She laughed. “He needs only one.”
He rubbed his hand along his unshaved jaw. “This is going to take some thought.”
The Etruscans had a custom that a newborn infant should not be named until seven days had passed. “On the eighth day,” Turms told Arthur, “the child receives his name. This is a very old tradition. The eighth day-it is the most propitious day for naming, beginning a new venture, or undertaking a journey.”
Arthur liked that idea, since it allowed him plenty of time to think. It did not, however, make the thinking any easier. In his search, he conjured before him the faces of all his male ancestors-all those he could remember, alive or dead-to see if any of them had qualities he admired and whose names he might borrow and commemorate. This proved a useful exercise, but all the time devoted to the project failed to bring him any closer to a final decision.
When, after four days had passed, Xian-Li asked him what he was thinking, he was forced to admit that while he had begun drawing up a list, he had not yet chosen a name. He told her what Turms had said about refraining from conferring a name until seven days had passed. She accepted this, but warned, “Ponder as much as you like, but you have only four more days.”
His ruminations carried him to the final hour of the final day. “The king has asked me to inform you that tomorrow morning at sunrise we will hold the naming ceremony,” the king’s chief housekeeper told him. “I am to come and wake you at the appropriate time.”
“Ah,” replied Arthur, wondering where the days had flown. “Thank you, Pacha. Please, tell the king we will be ready.”
So, as the night ended and the moon began to set over the Tyrhennian Sea, Arthur and Xian-Li walked down the moonlit path to the little temple at the bottom of the hill. Xian-Li carried the infant asleep in her arms. It was the first time she had been out since the baby was born, and it felt good to move and feel the soft night air on her face, and to see the world once again. Turms had come to see her several times since the birth, and she wanted to thank him for his thoughtfulness.
When they reached the temple, however, he was not there. In fact, no one was about except a young acolyte, who had been charged with the task of informing them that the naming ceremony would not take place in the temple. “I am to ask you to follow me,” he said. “It is not far. But there is a donkey ready if you would like to ride.”
“It feels good to walk,” Xian-Li said when Arthur had relayed the offer.
“Thank you, but we will walk,” Arthur told the youth. “Lead the way.”
They continued along the path towards the town and soon came to a small pillar standing to one side. The acolyte paused here and, turning to them, said, “They are gathered at the king’s tomb. It is on the sacred road.” Indicating the little pillar, he said, “You are to wash before you enter the sacred way.”
The top of the pillar had been hollowed into a shallow depression, and this was filled with water. The young man demonstrated how to make the symbolic gesture by dipping his hands and then passing them over his head and face. “Also the child,” he said when they had done as instructed. Xian-Li dipped her fingertips in the water and, pushing away the unruly shock of hair, dampened the child’s forehead and wet his curled little hands.
The young acolyte led them off the path towards what appeared to be nothing more than the edge of a small defile-a place where the ground had crumbled away, or where a stream had cut through the soft earth over time. They quickly discovered, however, that it was not a natural feature at all, but man-made. Steps had been cut in the soft tufa stone that lay beneath the ground.
This hewn staircase led down and down, passing between narrow walls until they could no longer see the surface they had left behind. At the bottom, the steps joined a passage wide enough for two horses to pass abreast; the passage stretched away on either hand. Torches had been lit and set in simple sconces carved into the towering stone walls.
“This is the sacred road,” the young man informed them.
“Where does it lead?” asked Arthur.
“It joins other sacred ways in other places,” replied the acolyte. “There are many such throughout the land.”
They walked along, the passageway cast in deepest gloom though the sky above held the faint glimmer of the rising sun. They passed an elaborate doorway that had been carved into the tufa; columns, also carved, supported a triangular pediment that bore the sculpted image of a man in long robes lying on a low couch. There was an inscription, which seemed to be a name carved into the architrave. The doors were of stone and sealed.
“What is this?” asked Arthur.
“It is the tomb of Lars Volsina,” answered the youth. “He was a king of our people many years ago.”
They passed another doorway set in a niche on the opposite side of the sunken road, then two more; as they continued along there were more of these elaborate facades: some larger, grandly decorated porticoes with steps and columns; others simple posts and lintels framing a stone door. “Are they all tombs?” wondered Arthur. “All these doorways?”
“Yes, all are tombs of kings and noblemen.”
The deep-carved passageway wound gently down, curving as it went. As it straightened again they saw a short distance ahead a group of people standing before another of the rock-cut tombs, this one somewhat larger than the others and more elaborate, with stone steps leading up to a covered porch. A fire had been lit in an iron bowl supported by a tripod, and torches attached to the columns and walls of the sunken roadway gave the tufa a warm, ruddy glow. There was a stone plinth covered with an orange cloth in front of the steps. King Turms stood before it, flanked on either side by women in long white linen gowns. Both had their hair braided in such a way as to fall over each shoulder; one of them held a golden bowl, the other a knife with a blade of black glass.
“Welcome, friends,” called Turms as they came to stand before the plinth. “This rite is best observed on the sacred way in the presence of venerable ancestors,” he explained. “This is a most auspicious place.”
At Arthur’s sceptical expression, he said, “I suppose it will seem strange to you that the celebration of new life should take place amongst the tombs. Even so, this, like the road you have taken to come here, represents the journey of life itself. We are travellers, and each of us, body and soul together, are companions for life’s journey. One day we will part company, as we must. The body, grown weary, will take its rest at last.” Turms lifted a hand to the surrounding tombs.
“But for those whose spirits are alive to the purposes of creation,” he continued, “there is no final destination. For such as these, death is merely a pause, an interlude where one can gather strength for new and greater journeys. Friends, we are created travellers. I ask you, what true traveller ever arrived in a new place who did not wish to explore it, and in exploring did not continue his travels, seeing new sights, learning new ways, breathing the air of a new land under new skies, and rejoicing in new discoveries?”
Turms the Immortal, priest king of the Velathri, turned and motioned to the woman with the bowl. She stepped forward, placing the bowl on the orange-draped plinth. “Though the body you bring before me in this most favourable hour will one day grow weary and die, the new spirit which has entered the world in this body is immortal and will never die. Know this, my friends, we are-all of us-immortal.”
He held out his hands. “Give me the child.”
Xian-Li, who had been following Turms’ explanation with Arthur’s whispered translation, extended her arms and gently placed her newborn son in the king’s hands. Turms raised the infant above his head, then passed it to the woman who had held the bowl. She unwrapped the baby and presented it naked to the king, who cradled it in his arms. “As the last stars of the night fade into the dawn, so begins a new day in the dying of the old. This is as it must be.”
Turms dipped a little water from the bowl and wet the baby’s head. “We welcome you, little soul, into the life we all share in this world,” he said, his voice growing soft as a mother’s. Extending his hand to the woman with the knife, he said, “Yours is not a solitary life, little one.” With a quick deft stroke he pricked the sole of the infant’s foot with the point of the knife.
Xian-Li stifled a gasp, and the child gave a squeak of surprise at the sudden, fleeting pain. A big drop of bright red blood welled up on the little heel. Turms dabbed the blood with a forefinger and made a spot on the baby’s forehead, then repeated the gesture three times, placing a spot first on Xian-Li’s forehead, then on Arthur’s, and finally on his own. “This sign is to remind you that your life is not yours alone-it is mingled with your parents, and with all those who came before you and will come after. But it is mingled with others, too, just as their lives are
