She gave him a long, slow look – contempt, was it, or hatred? ‘I swear to you, I sooner would be a whore.’
‘And I swear you would not.’ He spoke more sharply. ‘You’re young. What do you know of how people live?’
‘I know I cannot be married to someone I despise. Could you?’ She glared at him. ‘Perhaps you could.’
He turned away. ‘No, Corelia.’
‘Are you married?’
‘No.’
‘But you were married?’
‘Yes,’ he said quietly, ‘I was married. My wife is dead.’
That shut her up for a moment. ‘And did you despise her?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Did she despise you?’
‘Perhaps she did.’
She was briefly silent again. ‘How did she die?’
He did not ever talk of it. He did not even think of it. And if, as sometimes happened, especially in the wakeful hours before dawn, his mind ever started off down that miserable road, he had trained himself to haul it back and set it on a different course. But now – there was something about her: she had got under his skin. To his astonishment, he found himself telling her.
‘She looked something like you. And she had a temper, too, like yours.’ He laughed briefly, remembering. ‘We were married three years.’ It was madness; he could not stop himself. ‘She was in childbirth. But it came from the womb feet first, like Agrippa. That’s what the name means – Agrippa – aegre partus – “born with difficulty” – did you know that? I thought at first it was a fine omen for a future aquarius, to be born like the great Agrippa. I was sure it was a boy. But the day went on – it was June in Rome, and hot: almost as hot as down here – and even with a doctor and two women in attendance, the baby would not move. And then she began to bleed.’ He closed his eyes. ‘They came to me before nightfall. “Marcus Attilius, choose between your wife and your child!” I said that I chose both. But they told me that was not to be, so I said – of course I said – “My wife.” I went into the room to be with her. She was very weak, but she disagreed. Arguing with me, even then! They had a pair of shears, you know – the sort that a gardener might use? And a knife. And a hook. They cut off one foot, and then the other, and used the knife to quarter the body, and then the hook to draw out the skull. But Sabina’s bleeding didn’t stop, and the next morning she also died. So I don’t know. Perhaps at the end she did despise me.’
He sent her back to Pompeii with Polites. Not because the Greek slave was the strongest escort available, or the best horseman, but because he was the only one Attilius trusted. He gave him Corvinus’s mount and told him not to let her out of his sight until she was safely home.
She went meekly in the end, with barely another word, and he felt ashamed of what he had said. He had silenced her well enough, but in a coward’s way – unmanly and self-pitying. Had ever an unctuous lawyer in Rome used a cheaper trick of rhetoric to sway a court than this ghastly parading of the ghosts of a dead wife and child? She swept her cloak around her and then flung her head back, flicking her long dark hair over her collar, and there was something impressive in the gesture: she would do as he asked but she would not accept that he was right. Never a glance in his direction as she swung herself easily into the saddle. She made a clicking sound with her tongue and tugged the reins and set off down the track behind Polites.
It took all his self-control not to run after her. A poor reward, he thought, for all the risks she ran for me. But what else did she expect of him? And as for fate – the subject of his pious little lecture – he did believe in fate. One was shackled to it from birth as to a moving wagon. The destination of the journey could not be altered, only the manner in which one approached it – whether one chose to walk erect or to be dragged complaining through the dust.
Still, he felt sick as he watched her go, the sun brightening the landscape as the distance between them increased, so that he was able to watch her for a long time, until at last the horses passed behind a clump of olive trees, and she was gone.
In Misenum, the admiral was lying on his mattress in his windowless bedroom, remembering.
He was remembering the flat, muddy forests of Upper Germany, and the great oak trees that grew along the shore of the northern sea – if one could speak of a shore in a place where the sea and the land barely knew a boundary – and the rain and the wind, and the way that in a storm the trees, with a terrible splintering, would sometimes detach themselves from the bank, vast islands of soil trapped within their roots, and drift upright, their foliage spread like rigging, bearing down on the fragile Roman galleys. He could still see in his mind the sheet lightning and the dark sky and the pale faces of the Chauci warriors amid the trees, the smell of the mud and the rain, the terror of the trees crashing into the ships at anchor, his men drowning in that filthy barbarian sea –
He shuddered and opened his eyes to the dim light, hauled himself up, and demanded to know where he was. His secretary, sitting beside the couch next to a candle, his stylus poised, looked down at his wax tablet.
