Holconius said, ‘And what is the real problem?’
‘The other documents – the ones that show how much Exomnius was paid to give this town cheap water.’
Holconius said quickly, ‘Have a care, Ampliatus. Your little arrangements are no concern of ours.’
‘My little arrangements!’ Ampliatus laughed. ‘That’s a good one!’ He set down his glass and lifted the decanter to pour himself another drink. Again, the heavy crystal rattled. He was becoming light-headed but he didn’t care. ‘Come now, your honours, don’t pretend you didn’t know! How do you think this town revived so quickly after the earthquake? I’ve saved you a fortune by my little arrangements”. Yes, and helped make myself one into the bargain – I don’t deny it. But you wouldn’t be here without me! Your precious baths, Popidius – where Brittius here likes to be wanked off by his little boys – how much do you pay for them? Nothing! And you, Cuspius, with your fountains. And you, Holconius, with your pool. And all the private baths and the watered gardens and the big public pool in the palaestra and the pipes in the new apartments! This town has been kept afloat for more than a decade by my “little arrangement” with Exomnius. And now some nosy bastard of an aquarius from Rome has got to hear about it. That’s the real problem.’
‘An outrage!’ said Brittius, his voice quivering. ‘An outrage – to be spoken to in such a way by this jumped-up slave.’
‘Jumped up, am I? I wasn’t so jumped up when I paid for the games that secured your election, Brittius. “Cold steel, no quarter, and the slaughterhouse right in the middle where all the stands can see it” – that’s what you asked for, and that was what I gave.’
Holconius raised his hands. ‘All right, gentlemen. Let’s keep ourselves calm.’
Cuspius said, ‘But surely we can just cut a deal with this new aquarius, like the one you had with the other fellow?’
‘It seems not. I dropped a hint yesterday but all he did was look at me as if I’d just put my hand on his cock. I felt insulted for my generosity. No, I’m afraid I recognise his type. He’ll take this up in Rome, they’ll check the accounts and we’ll have an imperial commission down here before the year’s end.’
‘Then what are we to do?’ said Popidius. ‘If this comes out, it will look bad for all of us.’
Ampliatus smiled at him over the rim of his glass. ‘Don’t worry. I’ve sorted it out.’
‘How?’
‘Popidius!’ cautioned Holconius quickly. ‘Take care.’
Ampliatus paused. They did not want to know. They were the magistrates of the town, after all. The innocence of ignorance – that was what they craved. But why should they have peace of mind? He would dip their hands in the blood along with his own.
‘He’ll go to meet his ancestors.’ He looked around. ‘Before he gets back to Misenum. An accident out in the countryside. Does anyone disagree? Speak up if you do. Popidius? Holconius? Brittius? Cuspius?’ He waited. It was all a charade. The aquarius would be dead by now, whatever they said: Corax had been itching to slit his throat. ‘I’ll take that as agreement. Shall we drink to it?’
He reached for the decanter but stopped, his hand poised in mid-air. The heavy crystal glass was not merely shaking now: it was moving sideways along the polished wooden surface. He frowned at it stupidly. That could not be right. Even so, it reached the end of the sideboard and crashed to the floor. He glanced at the tiles. There was a vibration beneath his feet. It gradually built in strength and then a gust of hot air passed through the house, powerful enough to bang the shutters. An instant later, far away – but very distinctly, unlike anything he, or anyone else, had ever heard – came the sound of a double boom.
Hora Sexta
[12:57 hours]
‘The surface of the volcano ruptured shortly after noon allowing explosive decompression of the main magma body . . . The exit velocity of the magma was approximately 1,440 km. per hour (Mach 1). Convection carried incandescant gas and pumice clasts to a height of 28 km.
Overall, the thermal energy liberated during the course of the entire eruption may be calculated using the following formula:
Eth = V · d · T · K
where Eth is in joules, V is the volume in cubic km., d is specific gravity (1.0), T is the temperature of the ejecta (500 degrees centigrade), and K a constant including the specific heat of the magma and the mechanical equivalent of heat (8.37 x 1014).
