Robert Harris - Pompeii

“Yes?” The slave eased his way through the mob.

“Fetch me my horse. We’ve wasted long enough here.”

Polites looked anxiously toward Brebix, now leading the reluctant work gang over to the wagons. “These men, aquarius—I don’t trust them.”

“Neither do I. But what else can we do? Come on. Get my horse. We’ll meet up with Musa on the road.”

As Polites hurried away, Attilius glanced down the hill. Pompeii was less like a seaside resort, more like a frontier garrison: a boomtown. Ampliatus was rebuilding her in his own image. He would not be sorry if he never saw her again—apart from Corelia. He wondered what she was doing, but even as the image of her wading toward him through the glittering pool began to form in his mind he forced himself to banish it. Get out of here, get to the Augusta, get the water running, and then get back to Misenum and check the aqueduct’s records for evidence of what Exomnius had been up to. Those were his priorities. To think of anything else was foolish.

In the shadow of the castellum aquae Tiro crouched, and Attilius was on the point of raising his hand in farewell, until he saw those flickering, sightless eyes.

The public sundial showed it was well into the ninth hour when Attilius passed on horseback beneath the long vault of the Vesuvius Gate. The ring of hooves on stone echoed like a small detachment of cavalry. The customs official poked his head out of his booth to see what was happening, yawned, and turned away.

The engineer had never been a natural rider. For once, though, he was glad to be mounted. It gave him height, and he needed every advantage he could get. When he trotted over to Brebix and the men they were obliged to squint up at him, screwing their eyes against the glare of the sky.

“We follow the line of the aqueduct toward Vesuvius,” he said. The horse wheeled and he had to shout over his shoulder. “And no dawdling. I want us in position before dark.”

“In position where?” asked Brebix.

“I don’t know yet. It should be obvious when we see it.”

His vagueness provoked an uneasy stir among the men—and who could blame them? He would have liked to have known where he was going himself. Damn Musa! He brought his mount under control and turned it toward the open country. He raised himself from the saddle so that he could see the course of the road beyond the necropolis. It ran straight toward the mountain through neat rectangular fields of olive trees and corn, separated by low stone walls and ditches—centuriated land, awarded to demobbed legionaries decades ago. There was not much traffic on the paved highway—a cart or two, a few pedestrians. No sign of any plume of dust that might be thrown up by a galloping horseman. Damn him, damn him . . .

Brebix said, “Some of the lads aren’t too keen on being out near Vesuvius after nightfall.”

“Why not?”

A man called out, “The giants!”

“Giants?”

Brebix said, almost apologetically, “Giants have been seen, aquarius, bigger than any man. Wandering over the earth by day and night. Sometimes journeying through the air. Their voices sound like claps of thunder.”

“Perhaps they are claps of thunder,” said Attilius. “Have you considered that? There can be thunder without rain.”

“Aye, but this thunder is never in the air. It’s on the ground. Or even under the ground.”

“So this is why you drink?” Attilius forced himself to laugh. “Because you are scared to be outside the city walls after dark? And you were a gladiator, Brebix? I’m glad I never wagered money on you! Or did you only train men to fight blind boys?” Brebix began to swear, but the engineer talked over his head, to the work gang. “I asked your master to lend me men, not women! We’ve argued long enough! We have to go five miles before dark. Perhaps ten. Now drive those oxen forward, and follow me.”

He dug his heels into the sides of his horse and it started off at a slow trot. He passed along the avenue between the tombs. Flowers and small offerings of food had been left on some, to mark the Festival of Vulcan. A few people were picnicking in the shade of the cypresses. Small black lizards scattered across the stone vaults like spreading cracks. He did not look back. The men would follow, he was sure. He had goaded them into it and they were scared of Ampliatus.

At the edge of the cemetery he drew on the reins and waited until he heard the creak of the wagons trundling over the stones. They were just crude farm carts—the axle turned with the wheels, which were no more than simple sections of tree trunk a foot thick. Their rumble could be heard a mile away. First the oxen passed him, heads down, each team led by a man with a stick, pulling the lumbering carts, and finally the rest of the work gang. He counted them. All were there, including Brebix. Beside the road, the marker stones of the aqueduct, one every hundred paces, dwindled into the distance. Neatly spaced between them were the round stone inspection covers that provided access to the tunnel. The regularity and precision of it gave the engineer a fleeting sense of confidence. If nothing else, he knew how this worked.

He spurred his horse.

An hour later, with the afternoon sun dipping toward the bay, they were halfway across the plain—the parched and narrow fields and bone-dry ditches spread out all around them, the ocher-colored walls and watchtowers of Pompeii dissolving into the dust at their backs, the line of the aqueduct leading them remorselessly onward, toward the blue-gray pyramid of Vesuvius, looming ever more massively ahead.

HORA DUODECIMA

[18:47 hours]

While rocks are extremely strong in compression, they are weak in tension (strengths of about 1.5 x 10 7bars). Thus, the strength of the rocks capping a cooling and vesiculating magma body is easily exceeded long before the magma is solid. Once this happens, an explosive eruption occurs.

— VOLCANOES: A PLANETARY PERSPECTIVE

Pliny had been monitoring the frequency of the trembling throughout the day—or, more accurately, his secretary, Alexion, had been doing it for him, seated at the table in the admiral’s library, with the water clock on one side and the wine bowl on the other.

The fact that it was a public holiday had made no difference to the admiral’s routine. He worked whatever day it was. He had broken off from his reading and dictation only once, in the middle of the morning, to bid good-bye to his guests, and had insisted on accompanying them down to the harbor to see them aboard their boats. Lucius Pomponianus and Livia were bound for Stabiae, on the far side of the bay, and it had been arranged that they would take Rectina with them, in their modest cruiser, as far as the Villa Calpurnia in Herculaneum. Pedius Cascus, without his wife, would take his own fully manned liburnian to Rome for a council meeting with the emperor. Old, dear friends! He had embraced them warmly. Pomponianus could play the fool, it was true, but his father, the great Pomponius Secundus, had been Pliny’s patron, and he felt a debt of honor to the family. And as for Pedius and Rectina—their generosity to him had been without limit. It would have been hard for him to finish the Natural History, living outside Rome, without the use of their library.

Just before he boarded his ship, Pedius had taken him by the arm. “I didn’t like to mention it earlier, Pliny, but are you sure you’re quite well?”

“Too fat,” wheezed Pliny, “that’s all.”

“What do your doctors say?”

“Doctors? I won’t let those Greek tricksters anywhere near me. Only doctors can murder a man with impunity.”

“But look at you, man. Your heart—”

“ ‘In cardiac disease the one hope of relief lies undoubtedly in wine.’ You should read my book. And that, my dear Pedius, is a medicine I can administer myself.”