The guests remained still and expressionless, while Lucius, having acknowledged the message, moved to the end of the room, his fine-boned, intelligent face as expressionless as his deep-set brown eyes. Each craned forward as their host made an offering at the altar dedicated to the dio domicilus, a sacrifice to the family Genius, for it was by this Lares, this household God, that a man such as Lucius Falerius, and his ancestors before him, achieved immortality. They knew by the sacrifice of a black puppy that Ameliana had been delivered of a son. Moments later, like a well staged appearance in a drama, the child, carried by a midwife in a wicker basket, wrapped loosely in a swaddling cloth, was brought into the chapel, still yelling mightily, the small puckered face bright pink with fury and the coal black hair which capped his head still glistening from the scented water in which it had been bathed.
Ragas took the basket and approached his master, so the true moment had arrived; a man’s wife could be delivered of a child and that child might be a boy, but he was not yet the son of Lucius, not yet a true descendant of the Falerii, who could trace their line back to the days when Aeneas, fleeing from the ruins of Troy, had founded the city of Rome. In the period between the birth and what followed the child was an orphan. If the next stage of the family ritual was omitted it would remain so and shame would fall on the head of Ameliana Falerius from this day forth.