He ate another fig. The noise of his slurping made Popidius wince. ‘I must say, you seem supremely confident, Ampliatus.’ There was an edge of irritation in his voice.
‘I am supremely confident. You should relax.’
‘That’s easy enough for you to say. Your name is not on fifty notices spread around the city assuring everyone that the water will be flowing again by midday.’
‘Public responsibility – the price of elected office, my dear Popidius.’ He clicked his juicy fingers and a slave carried over a small silver bowl. He dunked his hands and dried them on the slave’s tunic. ‘Have faith in Roman engineering, your honours. All will be well.’
It was four hours since Pompeii had woken to another hot and cloudless day and to the discovery of the failure of its water supply. Ampliatus’s instinct for what would happen next had proved correct. Coming on the morning after most of the town had turned out to sacrifice to Vulcan it was hard, even for the least superstitious, not to see this as further evidence of the god’s displeasure. Nervous groups had started forming on the street corners soon after dawn. Placards, signed by L. Popidius Secundus, posted in the forum and on the larger fountains, announced that repairs were being carried out on the aqueduct and that the supply would resume by the seventh hour. But it was not much reassurance for those who remembered the terrible earthquake of seventeen years ago – the water had failed on that occasion, too – and all morning there had been uneasiness across the town. Some shops had failed to open. A few people had left, with their possessions piled on carts, loudly proclaiming that Vulcan was about to destroy Pompeii for a second time. And now word had got out that the quattuorviri were meeting at the House of Popidius. A crowd had gathered in the street outside. Occasionally, in the comfortable drawing room, the noise of the mob could be heard: a growl, like the sound of the beasts in their cages in the tunnels of the amphitheatre, immediately before they were let loose to fight the gladiators.
Brittius shivered. ‘I told you we should never have agreed to help that engineer.’
‘That’s right,’ agreed Cuspius. ‘I said so right at the start. Now look where it’s got us.’
You could learn so much from a man’s face, thought Ampliatus. How much he indulged himself in food and drink, what manner of work he did, his pride, his cowardice, his strength. Popidius, now: he was handsome and weak; Cuspius, like his father, brave, brutal, stupid; Brittius sagged with self-indulgence; Holconius vinegary-sharp and shrewd – too many anchovies and too much garum sauce in that diet.
‘Balls,’ said Ampliatus amiably. ‘Think about it. If we hadn’t helped him, he would simply have gone to Nola for assistance and we would still have lost our water, only a day later – and how would that have looked when Rome got to hear of it? Besides, this way we know where he is. He’s in our power.’
The others did not notice, but old Holconius turned round at once. ‘And why is it so important that we know where he is?’
Ampliatus was momentarily lost for an answer. He laughed it off. ‘Come on, Holconius! Isn’t it always useful to know as much as possible? That’s worth the price of lending him a few slaves and some wood and lime. Once a man is in your debt, isn’t it easier to control him?’
‘That’s certainly true,’ said Holconius drily and glanced across the table at Popidius.
Even Popidius was not stupid enough to miss the insult. He flushed scarlet. ‘Meaning?’ he demanded. He pushed back his chair.
‘Listen!’ commanded Ampliatus. He wanted to stop this conversation before it went any further. ‘I want to tell you about a prophecy I commissioned in the summer, when the tremors started.’
‘A prophecy?’ Popidius sat down again. He was immediately interested. He loved all that stuff, Ampliatus knew: old Biria with her two magical bronze hands, covered in mystic symbols, her cage full of snakes, her milky-white eyes that couldn’t see a man’s face but could stare into the future. ‘You’ve consulted the sibyl? What did she say?’
