The Orpheus Descent (30 page)

‘What was the mystery?’

‘Nobody ever said. Once a year, the worshippers walked the twenty kilometres here from Athens. They came into this shrine, where the priests performed the ritual. They saw sacred objects, and were taught sacred truths. It transformed their understanding of the world.’

‘OK.’

They walked across the terrace. Half of it had been cut into the side of the hill, the other half built out on a massive stone platform towards the sea. His guide pointed to one of the column bases poking up through the earth and dead grass.

‘The building was supposed to be like a forest, full of columns. They crammed the initiates in here a thousand at a time. They’d been fasting for days; they’d walked twenty kilometres in the heat; they were in the dark, disoriented, dazed. There was smoke, incense, torches. Some scholars think they might have taken psychotropic drugs, like magic mushrooms.’

For a moment, he was back in the house in Oxford, the beds and sofas, the blood and the snow. He imagined how different it would have been here at Eleusis: the dark cavern, flickering lights, sweaty bodies jammed together, waiting for the moment when the god would come down and touch their souls. And music. There must have been music. He wondered what it had sounded like.

Rows of banked benches ran along the back of the terrace, cut out of the cliff like steps. The guide sat down.

‘No one’s found out what the rituals involved, exactly. But the basis for them was the cult of Demeter. Do you want to hear the story?’

She was looking away, across the terrace and out to sea. The cap and glasses still hid her face; she’d said nothing that wasn’t appropriate to a tour guide. But the longer he spent with her, the more sure he became that she was who he’d come to meet. There was a mystery about her, something hidden, waiting to be taken out of its box and revealed at the right time.

‘Tell me the story.’

She curled her legs under her on the stone. ‘There was a maiden who was the daughter of Zeus and Demeter, the goddess of the harvest. She was a wild girl who lived in the shady depths of the forest, a child of nature. Ivy wrapped itself in her hair; at night, the grasses lay down for her mattress and trees knitted together their branches to shelter her. All the gods wanted to marry her but her mother refused them. The King of the Underworld, Hades, wanted her too, but he knew she’d never agree to come down to the underworld. She was life, and living things need the sun.

‘So Hades went to his brother, Zeus, the king of the gods, and Zeus agreed to help him. He told his brother he could snatch the maiden while she was picking flowers in a glade.’

‘Wait a minute,’ Jonah interrupted. ‘I thought you said Zeus was the girl’s father.’

‘And her mother’s brother. It’s all a bit incestuous.’

‘No kidding.’

‘So the maiden went to the meadow, braiding flowers into a crown. But when she reached to pull up one of the narcissus flowers, a great rift opened in the earth. Hades rode out in his golden chariot. The maiden screamed, but the god grabbed her and dragged her down to Hell.’

Jonah’s chest tightened. As the story played out in his mind, it wasn’t a forest glade in Greece, but a baked plain in Southern Italy under a forked mountain. And the hole in the ground had people in it, opening up the earth five centimeters at a time.

‘Her mother heard the scream and came flying, but the crack in the earth had closed. She scoured the earth for her daughter, but no one would say anything because they all feared Death. At last, Helios, the sun who sees everything, took pity on her and told her. When she realised that Zeus had betrayed her, she tore off her crown, covered her head, and wandered the earth as a mortal. At last she came here, to Eleusis, and collapsed in the shade of an olive tree, next to a well. When the local king’s daughters came to fetch water, they saw her and took pity on her: they brought her back to life. Later, she taught them her mysteries, and ordered them to build her a temple on this spot. But she was still wasting away inside.’

Across time, across the bridge between myth and reality, Jonah felt the goddess’s emptiness inside him.

‘Meanwhile, without Demeter, the rains didn’t fall, the crops withered in the fields and turned to dust. The whole earth starved. And not just people. Because they had no food to make sacrifices, the gods became desperately weak too. One by one, Zeus sent the other gods to Eleusis to beg Demeter to return to Olympus and bring back the harvest. They offered her every imaginable gift, but the only thing she wanted was to see her daughter again.

‘When Zeus saw he had no choice, he sent his messenger down to the underworld to make Hades set the maiden free.’

‘I think I’ve heard this story before.’ Jonah searched his memory. ‘This is Orpheus and Eurydice, right?’

