Page 99 of Pandora

“I grew up without any set home. There was the shop, of course, which my parents often left in the charge of my uncle, and I spent many a month there when they were inclined to return. But they could never stay in one place for long. They spent their lives exploring the Mediterranean, and I accompanied my parents whenever they went there. My mother was fascinated by the cultural history of her homeland. She was always reciting the Greek myths to me, always sketching them on scraps of paper she kept in her pockets. It was she who taught me how to draw.” Dora smiles, wistful. “It was during a trip to Naples that we met Sir William.”

“I was struck by Helen’s artistry,” Sir William cuts in. “I used Johann Tischbein to sketch my pieces, but sometimes he was engaged elsewhere so I often commissioned Helen in his place.”

“Wait,” Lady Hamilton interrupts. “I think I remember... One summer you had visitors, didn’t you, William, and a child was with them. Miss Blake, that was you?”

“It was indeed, my dear,” Sir William returns. “But pray, Dora, continue. Naples?”

Dora takes a breath. “I think you might be able to explain this part better than I.”

“Very well.” Their host takes a sip of his wine, fills it again from the carafe in the middle of the table. “We were dining on the balcony, I remember, overlooking the bay.” He looks to Dora. “You were sitting on your mother’s lap.”

Dora offers a watery smile. “I remember.”

He inclines his head. “I commended Helen’s choice to name you Pandora. The name means ‘all-gifted’ and I thought it quite charming. She told me she had named you after the myth. When I asked her why, she told me how the story had always fascinated her as a child.”

“And what is the story?” Lady Hamilton asks.

Over the table Edward catches Dora’s eye. She understands what he asks her, though he does not speak the words aloud. Are you all right? his eyes say, and Dora’s chest tightens. Her anger at him is not diminished but she feels numb to it right now, finds herself nodding in answer, and Sir William seems to interpret this as permission to deviate from her own history still further.

“There have been many variations of the myth over the course of history. For the purpose of tonight’s explanation I shall recount the most common one.” He takes a breath. “You must know, of course, that in Greek myth their God was Zeus. For millennia, the world was made up only of gods and demigods and mythical creatures. Although their lives were by no means harmonious it was, in many respects, a perfect world. Zeus though, dissatisfied with this so-called ‘perfect world’—which he considered now altogether far too boring—tasked his good friend Prometheus to create the first humans out of mud and Zeus’ own spittle, and the goddess Athena animated them with her breath.

“However, all these humans were male, and they did not possess the ability to make fire which Zeus considered a skill only the gods may own. But Prometheus felt that humans were meant to evolve and create, so he stole the fire of Hephaestus, the god of blacksmiths, and bestowed it upon the humans. When he discovered Prometheus’ treachery, Zeus had Hephaestus create the first human female and gave her all the womanly wiles that many believe are the cause of man’s downfall. This first female was named Pandora.

“But even then, Zeus’ revenge was not complete. Before releasing her he gave Pandora a jar—not a box, as many believe. That error is due to a mistranslation attributed to the Dutch philosopher Erasmus. In his Latin account of the story he changed the Greek pithos to pyxis which means, literally, ‘box.’ But the point is there was a pithos, and Zeus ordered her never to open it.

“Pandora was then gifted to Prometheus’ brother, Epimetheus. The two fell deeply in love and were happy for many years. But the call of the pithos would not let Pandora rest. One night, unable to sleep, she opened the lid of the jar and alas, Zeus’ revenge was realized. Out came all the evils of the world from which we have never recovered: Illness, Violence, Deceit, Misery and Want. Pandora was so shocked by what she had done, that she closed the lid just before the final evil could be released. Zeus had added Hope to the pithos, to punish and torture man. He believed that Hope was often the false promise of good to come. I believe that it is up to interpretation whether Hope is considered Evil or Good.”

The room sits in a suspension of quiet. The air seems charged, as if the mythical tale is a living thing that has been awoken by its very narration. Sir William takes a sip of wine; the others follow suit. It is Mr. Ashmole who breaks the silence.

“How does all this connect to Miss Blake?”

Sir William looks to her. “My dear?” he prompts.

Dora takes a deep, steadying breath. Out of her few fragmented mirror shards of memory, this is the one that has stuck with her all these years, the one that has remained fully formed in her mind’s eye. She remembers her mother’s voice recalling the Pandora myth at bedtime as Dora turned the cameo over and over and over in the palm of her tiny hand. But of course it never occurred to her that the pithos she has been sketching might have been the very same one her mother spoke of, all those years before.

“My mother believed,” Dora begins, “that the original Pandora was real. Not the woman of myth, of course, but I remember her saying—as you suggested earlier, Lady Hamilton—that suspicion, fable, it all comes from some form of truth. My mother reasoned that there may well have been someone in ancient Greece of that name, a woman of great power and beauty, likely of aristocratic lineage, and that a vase was created as homage to her. Another argument might be that she was a corrupt woman since the myth tells that Pandora released all natural evils into the world, and therefore the vase was made as some form of insult. Either way, my mother thought it probable that a vase existed, one that would have been distinct enough to carry such a legend down through the generations. But I had no idea this was what my parents were looking for during those last weeks. To me it was just another dig site, like any other I had been on over the years.”

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 realizes 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.”

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