Robert Harris - Pompeii

He resumed his walk and when he reached his front door he stood beneath the lantern and knocked loudly. It was still a pleasure for him to come in through the entrance he had not been permitted to use as a slave and he rewarded the porter with a smile. He was in an excellent mood, so much so that he turned when he was halfway down the vestibule and said, “Do you know the secret of a happy life, Massavo?”

The porter shook his immense head.

“To die.” Ampliatus gave him a playful punch in the stomach and winced; it was like striking wood. “To die, and then to come back to life, and relish every day as a victory over the gods.”

He was afraid of nothing, no one. And the joke was, he was not nearly as rich as everyone assumed. The villa in Misenum—ten million sesterces, far too expensive, but he had simply had to have it!—that had only been bought by borrowing, chiefly on the strength of this house, which had itself been paid for through a mortgage on the baths, and they were not even finished. Yet Ampliatus kept it all running somehow by the force of his will, by cleverness and by public confidence, and if that fool Lucius Popidius thought he was getting his old family home back once he had married Corelia—well, sadly, he should have got himself a decent lawyer before he signed the settlement.

As he passed the swimming pool, lit by torches, he paused to study the fountain. The mist of the water mingled with the scent of the roses, but even as he watched it seemed to him that it was beginning to lose its strength, and he thought of the solemn young aquarius, out in the darkness somewhere, trying to repair the aqueduct. He would not be coming back. It was a pity. They might have done business together. But he was honest, and Ampliatus’s motto was always “May the gods protect us from an honest man.” He might even be dead by now.

The flaccidity of the fountain began to perturb him. He thought of the silvery fish, springing and sizzling in the flames, and tried to imagine the reaction of the townspeople when they discovered the aqueduct was failing. Of course, he realized, they would blame it all on Vulcan, the superstitious fools. He had not considered that. In which case tomorrow might be an appropriate moment finally to produce the prophecy of Biria Onomastia, the sibyl of Pompeii, which he had taken the precaution of commissioning earlier in the summer. She lived in a house near the amphitheater and at night, amid swathes of smoke, she communed with the ancient god Sabazius, to whom she sacrificed snakes—a disgusting procedure—on an altar supporting two magical bronze hands. The whole ceremony had given him the creeps, but the sibyl had predicted an amazing future for Pompeii, and it would be useful to let word of it spread. He decided he would summon the magistrates in the morning. For now, while the others were still in the forum, he had more urgent business to attend to.

His prick began to harden even as he climbed the steps to the private apartments of the Popidii, a path he had trodden so many times, so long ago, when the old master had used him like a dog. What secret, frantic couplings these walls had witnessed over the years, what slobbering endearments they had overheard as Ampliatus had submitted to the probing fingers and had spread himself for the head of the household. Far younger than Celsinus he had been, younger even than Corelia—who was she to complain about marriage in the absence of love? Mind you, the master had always whispered that he loved him, and perhaps he had—after all, he had left him his freedom in his will. Everything that Ampliatus had grown to be had had its origin in the hot seed spilled up here. He had never forgotten it.

The bedroom door was unlocked and he went in without knocking. An oil lamp burned low on the dressing table. Moonlight spilled through the open shutters, and by its soft glow he saw Taedia Secunda lying prone upon her bed, like a corpse upon its bier. She turned her head as he appeared. She was naked; sixty if she was a day. Her wig was laid out on a dummy’s head beside the lamp, a sightless spectator to what was to come. In the old days it was she who had always issued the commands—here, there, there —but now the roles were reversed, and he was not sure if she didn’t enjoy it more, although she never uttered a word. Silently she turned and raised herself on her hands and knees, offering him her bony haunches, blue-sheened by the moon, waiting, motionless, while her former slave—her master now—climbed up onto her bed.

Twice after the rope gave way Attilius managed to jam his knees and elbows against the narrow walls of the matrix in an effort to wedge himself fast and twice he succeeded only to be pummeled loose by the pressure of the water and propelled farther along the tunnel. Limbs weakening, lungs bursting, he sensed he had one last chance and tried again, and this time he stuck, spread wide like a starfish. His head broke the surface and he choked and spluttered, gasping for breath.

In the darkness he had no idea where he was or how far he had been carried. He could see and hear nothing, feel nothing except the cement against his hands and knees and the pressure of the water up to his neck, hammering against his body. He had no idea how long he clung there but gradually he became aware that the pressure was slackening and that the level of the water was falling. When he felt the air on his shoulders he knew that the worst was over. Very soon after that his chest was clear of the surface. Cautiously he let go of the walls and stood. He swayed backward in the slow-moving current and then came upright, like a tree that had survived a flash flood.

His mind was beginning to work again. The backed-up waters were draining away and because the sluices had been closed in Abellinum twelve hours earlier there was nothing left to replenish them. What remained was being tamed and reduced by the infinitesimal gradient of the aqueduct. He felt something tugging at his waist. The rope was streaming out behind him. He fumbled for it in the darkness and hauled it in, coiling it around his arm. When he reached the end he ran his fingers over it. Smooth. Not frayed or hacked. Brebix must simply have let go of it. Why? Suddenly he was panicking, frantic to escape. He leaned forward and began to wade but it was like a nightmare—his hands stretched out invisible in front of him feeling along the walls in the infinite dark, his legs unable to move faster than at an old man’s shuffle. He felt himself doubly imprisoned, by the earth pressing in all around him, by the weight of the water ahead. His ribs ached. His shoulder felt as if it had been branded by fire.

He heard a splash and then in the distance a pinprick of yellow light dropped like a falling star. He stopped wading and listened, breathing hard. More shouts, followed by a second splash, and then another torch appeared. They were searching for him. He heard a faint shout—“Aquarius!”—and tried to decide whether he should reply. He was scaring himself with shadows, surely? The wall of debris had given way so abruptly and with such force that no normal man would have had the strength to hold him. But Brebix was not a man of normal strength and what had happened was not unexpected: the gladiator was supposed to have been braced against it.

“Aquarius!”

He hesitated. There was no other way out of the tunnel, that was certain. He would have to go on and face them. But his instinct told him to keep his suspicions to himself. He shouted back, “I’m here!” and splashed on through the dwindling water toward the waving lights.

They greeted him with a mixture of wonder and respect—Brebix, Musa, and young Polites all crowding forward to meet him—for it had seemed to them, they said, that nothing could have survived the flood. Brebix insisted that the rope had shot through his hands like a serpent and as proof he showed his palms. In the torchlight each was crossed by a vivid burn mark. Perhaps he was telling the truth. He sounded contrite enough. But then, any assassin would look shamefaced if his victim came back to life. “As I recall it, Brebix, you said you could hold me and my mother.”