The guide shook her head. ‘That’s another legend. Orpheus is similar – but he was a mortal, and his story ends differently. When Zeus’s messenger reached the underworld, Hades didn’t argue. But before the maiden went, he gave her a few pomegranate berries to eat, so she wouldn’t get hungry on the journey home. In her excitement, she forgot that if you eat the fruits of hell you can never be free of it. Which is why, forever afterwards, the maiden spends eight months of the year with her mother in the light, and four months in darkness with her husband. And for that season, Demeter keeps the earth hostage and no crops grow.’

‘Does this woman have a name?’

‘The ancient Greeks didn’t dare say it aloud. They called her
Kore
, which means maiden. Plato refers to her as
Pherepapha
, the “goddess who understands”. You probably know her as Persephone.’

He barely caught the name. She’d lowered her voice, so that all he heard was soft consonants rustling like grass. As if, even now, she was afraid of what the name would conjure.

‘She has various other cult titles. The ancient philosopher Empedocles refers to her as
Nestis
. Perhaps you’ve heard of her?’

Jonah stared. She met his gaze, but all he saw was his own reflection mirrored in her sunglasses.

‘Why are you telling me this?’

‘Aren’t you looking for the maiden
too?’

She unbuttoned the cardigan and peeled it away. Underneath she wore a black top with thin straps, revealing golden-brown arms. A lotus-flower tattoo blossomed on her shoulder.

Déjà vu hit Jonah all over again. Except this time it was real, a true memory. A beautiful woman sitting on a patio, fairy lights twinkling like stars. Jonah rushing by to get to the boat across the water. The tattoo.
Nestis
.

‘You were at the hotel in Sibari the night Lily disappeared.’

She nodded.

‘You called me in London. You brought me here.’

She nodded again. Jonah felt that he’d been straining on a rope which had suddenly come undone so quickly he’d lost all balance.

‘Who are you?’

‘My name is Ren.’

That didn’t begin to answer his question. ‘
Who are you?
’

‘Do you mean
Why?
Why was I in Sibari? Why am I here? Why did I call you?’

‘Why. Who. Everything.’

‘Because I can help you.’

He remembered what she’d said on the phone.
I know who took your wife.
A wild thought struck him.

‘Did you take Lily?’

‘No.’

He was flailing. He got up from the steps, walked a brief circle on the terrace, and stood facing her. She watched him patiently.

‘Why did you bring me here? Why the charade about being a guide?’

‘I wanted you to understand what this is.’

‘What
what
is?’

‘Eleusis.’

He gazed at the terrace, the dry grass growing through the stones, the signs and barriers for visitors who didn’t come any more. ‘What is it?’

‘A place for revelations.’

‘Revelations,’ he repeated. ‘Do you mean like
truth
?’

‘Truth’s a problematic concept.’

She had a way of avoiding questions that made him want to grab her shoulders and shake the answers out of her. But an equally powerful force prevented him. An aura surrounded her, something inviolable. He knew, without having to be warned, that if he touched her in anger, bad things would happen.

‘Why were you in Sibari? Did you know what was going to happen to Lily?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Why, then?’

She took off the baseball cap and shook out her hair. It fell past her shoulders: long, dark and glossy. She lifted her sunglasses to hold back her hair, revealing a pair of almond-shaped eyes. For the first time, Jonah wondered how old she was. She didn’t look much more than twenty, but her eyes were as old as time.

‘Have you ever heard of Socratis Maroussis?’

‘Is he related to Ari Maroussis, who owns the
Nestis
?’

‘His father – and the richest man in Greece. Not that that means so much these days, but don’t be fooled. The crash didn’t touch him. His fortune’s in London, his ships are registered in Panama, and his clients are mostly in China.’

‘OK.’

‘He’s the money behind the Eikasia Foundation. He funded the Sybaris dig. He employs your friend Adam Shaw.’

‘How do you know about Adam?’

‘The old man’s probably a psychopath, if you want to be clinical. You don’t get that rich worrying about people’s feelings. He’s destroyed more people in the last fifty years than you’ve played gigs.’

She knows about the band
, Jonah noted.

