The Orpheus Descent

by Tom Harper

  Andreas let the statement hang until there was no mistaking the suggestion.

  ‘If you’re trying to say …’

  ‘I am stating facts. I should warn you, also, the Italian police are aware of these facts. They may want to ask you some questions.’

  ‘They think I helped Lily steal the tablet?’

  ‘You are the only other person who knew about it. In contravention of the non-disclosure agreement.’

  He wanted to explain that he hadn’t known a thing, not until the letter arrived and he saw the case in the museum. But he’d told his lie, and now he was caught in it. Perhaps, if he spoke to the police, he’d be able to set it straight.

  ‘Lily and the tablet have a connection,’ Andreas said decisively. ‘One will surely lead us to the other.’

  Nothing added up, but his head was spinning so fast all his thoughts were a blur. There was more he needed to know, but he’d forgotten what it was. He had to get out.

  He stood. Andreas pressed a button on his desk and the door clicked open. Jonah hadn’t realised it was locked.

  ‘We understand your concern completely,’ Andreas assured him. ‘We want Lily back as much as you do. If this is a misunderstanding, or if she is innocent, only she can answer the questions.’

  He walked him to the lift.

  ‘But what you must ask yourself is: does she want you to find her?’

  Fifteen

  If you don’t know where you started, and you don’t know your destination or any of the waypoints, how can you ever get anywhere?

  Plato, Republic

  Diotima glanced at the sky. High clouds wove a screen over the sun; the mountain peaks seemed larger than ever.

  ‘I ought to go. I have to meet a friend.’

  ‘Wait.’ Mud oozed around my feet; I felt I was sinking. I held up the golden leaf. ‘What is this?’

  ‘Ask Agathon, when you find him.’ She skipped off the stone capital and climbed up to the road. ‘But don’t waste time.’

  ‘Won’t you help me?’

  She stopped at the top of the embankment and looked down, a solemn goddess silhouetted against the sky. The look she gave me broke my heart.

  ‘Thank you for listening to my stories. I enjoyed it.’

  ‘When can I see you again?’

  I didn’t quite catch what she said. It sounded like, ‘In your dreams.’

  * * *

  The words of Memory, carved in gold

  For the hour of your death,

  When darkness covers you and leads you down the dreadful path.

  The Mansion of Night, the right-hand spring,

  Black water and a shining white cypress

  Where descending souls cool their fall.

  Stay away.

  Next, cold water from the pool of Mnemosyne

  Flowing beneath the Guardians,

  Watching, all-knowing.

  ‘What are you looking for

  In the dark shadows of Hades?’

  ‘I am a son of Earth and starlit Sky,

  Drained dry with thirst, dying.

  Let me drink quickly from the cold water

  That flows from the pool of Mnemosyne.’

  More questions.

  They will consult the Queen of Hell.

  You will drink cold water from the pool of Mnemosyne,

  Fly out of the circle of suffering,

  And travel further down the sacred road

  In glory, with the other initiated souls.

  Folded in the breasts of the Queen of Hell

  A kid in milk, pure, no longer mortal.

  A god.

  I put down the tablet. My eyes hurt from puzzling out the flea-sized letters on the gold leaf, twisting it this way and that to catch the light. Even now, I couldn’t be sure I had it right.

  Who could blame the scribe? Reading the words was hard; how much worse must it have been trying to write the minuscule letters in gold? Whoever did it, he must have thought his life depended on it.

  When darkness covers you and leads you down the dreadful path …

  The verses were hexameters, the heroic rhythm of Homer. More or less. The metre was choppy. Some of the words were misspelled; others seemed to be missing or abbreviated. But that wasn’t what bothered me.

  I held the gold leaf, so thin I could feel my thumb through it. I sniffed it. Gold shouldn’t smell of anything except the person who’s worn it, but behind Diotima’s fig scent I caught something cold and earthy, as if it had lain underground for a long time. The poem described a journey to the underworld. Just the sort of thing you might bury in a tomb, to help the deceased find their way.

  They opened the coffin and stole some grave goods.

