The Orpheus Descent (31 page)

‘Or Ari could have acted alone.’
Acted alone
. He felt as if he was covering someone else’s song. The words belonged in a story, in a cop show or a crime novel. Not in his universe.

‘Maybe.’

‘And Richard?’

‘Richard Andrews has lived his entire life by the rules that other people set for him.’

It was all too much for him to comprehend. He stared at Ren, wondering if he was about to wake up from a dream.

‘What about you?’

‘What about me?’

The question was so deep and so broad, he almost had to laugh at the futility. ‘You – everything. You’ve brought me here, you’ve told me this amazing story.’

‘You told the story.’

‘You’ve told me I can’t trust any of my friends. Why should I trust you?’

She sat perfectly still, her head cocked to one side as if listening to the wind in the dust. The silence lasted so long that Jonah wondered whether she’d say anything again, or if he’d offended her in some obscure but irrevocable way.

‘Do you think she’s …?’ He couldn’t bring himself to say it.

‘Does it matter?’

Anger flared inside him. ‘Does anything else?’

‘Weren’t you paying attention to the story I told you? Wherever Lily’s gone, you’ll find her. The real question is: can you bring her back?’

When your opponent has you ‘stuck down the well’, as the saying goes, trapped by a question with no good answer, what will you do?

Plato
, Theaetetus

The boy was about ten and naked. His damp hair clung to his scalp, though the sun had already dried his skin. He had a length of rope tied around one ankle, and a small amphora of wine lay on the ground beside him on a wet patch of stone. Soldiers milled around.

Agathon lay next to the amphora, sprawled out like a drunk in a stage comedy. Except this was tragedy. His bare skin was raw and bloated. Even trying not to look, I could see clouds of bruises spread over him like inkdrops in water. One leg stuck out at a right-angle: it must have broken somewhere on his journey to the bottom of the well. His head lolled the other way, mercifully hiding his eyes.

‘The boy found it when he dived for the wine,’ Dion told me. ‘We leave it down there in the summer to keep it cool.’

I nodded, as if what he was saying mattered.

‘He must have fallen. Perhaps he’d been drinking and lost his way in the dark.’

‘Perhaps.’ The well was in the kitchen garden, a long way from the guest quarters. Its wall was knee high, with a wooden cover leaning against it. And Agathon never drank.

‘I’m sorry. I know he was your friend.’

This is what happens when tyrants rule. Men disappear in the dead of night; corpses turn up in unexpected places; friends fall down wells. Tracks go in to the cave, but none come out.

The moral is:
take warning from the misfortunes of others
.

Now I understood what Dion had been trying to tell me. I turned to face him.

‘You knew.’

He was too young – and not quite innocent enough. The look he gave me aimed for bewildered ignorance, but didn’t quite get there.

‘He fell down the well.’

‘All that time we were talking about virtue, when you were so interested in what I had to say. Is this what you were thinking about?’

I looked down at the corpse again. It was a horrible thing: broken, flabby, empty. The soul had left it; so had the intelligence and the beauty. Everything that was Agathon.

Even so, I couldn’t bear to leave him there with the men who’d killed him. He looked so lonely, so lost. Without thinking, I knelt down and lifted him up. He was heavy – heavier than he’d ever been in life – but I wasn’t going to drop him in front of Dionysius’ mercenaries.

I carried him through a gate and all the way back to my room. I laid him on the bed and pulled a sheet over him. Then I went to find the man responsible.

Nobody tipped Socrates down a well. He died as he lived, publicly, surrounded by a crowd hanging on his every last word. I wasn’t there: I was ill. That’s what I tell people.

It’s not exactly true, not the way they think. I wasn’t lying in bed, or breathing in vapours at a steam pool. I was standing on the beach below Cape Sounion, holding a basket of rocks. I’d tied a small end of rope to the handle, and looped it around my wrist so I wouldn’t let go when I passed out.

My heart was broken. I was so empty, I needed the stones to weigh me down. If Socrates could be murdered by a mob, then there was nothing left in the world for me. I refused to inhabit it.

