Spartacus: Swords and Ashes

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.”

Verres chuckled wryly, leaning down with the others to grab a purchase on the bier.

“The gods, Batiatus,” he whispered. “The gods see your actions and note them.”

“Fuck the gods,” Batiatus snapped in retort. “Once again they conspire to fuck me.”

“Ah,” Verres said. “Timarchides arrives. We are ready.”

Batiatus followed Verres’s gaze, to see a man he knew only from correspondence moving toward them. He was a towering, burly Greek, his hair in tight black curls against his head, his deep tan marked in places by thin white scar lines. He was clad in a dark toga edged incongruously with a white border, as if in defiant reversal of everyday wear. In his belt he wore a rudely fashioned wooden sword. Batiatus squinted at the flat of the blade, making out enough letters scratched in it to know the name it bore was Timarchides’s own.

“And a freed gladiator,” Batiatus muttered, acidly. “All the great and good are present.”

With careful deliberation, Timarchides raised a mask to his head, strapping it in place. He turned to look at Batiatus, his face a golden parody of Pelorus himself.

“Surely the best of all the imagines,” Verres said. “That is based on Pelorus’s own death mask. Set in wax upon his face and painted by the swiftest and most diligent of craftsman.”

“So Pelorus may walk among us, even in his own funeral procession,” Batiatus said.

“Indeed so. And he will walk among us as a giant of a man.”

“Larger in death than he was in life-” Batiatus began, only to gasp at the sight of another figure, suddenly raised above the bier. Looming above the whole procession was a giant winged creature in black, a cowl covering a face that was featureless and shadowed. Standing twice as tall as a man, the imposing being was held up on a frame by an unseen slave, creating the impression that a Titan walked among the lesser mortals of the procession.

“Nemesis,” Batiatus breathed.

“A goddess of some importance to Pelorus, I believe,” Verres said.

Batiatus nodded.

“Vengeance herself?” he said.

Verres gazed up admiringly at the figure of the goddess.

“I thought it particularly fitting,” he said, “in consideration of the manner of Pelorus’s passing. And my intentions for the games that celebrate him.”

The band struck up their music, a discordant clash of cymbals, limned by moaning pipes. The horns blew a grave fanfare, announcing to the world ahead that a dead man was on his last journey, and Verres signaled to the other bearers.

Barca gestured for Batiatus to stand aside, seeing a burden to be shouldered, but Batiatus shooed him away.

“Barca,” he said. “Ever my protector. Today shall be some small Saturnalia, when you walk unencumbered and your master bears a slave’s burden.”