The Fox Knows Many Things: An Athena Fox Adventure Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Part I - Agora-Phobia Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Part II - Black Forest Hams Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Part III - La Donna é Andare Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Part IV - Owed on a Grecian Urn Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Part V - What Does the Fox Say Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  THE FOX KNOWS MANY THINGS

  An Athena Fox Archaeological Adventure

  Mike Sweeney

  “I’m not an archaeologist — but I play one on YouTube.”

  — Penny Bright

  Prologue

  ATHENA FOX DROPPED into darkness. The silence of the underground chamber was broken only by the whine of the nylon kernmantle sliding through her carabiner. Dislodged dust turned the narrow fingers of outside light into glowing beams, which in turn picked out fragmentary details of the cyclopean stones. A few meters before the bottom she braked, flexing her knees as her boots struck dirt.

  She stepped out of the harness and left it dangling at the end of the rappel line. An LED camping lantern came on with a twist of the base. Gold gleamed in the light, sea life danced in the flaking murals of turquoise, saffron, and scarlet that decorated the high walls of the beehive chamber.

  Athena drew a deep breath in admiration. “Mourners would have entered and exited there, where the dromos is blocked by collapse,” she said. “And there’s the trench. Archaeologists still don’t understand the purpose of it. And here, in the center of the tholos, is the low table or bier where the deceased would be laid out among offerings and other ritual objects.”

  She approached almost reverently. “Cycladic,” she picked up a clay statue with stumpy limbs and a large flattened-spoon head. “Female votive figure.” She grinned. “Or a child’s doll.”

  “I love these parts. She gets so geeky about the stuff she finds. It’s totally adorkable.”

  “More than the action stuff?”

  “Yeah, she’s cute, and she moves well. But that’s not what got her channel all those hits.”

  “Egyptian scarab, marked with the cartouche of Amenhotep I.” She examined another object. “The Minoans traded with everyone.” There were pottery bowls, wide-mouthed vessels, small round-bodied containers, many decorated with flowing organic patterns and carefully depicted sea life in a shiny black glaze.

  Her eye was drawn towards a large cuirass, dark with an oily sheen under the light. Beside it were piled blades and spearheads, many of them chipped and broken.

  “War trophies,” she said. “This was the tomb of a hero. But look at this armor! That strange, advanced design, unlike anything else in the Aegean. I can’t even guess what material they forged it from. This is it, this is the lead I was hoping for!” Then she stopped. “But this tomb isn’t complete. There’s no sarcophagus. No shrine.”

  She looked around the beehive tomb, more carefully. A huge golden sun hung low in the part of the fresco closest to true East, dolphins framing the golden band it cast across the waves. “The glitter path!” Athena said. “The axis mundi of the Minoan cosmology, that points the way to the Minoan underworld!”

  She turned in a slow circle, eyes widening in growing excitement as she worked out the implications. “The normal orientation of a Minoan tomb is with the entrance to the East. They would display the body on the bier for fourteen days then place it into a clay sarcophagus. But here, the entrance is offset. There’s a painted sun there. That must mean…”

  “I do like the production values.”

  “She built several of those props herself. They had a good team. That rappel scene nearly broke their budget, though. The UC Media Lab had never been set up for that kind of chroma-key shot.”

  She ran to the opposite wall of the tomb. A small amphorae and an unfired clay bowl sat there at the foot of an unremarkable plinth. Without hesitation, the young archaeologist grabbed the curving horns that topped the plinth and pulled them towards her.

  There was a loud grinding noise and ancient dust cascaded down. She threw herself into action, rolling backwards as a single huge stone parted from the wall, teetered over, and slammed into the ground right where she had been.

  “Close one!” she grinned, waving the clouds of dust away from her face. “They picked up a couple of tricks from the Egyptians.”

  The revealed alcove glittered. Two huge double-bladed axes framed a massive altar. The curving Minoan horns that topped it were carved in gleaming black stone. On the plinth rested a glittering trident. The tines were rippled, curving like the blade of a kris, and the short haft was a thick cylinder of silvery metal. “The Rod of Taru,” Athena breathed. “It’s real. This is what I came to Crete for. The Minoans did it. They actually captured the rod of an Atlantean king.”

  “Chust ein moment, Fräulein,” a voice spoke from behind her.

  “Worst German accent ever.”

  “Funny. That was Detlef. He came over from some small town north of Berlin on a tech scholarship. Wrote her music, too.”

  “Was he the guy that went on to do the Masters of Linux web series? That was a great one.”

  “No. Detlef is at Elcor these days. Jameson’s kept an eye on the Media Lab ever since he donated it to the university.”

  “You again,” Athena Fox sighed.

  A Luger entered the frame, followed by a dapper-looking young man in a dark suit. He snapped his fingers. “Hier. Schnell.” He gestured towards the glittering rod.

  “And me?”

  He smiled thinly. “‘Zee tomb of ein hero,’ nicht wahr?”