  That bothered me more: how Agathon, that paragon of virtue, had come by it, and why he’d left it for me. If he was so desperate for money, why didn’t he sell it?

  But what troubled me most, as the gold glinted in the light and the grooves pressed against the whorls on my thumb, was its authenticity. This poem wasn’t a story. These were instructions, meant in deadly earnest, from someone who had been there – and come back.

  A noise at the door. Euphemus had come into the room, sniffing the air like a fox. A casual smile couldn’t hide the curiosity in his eyes. Too late, I put my hand flat on the table to hide the gold leaf.

  ‘Have you been out?’ he asked.

  ‘Seeing the sights. Did you know Herodotus is buried here?’ I tried to slide the gold sheet towards me without attracting attention. ‘Where’s Dimos?’

  ‘He’s out.’

  ‘Who with?’

  ‘Probably some boy he met at the gym. He stank of perfume.’ Euphemus sat heavily on my bed and stretched himself out. ‘All that talk of love last night. What did you think of the girl?’

  ‘Diotima?’ The name flashed out of my mouth too quick to stop. Euphemus’ eyes narrowed.

  ‘I don’t suppose you know where to find her?’

  ‘You can’t buy a woman like that,’ I warned him.

  ‘I don’t have to. A well-placed gift and the right words will open her legs like Pandora’s box.’

  Diotima’s too clever for you, the Voice of Will insisted.

  You know what she is, the Voice of thwarted Desire replied.

  ‘Did you have the same idea?’

  ‘What?’ I hadn’t heard him properly.

  He leaned forward. ‘You did, didn’t you. I thought I smelled her perfume when I came in. Was she here?’ He patted the bed and sniffed his fingers. ‘Did you have her here?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

  ‘It’s nothing to be embarrassed about – I’m not jealous. Well, perhaps a bit. But I’ll get my turn.’

  ‘She wasn’t here.’

  ‘And you’re still mooning like a teenager. Are you in love?’ That seemed to amuse him even more. ‘For sure, she’s better looking than Socrates.’

  ‘Get out.’

  He stepped towards the door, then remembered something.

  ‘I went down to the harbour this morning. There’s a ship leaving for Syracuse tomorrow.’

  ‘You said you weren’t trusting the sea ever again, after Calliste.’

  ‘Sicily’s an island – I’ve got to get there somehow. What are you going to do?’

  What am I going to do? Should I stay there, enduring Dimos’ hospitality, hoping Agathon would turn up?

  The gold throbbed under my hand and whispered words into my blood. Fly out of the circle of suffering, and travel further down the sacred road. Suddenly, I knew what I wanted to do.

  ‘I’m going to see Locris.’

  It turned out that Locris was on the way to Syracuse, and that Euphemus’ ship would be calling there. It meant two more days at sea and two more days with Euphemus, which didn’t appeal. But travelling by road would have taken over a week, and I needed to make up time on Agathon.

  Dimos was thrilled when I suggested I might be leaving – less so when I explained it would cost him a hu
ndred and twenty drachmas. Five to get me to Locris, fifteen back to Athens, and a hundred for the book.

  ‘Even your friend had enough manners not to ask me for money.’

  ‘I’m family,’ I said, stretching the definition. ‘And I’ll pay you back when I get home.’

  ‘What if you don’t make it?’ I could see he was worried about his loan. ‘That end of the peninsula’s a war-zone. Dionysius has an army down there besieging Rhegion, and there’s nothing Syracusans like more than sending Athenians down to rot in their quarries.’

  I faked nonchalance. If I’d shown the least crack, he’d never have given me the money.

  ‘I’m not going any further than Locris. That’s peaceful, isn’t it?’

  ‘For the moment.’

  I had one more question for him – something I cared about far more than his money.

  ‘The flute-girl who played at your party. Diotima …’

  He flinched at the sound of her name.

  ‘Diotima …’ I said it again, just to see the effect. ‘Have you known her long?’

  ‘Why are you interested in her?’

  ‘I heard she was a friend of Agathon’s.’