Ampliatus arranged his features in a suitably solemn expression. ‘She sacrificed serpents to Sabazius, and skinned them for their meaning. I was present throughout.’ He remembered the flames on the altar, the smoke, the glittering hands, the incense, the sibyl’s wavering voice: high-pitched, barely human – like the curse of that old woman whose son he had fed to the eels. He had been awed by the whole performance, despite himself. ‘She saw a town – our town – many years from now. A thousand years distant, maybe more.’ He let his voice fall to a whisper. ‘She saw a city famed throughout the world. Our temples, our amphitheatre, our streets – thronging with people of every tongue. That was what she saw in the guts of the snakes. Long after the Caesars are dust and the Empire has passed away, what we have built here will endure.’
He sat back. He had half convinced himself. Popidius let out his breath. ‘Biria Onomastia,’ he said, ‘is never wrong.’
‘And she will repeat all this?’ asked Holconius sceptically. ‘She will let us use the prophecy?’
‘She will,’ Ampliatus affirmed. ‘She’d better. I paid her plenty for it.’ He thought he heard something. He rose from the couch and walked out into the sunshine of the garden. The fountain that fed the swimming pool was in the form of a nymph tipping a jug. As he came closer he heard it again, a faint gurgling, and then water began to trickle from the vessel’s lip. The flow stuttered, spurted, seemed to stop, but then it began to run more strongly. He felt suddenly overwhelmed by the mystic forces he had unleashed. He beckoned to the others to come and look. ‘You see. I told you. The prophecy is correct!’
Amid the exclamations of pleasure and relief, even Holconius managed a thin smile. ‘That’s good.’
‘Scutarius!’ Ampliatus shouted to the steward. ‘Bring the quattuorviri our best wine – the Caecuban, why not? Now, Popidius, shall I give the mob the news or will you?’
‘You tell them, Ampliatus. I need a drink.’
Ampliatus swept across the atrium towards the great front door. He gestured to Massavo to open it and stepped out on to the threshold. Perhaps a hundred people – his people was how he liked to think of them – were crowded into the street. He held up his arms for silence. ‘You all know who I am,’ he shouted, when the murmur of voices had died away, ‘and you all know you can trust me!’
‘Why should we?’ someone shouted from the back.
Ampliatus ignored him. ‘The water is running again! If you don’t believe me – like that insolent fellow there – go and look at the fountains and see for yourselves. The aqueduct is repaired! And later today, a wonderful prophecy, by the sibyl, Biria Onomastia, will be made public. It will take more than a few trembles in the ground and one hot summer to frighten the colony of Pompeii!’
A few people cheered. Ampliatus beamed and waved. ‘Good day to you all, citizens! Let’s get back to business. Salve lucrum! Lucrum gaudium!’ He ducked back into the vestibule. ‘Throw them some money, Scutarius,’ he hissed, still smiling at the mob. ‘Not too much, mind you. Enough for some wine for them all.’
He lingered long enough to hear the effects of his largesse, as the crowd struggled for the coins, then headed back towards the atrium, rubbing his hands with delight. The disappearance of Exomnius had jolted his equanimity, he would not deny it, but in less than a day he had dealt with the problem, the fountain looked to be running strongly, and if that young aquarius was not dead yet he would be soon. A cause for celebration! From the drawing room came the sound of laughter and the clink of crystal glass. He was about to walk around the pool to join them when, at his feet, he noticed the body of the bird he had watched being killed. He prodded it with his toe then stopped to pick it up. Its tiny body was still warm. A red cap, white cheeks, black and yellow wings. There was a bead of blood in its eye.
A goldfinch. Nothing to it but fluff and feathers. He weighed it in his hand for a moment, some dark thought moving in the back of his mind, then let it drop and quickly mounted the steps into the pillared garden of his old
house. The cat saw him coming and darted out of sight behind a bush but Ampliatus was not interested in pursuing it. His eyes were fixed on the empty cage on Corelia’s balcony and the darkened, shuttered windows of her room. He bellowed, ‘Celsia!’ and his wife came running. ‘Where’s Corelia?’
‘She was ill. I let her sleep –’
‘Get her! Now!’ He shoved her in the direction of the staircase, turned, and hurried towards his study.