  The young archaeologist reluctantly picked up the Atlantean artifact. “That’s the trouble with you, and your mysterious employers,” she told him. “You don’t do any of the work. That’s why you need to follow me around. If you’d actually studied, you’d know that Taru is an early Mesopotamian god, later syncretized with Teshub. Teshub the Conqueror. Teshub — the Storm God!”

  With that she smacked the base of the rod. Sparks shot out violently, leaping to every piece of nearby metal. The German cursed as electricity crackled across his weapon. The camp light popped and went out.

  A single gunshot shattered the darkness…

  Part I

  Agora-Phobia

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE ACROPOLIS. I was on the Acropolis! I still couldn’t believe it. I’d seen it in glimpses from the hotel shuttle, glowing golden above the rooflines of Athens, before jet lag and sheer exhaustion had taken me. It had been in front of me as I all but ran out of the hotel the next morning. I remembered gulping some coffee and some kind of fruit from the buffet, then there was a wide cobblestone road and a long winding path up through what I think were olive trees. There had been a gated entrance and a whole lot of stairs and now here I was.


  I finished the last steps up from the Propylaea and I stopped dead because right in front of me, back-lit in the morning sun, was the Parthenon. I’d made it. I was in Greece, an ocean away from home. I was in Athens, birthplace of democracy, cradle of Western Civilization, home of Plato and Herodotus and Aristophanes.

  I’d never even been overseas before.

  I walked up the rise in a trance, not even thinking to watch my footing on the rough surface. The top of the Acropolis was large and mostly flat and so high up you weren’t even aware of the surrounding city from here. I was surrounded by gray stone and white marble, the clean classical lines of some of the world’s most famous structures. I felt the frisson of seeing into the past, a glimpse of what it might have been to walk these stones during the height of the Greek Classical age.

  Of course, had it still been then I would have been greeted by a thirty foot tall bronze statue of Athena. And the stones would be painted in vibrant colors. And there wouldn’t be quite so many missing.

  I walked around the great building, admiring it, taking my time. You couldn’t go inside the Parthenon, not now. Fencing surrounded it, two huge cranes were inside, and the Western Facade was covered in scaffolding. They’d been restoring it since, well, at least since 1975. Somewhat more slowly in the current economic woes.

  Oh, look, a vantage point! I hiked over to where the Greek flag fluttered in the fugitive breeze and took the steps up to the remains of a belvedere from Byzantine times. The view of the city from here was great. Red tile roofs, narrow cobbled paths, white courtyards and greenery everywhere. The view of the Parthenon from here was spectacular.

  It was time. I tried to still my nervousness by focusing on detail. Light was good. Not too many other people around. I’d studied the material as best I could in the limited time I’d had. I fished out the phone and sent a quick text to the videographer who would be meeting me here.

  He was here already? I trotted back down from the belvedere. Careful! There were no railings and the stone parapet was remarkably low.

  The hard limestone of the native rock was pale gray, cut with bands of muted red, smoothed by millions of feet over the ages. It was also slick as hell, especially with the fine drizzle that at least was keeping some of the current millions back in their hotels. A dozen or so tourists were already braving the weather and the early hour. I couldn’t imagine what the crowds must be like at the height of the season.

  “Kaliméra!” a voice called.

  He looked younger than I’d expected, narrow and wiry. His shirt had front pockets and they buttoned. Yup; film student. Oh, and the camera bag slung over his shoulder probably gave it away, too. “I’m Penny!” I waved to him. “And you are, um…”

  “Biro.” His grin gleamed. “Yes, it really is my name. I did a lot of pen art before I got into Vakalo. So what do you need from me?”

  “Drea told you about the format of my show, right? I’m going to give an ad hoc history lecture. Well try, anyhow.” I paused. “Kalimi… That’s Greek, right?” I shook my head, embarrassed. “I didn’t have time before I left,” I said. “Not even to open a phrase-book.”

  “Kaliméra, that’s right.” Biro seemed pleased. “In the evening, kalispéra.”

  “Then, kaliméra!”

  “Or among friends, you say yasou!” Biro grinned. He cocked an eye on the sky, which was still scattered overcast. “Light’s good.”

  “With the Parthenon behind me,” I nodded. The Parthenon! The nerves were back. How could I do justice to this place? I’d never felt so out of my depth.

  Biro pulled out his camera and checked it over. “How much time do you need?” he asked.

  “Two minutes,” I replied. I was already in the costume; twill trousers, khaki shirt, the most perfectly fitting boots that had ever come out of a thrift store. He handed me the wireless mic. I clipped it on and ran the wire under the leather jacket. Then I tilted the fedora back to touch up my forehead.

  “You have a little…” Biro said, pointing at his nose.

  “Got it.” I killed the offending shine then gave him a grin. “How’s the hat?” I asked.

  “Your eyes are out of shadow,” he reassured me. “Audio’s good,” he added. He already had the camera running. Of course he did; like my old prof had put it, electrons were cheap. You never wanted to lose a great performance because you hadn’t turned on the camera yet.

  Places. I put away the powder, took my mark, and gave the camera my best Athena Fox smile.

