Robert Harris - Pompeii

“. . . the Chauci.” How old was he then? Twenty-four? It was his first campaign. He began again. “The Chauci, I remember, dwelled on high wooden platforms to escape the treacherous tides of that region. They gathered mud with their bare hands, which they dried in the freezing north wind, and burned for fuel. For drink they consumed only rainwater, which they collected in tanks at the front of their houses—a sure sign of their lack of civilization. Miserable bastards, the Chauci.” He paused. “Leave that last bit out.”

The door opened briefly, admitting a shaft of brilliant white light. He heard the rustling of the Mediterranean, the hammering of the shipyards. So it was morning already. He must have been awake for hours. The door closed again. A slave tiptoed across to the secretary and whispered into his ear. Pliny rolled his fat body over onto one side to get a better view. “What time is it?”

“The end of the first hour, admiral.”

“Have the sluices been opened at the reservoir?”

“Yes, admiral. We have a message that the last of the water has drained away.”

Pliny groaned and flopped back onto his pillow.

“And it seems, sir, that a most remarkable discovery has just been made.”

The work gang had left about a half hour after Corelia. There were no elaborate farewells: the contagion of fear had spread throughout the men to infect Musa and Corvinus and all were eager to get back to the safety of Pompeii. Even Brebix, the former gladiator, the undefeated hero of thirty fights, kept turning his small dark eyes nervously toward Vesuvius. They cleared the matrix and flung the tools, the unused bricks, and the empty amphorae onto the backs of the wagons. Finally, a couple of the slaves shoveled earth across the remains of the night’s fires and buried the gray scars left by the cement. By the time this was finished it was as if they had never been there.

Attilius stood warily beside the inspection shaft with his arms folded and watched them prepare to leave. This was his moment of greatest danger, now that the work was done. It would have been typical of Ampliatus to make sure he extracted a final measure of use out of the engineer before dispensing with him. He was ready to fight, to sell himself dearly if he had to.

Musa had the only other horse and once he was in the saddle he called down to Attilius. “Are you coming?”

“Not yet. I’ll catch up to you later.”

“Why not come now?”

“Because I’m going to go up onto the mountain.”

Musa looked at him, astonished. “Why?”

A good question. Because the answer to what has been happening down here must lie up there. Because it’s my job to keep the water running. Because I am afraid. The engineer shrugged. “Curiosity. Don’t worry. I haven’t forgotten my promise, if that’s what’s bothering you. Here.” He threw Musa his leather purse. “You’ve done well. Buy the men some food and wine.”

Musa opened the purse and inspected its contents. “There’s plenty here, aquarius. Enough for a woman as well.”

Attilius laughed. “Go safely, Musa. I’ll see you soon. Either in Pompeii or Misenum.”

Musa gave him a second glance and seemed about to say something, but changed his mind. He wheeled away and set off after the carts and Attilius was alone.

Again, he was struck by the peculiar stillness of the day, as if nature were holding her breath. The noise of the heavy wooden wheels slowly faded into the distance and all he could hear was the occasional tinkle of a goat’s bell and the ubiquitous chirping of the cicadas. The sun was quite high now. He glanced around at the empty countryside, then lay on his stomach and peered into the matrix. The heat pressed heavily on his back and shoulders. He thought of Sabina and of Corelia and of the terrible image of his dead son. He wept. He did not try to stop himself but for once surrendered to it, choking and shaking with grief, gulping the tunnel air, inhaling the cold and bitter odor of the wet cement. He felt oddly apart from himself, as if he had divided into two people, one crying and the other watching him cry.

After a while he stopped and raised himself to wipe his face on the sleeve of his tunic and it was only when he looked down again that his eye was caught by something—by a glint of reflected light in the darkness. He drew his head back slightly to let the sun shine directly along the shaft and he saw very faintly that the floor of the aqueduct was glistening. He rubbed his eyes and looked again. Even as he watched, the quality of the light seemed to change and become more substantial, rippling and widening as the tunnel began to fill with water.

He whispered to himself, “She runs!”

When he was satisfied that he wasn’t mistaken and that the Augusta had indeed begun to flow again, he rolled the heavy manhole cover across to the shaft. He slowly lowered it, pulling his fingers back at the last instant to let it drop the final few inches. With a thud the tunnel was sealed.

He untethered his horse and climbed into the saddle. In the shimmering heat, the marker stones of the aqueduct dwindled into the distance like a line of submerged rocks. He pulled on the reins and turned away from the Augusta to face Vesuvius. He spurred the horse and they moved off along the track that led toward the mountain, walking at first but quickening to a trot as the ground began to rise.

At the Piscina Mirabilis the last of the water had drained away and the great reservoir was empty—a rare sight. It had last been allowed to happen a decade before and that had been for maintenance, so that the slaves could shovel out the sediment and check the walls for signs of cracking. The admiral listened attentively as the slave explained the workings of the system. He was always interested in technical matters.

“And how often is this supposed to be done?”

“Every ten years would be customary, admiral.”

“So this was going to be done again soon?”

“Yes, admiral.”

They were standing on the steps of the reservoir, about halfway down—Pliny, his nephew Gaius, his secretary Alexion, and the water-slave, Dromo. Pliny had issued orders that nothing was to be disturbed until he arrived and a marine guard had been posted at the door to prevent unauthorized access. Word of the discovery had got out, however, and there was the usual curious crowd in the courtyard.

The floor of the piscina looked like a muddy beach after the tide has gone out. There were little pools here and there, where the sediment was slightly hollowed, and a litter of objects—rusted tools, stones, shoes—that had fallen into the water over the years and had sunk to the bottom, some of them entirely shrouded so that they appeared as nothing more than small humps on the smooth surface. The rowboat was grounded. Several sets of footprints led out from the bottom of the steps toward the center of the reservoir, where a larger object lay, and then returned. Dromo asked if the admiral would like him to fetch it.

“No,” said Pliny, “I want to see it where it lies for myself. Oblige me, would you, Gaius.” He pointed to his shoes and his nephew knelt and unbuckled them while the admiral leaned on Alexion for support. He felt an almost childish anticipation and the sensation intensified as he descended the last of the steps and cautiously lowered his feet into the sediment. Black slime oozed between his toes, deliciously cool, and immediately he was a boy again, back at the family home in Comum, in Cisalpine Italy, playing on the shores of the lake, and the intervening years—nearly half a century of them—were as insubstantial as a dream. How many times did this occur each day? It never used to happen. But lately almost anything could set it off—a touch, a smell, a sound, a color glimpsed—and immediately memories he did not know he still possessed came flooding back, as if there were nothing left of him anymore but a breathless sack of remembered impressions.