Robert Harris - Pompeii

Pliny’s greatest concern was that it might all be over before he got there. Every so often he would come waddling out of his library to check on the progress of the column. Each time he was reassured. Indeed, if anything, it seemed to be growing. An accurate estimation of its height was impossible. Posidonius held that mists, winds, and clouds rose no more than five miles above the earth, but most experts—and Pliny, on balance, took the majority view—put the figure at a hundred eleven miles. Whatever the truth, the thing—the column—“the manifestation,” as he had decided to call it—was enormous.

In order to make his observations as accurate as possible he had ordered that his water clock should be carried down to the harbor and set up on the poop deck of the liburnian. While this was being done and the ship made ready he searched his library for references to Vesuvius. He had never before paid much attention to the mountain. It was so huge, so obvious, so inescapably there, that he had preferred to concentrate on nature’s more esoteric aspects. But the first work he consulted, Strabo’s Geography, brought him up short. “This area appears to have been on fire in the past and to have had craters of flame . . .” Why had he never noticed it? He called in Gaius to take a look.

“You see here? He compares the mountain to Etna. Yet how can that be? Etna has a crater two miles across. I have seen it with my own eyes, glowing across the sea at night. And all those islands that belch flames—Strongyle, ruled by Aeolus, god of wind, Lipari, and Holy Island, where Vulcan is said to live—you can see them all burning. No one has ever reported embers on Vesuvius.”

“He says the craters of flame ‘were subsequently extinguished by a lack of fuel,’ ” his nephew pointed out. “Perhaps that means some fresh source of fuel has now been tapped by the mountain, and has brought it back to life.” Gaius looked up excitedly. “Could that explain the arrival of the sulfur in the water of the aqueduct?”

Pliny regarded him with fresh respect. Yes. The lad was right. That must be it. Sulfur was the universal fuel of all these phenomena—the coil of flame at Comphantium in Bactria, the blazing fish pool on the Babylonian plain, the field of stars near Mount Hesperius in Ethiopia. But the implications of that were awful: Lipari and Holy Island had once burned in midsea for days on end, until a deputation from the senate had sailed out to perform a propitiatory ceremony. A similar explosive fire on the Italian mainland, in the middle of a crowded population, could be a disaster.

He pushed himself to his feet. “I must get down to my ship. Alexion!” He shouted for his slave. “Gaius, why don’t you come with me? Forget your translation.” He held out his hand and smiled. “I release you from your lesson.”

“Do you really, uncle?” Gaius stared across the bay and chewed his lip. Clearly he, too, had realized the potential consequences of a second Etna on the bay. “That’s kind of you, but to be honest I’ve actually reached rather a tricky passage. Of course, if you insist . . .”

Pliny could see he was afraid, and who could blame him? He felt a flutter of apprehension in his own stomach, and he was an old soldier. It crossed his mind to order the boy to come—no Roman should ever succumb to fear: what had happened to the stern values of his youth?—but then he thought of Julia. Was it fair to expose her only son to needless danger? “No, no,” he said, with forced cheerfulness. “I won’t insist. The sea looks rough. It will make you sick. You stay here and look after your mother.” He pinched his nephew’s pimply cheek and ruffled his greasy hair. “You’ll make a good lawyer, Gaius Plinius. Perhaps a great one. I can see you in the senate one day. You’ll be my heir. My books will be yours. The name of Pliny will live through you.” He stopped. It was beginning to sound too much like a valedictory. He said gruffly, “Return to your studies. Tell your mother I’ll be back by nightfall.”

Leaning on the arm of his secretary, and without a backward glance, the admiral shuffled out of his library.

Attilius had ridden past the Piscina Mirabilis, over the causeway into the port, and was beginning his ascent of the steep road to the admiral’s villa when he saw a detachment of marines ahead clearing a path for Pliny’s carriage. He just had time to dismount and step into the street before the procession reached him.

“Admiral!”

Pliny, staring fixedly ahead, turned vaguely in his direction. He saw a figure he did not recognize, covered in dust, his tunic torn, his face, arms, and legs streaked with dried blood. The apparition spoke again. “Admiral! It’s Marcus Attilius!”

“Engineer?” Pliny signaled for the carriage to stop. “What’s happened to you?”

“It’s a catastrophe, admiral. The mountain is exploding—raining rocks.” Attilius licked his cracked lips. “Thousands of people are fleeing east along the coastal road. Oplontis and Pompeii are being buried. I’ve ridden from Herculaneum. I have a message for you”—he searched in his pocket—“from the wife of Pedius Cascus.”

“Rectina?” Pliny took the letter from his hands and broke the seal. He read it twice, his expression clouding, and suddenly he looked ill—ill and overwhelmed. He leaned over the side of the carriage and showed the hasty scrawl to Attilius:

Pliny, my dearest friend, the library is in peril. I am alone. I beg you to come for us by sea—at once—if you still love these old books and your faithful old Rectina.

“This is really true?” he asked. “The Villa Calpurnia is threatened?”

“The entire coast is threatened, admiral.” What was wrong with the old man? Had drink and age entirely dulled his wits? Or did he think it was all just a show—some spectacle in the amphitheater, laid on for his interest? “The danger follows the wind. It swings like a weathervane. Even Misenum might not be safe.”

“Even Misenum might not be safe,” repeated Pliny. “And Rectina is alone.” His eyes were watering. He rolled up the letter and beckoned to his secretary, who had been running with the marines beside the carriage. “Where is Antius?”

“At the quayside, admiral.”

“We need to move quickly. Climb in next to me, Attilius.” He rapped his ring on the side of the carriage. “Forward!” Attilius squeezed in beside him as the carriage lurched down the hill. “Now tell me everything you’ve seen.”

Attilius tried to order his thoughts, but it was hard to speak coherently. Still, he tried to convey the power of what he had witnessed when the roof of the mountain lifted off. And the blasting of the summit, he said, was merely the culmination of a host of other phenomena—the sulfur in the soil, the pools of noxious gas, the earth tremors, the swelling of the land that had severed the matrix of the aqueduct, the disappearance of the local springs. All these things were interconnected.

“And none of us recognized it,” said Pliny, with a shake of his head. “We were as blind as old Pomponianus, who thought it was the work of Jupiter.”

“That’s not quite true, admiral. One man recognized it—a native of the land near Etna: my predecessor, Exomnius.”

“Exomnius?” said Pliny sharply. “Who hid a quarter of a million sesterces at the bottom of his own reservoir?” He noticed the bafflement on the engineer’s face. “It was discovered this morning when the last of the water had drained away. Why? Do you know how he came by it?”

They were entering the docks. Attilius could see a familiar sight—the Minerva lying alongside the quay, her mainmast raised and ready to sail—and he thought how odd it was, the chain of events and circumstances that had brought him to this place at this time. If Exomnius had not been born a Sicilian, he would never have ventured onto Vesuvius and would never have disappeared, Attilius would never have been dispatched from Rome, would never have set foot in Pompeii, would never have known of Corelia or Ampliatus or Corax. For a brief moment, he glimpsed the extraordinary, perfect logic of it all, from poisoned fish to hidden silver, and he tried to think how best he could describe it to the admiral. But he had barely started before Pliny waved him to stop.