Desperate Undertaking--A Flavia Albia Novel by Lindsey Davis

Author:Lindsey Davis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

More people wept. The flames were lapping up around the corpses. Heat released scents of pine, cinnamon and myrrh.

Those words should have had resonance for whoever murdered Chremes and Phrygia. I glanced around to see how rage, the cause of woes most grievous might have affected the Farcicals. Too much?

I could not see them. They must have slipped away.

XXXIII

It takes a long time for fire to consume human bodies. If you give full respect to the departed and stay until they are reduced to fragments, then the ash and bone pieces cool down enough to be collected, it is a big commitment.

Out in the open, sounds carried from afar. Subdued, our group was now standing mainly in silence, or talking only in undertones. The night grew darker. We waited. The atmosphere was chill, our breath wreathing. People believed that until the dead were formally buried, their troubled shades lingered, hovering around their mourners, unable to find rest in the underworld. As flames consumed the bodies of Chremes and Phrygia, we could easily imagine it to be true.

I saw Mucius from the Seventh Cohort talking to Tiberius. They both looked towards me, so were probably discussing the Saepta Julia break-in. Dromo waved, as if we were all partying on a beach; he had no sense of occasion. I stayed where I was.

I sought out Sophrona for commiserations, since it was her birth-mother’s funeral. She was a wonderful musician, I knew, but her instrument was the water organ: much too large to transport here. Sophrona had several small children, who were running around; I had heard that her husband, who had not come with her, was flighty.

She knew what I did. Calm and composed, the tall young woman declared that she would probably murder this husband over his next affair, but she had no time, energy or wish to kill anyone else. I never had her as a suspect. Sophrona, who seemed a gentle soul, only knew Chremes and Phrygia slightly; whenever she had met them, he had always been distant with her, she vague in her own way yet more kindly. Sophrona said she grieved their loss; she wanted me to discover who murdered them. As she grabbed at a mischievous infant, she sent regards to my parents, urging me on, saying they would want me to do my best. Among this group, many of whom had known Falco and Helena before I did, I felt overshadowed. It was hard work competing with their reputation.

In the loose amalgam of actors, backstage hands, acrobatic performers and animal trainers, no one else seemed to have any motive. I moved on from Sophrona to speak to Byrria. She said she had rarely seen Chremes and Phrygia in recent years; she had worked all through Saturnalia at Alba Longa, the Emperor’s citadel—which I could check, though there was no reason to doubt it. Besides greeting Thalia, Byrria had barely talked to anyone, though that might have been because she was upset. With me, she, too, asked after Falco and Helena, speaking with affection about their travels in Syria.

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