Robert Harris - Pompeii

He pushed himself to his feet and made his way over to the men, who were crouched in a circle, playing dice. Corax had his hand cupped over the beaker and was shaking it hard. He did not look up as Attilius’s shadow fell across him. “Come on, Fortuna, you old whore,” he muttered and rolled the dice. He threw all aces—a dog—and groaned. Becco gave a cry of joy and scooped up the pile of copper coins.

“My luck was good,” said Corax, “until he appeared.” He jabbed his finger at Attilius. “He’s worse than a raven, lads. You mark my words—he’ll lead us all to our deaths.”

“Not like Exomnius,” said the engineer, squatting beside them. “I bet he always won.” He picked up the dice. “Whose are these?”

“Mine,” said Musa.

“I’ll tell you what. Let’s play a different game. When we get to Pompeii, Corax is going out first to the far side of Vesuvius, to find the break on the Augusta. Someone must go with him. Why don’t you throw for the privilege?”

“Whoever wins goes with Corax!” exclaimed Musa.

“No,” said Attilius. “Whoever loses.”

Everyone laughed, except Corax.

“Whoever loses!” repeated Becco. “That’s a good one!”

They took it in turns to roll the dice, each man clasping his hands around the cup as he shook it, each whispering his own particular prayer for luck.

Musa went last, and threw a dog. He looked crestfallen.

“You lose!” chanted Becco. “Musa the loser!”

“All right,” said Attilius, “the dice settle it. Corax and Musa will locate the fault.”

“And what about the others?” grumbled Musa.

“Becco and Corvinus will ride to Abellinum and close the sluices.”

“I don’t see why it takes two of them to go to Abellinum. And what’s the Greek kid going to do?”

“Polites stays with me in Pompeii and organizes the tools and transport.”

“Oh, that’s fair!” said Musa, bitterly. “The free man sweats out his guts on the mountain, while the slave gets to screw the whores in Pompeii!” He snatched up his dice and hurled them into the sea. “That’s what I think of my luck!”

From the pilot at the front of the ship came a warning shout—“Pompeii ahead!”—and six heads turned as one to face her.

She came into view slowly from behind a headland, and she was not at all what the engineer had expected—no sprawling resort like Baiae or Neapolis, strung out along the coastline of the bay, but a fortress-city, built to withstand a siege, set back a quarter of a mile from the sea, on higher ground, her port spread out beneath her.

It was only as they drew closer that Attilius saw that her walls were no longer continuous—that the long years of the Roman peace had persuaded the city fathers to drop their guard. Houses had been allowed to emerge above the ramparts, and to spill, in widening, palm-shaded terraces, down toward the docks. Dominating the line of flat roofs was a temple, looking out to sea. Gleaming marble pillars were surmounted by what at first appeared to be a frieze of ebony figures. But the frieze, he realized, was alive. Craftsmen, almost naked and blackened by the sun, were moving back and forth against the white stone—working, even though it was a public holiday. The ring of chisels on stone and the rasp of saws carried clear in the warm air.

Activity everywhere. People walking along the top of the wall and working in the gardens that looked out to sea. People swarming along the road in front of the town—on foot, on horseback, in chariots, and on the backs of wagons—throwing up a haze of dust and clogging the steep paths that led up from the port to the two big city gates. As the Minerva turned into the narrow entrance of the harbor the din of the crowd grew louder—a holiday crowd, by the look of it, coming into town from the countryside to celebrate the festival of Vulcan. Attilius scanned the dockside for fountains but could see none.

The men were all silent, standing in line, each with his own thoughts.

He turned to Corax. “Where does the water come into the town?”

“On the other side of the city,” said Corax, staring intently at the town. “Beside the Vesuvius Gate. If ”—he gave heavy emphasis to the word—“it’s still flowing.”

That would be a joke, thought Attilius, if it turned out the water was not running after all and he had brought them all this way merely on the word of some old fool of an augur.

“Who works there?”

“Just some town slave. You won’t find him much help.”

“Why not?”

Corax grinned and shook his head. He would not say. A private joke.

“All right. Then the Vesuvius Gate is where we’ll start from.” Attilius clapped his hands. “Come on, lads. You’ve seen a town before. The cruise is over.”

They were inside the harbor now. Warehouses and cranes crowded against the water’s edge. Beyond them was a river—the Sarnus, according to Attilius’s map—choked with barges waiting to be unloaded. Torquatus, shouting orders, strode down the length of the ship. The drumbeats slowed and ceased. The oars were shipped. The helmsman turned the rudder slightly and they glided alongside the wharf at walking pace, no more than a foot of clear water between the deck and the quay. Two groups of sailors carrying mooring cables jumped ashore and wound them quickly around the stone posts. A moment later the ropes snapped taut and, with a jerk that almost knocked Attilius off his feet, the Minerva came to rest.

He saw it as he was recovering his balance. A big, plain stone plinth with a head of Neptune gushing water from his mouth into a bowl that was shaped like an oyster shell, and the bowl overflowing —this was what he would never forget—cascading down to rinse the cobbles, and wash, unregarded, into the sea. Nobody was lining up to drink. Nobody was paying it any attention. Why should they? It was just an ordinary miracle. He vaulted over the low side of the warship and swayed toward it, feeling the strange solidity of the ground after the voyage across the bay. He dropped his sack and put his hands into the clear arc of water, cupped them, raised them to his lips. It tasted sweet and pure and he almost laughed aloud with pleasure and relief, then plunged his head beneath the pipe, and let the water run everywhere—into his mouth and nostrils, his ears, down the back of his neck—heedless of the people staring at him as if he had gone insane.

HORA QUARTA

[09:48 hours]

Isotope studies of Neapolitan volcanic magma show signs of significant mixing with the surrounding rock, suggesting that the reservoir isn’t one continuous molten body. Instead, the reservoir might look more like a sponge, with the magma seeping through numerous fractures in the rock. The massive magma layer may feed into several smaller reservoirs that are closer to the surface and too small to identify with seismic techniques . . .

—AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE,

NEWS BULLETIN, “MASSIVE MAGMA LAYER FEEDS

MT. VESUVIUS,” NOVEMBER 16, 2001

A man could buy anything he needed in the harbor of Pompeii. An Indian parrot, a Nubian slave, nitrum salt from the pools near Cairo, Chinese cinnamon, an African monkey, Oriental slave girls famed for their sexual tricks . . . Horses were as easy to come by as flies. Half a dozen dealers hung around outside the customs shed. The nearest sat on a stool beneath a crudely drawn sign of the winged Pegasus, bearing the sloganBACULUS: HORSES SWIFT ENOUGH FOR THE GODS.

“I need five,” Attilius told the dealer. “And none of your clapped-out nags. I want good, strong beasts, capable of working all day. And I need them now.”

“That’s no problem, citizen.” Baculus was a small, bald man, with the brick-red face and glassy eyes of a heavy drinker. He wore an iron ring too large for his finger, which he twisted nervously, around and around. “Nothing’s a problem in Pompeii, provided you’ve the money. Mind you, I’ll require a deposit. One of my horses was stolen the other week.”