Julia smiled warmly at my request and would clearly have agreed. She turned to Marcus, obviously to urge that he should let me go, but Lucius was already shaking his patrician head.
‘No need. It is already seen to. I have sent word to her. Your freedwoman Cilla was here earlier, wondering where you were, and I explained the situation and sent a message back — only a few moments before your patron came home, in fact.’
My heart sank, wondering what kind of lofty message Lucius would have sent and what my poor Gwellia would have made of it. But once again there was nothing I could do, except say reluctantly, ‘In that case, patron. .’
My words were interrupted by the arrival at the door, from the direction of the inner courtyard, of the high priest of Jupiter. He was a short, round person with a florid face and thinning hair under the folds of toga he had draped to form a hood. He strode towards us, looking smug.
‘Well, that should take care of the spirits, anyway. You can cremate the body when you are ready to. As soon as possible, is my advice — though the ceremony need not be elaborate. Our rituals have only been token ones, of course — we didn’t have a name to call him by, for instance, so we just called three times on “whoever you may be” — but I am satisfied that the minimum requirements have been met. Officially he is symbolically buried as he is, so no need to cut off any other bits and bury them before you put him on the pyre. I’ve left Stygius to sweep and purify the stable block for you. Fire and herbs and water, that’s the trick of it. And, if your little slave will bring that bowl of consecrated water from next door, I’ll do the same thing for myself.’
He crossed to the bowl of herbs and took a pinch of them, placed it on the altar, where the ashes were still smouldering, and held his fingers above it in the smoke, turning them this way and that and rubbing them together as if cleansing them. Then, seizing a lamp, he walked three times round the room, turning right-handed to avoid bad luck. Niveus had by this time brought in the water bowl, and the priest pushed back his hood and plunged his face in it. All this to purify himself, when he had not even set eyes upon the corpse! I wondered how long a process would have been required if he’d happened to come upon the dead man by accident!
However, the little ritual seemed to sober him, and he spoke less briskly when he said, ‘I have told them to let me know as soon as the cleansing of the stables is complete and the influence of death is lifted from the premises. Then we can move on to our ceremony here. I presume that you would like me to officiate? There is no problem for me in doing so, of course, since there is no corpse, but we should still think of sacrificing a young ram to the Lars, as one would normally do to close a family death. An animal without any kind of spot or flaw, of course. I could arrange one for you, from the temple, at a price, but of course it would take a little time to get it here.’
Lucius looked enquiringly at Marcus, who said wearily, ‘I think we can manage to provide our own. I had a word with Stygius on the subject earlier. He has been keeping a spotless ram apart ever since I first feared for my father’s health. And I have already ordered him to kill a calf and a pig and told the kitchens to prepare a feast tonight.’ He looked at me. ‘Libertus, you and Gwellia may join us for that, if you wish. Oh, and your son, of course. I had forgotten him.’
Lucius glanced up contemptuously. ‘A freedman pavement-maker and his wife, and his ex-slave of a son? That is your choice of honourable guests for your memorial feast?’
Marcus was clearly nettled, but he said evenly, ‘These are my loyal clientes, cousin: it is fitting they should be present. However, naturally I took the opportunity, when I got the news in town, of inviting a few senior councillors as well. Some of the people whom you met the other day. Though it is short notice, they have promised they will come. It is not respectful to my father that we should honour his memory alone — although of course no one in Britannia knew him.’
Lucius had turned pink again, but he said nothing more — just gestured to Niveus to take the bowl away. The little slave boy looked terrified and slunk away with it.
The other servants had set the bust upon its plinth by now, and were weaving garlands to set around its brow. Julia had arranged her net veil across her face, and Marcus pulled his toga up to form a hood again. At any moment the family eulogy and lamentations would begin, and the unknown body was waiting at the pyre. It was time for me to go.
I held a hasty consultation with the priest of Jupiter, sent one of the servants out to get my slave, and with a growling stomach — set off to find my son and do my gruesome duty at the cremation site.
Chapter Sixteen
Standing on a windy hilltop in incipient rain, with the draught sneaking under your toga-hems and whistling round your knees while Stygius and half a dozen bored land slaves try to set fire to a corpse, is not a pleasant way to spend an afternoon — especially when your stomach is grumbling all the while. Add to this that Britannia is a gentle backwater, where most funerals continue to be held at night, with lighted torches and processions of hired mourners wailing through the dark — old traditions that have long ago been swept away in Rome — and you will understand why this hurried cremation, in broad daylight with no other witnesses but the slaves and Junio, and the identity of the corpse still a mystery, seemed very peculiar and discomfiting.
Of the actual ceremony, such as it was, the less said the better. Sufficient to report that I more or less remembered what I had to say and that — with the addition of quite a lot of oil — the pyre was finally induced to burn. I even recalled before it was too late that the eyes should be opened before the fire was lit. It was in the course of pulling back the sheet to see to this that I realised that the body was now clothed again, in what looked like a scarlet tunic such as Niveus wore.
I completed my ceremonial task and stepped back to Juno. ‘Somebody has dressed the body, then?’ I murmured, keeping my voice deliberately low. We were at a funeral, after all.
‘Stygius and I. And we put a quadrans in his mouth as well.’ He too was talking from the corner of his mouth. ‘All done at the suggestion of the priest of Jupiter. He said it was disrespectful to burn the body naked, when it is usual to deck a person in their best, so the steward brought out two or three old slave’s tunics from the house and we selected this. Marcus supplied new ones for all the household staff when Lucius came.’
I frowned. ‘But not for Niveus, surely? He wasn’t there by then. And this is a page’s uniform.’
Junio glanced warningly at Stygius and his men who were standing respectfully a little distance off, but all of them had their eyes fixed firmly on the ground, and facial expressions of careful piety. They seemed to suppose that all this muttering was some kind of muted prayer.
‘It must have belonged to Pulchrus, I suppose,’ he murmured. ‘It was by far the smartest tunic, though it was stained across the hem, and they’d taken all the trimming off. It seemed to fit all right. They were going to cut it up to use for cleaning rags, but it’s found a higher use. I don’t suppose that in the afterworld a stain will matter much.’ He gestured towards the pyre which by now was well alight. ‘Time to put the grave-goods on the flames, I think.’
I picked up the plaid shawl that had accompanied the corpse, and carefully tossed it into the centre of the fire, where it caught light and began to smoulder instantly. I stepped ceremonially back to Junio again. Even as I did so, an idea occurred to me.
‘Great Mithras! Pulchrus!’ I whispered. ‘I’d forgotten him. With those soft hands and everything, it might have been a page. You don’t suppose. .?’ I nodded at the pyre. ‘If he was supposed to be carrying a message to Londinium, no one would know he was missing anyway.’