As the moments crawled by, Fronto started to feel uncomfortable in the almost-silence, pursing his lips curiously as he saw a small smile cross Lucilia’s face as though she had shared a private joke with her mother. More worryingly, as soon as she smiled she turned to look directly at him, and then returned her gaze to the urn with a chuckle. Clearly whatever the joke was, it was at his expense. Under most circumstances, that would irritate him intensely, but given the situation he was inclined to let this one pass uncommented.
It seemed an age that he stood there, and he kept glancing at the oil lamp, wondering when it would go out, trying to determine where the spare flask of oil was kept to refill it should the room be suddenly plunged into darkness.
Finally, after a couple of decades of discomfort, Balbus turned and made a questioning face at his daughter. Lucilia nodded, and he took a deep breath. ‘Let’s move on, then.’
Fronto was the first outside, followed by Lucilia and her little sister. He felt with relief the cold winter air slap him in the face. It felt like emerging from a cave.
‘Farewell.’ A voice. Small. Broken.
Fronto turned in surprise, looking down at Balbina, the younger of the sisters. Lucilia and Balbus’ heads had both snapped round in surprise.
‘Balbina?’
But she had returned to her silent, uninterested façade — so swiftly, in fact, that Fronto would have thought he’d imagined her voice had not the others turned too.
‘You heard that?’ Balbus said quietly.
‘Yes.’
The old officer leaned over and reached out, taking his daughter in both hands and gripping her shoulders. ‘You are in there, my girl. Come back and talk to me.’
Silence. Balbus stood still for some time and waited, but nothing more seemed forthcoming and after a while he straightened and sighed. ‘Well that can only be good,’ he announced with a shaky smile.
Fronto nodded his agreement but remained silent as the older man blew out the oil lamp and locked the gate to the columbarium before striding back out onto the rutted track that served as a road here. Galronus, Masgava and Palmatus, who seemed to have been having some sort of tactical martial discussion during the visit, fell in once more as guards for the party, their eyes watchful as they scanned the surroundings for any hint of danger.
‘I think you’re right, you know, Fronto?’ Balbus said with a restorative breath. ‘I think that when I have the time and the opportunity, I’ll have a new columbarium built somewhere further out and move the family there. Maybe somewhere up the Via Flaminia. Seems to be a popular place for good families these days, so it won’t be lost among insulae any time soon.’
Fronto nodded his approval, scanning the area. ‘Anyone know where we go from here?’ he asked with a frown.
‘I thought you said you knew where it was?’ Balbus replied, rolling his eyes.
‘I do. From the forum. But I haven’t the faintest bloody idea where I am now. I couldn’t even find the forum now. Another couple of turns and I’d have trouble finding my own arse!’
‘Give me a clue, then,’ Balbus asked wearily.
‘It’s across the way from the ovilia, maybe a hundred paces.’
Balbus turned to the others and pointed off across the road towards a stand of pines that surrounded an almost identical columbarium. ‘Should be down that way, then?’
Palmatus nodded and pointed off at an angle. ‘More that way. Look over to the right of the trees… you can see the top of Pompey’s monstrosity. It’ll be near there.’
Trusting their directions to the only member of the group who had spent any length of time in the city in recent years, the party crossed the road and took what looked more like a farm track than anything else, heading towards the monumental marble curve of Pompey’s new theatre which towered distant over the roofs and trees of the Campus Martius.
They walked on in silence, each with the company of their own thoughts, back through the greenery and into the more populous area of recent constructions which marked the parts of the sacred space that had been parcelled up and sold on to the senate’s cronies. It would have irked Fronto had he not all-but given up caring about the city itself anyway. It seemed these days a seething hive of snakes, rats and cockroaches all in human form, and anyone with any value as a human being seemed to have moved away from the capital into more rural retreats.
Let them have their city. He would reside in Massilia or Puteoli from now on, as would his family, only coming to the capital when business required. Slowly they approached the estimated location of their goal. Soon enough the great arc of the theatre was lost to sight behind the various buildings of the greatest city in the world, and Fronto once more had no idea of his location, relying on Palmatus’ sense of direction.
Finally, after half an hour more of travel, the group emerged onto a paved road with a drainage channel — a luxury after the tracks they had wandered ‘til now. Ahead, amid the new houses rising each year and filling the land, and the monumental structures of the rich, the ovilia stood as a strange sight. The place where the population gathered to vote, the ovilia was an open space some thousand feet long and the same wide, surrounded by a neat, well-maintained fence and subdivided into aisles for individual assemblies to vote within, the whole thing dotted with plaques and signs to direct the people to their appropriate places. Despite everything that happened these days in the city, it was somewhat heartening to note that the thugs, drunks, whores, hooligans and so on seemed to have left the place alone, respecting its function in the governing of their city.
Turning, he was surprised to realise that they had emerged from a side street almost at their intended location. A brick columbarium of some size, graced with a marble façade and a tall statue of Venus stood surrounded by neatly-clipped box hedges and small flower beds, a row of shaped and pruned pines defining the boundaries behind and to the sides. Elegant. A sign of nobility, but with taste and a modicum of modesty.
‘There,’ he announced, somewhat redundantly, given that the others had already turned with him to look at the tomb. The building housed the remains of the Julii and the component lines of the extended family. Only a decade ago, when Fronto had first visited with Caesar on the death of his first wife, it had been simple brick — like the others they had seen this morning — but the great general and Proconsul who was currently the shining star of the house had embellished the façade and made sure the family’s progenitor Goddess was appropriately honoured.
‘It will be crippling Caesar not to be able to visit his mother at Parentalia,’ Fronto sighed. ‘Is it sacrilegious for us to do it for him? I mean, I knew Aurelia, but she’s not our mother.’
‘I suspect the Gods are more flexible and forgiving than most priests would have us believe,’ Balbus smiled sadly. ‘It’s just a shame we can’t get inside, but at least there’s a pleasant garden to sit in while we eat and an altar there by the statue for libations.’
Fronto nodded. He’d contemplated going to visit one of Caesar’s nieces to ask for a key, but the three Atias were very much not his kind of people — social climbers given to ostentatious displays of new money. Better to steer clear of them for such small favours. Even Caesar had intimated to him more than once how disappointed he was with his sisters’ progeny.
He peered into the shadows cast by the pine trees and frowned.
‘The door’s open, Quintus.’
Balbus followed his gaze and his own brow wrinkled in surprise and suspicion. If the Julii had come to celebrate Parentalia, there would be a dozen armed ex-legionaries surrounding the place to keep trouble away, so whoever was inside was likely up to no good.