I remember that morning as if it were the only day I ever lived. The smell in the air, the ripples of light on the sea bed. I remember how calm the sea was, and how pleasant it was to have it cooling my feet. A fisherman sat hunched up on a rock on the point, but he didn’t seem to notice me.

My friends said Socrates drained the cup calmly and easily. He scolded the others for crying like women: he wanted to die in peace.

The numbness started in his feet and rose. He walked around to stir the poison, then lay down when his legs got too heavy. The executioner provided a running commentary, prodding his ankles, his calves, his thighs; asking him what he could feel. When it got to his belly, he lifted the veil briefly and said his last words.

At Sounion, a gull swooped down from the headland and plunged into the water with a shock of spray. I felt a pain in my chest and knew the poison had reached his heart. Socrates had left the world. I gripped the basket tighter and prepared to follow him. The laughing waves tugged at my legs like children, encouraging me on. It was a calm day, but the wind and the sea seemed to roar in my ears like a storm.

I couldn’t do it. I slipped the rope loop off my wrist and let the basket sink. I waded ashore and collapsed on the beach, unable to move. The fisherman who found me thought I was dead.

Was that courage or cowardice? Socrates said that to be properly courageous, you have to understand the true nature of the dangers. Of course I didn’t understand death. But I didn’t think that life would be this hard either.

That night, I had my drowning dream for the first time.

The guards didn’t try to stop me. They could spot a man bent on his own destruction – why bother to get in the way? Some even opened doors for me, with mocking bows and grins that said they didn’t expect to see me come back.

I came to the great bronze doors with the snarling lions and pushed them open. The windowless room looked no different in daylight, but the throne was empty.

I turned around. A knot of guards had bunched in the open doorway to watch. Their faces said getting out would be harder than coming in. I kept turning, like a hanged man twisting on the rope. Like a man spinning in the air as he drops down a well-shaft.

Dion pushed his way through the guards. He must have run: his hair was askew, his face red. He looked like a boy again.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘I wanted to see Agathon’s murderer. I wanted to call him a killer to his face.’

‘What would that achieve?’

‘It’s telling the truth.’

‘And if he executed you for saying it – would that make it better?’

I dropped my head. ‘It’s my fault.’

The moral is:
take warning from the misfortunes of others
. I’d come to the tyrant’s palace, and never noticed Agathon’s footprints leading me in. I’d insulted Dionysius, and thought there was nothing he could do to touch me.

‘Dionysius was sending me a message.’

‘Then listen to it,’ Dion implored me. ‘You’re a wise man. Don’t step into the trap he’s set for you.’

‘Socrates could have run away. He was completely innocent. But he took his punishment bravely.’

‘And did that make anything better?’

The question lingered in the open room, until heavy footsteps chased it away. The guards at the door separated, slipping into their lines as Dionysius came in.

He walked towards the throne as if I didn’t exist. But I was in his way. For a moment, it seemed he’d walk straight into me, like a trireme on a ramming course. I felt an invisible tide tugging on my body, the Voice of Reason yelling that I should move. But the Voice of Will kept me rooted in place.

Dionysius stopped, an inch from my face. The same height, the same build, the same age – it was like looking at myself in a tarnished mirror.

‘I hear your friend fell in a well.’

Off his shoulder, Dion shot me a fierce stare. I didn’t trust myself to speak.

‘He should have been more careful.’ A smirk turned the corners of Dionysius’ mouth. ‘There are plenty of dark holes on Ortygia where visitors fall and are never seen again. We wouldn’t even have heard the screams. It’s tragic. A waste.’

He wanted to provoke me. The Voice of Desire said
let him
– that the only way I could honour Agathon was to sacrifice myself on his tomb. Against it, the Voice of Reason was a small bleating, too easy to ignore.

Socrates said that no one can do a wrong thing once he’s been told the right thing. I think Socrates underestimated the human capacity for self-destruction. But this time, his argument held. I didn’t react.

It disappointed Dionysius. ‘You can mourn your friend.’ All magnanimity. ‘Tomorrow, I want you back tutoring my son. If not, your position is terminated.’

I nodded.

‘You can go.’

For a moment, we faced each other down like wrestlers. Then the Voice of Reason took charge, and I stepped around him. His men let me go.

