The Orpheus Descent (2 page)

‘I’m not him,’ I repeated.

‘Are you sure you’re doing the right thing?’

‘It depends how you define right action.’

Running footsteps from behind cut me short. A tug on my coat almost pulled me off my feet. A breathless slave, his tunic bearded with sweat despite the cloudy day, stared up at us.

‘Philebus wants you to wait,’ he said baldly.

‘Where is he?’

The slave pointed back to the crowds around the stoa. I snuck a glance at the gangplank. Even my terror of the sea might compromise to avoid a man like Philebus. But I could already see him, a round figure poling himself along on his stick. A bedraggled garland sat crooked on his white curls, and a spray of wine dregs flecked his cheek, as if someone had slapped him. He must have just come from dinner.

He hailed us as he came close.

‘Ariston’s boys. I knew it was you.’ He made a show of looking from the baggage to the boat, and back to us. ‘Are you two going somewhere? It looks as if you’re off on a voyage.’

‘I’m staying.’ Glaucon gave me an unforgiving nod. ‘He’s going.’

‘Where?’

‘Italy.’

Philebus smacked his lips. ‘Of course. The food, the boys – you’ll come back twice the man you are now.’ He jabbed me in the stomach. ‘Careful what you put in your mouth, eh?’

I shuddered, but Philebus didn’t notice. His restless eye had moved on over my shoulder, so that I had to turn awkwardly to see. A tall man with a distinguished mane of hair, a handsome face and a robe worn casually over one shoulder was climbing the gangplank. A gaggle of porters trailed behind him, swaying perilously as they tried to carry all his baggage.

Philebus’ hooded eyes widened. ‘That’s Euphemus,’ he announced. ‘The philosopher.’ He snorted. ‘He’s got even more luggage than you do. At this rate, your ship won’t make it out of the harbour without capsizing.’

My stomach turned. ‘Euphemus isn’t a philosopher,’ I said. ‘He’s a sophist.’

‘A thinker.’ Philebus tapped the side of his head. ‘Proper, useful stuff. Not like your old friend Socrates, wasps farting and suchlike. Euphemus could have taught him a few things. By the time you reach Italy, you’ll be so full up with learning you’ll hardly have room for the food.’

He was standing near the edge of the dock: it would have been quite easy to knock him in the water. A grab of his stick, a twist, and he’d have been licking barnacles off the ship’s hull. I put a hand on Glaucon’s arm in case he’d had the same idea. Unlike me, he might actually have done it.

‘At least you’ll have plenty of conversation on your voyage,’ Glaucon told me. He kept a straight face, though I didn’t appreciate the joke. If there was one thing to dread more than a voyage in solitude, it was a voyage in company with a man like Euphemus.

Are you sure you’re doing the right thing?
Avoiding the question was easy; answering it, even with all the wisdom Socrates taught me, impossible. That’s why I had to go.

I will always risk a possible good over a certain evil
, he said. A month later he drank the hemlock.

A punch in the stomach brought me back to the shore.

‘Dreaming, eh? One foot in the fleshpots already, I bet.’

‘I’m going to meet a friend.’

A vile wink. ‘Of course you are.’ He almost doubled over at his own wit. ‘I wish I was coming with you.’

He rapped the slave with his staff like a goatherd, then upended the stick and poled himself off into the crowd. Glaucon glared after him.

‘I don’t suppose there’s another berth on your ship?’

It was a graceful concession. I met his eyes in thanks, and saw the doubts still raw behind them. He looked away.

‘Be careful. Italy’s a dangerous place. Beyond the coasts, there’s nothing but wilderness and barbarians. I won’t be there to look out for you.’

We embraced. The moment I touched him I felt a pang: not the satisfying melancholy of leaving the city, but something bitter and irrevocable. I held him as long as I could.

As I pulled away, he pressed something into my hand – a glossy green pebble polished smooth by the sea.

‘It’s a shipwreck stone. If the boat goes down, cling on and it’ll whisk you back to land. So they say.’

I held it in my fingers like the pick of a lyre. Of course I knew it was superstition – but I was sensitive that morning. I could almost imagine I felt the magic of the stone vibrating inside it like a plucked string.

