The Orpheus Descent (6 page)

The water flashed darkly, daring me to drink it. The weird music played again, much closer. I looked around.

Whichever god guarded that place, he wanted strange offerings. Wooden frames lashed together with ropes lay scattered around the precinct like the pieces of some enormous machine. Shallow sandpits had been dug into the soil, with more figures like the one on the beach laid out inside them. Seven metal pipes of different lengths dangled on strings from a tree branch, knocking into each with the wind to create the ever-shifting music I’d heard. A horned Bacchus watched proceedings from a plinth. And still the water tempted me.

‘What could be wrong with having a drink?’

Without warning, something flew out of the forest and struck me hard on the head. Weak, off-balance, I toppled over and fell splash into the pool.

Euphemus grabbed me and hauled me out. I shook myself off. An apple lay on the ground beside me, with a big brown bruise to match the bruise swelling on my forehead. And on the edge of the clearing, behind the boundary wall, a man was watching us.

I jumped at the sight of him. He was a beanpole of a man, with a round head that he seemed to have borrowed from someone much larger. Grey hair burst out in all directions, matted with leaves; leaves clung to his white tunic, too, as if he’d slept the night in the forest. He didn’t look strong enough to have thrown the apple so hard.

‘Is it safe to drink?’ Euphemus called.

The man shook his head.

‘We need water,’ I croaked

He considered this. Very deliberately, he walked around the wall to the gate and bowed. He followed the path, spiralling round us three times before he finally reached the centre.

‘I am Eurytus,’ he announced, as though it should mean something.

He looked like an outlaw, or an escaped slave. But he obviously wasn’t entirely destitute. A round gold disc, carved with tiny writing, dangled at his throat on a leather cord.

I caught his eye and realised I didn’t look any better. ‘Our ship sank,’ I whispered. ‘We need water.’

‘Come with me.’

He made us follow the path all the way back to the gate, muttering to himself all the while. The wind-chime music died away as we left the precinct and carried on into the forest. Not far off, we came to a shallow stream running between poplars.

‘You may drink.’

We knelt down on the bank and slurped up the water like dogs. I almost drowned myself all over again. Eurytus leaned against a tree, watching.

‘Are you from Athens?’

I nodded, surprised. How could he tell? Did so many bedraggled Athenians come traipsing through these woods that we were a common sight?

‘Our ship was going to Taras,’ Euphemus said. ‘Is it far?’

‘Nine miles.’

‘Can you take us there?’

He looked us up and down. ‘You should rest, first.’

From Eurytus’ appearance, I’d expected his house would be a lean-to made of moss and branches, the sort of place the centaurs might have taken the young Achilles to nurse him on berries. In fact, he lived in a good-sized farmhouse beyond the forest, overlooking a cultivated plain. That was as much as I saw before I collapsed into his surprisingly comfortable bed.

I only meant to sleep for a couple of hours, but when I woke, a soft sunset was glowing orange through the window. Fresh clothes had been left on a stool. Euphemus lay on the bed beside me, snoring like a marble saw.

I dressed and went out. The main living room was empty, but I could hear a soft, irregular tapping, like loom weights, coming from outside.

Eurytus sat on his knees in the courtyard. For a moment, I didn’t recognise him. He’d changed into a clean, white woollen tunic and combed his hair almost respectably straight. But it hadn’t made him normal. He scrabbled on the ground, kneeling over a sandpit and making patterns out of white pebbles, murmuring under his breath. Every so often, he’d lean over to the counting frame beside him and shuttle a counter from one side to the other with a sharp
clack
. Then he’d go back to the pebbles.

There were plenty more important questions pending, but I couldn’t help asking: ‘What are you doing?’

‘Experiments.’ He didn’t look up.

‘Some kind of art?’

‘Philosophy.’

They looked like children’s pictures to me, stick men and stick animals standing outside stick houses, surrounded by other, more abstract figures. A lot of triangles.

I remembered the figure on the beach. ‘Is this geometry?’