Halfway down the next corridor, I heard someone hurrying after me and Dion’s voice calling my name. I ignored him until he was right behind me, then spun around, forcing him back.

‘You told me Agathon left.’

‘I saw him go.’

‘Obviously, he came back. Did you know
that
?’

His eyes dropped. ‘Yes.’

‘When? Where had he been?’

‘He wouldn’t say. He came back a week ago, but he was different.’

A week ago. While I was chained up in Dionysius’ quarry. ‘How was he different?’

‘As if he’d been in battle. Not wounded – but like sometimes you see men who’ve taken a blow to the head, or who’ve panicked under a charge. As if something’s been shaken loose inside them.’

‘And you don’t know where he’d been?’

‘Not too far away. He’d only been gone a few days.’

‘Did he say anything else?’

‘He said he had to look up a book by Empedocles in the library. Then he was going to catch a ship to Thurii. He had to meet a friend.’

That was me.
‘Then what happened?’

‘I didn’t see him the next day. I hoped he’d caught his ship.’

I tried to snatch out facts from the chaos in my head. ‘If he came back a week ago, and was only here a day, where’s he been since?’

‘Where we found him.’

That couldn’t be right. ‘Last night I stood in Dionysius’ hall and called him a tyrant to his face. Today, this happens. Is that a coincidence?’

‘Agathon was dead before you got here,’ he insisted. ‘Before Dionysius knew you existed.’

He could see I didn’t believe him. ‘Have you ever seen a drowned man pulled out of the water?’ he said.

‘Not until today.’

‘I have. Look at the state of the body. Agathon was in that well for days.’

I didn’t believe him – but why argue? ‘Does it matter?’

‘If you’re blaming yourself.’

‘He’s still dead.’ I’d come so far looking for my friend, and now his corpse lay under a sheet on my bed. That was the end.

‘We should bury him,’ said Dion pragmatically.

‘I won’t bury him on Ortygia.’

‘You don’t have a choice.’

I turned away. This time, Dion didn’t try to stop me.

Jonah took the bus back to Athens, staring out the window at the miles of concrete and dust. The bus was slow; the sun was setting by the time he got back. A six-pack of Mythos beer had appeared in the fridge. Adam didn’t drink; Jonah supposed it was for him. He certainly needed it. As he opened a can, he remembered what Ren had said.

Alcohol’s a drug. They don’t even have to inject it.

He left the beer and stood at the window, letting the orange light blast through him. He closed his eyes and pressed his face against the glass. The sun filled the horizon: he thought if he opened the window, he could step right into it.

The first time he’d spoken to Ren, he’d been on the phone and drunk; this time, face to face and stone-cold sober. Yet both times, afterwards, the memory faded like water drying in the sun. He struggled even to remember her face. If he had to pick her out of a photograph, he wasn’t sure he’d manage, though in person, even in a crowd, he’d know she was there without a doubt.

He hunted for a piece of paper and a pen but couldn’t find them. In the end, he had to use the back of his bus ticket and a pencil he found at the bottom of his bag. He scribbled down everything he could remember, worried that he’d wake up and find he’d lost it all.

Maroussis.

Ari.

Nestis.

Orpheus

Underworld

There wasn’t much room on the back of the ticket – it was about the size of one of the gold leaves, in fact. He wondered again about the hand that had incised those tiny letters into the flimsy metal, cramming the words in with such desperate urgency. Hard-won revelations they couldn’t afford to forget.

You don’t need the tablet to find the underworld. The tablet is to help you escape.

He thought about what Ren had told him, but his brain couldn’t process it. It sat in his mind, a giant rock that had fallen from the sky. Too big to understand: he could only chisel away at it with the one question that mattered.

How do I find her?

Ren had stood up when he asked that. ‘Stay with Adam. If they think you know too much, they might act unpredictably.’

Before Jonah could ask what ‘unpredictably’ meant, she slid the sunglasses over her eyes and pulled on the baseball cap. After that, the memory flickered and went dim, like an old film reaching the end of the reel. The next thing he knew, he was at the back of the bus, grinding through the traffic into Athens. And now in Adam’s flat, eyeballing the setting sun.