At that moment the office door opened, and Dee’s assistant entered bearing a tea tray.
“Ah, here we are!” the trove keeper announced. She helped the tyro set the items down on the coffee table. He departed wordlessly, allowing Dee to act as hostess.
“No coffee for you today, Madame Pythia,” she joked. “Kerala is one of the major tea-producing regions of India, so you have to try one of our local specialties. White tea.”
“I’ve never heard of that,” Cassie said as Dee poured them all cups of the pale liquid.
“It’s a different harvesting and drying process. The flavor is more delicate than black tea.” She passed around a plate of cakes. “And try some of these.”
Aside from almond cookies, there were fried pastries that looked like a cross between an apple fritter and a muffin.
“They’re called unniappam,” the trove keeper said. “Made with sweetened rice and coconut.”
Cassie bit into one. It was doughy and sweet with a hint of a spice she couldn’t identify.
“Cardamom.” Dee anticipated her question. “Kerala was famous for its spices centuries before it became famous for its tea plantations. Most of the local cuisine is flavored with things like chili peppers, cardamom, cloves, ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon, and turmeric.”
The trove keeper’s assistant returned with another tray containing small dishes of what looked like rice pudding.
“And, of course, you must sample a little of the payasam.” Dee dismissed the tyro. She unloaded the tray and placed a dish in front of each of her guests. None of them needed any urging to dive in.
The payasam didn’t taste as bland as any rice pudding Cassie had eaten before. It too was flavored with coconut and a complex array of spices. “Yum,” she murmured.
Her teammates were too busy eating to comment.
***
It wasn’t until half an hour later when the tea things had been cleared away that they all settled back comfortably in their seats and turned their attention to business.
“So why is there a trove here in Kerala anyway?” Cassie began. “From everything I’ve seen, Kochi is a totally modern city. What’s the Arkana’s interest in this particular corner of India?”
Dee and Griffin exchanged knowing looks.
The scrivener spoke first. “Because this area bears the distinction of successfully preserving traits of the matristic culture which once existed everywhere in India before the overlords arrived. It’s much like the Basque region of Spain— a matriarchal anomaly in an otherwise rigidly patriarchal country—and for much the same reason. Kerala’s geographic isolation protected it. Bordered on one side by the Arabian Sea and on the other by a coastal mountain range, it was a singularly difficult area for Aryan horsemen to conquer. Horses provide no tactical advantage over mountainous terrain nor are they very helpful when staging an attack by sea. This part of India was able to retain its customs long after the rest of the country had succumbed to overlord ideology.”
Erik chimed in. “I remember hearing that people in Kerala trace lineage through their mothers instead of their fathers. Up until the beginning of the twentieth century, they lived in big family groups that reckoned kinship from a common ancestress.”
“Marriage was also an offhanded affair,” Griffin added. “Couples could marry and divorce at will since preserving a patriarchal bloodline was meaningless.”
“That’s all quite true,” Dee agreed. “In the old days, the eldest female was the head of the family, and her oldest daughter was the second in command like a prime minister. A man’s primary affection was for his mother’s family more than for his own wife and offspring. Families lived in large groups, sometimes as much as a hundred individuals all related by blood through the female line. Males who married into the family made overnight conjugal visits but otherwise lived in their own mother’s compound. Everyone in a family shared all the resources in common. The eldest brother of the head of the family acted as a steward to manage the family’s property.” The trove keeper sighed and shook her head. “Of course, that all changed once the overlords arrived.”
“You mean the Aryans?” Cassie asked.
“Not simply the Aryans. It’s a little more complicated than that,” Dee countered. “You have to remember that Kerala is a coastal state bordered by the Arabian Sea. As far back as 3000 BCE it was already active in the spice trade and attracted traffic from everywhere. There’s a long history of foreign presence here—some peaceful, some aggressive. Aryan Hindus, Arab Muslims, Semitic Jews, Chinese explorers, Dutch, Portuguese and English merchants. All of them left a trace of their own overlord traditions behind. Over time, the Malabar Coast changed. While the matrilineal inheritance laws continued, patriarchal customs crept in and took over. The eldest uncle was no longer a steward for the family’s resources. A legal system which increasingly favored males over females allowed him to become a dictator who arranged marriages and controlled the family’s riches. The only vestige of a bygone time was that the senior uncle couldn’t sell the family property outright without the common consent of all its members—both male and female.”
“Then it was like a democracy. Everybody had a say?’ Cassie asked.
“Yes, a democracy several thousand years older than the Greek version which is the only one anybody ever hears about.” Dee’s voice was sarcastic.
“Just like the IVC inventions,” Erik observed. “Overlords are never shy about claiming credit for stuff they didn’t create.”
The trove keeper laughed grimly. “In spite of the erosion of maternal authority in Kerala, just enough of the old ways remained to safeguard women in these parts. The Malabar Coast escaped the worst atrocities of overlord culture in India.”
Cassie sat forward. “What do you mean by atrocities?”
Dee sniffed with disgust. “Female infanticide, for one.”
“Yes, selectively killing female babies simply because they are female is an appalling practice that happens to this day in some parts of the country,” Griffin explained.
“Yeesh!” The pythia shuddered involuntarily.
Dee continued. “And if infanticide isn’t bad enough, there’s the hideous custom of suttee.”
Erik turned to face Cassie. “That’s burning widows alive on the funeral
