My parents had drowned during a river crossing along with a hundred other people, yet the only detail my uncle had ever given me when he spoke of the gruesome task of identifying their water-soaked corpses days later was that beasts had done damage to their features, so he had had to identify them by other means: the locket and greatcoat my father wore, my mother’s red hair still coiled in a single thick braid, and a silver brooch later sold to pay the burial costs.
But if that were true, how could we be sure those were their bodies? Lockets and brooches could be given away or stolen. Other people had red hair and coats. So how could we be sure they were really dead, not just run away, kidnapped, or somehow lost?
We hurried along the high street that led past the academy grounds and the adjacent temple sanctuary. Kena’ani temple gates never closed, no matter day or night, winter or summer, storm or fair weather, not that many people in these enlightened days ventured inside those gates except as sightseers. Every guidebook to Adurnam noted that this temple, dedicated to the goddess Tanit, was the ancient center of the Phoenician trading settlement founded two thousand years ago on the banks of the Solent River.
I glanced in now, as I always did when I passed, wondering if the goddess would summon me to the court of truth at which all my questions about my parents would be answered. Our ancestors marked sacred ground with a lustral basin for washing at the entrance, an arcade of pillars, and a marble altar whose ceiling was the blessed heavens. The sign of Tanit, protector of women, face of the moon, both bright and dark depending on Her aspect, was carved on the gates, on each pillar, and on the altar stone.
In one corner of the enclosure, a pair of elderly priests in shabby robes shivered on the raised porch of the winter house. A veiled woman stood at the base of the steps. She held a birdcage in one hand and a basket covered with a scrap of linen in the other.
Bee kept striding, but the woman’s tense posture drew my gaze, so I paused to watch.
The supplicant set the laden basket down on the porch. The priests accompanied her to the altar stone. Their feet squeaked on the afternoon’s dusting of fresh snow. Their shaven heads and exposed ears looked shiny with cold. The drape of the woman’s loose robes hid the identity of the bird, but when they reached the altar and withdrew a turtledove from the cage with gentle hands, I knew the woman had come to ask for the blessing of a child.
Their bodies blocked the brief ceremony. One of the priests would break the bird’s neck; his arm moved sharply as he afterward cut off the head. Blood would be spilling on the stone, but the wind was blowing both smell and sound away from me. Probably the cold air was already congealing the blood. Feathers, bones, and flesh would be consumed in fire, while the priests would eat as their evening’s meal whatever provender the supplicant had brought in the basket.