A Coin for the Ferryman (20 page)

‘No sign of Aulus?’ I enquired in surprise, as Colaphus shut the gate behind us, and went to retire into his cell again.

He shook his battering-ram head in mock despair. ‘They’ve searched the house and grounds for him, and looked up and down the lane. But nobody has found him, or any trace of him.’ He gave an evil grin. ‘I hope he has a good excuse when he turns up again. His master isn’t very pleased with him, I can tell you, citizen.’

‘This is not like Aulus. I begin to wonder if Lucius is right,’ I began, and then I saw the implication of what Colaphus had said. ‘My patron has returned from Glevum, then?’

He looked up to judge the position of the sun. ‘Came back about an hour ago, I’d calculate,’ he said. ‘Brought the high priest of Jupiter with him. And your son and Mistress Julia. They are all talking in the atrium; I’m told to send you in. But I’m to remind you to perform the special cleansing ritual, since you have been in the presence of a corpse today. You’ll find a bowl of water and a special pot of altar ashes in the servants’ ante-room. You are to rinse your hands and face and mark your forehead before you join the family. This is formally a house of mourning now. Do you require a slave to show you in?’ He made towards the metal gong that hung beside the wall, and would have struck it if I’d not prevented him.

‘I have got Minimus,’ I said, and we went into the house, calling in to the ante-room beside the entranceway to make the required ablutions in honour of the dead. A young slave in a dark black-edged tunic hurried in to us, and handed me a linen towel with which to wipe my hands.

‘Citizen, I put some bread and cheese aside for you a little earlier. I thought you would be glad of it when you came home again. But they’re waiting for you in the atrium. You’d better go there first,’ piped a familiar voice, and I looked again and realised the page was Niveus. I had not recognised him without his scarlet finery, and with dust and ashes rubbed into his hair.

Food would have been welcome since it was well past noon and I had eaten nothing since my yeast cakes earlier, but obviously I would have to wait a little longer. Minimus might be luckier. He was formally directed to the servants’ room to wait, like the slave of any other visitor to the house, just as if he had never worked here in his life. He stumped off disconsolately – his pale blue tunic looking strangely gaudy and inappropriate – but at least, I thought, he would given some refreshment there. I sighed, dipped my finger in the ashes and smeared them on my brow, and – duly purified – followed Niveus into the atrium.

The room was heavy with sacrificial smoke, and it was clear that more offerings had recently been made – this time by the high priest of Jupiter, I guessed, since there was a smell of burning feathers which suggested doves. A pair of oil lamps had been lit on each side of the room – obviously a gesture, since it was broad daylight still – while rose petals and sweet basil were scattered on the ground and a great bowl of sweet-smelling herbs was standing by the door. Servants, all silent and in dark tunics now, were moving furniture, and seemed to be bringing a large stone plinth into the room, while Marcus and Julia, also in dark clothes, were sitting with Lucius on folding stools nearby.

‘Ah, Libertus!’ Marcus offered me his ring. ‘You find us all in mourning – much sooner than I thought. However, my cousin warned me as soon as he arrived that my father was desperately ill, so I had the servant’s tunics dyed in readiness.’ It occurred to me to wonder why Lucius had not made arrangements too. His sparkling white toga, even with its wide aristocratic purple bands, managed to look disrespectful and rather out of place.

Julia had undone the bindings in her hair and allowed it to fall dishevelled – or it least in an artful semblance of traditional disarray – around her shoulders. Over her head she wore a veil of net which did not so much conceal her tresses as contrive to frame her face. She looked quite ravishing. She turned to extend a greeting hand to me.

‘And here is the very person to design the cenotaph. Citizen Libertus, I am glad to see you here. Marcus is planning a memorial to his father here – you know the sort of thing.’

I nodded. Politicians and other important men often have an
honorarium sepulchrum
like this, when they are honoured in one place and buried somewhere else. My patron was obviously proposing a private version of the same.

‘We could have something suitable in a mosaic niche, perhaps. Marcus already has a portrait bust of him that you could copy from,’ Julia went on, gesturing towards the servants, who were positioning the plinth. One of them was carrying the marble image of a head.

Obviously it had come from the large cupboard by the shrine, because the doors were open and there was a space on the shelf where traditionally the
imago
masks of ancestors would stand. Most well-born Roman families had a collection of these wax likenesses, each representing a dead male member of the line, which were brought out and paraded – sometimes even worn – at the funeral of the current
paterfamilias
, at which time the new
imago
would be modelled and added to the store. Presumably Marcus’s family masks were held in Rome, but clearly he intended to use the bust as a sort of substitute, since obviously some memorial ritual was in train.

I wondered if he had commissioned it since his father had been ill, or whether he’d brought it with him when he first came from Rome. Certainly I did not remember seeing it before.

However, this was no time for considerations of that kind. Marcus was signalling for an extra stool for me. Lucius said loftily, with his patrician sneer, ‘I dare say a mosaic niche is quite acceptable, here in the provinces. In Rome the fashion is for marble tombs these days.’