Thus the thermal energy released during the A.D. 79 eruption would have been roughly 2 x 1018 joules – or about 100,000 times that of the Hiroshima atomic bomb.’
Dynamics of Volcanism
Afterwards, whenever they compared their stories, the survivors would always wonder at how differently the moment had sounded to each of them. A hundred and twenty miles away in Rome it was heard as a thud, as if a heavy statue or a tree had toppled. Those who escaped from Pompeii, which was five miles downwind, always swore they had heard two sharp bangs, whereas in Capua, some twenty miles distant, the noise from the start was a continuous, tearing crack of thunder. But in Misenum, which was closer than Capua, there was no sound at all, only the sudden appearance of a narrow column of brown debris fountaining silently into the cloudless sky.
For Attilius, it was like a great, dry wave which came crashing over his head. He was roughly two miles clear of the summit, following an old hunting trail through the forest, descending fast on horseback along the mountain’s western flank. The effects of the poisoning had shrunk to a small fist of pain hammering behind his eyes and in place of the drowsiness everything seemed oddly sharpened and heightened. He had no doubt of what was coming. His plan was to pick up the coastal road at Herculaneum and ride directly to Misenum to warn the admiral. He reckoned he would be there by mid-afternoon. The bay sparkled in the sunlight between the trees, close enough for him to be able to make out individual lines of surf. He was noticing the glistening pattern of the spiders’ webs hanging loosely in the foliage and a particular cloud of midges, swirling beneath a branch ahead of him, when suddenly they disappeared.
The shock of the blast struck him from behind and knocked him forward. Hot air, like the opening of a furnace door. Then something seemed to pop in his ears and the world became a soundless place of bending trees and whirling leaves. His horse stumbled and almost fell and he clung to its neck as they plunged down the path, both of them riding the crest of the scalding wave, and then abruptly it was gone. The trees sprang upright, the debris settled, the air became breathable again. He tried to talk to the horse but he had no voice and when he looked back towards the top of the mountain he saw that it had vanished and in its place a boiling stem of rock and earth was shooting upward.
From Pompeii it looked as if a sturdy brown arm had punched through the peak and was aiming to smash a hole in the roof of the sky – bang, bang: that double crack – and then a hard-edged rumble, unlike any other sound in Nature, that came rolling across the plain. Ampliatus ran outside with the magistrates. From the bakery next door and all the way up the street people were emerging to stare at Vesuvius, shielding their eyes, their faces turned towards this new dark sun rising in the north on its thundering plinth of rock. There were a couple of screams but no general panic. It was still too early, the thing was too awesome – too strange and remote – for it to be perceived as an immediate threat.
It would stop at any moment, Ampliatus thought. He willed it to do so. Let it subside now, and the situation will still be controllable. He had the nerve, the force of character; it was all a question of presentation. He could handle even this: ‘The gods have given us a sign, citizens! Let us heed their instruction! Let us build a great column, in imitation of this celestial inspiration! We live in a favoured spot!’ But the thing did not stop. Up and up it went. A thousand heads tilted backward as one to follow its trajectory and gradually the isolated screams became more widespread. The pillar, narrow at its base, was broadening as it rose, its apex flattening out across the sky.
Someone shouted that t
he wind was carrying it their way.
That was the moment at which he knew he would lose them. The mob had a few simple instincts – greed, lust, cruelty – he could play them like the strings of a harp because he was of the mob and the mob was him. But shrill fear drowned out every other note. Still, he tried. He stepped into the centre of the street and held his arms out wide. ‘Wait!’ he shouted. ‘Cuspius, Brittius – all of you – link hands with me! Set them an example!’
