MALICE ARCHAEOLOGICAL

by Sarah Wisseman

The root broke in my hand.

I straightened my back and pushed the damp hair off my forehead.

“Cathy! Don't you know you need a pickax for breaking sod?” David Willoughby grinned at me. His well-muscled, tanned arms gleamed in the early morning light.

“Of course I do,” I said, scowling. “I'm not really trying to pull out this tree by hand; I just hate standing around doing nothing until my workmen come back up the hill with the right tools.”

David raised his gold eyebrows. “Yeah, save the heavy work for the natives. It's what we pay them for.” He barked an order in fluent Italian to one of his own assistants and returned to brushing off the junction of two walls prior to photographing them.

We were excavating a group of houses at an Etruscan archaeological site called Collina di Toscano outside of Siena .Despite the hard physical work, I couldn't imagine any place I'd rather be. Most graduate students didn't have the opportunity to work at a site in the heart of Tuscany , a trowel's throw from cathedrals, medieval piazzas, and delectable food.

“Miss, where do you want us to start?” Franco appeared with pickaxes, a wheelbarrow, and a swarthy workman who didn't look a day over sixteen.

“We have to get rid of these tree roots. Don't go any deeper than you have to, and then we need to level it out so we go down only a few centimeters at a time.”

“The whole square? How you say, ‘grid' square?”

It was more of an oblong trench than a square, but it had originally been laid out as part of a grid. “ Si ,” I said. “We excavate slowly and evenly. You understand?”

“Yes, Miss.”

I waited while the two men removed some dirt and loosened the roots, and then I jumped into the hole to check for artifacts. My shoulders knotted with the tension of my first supervisory job. David had it easy; he was a third year graduate student with two seasons excavating at Collina under his belt. I, on the other hand, had never excavated in Italy before.

At my nod, Franco and his assistant ripped out the tree roots. We began gently removing slabs of dirt, watching for the charred remains of cooking fires or bits of pottery, metal, and ivory that would mark the first habitation level.

“Cathy?” A thin young woman in blue jeans and a Boston University T-shirt interrupted my fierce concentration. “David says you could use some help.”

Silently cursing David for passing the buck on training our least experienced excavator, I considered the wary expression on Jennifer Stoughton's face. Two days earlier, she'd become the butt of the younger students when she'd broken a delicate ivory carving by digging too vigorously.

“I guess so. I mean, yes, you can join us. How about you take this corner, here?” I showed her what to do, making certain that her troweling was even and that she stopped often enough to peer at the soil color changes. “Let me know if you find anything. If you do, just leave it in place until we photograph it. Then we'll remove it together. Okay?”

Jennifer nodded, her lips refusing to smile. She bent over her corner, shoulder blades jutting through her thin cotton shirt. Suddenly I noticed that the close-up view of Jennifer's surprisingly shapely posterior was distracting the Italian workmen.

“Enough! Back to work,” I hissed at them, wondering if I sounded as severe as I felt. A thumbs-up from David in the next trench assured me I did.

“Thanks for nothing!” I mouthed at him. Bending over my work again, I thought about Jennifer's other problem. Her intense desire to become a good excavator was interpreted as brown-nosing by the others. Eager for crumbs of information and tips on technique, Jennifer shadowed our director, Dr. William Brown, wherever he went. She also volunteered for the gopher jobs that no one else wanted.

The sun climbed higher in the sky as we scraped and sweated.

“Isn't it time for lunch?” called David.

The seductive idea of food roused everyone. I heard rustling and clinking sounds as people donned long-sleeved shirts and dumped tools in piles. I straightened up from a half-crouch, rubbing my lower back.

“Oh, Dr. Brown! Do tell me what to dooooo!” Tom Penning, a short, stocky undergraduate who thought he was clever because he could hold his liquor better than anyone else, capered in front of Jennifer, rolling his eyes.

Jennifer said nothing, but her neck flushed a dusky red as she clambered out of our trench.

I raised my eyebrows at Tom, but he ignored me.

We gathered in an olive grove and washed up with bottled water. The aroma of garlic teased me as I grabbed my wax paper-wrapped lunch and chose a spot in the shade. I bit into thick panini stuffed with roasted eggplant and sautéed onion. I closed my eyes, savoring the rich flavors. The Italians sure knew how to dress up vegetables.

