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From your spot on the university campus, you see them every time you set up shop: the historians and librarians documenting and preserving the collection of Sophia Bright and Audrey Harrington. There are so many books down there and they’re having to go carefully; luckily there’s very little mold, but anything that old is going to be fragile. And there are some real rarities in there.
Every so often, extremely excitable people in tweed from other universities come to visit. Before they leave, they will stop at your shop, buy a book or two, and chat. More often than not, at least one of them will say something envious about the collection that’s been lying under St. Bookston’s feet.
Sophia Bright, you say.
“S—yes, of course, I meant to say ... well, it takes a while sometimes, doesn’t it? To get into the habits of the new names?”
You manage not to roll your eyes, somehow. An entire village could go from calling you Theo to Theresa overnight at your request, sure, but God forbid some stuffy old idiots remember the proper name attached to one of the most important historical discoveries this town has seen in decades.
The staff normally wouldn’t let just anyone into the hidden library, but as one of the co-discoverers, you have a special dispensation. So does Harper, although one of the staff will hover around her discreetly to make sure that she doesn’t knock anything over or otherwise mess up anything in her childish enthusiasm.
Frankly, you think Harper deserves more credit than that. The chaperone means she always has someone to pepper with questions: Where will the books go? What’s that one about? What made those holes? Wait, bookworms are real bugs? Ew. Why are there dragons on this map? How can you read these funny-looking letters?
Harper has announced that she will be an archaeologist when she grows up. You assure her that if she keeps up the way she has, she’ll be a very good one.
Classes are out for the summer, but you still come to the university with your mobile shop every other week or so, chiefly to see what they’ve discovered in Sophia and Audrey’s library. One hot summer afternoon, with almost no one coming to buy books, you make your way down to relax in the cool dimness. Anne is there; she’s spending part of her summer helping to catalogue the books. Everyone else has gone out for lunch. Anne doesn’t hear you come in; her attention is fixed on the book in front of her.
What’s up?
She starts. “Oh! Theresa. Hey. Look, I’ve um—I’ve found something. You did classics in school, right?”
Half a lifetime ago, but yeah. Why?
“You might be able to make something of this. Come look.”
You join her at her worktable, where a slim octavo volume lies open to a page with a note in what you now recognize as Audrey Harrington’s elegant seventeenth-century hand. “It’s another of Sophia’s commonplace books,” Anne explains. “One that she—well, she never really got to use it. There’s a few sketches, some lists of book titles—and then I saw this.”
You read: In Padua I had this fragment from a Greek merchant who swore that it is a work of Sappho. It was a gift to my Sophia, but before she could translate it, she passed from this earth. I leave it here for a scholar in a happier era.
Anne turns the page, revealing thin brown sheets covered in writing. The hair goes up on the back of your neck.
That’s … that looks like papyrus, you say. Not regular paper.
“Yeah. That’s what I thought. Can you read this?”
I’m out of practice, but let me see.
You adjust your glasses and lean closer to the paper, sounding out the letters under your breath.
ὦ ἐπαινή Μηλινόη, Εὐμενής εὐμένστατη
‘Aθάνατη Θανατίνη, θέλγανασσα, σκιακουρή
Φιλανέμεσις, φιλάμoρος, φιλάρις
ἀκούσοι, ὦ Πότνια.
Your legs feel unsteady suddenly, and you have to sit down.
“What is it?”
It’s … well, it’s a ode to a goddess—the goddess Melinoë. She’s one of the cthonic gods—like Hecate or Thanatos or Nemesis. She only shows up in the Orphic hymns, but I don’t think this is any known Orphic hymn, particularly because it uses the Sapphic stanza and uh … I don’t suppose you know anyone in the classics department at the university? Because they are going to really, really want to know about this.
“Whoa.” Anne’s eyes go wide. “Yeah, Moira’s got a friend—hey, Moira!”
“Hey babe. I brought you lunch—what’s going on?”
“We’ve made a discovery.”
Moira’s friend is a PhD candidate named Laxmi, and when she finds out about the poem, she literally squeals with excitement. You admit to a pang of reluctance at the idea of handing the fragments off to someone else, but when Laxmi finds out that you know your way around Ancient Greek, she’s more than happy to keep you as a collaborator on the work. “We can be co-authors when we publish,” she says with a grin.