‘Other people’s souls have wells of compassion, sympathy, altruism. In Maroussis, they’ve been poisoned by greed and ambition. But he’s old fashioned: he still lives by some sort of code. Ari, on the other hand, inherited all his father’s vices, but none of the restraint. Have you read Plato?’

The question caught him off guard. ‘Should I?’

‘He captures Ari well.’ She said it matter-of-factly, as if a Sunday magazine had assigned Plato to write a profile. ‘“He lives in clouds of incense and perfumes and garlands and wines, and all the pleasures of his dissolute life only make him mad for more. And if he finds anything good in himself, any merit or kindness or vestigial sense of shame, he wipes it out until his madness is perfected.”’

On the warm stones in the noon sun, Jonah shivered. Ren’s words framed a cave, a jagged gash in a barren hillside. The stench of rotting flesh wafted out; discarded bones lay at its mouth. From inside, he could hear the screams of unspeakable things. The thought that Lily was in there made him want to throw himself into the sea.

‘You said you know what happened to Lily.’ His mouth was so dry he thought he’d choke.

Her eyes shimmered like oil: sometimes green, sometimes blue, sometimes so dark they lost all colour. ‘Socrates said, “All the truths in the universe have always existed in our soul.” We just need a guide to bring it to the surface.’

Frustration erupted in anger. ‘For God’s sake, can we cut through the mystique and the games? Just tell me what happened.’

Ren didn’t move, didn’t even change her expression. She was a rock; against it, all his emotion was just froth and spray. For a moment, her permanence whipped his fury to a new, savage peak. Then he realised it was pointless.

And as his anger slipped away, he understood she was right. He had all the pieces he needed. In the straight beam of Ren’s stare, they all came together.

‘It started with the gold tablet,’ he said slowly.

‘A long time before that. But keep going.’

‘The others wanted to keep it secret – I don’t know why. They sacked the conservator, but Lily wouldn’t play. So they got rid of her.’

‘How?’

The ancient philosopher Empedocles refers to her as
Nestis. ‘The boat. They took her away.’ And he’d stood there on the dock, watching the wake churn the sea, knowing what was happening but not understanding it.

Without thinking, Jonah leaned down and broke off a stalk of grass. He wound it around his finger, watching the tip flood red as it went tight, then drain when he let go. His thoughts ebbed and flowed.

‘What’s so special about the tablet?’

Ren shook her head. Her hair swayed as though a breeze tickled it. ‘Do you know about the Orphic religion?’

‘I’ve heard of it.’ Written on a card at the British Museum.
Gold tablet with an Orphic inscription and the pendant case that contained it.

‘It was a mystery cult, a lot like Eleusis. It was concerned with a journey to the underworld, too.’

Charis:
The tablets are directions to the underworld.

‘Like a lot of billionaires, Socratis Maroussis suffers from
ennui
. There’s nothing he can’t have, but he still wants more. He’s also an old man, and he’s not well. He’s obsessed with ancient philosophy, and the Orphic cult in particular. Everything the Eikasia Foundation does is to try and understand its secrets.’

‘Wouldn’t he be better spending his money on a cure for cancer, or whatever?’

‘Do you remember the last line of the tablet?
No longer mortal – a god
. You don’t need the tablet to
find
the underworld – we’re all headed there anyway. The tablet is to help you escape. That’s what the Orpheus cult promises. Immortality.’

The sun warmed his back. The ancient stone dug into his hands. A beetle crawled slowly up his trouser leg. He didn’t notice any of it.

‘But the tablet’s not unique,’ he said at last. ‘There are others. I saw one in the British Museum.’

Ren watched him and didn’t speak. After a moment, Jonah understood that she was waiting for him again.

‘There must be something different about this one. Something the other tablets don’t have.’

She nodded.

‘But Charis translated it. She said it was the same as the others.’

‘Do you trust her?’

‘She’s my friend. Lily’s friend.’

Sandi:
Don’t you get it? They were all in this together. All college friends, all in each other’s pockets.

‘What about the others. Richard, Adam? Are they part of this?’

She shrugged. The lotus flower on her shoulder shivered.

‘Adam Shaw is very close to Maroussis.
It would be surprising if the foundation did something without Adam knowing about it.’