David plunked himself down next to me. Most of him was bare and filthy, but the dirt couldn't hide the six pack or the handsome face topped with blond curls. “Are we having fun yet?” he asked, unwrapping his own sandwich.

I snorted. “You clearly are. Why did you move Jennifer to my trench? I thought she was doing fine in yours.”

“You know how gawky she is—all arms and legs. I needed some elbow room to prepare for the photography.”

“My trench is no bigger than yours, and I have the same number of workmen.”

“Oh, all right. I was planning to take her back after lunch anyway.” David looked me up and down. “Mmm, you're getting some muscles on you. You should wear tank tops more often.”

“Staying cool is what I'm interested in,” I replied as my insides glowed at his flirtatious observation.

Dr. Brown stood, signaling the end of our lunch break. I tucked my sandwich wrappings into our waste bag and motioned to Jennifer.

“Hey, Jen, David wants you back in his square. He's going to show you how to set up for in situ photographs.”

She shrugged and turned away without comment.

You might be brilliant in the classroom, I thought, but no one will ever hire you unless you develop some social skills.

The sun heated my back as I used a whiskbroom to clean off a series of protrusions in the soil. Holy Toledo , ceramic roof tiles! I whisked faster. Were the tiles from another house, or from the roof of the sanctuary we sought? I lost all consciousness of time as I swept and probed.

Someone fell into my corner, scattering dirt over my carefully cleaned feature.

“What the hell!” I yelped as I jumped out of Jennifer's way. “I've spent the last twenty minutes getting this clean!”

“Sorry, Cathy. Look at this.” Jennifer held out her notebook with a trembling hand.

In the center of her grid square, she had sketched a large potsherd decorated with horses and chariots.

“Well!” I said, forgiving her clumsiness. “That could be the piece of evidence we've been looking for to nail down dates.” The scene on the ceramics could be either Greek or Etruscan, but identifying the pottery workshop would help us narrow down the time period of our buildings. “Have you shown it to David yet?”

“No. He went over to Anna's trench.”

“Show me exactly where you found it.”

I hopped out of my corner and followed Jennifer back to David's square, accompanied by a stream of tired workers eager for any excuse to put down their tools.

Dr. Brown joined us, and Jennifer handed him her notebook. Her narrow face shone and her teeth tugged at her lower lip. I tensed, hoping the find would redeem Jennifer in the eyes of the others, especially Tom.

“Interesting,” said Brown. “Hand me a trowel, would you, Cathy?”

I passed the tool with an inner chuckle. “Interesting” was our professor's favorite stalling technique. It meant he wasn't going to commit himself to anything until he'd had a good look at the artifact.

The archaeologist stooped over Jennifer's find, gently removing the loose dirt around it with the tip of the trowel until he could see the entire potsherd. The charioteers were rendered in shiny black on a red-orange background. David Willoughby stepped up and took a couple of photos of it in situ , and then Brown picked it up. He spit on it and rubbed it with the edge of his shirttail.

“Hmm,” he said. His bushy eyebrows snapped together.

Everyone waited.

“Modern. A modern fake,” he said, tossing it on the ground. “Did someone plant it in your trench, Willoughby ? Filthy trick. Waste of time, Jennifer. Get back to work, everyone.”

Tom and Anna turned away, sniggering. I stole a look at Jennifer. She stood frozen, her cheeks scarlet with shame. So much for her glorious discovery.

As Jennifer disappeared behind a clump of bushes, I heard her mutter, “I'll get the jerk who did this to me.”

I picked up the discarded artifact. It belonged to a black-figured kylix , a Greek cup. A lower body sherd attached to part of the foot. I tilted it, revealing a pristine, smooth surface with suspiciously bright colors. Dr. Brown was right; it was modern, but it looked like the corners had been roughed up with sand paper and artificially dirtied.

I turned it over and over as goose bumps rose on my neck. “A filthy trick,” Brown had called it. But was it a prank, or deliberate sabotage? Whatever it was, it was a stupid thing to do in a country that possessed an extensive black market for faked and stolen antiquities.

The clink of a trowel hitting stone made me look up as I pocketed the sherd. Anna Rinehart, another third year graduate student, observed me as she leaned over the wall between her square and mine. “Serves Jennifer right,” she said. “She's gotten on everyone's nerves. Maybe she'll keep a lower profile now.”

