Lindsey Davis - Vesuvius by Night

Part of his skill would be to sell solutions to clients who did not even realise, until he told them, that they had a problem.

Really, the painter had grasped that all the flash talk was rubbish, but Nonius was well able to ignore others’ scepticism, so long as he got what he wanted. So now they rubbed along in the shared room, more or less in harmony. When the painter fell into bed after a long day creating frescos, Nonius went out in his sharp tunic to gain clients. He picked them up as they enjoyed relaxation in the better class of bar – larger establishments that offered space inside as well as counters on the street, and with secluded gardens. Most had a pricelist on the wall that included ‘Falernian’, which might even be the real thing.

Wine – 1 as

Good wine – 2 asses

Falernian – 4 asses

Fellatio – anything between 1 as and 7

Tips – at your discretion, sir

Plus bar staff who didn’t pick their noses, or at least not in front of you.

When Nonius had tickled up a new prospect successfully, or better still a consortium of these idiots, he would come home and change into his grubby clothes, then go back out to the lower class of dive to drink himself silly in celebration, until dawn broke and the painter took his brushes out to work. Then Nonius, with or without female company, could come home again and have the bed.

The room was a small bare space above a cheap front shop that had been carved out of a once-fine large house. In Pompeii such remodelling was rife. One-time gracious mansions were divided into upper-storey apartments and ground-level bakeries and laundries, fitted with street-side workshops, and flanked with booths and bars. Even their exterior walls were hired out for advertisements and electioneering. This situation both provided for, and in itself encouraged, a shifting population. Families and businesses came and went in the refurbished properties, while a whole new range of entrepreneurs flourished through leasing real estate. Many were freed slaves, flexing their financial muscles and not caring that trade was supposedly dirty. Some were merely from families that had once been kept down socially by an older and more snobbish local élite, but who, since the earthquake upset everything, were emerging into confidence, status and power.

The entrepreneurs lived in better houses than they rented out, homes which they decorated fashionably. This brought continual work for painters. And Nonius was sure, if he himself could offer the right temptations, it would bring a fortune to him.

He had noticed his landlord wore a sardonic expression while this was explained. Jupiter’s jockstrap, that dauber thought a lot of himself. He was not from around here. It was said he had been born and bred in Rome. It damn well showed. He was a cocky sod. While he was listening to his customers’ generally daft ideas for décor, this supposedly brilliant artist might appear mild-mannered enough, but clearly he believed himself superior to anyone in Campania. He must set customers straight without them noticing he thought their own taste dire. Presumably the wiser ones just let him get on with it. He preferred to be given a free hand; he knew that when they saw what he painted they would be delighted. He was very sure of his talent.

In the opinion of Nonius, this arrogant, tight-arsed young Roman was just ripe to have his self-assurance pricked, by Nonius helping himself to all the money that painter had saved up. It was going to happen. When Nonius was ready. When – and even he had to admit this was proving difficult – when Nonius had managed to find out where the painter’s savings actually were.

In his mind, the future loot had acquired colour, substance, and ludicrous bulk. He had been thinking about his landlord’s money so much that he had lost all sense of proportion. He was now imagining a silver hoard so glorious it needed to be guarded by mythical beasts. He believed that men in the building trade were generally paid with coinage but that sometimes, when a customer had a tricky cashflow, they were offered rewards in kind. Nonius, who could be just as imaginative as any of the best fresco painters and mosaicists around the Bay, now pictured more than mounds of glimmering sesterces; he dreamed of unexpectedly fine works of art, antique Greek statues and vases, tangles of curiously-set jewels…

The tight-fisted swine had hidden his hoard too well. It was not in the room. Nonius searched everywhere, taking up floorboards one by one, then hammering them down again. Since he had the place by daylight, he could see what he was doing so knew he hadn’t missed it. Nothing was here.

The landlord did get paid. Nonius had observed him obsessively. The painter always had money in his purse, a little corded leather bag he kept around his neck, from which he took coppers to buy a flatbread or an apple from a street stall. He could pay his way (a concept Nonius viewed askance) and never seemed troubled by financial anxiety in the way destitute people were. Nonius could spot that. He had been there.

Nonius would get him. In the meantime, until the particular day in question dawned, life continued for them both with its gentle cycle. Like a plumb-bob in motion, they came and went in their terrible bleak room, one swinging in, one swinging out, passing each other with barely a nod, never sharing a meal or a philosophical conversation, yet constantly linked by a mutual thread of existence.

When Nonius took his turn in the bed, once he finished with any female companion – assuming he could be bothered, and assuming she didn’t order him to screw himself and leave her be – he would sleep like the dead, or at least the hungover. Since being hungover was so regular for him, it passed without too much pain, normally around the time the light began to fade at dusk. He usually woke and was ready to decamp when his landlord’s weary feet climbed the stone steps from the street.

But on the day in question, it was different. He woke much sooner than he wanted. Nonius abruptly reached consciousness while there was still sunlight streaming through the broken shutters at full intensity. His body sensed it was only about midday, though sounds from outside seemed not quite right.

Nonius lay spread-eagled, face down. He had ended up diagonally on the mattress, tangled in the sheet, unsure for a few moments where the ends and sides of the narrow bed were in relation to him. He felt a fear of falling out. He would have groaned, but could not summon the energy.

He thought he knew what was going on. He realised that what had woken him was a peculiar sensation, a sense of his bed shifting beneath him during unnatural reverberations. Anyone who experiences this, even for the first time, knows it must be an earthquake. Even in places where earthquakes have never happened before, the occurrence is so strange it is unmistakeable. It ought to be unsettling, yet Nonius had lived through seismic activity, so he felt neither alarm nor surprise. People said, ‘This is Campania, what do you expect?’ Earthquakes regularly happened. In the past, the street level in Pompeii rose or sank by several feet. The shoreline changed. On the way out to Cumae lay fiery, sulphurous fields and lakes whose dead air killed birds overhead. The earth was rocky and barren there; it stretched and heaved, spewing hot fumaroles of steam or gas. Poets wrote of it as the entrance to Hades.

For the past four days minor tremors had been felt. Locals cursed, but were used to it. Noises cracked and grumbled deep underground. The credulous believed giants were walking the earth. The racket was growing louder but as the days passed people took less notice.

Was there now to be another significant earthquake? Nonius knew that when the ground began rippling in waves, as if solid earth had turned to water, the sensible rule was to leave your building. Best not to be indoors when your house falls down. Even if somebody eventually dug you out, if anyone bothered, you might be dead of fear and suffocation by the time they pulled off the rubble.