‘A memorial niche is not the same thing as a tomb.’ Marcus was emphatic, though he sounded sad and tired. ‘My father will be cremated and his ashes cold by now. They are going to raise a tombstone to him on the roadside out of Rome, doubtless of the finest marble my mother can obtain. And I see in her letter that she has decreed a feast, and that there will be public games in honour of his name.’

‘Exactly!’ Lucius looked disdainful. ‘And naturally the funerary expenses will fall on you, as heir. So you have done your part. Why then the necessity for another monument? Particularly one that nobody in Rome will ever see.’

‘This is a separate tribute, from my family and me. News takes such a time to reach us here. It is too late for me to close his eyes or call his name, or even to attend the funeral, let alone take part in the lament. Not even you were present, cousin, so some servant must have performed the rituals in my place.’ My patron sounded stricken and I realised how much it would have meant to him to carry out these simple filial acts. ‘I must do something to honour my father’s memory. And quickly too, before the Lemuria begins.’ He sighed. ‘And we must deal with that unfortunate business of the corpse outside.’ He turned to me. ‘No news there, I suppose?’

‘I have made a little progress, Excellence, I am glad to say,’ I murmured. ‘I am fairly sure I know now to whom the dress belonged, although—’

He cut me off with an impatient smile. ‘It’s far too late to worry about all that, Libertus, my old friend. There’s no time to trace the family now. I am sorry that your efforts on that score have been in vain, but for once I have to recognise that Lucius is right. In the present circumstances we must simply go ahead and deal with the matter right away. Fortunately the high priest of Jupiter has found a strategy for us – sprinkling a little earth on to the corpse. It gives it a notional burial at least, he says – it is an expedient that has been used before and should be enough to appease the spirits. Junio is out there with him, even now – it requires a citizen or somebody of rank. As soon as that is done, I’ve ordered the land slaves to take the body out and put it on the pyre, so that it is no longer within the confines of the villa walls. Then we can cleanse the stable block and begin the proper rituals here.’

‘The high priest is with the body?’ I was most surprised. Many priests take part in funeral rituals, of course – there’s one acolyte of Diana, the goddess of the moon, who makes a living doing little else – but there are special regulations for the priests of Jupiter. Of course, the current one was not a
flamen
– the most sacred sacerdotal post in all the Empire – nor a prospective one, as his predecessor had been, so some of the stricter rules did not apply to him. But it was unusual to find him deliberately in the same room as a corpse. It was once explained to me that, since the Roman army has a special reverence for the Father of the Gods – every legion sets up a special altar to him, reconsecrated every year with great solemnity – it was ill-luck for his priests to cast their eyes on human death, lest the evil influence be extended to the troops.

But I need not have worried. Marcus shook his head. ‘It isn’t necessary for him to take an active part. He won’t be in the room, just outside instructing Junio what to do. He and Stygius are conducting the actual ritual. Of course, there will be the physical cremation later on, but we can leave that to the slaves – the land slaves for preference, since they don’t come to the house. Lucius has suggested that the peasant garments the corpse was wearing ought to be offered as grave-goods on the bier, and then the whole matter will be disposed of with a certain dignity, just as though the dead man were a household slave of mine. Except that none of us will be there to witness it.’

‘But, Excellence,’ I murmured, ‘we don’t know who he is. It is still possible that he was a man of wealth.’

‘Then perhaps you would consent to perform the rites for him – or Junio could do it, as a citizen?’

‘But, Excellence . . .’ I protested. I’d brought this on myself. ‘I am not familiar with Roman ritual . . .’

Marcus overrode me. ‘Libertus, as your patron I am begging you. Just do this task for me. In case the dead lad was a Roman citizen, as you say, there should be someone of that status present at the pyre. You will do as well as anyone. You are not officially in mourning as this family is – it would be quite improper for any of my household to attend. I understand that you’re not certain of the proper ritual, but you need have no fear that you’ll offend the nether world by that. The priest will give you instructions what to do, and anyway he says the sprinkling of the earth is enough to keep the ghost at bay. This is an additional formality, that is all.’

I sighed. It was not a task I relished, but there was no escape. Marcus had formally requested it, and when Marcus requested something it was prudent to comply, however often he called me ‘friend’. I bowed my head.

‘I should be honoured, Excellence,’ I said untruthfully. ‘But I should be glad of an opportunity first to go and see my wife. She will be concerned already that I’ve been away so long, and I’d like to reassure her about what’s happening.’

I meant it, too. Gwellia would certainly be reassured, not only to learn that I was safe and well, but more particularly to hear that I was now required merely to incinerate the corpse, rather than keep trying to discover who it was. In fact, I was looking forward to going home to talk to her. I wanted to hear her views on Morella’s history. Gwellia often has a useful line of reasoning, seeing things from a woman’s point of view; and besides, she can be relied upon to give a man a meal, and I was seriously hungry by this time.

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.’