I frowned. “You think this is the way to train first-year students? Humiliate them in front of everyone else?”

“Can you think of a better way?” said Anna, flipping her coppery braid over her shoulder.

“Yeah, I can. Jolly them along, make them feel needed. Don't you remember what your first time on an excavation was like?”

“Huh,” said Anna. “I managed without having my hand held every step of the way. Why can't Jennifer?”

Her cold stare unnerved me, so I turned away to resume work.

Graduate school was hell, I thought, as I troweled and swept the junction of roof tiles and wall clean again, but going on a dig was the worst part. You were marooned in a foreign country, usually in a rural setting, with people you could barely tolerate for weeks or months. Housing was haphazard: crowded, dorm-like rooms in rented buildings or tents with outhouses and jerry-rigged, coldwater showers. The food might be okay, but entertainment in the evenings consisted of drinking cheap wine and playing cards unless you were close to a town. A dig was like a pressure cooker; everyone's emotions built up until someone let off steam with practical jokes or worse mischief.

I finished my cleanup and hollered for the photographer. As I waited for him, David sauntered over.

“Where's Jennifer? I thought she was returning to my square to help me with the photography.”

“I don't know,” I said, looking around. “She went off into the bushes after Dr. Brown made his pronouncement. I assumed she was taking a break.”

Anna joined us. “More likely, she wanted to bawl in private. Don't worry, that girl will show up for food. She needs it with that stick-like body.”

She laughed and David's mouth twitched.

“Cut her a little slack, why don't you?” I said.

***

Our cook, Lucia, served my favorite supper: a large dish of spaghetti sauced with olive oil, freshly ground pepper, and pungent chopped garlic. The taste was divine but it was the sort of dish best eaten by everyone present; the after-breath was quite unmistakable.

I stepped outside our dining hall, the former front room of a house in the medieval walled town that served as our headquarters. The fading light showed red roses tumbling down the wall, tendrils clinging to cracks in the limestone. I strolled around the tiny square, smiling as I remembered how Anna, determined to avoid the queue for the one hot shower in the men's dormitory, had chosen the town pump for her coldwater ablutions. Much to her chagrin, several elderly Italians turned up with folding chairs to watch her pour buckets of water over her bikini.

As the sun sank in a fiery orb behind a row of cypress trees, I spied a thin figure trudging under the arched entrance. Jennifer Stoughton, returning from wherever she had been hiding. I watched until I saw a light come on in her room. If she didn't show up for the after-dinner work session, I would check on her later.

David and I led the other students down the hill to our laboratories to spend a couple of hours piecing together potsherds and labeling artifacts.

“So Jennifer didn't come to supper,” said David, glancing my way as the lightning bugs glittered in the dusk.

“No, but I saw a light in her room right afterwards. I think she didn't want to face any of us just yet.”

“Poor kid.”

Poor kid, nothing. Anyone would be upset after that fake pottery incident. I intended to get to the bottom of it and make sure the culprit wasn't planning to plant any more spurious artifacts.

David turned off into the first storeroom to supervise the ink-and-nail-polish labeling of artifacts intended for the local museum while I proceeded to the third storeroom.

Entering, I saw only Marco Gotti, our Italian conservator. He perched on a tall stool behind a sandbox with a partially reconstructed vase.

“Miss Cathy! How are you?”

“Okay, I guess. Um, Marco, I have something to show you.”

I turned sideways to pass between the closely packed tables covered with potsherds.

“Here.” I pulled Jennifer's potsherd out of my pocket and put it in front of Marco.

Marco's smile died as he examined it. “It's modern, isn't it? Where did you find it?”

I told him the story of Jennifer's humiliation.

“Nasty business. Looks like one of those cheap souvenirs from a shop in Siena —enhanced a bit. You're going to find the culprit, am I right?”

I nodded, stuffing the cup fragment in my pocket again. “This kind of thing causes a lot of bad feeling.”

“It would also be nice if you could catch the new guy circulating expensive forgeries in this part of Tuscany .”

“What ?”

“You heard me. High-class Greek vases started showing up about three weeks ago.”