The cowards did not even look at him. Holconius broke first, jamming his bony elbows into the press of bodies to force his way down the hill. Brittius followed, and then Cuspius. Popidius turned tail and darted back inside the house. Up ahead, the crowd had become a solid mass as people streamed from the sidestreets to join it. Its back was to the mountain now, its face was to the sea, its single impulse: flight. Ampliatus had a final glimpse of his wife’s white face in the doorway and then he was engulfed by the stampeding crowd, spun like one of the revolving wooden models they used for practice in the gladiatorial school. He was thrown sideways, winded, and would have disappeared beneath their feet if Massavo had not seen him fall and scooped him up to safety on the step. He saw a mother drop her baby and heard its screams as it was trampled, saw an elderly matron slammed head first against the opposite wall then slip, unconscious, out of sight, as the mob swept on regardless. Some screamed. Some sobbed. Most were tight-mouthed, intent on saving their strength for the battle at the bottom of the hill, where they would have to fight their way through the Stabian Gate.
Ampliatus, leaning against the door-jamb, was aware of a wetness on his face and when he dabbed the back of his hand to his nose it came away smeared in blood. He looked above the heads of the crowd towards the mountain but already it had disappeared. A vast black wall of cloud was advancing towards the city, as dark as a storm. But it was not a storm, he realised, and it was not a cloud; it was a thundering waterfall of rock. He looked quickly in the other direction. He still had his gold-and-crimson cruiser moored down in the harbour. They could put to sea, try to head to the villa in Misenum, seek shelter there. But the cram of bodies in the street leading to the gate was beginning to stretch back up the hill. He would never reach the port. And even if he did, the crew would be scrambling to save themselves.
His decision was made for him. And so be it, he thought. This was exactly how it had been seventeen years ago. The cowards had fled, he had stayed, and then they had all come crawling back again! He felt his old energy and confidence returning. Once more the former slave would give his masters a lesson in Roman courage. The sibyl was never wrong. He gave a final, contemptuous glance to the river of panic streaming past him, stepped back and ordered Massavo to close the door. Close it and bolt it. They would stay, and they would endure.
In Misenum it looked like smoke. Pliny’s sister, Julia, strolling on the terrace with her parasol, picking the last roses of summer for the dinner table, assumed it must be another of the hillside fires that had plagued the bay all summer. But the height of the cloud, its bulk and the speed of its ascent were like nothing she had ever seen. She decided she had better wake her brother, who was dozing over his books in the garden below.
Even in the heavy shade of the tree his face was as scarlet as the flowers in her basket. She hesitated to disturb him, because of course he would immediately start to get excited. He reminded her of how their father had been in the days before his death – the same corpulence, the same shortness of breath, the same unchar-acteristic irritability. But if she let him sleep he would no doubt be even more furious to have missed the peculiar smoke, so she stroked his hair and whispered, ‘Brother, wake up. There is something you will want to see.’
He opened his eyes at once. ‘The water – is it flowing?’
‘No. Not the water. It looks like a great fire on the bay, coming from Vesuvius.’
‘Vesuvius?’ He blinked at her then shouted to a nearby slave. ‘My shoes! Quickly!’
‘Now, brother, don’t exert yourself too much –’
He did not even wait for his shoes. Instead, for the second time that day, he set off barefoot, lumbering across the dry grass towards the terrace. By the time he reached it most of the household slaves were lining the balustrade, looking east across the bay towards what looked like a gigantic umbrella pine made of smoke growing over the coast. A thick brown trunk, with black and white blotches, was rolling miles into the air, sprouting at its crown a clump of feathery branches. These broad leaves seemed in turn to be dissolving along their lower edges, beginning to rain a fine, sand-coloured mist back down to earth.
It was an axiom of the admiral’s, one which he was fond of repeating, that the more he observed Nature, the less prone he was to consider any statement about Her to be impossible. But surely this was impossible. Nothing he had read of – and he had read everything – came close to matching this spectacle. Perhaps Nature was granting him the privilege of witnessing something never before recorded in history? Those long years of accumulating facts, the prayer with which he had ended the Natural History – ‘Hail Nature, mother of all creation, and mindful that I alone of the men of Rome have praised thee in all thy manifestations, be gracious towards me’ – was it all being rewarded at last? If he had not been so fat he would have fallen to his knees. ‘Thank you,’ he whispered. ‘Thank you.’