‘We were with Domitius Corbulo, admiral,’ said Alexion, ‘when you were in the cavalry, fighting the Chauci.’
‘Ah yes. Just so. The Chauci. I remember –’
But what did he remember? The admiral had been trying for months to write his memoirs – his final book, he was sure – and it was a welcome distraction from the crisis on the aqueduct to return to it. But what he had seen and done and what he had read or been told seemed nowadays to run together, in a kind of seamless dream. Such things he had witnessed! The empresses – Lollia Paulina, Caligula’s wife, sparkling like a fountain in the candlelight at her betrothal banquet, cascading with forty million sesterces’ worth of pearls and emeralds. And the Empress Agrippina, married to the drooling Claudius: he had seen her pass by in a cloak made entirely out of gold. And gold-mining he had watched, of course, when he was procurator in northern Spain – the miners cutting away at the mountainside, suspended by ropes, so that they looked, from a distance, like a species of giant bird pecking at the rock-face. Such work, such danger – and to what end? Poor Agrippina, murdered here, in this very town, by Ancietus, his predecessor as admiral of the Misene Fleet, on the orders of her son, the Emperor Nero, who put his mother to sea in a boat that collapsed and then had her stabbed to death by sailors when she somehow struggled ashore. Stories! This was his problem. He had too many stories to fit into one book.
‘The Chauci –’ How old was he then? Twenty-four? It was his first campaign. He began again. ‘The Chauci, I remember, dwelt on high wooden platforms to escape the treacherous tides of that region. They gathered mud with their bare hands, which they dried in the freezing north wind, and burnt for fuel. To drink they consumed only rainwater, which they collected in tanks at the front of their houses – a sure sign of their lack of civilisation. Miserable bloody bastards, the Chauci.’ He paused. ‘Leave that last bit out.’
The door opened briefly, admitting a shaft of brilliant white light. He heard the rustling of the Mediterranean, the hammering of the shipyards. So it was morning already. He must have been awake for hours. The door closed again. A slave tip-toed across to the secretary and whispered into his ear. Pliny rolled his fat body over on to one side to get a better view. ‘What time is it?’
‘The end of the first hour, admiral.’
‘Have the sluices been opened at the reservoir?’
‘Yes, admiral. We have a message that the last of the water has drained away.’
Pliny groaned and flopped back on to his pillow.
‘And it seems, sir, that a most remarkable discovery has just been made.’
The work-gang had left about a half-hour after Corelia. There were no elaborate farewells: the contagion of fear had spread throughout the men to infect Musa and Corvinus and all were eager to get back to the safety of Pompeii. Even Brebix, the former gladiator, the undefeated hero of thirty fights, kept turning his small, dark eyes nervously to
wards Vesuvius. They cleared the matrix and flung the tools, the unused bricks and the empty amphorae on to the backs of the wagons. Finally, a couple of the slaves shovelled earth across the remains of the night’s fires and buried the grey scars left by the cement. By the time this was finished it was as if they had never been there.
Attilius stood warily beside the inspection shaft with his arms folded and watched them prepare to leave. This was his moment of greatest danger, now that the work was done. It would be typical of Ampliatus to make sure he extracted a final measure of use out of the engineer before dispensing with him. He was ready to fight, to sell himself dearly if he had to.
Musa had the only other horse and once he was in the saddle he called down to Attilius. ‘Are you coming?’
‘Not yet. I’ll catch you up later.’
‘Why not come now?’
‘Because I’m going to go up on to the mountain.’
Musa looked at him, astonished. ‘Why?’
A good question. Because the answer to what has been happening down here must lie up there. Because it’s my job to keep the water running. Because I am afraid. The engineer shrugged. ‘Curiosity. Don’t worry. I haven’t forgotten my promise, if that’s what’s bothering you. Here.’ He threw Musa his leather purse. ‘You’ve done well. Buy the men some food and wine.’