‘Geometry is the study of shapes. I’m concerned with number.’

‘I don’t see any numbers.’

‘You have to count them.’

He swept up the pebbles and started laying them out again, heavy and deliberate. ‘The world is made of numbers. One is a point. Two make a line. Three points defines a surface, and the fourth’ – the pebble went down – ‘creates volume. Solid objects.’

He drew lines in the sand with his finger to connect the stones. ‘You see? One, two, three, four. Do you think that’s a coincidence?’

‘Um …’

‘All things that exist have a number.’ He dealt out more pebbles, making another stick man. ‘If we can work out the number of each thing, we can understand how the world works.’

‘Who decided that?’ said Euphemus, from behind. He’d come down unnoticed and was peering over Eurytus’ shoulder at the picture in the sand.

‘The Philosopher. The first and greatest.’

‘Which philosopher?’

Eurytus wouldn’t answer. But staring at the triangles he’d drawn, I suddenly realised the answer. And I remembered Agathon’s letter.
A Pythagorean teacher has a book of wisdom he is willing to sell …

‘Was it Pythagoras? Are
you
a Pythagorean?’

He made a strange twisting gesture with his hand, and touched the gold locket at his neck. ‘Only the enlightened should say his name.’

‘I’ve come to Italy to find a friend of mine. He said he was studying with a Pythagorean’ – Eurytus flinched as I said the name again – ‘teacher. Did you meet him? He’s called Agathon.’

The question had an extraordinary effect. Eurytus looked as if he’d swallowed one of his own stones. He swept the pebbles up and rattled them into a small sack. ‘Truth is sacred,’ he muttered. ‘Not to be spoken.’

‘So many prohibitions,’ Euphemus observed. ‘Do you ever manage to say anything?’

I waved him to shut up. ‘Did Agathon come here? Stay with you?’ Agathon is one of the gentlest souls I know, but he has a razor-sharp mind – and he isn’t afraid to draw blood. I could imagine how the conversation might have gone if Eurytus had started showing him his stones.

The old man shook his head.

‘But you knew him?’

‘Archytas dealt with it. He can tell you.’

‘Dealt with what?’

‘Archytas can tell you,’ he repeated.

‘Who’s Archytas?’

He shut the bag with a drawstring and stood up.

‘I’ll take you to him.’

The shadows spread across the trench, creeping over the drowned city. Volunteers gathered tools and stretched plastic sheeting over the remains. Lily still hadn’t come back.

He should have walked – he’d have been there by now. Now, he worried he’d miss her if she drove back while he was walking over. He dialled her number: it rang and rang until he almost tuned out the sound, but she didn’t answer.

He couldn’t wait any more. He jumped up and found Richard on the far side of the trench with two volunteers, examining a pot-handle embedded in the ground.

‘I’m going,’ Jonah said. ‘If Lily comes, tell her to call me.’

Richard’s head jerked up. ‘Sorry.’ He flapped a hand. ‘It’s all mad today. I’ll just be another minute.’

‘Forget it.’

‘OK, OK.’ Richard tossed his notebook to one of the volunteers and took a bunch of keys out of his pocket. ‘We’ll go now.’

Jonah followed him out of the trench and strapped himself into one of the pickups. The headache was back. The warmth of anticipation had cooled to a lump in his stomach, disappointed and uncertain. He took out his mobile. Still nothing.

Richard piloted the car along the dirt track and onto the coastal highway. Jonah stared out the window as they drove half a mile down the road, then turned in at a stonemason’s. Beyond it, along a track, a two-storey farmhouse stood on the edge of a field circled by citrus trees and shiny barbed wire. The drive had taken three minutes.

He could have walked it in ten, fifteen tops. Instead, he’d wasted almost three-quarters of an hour waiting for Richard. He stamped against the footwell in frustration as Richard opened the gate.

The house had a porch, where half a dozen volunteers sat cross-legged with buckets of muddy water, scrubbing pink pot fragments with toothbrushes. Clean pieces lay out on mesh racks in the sun: they reminded Jonah of the pictures you saw after air crashes, warehouses where investigators tried to reverse-engineer a catastrophe out of its debris.

