“And since the ludus must be considered part of House Pelorus, and prize gladiators played their part in the revolt, there can be no debate upon the subject. They too, must perish.”
“A sad state of affairs,” Verres agreed.
“My fine gladiators fight in these games as executioners more than warriors,” Batiatus pointed out. “Why bring in such men from Capua? Pelorus was not the only lanista in Neapolis. Why not seek such executioners closer to hand?”
“Perhaps good Timarchides knew of your past association with Pelorus, and felt the coin best spent on friends?” Verres said expansively.
Batiatus sighed. “The bitter death of Pelorus, sweetened by last gesture of friendship.”
From outside came a dreadful cacophony of flat horns and discordant flutes.
“Curse them,” Verres muttered. “This cloud leaves no sun for the dial, making it a task near impossible to tell when the procession should start.”
“It holds the sound of starting now,” Batiatus said.
“I must don my mourning robes,” Verres scowled, dashing toward the bedchambers.
“I shall see what weight I can add to its slowing.”
“Do not trouble yourself,” Verres called behind him. “They would not start without me.”
Clad in dark, heavy clothes a world away from her habitual lightweight silks, Ilithyia watched the distant sea from the colonnade that circled the house of Pelorus. She heard footsteps approaching, and the rustle of rough cloth.
“You should attend to your husband, Lucretia,” she said, without turning around. “I think he is still sulking after the journey.”
“I expect the solitude pleased him.”
“You are cruel!”
“I know my husband. Besides, I do not wish to enter the house while the body is still laid out within. Let him take on the bad fortune!”
Ilithyia smiled to herself.
“Your mourning weeds become you,” Lucretia said.
“Gratitude,” Ilithyia said. “It was kind of you to provide them.”
“Anything for a dear friend.”
“I have none of my own, not even in Rome. One is supposed to wear rags to funerals, and all of my clothing is too fine!”
Lucretia smiled with clenched teeth.
“It is to your good fortune that my clothing should be so poor,” she said.
“The great and the good of Rome are building their holiday villas here,” Ilithyia continued.
“For all that is sacred, why?”
“The views across the bay. The sea air.”
“But the journey here is miserable. As our own experience can attest.”
“Not with the right companion,” Ilithyia said, pointedly. “One does not have to trudge through the hilly backwaters of Capua, you know. You can ignore the Appian Way and take the road along the coast from Rome.”
“Ilithyia, you tease me. That way lays Cumae and the Fiery Fields.”
“The fiery what?”
“Have you not seen them? This whole region is shot through with doorways to death itself. Molten rocks like Vulcan’s very furnace. Hot waters gushing from cracks in the earth.”
“You make that sound as though it were a bad thing.”
“The dust! The rock turns powdery as ash, and throws up clouds of gray dust upon everything.”
“Merely a matter of perspective,” Ilithyia said touching Lucretia’s arm condescendingly. “Look past the rude bricks toward the marble that will come with further prosperity.”
“Do you suggest Pelorus had wisdom and forethought?”
“Where you see gateways to Hades, some see cleansing hot springs. Why commandeer armies of slaves to heat water when nature will do it for you? Think of the coast around Neapolis strewn with villas for the wealthiest and noblest of Romans. Land costs little.”
“Because the former owners met their deaths in a generation of war!” Lucretia said with exasperation.
“And there is so much history to be found. The cave of the Sibyl at Cumae. The old Greek colonies. You can sail north to Ostia from Neapolis, or take the Appian Way through Capua across land. Roads lead to the south, or if your business takes you further afield, you can sail straight from Neapolis to Sicilia, or onward to the east.”
“Perhaps you would like to stay here forever,” Lucretia said icily.
“Perhaps,” Ilithyia replied, ignoring her companion’s tone. “When there are more residents of suitable rank to welcome me! Have the other mourners yet arrived? I want to put this parade behind me. The wake will see the wine cellar plucked dry.”
Batiatus knelt in the Neapolitan dirt, a choking dust more like black talcum or the ashes of hell. He scooped up a fistful in several careful sweeps, and dumped it on his head, taking care to run his fingers across his face. At his side, the gladiator Barca loomed in watchful guardianship, clad in a dark tunic.
Gaius Verres approached, his eyes on the towering bodyguard, as if awaiting permission to come closer. Barca made no indication either way, but kept his gaze on the approaching Roman.
“You do him suitable honor,” Gaius Verres addressed Batiatus. Verres was now correctly attired for the occasion, his bright, clean toga replaced by a tunic and cowl in black and dark gray. He, too, knelt in the dirt in search of suitable ash, carefully dragging his fingers down across his face to create a cage of dark bars on his cheeks.
“I would say good morning, Gaius Verres,” Batiatus said solemnly, “but such a morning cannot be in such conditions.”
“Death comes to us all,” Verres mused. “Let us bid farewell to good Pelorus as best we can.”
“His friends, where might they be?” Batiatus asked. He glanced around, checking to see if Verres led a new set of arrivals, but saw only the hired help as before.
“Us two I believe in number,” Verres replied, patting Batiatus’s arm.
“Yet Pelorus met death at a banquet among dozens of guests. Was their friendship so fleeting?”
Batiatus stared in apprehension at the other six bearers, every one of them a dour-faced undertaker. None met his eye. As he watched, they donned white masks bearing the imagines of deities. He shook his head in sorrow that Pelorus had no family imagines to walk in his procession, but remembered he had been the newest of New Men.
Nearby Lucretia and Ilithyia lurked, their necks craning as they peered down the road, searching in vain for any other arrivals. Close to the women stood a small gaggle of slaves, and servants. They, too, donned masks that bore the images of gods and heroes. Batiatus saw a Hercules and a Theseus, a Jason and an Achilles, a Hector and an Ajax-warriors all. Absent imagines for their faces, Lucretia and Ilithyia fastened their veils, drawing them down from their headdresses to render their faces all but invisible.
Batiatus caught sight of a wide-hipped, shapely woman in a veil and mourning robes, but no other candidates for friends or relations.
“I see pipes and drums, trumpets and horns,” Batiatus muttered to Verres. “I see professional mourners and undertakers, slaves to clear the way. I see my wife and her irritating friend, and another woman whose visage is unfamiliar. And you. And me. And that is all. That is all!”
He scowled at the six men standing impassively nearby, each in the dark, long-sleeved tunic and brightly colored hat that marked them out as undertakers.
“Tradition often allows a dying master to free some slaves in his service, that his funeral procession might have some grateful associates walking freely amongst it,” Verres commented.
Batiatus snorted scornfully.
“Such a plan has little to recommend it when the slaves attempt to free themselves, and slay the master in the process,” he said dryly.
“It is an honor to be one of the pallbearers,” Verres said. “And you and I, Batiatus, we are in the frontmost position, rated the most high among all the men of Pelorus’s acquaintance.”
“By whom are we rated such?” Batiatus murmured. “There are none here to observe it. I am honored before an audience of no one.”