The Pandora Syndrome

   14-year old Morgan learned to fight and survive in the streets of Lower East Manhattan against rats, murderers, and thieves in pre-Civil War America. She earned a position in the Brooklyn ship yards as a caulker but became infatuated with sailing ships and joined the Union navy to serve 4 years in the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico including several battles.

   A discovery in the last year of the war ensured her a comfortable lifestyle and she purchased a three-mast ship to explore the world. Captain Morgan later thwarted a vicious attack by an Imperial Japanese navy ship on a small Chinese junk north of Hong Kong and recovered two survivors. 

   The Emperor of China had been assassinated and one of the two survivors was heir to the throne. A sudden violet storm forced the ship on ground allowing Morgan time to fall deeply in love with the woman she would spend the rest of her life with.

   Morgan’s diary takes us through battles to the richly adorned Chinese architecture often over a thousand years old all the while managing to conceal her sex.

   Sin in the Forbidden City is based on Chinese Song Dynasty folk tales regarding the ancient belief of the magical relationship two women could share. 

A monk discovered an obscure hand written collection of manuscripts in the year 1494 while organizing manuscripts in the archives in Canterbury England that recorded the events from the life of Cinna Cassia, Queen of the Britons during Briton’s post-Roman era. The monk was so impressed with the little information he reviewed regarding Cassia that he dedicated all his available time reviewing manuscripts, documents, and folk songs. Furthermore, the monk visited archives in France, England, Scotland, and Italy furthering his appreciation of her.  

When Rome withdrew from England in 410 A.D., the vacuum that created encouraged invasions from countries who prized the island, mainly the Anglo-Saxon. Several tragic events including the birth of a son conceived through the brutal rape by a fleeing Roman soldier, made Cassia stand up and refuse to be ruled by anyone other than themselves motiving her to unite the numerous kingdoms under the flag of the United Kingdom of Briton and Cassia was elected queen. Cassia formed and trained armies then provided them with up-to-date weapons and tactics including the use of carrier pigeons to repel any attacker. Cassia understood the importance of quickly treating the wounded and utilized what we now call doctors on the battlefield to reduce the deaths of her well-trained soldiers. The monk found several references that Cassia married a woman Lily who formed an education system for anyone who wanted it and the first schools appeared to include children, adults, and soldiers to receive an education to be passed on into future generations including her son Arthur, that history knows well. The monk published the book about her in 1518, but found there was no interest in a woman from England’s early history with scholars or historians. But the king noticed, and the monk was prosecuted because a book supporting same sex relationship violated all religious doctrine and he was burned at the stake in front of three thousand people; a common form of religious punishment during the Reformation period of King Henry VIII’s rule. The king ordered all known copies to be destroyed.  

In 1909, a librarian discovered a single moldy water-stained copy that had fallen behind a stack of books in a Parisian library. The librarian returned the book to its proper location and the book remained forgotten about until a modern scholar discovered it and wrote her story in the pages you are about to read.    

This fictional story would certainly fit into the vast void of early post-Roman English history when same sex relationships were regarded much differently than now because certain religious powers altered those beliefs through time through interpretation of text.  

My name is Fiona Abernethy and I was born in Glasgow Scotland in 1960. I received my mother’s personal artifacts after she passed away in 2010 and began to explore the boxes of her things when I discovered diaries written by Colette Madeline Bonnet. It became very clear to me immediately that Colette was the lover of my ancestor Aunt Annette Murdina Abernethy. I had not known that. If mother knew, she never said anything even after my disclosure that I was also in a permanent relationship with another woman-it runs in the family?

Simply put, I found her diaries inspiring and terrifying. I laughed and they brought tears of happiness and sadness as Colette shared her experiences during the French Revolution starting as a lamplighter on the streets of Paris. They included the horrors she witnessed at the Battle of Bastille where she helped an injured man disregarding her own safety who turned out to be a rebel of the king. They narrowly escaped Nature’s fury and destruction of the Mount Vesuvius eruption while in Naples on assignment for the university in Rome. Furthermore, they witnessed the battles in Rome when French and Italian armies clashed where they attended and taught at university then witnessed the Battle of the Nile with Lord Nelson’s English armada against Bonaparte’s French navy. Her diaries also shared Annette’s pilgrimage to the Isle of Lesvos and their adventures sailing in the Mediterranean Sea with an encounter of a polite Spanish pirate. While in rain-soaked Genoa, hundreds of creatures sought the dryness of their villa including a large lynx. To escape the war in Europe while Napoleon attempted to take over the globe, they moved to the new country and taught at an all-female school in Connecticut to help those young women of special needs and several slaves with their freedom. 

Annette became the guardian of Fiona Rose Abernethy, my name’s sake, who grew into a strong woman of intelligence, grace, and dignity. It is through Fiona’s marriage that our name was carried on and the diaries of Colette passed through the family.

My life partner suggested the diaries should be shared with others. Not only was she hiding her love for another woman, but she had to hide from the country she loved for something she did not do during the most turbulent and violent period of French history.

Many pages were missing or damaged and a few damaged from spilled ink. The pages that had been ripped from the diary intrigue us the most as we will never know what happened during those periods and what Colette was involved in which provoked someone to alter her diary. She was interrogated by authorities while Genoa when Napoleon’s troops had invaded Italy and several pages were missing from that time.

This fictional story told through diary entries is based on true events in history as they occurred. This is a story of strong and well-educated women who believed their education and love for one another could and did benefit other women who loved only women was during a period of history when religion had biased many opinions based only on interpretations of religious texts.