‘Is Lily here?’

A muscled boy in a green vest looked up. ‘Haven’t seen her.’

‘We just got here a half-hour ago,’ added the girl beside him, in an American accent. ‘She could be upstairs.’

Jonah took the steps two at a time. The lab was a plain room with a few wooden tables pushed together in the middle that reminded him of a school science lab. There was a dirty sink, a microscope, a computer, and plastic bags filled with pottery. A half-assembled black vase stood on the table, next to a grinning skull.

Lily wasn’t there.

‘She must have gone back to the hotel.’ Richard had come up behind him. ‘She said she’d been feeling the heat.’

Jonah stared around the room, as if Lily might emerge from under the table, or step out of one of the pictures on the wall. The sweat on his face felt ice cold.

Richard was in a different world. ‘I’ll run you back to the hotel,’ he offered. ‘She’s probably in the pool.’

Lily was a waterbaby. That first dig in Greece, she’d paced him stroke for stroke as they swam out to the little islet just off shore, hauling themselves up on the rocks, careful to avoid the sea urchins that could stab your feet like needles. He told her she was a dolphin in a past life; the first present he ever bought her was a dolphin pendant.

A door opened, an office beyond. A girl popped her head out. She was young, like the rest of them, with long brown hair and minimal clothing. She noticed Jonah, and her eyes seemed to stay on him a moment longer than necessary.

‘Can I help?’

‘I’m looking for Lily.’

Unselfconsciously, the girl put a hand to her shoulder and straightened her bra strap. ‘You’re Jonah, right? She said you were coming today.’

‘Is she here?’

‘Um, I’m not really sure.’ She looked back to Richard. ‘There’s something you need to look at in here.’

‘Won’t be a minute.’

Without apology, Richard went in and closed the door behind him. Jonah almost knocked it down to take his car keys so he could get back to the hotel. After hanging around at the dig, now this, he thought something would explode inside him.

Richard always was a prick, he thought. He flopped onto one of the battered chairs and closed his eyes. Ever since he woke up he’d been feeling he’d come into a different world, that someone had rearranged the furniture on him while he slept.

You’re not thinking straight
, he told himself. The heat, the tiredness, the end-of-tour emptiness. Of course Lily was back at the hotel. If he hadn’t stopped for that last coffee at the Autogrill, he’d have caught her at breakfast.

He opened his eyes. On the table, the incomplete skull stared back at him. It had one eye socket, and a hard ball of earth filling the space where the brain used to be.

I know how you feel.

He looked around, trying to find Lily in the lab’s clutter. Minor artefacts covered the table in ziplocked bags, each one with a slip of paper noting where it had been found. Some of the writing looked like Lily’s. A photocopied cartoon had been pinned to the wall, an old Far Side he recognised from her office in London. A pitchfork-toting Satan prodding a hapless nerd towards two doors marked ‘Damned if you do’ and ‘Damned if you don’t’. ‘
You’ve got to choose
,’ said the caption. A black-and-white exercise book lay on the cupboard underneath it.

Richard was still in the office. Jonah went over and picked up the exercise book. The cover said
Field Journal
, printed in Lily’s plain handwriting. He flicked through page after page of Lily’s meticulous observations, her neat line drawings of the artefacts they’d found. Coins, pots, a comb with a handle like a centaur.

One drawing filled almost the entire page, a thin cylinder, dented and bent like a cigarette that had been dropped on the ground. Two loops fastened it to a chain, which Lily had also drawn. Underneath she’d labelled it
R
27
:
tablet/pendant/case
, and drawn a scale, showing it was about four centi-metres long.

He was about to turn over when he noticed a gap, a rough edge where the facing page had been torn out. It surprised him. Archaeologists obsessed about preserving everything they did: they had to. It was a one-shot discipline – the moment the spade hit the ground, they were destroying the very thing they wanted to study. If it wasn’t documented, it didn’t exist.