate braiding on her skirt. “The inns are little more than stables; the terrain is ruthless. These are treks, not pleasure jaunts. Ah, I’ll never forget tramping from Phocis to Thermopylae and then back round through Boeotia a few seasons past. Two hundred and fifty miles in ten days, pouring rain all the way. And the places we slept! We had so many bedbugs, we named them the Persians.”

“It sounds delightful,” said Betsy. It sounded awful.

“It was, it was. Tramping in the rain, singing our way through the Carmina Collegensia.” Richardson burst unexpectedly into a rumbling baritone: “We will give three cheers for old Dartmouth, old Dartmouth, a tiger and three times threewith! There was Brownson bellowing out his Yale glees and Gilbert, not to be outdone, with his I wish I was in Boston city, where the girls they are so—ahem.”

Richardson recalled himself to his present company with a violent fit of coughing.

“Smith has songs too,” Betsy pointed out. “And I am perfectly capable of singing them in all conditions and all altitudes.”

Looking thoroughly discomfited, Professor Richardson took refuge in delay. “You’ll have to speak to Professor Sterrett.”

Betsy beamed at him. “Oh, I shall. Thank you, Dr. Richardson! I’ll be sure to tell him you sent me.”

“But—I didn’t—”

“I won’t keep you a moment longer. I know you have important . . . papers to attend to.” She turned on her heel before he could recover himself. After all, he had told her to speak to Dr. Sterrett. So he had, in fact, sent her to Dr. Sterrett. Which was nearly the same thing as suggesting she accompany the expedition. Betsy was sure Dr. Sterrett would see the sense of it.

She whisked out the door, turning only to twiddle her fingers in farewell, which was why she didn’t at all see the man coming from the other direction until she had launched herself straight at him, landing in a flurry of papers and a tangle of limbs (his) and petticoats (hers) on the hard floor of the corridor.

“Ooof,” said Betsy eloquently.

She shoved herself up on her elbows, and then to her knees, and found herself facing a man similarly situated. There was no mistaking the man for anything but an archaeologist. His hair, naturally a rich chestnut, had been faded to tow in places, and his eyes bore the unmistakable white lines of a man who spent a great deal of time squinting into the sun.

“A million pardons, mademoiselle.” He spoke English with a light French accent and a very heavy British one.

“One would have sufficed.” Since she was on her knees already, Betsy decided she might as well gather the fallen papers, so she did, practically bumping heads with the Frenchman, who seemed to have had the same idea. Nose to nose, his eyes were a very pleasant shade of brown, like her father’s whiskey, and just as full of forbidden promise. “And it was my fault, not yours.”

He rose, holding out a hand to her. “I’ve seldom been felled by so charming an obstacle.”

Betsy grinned up at the Frenchman, feeling all the more charming for being called so. “Tell that to the next tree stump you trip over. Au revoir, monsieur.”

Betsy couldn’t resist looking after him as he let himself into Professor Richardson’s office. The man had to be a fellow of the French School, of course. They were here too. The national schools did a good line in mutual aid, scholarly ribbing, and cutting one another out for dig sites. It was all in good fun, except when the French School shamelessly stole the permit for excavating Delphi out from under them.

It gave Betsy a thrill to think she was about to be one of them, this elect group of explorers who coaxed the secrets of the past from the soil, turning myth flesh with their finds. That someday not too distant, she might be striding through the American School and some new girl, fresh from Vassar or Wellesley, might bump into her and look at her sunburnt skin and know her for an archaeologist.