Robert Harris - Pompeii

“He had rooms at Africanus’s place,” said Tiro. “He was not here all the time. But often.”

“And how long ago did you speak to him?”

“I can’t remember.” The youth really was beginning to seem frightened now. He turned his head as though trying to look at Attilius’s hand on his shoulder. The engineer quickly released him and patted his arm reassuringly.

“Try to remember, Tiro. It could be important.”

“I don’t know.”

“After the Festival of Neptune or before?” Neptunalia was on the twenty-third day of July: the most sacred date in the calendar for the men of the aqueducts.

“After. Definitely. Perhaps two weeks ago.”

“Two weeks? Then you must have been one of the last to talk to him. And he was worried about the tremors?” Tiro nodded again. “And Ampliatus? He was a great friend of Ampliatus, was he not? Were they often together?”

The slave gestured to his eyes. “I cannot see—”

No, thought Attilius, but I bet you heard them: not much escapes those ears of yours. He glanced across the street at the house of Popidius. “All right, Tiro. You can go back to the castellum. Do your day’s work. I’m grateful for your help.”

“Thank you, aquarius.” Tiro gave a little bow and took Attilius’s hand and kissed it. Then he turned and began climbing back up the hill toward the Vesuvius Gate, dancing from side to side through the holiday crowd.

HORA QUINTA

[11:07 hours]

Injections of new magma can also trigger eruptions by upsetting

the thermal, chemical, or mechanical equilibrium of older magma

in a shallow reservoir. New magmas coming from deeper, hotter

sources can suddenly raise the temperature of the cooler

resident magma, causing it to convect and vesiculate.

— VOLCANOLOGY (SECOND EDITION)

The house had a double door—heavy-studded, bronze-hinged, firmly closed. Attilius hammered on it a couple of times with his fist. The noise he made seemed too feeble to be heard above the racket of the street. But almost at once it opened slightly and the porter appeared—a Nubian, immensely tall and broad in a sleeveless, crimson tunic. His thick black arms and neck, as solid as tree trunks, glistened with oil, like some polished African hardwood.

Attilius said lightly, “A keeper worthy of his gate, I see.”

The porter did not smile. “State your business.”

“Marcus Attilius, aquarius of the Aqua Augusta, wishes to present his compliments to Lucius Popidius Secundus.”

“It’s a public holiday. He’s not at home.”

Attilius put his foot against the door. “He is now.” He opened his bag and pulled out the admiral’s letter. “Do you see this seal? Give it to him. Tell him it’s from the commander in chief at Misenum. Tell him I need to see him on the emperor’s business.”

The porter looked down at Attilius’s foot. If he had slammed the door he would have snapped it like a twig. A man’s voice behind him cut in: “The emperor’s business, did he just say, Massavo? You had better let him in.” The Nubian hesitated— Massavo: that was the right name for him, thought Attilius—then stepped backward, and the engineer slipped quickly through the opening. The door was closed and locked behind him; the sounds of the city were extinguished.

The man who had spoken wore the same crimson uniform as the porter. He had a bunch of keys attached to his belt—the household steward, presumably. He took the letter and ran his thumb across the seal, checking to see if it was broken. Satisfied, he studied Attilius. “Lucius Popidius is entertaining guests for Vulcanalia. But I shall see that he receives it.”

“No,” said Attilius. “I shall give it to him myself. Immediately.”

He held out his hand. The steward tapped the cylinder of papyrus against his teeth, trying to decide what to do. “Very well.” He gave Attilius the letter. “Follow me.”

He led the way down the narrow corridor of the vestibule toward a sunlit atrium, and for the first time Attilius began to appreciate the immensity of the old house. The narrow facade was an illusion. He could see beyond the shoulder of the steward straight through into the interior, a hundred fifty feet or more, successive vistas of light and color—the shaded passageway with its black-and-white mosaic floor; the dazzling brilliance of the atrium with its marble fountain; a tablinum for receiving visitors, guarded by two bronze busts; and then a colonnaded swimming pool, its pillars wrapped with vines. He could hear finches chirruping in an aviary somewhere, and women’s voices, laughing.

They came into the atrium and the steward said, brusquely, “Wait here,” before disappearing to the left, behind a curtain that screened a narrow passageway. Attilius glanced around. Here was money, old money, used to buy absolute privacy in the middle of the busy town. The sun was almost directly overhead, shining through the square aperture in the atrium’s roof, and the air was warm and sweet with the scent of roses. From this position he could see most of the swimming pool. Elaborate bronze statues decorated the steps at the nearest end—a wild boar, a lion, a snake rising from its coils, and Apollo playing the cithara. At the far end, four women reclined on couches, fanning themselves, each with her own maid standing behind her. They noticed Attilius staring and there was a little flutter of laughter from behind their fans. He felt himself redden with embarrassment and he quickly turned his back on them, just as the curtain parted and the steward reappeared, beckoning.

Attilius knew at once, by the humidity and by the smell of oil, that he was being shown into the house’s private baths. And of course, he thought, it was bound to have its own suite, for with money such as this, why mix with the common herd? The steward took him into the changing room and told him to remove his shoes, then they went back out into the passageway and into the tepidarium, where an immensely fat old man lay facedown, naked, on a table, being worked on by a young masseur. His white buttocks vibrated as the masseur made chopping motions up and down his spine. He turned his head slightly as Attilius passed by, regarded him with a single, bloodshot gray eye, then closed it again.

The steward slid open a door, releasing a billow of fragrant vapor from the dim interior, then stood aside to let the engineer pass through.

It was hard at first to see very much in the caldarium. The only light came from a couple of torches mounted on the wall and from the glowing coals of a brazier, the source of the steam that filled the room. Gradually Attilius made out a large sunken bath with three dark heads of hair, seemingly disembodied, floating in the grayness. There was a ripple of water as one of the heads moved and a splash as a hand was raised and gently waved.

“Over here, aquarius,” said a languid voice. “You have a message for me, I believe, from the emperor? I don’t know these Flavians. Descended from a tax collector, I believe. But Nero was a great friend of mine.”

Another head was stirring. “Fetch us a torch!” it commanded. “Let us at least see who disturbs us on a feast day.”

A slave in the corner of the room, whom Attilius had not noticed, took down one of the torches from the wall and held it close to the engineer’s face so that he could be inspected. All three heads were now turned toward him. Attilius could feel the pores of his skin opening, the sweat running freely down his body. The mosaic floor was baking hot beneath his bare feet—a hypocaust, he realized. Luxury was certainly piled upon luxury in the house of the Popidii. He wondered if Ampliatus, in the days when he was a slave here, had ever been made to sweat over the furnace in midsummer.