able to smother the sadness. He reached out and took his father's hand, bowing his head. The skin felt like cloth, rough and cool under his grip.
‘Conclamatum est,’ he said aloud and the crowd murmured the words again.
He stood back and watched in silence as his mother approached the man who had been her husband. He could see her shaking under her dirty wool cloak. Her hair had not been tended by slaves and stood out in wild disarray. Her eyes were bloodshot and her hand trembled as she touched his father for the last time. Gaius tensed, and begged inside that she would complete the ritual without disgrace. Standing so close, he alone could hear the words she said as she bent low over the face of his father.
‘Why have you left me alone, my love? Who will now make me laugh when I am sad and hold me in the darkness? This is not what we dreamed. You promised me you would always be there when I am tired and angry with the world.’
She began to sob in heaves and Tubruk signalled to the nurse he'd hired for her. As with the doctors, she had brought no physical improvement, but Aurelia seemed to draw comfort from the Roman matron, perhaps simply from female companionship. It was enough for Tubruk to keep her on, and he nodded as she took Aurelia's arm gently and led her away into the darkened house.
Gaius breathed out slowly, suddenly aware of the crowd again. Tears came into his eyes and were ignored as they brimmed and held against his lashes.
Tubruk approached and spoke quietly to him. ‘She will be all right,’ he said, but they both knew it wasn't true.
One by one, the other mourners came to pay their respects to the body and more than a few spoke to Gaius afterwards, praising his father and pressing him to contact them in the city.
‘He was always straight with me, even when profit lay the other way,’ said one grey-haired man in a rough toga. ‘He owned a fifth part of my shops in the city and lent me the money to buy them. He was one of the rare ones you could trust with anything and he was always fair.’
Gaius gripped his hand strongly. ‘Thank you. Tubruk will make arrangements to discuss the future with you.’
The man nodded. ‘If he is watching me, I want him to see me being straight with his son. I owe him that and more.’
Others followed and Gaius was proud to see the genuine sadness his father had left behind. There was a world in Rome that the son had never seen, but his father had been a decent man and that mattered to him, that the city was a little poorer because his father would no longer walk the streets.
One man was dressed in a clean toga of good white wool, standing out in the crowd of mourners. He did not pause at the carriage, but came straight to Gaius.
‘I am here for Marius the consul. He is away from the city, but wanted to send me to let you know your father will not be forgotten by him.’
Gaius thanked him politely, his mind working furiously. ‘Send the message that I will call on Consul Marius when he is next in the city.’
The man nodded. ‘Your uncle will receive you warmly, I am sure. He will be at his town house three weeks from today. I will let him know.’ The messenger made his way back through the crowd and out of the gates and Gaius watched him go.
Marcus moved to his shoulder, his voice low. ‘Already you are not so alone as you were,’ he said.
Gaius thought of his mother's words. ‘No. He has set my standard and I will meet it. I will not be a lesser man when I lie there and my son greets those who knew me. I swear it.’
Into the dawn silence came the low voices of the praeficae women, singing softly the same phrases of loss over and over. It was a mournful sound and the world was filled with it as the horses pulled the carriage with his father out of the gates in slow time, with the people falling in behind, heads bowed.
In only a few minutes the courtyard was empty again and Gaius waited for Tubruk, who had gone inside to check on Aurelia.
‘Are you coming?’ Gaius asked him as he returned.
Tubruk shook his head. ‘I will stay to serve your mother. I don't want her alone at this time.’
Tears came again into Gaius' eyes and he reached out for the older man's arm.
‘Close the gates behind me, Tubruk. I don't think I can do it.’
‘You must. Your father is gone to the tomb and you must follow, but first the gates must be shut by the new master. It is not my place to take yours. Close up the estate for mourning and go and light the funeral pyre. These are your last tasks before I will call you master. Go now.’
Words would not come from his throat and Gaius turned away, pulling the heavy gates shut behind him. The funeral procession had not gone far with their measured step and he walked after them slowly, his back straight and his heart aching.
The crematorium was outside the city, near the family tomb. For decades, burials within the walls of Rome had been forbidden as the city filled every scrap of available space with buildings. Gaius watched in silence as his father's body was laid on a high pyre that hid him from view in the centre of it. The wood and straw were soaked with perfumed oils and the odour of flowers hung heavily in the air as the praeficae changed their dirge to one of hope and rebirth. Gaius was brought a sputtering torch by the man who had prepared his father's body for the funeral. He had the dark eyes and calm face of a man used to death and grief and Gaius thanked him with distant politeness.
Gaius approached the pyre and felt the gaze of all the mourners on him. He would show them no public weakness, he vowed to himself. Rome and his father watched to see if he would falter, but he would not.
Close, the smell of the perfumes was almost overpowering. Gaius reached out with a silver coin and opened his father's loose mouth, pressing the metal against the dry coolness of the tongue. It would pay the ferryman, Charon, and his father would reach the quiet lands beyond. He closed the mouth gently and stood back, pressing the smoking torch against the oily straw stuffed between the branches at the base of the pyre. A memory of the smell of burning feathers slipped into his mind and was gone before he could identify it.
The fire grew quickly, with popping twigs and a crackle that was loud against the soft songs of the praeficae. Gaius stepped back from the heat as his face reddened and held the torch limply in his hand. It was the end of childhood while he was yet a child. The city called him and he did not feel ready. The Senate called him and he was terrified. But he would not fail his father's memory and would meet the challenges as they came. In three weeks, he would leave the estate and enter Rome as a citizen, a member of the nobilitas.
At last, he wept.
‘Rome – the largest city in the world,’ Marcus said, shaking his head in wonder as they passed into the vast paved expanse of the forum. Great bronze statues gazed down on the small group as they walked their horses through the bustling pedestrians.
‘You don't realise how big everything is until you get up close,’ Cabera replied, his usual confidence muted. The pyramids of Egypt seemed larger in his memory, but the people there looked always to the past with their tombs. Here, the great structures were for the living and he felt the optimism of it.
Alexandria