He must start work at once. Umbrella pine . . . tall stem . . . feathery branches . . . He needed to get all this down for posterity, while the images were still fresh in his head. He shouted to Alexion to collect pen and paper and to Julia to fetch Gaius.
‘He’s inside, working on the translation you set him.’
‘Well, tell him to come out here at once. He won’t want to miss this.’ It could not be smoke, he thought. It was too thick. Besides, there was no sign of any fire at the base. But if not smoke, what? ‘Be quiet, damn you!’ He waved at the slaves to stop their jabbering. Listening hard, it was just possible to make out a low and ceaseless rumble carrying across the bay. If that was how it sounded at a distance of fifteen miles, what must it be like close to?
He beckoned to Alcman. ‘Send a runner down to the naval school to find the flagship captain. Tell him I want a liburnian made ready and put at my disposal.’
‘Brother – no!’
‘Julia!’ He held up his hand. ‘You mean well, I know, but save your breath. This phenomenon, whatever it is, is a sign from Nature. This is mine.’
Corelia had thrown open her shutters and was standing on the balcony. To her right, above the flat roof of the atrium, a gigantic cloud was advancing, as black as ink, like a heavy curtain being drawn across the sky. The air was shaking with thunder. She could hear screams from the street. In the courtyard garden slaves ran back and forth, to no apparent purpose. They reminded her of dormice in a jar, before they were fished out for cooking. She felt somehow detached from the scene – a spectator in a box at the back of the theatre, watching an elaborate production. At any moment, a god would be lowered from the wings to whisk her off to safety. She shouted down – ‘What’s happening?’ – but nobody paid her any attention. She tried again and realised she was forgotten.
The drumming of the cloud was getting louder. She ran to the door and tried to open it but the lock was too strong to break. She ran back on to the balcony but it was too high to jump. Below, and to the left, she saw Popidius coming up the steps from his part of the house, shepherding his elderly mother, Taedia Secunda, before him. A couple of their slaves, laden with bags, were following behind. She screamed at him – ‘Popidius!’ – and at the sound of his name he stopped and glanced around. She waved to him. ‘Help me! He’s locked me in!’
He shook his head in despair. ‘He’s trying to lock us all in! He’s gone mad!’
‘Please – come up and open the door!’
He hesitated. He wanted to help her. And he would have done so. But even as he took half a pace towards her something hit the tiled roof behind him and bounced off into the garden.
A light stone, the size of a child’s fist. He saw it land. Another struck the pergola. And suddenly it was dusk and the air was full of missiles. He was being hit repeatedly on the head and shoulders. Frothy rocks, they looked to be: a whitish, petrified sponge. They weren’t heavy but they stung. It was like being caught in a sudden hailstorm – a warm, dark, dry hailstorm, if such a thing were imaginable. He ran for the cover of the atrium, ignoring Corelia’s cries, pushing his mother in front of him. The door ahead – Ampliatus’s old entrance – was hanging open and he stumbled out into the street.
Corelia did not see him go. She ducked back into her room to escape the bombardment. She had one last impression of the world outside, shadowy in the dust, and then all light was extinguished and there was nothing in the pitch darkness, not even a scream, only the roaring waterfall of rock.
In Herculaneum life was peculiarly normal. The sun was shining, the sky and sea were a brilliant blue. As Attilius reached the coastal road he could even see fishermen out in their boats casting their nets. It was like some trick of the summer weather by which half of the bay was lost from view in a violent storm whilst the other half blessed its good fortune and continued to enjoy the day. Even the noise from the mountain seemed unthreatening – a background rumble, drifting with the veil of debris towards the peninsula of Surrentum.
Outside the town gates of Herculaneum a small crowd had gathered to watch the proceedings, and a couple of enterprising traders were setting up stalls to sell pastries and wine. A line of dusty travellers was already plodding down the road, mostly on foot and carrying luggage, some with carts piled high with their belongings. Children ran along behind them, enjoying the adventure, but the faces of their parents were rigid with fear. Attilius felt as if he were in a dream. A fat man, his mouth full of cake, sitting on a milestone, called out cheerfully to ask what it was like back there.