'Esus!'
Esus, the Blood God, because those who he slayed or were slain in his name were condemned to eternal torment.
In the corner, layers of dust faded the bright colours of the baskets woven by her granddaughter and made grey the pillow where she'd laid her lovely head.
Fourteen
Shadows were lengthening and the setting sun had cloaked the landscape in a dusky heather pink as Claudia followed the path beside the stream, but work on Marcia's tomb continued unabated. She could hear the chip-chip-chip of chisels and the clip-clip-clip of shears as she approached, along with the unmistakable thwack that an axe makes when it's engaged in felling trees.
'I thought you were supposed to be working on Hercules,' she said to Paris, kneeling on the scaffolding where fifteen marble columns were slowly being sculpted into nymphs.
One tanned and muscled shoulder shrugged, but his concentration didn't waver.
'Marcia wants me back on the caryatids,' he said, blowing away the marble dust that had accumulated in the nymph's left ear. 'She insists the tomb take priority again, so I've delegated the statuary to her hired workforce, given them sketches, dimensions and so on, and then it's just a question of adding the personal touches myself. Some of them,' he added grudgingly, 'aren't too bad.'
Praise indeed from a man who could turn a lump of stone into the youthful personification of spring.
'That doesn't bother you?' she asked. 'Delegating to a team you didn't pick?'
Right from the outset, it struck her as odd that men such as Paris, Hor and Semir were working alone. Most experts, especially those in the artistic field, were accompanied by a whole squad of apprentices and labourers. Men who understood every inch of the business their maestro was engaged in, down to the last nuance and wrinkle, and who were thus easily entrusted with the more mundane tasks and repetitive jobs. When Claudia raised the subject with Marcia, though, the woman had been adamant.
'My dear girl, I provide the staff,' she'd sniffed, 'not the hired help!'
This way, she insisted, she always knew exactly where each stage was at, whilst at the same time ensuring there could not possibly be any pilfering going on under her roof, much less any lingering about on time that she was bloody well paying for.
'In other words, if bread's the staff of life, this way you're sure the life of your staff isn't one long loaf?'
'Hm.' Marcia had looked at her in much the same way Claudia imagined she might inspect a cockroach in her bed, before turning on her fashionable heel to harangue the fan wallah for not flapping hard enough, while clipping her maidservant round the ear for eavesdropping.
And whilst Claudia could see exactly why Marcia, who needed to be in control of every waking moment, would ship in scores of slaves to work on her precious project, she couldn't understand why the likes of Paris, Hor and Semir would agree to such terms. Surely artists of that calibre also had a need to be in control of their work? If only out of personal pride, rather than ego?
'What bothers me,' Paris snorted, polishing the nymph's earlobe with a soft cloth, 'is being made to employ imbeciles who can't tell the difference between a right foot and a left.'
He cast a scornful eye over the statues that were scattered round the precinct in varying stages of completion. For all her talk about purists, it would appear that Marcia was more than happy to compromise on quality in favour of early completion of her undertaking. This was nothing short of a production line.
'Thanks to one incompetent fool, I'm faced with the choice of mounting a discus thrower with two left feet on the podium,' the Greek snapped, 'or I end up with a satyr surplus to requirements, because I've had to shear his feet into hooves.' His voice softened. 'Isn't she beautiful?'
'Marcia? Um, yes. Absolutely'
'No, no, the caryatid.' He ran a lover's hand over her stone shoulders. 'Do you know what the word means?'
'A clothed female figure used in place of a column.'
'Caryatid means "woman of Caryae",' he corrected.
'A Spartan?' Claudia had had no idea.
'Spartan women were reputed to be the most beautiful in the whole of the Greek world.'
'As well as the most intelligent, the most spirited and the most independent.'
'Exactly, and can't you see the way this one is thrusting herself out of the marble? The more I work on this woman of Caryae, the more aware I become of her turning into flesh and blood. I feel her character form in my hands and then I start to sense the pride she feels, holding up this roof not just for a few years, but for centuries.' He leaned back on his knees and admired his handiwork. 'Centuries,' he whispered. 'Can you imagine that?'
And suddenly there was the clicking of internal cogs as it became clear why Paris had agreed to waive his usual practices. Marcia needed a tomb to outshine all other civil monuments in Aquitania not simply to impress people during her own lifetime, but to secure for herself the nearest thing to immortality.
Paris, too, was looking far beyond the immediate future.
Paris was looking towards a time when people would be able to look back and marvel on his works, in much the same way they used to marvel at the achievements of his Mycenean ancestors. Except that whilst Greek statues in those days were finely executed, they were also stiff and unyielding. Paris had contrived to combine his stoneworking skills with modern art that embraced the human psyche every bit as much as it revered the human body. His statues reflected real people doing real things, rather than elevated ideals. In capturing the soul, Paris had also ensured his own immortality!
Locked in his obsession with his marble, he didn't even notice her slip away. But the concept of immortality lingered, as Claudia reflected that Hor was Egyptian… and a race more obsessed with the afterlife she had yet to meet.
She wasn't sure whether he'd even noticed her, absorbed as he was with his brushwork. But he had.
'Good evening, my lady.'
He flashed her his wholesome smile before returning to his work, and Claudia thought Hor would be much better looking if he only went outside once in a while. His skin was so pale it was unhealthy, his hair was flecked with dandruff from too much time spent indoors, and it couldn't possibly be good for his eyes, working by lamplight from morning till night.
Picking up one of the hand-lamps, she toured the tomb, again dumbstruck by how expertly Hor had managed to cram everything in. The banquets, the trade deals, the villa, the boat, and more scribes, accountants and secretaries than Augustus employed to run the whole Empire. Of course, on the walls all these people were perfect. No warts, no squints, no birthmarks, no ugliness was permitted inside or out of this tomb. In each scene, a timeless Marcia was surrounded by beautiful girls, although, so as not to distract from the point of the exercise, they were either shorter or depicted seated so that each had to look up to her, physically, not just figuratively, and in every setting she was adored by bronzed, handsome hunks. No detail had been spared. Hor had painted the rich harvests from the fields and the abundant game from the forests with draughtsman-sharp accuracy, and if he couldn't reproduce the animals intended for the menagerie with anatomical precision he left a space and rough outline for later completion.
'The artwork is exquisite,' Claudia told him truthfully.