There was no time for more conversation since the others had arrived. I directed Tom and the younger students to specific tables covered with black polished bucchero pottery. The work was exactly like doing a jigsaw puzzle: looking for joins and grouping related pieces together. While my hands were busy sorting physical objects, my mind grappled with the puzzling behavior of my colleagues.

Someone had planted a modern sherd in Jennifer's trench. Who would be silly enough to risk contaminating our excavation with a fake? The most likely suspect was young Tom.

But it was Marco's news that made my stomach queasy and my fingers fumble…

The students worked amiably enough, trading jokes and snatches of favorite songs, until a sudden silence alerted me to a new presence in the room.

I glanced up from a plate I was lining up for gluing. Jennifer, her lips compressed in a tight frown, sidled into the room and picked a table away from the others.

Ignoring a snigger from Tom and his buddy Al, I abandoned my table and joined her. We made good progress for perhaps twenty minutes until a large potsherd shot out of Jennifer's hand onto the floor. As it smashed, Tom called out, “Done it again, Butterfingers?”

“Oh, shut up!” Jennifer ran out into the alley behind the storeroom.

I followed her. “Hey, Jen, it's okay,” I said. “It was only one sherd. God knows, we have hundreds more!”

Jennifer pulled away from my comforting arm. “It's not that! Where do those jerks get off, being so nasty? And they're only undergrads!”

I sighed. “They're frat boys with a limited sense of humor. Don't let them see you react—it only encourages them.”

“Bozos.” She flounced away towards the café.

A surge of irritation buzzed through me. I was wasting my time trying to befriend Jennifer.

***

“Let's go for a drink, Cathy,” said David, as we were locking up. Anna joined us as she usually did, but the younger students hurried up the hill for a late night poker game.

We entered the tiny café that boasted five rickety tables, a foosball machine, a stuffed wild boar's head, and a dartboard. David and Anna fetched wine for us while I nabbed seats away from the bar.

Anna arrived at our table pink-faced and giggling. I eyed her sourly, suspecting David of flirting—again.

“David,” I began, placing the fake cup fragment on the table. “Jennifer's really upset about this.”

“Jennifer's a wimp,” said David, sipping his wine. His dark blue gaze fastened on Anna, who simpered as she tucked a strand of coppery hair back into her braid.

“Why? Because she's clumsy and a little shy?” I asked. “Don't forget, she's brilliant intellectually.”

“Maybe,” said David, the corners of his mouth quirking up.

“She aced her German exam with only one semester of formal language training,” said Anna.

David's smile disappeared; he had failed that exam three times so far. “Yeah, but she's annoying. Tom and I thought she needed a little comeuppance.”

Anna gasped; I spilled my wine.

“So you bought a cheap copy of a Greek cup in Siena ,” I said, mopping up with my napkin.

“No, Tom did. I just told him where to buy it. Then he and Al smashed it up and doctored the pieces a bit—with dirt and olive oil.” David chortled. “Don't you think it was funny? I mean, Jennifer's expression when Brownie dropped her precious find on the ground like a hot potato!”

“It's not funny, David!” I glared at him. “It was a rotten trick to play on a fellow student. And what if Dr. Brown had mistaken it for the real thing? Then there'd be hell to pay!”

“I'm surprised Brownie wasn't more upset about it,” said Anna, who'd turned rather pale after David's revelations. “Messing up a scientific dig like that. If it were me, I'd send the culprits home, pronto.”

“Why, for playing a prank on Jennifer? C'mon!” scoffed David.

“I suppose you think making and circulating copies of ancient artifacts is okay, then? What kind of archaeologist are you?” Anna leaned forward, and new tendrils of hair escaped from her braid.

“Making cheap copies for tourists to buy as souvenirs is okay. Every museum shop sells them. Right, Cathy?” David stared at me.

“If they're signed or stamped so everyone knows they're reproductions, that's okay,” I said slowly. “But making and selling unmarked copies—copies that are so fine that even experts accept them as original artifacts—that's fraud.”

“If you plant them in an excavation, sure! But copying ancient art isn't inherently unethical. After all, painting students copy the works of Van Gogh or Titian. Everyone does it.” David's smiling gaze darted between us.

“Oh, quit playing devil's advocate!” said Anna, who was on her second glass of wine. “You know the issue isn't making copies—it's how you identify them. The presence of a signature or maker's mark on the bottom of a vase is what distinguishes a legal copy from a deliberate forgery. The unsigned forgery is designed to deceive art dealers and collectors.”

