The mourners had fallen silent. Nicole hadn’t realized how intensely irritating their shrieking and keening was until it stopped, and she luxuriated in silence. The undertaker’s assistants brought the bier down from their shoulders with a little too much evident relief. One’s bones cracked as he bent to lower body and bier into the grave. The body rocked slightly, shifting sideways. Nicole caught her breath. But the bier steadied; it sank down into the dark earth.
It hadn’t been real before, not really. Somehow that one bobble, that almost-fall, brought it home to Nicole. Fabia Ursa was dead.
The priestess hadn’t moved at all, or spoken a word, or seemed aware that any of them was there. Just as the body sank below the level of the ground, she raised her hands to the heavens. The voice that came out of her was strong, a little harsh, with a flatness in it that was vaguely familiar. So too were the words she spoke. “Queen Isis is she that is the mother of the nature of things, the mistress of all the elements, the initial progeny of the ages, highest of the divine powers, queen of departed spirits, first of the gods in heaven, the single manifestation of all the gods and goddesses.”
It was no prayer Nicole had ever heard before, but it had that odd, familiar feel. “The luminous summits of the sky, the wholesome breezes of the sea, and the lamented silences of the dead below, Isis controls at her will. Her sole divine power is adored throughout the world in many guises, with differing rites, and with differing names, but the Egyptians, preeminent in ancient lore and worshipping her with their special rites, give Mother Isis her truest name.”
Fabia Ursa’s baby began to cry. Sextus Longinius lulus passed him to the woman next to him, a nondescript woman of indeterminate age. She slid her arm out of one sleeve of her tunic and exposed a breast, thereby informing Nicole, and anyone else with eyes to see, who she was and what she was doing here. The baby’s cries subsided into gurgles.
Nicole, distracted by the baby and his nurse, had missed a few words of the priestess’ prayer, declamation, whatever she wanted to call it:“ – take the spirit of this woman who worshipped her and cherish it. May Isis take the spirit of this woman who worshipped her and comfort it. May Isis take the spirit of this woman who worshipped her and give it peace and rest and tranquility forever.”
“So may it be,” several of the people gathered around the grave said in unison. The hired mourners took up their racket again, wailing and beating their breasts. The musicians kept them company with a racket that certainly made Nicole sad – sad that she had to listen to such a ghastly imitation of music.
Fabia Honorata had carried a covered jar to the graveside. Now that Longinius lulus’ arms were free of the baby, she handed the jar to him. He took it as if he didn’t know quite what to do with it; then with a start he seemed to remember where he was. He was still in shock. He bent stiffly, and set the jar in the grave beside his wife’s shrouded body. “My dear wife,” he said with the same flatness Nicole had heard in the priestess, the flatness of rote, “I offer you food and drink to take with you on your journey from this world to the next.”
His voice was steady. But as he knelt beside the grave, looking down at the shape that lay within it, something in him crumpled. For a moment Nicole thought he would faint, or fling himself into the grave with Fabia Ursa’s body.
Of course he did no such thing. He straightened painfully, as if he were a very old man. As he turned his face again to the sun, Nicole saw tears streaming down his cheeks.
That, it seemed, was all there was to the funeral. As Longinius lulus stepped away from the grave, the two gravediggers woke from what had looked like a fairly complete stupor, picked up their spades, and ambled toward the grave. They didn’t pay attention to the rapidly dispersing group of people, nor did they show any notable concern for the solemnity of the occasion. Without a word, they dug spades into the pile of earth beside the grave and began to fill it in. Dirt thudded down onto the shrouded body of the woman who had been Umma’s friend, and whom Nicole had liked well enough.
Nicole suppressed a stab of guilt. Well enough was a cold thing when she stopped to think about it, but the fact was, Fabia Ursa had been a neighbor and an acquaintance. She had not, in Nicole’s mind, been a friend.
Whatever she had been, one thing was certain. “It’s not fair,” Nicole said to no one in particular. The others had turned away from the grave and headed toward the gate. They weren’t a procession anymore; they were a scattering of individuals and couples, who happened to be in the same place at the same time. Some even seemed to have forgotten what they’d come for: they were laughing and talking. Nicole wanted to grab the lot of them and shake them. “It’s not fair! She had too much to live for, to die like that.”
Somewhat to her surprise and rather to her dismay, the priestess of Isis heard her. “The gods do as they please,” she said with the hint of a frown. “Who are we to question their will?”
Shut up, don’t ask questions, and do as you’re told. That was what that meant, in the second century as in the twentieth. Nicole couldn’t buy it, not here. With any real concern for cleanliness, Fabia Ursa never would have contracted that infection in the first place. With a doctor who knew his ass from his elbow, she wouldn’t have died of it. This funeral wasn’t the will of the gods; it was no more and no less than ignorance.
She said so, injudiciously, but she was past caring for that. The priestess’ expression of shock was almost gratifying – it proved just how ignorant and downright criminally negligent people were in this world and time. “Aemilia is one of the best midwives in the city,” she said, “and as for Dexter, he studied medicine in Athens. Anything mortal men could have done to save your friend, they did. It was no human creature’s fault that she died.”
Nicole shut her mouth with a snap. If I’d had a shot of penicillin to give her, you’d be singing a different tune, she thought fiercely; but some remnant of common sense kept her from saying it aloud. She’d done enough damage as it was.
And still – how many people here in Carnuntum, here in the Roman Empire, here all over the world, died young, died in anguish, of injuries and illnesses from which they would easily have recovered in Los Angeles? How many babies died of childhood diseases against which they couldn’t be immunized, because no one knew how?
She didn’t know the exact answer, but she knew the general one: lots. She shivered. If you were in your thirties in Carnuntum, you couldn’t count on another thirty or forty or fifty years of healthy, active, productive life, as you could in L.A. or Indianapolis. You could wake up dead, for any reason at all. Then, the day after tomorrow, some wine-sodden lout of a gravedigger would be shoveling dirt over your corpse.
Maybe Julia had the right idea after all. In a world in which you didn’t know if you’d be alive next week, let alone next year, you really would want to grab hold of whatever pleasure came your way. Eat, drink and be merry. Tomorrow you may die. It had been a greeting-card joke in Indianapolis. Here, it was real. It was the truth.
Everybody else was gone from the cemetery. Even the priestess had disappeared, Nicole had no idea where. For all she knew, the woman had sunk back into the ground, to emerge again when a devotee of Isis came to be buried. The gravediggers had made substantial inroads on the pile of dirt. One of them belched; the other farted. They grinned at each other as if it had been a grand joke.