‘Where did you get it?’

‘A wanderer sold it to me – a priest of Orpheus.’ He laughed, embarrassed. ‘Well, you never know.’

‘I hope I won’t need it.’

‘Of course. Go well. And come back a better man.’

The moment I set foot aboard, the nausea returned with a vengeance. The deck seemed to roll like a bottle, though the boat was tied up and motionless. That didn’t bode well. I gripped the side and stared down at the wharf, looking for Glaucon and reassurance. He’d gone.

Something struck me on the back of the leg, almost knocking me over the side. An angry porter swore at me to get out of the way; an amphora nearly crushed my toe. Smarting, I edged my way to the stern, around the side of the deckhouse. I was trembling. I sat down on the deck and waited for the panic to subside.

Are you sure you’re doing the right thing?

I reached my hand inside my bag and extracted the letter. The crew were too busy getting ready for sea to pay me any attention. The sophist Euphemus had disappeared inside.

I unfolded the flattened scroll, though I’d read it so often I had it word perfect.

For the thousandth time, I wondered:
What secrets?

Cargo was stowed and lines tightened. The sun traced its course around the world. An afternoon breeze came down off the mountains, snapping the halyards like whips, though the clouds didn’t lift. In the offing, the sea and sky were welded together without a join.

A longboat pulled us out of the harbour, hidden from the deck so that the ship seemed to move of its own volition, without oars or sails. The white tower of Themistocles’ tomb watched from the headland as we passed.

I surrendered myself to the sea.

It started slowly. A shuffle on the cymbal, like water trapped in your ear; a brushing sound that emerged imperceptibly from the noise in the club. It crept through the crowd, taking over conversations, leaving behind a wash of silence. The audience turned towards the darkened stage.

The drum kicked in. Slow, forty beats a minute, the pulse of a sleeping heart. The crowded bodies pressed towards the stage, closer to the music. The whole room had become a single organ, breathing in and out with the throb of the drum.

Jonah sucked the plectrum between his teeth and let the beat take a hold of him. His left-hand fingers slid up the neck of the guitar and settled on the chord. The music was a vector, channelling the crowd’s energy into him so that he could feed it through the strings and deliver it back to them.

The bass joined in, matching the drum and then slowly pulling it forward. A freight train gathering pace, stretching the weight on its couplings. Jonah took the plectrum out of his mouth and held it above the strings. He closed his eyes. He didn’t have to count off the time: he knew what was coming.

The beat was accelerating, the pulse drawn out of sleep into life. The keyboard sprinkled in notes that glittered like powdered glass. Spotlights chased over the crowd. Caught out in the moonbeam, he saw a willowy girl with a thin face, her long hair tied back with a circlet of cloth. Her head was tipped back, her mouth open, her body moving in perfect time with the music. In perfect time with him.

He thought of Lily. One more day …

He hit the first chord and the stage exploded in light.

The security lights exploded over the yard as Lily let herself in the gate. She crossed the lot quickly, painfully exposed to the surrounding darkness. She had every right to be there, though it didn’t feel that way. She pulled her hat lower over her face.

She climbed the stairs and unlocked the lab. She’d thought about bringing a torch, but that would have looked suspicious. She flicked on the fluorescents and hoped the window shutters were thick enough to cover it.

I’m the site director
, she reminded herself.
I’m in charge here
. She unlocked the Finds room and dialled in the combination to the safe. The gold tablet lay on its cushion, bright where the conservator had cleaned off twenty-four centuries of mud. The tiny gold letters winked out at her.

A creak behind her: she almost dropped the tablet. She stuffed it back in its drawer and peered back into the lab. No one was there. Next to a half-cleaned skull, the door swung loose on its hinges.

She was getting paranoid.

She closed the door firmly, checking it had latched, then retrieved the tablet. The writing was almost too small to read with the naked eye. She slid it under a microscope, pen and paper ready. It bulged and shrank as she fiddled with the dial, until suddenly the lettering leapt into focus.

Her Greek was rough – she left that to others – but she knew the first line by heart.

The words of Memory, carved in gold …

It always made her think of Jonah.