“So they'll fork over lots of money…” said David. He smirked and tipped his chair back so it balanced on only two legs.

I took a gulp of the strong local wine and gagged as the acidity hit the back of my throat. My fingers shredded the wine-sodden napkin in front of me.

“Of course, there are far more ways to detect forgeries than there used to be,” said Anna. “Especially for vase-painting. There's thermoluminescence dating and pigment analysis…”

I'd had enough. I set down my glass and shoved back my chair. “Hey, you two, I'm beat. I'm going to bed.”

David and Anna barely acknowledged my departure.

As I trudged up the hill, I reflected that it was a shame graduate students earned such tiny stipends. That's why I'd allowed David to talk me into doing the accounting for his little side business, Gorgoneion Inc., last winter. David made cheap reproductions—the sort of cute miniature Greek vases that sold for twenty or thirty bucks in museum shops.

I hadn't seen David's vases for months. If he were still making only cheap copies with the Gorgoneion stamp on the bottoms, then there was no problem. But David's B.A. degree was in Fine Arts, and I knew he'd taken recent pottery classes back in New Jersey . And he'd boasted to me only a month ago that he was getting better…

Had David graduated from cheap copies to high-class forgeries?

If so, what was I going to do about it?

Inside our little walled town, I checked on the card players by sneaking up near the open window of the dining room. The slurred voices and clink of glasses reassured me that most of the team was half gone with cheap wine.

I nipped up the stairway to David's room. As a senior member of the excavation, he rated a single with a decent bed whereas the rest of us drew doubles or triples with lumpy cots and no bureaus.

The arched window next to his door allowed me a quick check of the road—no David or Anna. I figured that even if they'd left the café, I had at least ten minutes for a quick search of his room.

Easing the door open, I flipped on the overhead light and then quickly drew the curtains.

David Willoughby was a slob. I'd seen the room on two other occasions, but never quite like this. Dirty shirts and shorts tangled together on the floor next to the bed. Work boots and balled-up socks jostled with a portable CD player, an Italian dictionary, two dusty water bottles, and the knapsack he carried to and from the dig.

My gaze roved around the room, searching for a cupboard or shelf where he might stash more private gear. On the little shelf over his pillow, I spied a small, dog-eared notebook. I snatched it, and it fell open to a page of sketches.

I froze. Beautiful, detailed drawings of black-figured cups alternated with pages of Greek lettering. Next came David's copies of the signatures of ancient vase-painters, with checkmarks and penciled comments next to the ones he'd deemed the best.

The notebook by itself was suggestive, but where were the pots? He hadn't hid them here—there was no room. Then I remembered that the Conservation Lab had lockers. Marco would know if David was using one this season.

Tomorrow, first thing, between breakfast and the first session in my trench, I would check.

***

It took three cups of coffee to pull me out of the lethargy caused by too little sleep and an uneasy mind. If I was going to turn David in for fraud, I had to distance myself from his legal museum replica business. Our prudish professors might have trouble believing that only one of us was a forger. Lying awake on the lumpy cot, I reviewed the paper trail; I was pretty sure I'd covered my tracks, but I would still have to convince Dr. Brown and the others that my relationship with David was nothing but a casual friendship.

I left the dining room, carrying the knapsack I would need up at the dig, and trotted down the hill to the laboratories.

The aroma of fresh pizza enticed me as I passed the bakery. My stomach rumbled, begging for a piece of thin-crust with tomato paste and basil leaves.

“Good morning, Marco.”

“What a surprise to see you this early!”

“Marco, I haven't time to chat, but this is important. Does David Willoughby have a locker this year?”

"Yes, but --"

Inside was a bubble-wrapped package, loosely taped. I undid the wrapping and pulled out a small cup. It was a black-figured kylix , fine enough to pass as an original, the work of an ancient master like Amasis or Exekias. Something that would fetch a lot of money. I looked at the underside of the foot—there was no maker's mark anywhere on it. I checked the bubble wrapping again and found several similar cups.

Drawing a shaky breath, I asked Marco to put a new padlock on the locker and keep the key. “Will you come with me to talk to Dr. Brown?”

