Danae recalled the name from the musician’s songs aboard theArgo. ‘The girl from your village?’
Orpheus nodded. ‘She waited for me and when I returned home from Colchis, she agreed to be my wife.’
‘What happened to her?’
‘She …’ he drew a wavering breath. ‘Not long after our wedding – she liked to walk in the forest, and one day a man followed her …’ his voice cracked. ‘She fought him off and ran. My brave girl was swift, but in her haste, she was bitten by a snake.’
‘I’m sorry.’
Furiously Orpheus wiped his face. ‘I’m going to get her back.’
Danae said nothing.
They walked on a little longer in silence, then he asked, ‘What happened to you?’ When she did not reply he continued, ‘Were you kidnapped by the shades that killed Dolos?’
She released the breath that had been locked in her chest. He did not know what she had done. It had happened nearly a year ago, yet her body still tensed at the memory of that night: the snow crisping the trees, blanketing the world in deafening silence, Dolos’ dark blood staining the white ground as it dripped between the healer’s lifeless eyes. It had been self-defence; she had discovered Dolos meeting with a shade to procure more of the strength elixir he’d secretly been feeding to Heracles on Zeus’ command. When she’d threatened to return to the camp and tell the hero the truth, Dolos had stabbed her. Her powers and her fury had saved her, but they had also taken the healer’s life.
‘Yes,’ she forced herself to lie. ‘Dolos and I spotted a shade skulking around the camp. We chased it into a clearing, where it attacked us. Then more appeared. I managed to take one down, but there were too many … They killed Dolos and kidnapped me.’
‘Poor man,’ whispered Orpheus. ‘It was a terrible shock when we found him dead along with the shade.’ He paused. ‘Heracles was distraught.’
Danae swallowed, her throat thick.
‘Did he find you?’ asked Orpheus.
‘What?’
‘Heracles. He, Telamon and Atalanta left the Argonauts after we discovered Dolos’ body … We thought you’dbeen kidnapped and they went to search for you. Jason was furious.’
Her pulse quickened as she grasped for more threads to weave into the fabric of her lie. ‘No … I managed to overpower the shades and escape.’
She could feel Orpheus’ eyes on her as they turned down another street. ‘What did they want with you?’
‘I don’t know …’ Her heart fluttered like a fledgling bird. But she was saved from further interrogation as the musician stopped in front of a row of marble workshops and pointed to a narrow street behind them. The air rang with the peal of hammers.
‘My lodgings are just down there.’
He led her down the passageway, halting at a shabby entranceway, before unlatching the cracked oak door.
To call the room lodgings was generous. There was barely enough space for the small table, stool and pallet that filled the entire left-hand wall. The marble dust from the workshops had even found its way through the cracks around the door, coating everything in a fine green powder. It simultaneously gave the place a feeling of abandonment and disease.
In the silence punctuated by the dull hammering of metal on stone, Orpheus dusted off his bag and began filling it with the meagre items scattered around the room.
Scanning the place, Danae frowned. ‘Where’s your lyre?’
‘I sold it,’ Orpheus replied as he picked up a small amphora of wine from the table.
She stared at him. When they’d travelled together aboard theArgothe lyre was like another limb to the musician. When the instrument had almost been destroyed by the storm that wrecked the Argonauts on Lemnos, he’d been devastated. It was his soul in physical form. She couldn’t believe he would ever willingly part from it.
‘Why?’
‘I needed the coin to travel here.’
‘Couldn’t you have played for payment? You’re the finest musician in Greece!’
Orpheus looked at her with hollow eyes. ‘I cannot play without a heart, and mine was dragged to the Underworld the day Eurydice died.’
She couldn’t argue with that.