It was not possible –
She would not dare –
He knew there was something wrong the moment he picked up the lamp and took it over to his desk. It was an old trick, learned from his former master – a hair in the drawer to tell him if a curious hand had been meddling in his affairs – but it worked well enough, and he had let it be understood that he would crucify the slave who could not be trusted.
There was no hair. And when he opened the strong box and took out the document case there were no papyri, either. He stood there like a fool, tipping up the empty capsa and shaking it like a magician who had forgotten the rest of his trick, then hurled it across the room where it splintered against the wall. He ran out to the courtyard. His wife had opened Corelia’s shutters and was standing on the balcony, her hands pressed to her face.
Corelia had her back to the mountain as she came through the Vesuvius Gate and into the square beside the castellum aquae. The fountains had started to run again, but the flow was still weak and from this high vantage point it was possible to see that a dusty pall had formed over Pompeii, thrown up by the traffic in the waterless streets. The noise of activity rose as a general hum above the red roofs.
She had taken her time on the journey home, never once spurring her horse above walking pace as she skirted Vesuvius and crossed the plain. She saw no reason to speed up now. As she descended the hill towards the big crossroads, Polites plodding faithfully behind her, the blank walls of the houses seemed to rise on either side to enclose her like a prison. Places she had relished since childhood – the hidden pools and the scented flower gardens, the shops with their trinkets and fabrics, the theatres and the noisy bath-houses – were as dead to her now as ash. She noticed the angry, frustrated faces of the people at the fountains, jostling to jam their pots beneath the dribble of water, and she thought again of the aquarius. She wondered where he was and what he was doing. His story of his wife and child had haunted her all the way back to Pompeii.
She knew that he was right. Her fate was inescapable. She felt neither angry nor afraid any more as she neared her father’s house, merely dead to it all – exhausted, filthy, thirsty. Perhaps this would be her life from now on, her body going through the routine motions of existence and her soul elsewhere, watchful and separate? She could see a crowd in the street up ahead, bigger than the usual collection of hangers-on who waited for hours for a word with her father. As she watched they seemed to break into some outlandish, ritualistic dance, leaping into the air with their arms outstretched then dropping to their knees to scrabble on the stones. It took her a moment to realise that they were having money thrown to them. That was typical of her father, she thought – the provincial Caesar, trying to buy the affection of the mob, believing himself to be acting like an aristocrat, never recognising his own puffed-up vulgarity.
Her contempt was suddenly greater than her hatred and it strengthened her courage. She led the way round to the back of the house, towards the stables, and at the sound of the hooves on the cobbles an elderly groom came out. He looked wide-eyed with surprise at her dishevelled appearance, but she took no notice. She jumped down from the saddle and handed him the reins. ‘Thank you,’ she said to Polites and then, to the groom, ‘See that this man is given food and drink.’
She passed quickly out of the glare of the street and into the gloom of the house, climbing the stairs from the slaves’ quarters. As she walked she drew the rolls of papyri from beneath her cloak. Marcus Attilius had told her to replace them in her father’s study and hope their removal had not been noticed. But she would not do that. She would give them to him herself. Even better, she would tell him where she had been. He would know that she had discovered the truth and then he could do to her what he pleased. She did not care. What could be worse than the fate he had already planned? You cannot punish the dead.
It was with the exhilaration of rebellion that she emerged through the curtain into the House of Popidius and walked towards the swimming pool that formed the heart of the villa. She heard voices to her right and saw in the drawing room her future husband and the magistrates of Pompeii. They turned to look at her at exactly the moment that her father, with her mother and brother behind him, appeared on the steps leading to their old home. Ampliatus saw what she was carrying and for one glorious instant she saw the panic in his face. He shouted at her – ‘Corelia!’ – and started towards her but she swerved away and ran into the drawing room, scattering his secrets across the table and over the carpet before he had a chance to stop her.
