In the Shadow of Heroes Page 15

  ‘Spoken like a true Stoic,’ he laughed. ‘But this feels like more than coincidence.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Our fates have aligned, it seems. We’re both heading to Britannia now.’

  Tog raised one eyebrow, which was perhaps the most expressive gesture he’d ever seen her make. He told her everything that had happened since she had abandoned him in the baths. When he reached the part about the priestess’s prophecy, Tog stopped him. ‘I know Mona,’ she said. ‘It’s where fugitives go. All the people who ran from the Romans. The last of the druids live there.’

  The druids. Cadmus had read about this Gaulish religion. Their priests were sorcerers, necromancers, men who dabbled in human sacrifice. The Romans had been so appalled by their practices that they’d trapped them on their island and massacred them only two years previously.

  But as much as they were feared and hated by Romans, the druids sounded like perfect company for someone like Medea. And she was definitely a fugitive . . . It seemed to fit quite nicely.

  ‘I don’t know how we’ll get there before Nero and Tullus,’ he said. ‘I don’t know how we’ll get there at all, in fact. Even if we find the fleece—’

  Cadmus was suddenly aware of a presence a little behind him. Taller than him. Taller even than Tog. When he turned he saw the tanned, leathery man who had been watching him earlier. Orthus started barking,

  ‘Shut him up,’ he said in a rough and earthy voice.

  ‘You’ve made enough of a scene as it is.’

  Cadmus patted Orthus and drew him to his side. He looked at the man. Beneath his great beard his face was seamed and craggy, and his tunic was not woven but stitched together out of animal skin. He almost seemed in costume, an ancient tragic hero ready to take to the stage.

  ‘Where did you get it?’ the man said, once Orthus was calm.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Where did you get the fleece?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about . . .’

  ‘Don’t play stupid with me. I saw you selling it to the Syrian. Where did you find it?’

  ‘It’s . . . difficult to explain . . .’

  ‘Did you get it from Eriopis?’

  The man stepped forward and completely overshadowed Cadmus. Tog watched him carefully, her fingers curling slowly into fists.

  ‘Eriopis? I don’t know who that is.’

  ‘The witch.’

  Cadmus paused for a moment. He looked at Tog, then back at the bearded man. It wasn’t worth his while starting a fight.

  ‘Yes. In Athens. She called herself a priestess of the Hecate.’

  ‘Then you have spoken to her?’

  ‘Well. Yes. But—’ He stopped. ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’

  The man was staring intently into Cadmus’s eyes, almost like he was trying to see past them. Cadmus closed his one yellow eye self-consciously.

  ‘How do you know Eriopis?’ he said.

  ‘I told you, I don’t know her. That’s the first time I’ve heard that name – we only spoke very briefly. And she spoke mostly in riddles.’

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘She said she’d seen me before.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘She said . . .’ His thoughts were fuzzy. The man was intimidating. ‘She thought I had the fleece. But I didn’t.’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘She made a prophecy. About what the fleece could do. And where to find it.’

  The man scrutinized him carefully, as though trying to discover the truth of what he was saying.

  ‘She mentioned the grave?’ he said after a moment.

  Cadmus nodded. How did the man know these things? These were secrets it had taken Tullus his entire life to uncover.

  The man straightened up and looked around. ‘We should not talk of such things in public,’ he said. ‘Come with me. We may be able to help each other.’

  As he turned to go, a pained cry that resounded around the agora.

  ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘It seems our Syrian friend has realized he is missing something.’

  Smiling, the man pulled back his tunic of animal hide and revealed a mass of golden thread beneath.

  ‘You know,’ said Cadmus tentatively, ‘that’s not the real thing?’

  ‘Of course I know,’ the man said. ‘I was the one who made it.’

  Corinth occupied a narrow strip of land separating seas to the north and south. To the west of the city the land curved round in a long, mountainous peninsula, creating a safe harbour for ships entering from the gulf. The man led them out of Corinth and along the bay, until they reached a small shrine to Fons. Here, a small stream emerged from the rocks and tumbled down towards the sea. The mixed scents of sea air and pine resin were suddenly replaced with something less pleasant.