  If I’d claimed to have seduced his wife, he could hardly have reacted more violently. ‘I was worried that might get out.’

  ‘Worried?’

  ‘She came while Agathon was here. He took a shine to her … well, why not? Every man in Thurii’s got a hard-on for Diotima. But there was a scene, Agathon made a pest of himself. Treated her like a two-obol whore. When I told him to calm down, he attacked me. In my own house.’

  I considered this. Agathon has a slight build, reed-thin arms, and only ever sets foot in a gymnasium if there’s a lecture on. Dimos is a big man who wears his weight well. A fight between them would be as short and painful as Dimos chose to make it.

  ‘I know he’s your friend – still …’

  ‘What did Diotima say?’

  ‘She blamed us both. Silly cunt.’ A reflective tone. ‘They say she’s half barbarian. Her mother was a Sicel.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘Sicilian. Wild people, from the old days before we got there. We’ve mostly got rid of them, now.’

  How had I spent most of a morning with Diotima swapping stories about lost cities and magic rings, and never heard about this? Why didn’t she tell me about the fight? And if Agathon had behaved so outrageously, why did he stay with her when he came back?

  What else hadn’t she told me?

  So many things I should have asked her. But time in her company passed like a dream, and going into conversation was like wading into the ocean. The ground shifted, and even rocks got swallowed.

  One thing I did know. There was only one person in the world whose honour Dimos would defend, and it wasn’t a flute-girl. Not even one as desirable as Diotima. If there’d been a fight – and that much I did believe – there was only one likely reason.

  ‘Did she prefer Agathon to you? Was that what made you angry?’

  Dimos stood with a terrifying smile. ‘I’ll get the money now. I don’t want to delay you.’

  The morning we left, I went back to Diotima’s house. The door was locked; the windows shuttered. I knocked until my knuckles bled, but nobody answered.

  I wandered around Thurii for what seemed like hours, eyes down, reading the dust for her footprints. I lingered at Herodotus’ tomb, Aphrodite’s temple, the theatre. I spent an hour staring at the ruins of Sybaris. Out in the marsh, gulls perched on a pair of old columns that thrust out of the water, a gateway to nowhere. Sunlight flashed on the water between them. I imagined Diotima approaching the gates, gliding across the surface like a swan, then vanishing in a twist of light.

  It was as likely an answer as any.

  ‘Do you know the story of the ring of Gyges?’

  We were back on a ship, coasting down to Locris. I think. In memory, the ship and the sea and the sky and Euphemus and I are all archetypes, a collage assembled from stock parts. What I really remember is the feeling. All I wanted, that short voyage, was to talk about Diotima.

  Euphemus didn’t know Gyges’ story the way she’d told it. I paraphrased it, not mentioning Diotima. When I’d finished, he nodded approvingly.

  ‘I think that rather proves my point.’

  ‘Because the law of nature tells us to pursue pleasure and take everything we can get?’ I pressed.

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘And the only reason we pretend to be virtuous is so that other people don’t realise we’re trying to get something from them?’

  ‘Ye-es.’ More cautiously, sensing a trap.

  ‘But if you picked up the ring of Gyges, would you really turn into a thieving, murdering libertine? Is all that’s preventing you from stealing my money and throwing me in the water right now the fact that I can see you?’

  Euphemus’ constant smile stretched tight. The motion of the sea seemed to be upsetting him.

  ‘It’s a hypothetical situation.’

  ‘You can’t say it.’ Now I was smiling. I could feel the sun warm on my back. ‘You say the world is a cauldron, all boiling against all. You say we use convention to mask the grasping, selfish truth. But I think you’re hiding the opposite. Strip away convention and social expectation, like the ring of Gyges, and you might find you actually have some good in you.’

  He picked at the end of a rope, pulling apart its strands. ‘Who can be sure what we’d do in extreme circumstances?’

  ‘Are you saying that in extreme circumstances, if you had absolutely no choice, you might actually do the right thing?’

  ‘Very good. No, I’m thinking of Orpheus.’

  I didn’t see the connection.