It seemed to the engineer that Vesuvius was playing a game with him, never coming any closer however hard he rode towards her. Only occasionally, when he looked back, shielding his eyes against the sun, did he realise how high he was climbing. Soon he had a clear view of Nola. The irrigated fields around it were like a clear green square, no larger than a doll’s handkerchief lying unfolded on the brown Campanian plain. And Nola itself, an old Samnite fortress, appeared no more formidable than a scattering of tiny children’s bricks dropped off the edge of the distant mountain range. The citizens would have their water running by now. The thought gave him fresh confidence.
He had deliberately aimed for the edge of the nearest white-grey streak and he reached it soon after the middle of the morning, at the point where the pastureland on the lower slopes ended and the forest began. He passed no living creature, neither man nor animal. The occasional farmhouse beside the track was deserted. He guessed everyone must have fled, either in the night when they heard the explosion or at first light, when they woke to this ghostly shrouding of ash. It lay across the ground, like a powdery snow, quite still, for there was not a breath of wind to disturb it. When he jumped down from his horse he raised a cloud that clung to his sweating legs. He scooped up a handful. It was odourless, fine-grained, warm from the sun. In the distant trees it covered the foliage exactly as would a light fall of snow.
He put a little in his pocket, to take back to show the admiral, and drank some water, swilling the dry taste of the dust from his mouth. Looking down the slope he could see another rider, perhaps a mile away, also making steady progress towards this same spot, presumably led by a similar curiosity to discover what had happened. Attilius considered waiting for him, to exchange opinions, but decided against it. He wanted to press on. He spat out the water, remounted, and rode back across the flank of the mountain, away from the ash, to rejoin the track that led into the forest.
Once he was among the trees the woodland closed around him and quickly he lost all sense of his position. There was nothing for it but to follow the hunters’ track as it wound through the trees, over the dried-up beds of streams, meandering from side to side but always leading him higher. He dismounted to take a piss. Lizards rustled away among the dead leaves. He saw small red spiders and their fragile webs, hairy caterpillars the size of his forefinger. There were clumps of crimson berries that tasted sweet on his tongue. The vegetation was commonplace – alder, brambles, ivy. Torquatus, the captain of the liburnian, had been right, he thought: Vesuvius was easier to ascend than she looked, and when the streams were full there would be enough up here to eat and drink to sustain an army. He could readily imagine the Thracian gladiator, Spartacus, leading his followers along this very trail a century and a half before, climbing towards the sanctuary of the summit.
It took him perhaps another hour to pass through the forest. He had little sense of time. The sun was mostly hidden by the trees, falling in shafts through the thick canopy of leaves. The sky, broken into fragments by the
foliage, formed a brilliant, shifting pattern of blue. The air was hot, fragrant with the scent of dried pine and herbs. Butterflies flitted among the trees. There was no noise except the occasional soft hooting of wood pigeons. Swaying in the saddle in the heat he felt drowsy. His head nodded. Once he thought he heard a larger animal moving along the track behind him but when he stopped to listen the sound had gone. Soon afterwards the forest began to thin. He came to a clearing.
And now it was as if Vesuvius had decided to play a different game. Having for hours never seemed to come any closer, suddenly the peak rose directly in front of him – a few hundred feet high, a steeper incline, mostly of rock, without sufficient soil to support much in the way of vegetation except for straggly bushes and plants with small yellow flowers. And it was exactly as the Greek writer had described: a black cap, long ago scorched by fire. In places, the rock bulged outwards, almost as if it were being pushed up from beneath, sending small flurries of stones rattling down the slope. Further along the ridge, larger landslips had occurred. Huge boulders, the size of a man, had been sent crashing into the trees – and recendy, by the look of them. Attilius remembered the reluctance of the men to leave Pompeii. ‘Giants have journeyed through the air, their voices like claps of thunder . . .’ The sound must have carried for miles.