  ‘Smells like eggs,’ Tog complained.

  ‘Sulphur,’ said Cadmus. ‘There must be a hot spring here.’

  A few paces ahead of them, the man bent, cupped the water with his hands, and drank.

  ‘Who is he?’ said Tog a little too loudly.

  ‘I am Thoas,’ he said, standing.

  ‘How do you know about the priestess?’

  ‘Eriopis is one of us,’ he said. ‘Broadly speaking.’

  ‘Who is “us”?’

  ‘That will be answered in good time,’ said Thoas. ‘Now. We are entering a sacred place. Drink your fill from the spring. It is long way to the heart of the mountains.’

  Cadmus quickly found himself at the rear of the group, Orthus at his side. The ground was steep and uneven, and every one of Tog’s giant steps sent rock and grit sliding down behind her. They scrambled higher and higher into the scrubland, Thoas never speaking, never even glancing over his shoulder. Cadmus began to wonder if they’d made a terrible mistake. Without the sea breeze the sun was brutally hot. The trees here were sparse and stunted, barely higher than Cadmus’s head, and offered no shade whatsoever.

  He’d lagged far behind on an uphill stretch when Tog’s voice suddenly rolled around the mountainside.

  ‘Cadmus,’ she said. ‘Look at this.’

  He climbed a landslide of broken rocks, spitting dust and muttering to himself.

  And then he saw the view. What little breath he had left in his dry and creaking lungs was quite taken away.

  From the top of the mountain he could see almost all the way back to Athens, the land folded and creased like old leather. To the north was the expanse of the sea, hazy and no longer glittering now the sun was directly overhead. To the west and the south were the high, pale mountains of the Peloponnese, their foothills cloaked in a thick mist that seemed to suggest they were not just in a different place, but a different time altogether.

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ he said.

  On this side of the mountain, facing away from the sea and the city, the trees and bushes were suddenly vastly more numerous – not only pine, but also oak, plane and myrtle. On the slopes of the next ridge were grasses and a thick forest. It was like stumbling upon a lost world.

  Tog stood a few paces ahead of him with her arms folded and nodded with satisfaction. Thoas was already striding down the other side of the ridge.

  Orthus suddenly stiffened like a hare disturbed from its burrow. He turned an ear in the direction of the trees a little further down the mountain.

  The first spear narrowly missed Tog’s shoulder and planted in the ground between Cadmus’s feet. He had just enough time to see a dozen or so men and women springing from among the pines in animal skins, when the second spear came whistling at him. He turned his back and the point clipped the edge of his tunic and clattered among the stones.

  ‘Stop,’ Thoas said loudly. ‘They’re with me.’

  Cadmus came out from behind a rock, and saw the men and women advancing from among the trees. They looked very similar to Thoas – almost primitive, some of them bare-skinned above and below the waist, others in animal hides. Many were armed, spears in hand, shi
elds slung upon their backs. One man wore a lion skin and held a club in his right hand. One carried a lyre. They were all, men and women, dark and muscular and proportioned like no human beings Cadmus had ever seen, except, perhaps, Tog herself. They looked as though they had escaped from the design of a Greek urn.

  They formed a circle around the newcomers, their eyes narrow and suspicious. Cadmus did his best to calm Orthus, who was still growling and barking.

  ‘I found him in the agora,’ said Thoas. ‘He was carrying this.’

  He pulled the fake fleece out from underneath his tunic. There were gasps from the others.

  ‘His eye,’ said the one in the lion skin.

  ‘Yes,’ said Thoas. ‘I know.’

  ‘Does he?’

  Thoas shook his head.

  Before Cadmus could ask what they meant, he and Tog were thrust together and led down a narrow, stony path through the trees. Orthus stayed close to him. It was good to feel the dog’s muzzle brushing his calves. They descended the eastern side of the mountain and went up the opposite ridge, where the woods were thicker. They walked in silence, swatting mosquitoes from their faces. The air among the trees was hot and thick, like the inside of the baths.