  “Welcome to the Acropolis of Athens, a limestone outcrop that rises dramatically from the Attic Plain. Occupation of ‘The Rock’ goes back before recorded history. The Mycenaeans had a fortress here. That’s what Acropolis means, after all; it means buildings on a hill. It’s tall, it’s steep, it’s defensible.”

  I gave it a pause so the viewers could take in the view properly. “What you see today is largely from a huge building program following the Persian War. Yeah, that Persian War. Marathon, Thermopylae, This! Is! Sparta! and all that. Except, you know, even with all that shouting all they did was delay Xerxes. Athens was evacuated…and sacked. The Persians burned the old temple to the ground. Look, I’m not going to diss on the Spartans, but it was Athenian warships that carried the day in the end. Enough so that Athens was able to take up a collection later to buy a navy so big nobody would ever try and invade Greece again.”

  I half-turned, cheating front for the camera. Wow. Even in near-ruin, the grace and majesty of the Parthenon was overwhelming. “Yeah, no wonder they ended up in another war,” I muttered. “Right, so Athens forms the Delian League and becomes very wealthy. So Peristyle…no, that’s not right…”

  Periaktos? Perestroika? Peri-Banu? Dammit. Thank the gods for editing.

  “Pericles?” Biro mouthed silently.

  “Pericles. The Great General, also effectively leader of Athens. He wasn’t a tyrant — tyrant didn’t mean quite the same thing to the Greeks as it does to us now, anyhow — or a king. Think of him as sort of like Speaker of the House. Very, very good orator. Spoke quietly and persuasively, none of that shouting. Pericles started a huge rebuilding program using those nice drachmas provided by the Delian League. There was a colossal statue of Athena Polias in the Parthenon, olive wood with ivory face and hands. They call that Chryselephantine; say that one three times fast. Covered in so much gold Pericles himself commented if the city coffers ever ran low they could just melt that down.”

  I was back on course. That was the real trick of acting; no matter what happened, never let them see you sweat.

  “It wasn’t exactly a cultic figure. The Parthenon itself wasn’t exactly a temple. To actually worship Athena, the people went elsewhere; to the Temple of Athena Nike, say. No, not like the tennis shoe. Use the Italian vowels. Or to the next most famous building on the Acropolis; the Erechtheion.”

  I dropped out of character, shook out the tenseness of the stage fright that still got to me even after a dozen videos and several years of stage acting before that. “Your hand steady enough to do a walking follow?”

  “You have to ask?” Biro acted offended. It was amazing how fast we’d clicked. My contacts from the Media Lab days had really scored with this one. The sun was moving steadily upwards, and the crowds were as steadily increasing. People were clustering against the fence on the Northern side of the Parthenon, phones held high, and more tourists trickled out to the belvedere to look over the low parapet and have their picture taken against the skyline.

  We resumed the lecture on the North side of the Erechtheion. I told the story of the contest of Poseidon and Athena. He’d struck the rock with his trident and raised a salt-water spring. She’d planted an olive tree and that won her patronage of the city. There was still an olive tree there but it was more of a spiritual successor. I also talked a bit about the snake-tailed Cecrops, first King of Athens. I decided not to go into the origin story involving Erichthonius, the first true Athenian, as the details of that one were kind of weird. And mi
ght get my channel de-monetized.

  So instead around to the Porch of the Maidens. I commented how this was one of the first buildings to use caryatids as a structural element, leading to hundreds of years of women supporting parts of banks and parliaments and other classical-styled buildings on their heads. Which sounded terribly symbolic of something but I didn’t know if I was going to leave that in the final cut.

  And now the wrap-up. “They are hard to see from the ground, and far too many of them are missing, but one of the most spectacular artistic achievements are the Parthenon Marbles. The Western pediment illustrates the contest of Athena and Poseidon. On the Eastern, appropriately enough, Helios in the Chariot of the Sun chases Selene the Goddess of the Moon across the course of a day. The metopes, carved in a deep bas relief, show scenes from the battles between Gods and Giants, Lapiths and Centaurs, the Amazonomachy, and, apparently, the Fall of Troy.”

  A young couple passed behind me, noticing the camera a little too late. “Pardon,” said the guy in what sounded like a French accent.

  “Syngnómi,” the girl said impishly.

  “The name ‘Parthenon’ likely comes from Athena Parthenos — Athena the Virgin, or maiden. Or it may have referred to virgin priestesses having quarters there. Their main duty was apparently to weave the peplos that would be placed on the actual cult statue. Athena was the goddess of wisdom and war and weaving. Which once got a mortal woman by the name of Arachne in trouble, but anyhow. So the Romans picked her up, called her Minerva, dropped the war and emphasized the wisdom angle. By the eighteenth century artists were using her as a symbol of the arts, learning, and democracy.”

  I smiled for my online audience. “As is Athens itself,” I said. “A big shout out to all my fans and all the other lovers of history out there. Please comment and tell me all the things I got wrong — as I know you will. And an extra special thanks to my Patreon supporters. You’ll be getting the private link to my shopping adventures in Athens — after I’ve had time to have them!”