Marilyn Todd - Widow's Pique

'I trust you don't bury your people in fours.'

'Only because we have trouble finding three volunteers to go in there with them,' he laughed, falling into step as she strolled round the cemetery.

How different from Rome! In Rome, you died, you were cremated and, according to what you could afford, your ashes were either interred in a marble tomb along one of the approach roads, like Claudia's husband (and dammit, she really must find out which road) or they were laid to rest in little pigeonhole arrangements, although the really poor had to settle for having their ashes scattered. In the Histri's eyes, burning was the worst punishment that could be inflicted upon the soul — hence the fate of rapists and murderers. So, for their dead, Kazan explained, four-sided pits were dug in the ground and lined with oak planks, in which the deceased was laid to rest on their own bed, dressed in their best clothes along with their worldly possessions, then the grave covered with an unmarked flat rock. The only difference between rich and poor here was the size of the pit that contained their belongings.

'At the risk of sounding stupid,' she said, 'why are you carrying a bird cage?'

It wasn't that the birds weren't pretty. And she was sure they sang like choirs of angels. But Kazan hadn't struck her as the type of chap who made a habit of lugging caged birds round the countryside.

'Well, there's another thing that separates our two cultures,' he said. 'Look around and, yes, you'll see an abundance of floral tributes, but to the Histri, birds represent the souls of the dead. These little creatures,' he patted the cage, 'will provide company for the souls who abide here.'

Claudia tried to imagine every soul as a melodious warbler and failed. She'd encountered far too many hawks on her travels to see them changing their feathers after death. Not to mention quite a few bustards. Kazan stopped by one of the larger top stones to unhook the lid of the cage. Instantly, the birds fluttered off into the trees, but his dark eyes remained on their flight long after they'd disappeared.

'Or, rather, one soul in particular,' he said quietly.

'Your mother?'

'Brother,' he corrected. 'Every year on the anniversary of his death, I come back and release a flock of finches.' His tormented expression was quickly replaced by the more familiar grin. 'Although I can't help wondering whether they're not the same finches I net every year. That I keep recycling the same flock, as it were.'

She tossed back a light riposte, something to do with reincarnation, she thought, but her mind wasn't on jokes. Because if Kazan's brother was buried here, then so, by default, was Mazares's..

'Since we don't believe in desecrating the top stones with engravings,' Kazan was saying, taking her arm and moving on, 'we resort to other ways to identify the departed.'

He indicated the menagerie of carved creatures that nestled close to the graves.

'The larger beasts denote clan, like those bears, lynx and stags, while the smaller mammals — ' he pointed to dormice, pine martens and hedgehogs — 'are the family emblems. The birds, of course, are the true souls of the individual and these denote status within the household.'

An eagle signified patriarch, a dove was the mother, a kite for the first son, an owl for the second and so on and so on.

'The custom harks back to the days when Histria was part of the great Kingdom of Illyria,' he added. 'The days when Jason and the Argonauts sailed these seas in search of the

Golden Fleece and a storm blew Odysseus's ship on to the island of Circe the Enchantress, who promptly turned his crew into swine. See?'

He pointed to a carved boar.

'One clan even claims descent. After she turned them back into humans, of course!'

'I thought you said four was the number for the dead?' Claudia asked. Large mammal, small mammal and bird made three.

'You're not looking hard enough,' Kazan laughed, brushing his hand across the chaplets and wreaths that covered his brother's top stone.

It was only when the butterflies didn't fly off that Claudia realized it was far too early in the day for them to be feeding and that these were, in fact, painted carvings, which had been placed artfully among the blooms. Another example of Histrian sneakiness, but this time the sentiment was at least admirable. As dawn cast her pink cloak over the cemetery, she found an inexplicable lump in her throat at the tranquillity of this enclosure, at the exquisite detail to be found in the carvings and in the loving attention that had been given to the floral tributes laid on the graves. Through the oak trees, she noticed the first trickle of white-clad figures making their way to the stadium, obviously wanting to bag themselves a good seat.

'The butterflies are indicators of age,' Kazan said, clearly in no hurry to join the early birds. 'Holly blues represent one year, brimstones a decade and swallowtails count for fifty.'

Claudia decided to put to the test what seemed like a very clever system for uneducated people. She found the largest top stone in the graveyard and studied the carvings impaled on stakes alongside it. The eagle proclaimed the deceased as the head of the household, a swallowtail and two blues put him at fifty-two when he died. But, of course, she had no idea whose family carried the squirrel totem, much less whose clan belonged to the dragon. But wait. Why were there five groups beside this particular grave? She peered closer and saw that two of the carvings were birds. The eagle, and a woodpecker, unmistakable with its long, pecking bill. Two people in the same grave? Or…?

'Dol?'

'Indeed,' Kazan replied, a sparkle lighting his liquid-brown eyes. 'His Royal Majesty rests here in full military armour, together with his rings, cloak pins, ceremonial torque and his amulets, plus his scissors and knives, a quiver of arrows, his finest yew bow, his shield, his axe, an assortment of gold salvers, three silver finger bowls, ten pells of parchment plus, I am reliably informed, the sword and helmet of a Dacian warrior, although officially, you understand, such an ambush never took place.'

It was when Kazan smiled like that, with the same selfdeprecating grin as his brother's, that the family resemblance really struck home. Even with eyes wider apart than Mazares's and straight hair that he restrained in a soft leather headband, there was no mistaking the blood that ran through the men's veins, and although Kazan's good looks exuded boyish innocence, how much of that was actually heredity, she wondered? Her eyes rested on the gold torque round his neck, engraved with creatures she was beginning to recognize now — dragons, bajuks and serpent-tailed giants — and wondered how close the brothers might be in other ways, too.

Drum beats rolled in the distance, signalling the start of the procession, but through the trees, though on the opposite side of the cemetery to the stadium, she noticed Marek and Mir leading their mastiffs on leads. Unlike Kazan, they weren't dressed in festival white, but wore the short kilts of the hunter, and in their hands they carried spears.

'I'm afraid that, to my sons, local events such as these games are a waste of their time,' their father explained, perhaps in response to Claudia's raised eyebrows, perhaps justifying it to himself. 'Rosmerta goes blue in the face telling them how they ought to compete in the spirit of politics, but the very mention of that word bores the boys rigid, and no matter how much their mother bends their ears, they won't budge.'

'Have you tried fatherly persuasion?'

'Me?' An impish grin twisted his lips. 'I leave that kind of stuff to Rosmerta, she's far better at it, and anyway, after the executions yesterday, can you blame the lads for preferring the smell of a good spoor to roasted man meat?'