frittered away his accumulated pay on wine and whores all she could do was shed futile tears.
Faced with crippling debts, she quickly sold her land for a pittance to a rich patrician. She and her daughters would have to survive by hiring themselves out as labourers and cloth weavers, but she could ill afford to feed two useless mouths. Rather than sell them into slavery she made the somewhat more humane decision to send the boys to their uncle to earn their keep there.
Judging by the smells, they were getting close to the cattle market in an industrial sector where tenements clung to islands of land in a sea of twisting and claustrophobic alleyways.
At street level, the retaining walls of the tenements were built of stone and reasonably robust. Higher stories listed at precarious angles and looked a good bit flimsier and indeed they passed a block which had suffered a collapse. The dwellings doubled as shops by day, selling bare necessities and cheap, rough wine. The boys dragged themselves along the fetid street towards the ghostly white glow of the stone-flagged marketplace, keeping to the centre, avoiding the glowering shadows.
The open windows at street level leered at them like black sockets in a cadaver’s skull. Sextus squeaked in fright as he tripped over a pile of offal festering in front of a butcher shop and set a loathsome carpet of rats in motion. With the last of his fading strength, Quintus managed to jerk him upright before the little boy fell into the mess.
An empty cattle byre beckoned. An emaciated dog emerged from it, interested in seizing the rotting meat before the rats reclaimed their prize. The mongrel succeeded and scuttled off down an alleyway dragging a coil of intestines.
Inside the animal pen, Quintus looked around and declared, ‘We’ll sleep here.’ They busied themselves raking up stray hanks of unfouled straw and dry grass with their hands, laying out a bed of sorts against the plank walls at the far corner of the unroofed shed.
‘We won’t have far to travel tomorrow, will we, Quintus?’ asked the younger boy hopefully.
Quintus wasn’t at all sure but he said with feigned confidence, ‘If we start early, we’ll be at Uncle’s before noon.’
He untied the knotted corners of the travelling blanket he’d been carrying over his shoulder and removed the last of their meagre provisions. Handing Sextus half the bread and an apple, the two boys collapsed on the straw bed and ate.
Balbilus heard a dull pounding overhead, an iron rod smashing against stone, a signal that he was wanted.
The underground chamber was well lit by sooty lamps. It was a large space – fifty men could assemble there comfortably, a hundred in a pinch. Live men. There was space for thousands of dead ones if most were cremated and tucked inside urns in the tuff walls. It was newly finished. The columbarium was awaiting its first inhabitant.
Tiberius Claudius Balbilus put down his paintbrush. He disliked interruptions but he was used to them. Many sought him out.
He was in his thirties, a powerful-looking man with the olive skin of his half-Egyptian, half-Greek heritage, a large nose and a well-tended beard which was trimmed to a sharp point and made his face look like some sort of weapon or chisel tool. He had let his tunic go loose for comfort but before he climbed the stairs he cinched his belt and donned a cloak.
Balbilus entered the mausoleum by pushing open a concealed trapdoor. The walls were lined with the tombs and shrines of the wealthy. A fresh corpse, no more than a few weeks old, linen-wrapped and stuffed into a loculum, made the place reek of death. The mausoleum had been in his family for a few generations. It was a good, steady source of income, but because of his recent secret excavation it now had another purpose.
When his time came, he would rest there for eternity, not above ground with these so-called citizens but underground, among his own kind. His followers would rest there too.
Faced with crippling debts, she quickly sold her land for a pittance to a rich patrician. She and her daughters would have to survive by hiring themselves out as labourers and cloth weavers, but she could ill afford to feed two useless mouths. Rather than sell them into slavery she made the somewhat more humane decision to send the boys to their uncle to earn their keep there.
Judging by the smells, they were getting close to the cattle market in an industrial sector where tenements clung to islands of land in a sea of twisting and claustrophobic alleyways.
At street level, the retaining walls of the tenements were built of stone and reasonably robust. Higher stories listed at precarious angles and looked a good bit flimsier and indeed they passed a block which had suffered a collapse. The dwellings doubled as shops by day, selling bare necessities and cheap, rough wine. The boys dragged themselves along the fetid street towards the ghostly white glow of the stone-flagged marketplace, keeping to the centre, avoiding the glowering shadows.
The open windows at street level leered at them like black sockets in a cadaver’s skull. Sextus squeaked in fright as he tripped over a pile of offal festering in front of a butcher shop and set a loathsome carpet of rats in motion. With the last of his fading strength, Quintus managed to jerk him upright before the little boy fell into the mess.
An empty cattle byre beckoned. An emaciated dog emerged from it, interested in seizing the rotting meat before the rats reclaimed their prize. The mongrel succeeded and scuttled off down an alleyway dragging a coil of intestines.
Inside the animal pen, Quintus looked around and declared, ‘We’ll sleep here.’ They busied themselves raking up stray hanks of unfouled straw and dry grass with their hands, laying out a bed of sorts against the plank walls at the far corner of the unroofed shed.
‘We won’t have far to travel tomorrow, will we, Quintus?’ asked the younger boy hopefully.
Quintus wasn’t at all sure but he said with feigned confidence, ‘If we start early, we’ll be at Uncle’s before noon.’
He untied the knotted corners of the travelling blanket he’d been carrying over his shoulder and removed the last of their meagre provisions. Handing Sextus half the bread and an apple, the two boys collapsed on the straw bed and ate.
Balbilus heard a dull pounding overhead, an iron rod smashing against stone, a signal that he was wanted.
The underground chamber was well lit by sooty lamps. It was a large space – fifty men could assemble there comfortably, a hundred in a pinch. Live men. There was space for thousands of dead ones if most were cremated and tucked inside urns in the tuff walls. It was newly finished. The columbarium was awaiting its first inhabitant.
Tiberius Claudius Balbilus put down his paintbrush. He disliked interruptions but he was used to them. Many sought him out.
He was in his thirties, a powerful-looking man with the olive skin of his half-Egyptian, half-Greek heritage, a large nose and a well-tended beard which was trimmed to a sharp point and made his face look like some sort of weapon or chisel tool. He had let his tunic go loose for comfort but before he climbed the stairs he cinched his belt and donned a cloak.
Balbilus entered the mausoleum by pushing open a concealed trapdoor. The walls were lined with the tombs and shrines of the wealthy. A fresh corpse, no more than a few weeks old, linen-wrapped and stuffed into a loculum, made the place reek of death. The mausoleum had been in his family for a few generations. It was a good, steady source of income, but because of his recent secret excavation it now had another purpose.
When his time came, he would rest there for eternity, not above ground with these so-called citizens but underground, among his own kind. His followers would rest there too.
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