  Cadmus’s head swam in the heat. The man had said they could help each other, but now he felt more like his prisoner. He wondered why the man in the lion skin had mentioned his eye. He wondered who any of these people were, and how they knew everything about the fleece already. He looked round at Tog, but as usual she seemed unruffled by the situation. Perhaps her head was spinning as much as his, and she just didn’t show it.

  As they walked on, Cadmus saw a dark shape further up the mountainside. He squinted but could make no sense of it – there were strange angles and lines that did not belong in a forest. At first he thought it was a strangely shaped boulder, but as they got closer he realized that it was not a work of nature. It was something that had been built, long, long ago.

  After a hundred paces the trunks of the trees thinned and they entered a theatre of rock, an uneven semicircle hollowed out of the mountain and fringed with trees. At its centre, miles from the sea and sunk into the earth, was a boat. It was rotten and ruined and overgrown with twisted bushes, but the name on its prow was still visible even from where Cadmus stood:

  APГΩ

  They were standing in the shadow of the Argo.

  XX

  They sat in the broken hull of the ship, on benches that had been built for the oarsmen, while their captors talked in low voices in the bows. Cadmus and Tog had each been given a cup of warm, sulphurous spring water, but aside from that they had been ignored since their arrival. Orthus had been forbidden from entering the shrine, and Cadmus was surprised by how much he noticed his companion’s absence.

  The only light came in thin, yellow shafts through the gaps in the decking, but Cadmus could see the boat was richly decorated. Inside and out, the ancient timbers were painted with scenes from Jason’s quest: the defeat of the fire-breathing bulls, the soldiers sprung from the ground, the great serpent put to sleep; his long journey home and his meetings with the witch Circe, with the Sirens, with Talos the bronze giant; his triumphant return to Corinth and the reclaiming of his kingdom. Medea, Cadmus noticed, hardly featured in these pictures – her role in the story had been almost entirely erased.

  Piled up beneath these designs were gifts that the cult had dedicated to their hero. There were urns, tripods, statues, all cast in gold and silver. Enough to buy Tog and himself several hundred times over.

  Cadmus shook his head. ‘I don’t believe it,’ he said.

  ‘You don’t believe anything,’ said Tog.

  ‘It can’t be the Argo. Lots of ships are called the Argo.’ He rubbed his hands over the wood, which was smooth with age. ‘Still. It does look very old.’

  ‘Why can’t it be what they say it is? What’s so special about it?’

  ‘It depends on which version of the myth you read,’ he said, ‘but some people say the Argo was the first ship to ever sail the seas.’

  ‘Ever?’

  ‘Ever. Another story says one of the timbers –’ again he rubbed a hand over the warped bench – ‘came from Zeus’s sacred grove at Dodona and could speak prophecies.’

  ‘A piece of wood could tell the future?’

  Cadmus smiled and nodded. ‘Who’s the unbeliever now?’

  ‘Just seems strange.’

  ‘At any rate, the Argo was the ship that carried Jason and the Argonauts to Colchis and back again. It survived all of the trials you can see painted here, and then it was consecrated to Poseidon when it finally returned to Corinth. So we are at least in the right part of the world . . . Another part of the myth says that the ship killed Jason much later on in his life. He was sleeping underneath it, and a rotten piece of the mast fell and hit him on the head.’

  ‘Now that I can believe in,’ she said, and started picking at the hull with her finger. ‘This thing is falling apart.’

  The group suddenly split and Thoas walked down the length of the boat.

  ‘I have convinced them not to kill you,’ he announced.

  Cadmus blinked. ‘Um. Thank you?’ he said.

  ‘On the condition that you tell us everything. Starting with who you are.’

  Cadmus paused before speaking, looking from face to face, scanning the length of the ship. He gathered what little courage he felt.

  ‘You first,’ he said.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘If you want to talk about the fleece, you need to tell me who you are. Prove to me you’re not just another treasure hunter.’

  Thoas gave a little smile. ‘He is pious,’ he said over his shoulder to the others. ‘That’s good.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘You needn’t have any fear about our intentions, boy. We seek only to honour the relics. To keep them out of the wrong hands.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘It is our duty. Has always been our duty. We are the heroidai.’

