Robert Harris - Pompeii

“Monster!” Corelia stepped backward, her hands still pressed to her face, and sank into the water.

“You take advantage of my good nature, aquarius!” said Ampliatus. He was advancing across the tablinium. “I told you to wait for me, that was all.” He glared at Corelia. “You should know better, after what I told you yesterday!” Then he shouted across the pool—“Celsia!”—and the mousy woman Attilius had noticed earlier jerked up in her chair. “Get our daughter out of the pool! It’s unseemly for her to show her tits in public!” He turned to Attilius. “Look at them over there, like a lot of fat hens on their nests!” He flapped his arms at them, emitting a series of squawks— cluuuuck, cluck-cluck-cluck! —and the women raised their fans in distaste. “They won’t fly, though. Oh, no. One thing I’ve learned about our Roman aristocrat—he’ll go anywhere for a free meal. And his women are even worse.” He called out: “I’ll be back in an hour! Don’t start without me!” And with a gesture to Attilius that he should fall in behind him, the new master of the House of the Popidii turned on his heel and strode toward the door.

As they passed through the atrium, Attilius glanced back at the pool where Corelia was still submerged, as if she thought that by completely immersing herself she could wash away what was happening.

HORA SEXTA

[12:00 hours]

As magma rises from depth, it undergoes a large pressure decrease. At a

10-meter depth, for example, pressures are about 300 megapascals (MPa), or 3,000 times the atmospheric pressure. Such a large pressure change has many consequences for the physical properties and flow of magma.

— ENCYCLOPEDIA OF VOLCANOES

Ampliatus had a litter and eight slaves waiting outside on the pavement, dressed in the same crimson livery as the porter and steward. They scrambled to attention as their master appeared but he walked straight past them, just as he ignored the small crowd of petitioners squatting in the shade of the wall across the street, despite the public holiday, who called out his name in a ragged chorus.

“We’ll walk,” he said, and set off up the slope toward the crossroads, maintaining the same fast pace as he had in the house. Attilius followed at his shoulder. It was noon, the air scalding, the roads quiet. The few pedestrians who were about mostly hopped into the gutter as Ampliatus approached or drew back into the shop doorways. He hummed to himself as he walked, nodding an occasional greeting, and when the engineer looked back he saw that they were trailing a retinue that would have done credit to a senator—first, at a discreet distance, the slaves with the litter, and behind them the little straggle of supplicants: men with the dejected, exhausted look that came from dancing attendance on a great man since before dawn and knowing themselves doomed to disappointment.

About halfway up the hill to the Vesuvius Gate—the engineer counted three city blocks—Ampliatus turned right, crossed the street, and opened a little wooden door set into a wall. He put his hand on Attilius’s shoulder to usher him inside and Attilius felt his flesh recoil at the millionaire’s touch.

“Don’t let him trap you as he’s trapped the rest of us.”

He eased himself clear of the grasping fingers. Ampliatus closed the door behind them and he found himself standing in a big, deserted space, a building site, occupying the best part of the entire block. To the left was a brick wall surmounted by a sloping red-tiled roof—the back of a row of shops—with a pair of high wooden gates set into the middle; to the right, a complex of new buildings, very nearly finished, with large modern windows looking out across the expanse of scrub and rubble. A rectangular tank was being excavated directly beneath the windows.

Ampliatus had his hands on his hips and was studying the engineer’s reaction. “So then. What do you think I’m building? I’ll give you one guess.”

“Baths.”

“That’s it. What do you think?”

“It’s impressive,” said Attilius. And it was; at least as good as anything he had seen under construction in Rome in the past ten years. The brickwork and the columns were beautifully finished. There was a sense of tranquility—of space, and peace, and light. The high windows faced southwest to take advantage of the afternoon sun, which was just beginning to flood into the interior. “I congratulate you.”

“We had to demolish almost the whole block to make way for it,” said Ampliatus, “and that was unpopular. But it will be worth it. It will be the finest baths outside Rome. And more modern than anything you’ve got up there.” He looked around, proudly. “We provincials, you know, when we put our minds to it, we can still show you big-city men from Rome a thing or two.” He cupped his hands to his mouth and bellowed, “Januarius!”

From the other side of the yard came an answering shout, and a tall man appeared at the top of a flight of stairs. He recognized his master and ran down the steps and across the yard, wiping his hands on his tunic, bobbing his head in a series of bows as he came closer.

“Januarius—this is my friend, the aquarius of the Augusta. He works for the emperor!”

“Honored,” said Januarius, and gave Attilius another bow.

“Januarius is one of my foremen. Where are the lads?”

“In the barracks, sir.” He looked terrified, as if he had been caught idling. “It’s the holiday—”

“Forget the holiday! We need them here now. Ten, did you say you needed, aquarius? Better make it a dozen. Januarius, send for a dozen of the strongest men we have. Brebix’s gang. Tell them they’re to bring food and drink for a day. What else was it you needed?”

“Quicklime,” began Attilius, “puteolanum—”

“That’s it. All that stuff. Timber. Bricks. Torches—don’t forget torches. He’s to have everything he needs. And you’ll require transport, won’t you? A couple of teams of oxen?”

“I’ve already hired them.”

“But you’ll have mine—I insist.”

“No.” Ampliatus’s generosity was starting to make the engineer uneasy. First would come the gift, then the gift would turn out to be a loan, and then the loan would prove a debt impossible to pay back. That was no doubt how Popidius had ended up losing his house. A hustler’s town. He glanced at the sky. “It’s noon. The oxen should be arriving down at the harbor by now. I have a slave waiting there with our tools.”

“Who did you hire from?”

“Baculus.”

“Baculus! That drunken thief! My oxen would be better. At least let me have a word with him. I’ll get you a fat discount.”

Attilius shrugged. “If you insist.”

“I do. Fetch the men from the barracks, Januarius, and send a boy to the docks to have the aquarius’s wagons brought here for loading. I’ll show you around while we’re waiting, aquarius.” And again his hand fell upon the engineer’s shoulder. “Come.”

Baths were not a luxury. Baths were the foundation of civilization. Baths were what raised even the meanest citizen of Rome above the level of the wealthiest hairy-assed barbarian. Baths instilled the triple disciplines of cleanliness, healthfulness, and strict routine. Was it not to feed the baths that the aqueducts had been invented in the first place? Had not the baths spread the Roman ethos across Europe, Africa, and Asia as effectively as the legions, so that in whatever town in this far-flung empire a man might find himself, he could at least be sure of finding this one precious piece of home?

Such was the essence of Ampliatus’s lecture as he conducted Attilius around the empty shell of his dream. The rooms were unfurnished and smelled strongly of fresh paint and stucco and their footsteps echoed as they passed through the cubicles and exercise rooms into the main part of the building. Here, the frescoes were already in place. Views of the green Nile, studded with basking crocodiles, flowed into scenes from the lives of the gods. Triton swam beside the Argonauts and led them back to safety. Neptune transformed his son into a swan. Perseus saved Andromeda from the sea monster sent to attack the Ethiopians. The pool in the caldarium was built to take twenty-eight paying customers at a time, and as the bathers lay on their backs they would gaze up at a sapphire ceiling, lit by five hundred lamps and swimming with every species of marine life, and believe themselves to be floating in an undersea grotto.