The choir continued to carry Lichas on his final voyage, calming the River Styx with their voices and steadying the Ferryman's oars.
The spy's news was bad. The worst possible, as it happened, as he'd listened in on the conversation between Rex and that high-flying crony of his from Rome. It was, as Rosenna had feared, a full-scale cover-up. Having admitted to quarrelling with Lichas at the spot where he was killed, Hadrian was one step away from confessing to the murder, something Rex had no intention of allowing him to do. According to the spy, the investigator from Rome was more than happy to drop the case, whilst Rex had personally spoken to the Emperor, who was arranging for Hadrian to be despatched to the Rhine, where the rumours about his precious boy wouldn't have surfaced.
Boy. The word made Rosenna sick. Holy Nox, Hadrian was twenty-five years old and at an age when most men of his class had been married for ten years and raised kids, having served two years in the army then either continued with a military career or taken up a post in the Administration. What had this Hadrian done? Become a leech on his father and society, that's what. A hanger-on without backbone or conscience, yet Rex still called him a boy. Rosenna pulled her long red hair loose as a gesture of mourning and sprinkled ashes over her head. Dammit, the cover-up made Rex as big a bastard as his murderous son, but nits grow into lice, she supposed. And both were equally easily exterminated.
After a while, the funeral pyre ceased to crackle and the flames no longer leapt higher than herself. The townspeople had dispersed; the choir, the acolyte, and even the priest had slipped away until it was just Rosenna and a pile of smouldering bones on a field surrounded by cypress and poplars.
Rosenna did not believe in clinging to the old ways. She understood why folk'd want to bury their dead in the City of Shades out in the country, but as far as she was concerned, times change and life moves with it. And how can they call themselves traditionalists, when the necropolises themselves had changed so drastically over the years? Once upon a time, tombs were tiny replica houses, to which the family brought food and other gifts that would nourish the deceased's spirit in its new residence. Then, through the flight patterns of birds and the clouds in the skies, the gods divulged more about the afterlife and tombs were excavated deep in the rock that the dead might be closer to Aita the Unseen, who ruled over the Underworld. Such sepulchres were a complex arrangement of chambers and corridors, passageways, columns and courtyards, but even that changed when the City of Shades was laid out in a pattern of properly recreated streets and plazas, so that the dead might feel more at home.
Except the dead were not at home, Rosenna thought bitterly, and better their ashes were buried in an urn close to the living, where flowers could be laid at regular intervals, than leave their souls to flit like bats in the void. Untended. Unloved. Ultimately forgotten …
A kite mewed high above and, down the long straight road that led to the Burning Field, a set of hooves echoed. The horse snickered as the rider pulled up and dismounted. His head was veiled, as men are obliged when paying respects at a funeral, so his face was deep in shadow, and the loose way he draped his cloak betrayed little about his build. After standing in swirling wood smoke for several hours, many of which had been spent sobbing, Rosenna's smarting eyes couldn't tell whether the rider was young or old, thin or stocky, Roman or Etruscan, though for the life of her she couldn't understand why a stranger should stand some distance from her brother's funeral and just stare. No words of comfort were offered to the bereaved. No token thrown upon the flames. Just a stranger. Staring from across the other side of the field. Without acknowledgement, the rider picked up the reins of his horse, flung himself into the saddle and galloped off, his mount's hooves kicking up clouds of dust on the road.
It was only once he'd ridden off that Rosenna noticed the couple.
Standing close together in the shade of an ancient cypress, their skin was an identical shade of olive, their hair an identical length, their noses identical in profile. The man wore a green tunic that mirrored the cypress, the girl's was a deep brooding blue, both embroidered with patterns that Rosenna had seen only once before and then on a Palestinian merchant. No words passed between the pair, yet they were communicating, Rosenna was sure of it. And as the sun slowly set and the last of the energy drained from Lichas's pyre, she was reminded of vultures standing over a body, waiting for the victim to die.
Shivering, she turned back to the fire, rubbing the goose pimples flat on her arms. When she looked back again, the couple were gone.
Standing in middle of the Burning Field as dusk settled over the landscape while she waited for the priest to return and sanctify her brother's remains before they were washed then locked away in their urn, Rosenna had never felt so alone.
Twelve
Claudia! Darling!' Eunice embraced her as though she was family. 'So glad you joined me for dinner.'
She swept her into the atrium of one of the exclusive villas that Claudia had noticed when standing on the top of Mount Mercury beside Darius earlier. But, though of fine quality, the stone inside was porphyry rather than marble, and the trimmings were fashioned from ivory rather than gold. As the widow of a rich merchant, this would represent quite a climb down for Eunice. Whereas for a masseur from the hot springs, it must be luxury beyond his wildest dreams…
'I do so detest my own company; it's unspeakably dull, and with Lars off at another of his dreary Etruscan dos and Larentia still mooning over that man of hers, I was in danger of collapsing from acute isolation.'
'If anything, Eunice, you're more likely to collapse with a cute eye doctor,' Claudia laughed.
'Darling, you know me so well.'
Her throaty chuckle mingled with the lavender and pinks wafting their fragrance into the warm evening air, along with wallflowers, chamomile and aromatic crimson rock rose. Eunice was a sensual woman in every respect, Claudia reflected. Yet she was no more likely to be swayed by flattery or the slow touch of a man's hand than the forthright, no-nonsense Larentia.
'Now, tell me honestly. What do you think of the decor?' Well, there was one thing about this atrium, Claudia thought. She wasn't likely to forget it in a hurry! Lars talked about Etruscan culture being assimilated by Rome, but in this house they met in a fist fight. On the outside, the villa was Roman from the tip of its roof tiles to the gleaming bronze knocker via the lion's-head rainwater spouts. On the inside, although the architecture was still very much Roman, with its pillars and pools, the red-painted walls were covered in Etruscan-style frescoes in which joyous families danced and dined, priests blessed painted fields and augurs divined the will of the gods from the skies and the behaviour of beasts.
'Honestly?' she asked, examining the four shrines that dominated the atrium. East was garlanded with laurel, the herb of prophesy, South with white-petalled, yellow-bearded Etruscan irises, while a small flame burned on North's shrine and verbascum was on West's as defence against sorcery. She studied the frescoes of Lars's gods and goddesses, in which some wore helmets and carried spears, others went naked and winged, while at least half had assumed animal features in one form or another. Vultures' heads, horses' ears, cloven hoofs, feathers… Right through the room, though, light mingled with dark, death with rebirth, air with water, healing with joy to create an effect that was sinister, exhilarating, uplifting and strange. 'Don't tell anyone,' she whispered to Eunice, 'but I like it.'