Robert Harris - Pompeii

VESPERA

[20:00 hours]

The arrival of magma into the near-surface swells

the reservoir and inflates the surface . . .

— ENCYCLOPEDIA OF VOLCANOES

Attilius and his expedition reached the matrix of the Aqua Augusta just as the day was ending. One moment the engineer was watching the sun vanish behind the great mountain, silhouetting it against a red sky, making the trees look as though they were on fire, and the next it had gone. Looking ahead, he saw, rising out of the darkening plain, what appeared to be gleaming heaps of pale sand. He squinted at them, then spurred his horse and galloped ahead of the wagons.

Four pyramids of gravel were grouped around a roofless, circular brick wall, about the height of a man’s waist. It was a settling tank. He knew there would be at least a dozen of these along the length of the Augusta—one every three or four miles was Vitruvius’s recommendation—places where the water was deliberately slowed to collect impurities as they sank to the bottom. Masses of tiny pebbles, worn perfectly round and smooth as they were washed along the matrix, had to be dug out every few weeks and piled beside the aqueduct, to be carted away and either dumped or used for road-building.

A settling tank had always been a favorite place from which to run off a secondary line and as Attilius dismounted and strode across to it he saw that this was indeed the case here. The ground beneath his feet was spongy, the vegetation greener and more luxuriant, the soil singing with saturation. Water was bubbling over the carapace of the tank at every point, washing the brickwork with a shimmering translucent film. The final manhole of the Pompeii spur lay directly in front of the wall.

He rested his hands on the lip and peered over the side. The tank was twenty feet across and he would guess at least fifteen deep. With the sun gone it was too dark to see all the way to the gravel floor but he knew there would be three tunnel mouths down there—one where the Augusta flowed in, one where it flowed out, and a third connecting Pompeii to the system. Water surged between his fingers. He wondered when Corvinus and Becco had shut off the sluices at Abellinum. With luck, the flow should be starting to ease very soon.

He heard feet squelching over the ground behind him. Brebix and a couple of the other men were walking across from the wagons.

“So is this the place, aquarius?”

“No, Brebix. Not yet. But not far now. You see that? The way the water is gushing from below? That’s because the mainline is blocked somewhere further down its course.” He wiped his hands on his tunic. “We need to get moving again.”

It was not a popular decision, and quickly became even less so when they discovered that the wagons were sinking up to their axles in the mud. There was an outbreak of cursing and it took all their strength—shoulders and backs applied first to one cart and then to the other—to heave them up onto firmer ground. Half a dozen of the men went sprawling and refused to move and Attilius had to go round offering his hand and pulling them up onto their feet. They were tired, superstitious, hungry—it was worse than driving a team of ill-tempered mules.

He hitched his horse to the back of one of the wagons and when Brebix asked him what he was doing he said, “I’ll walk with the rest of you.” He took the halter of the nearest ox and tugged it forward. It was the same story as when they left Pompeii. At first nobody moved but then, grudgingly, they set off after him. The natural impulse of men is to follow, he thought, and whoever has the strongest sense of purpose will always dominate the rest. Ampliatus understood that better than anyone he’d met.

They were crossing a narrow plain between high ground. Vesuvius was to their left; to their right, the distant cliffs of the Apenninus rose like a wall. The road had once again parted company with the aqueduct and they were following a track, plodding along beside the Augusta—marker stone, manhole, marker stone, manhole, on and on—through ancient groves of olives and lemons, as pools of darkness began to gather beneath the trees. There was little to hear above the rumble of the wheels except the occasional sound of goats’ bells in the dusk.

Attilius kept glancing off to the line of the aqueduct. Water was bubbling around the edges of some of the manholes, and that was ominous. The aqueduct tunnel was six feet high. If the force of the water was sufficient to dislodge the heavy inspection covers, then the pressure must be immense, which in turn suggested that the obstruction in the matrix must be equally massive, otherwise it would have been swept away. Where were Corax and Musa?

An immense crash, like a peal of thunder, came from the direction of Vesuvius. It seemed to go rolling past them and echoed off the rock face of the Apenninus with a flat boom. The ground heaved and the oxen shied, turning instinctively from the noise, dragging him with them. He dug his heels into the track and had just about managed to bring them to a halt when one of the men shrieked and pointed. “The giants!” Huge white creatures, ghostly in the twilight, seemed to be issuing from beneath the earth ahead of them, as if the roof of Hades had split apart and the spirits of the dead were flying into the sky. Even Attilius felt the hair stiffen on the back of his neck and it was Brebix in the end who laughed and said, “They’re only birds, you fools! Look!”

Birds—immense birds: flamingos, were they?—rose in their hundreds like some great white sheet that fluttered and dipped and then settled out of sight again. Flamingos, thought Attilius: waterbirds.

In the distance he saw two men, waving.

Nero himself, if he had spent a year on the task, could not have wished for a finer artificial lake than that which the Augusta had created in barely a day and a half. A shallow depression to the north of the matrix had filled to a depth of three or four feet. The surface was softly luminous in the dusk, broken here and there by clumpy islands formed by the dark foliage of half-submerged olive trees. Waterfowl scudded between them; flamingos lined the distant edge.

The men of Attilius’s work gang did not stop for permission. They tore off their tunics and ran naked toward it, their sunburned bodies and dancing, snow-white buttocks giving them the appearance of some exotic herd of antelope come down for an evening drink and a bathe. Whoops and splashes carried to where Attilius stood with Musa and Corvinus. He made no attempt to stop them. Let them enjoy it while they could. Besides, he had a fresh mystery to contend with.

Corax was missing.

According to Musa, he and the overseer had discovered the lake less than two hours after leaving Pompeii—around noon, it must have been—and it was exactly as Attilius had predicted: how could anyone miss a flood of this size? After a brief inspection of the damage, Corax had remounted his horse and set off back to Pompeii to report on the scale of the problem, as agreed.

Attilius’s jaw was set in anger. “But that must have been seven or eight hours ago.” He did not believe it. “Come on, Musa—what really happened?”

“I’m telling you the truth, aquarius. I swear it!” Musa’s eyes were wide in apparently sincere alarm. “I thought he would be coming back with you. Something must have happened to him!”

Beside the open manhole, Musa and Corvinus had lit a fire, not to keep themselves warm—the air was still sultry—but to ward off evil. The timber they had found was as dry as tinder, the flames bright in the darkness, spitting fountains of red sparks that rose whirling with the smoke. Huge white moths mingled with the flakes of ash.

“Perhaps we missed him on the road somehow.” Attilius peered behind him into the encroaching gloom. But even as he said it he knew that it could not be right. And in any case, a man on horseback, even if he had taken a different route, would surely have had time to reach Pompeii, discover they had left, and catch up with them. “This makes no sense. Besides, I thought I made it clear that you were to bring us the message, not Corax.”