Robert Harris - Pompeii

“Use me?”

“Here, for a start. These baths could do with a man who understands water. In return for your advice, I could cut you in. A share of the profits.”

Attilius shook his head, smiling. “I don’t think so.”

Ampliatus smiled back. “Ah, you drive a hard bargain! I admire that in a man. Very well—a share of the ownership, too.”

“No. Thank you. I’m flattered. But my family has worked the imperial aqueducts for a century. I was born to be an engineer on the matrices, and I shall die doing it.”

“Why not do both?”

“What?”

“Run the aqueduct, and advise me as well. No one need ever know.”

Attilius looked at him closely, at his crafty, eager face. Beneath the money, the violence, and the lust for power, he was really nothing bigger than a small-town crook. “No,” he said coldly, “that would be impossible.”

The contempt must have shown in his face because Ampliatus retreated at once. “You’re right,” he said, nodding. “Forget I even mentioned it. I’m a rough fellow sometimes. I have these ideas without always thinking them through.”

“Like executing a slave before finding out if he’s telling the truth?”

Ampliatus grinned and pointed at Attilius. “Very good! That’s right. But how can you expect a man like me to know how to behave? You can have all the money in the empire but it doesn’t make you a gentleman, right? You may think you’re copying the aristocracy, showing a bit of class, but then it turns out you’re a monster. Isn’t that what Corelia called me? A monster?”

“And Exomnius?” Attilius blurted out the question. “Did you have an arrangement with him that nobody ever knew about?”

Ampliatus’s smile did not waver. From down in the street came a rumble of heavy wooden wheels on stone. “Listen—I think I can hear your wagons coming. We’d better go down and let them in.”

The conversation might never have happened. Humming to himself again, Ampliatus dodged across the rubble-strewn yard. He swung open the heavy gates and as Polites led the first team of oxen into the site he made a formal bow. A man Attilius did not recognize was leading the second team; a couple more sat on the back of the empty cart, their legs dangling over the side. They jumped down immediately when they noticed Ampliatus and stood looking respectfully at the ground.

“Well done, lads,” said Ampliatus. “I’ll see you’re rewarded for working a holiday. But it’s an emergency and we’ve all got to rally round and help fix the aqueduct. For the common good—isn’t that right, aquarius?” He pinched the cheek of the nearest man. “You’re under his command now. Serve him well. Aquarius: take as much as you want. It’s all in the yard. Torches are inside in the storeroom. Is there anything more I can do for you?” He was obviously eager to go.

“I shall make an inventory of what we use,” said Attilius formally. “You will be compensated.”

“There’s no need. But as you wish. I wouldn’t want to be accused of trying to corrupt you!” He laughed, and pointed again. “I’d stay and help you load myself—nobody ever said that Numerius Popidius Ampliatus was afraid of getting his hands dirty!—but you know how it is. We’re dining early because of the festival and I mustn’t show my low birth by keeping all those fine gentlemen and their ladies waiting.” He held out his hand. “So! I wish you luck, aquarius.”

Attilius took it. The grip was dry and firm; the palm and fingers, like his own, callused by hard work. He nodded. “Thank you.”

Ampliatus grunted and turned away. Outside in the quiet street his litter was waiting for him and this time he clambered straight into it. The slaves ran around to take up their positions, four men on either side. Ampliatus clicked his fingers and they hoisted the bronze-capped poles—first to waist height, and then, grimacing with the strain, up onto their shoulders. Their master settled himself back on his cushions, staring straight ahead—unseeing, brooding. He reached behind his shoulder, unfastened the curtain and let it fall. Attilius stood in the gateway and watched him go, the crimson canopy swaying as it moved off down the hill, the little crowd of weary petitioners trudging after it.

He went back into the yard.

It was all there, as Ampliatus had promised, and for a while Attilius was able to lose himself in the simple effort of physical work. It was comforting to handle the materials of his craft again—the weighty, sharp-edged bricks, just big enough to fit a man’s grasp, and their familiar brittle clink as they were stacked on the back of the cart; the baskets of powdery red puteolanum, always heavier and denser than you expected, sliding across the rough boards of the wagon; the feel of the timber, warm and smooth against his cheek as he carried it across the yard; and finally the quicklime, in its bulbous clay amphorae—difficult to grasp and heave up onto the cart.

He worked steadily with the other men and had a sense at last that he was making progress. Ampliatus was undeniably cruel and ruthless and the gods alone knew what else besides, but his stuff was good and in honest hands it would serve a better purpose. He had asked for six amphorae of lime but when it came to it he decided to take a dozen and increased the amount of puteolanum in proportion, to twenty baskets. He did not want to come back to Ampliatus to ask for more; what he did not use he could return.

He went into the bathhouse to look for the torches and found them in the largest storeroom. Even these were of a superior sort—tightly wadded flax and resin impregnated with tar; good, solid wooden handles bound with rope. Next to them lay open wooden crates of oil lamps, mostly terra-cotta, but some of brass, and candles enough to light a temple. Quality, as Ampliatus said: you couldn’t beat it. Clearly, this was going to be a most luxurious establishment.

“It will be the finest baths outside Rome . . .”

He was suddenly curious and with his arms full of torches he looked into some of the other storerooms. Piles of towels in one, jars of scented massage oil in another, lead exercise weights, coils of rope and leather balls in a third. Everything ready and waiting for use; everything here except chattering, sweating humanity to bring it all to life. And water, of course. He peered through the open door into the succession of rooms. It would use a lot of water, this place. Four or five pools, showers, flush latrines, a steam room . . . Only public facilities, such as the fountains, were connected to the aqueduct free of charge, as the gift of the emperor. But private baths like these would cost a small fortune in water taxes. And if Ampliatus had made his money by buying big properties, subdividing them, and renting them out, then his overall consumption of water must be huge. He wondered how much he was paying for it. Presumably he could find out once he returned to Misenum and tried to bring some order to the chaos in which Exomnius had left the Augusta’s records.

Perhaps he wasn’t paying anything at all.

He stood there in the sunlight, in the echoing bathhouse, listening to the cooing pigeons, turning the possibility over in his mind. The aqueducts had always been wide open to corruption. Farmers tapped into the mainlines where they crossed their land. Citizens ran an extra pipe or two and paid the water inspectors to look the other way. Public work was awarded to private contractors and bills were paid for jobs that were never done. Materials went missing. Attilius suspected that the rottenness went right to the top—even Acilius Aviola, the Curator Aquarum himself, was rumored to insist on a percentage of the take. The engineer had never had anything to do with it. But an honest man was a rare man in Rome; an honest man was a fool.