“No one can help me now, can they?” Titus said it softly, looking from the bust of his father to the empty niche right beside it—the niche where the funerary bust of his grandfather would be placed, after the funeral procession today. His grandfather was dead, and Titus Aurelius Fulvus Boionius Arrius Antoninus was now head of the family. People would now be looking to him for advice, not the other way around.

“Talking to statues again?” Ennia stood in the doorway, hands on skinny hips. “People will think you’re moon mad, and you the paterfamilias now.”

He groaned. “Don’t say it.”

“Not saying it don’t make it less true.” She came forward, adjusting the pleats of his black mourning toga. “They’re all waiting for you out there.”

“Then wish me luck,” Titus said to both his mistress and his father, and drew a fold of black wool up over his head.

The sky was steel gray and cold overhead, but a great many worthy citizens had still come to pay their respects to a former consul and distinguished statesman of Rome. Titus paced on foot with the masked mourners, matching his steps to the solemn blare of the bronze horns, looking straight ahead with impassive eyes because too great a show of grief would be improper. Behind him he could hear his half-sisters weeping, but that was fitting for women. A paterfamilias must be stone. He felt tears prick his eyes just once, when he met the gaze of Senator Marcus Norbanus limping sturdily along to join the procession, flanked by his wife and daughter in black gowns, and the old man gave him the nod of an equal. I’m not your equal, Titus thought, I’m not anyone’s equal, I’m twenty-eight years old and an undistinguished public servant, and would you all stop looking at me like I’m important? But he was important now; he was head of the family with all attendant duties and responsibilities, and Titus answered Marcus’s nod with a grave one of his own and kept marching.

If it had been his own choice, the funeral procession would have ended matters. He’d have installed his grandfather’s ashes in the crypt and gone thankfully home for the nine days of mourning, which he’d have spent installing his grandfather’s funeral bust in its niche and perhaps chatting to it now and then while he got used to his new role. But first there was the eulogy to be given, and for a man of his grandfather’s stature the eulogy must be given publicly, at the Rostra in the Forum Romanum where all Rome could hear.