  ‘When Hades snatched his wife, he wanted to go down to the underworld to rescue her. He said he’d do anything for her. But he tricked his way in. That’s why the gods didn’t let him bring her back – because he wouldn’t make the ultimate sacrifice. He thought his love was perfect, but when it came down to it, it wasn’t. He didn’t dare die for love, so the gods didn’t feel compelled to let her live.’

  The crack in the earth. A lone man picking his way over the rocks that are loose as ashes. He has a lyre slung over his back and a crown of black ivy wrapped in his hair. It could be Gyges. But there’s no ring or bronze horse at the bottom of the ravine – only a dark hole leading deeper into the earth. If you put your ear to it, you can hear waves crashing.

  We must have changed course while Euphemus was speaking. The sail shaded the sun. ‘That’s an extreme situation,’ I murmured.

  ‘Extreme situations reveal the truth.’ The rope-end had become three separate strands, twisting into the air like the triple-headed serpent of Apollo. ‘Your elusive friend, Agathon. Is he a good man?’

  ‘One of the best.’

  ‘Just? Virtuous?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘And yet he broke open the tomb and stole something.’

  His eyes tracked me like a hawk following a mouse. How much had he seen in my bedroom? Did he know what the tablet was? Did he guess? I balled my hand into a fist so that I wouldn’t touch the locket hanging around my neck.

  I wanted to change the subject – but so much talk of Orpheus and tombs reminded me of something I’d been meaning to ask.

  ‘That story you told me, that Pythagoras found his knowledge in the underworld. Did it say if he wrote anything down about it?’

  He shook his head. ‘Pythagoras never wrote anything down. He’s notorious for it. That’s why you get people like Archytas and Eurytus, all arguing about what he actually said. Why?’

  Pythagoras wasn’t enough. Agathon wanted to go further, to find what came before. The source of Pythagoras’ ideas.

  Agathon hadn’t gone down to the underworld like some latter-day Orpheus, I told myself firmly. He’d gone to Locris, to buy a book.

  Euphemus tossed the rope aside. ‘Perhaps he did find it.’

  ‘Find what?’

&nbs
p; ‘The ring of Gyges.’ He saw I’d lost him. ‘Agathon. That would explain why you’ve travelled the length of Italy and never seen him.’

  A crack from above. Even in that split second, I knew it was different from the usual run of the ship’s sounds. Perhaps I started to look up.

  Shouted warnings came too late. It was already in motion.

  Something tore through the air and landed hard on my head.

  Sixteen

  Jonah – London

  It was only Tuesday and the torture had already become routine. The trembling as he unlocked the door, like waiting to go on stage. Imagining her there – her smile, her arms around him – the vision so painfully real it had to be true. There was no reason in the world why she couldn’t be there, so why shouldn’t she be?

  Calling her name through the open door. Looking into each room, just in case she’d fallen asleep, waiting. The slump of despair. Checking voicemails, text messages, e-mails, missed calls. Each piece of nothing seemed to take a bite out of his soul. He wondered how long before it was all gone?

  The warm day had made him sweat, and the sweat had cooled to something sticky and unpleasant. He was furious with himself. He’d gone to the Eikasia Foundation with so many unanswered questions – the tablet, Ari, her trip to Athens – and instead he’d been blindsided by their story that Lily was a thief.

  Was it true?

  Lily’s letter, the tablet transcription, lay on the sofa beside him. He held it to his face, sniffing for any trace of scent, but Lily never wore perfume on the digs. Your hands always smell like earth anyway, she said.

  Why did she send it?

  She was a self-confessed trowel monkey. She didn’t date pottery, or piece things together, or read ancient Greek. She left conservators and academics to explain the things she found: she just pulled them out of the ground. So why did she spend the last hours before she disappeared copying the text?

  If she was going to steal it, why would she bother to copy it out and send it to her sister beforehand?

  Why did she bother?

  He called Charis. Her voice went artificially bright when she heard him.

  ‘Haven’t got long – Bill’s got a do. Just getting ready now. Any news of Lily?’