The Furies of Rome by Robert Fabbri Read Free Book Online Page A

be invoked. Pallo’s son, Hylas, followed his father with a tray upon which was placed the necessities for sacrifice.
    Sabinus held out his hands, palms upwards, and kept his gaze to the ground; with a voice made flat by the dampening mist, he intoned the ritual ancient prayer to Ceres, the agricultural goddess who was always addressed at funerals.
    The sow remained calm during the prayers and hardly stirred as Sabinus took a salt cake from the tray and crumbled it over its head and then poured a libation over the crumbs. It stared at Sabinus with dark, unquestioning eyes as he approached it, with the sacrificial blade in his right hand; it did nothing to try to escape as he lifted its snout with his left hand. It was not until the blade bit into its throat that it recognised the danger it was in but by then it was too late and the blood was pouring from the wicked gash in powerful, heart-pounding spurts. As its veins emptied, so its strength faded and within a score of heartbeats its front legs buckled and its snout crashed into the bloodied earth whilst its hind legs shuddered their last, eventually weakening under the weight they still supported so that they too collapsed and the dying beast rolled onto its side, its limbs twitching feebly.
    At a nod from his brother, Vespasian took a flaming torch from one of the freedmen and thrust it into the oil-drenched wood of the pyre. Deep in its centre it was constructed of brushwood and small kindling; this caught with growing fury, emanating heat outwards that transferred into the larger logs around the edge; they soon began to smoulder and then eventually burst into flame, sending spirals of black smoke skywards. With tears welling, Vespasian watched the smoke, the by-product of his mother’s physical form’s consumption, ascend and then disperse on the breeze. The constant that had been there for him and his brother throughout all their years, the woman who had helped shape their lives by her ambition for the family, had departed; now he and Sabinus were responsible for taking the family forward and he prayed that they would not be found wanting. He lowered his head, a tear fell, and he felt the weight of familial responsibility pass onto the shoulders of his generation.
    The sow had been turned on its back and Sabinus was making the belly and chest incisions as the first flames licked Vespasia, and her hair and clothes began to crackle and smoke. As he worked to remove the heart, fire caught all along the corpse and the skin started to blacken and blister. With a prayer to Ceres asking that she deign to accept the sacrifice, he threw the heart onto the pyre so that it landed next to the corpse, hissing and spitting now as it began to be consumed. With a few more incisions of the razor-sharp blade, the liver, richly brown, emerged from the chest cavity, dripping with blood. Sabinus examined it and found it to be perfect; he showed it to the congregation, so that they too could witness it as being so, before throwing it, after the heart, into what was now a raging conflagration hiding all signs of the melting corpse. Now the only evidence of Vespasia was the smell of crisping and then burning meat as the mourners took steps back to avoid the scorching heat.
    The sacrifice made and the goddess appeased, Hylas began to butcher the sow; Sabinus apportioned a small amount to the dead but the most part to the living. With the meat divided and Vespasia’s share given to the flames, she was left to burn to ashes as her family departed with their portion of the offering that would provide an ample meal for all later in the day when they returned from the hunt.
    Vespasian urged his horse to the crest of the hill and then pulled it up; the beast snorted, breath steaming from flared nostrils, and pranced a couple of high steps as it settled. Vespasian let the pressure off the reins and gazed across the valley of lush pasture, edged by a wood to the right, to the scrub-covered hill on