I spent the rest of that day at home, preparing scrolls for auction, later adding those the workmen brought. I did not enjoy this job. I overheard staff members calling me tetchy. They were wrong, though. I could be much tetchier than that.
My spirits sank lower when a slave came from Uncle Tullius. Aunt Valeria had written to him about the funeral; he was leaving for Fidenae the next morning. I confined myself to saying that Gratus would be in charge in my absence and Suza had to stay at home, since I could not face her moaning about mourners with dishevelled hair. I went to bed but slept little.
Tullius, in his mule cart, came when it was barely light, since we hoped to rattle through Rome to our northern exit while the streets were empty. Tullius always ignored the daytime wheeled-vehicle ban. Even so, he left before eager officials on the day roster started work, while the night watch would not want to delay going off duty. We escaped the city unchallenged.
We spoke little during the journey. At one point I remembered my commission for Donatus, so I asked if Tullius could tell me his nephew’s birthday.
‘Two days before the October Ides,’ he answered straight away. ‘You missed this year; I didn’t tell you – he was still suffering after the bolt hit him. Fania’s was fifteen days earlier. Their mother had believed her second child was going to be born on the same day as her first, but she came sooner.’ He was able to tell me without checking a calendar, a surprise. Tullius then said, after a pause, ‘He will grieve on her anniversary, but at least then he can lighten up for his own. If he will. He can be dark.’
As he sank back into gloom, I wondered if his niece’s death reminded Tullius of losing his own sister. Talk of family matters seemed out of character, yet he kept dates in his mind and thought about implications. Even so, his attending the funeral still appeared to be more stubbornness than sorrow.
Left with silence again, I pondered the odd tolerance that seemed to exist between uncle and nephew. Tiberius, I knew, had been sixteen when Tullius offered him a home. Tiberius was such a different character, serious and traditional, traits that might even have been exaggerated when he first lost his parents. By contrast, his uncle was a secretive but sociable businessman who slept with slaves, if not worse. Yet I had never heard Tiberius say a bad word about him. I guessed Tullius had never tried to change him – or vice versa. Generous acceptance on both sides. I wondered if their dissimilarity might explain why Tiberius had spent so much time on his own, reading.
Strange how sometimes you can alter your perspective, with barely a word spoken. Unusual, too, to come across someone who made no attempt to force conversation even when later we had the picnic basket out. I was happy with that.
Eventually, stiff and tired, we reached Fidenae. I had been nearby once before, with Tiberius, though we had been working on a case so could not linger. Now I was to stay at his aunt’s home. When we arrived, he strode out to meet us, nodded to his uncle, then hugged me in a tight embrace.
‘You needn’t have come.’
‘I wanted to be with you.’
I took him away to be private. With me, he wept, letting out his grief over Fania for the first time. Until I came, he had been keeping himself together while he consoled other people and busied himself with arrangements. I held him, saying nothing, until he stopped, left only with emptiness.
Later he wanted me to talk. It gave him new topics to think about, so I started with the story of Primulus and Galanthus. When I explained their disappearance, I had to go into the Cluventius birthday party, with its tragic outcome. Tiberius made me promise I was not investigating the deaths. I said truthfully that Julius Karus had taken over. Tiberius scratched his chin somewhat, but we avoided arguing. He knew me. He knew when he could influence me, and when not. I would not worry him with admitting my intentions, while he had too much on his mind to want a tussle he could not win.
There was plenty of other strife around us. Valeria and Tullius engaged in open hostilities. Simply related by marriage, they had nothing else in common, except their claims on Tiberius and strong distastes for one another. She was a countrywoman, he a city-dweller. She was elderly and so anxious she seemed feeble, he creaky but still a goer. They might have shared concerns for Fania’s children, but Tullius openly thought that even now they were motherless, those whiny little boys were to be shunned. He had no conscience, as Valeria loved pointing out.
The funeral was next day. We all processed to a tomb that had been built adjacent to the old estate where the grandparents and parents had lived, now sold. This tomb stood beside the road, in an awkward corner of land on the boundary of the property. The usual notice gave dimensions of the plot, ground that was now sacred to those buried there, home for ever to their spirits, unencumberable by mortgage, inviolable, unsaleable. A brick wall provided protection, with a single entrance and a garden. Four or five large trees were planted in a row on the roadside, with an orchard of fruit trees and vines behind, then rows of kitchen vegetables. It was a peaceful spot. Birds flew around and sang. Roses, with one or two pale flowers braving the winter, made a sweet surround to the tomb. It was marble, the material the grandfather had imported. Inside, neat plaques commemorated family members, while a place had been marked for a new stone to be erected: Fania’s.
Mourners had come from farms in the district. Tiberius announced briefly that it had been Fania Faustina’s wish to lie here, near their happy childhood home, with their grandparents and parents. Nobody commented that this was odd. No one (not even Tullius) said Fania’s ashes would normally have been placed in her husband’s family mausoleum and only put here if they had been divorced. Naturally, we all thought it.
I met the tenant who worked the tiny market-garden. His role was to grow produce to be given to the gods in memory of the dead. When relatives came, he supplied fresh fruit and vegetables for their feast. He sold some for the tomb’s upkeep. Then, if he managed to achieve a surplus, he was allowed it for his own table, or could sell it. He lived in a small building alongside. Today he helped with the funeral fire.
It was clear to me that Tiberius had arranged almost everything. Antistius spoke the formal words of farewell, but Tiberius gave his sister’s eulogy. Valeria and I looked after the three boys during the ceremony. She pointed out to me a widow, whom she whispered sarcastically was a very close, long-term friend of Antistius, though not of Fania.
Tiberius confirmed this to me afterwards. He said Antistius was always over at the widow’s house since, apparently, she needed continual advice on her estate. For some reason, it was beyond her to employ a farm manager. Antistius claimed he was being neighbourly.
This hardly seemed a grand romance. She was an average-looking woman, just as he was an insignificant man. She was not rich, nor were her people well thought of locally. She seemed oblivious to people’s stares or had become hardened to their antipathy. She must know what Antistius was like, if only because she knew he had offended his wife with his attentions to her. Like so many relationships, it was hard to see how it had ever come about, or why they were so firmly attached to one another.
Tiberius thought Antistius would openly move in with the widow soon. I decided not to wonder what that might mean for his young sons. Someone had dressed them in mourning white for the funeral, all their new clothes slightly too large for them. Fania had always kept them in different-coloured little tunics: red, blue and green assigned to each. She said it helped with laundry. I could see that today they felt uncomfortable and strange. At one point in the funeral, the widow made a show of approaching to hug them; they were unresponsive, especially the two youngest. Aunt Valeria took them all home early.
The rest of us duly stayed until the cremation finished. This long period of waiting always has the potential to be awkward. Tiberius was strung so tight I kept him away from his brother-in-law, lest he ended up punching Antistius. Uncle Tullius did stay at the tomb to the end. He had brought a flask of expensive oil to pour upon his niece’s bier; then, for all the hours necessary, he engaged with local mourners, acting for the family, even though I knew he thought of those people as clods.
Eventually, while Antistius was standing with his very close friend the widow, Tiberius and Tullius collected Fania’s ashes. Together they placed her remains in an urn that Tiberius provided, then set it inside the tomb. I had never been religious, but I spent a moment thanking the spirits of his parents for Tiberius, while I made a silent promise that I would take care of him. He spent a long time inside the tomb on his own, while I waited outside for him in the quiet garden where his sister’s spirit could now safely wander among those of her ancestors.
Darkness was falling as we left.