Musa opened the purse and inspected its contents. ‘There’s plenty here, aquarius. Enough for a woman as well.’
Attilius laughed. ‘Go safely, Musa. I’ll see you soon. Either in Pompeii or Misenum.’
Musa gave him a second glance and seemed about to say something, but changed his mind. He wheeled away and set off after the carts and Attilius was alone.
Again, he was struck by the peculiar stillness of the day, as if Nature were holding Her breath. The noise of the heavy wooden wheels slowly faded into the distance and all he could hear was the occasional tinkle of a goat’s bell and the ubiquitous chafing of the cicadas. The sun was quite high now. He glanced around at the empty countryside, then lay on his stomach and peered into the matrix. The heat pressed heavily on his back and shoulders. He thought of Sabina and of Corelia and of the terrible image of his dead son. He wept. He did not try to stop himself but for once surrendered to it, choking and shaking with grief, gulping the tunnel air, inhaling the cold and bitter odour of the wet cement. He felt oddly apart from himself, as if he had divided into two people, one crying and the other watching him cry.
After a while he stopped and raised himself to wipe his face on the sleeve of his tunic and it was only when he looked down again that his eye was caught by something – by a glint of reflected light in the darkness. He drew his head back slightly to let the sun shine directly along the shaft and he saw very faintly that the floor of the aqueduct was glistening. He rubbed his eyes and looked again. Even as he watched the quality of the light seemed to change and become more substantial, rippling and widening as the tunnel began to fill with water.
He whispered to himself, ‘She runs!’
When he was satisfied that he was not mistaken and that the Augusta had indeed begun to flow again, he rolled the heavy manhole cover across to the shaft. He slowly lowered it, pulling his fingers back at the last instant to let it drop the final few inches. With a thud the tunnel was sealed.
He untethered his horse and climbed into the saddle. In the shimmering heat, the marker-stones of the aqueduct dwindled into the distance like a line of submerged rocks. He pulled on the reins and turned away from the Augusta to face Vesuvius. He spurred the horse and they moved off along the track that led towards the mountain, walking at first but quickening to a trot as the ground began to rise.
At the Piscina Mirabilis the last of the water had drained away and the great reservoir was empty – a rare sight. It had last been allowed to happen a decade ago and that had been for maintenance, so that the slaves could shovel out the sediment and check the walls for signs of cracking. The admiral listened attentively as the slave explained the workings of the system. He was always interested in technical matters.
‘And how often is this supposed to be done?’
‘Every ten years would be customary, admiral.’
‘So this was going to be done again soon?’
‘Yes, admiral.’
They were standing on the steps of the reservoir, about halfway down – Pliny, his nephew Gaius, his secretary Alexion, and the water-slave, Dromo. Pliny had issued orders that nothing was to be disturbed until he arrived and a marine guard had been posted at the door to prevent unauthorised access. Word of the discovery had got out, however, and there was the usual curious crowd in the courtyard.
The floor of the Piscina looked like a muddy beach after the tide had gone out. There were little pools here and there, where the sediment was slightly hollowed, and a litter of objects – rusted tools, stones, shoes – that had fallen into the water over the years and had sunk to the bottom, some of them entirely shrouded so that they appeared as nothing more than small humps on the smooth surface. The rowing boat was grounded. Several sets of footprints led out from the bottom of the steps towards the centre of the reservoir, where a larger object lay, and then returned. Dromo asked if the admiral would like him to fetch it.
‘No,’ said Pliny, ‘I want to see it where it lies for myself. Oblige me, would you, Gaius.’ He pointed to his shoes and his nephew knelt and unbuckled them while the admiral leaned on Alexion for support. He felt an almost childish anticipation and the sensation intensified as he descended the last of the steps and cautiously lowered his feet into the sediment. Black slime oozed between his toes, deliciously cool, and immediately he was a boy again, back at the family home in Comum, in Transpadane Italy, playing on the shores of the lake, and the intervening years – nearly half a century of them – were as insubstantial as a dream. How many times did this occur each day? It never used to happen. But lately almost anything could set it off – a touch, a smell, a sound, a colour glimpsed – and immediately memories he did not know he still possessed came flooding back, as if there was nothing left of him any more but a breathless sack of remembered impressions.
