Pandora(87)

Here, Sir William taps his glass. ‘How could you know? You were only a child.’ He manages a kindly smile. ‘But that is what they were looking for. You see, Helen told me that, having researched the myth, she’d discovered Pandora had drowned in a great flood. However, legend also said that Pandora and Epimetheus had a daughter who survived it – Pyrrha. So those three names, the flood … Helen used them as a starting point. She spent years, apparently, scouring ancient documents – family names, settlement lists – and believed she had not only located them in historic sources but geographically, too. She traced their ancestral heritage to southern Greece, cross-referenced natural disasters, and discovered there had been a great flood … in a town at the foothills of Mount Lykaion.’

Dora pinches the bridge of her nose. ‘I don’t remember exactly how we all came to be in the Peloponnese, or Sir William with us. But we were, and this was one of the rare occasions my uncle accompanied us. I remember very little of that day, or the days leading up to it, but I do remember something was wrong. My parents and my uncle, they argued. All the time. I …’

Lady Hamilton squeezes her arm. ‘Go on.’

Dora shuts her eyes. She pictures a deep blue sky. Cloudless, broken only by a sun too bright to look at directly. A mountain looms before her, deep green trees blanketing its slopes, their fronds full and lush. The earth beneath her feet is parched, deep cracks mapping its surface like ancient parchment, kept too long in the open air. Somewhere, in grass that has turned to straw in the heat, a cricket is singing. Dora pictures broken stone monoliths, narrow trenches held up by wooden beams. A deep hole in the ground, a dark tunnel that leads to somewhere she cannot see unless she climbs down a ladder to reach it. Around her, white tents, their seams flapping in a breeze that holds within it no air. Then the mirror shards shiver, break apart again, and Dora can no longer get a grasp on them.

‘I was at the dig site the day it happened,’ she hears herself say. ‘It was hot. Scorching hot. That dry sort of heat that fills your lungs and makes it difficult to breathe. No one else was around. The workers were sleeping. So I remember I went to the well to fetch my parents some water. I remember I had just climbed down into the access chamber, and the earth began to collapse around me. But I knew my parents were down in the room beyond it and I tried to reach them, I cried out …’

She is speaking in a rush, begins to shake, her vision starts to blur, and suddenly Mr Ashmole – Mr Ashmole of all people – has taken her hand and Dora is holding it as hard as she can.

‘I remember getting trapped. I couldn’t cry out, I couldn’t breathe at all. The next thing I knew I was waking up on a litter in the tent. Sir William had pulled me out …’

Dora realises she is gasping for air, that Lady Hamilton is pouring another glass of water. She drinks long and hard, and it is some minutes before she can compose herself.

‘I’m so sorry, Dora.’

It is Sir William who has spoken. She looks up to find them all watching her and – embarrassed now – Dora releases Mr Ashmole’s hand. His skin changes from white to pink as the blood flow returns to it.

‘Forgive me,’ Mr Ashmole murmurs, flexing his fingers. ‘But you said there were two parts to this story.’

Edward is rising from the chair. ‘Cornelius, I don’t think—’

‘No,’ Dora says, mastering her strength. ‘Mr Ashmole is right. What did you mean, Sir William, when you said that?’

Sir William sighs. ‘I do not want to cause you further pain.’

‘Tell me.’

He sighs again, wipes a hand across his face, takes one more sip of wine.

‘As you know, your parents were not so deep in the collapse as we had feared. They must have tried to make their escape. Their bodies were recovered, buried. You were shipped off back to London in the care of your uncle. It was classed as a terrible accident, the kind that happens all the time in that line of work.’ A deep line has begun to form between Sir William’s eyebrows. ‘But something just didn’t sit right with me. I had surveyed the site myself. You say, Dora, you don’t know why we all came to be in southern Greece. I can tell you now that Helen’s theory intrigued me. I funded the dig and asked that I be part of the team to search for the pithos.

‘Your parents were thrilled to accept. I’d overseen many digs and always taken an active part in them, so they knew I was no idle aristocrat. And we did it, Dora, we found a pithos. One that matched in every particular to the historical and geographical sources. And even more convincing, it depicted the myth of Pandora’s creation. There was no reason not to assume it was the pithos we had sought. We were ecstatic. Can you imagine the historic implications? We began to make arrangements to retrieve it. But then …

‘Dora, I am positive that site was sound. I admit it would have benefited from reinforcing but there was nothing to make me believe there was any imminent danger, so when it collapsed I suspected some sort of mischief. I had no proof, or course. And matters were of such a nature—’ Sir William stops, clears his throat. ‘All I could do was preserve the site. As I said I bought the land, put an overseer in place. Then, last year, I received word of a flood. The deluge washed away enough of the earth that it seemed there was a chance we could access the site again. So, I reopened the dig.’