Chapter 29Fire had embraced the corpse.
Aeneas stared into the flames as they consumed his father’s body. He had managed to speak a few words at the funeral, no more. All the survivors of Troy now encircled the pyre, trapping the heat with their bodies. People swayed with the last cicadas of the season. He was not sure whether they had come for the warmth or to pay their respects. Or maybe they had come to remember their own loved ones. There had been no proper funerals since they had fled Troy. Most of the bodies had been given to the Middle Sea.
They sang hymns to Lord and Lady Death, Hades and Persephone. The priests prepared sacrifices. The people prayed that the watchers of the dead would accept the new soul, that Ankhises would not be damned to linger on the threshold of the afterl