Marco nodded. He knew better than I did about the consequences of this kind of fraud in Italy . Together, we trudged back up the hill.

Now I wished I'd had some breakfast; I was going to need all my strength this morning. As we entered the walled village, a part of me hoped we were too late to catch our professor before he headed for the dig.

No such luck. Dr. Brown appeared in the entrance of the dining room, rubbing the crumbs out of his beard.

I pulled him off to one side and told him about the notebook and the bubble-wrapped kylikes , carefully avoiding any mention of my prior business partnership with David.

Dr. Brown heard me out, his gaze fastened on the climbing roses. There was a ghastly pause while he absorbed the unwelcome news, and then he stepped back inside.

“Willoughby ! Get out here. You've got some explaining to do.”

David emerged, blinking, into the sunlight. As Brown summarized what I had told him, David's eyes changed color from baby blue to slate gray. A small crowd gathered around us: Jennifer, Anna, Al, and Tom.

David opened his hands in a placating gesture. “Okay, so I make miniature vases at home to sell to museum shops. Big deal.” He nodded at me. “Besides, Cathy here knows all about it—she does the paperwork for me and takes a cut of the profits.”

“Balderdash,” I said firmly. “You asked me to help you, but I refused.”

“But you…” He stopped. I watched his flickering eyes and saw the exact moment that he realized he had no proof of my involvement; the accounting files were on my laptop and he had no paper copies. And the receipts I'd sent to the museums only had his name on them—not mine.

Dr. Brown cut in. “Selling tourist trinkets isn't a crime—so long as they're marked as reproductions. But if you brought your stuff into Italy illegally, or you're selling outright forgeries, you'll go to prison for it. Marco, have you seen these cups Cathy was describing?”

“Yes. They are exquisite, and they are not stamped.”

Dr. Brown's voice roughened. “I can't believe this! You know as well as I do that introducing such copies into the market just encourages looting of archaeological sites; people figure that if the copies fetch good money, then the ancient artifacts will be a gold mine! What the hell do you think you're doing?”

David tried again. “So I brought some of my nicer reproductions to Italy , to give away as gifts. That's not illegal. No one can prove I'm trying to sell them.”

“Oh, yes, they can,” said Jennifer loudly, stepping forward. Gone was the tentative voice and wary demeanor; this young woman knew exactly what she was doing. “Yesterday, I took the bus into Siena . I talked to a dealer in an art gallery near the Piazza. And…”

She paused and looked at David, whose skin suddenly had no tan at all.

“…he will swear that David approached him two weeks ago about selling these ‘reproductions' for a lot more money than most tourists spend on trinkets in a year.” Jennifer switched her intense gaze to Dr. Brown. “The carabinieri are on their way; I called them.”

***

“How did you know?” I asked Jennifer about an hour later. We stood apart from the others, watching as the police steered a reluctant David to their waiting cruiser.

“David asked me out at the beginning of last semester,” said Jennifer with the ghost of a grin. “He drank too much at dinner and started boasting about how good he was at making replicas of Greek vases. I thought at the time that it was an odd talent for someone who wanted to be a professional archaeologist.”

“Then, when someone planted the spurious potsherd in your trench…”

“I suspected him because he's borne a grudge against me ever since I refused to go out on a second date. And David never has enough money—probably because he has awfully expensive tastes for a grad student.”

So she'd noticed David's penchant for leather jackets and fine wines.

Jennifer's green eyes narrowed. “He also told me about your role in the business.”

I swallowed hard. “Which is not a crime, and for which there's no paper trail.”

“Really?” asked Jennifer coolly. “Not even any emails to the shops where you sold the stuff?”

A chill settled in my gut as I remembered that emails were most likely still preserved on the recipients' computers. I thought of the Archaeology Department's probable reaction to the revelation that I had any connection to David Willoughby's activities, legal or otherwise.

“Jennifer, I…”

“Don't worry, Cathy. I won't say anything.” Her sly little smile said otherwise; I was safe unless I pissed her off.

“Jennifer?” Dr. Brown pushed his glasses up on his nose and strode over to us. “I think you'd make a good site surveyor. Let's go up to the site and I'll show you how to use the equipment.”

“Okay,” said Jennifer, lifting her chin.

“And I'm going to make Tom and Al your assistants.”

She smiled and led the way uphill.