He hoisted the folds of his toga and began stepping gingerly across the surface, his feet sinking deep into the mud, which then made a delightful sucking noise each time he lifted them. He heard Gaius shout behind him, ‘Be careful, uncle!’ but he shook his head, laughing. He kept away from the tracks the others had made: it was more enjoyable to rupture the crust of mud where it was still fresh and just beginning to harden in the warm air. The others followed at a respectful distance.
What an extraordinary construction it was, he thought, this underground vault, with its pillars each ten times higher than a man! What imagination had first envisioned it, what will and strength had driven it through to construction – and all to store water that had already been carried for sixty miles! He had never had any objection to deifying emperors. ‘God is man helping man,’ that was his philosophy. The Divine Augustus deserved his place in the pantheon simply for commissioning the Campanian aqueduct and the Piscina Mirabilis. By the time he reached the centre of the reservoir he was breathless with the effort of repeatedly hoisting his feet out of the clinging sediment. He propped himself against a pillar as Gaius came up beside him. But he was glad that he had made the effort. The water-slave had been wise to send for him. This was something to see, right enough: a mystery of Nature had become also a mystery of Man.
The object in the mud was an amphora used for storing quicklime. It was wedged almost upright, the bottom part buried in the soft bed of the reservoir. A long, thin rope had been attached to its handles and this lay in a tangle around it. The lid, which had been sealed with wax, had been prised off. Scattered, gleaming in the mud, were perhaps a hundred small silver coins.
‘Nothing has been removed, admiral,’ said Dromo anxiously. ‘I told them to leave it exactly as they found it.’
Pliny blew out his cheeks. ‘How much is in there, Gaius, would you say?’
His nephew buried both hands into the amphora, cupped them, and showed them to the admiral. They brimmed with silver denarii. ‘A fortune, uncle.’
‘And an illegal one, we may be sure. It corrupts the honest mud.’ Neither the earthenware vessel nor the rope had much of a coating of sediment, which meant, thought Pliny, that it could not have lain on the reservoir floor for long – a month at most. He glanced up towards the vaulted ceiling. ‘Someone must have rowed out,’ he said, ‘and lowered it over the side.’
‘And then let go of the rope?’ Gaius looked at him in wonder. ‘But who would have done such a thing? How could he have hoped to retrieve it? No diver could swim down this deep!’
‘True.’ Pliny dipped his own hand into the coins and examined them in his plump palm, stroking them apart with his thumb. Vespasian’s familiar, scowling profile decorated one side, the sacred implements of the augur occupied the other. The inscription round the edge – IMP CAES VESP AVG COS III – showed that they had been minted during the Emperor’s third consulship, eight years earlier. ‘Then we must assume that their owner didn’t plan to retrieve them by diving, Gaius, but by draining the reservoir. And the only man with the authority to empty the piscina whenever he desired was our missing aquarius, Exomnius.’
Hora Quarta
[10:37 hours]
‘Average magma ascent rates obtained in recent studies suggest that magma in the chamber beneath Vesuvius may have started rising at a velocity of > 0.2 metres per second into the conduit of the volcano some four hours before the eruption – that is, at approximately 9 a. m. on the morning of 24 August.’
Burkhard Müller-Ullrich (editor), Dynamics of
Volcanism
The quattuorviri – the Board of Four: the elected magistrates of Pompeii – were meeting in emergency session in the drawing room of Lucius Popidius. The slaves had carried in a chair for each of them, and a small table, around which they sat, mostly silent, arms folded, waiting. Ampliatus, out of deference to the fact that he was not a magistrate, reclined on a couch in the corner, eating a fig, watching them. Through the open door he could see the swimming pool and its silent fountain, and also, in a corner of the tiled garden, a cat playing with a little bird. This ritual of extended death intrigued him. The Egyptians held the cat to be a sacred animal: of all creatures the nearest in intelligence to Man. And in the whole of Nature, only cats and men – that he could think of – derived an obvious pleasure from cruelty. Did that mean that cruelty and intelligence were inevitably entwined? Interesting.