  Cadmus jerked his head involuntarily. That didn’t make sense.

  ‘No, you’re not,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ the man said slowly. ‘We are.’

  ‘You’re not.’

  ‘We are!’

  ‘Well, you’re not the only ones. I should know, they’ve nearly killed me twice. I think they’re just gladiators in fancy-coloured armour, but Nero calls them his heroidai.’

  Thoas grimaced and spat.

  ‘As if Nero, or anyone who associates with him, is pure enough to claim that name. We are the true sons and daughters of the heroes. There are more of us in the world, but most of us have made this holy site our home. To preserve and defend our heritage. To keep the secrets of our ancestors and—’ He stopped. ‘Please ask your friend to stop that.’

  Cadmus looked to where he was pointing. Tog had got bored and was picking a chunk of wood the size of her fist out of the hull. She looked up, saw them both staring at her, and let it fall to the floor.

  The man looked at her for a moment before continuing.

  ‘Each and every one of us can trace our lineage back to one of the Argonauts,’ he said. ‘Many of us have divine blood in our veins. My name is Thoas, son of Jason.’ He pointed to the man in the lion skin. ‘Hyllus, of the line of Heracles. Linus, of the line of Orpheus. Meleagra, daughter of Atalanta . . .’

  A hero cult. Cadmus drifted into his own thoughts as the list went on. Plenty of people claimed descent from gods – all of the emperors had asserted with a straight face that the goddess Venus was the fountainhead of their family – but no one took such things literally. These people, though, really looked like the heroes they said they were descended from.

  Something suddenly made sense. A comment Silvanus had made in his letter.

  ‘Is that how you know Eriopis? The witch? Are you both descended from the children of Jason and Medea?’

  Thoas spat again.

  ‘The witch has none of Jason’s blood in her. She
is all poison, like her mother, and her grandmother, and the rest of her lineage. All of them deceitful, dangerous women.’

  Cadmus swallowed. The old grudges obviously still ran deep.

  ‘You still hate her? Because of what Medea did to Jason?’

  ‘Her debt will never be repaid,’ he said. ‘And she continues to wrong us. Her family have always known the secrets of the Golden Fleece. They know where Medea is buried. They know where the fleece is. And yet they keep the knowledge to themselves. It was Jason who rightfully claimed the fleece. It was never Medea’s. It belongs here, among us, with the Argo.’

  Cadmus looked at Tog. He began to feel uncomfortable. Unwittingly he had wandered into a centuries-old family feud.

  ‘I see,’ he said. ‘So you’ve had to make do with the fake all this time.’

  ‘It is not a fake,’ Thoas bristled. ‘It is a faithful replica of the original. But Eriopis wouldn’t even allow us that much.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘She had the nerve to come to us and take it for herself. She spun us lies about Romans searching for the heroes’ relics. She said it was in all of our interests, and in the interests of the fleece itself, to satisfy them with the replica. We refused, obviously. So she stole it, from this very altar.’ He pointed at the prow and then turned back to Cadmus. ‘You see? Deceitful, dangerous woman. You did well to escape from her.’

  Cadmus chewed his lips for a moment.

  ‘I understand why it might be difficult to forgive Medea,’ he said, ‘but Eriopis wasn’t lying to you . . .’

  The inside of the Argo fell silent. The other heroidai seemed to lean in to listen.

  ‘Nero really is looking for the Golden Fleece. And the Argo. And any other heroic artefact you care to mention.’

  ‘That is no concern of ours,’ said Thoas. ‘We know what kind of man rules the Romans. He is a moron. He wouldn’t know where to begin looking.’

  ‘He has already begun looking,’ Cadmus said. ‘He has found Eriopis. He has taken her. And he has ways of forcing oracles from her lips, whether she wishes to speak or not.’

  Thoas frowned, his great brow cracking like a slab of limestone.

  ‘Forcing?’

  ‘She has already told him where Medea’s remains can be found. No doubt she will speak just as readily when they ask her where the Argo is.’