Robert Harris - Pompeii

Ampliatus was momentarily lost for an answer. He laughed it off. “Come on, Holconius! Isn’t it always useful to know as much as possible? That’s worth the price of lending him a few slaves and some wood and lime. Once a man is in your debt, isn’t it easier to control him?”

“That’s certainly true,” said Holconius drily and glanced across the table at Popidius.

Even Popidius was not stupid enough to miss the insult. He flushed scarlet. “Meaning?” he demanded. He pushed back his chair.

“Listen!” commanded Ampliatus. He wanted to stop this conversation before it went any further. “I want to tell you about a prophecy I commissioned in the summer, when the tremors started.”

“A prophecy?” Popidius sat down again. He was immediately interested. He loved all that stuff, Ampliatus knew: old Biria with her two magical bronze hands, covered in mystic symbols, her cage full of snakes, her milky-white eyes that couldn’t see a man’s face but could stare into the future. “You’ve consulted the sibyl? What did she say?”

Ampliatus arranged his features in a suitably solemn expression. “She sacrificed serpents to Sabazius, and skinned them for their meaning. I was present throughout.” He remembered the flames on the altar, the smoke, the glittering hands, the incense, the sibyl’s wavering voice: high-pitched, barely human—like the curse of that old woman whose son he had fed to the eels. He had been awed by the whole performance, despite himself. “She saw a town—our town—many years from now. A thousand years distant, maybe more.” He let his voice fall to a whisper. “She saw a city famed throughout the world. Our temples, our amphitheater, our streets—thronging with people of every tongue. That was what she saw in the guts of the snakes. Long after the Caesars are dust and the empire has passed away, what we have built here will endure.”

He sat back. He had half convinced himself. Popidius let out his breath. “Biria Onomastia,” he said, “is never wrong.”

“And she will repeat all this?” asked Holconius skeptically. “She will let us use the prophecy?”

“She will,” Ampliatus affirmed. “She’d better. I paid her plenty for it.” He thought he heard something. He rose from the couch and walked out into the sunshine of the garden. The fountain that fed the swimming pool was in the form of a nymph tipping a jug. As he came closer he heard it again, a faint gurgling, and then water began to trickle from the vessel’s lip. The flow stuttered, spurted, seemed to stop, but then it began to run more strongly. He felt suddenly overwhelmed by the mystic forces he had unleashed. He beckoned to the others to come and look. “You see. I told you. The prophecy is correct!”

Amid the exclamations of pleasure and relief, even Holconius managed a thin smile. “That’s good.”

“Scutarius!” Ampliatus shouted to the steward. “Bring the quattuorviri our best wine—the Caecuban, why not? Now, Popidius, shall I give the mob the news or will you?”

“You tell them, Ampliatus. I need a drink.”

Ampliatus swept across the atrium toward the great front door. He gestured to Massavo to open it and stepped out onto the threshold. Perhaps a hundred people—“ his people” was how he liked to think of them—were crowded into the street. He held up his arms for silence. “You all know who I am,” he shouted when the murmur of voices had died away, “and you all know you can trust me!”

“Why should we?” someone shouted from the back.

Ampliatus ignored him. “The water is running again! If you don’t believe me—like that insolent fellow there—go and look at the fountains and see for yourselves. The aqueduct is repaired! And later today, a wonderful prophecy, by the sibyl Biria Onomastia, will be made public. It will take more than a few trembles in the ground and one hot summer to frighten the colony of Pompeii!”

A few people cheered. Ampliatus beamed and waved. “Good day to you all, citizens! Let’s get back to business. Salve lucrum! Lucrum gaudium! ” He ducked back into the vestibule. “Throw them some money, Scutarius,” he hissed, still smiling at the mob. “Not too much, mind you. Enough for some wine for them all.”

He lingered long enough to hear the effects of his largesse, as the crowd struggled for the coins, then headed back toward the atrium, rubbing his hands with delight. The disappearance of Exomnius had jolted his equanimity, he would not deny it, but in less than a day he had dealt with the problem, the fountain looked to be running strongly, and if that young aquarius wasn’t dead yet he would be soon. A cause for celebration! From the drawing room came the sound of laughter and the clink of crystal glass. He was about to walk around the pool to join them when, at his feet, he noticed the body of the bird he had watched being killed. He prodded it with his toe, then stooped to pick it up. Its tiny body was still warm. A red cap, white cheeks, black-and-yellow wings. There was a bead of blood in its eye.

A goldfinch. Nothing to it but fluff and feathers. He weighed it in his hand for a moment, some dark thought moving in the back of his mind, then let it drop and quickly mounted the steps into the pillared garden of his old house. The cat saw him coming and darted out of sight behind a bush but Ampliatus was not interested in pursuing it. His eyes were fixed on the empty cage on Corelia’s balcony and the darkened, shuttered windows of her room. He bellowed, “Celsia!” and his wife came running. “Where’s Corelia?”

“She was ill. I let her sleep—”

“Get her! Now!” He shoved her in the direction of the staircase, turned, and hurried toward his study.

It wasn’t possible; she wouldn’t dare . . .

He knew there was something wrong the moment he picked up the lamp and took it over to his desk. It was an old trick, learned from his former master—a hair in the drawer to tell him if a curious hand had been meddling in his affairs—but it worked well enough, and he had let it be understood that he would crucify the slave who could not be trusted.

There was no hair. And when he opened the strongbox and took out the document case there were no papyri, either. He stood there like a fool, tipping up the empty capsa and shaking it like a magician who has forgotten the rest of his trick, then hurled it across the room where it splintered against the wall. He ran out into the courtyard. His wife had opened Corelia’s shutters and was standing on the balcony, her hands pressed to her face.

Corelia had her back to the mountain as she came through the Vesuvius Gate and into the square beside the castellum aquae. The fountains had started to run again, but the flow was still weak and from this high vantage point it was possible to see that a dusty pall had formed over Pompeii, thrown up by the traffic in the waterless streets. The noise of activity rose as a general hum above the red roofs.

She had taken her time on the journey home, never once spurring her horse above walking pace as she skirted Vesuvius and crossed the plain. She saw no reason to speed up now. As she descended the hill toward the big crossroads, Polites plodding faithfully behind her, the blank walls of the houses seemed to rise on either side to enclose her like a prison. Places she had relished since childhood—the hidden pools and the scented flower gardens, the shops with their trinkets and fabrics, the theaters and the noisy bathhouses—were as dead to her now as ash. She noticed the angry, frustrated faces of the people at the fountains, jostling to jam their pots beneath the dribble of water, and she thought again of the aquarius. She wondered where he was and what he was doing. His story of his wife and child had haunted her all the way back to Pompeii.