“I’ll start tomorrow,” he continued. “Thanks for the dinner, sir. Now, with your permission, I would like to go home so I can say goodnight to my daughter before she falls asleep.”

Chapter 4 – August, 64 AD

Anna pulled off her gloves and wiped the back of her hand against her forehead, leaving a large smear of black ash amid the sweat. She looked at her hands in disgust. The ash and dirt were everywhere – in the air, on the ground, on the workers, and on the corpses.

She’d organized the corpses and body parts neatly in three rows – separating men, women, and children. The plot of ground that had been cleared for her use was almost filled with today’s bodies, at least 100 so far, and it was only mid-afternoon. Clouds of buzzing flies hovered over the dead, and the stench was overwhelming, even through the kerchief covering her mouth and nose. At the end of the day, slaves would drag all the bodies over to wooden pyres, throw as many as would fit onto the pyres, and set fire to them.

All day long a parade of people had walked past Anna’s exhibit, looking for friends and relatives. Occasionally someone would recognize a body with a scream or a moan, and Anna would add a name to her list and ask the person if they wanted to claim the corpse. More frequently, a passerby would tentatively approach, study a body, and walk away – a false alarm. Anna knew they had mixed emotions: happy the deceased was a stranger, but sad that their loved one was still missing.

Slaves carried in another batch of mangled bodies on blood-drenched wooden litters and dumped them casually at the end of Anna’s three rows. She put her gloves back on and began arranging the newcomers more neatly, men, women, and kids, so that each lay on his or her back with feet together and arms straightened along the torso. Sometimes when she was pulling them into position, an arm or a leg would come loose like on an overcooked chicken. Numb after three days of this hellish job, Anna pushed the limbs back into place. The stench grew worse each day, but the horror was decreasing.