Jonah leaned back on the wicker couch and took a long drink from the bottle. He barely tasted the beer, but the cold felt good. Even at
2
a.m., the night was warm, and his T-shirt still stuck heavy with the sweat from the club.

The world spun slowly – nothing to do with the beer, nor even the pot smoke drifting over from the next table. He was coming down, shrinking back. The music had stopped, the audience gone. The energy they’d poured into him had all drained out and he was himself again. Nothing more.

That was the hardest thing about coming off stage. Some musicians tried to beat it with drugs, but he knew that didn’t solve anything. Just multiplied the falls. All you could do was ease the way down with a few beers and a few friends, hold on to the night as long as she’d let you.

There were stars in the water and lights in the sky. They’d come to a bar on the bank of a river, a laid-back haunt spilling over old industrial terraces under the road bridge. Fairy lights snaked through the trees, and Spartan techno drifted off the dance floor that they’d crammed into a brick bunker no bigger than a meat locker. A clutch of empty-eyed ravers stood outside like lost souls, their bodies jerking spasmodically to the music that still possessed them. It was a long time since they’d touched reality.

Shadow pushed through the crowd with six bottles of beer in one arm and a girl on the other. He always said drummers needed good hands.

‘One more for the road?’

Alex, who played bass, took two. ‘Isn’t this the end of the road?’

‘Not for me.’ Jonah leaned over and took another bottle. Shadow dropped himself onto a wicker cube-stool and balanced the rest of the beers on the table. The girl behind him squeezed onto the couch between Jonah and Alex.

‘This is Astrid,’ Shadow said. ‘She was at the show.’

Jonah remembered her – the girl in the moonbeam. She wore a slim black T-shirt with short sleeves and a sharp V opening down to her breasts. Her hair fell in long ringlets almost down to her waist, bound back with a circlet so she looked like some ancient prophetess.

‘You’re in the band too, right?’ She had to put her mouth right up against him to be heard above the music. ‘You’re Jonah.’

The couch was tight, no doubt about that. When she put her drink down, there was nowhere for her hand to rest except on his thigh.

‘You played a great show tonight,’ she said. The tip of her tongue grazed his ear. ‘Your songs … ’ She put her hand on her midriff. ‘I feel them so deep.’

‘Thanks.’ It sounded gruff. He never knew how to handle praise.

‘Are you playing any more here in Berlin? I would like to see you again.’

‘This was our last night. The tour’s over.’

‘Then we should celebrate. You want to party some more? I know some clubs in Kreuzberg I can get us inside. It’s near my apartment.’

And it would have been so easy. The night made everything possible, and morning was just a rumour. The lights and the water and the music all whispered that he could have her, forget the dawn and everything that came with it. So easy to forget.

The temptation must have shown on his face. Alex, who’d drunk more than the others, was nodding his head, perhaps in time with the music. Shadow, wise to the danger, was trying to catch Jonah’s eye.

But some things were worth remembering. Jonah stood, leaving the unfinished beer on the table.

‘I need to get to bed. I’ve got a long drive tomorrow.’

Astrid started to rise with him. ‘It’s no problem. We—’

‘I’m going to see my wife.’

Jumping at shadows meant you often missed the real thing. Focussed on the golden letters, Lily didn’t hear the car pull up outside. The shutters hid the sudden flare of the security lights.

She adjusted the tablet under the microscope to read the last two lines. They called it a tablet, but that implied solidity. In fact, every time she touched it she expected it to curl up like a flower petal. The gold was beaten to a thin foil; the elusive letters shifted with every change of the light. The conservator had done an amazing job reclaiming it from the mud where it had rested so long.

Until Adam sacked her.

The door banged downstairs – she must not have shut it properly. She copied out the last few letters, squinting hard at the unfamiliar shapes. The person who originally wrote the text had made plenty of mistakes, and she didn’t want to add more. She tried to imagine the first scribe, pressing the words into the foil with the haste of a lover. Or a thief.

She shivered, breaking her concentration. In the gap, she heard a sound from the stairs. It wasn’t her imagination. There were footsteps, nearly at the top.