Now you have two jobs: keeping the bookshops running by day, working on the papyrus by night with Laxmi. Maryam and Tilde both tut over you, noting disapprovingly that you appear to not be getting enough sleep. Weeks pass. And eventually the poem comes together, as you first reassemble and transcribe the Greek, and then translate it, trying to squeeze the original ancient poet’s work into English.
You wonder what Sophia would have done with it. You’ve seen her verse in the other commonplace books and manuscripts you’ve uncovered; her poetry is strikingly modern, with an erudite, witty voice. In the style of her time, she’d probably have stuck to a formal diction and a use of rhyme that’s gone out of fashion in recent approaches to translation. But you have a feeling that this poem, this Ode to Melinoë, would have resonated with her.
Dread Melinoë, fairest of Furies:
Deathless death’s-daughter, witch-queen, shadow-girl,
Lover of Vengeance, Doom, and Strife—
hear me, Lady!
I beg you: from the shadows of Erebus, hearken,
hear me, saffron-gowned daughter of Hades,
jewel of Persephone. Sweet Goddess,
I dreamed
that you came to me on black-feathered wings,
with Lady Nemesis at your right hand
swift as Atalanta, light as Hermes,
cloaked in flames.
Your blades gleamed with Selene’s light;
you smoothed my brow and said to me, “Poor girl,
calling on the darkest gods, has the world used you
so harshly?”
Melinoë, sorceress, avenger, warrior—
you know this pain. The wrongs that break me,
the injustice that tyrants bring to bear
upon my family.
My father bends his knee and is struck down,
my mother weeps for her lost sons;
and I, scorned and beaten and slandered,
bow my head,
and throw myself at your feet, to pray:
Lend me your strength, even a small ember
of your glorious flaming soul to light the forge
in my heart.
Majestic Hera, implacable Demeter,
Firebrand Hestia, flower-crowned Aphrodite,
Artemis with her arrows, flashing-eyed Athena:
these Queens of Olympus
came to your aid in your time of need;
Melinoë, fierce and tender, humbly I beg you,
as they bestowed their boons upon you,
grant me
your prowess and ardor. Strengthen my arm,
armor my breast, that I may rise
against those who would crush me; I will destroy them
and stand victorious.
“So do you think it’s really a genuine Sappho?” Moira asks. You’re hanging out with her, Anne, and Laxmi at the Café Liberté after you’ve closed up shop for the night, the four of you drinking wine and talking about the poem and the paper that Laxmi is writing.
Laxmi laughs. “Believe me, I would love nothing more.”
It’s got a lot in common with her Ode to Aphrodite, you say. Maybe someone wrote this in imitation. A pastiche, you know? But hashing all that out is what Laxmi’s paper is for.
“Our paper,” Laxmi puts in.
You’re doing all the hard work.
“Psh. Listen to you two,” Anne chuckles. “Well—I think it’s great, no matter what.”
“It’s … poignant? I guess that’s the word I’m looking for?” Moira says. “Whoever this long-ago poet was—it was a woman, and a woman who was going through it, clearly. Looking to a goddess to help her. And then centuries later, Sophia Bright gets her legacy plowed over with all that ‘St Bookston’ stuff. Women going through it again.”
“And here we are,” Anne says.
“Going through it,” says Laxmi with a sigh.
Yeah. But you know what else we’re doing? Pulling them out of the dark. That ancient Greek poet, Sophia, Audrey. We know about them now. And we can make sure everyone else does.
“Heck yeah.” Moira grins and raises her glass. “Here’s to the ladies going through it. And to the cthonic goddess we’ve got on our side.”
“Nolite te bastardes carborundorum,” Anne interjects.
Laxmi jabs lightly her with her elbow. “That’s Latin, not Greek. And it’s not even real Latin.”
The point still stands, you say, laughing.
The conversation wanders, the wine flows. Eventually you leave the café, mostly steady, to make your way home, crossing the square, past the statue of St Bookston. The full moon casts odd shadows, and for a moment, the statue seems to be—not the stodgy male “saint”, but something more feminine, and in its shadow, a slender figure in a saffron-colored chiton, gleaming like a ghost. You blink and rub your eyes, and then it’s only the old statue, just as it always has been. But there’s a whisper in the air, a wordless approval, and it makes you smile.