‘Yes. Though I have not been able to see him myself. He made it to Cathay and back! He got here just before the equinox, he and that Coldlander boy of his. He had to talk his way through the Hatti siege to get into the city. How did you know?’
Jexami’s face twitched; perhaps he was trying to smile. ‘His was an epic journey, though I never saw the point of it myself. News of it travelled — something to admire, an achievement to light up a time of blackness.’
The maid returned with the water. Rina wet a cloth, and sponged drops into Jexami’s mouth.
‘You wonder why I summoned you,’ he whispered.
‘Listen to me.’ His hand closed on hers, the last of his strength. ‘I don’t want to die and finish up as these Carthaginians do. Oiled up and stuck in a hole in the ground. And nor will I be thrown into a pit with the poor people. .’
He wasn’t alone in obsessing how he would die; she had seen it a hundred times. And, she saw, he was to remain a snob even beyond his death. ‘What, then?’
‘I want to die a good Northlander, as I believe I’ve lived like one, for all I have been seduced at times by the ways of the city folk.
‘Of course,’ she murmured. ‘Rest now. You will sleep for ever in the Wall, with your mother, your father, all your family, under the care of the little mothers. .’
His eyes fluttered closed. Perhaps he slept.
She stayed with him until the daylight started to fade.
She emerged from the house into a soft, early evening light. For once the sky was clear, and the sunset was spectacular. The remarkable skies had, for the last year, been a small consolation for the disruption the world had suffered, a bit of beauty amid the misery. But she suspected that Pyxeas would say that even this was merely a symptom of the world’s agony; she was looking at the sun’s light reflecting off the dust that had once been all the farmland in North Africa, now dried out and blown high in the air.
The maid said that when the master died she would have the corpse cremated, send the ashes to Rina, shut up the house. Rina nodded, thanked the woman — wondering vaguely what would become of
Where Barmocar himself was waiting anxiously for her. For a second time that day she had been summoned.
67
Carthalo, one of the two suffetes, had asked to see her. They would meet at an expensive cemetery on the flank of the Byrsa.
‘I will accompany you,’ said Barmocar.
‘I am summoned by the suffetes,’ she said, unbelieving. ‘Me. A runaway servant. A middle-aged Northlander with whip burns on her back and my fingers worn out from working your wife’s slit-’
‘My wife is dead,’ he said bluntly. ‘Two days ago.’
‘The plague?’
‘Of course the plague. And now she lies out in the cemetery. You will see. That is why we are going there.’
‘Anterastilis was a foolish, indulgent woman, who used me, and others, cruelly. But nobody in this world deserves to die, certainly not of the blood plague. Still — she is gone. Why should I help you, who took advantage of my weakness and vulnerability?’
‘I brought you to Carthage,’ he snapped with a trace of his old anger. ‘I took you in when no other would. Times were already hard, or have you forgotten that?’ He made a visible effort to regain control; he seemed to be under huge stress. ‘It is not me who asks for your help. You and your uncle, actually.’
‘Pyxeas?’
‘He is to attend too. It is important, Rina. Will you attend or not?’
The next morning Pyxeas himself came to the house, with Avatak, his Coldlander companion. Rina was overjoyed; it was the first time she had seen her uncle since his arrival at Carthage. But Pyxeas was silent, withdrawn, and seemed much older than she remembered, drained by his journey. He had trouble talking too; there were bloody gaps in the teeth of his lower jaw. Yet he was gathering his strength for whatever was to come today, she saw.
The four of them, Barmocar, Rina, Pyxeas and his boy, together with a servant, were loaded onto a carriage drawn by a single elderly horse, and they crossed the city.
Carthage, these days, woke slowly. On the landward walls the sentries’ fires were sparks against a sunrise that towered pink, and carts bearing the dead rolled in doleful caravans, heading for the big, ever-burning pyres. Pyxeas stared at the slow carriages, and his lips moved slowly. He was counting, Rina realised, counting the carriages, perhaps hoping to estimate the number of the night’s dead. And, as they began to climb the Byrsa itself, a series of upright crosses was thrown into relief against the sky, the dangling bodies silhouetted. Thieves, looters, murderers and other criminals, punished in an ancient Carthaginian style. At least the crows didn’t go hungry any more, the Carthaginians bleakly joked.
At length they came upon the cemetery, a place of grand tombs, some of them evidently ancient. Here was an open grave, a wound in the ground. A pavilion of some weighty fabric had been set up beside the tomb. Solemn folk had gathered here wearing heavy purple cloaks, while servants fluttered around bearing trays of drinks and bits of food. A ring of soldiers watched warily, in case any hungry citizens took offence at this display of ostentation by their leaders.
Inside, the pavilion was opulent, with an Etruscan tapestry hanging from one wall, a Persian carpet covering the dusty cobbles. A table had been set up along the pavilion’s axis — and the body of Anterastilis lay on the table, dressed in her finest clothes, washed, anointed with oil, her hair and cosmetics carefully made up. Beside her was an altar of stone laden with food, drinks, and gifts: perfumes, herbs, expensive-looking bits of pottery, amulets. A priest murmured prayers, reading from a scroll. Rina couldn’t help but remember the last time she had seen Anterastilis lying on her back like this. Well, she looked better now than she had back then, even at the peak of sexual ecstasy. They had even put her in a girdle, judging by the prominence of her bosom.
Carthalo of the suffetes approached them. He was a tall, angular man with a high forehead but a full head of dark hair, and blank grey eyes, and an oddly sinister, soft smile. And, trailing him, Rina was astonished to see Mago, Barmocar’s nephew, healthy, well fed — uniformed, but not at the war. He grinned, insolent, when he caught her eye.
Carthalo bowed formally. ‘Rina of Etxelur. Thank you for coming on this sad day. And you are Pyxeas the sage, sir?’ He spoke Greek; perhaps he had prepared for this visit sufficiently to know that Pyxeas could follow Greek but not much Carthaginian.
‘I am he, I admit it.’ Pyxeas’ speech was slurred by his damaged teeth. He rather spoiled the moment by absently helping himself to a biscuit from a plate on the altar.
Rina had to slap his hand to make him put it back. ‘By the little mothers’ tears, Uncle, that’s for Anterastilis!’
‘Oh. Well, I don’t suppose she’d have missed it.’
Carthalo smiled. ‘I follow a little of what you say. I once visited Northland, you know, many years ago. When the world and I were both much younger. Fascinating place. But your customs are quite different from ours. Your treatment of the dead, for example. You inter your dead in the fabric of your mighty Wall, so that your ancestors may add their strength to the unending war against the sea. Inspirational.’
His tone sounded mocking. Rina’s reading of his Greek was too uncertain to be sure. She wondered if this man, used to manipulating those around him, was too clever for his own good.
‘We of Carthage do things quite differently,’ he said now, waving a hand. ‘As you can see. We believe that the
