Robert Harris - Pompeii

Attilius slithered down into the enclosed space and set off across it. Such was the intensity of the illumination that he cast a shadow. As he came closer he saw that the figures were slaves and that they were clearing the drifts of pumice where they had been blown into the three big chambers—the changing room, the tepidarium, and the caldarium—digging it out like snow with wooden shovels where it was deepest, or elsewhere merely sweeping it away with brooms. Patrolling behind them was Ampliatus, shouting that they should work harder, occasionally grabbing a shovel or a brush himself and showing how it should be done, before resuming his obsessive pacing. Attilius stood watching for a few moments, hidden in the darkness, and then cautiously began to climb toward the middle room—the tepidarium—at the back of which he could see the entrance to the domed sweating chamber.

There was no chance he could enter without being seen, so in the end he simply walked in—waded across the surface of the pumice, straight through the open window, his feet crunching on the tiled floor, the slaves staring at him in amazement. He was halfway to the sweating room when Ampliatus saw him—“Aquarius!”—and hurried to intercept him. He was smiling, his palms spread wide. “Aquarius! I’ve been expecting you!”

He had a cut in his temple and the hair on the left side of his scalp was stiff with blood. His cheeks were scratched and more blood had seeped through the coating of dust, carving red furrows in the white. The mouth was turned up at the corners: a mask of comedy. The dazzling light was reflected in his eyes, which were open very wide. Before Attilius could say anything he started talking again. “We must get the aqueduct running immediately. Everything is ready, you see. Nothing is damaged. We could open for business tomorrow, if only we could connect the water.” He was talking very quickly, the words tumbling out of him, barely finishing one sentence before he went on to the next. So much in his head to express! He could see it all! “People will need one place in the town that works. They’ll need to bathe—it’ll be dirty work, getting everything back in order. But it’s not just that. It’ll be a symbol to gather around. If they see the baths are working, it will give them confidence. Confidence is the key to everything. The key to confidence is water. Water is everything, d’you see? I need you, aquarius. Fifty-fifty. What do you say?”

“Where’s Corelia?”

“Corelia?” Ampliatus’s eyes were still alert for a potential deal. “You want Corelia? In exchange for the water?”

“Perhaps.”

“A marriage? I’m willing to consider it.” He jerked his thumb. “She’s in there. But I’ll want my lawyers to draw up terms.”

Attilius turned away and strode through the narrow entrance into the laconicum. Seated on the stone benches around this small domed sweating room, lit by the torches in their iron holders on the wall, were Corelia, her mother, and her brother. Opposite them were the steward, Scutarius, and the giant gatekeeper, Massavo. A second exit led to the caldarium. As the engineer came in, Corelia looked up.

“We need to leave,” he said. “Hurry. Everyone.”

Ampliatus, at his back, blocked the door. “Oh, no,” he said. “Nobody leaves. We’ve endured the worst. This isn’t the time to run. Remember the prophecy of the sibyl.”

Attilius ignored him, directing his word to Corelia. She seemed paralyzed with shock. “Listen. The falling rock is not the main danger. It’s when the fall stops that winds of fire travel down the mountain. I’ve seen them. Everything in their path is destroyed.”

“No, no. We’re safer here than anywhere,” insisted Ampliatus. “Believe me. The walls are three feet thick.”

“Safe from heat in a sweating room?” Attilius appealed to them all. “Don’t listen to him. If the hot cloud comes, this place will cook you like an oven. Corelia.” He held out his hand to her. She glanced quickly toward Massavo. They were under guard, Attilius realized: the laconicum was their prison cell.

“Nobody is leaving,” repeated Ampliatus. “Massavo!”

Attilius seized Corelia’s wrist and tried to drag her toward the caldarium before Massavo had time to stop him, but the big man was too fast. He sprang to cover the exit and when Attilius attempted to shoulder him aside Massavo grabbed him by the throat with his forearm and dragged him back into the room. Attilius let go of Corelia and struggled to prise away the grip from his windpipe. Normally he could look after himself in a fight but not against an opponent of this size, not when his body was exhausted. He heard Ampliatus order Massavo to break his neck—“Break it like the chicken he is!”—and then there was a whoosh of flame close to his ear and a scream of pain from Massavo. The arm released him. He saw Corelia with a torch clenched in both hands and Massavo on his knees. Ampliatus called her name, and there was something almost pleading in the way he said it, stretching out his hands to her. She whirled round, the fire streaking, and hurled the torch at her father, and then she was through the door and into the caldarium, shouting to Attilius to follow.

He blundered after her, down the tunnel and into the brightness of the hot room, across the immaculately cleaned floor, past the slaves, out through the window, into the darkness, sinking into the stones. When they were halfway across the yard he looked back and he thought perhaps that her father had given up—he could see no signs of pursuit at first—but of course, in his madness, Ampliatus had not: he never would. The unmistakable bulk of Massavo appeared in the window, with his master beside him, and the light of the window quickly fragmented as torches were passed out to the slaves. A dozen men armed with brooms and shovels jumped out of the caldarium and began fanning out across the ground.

It seemed to take an age of slipping and sliding to clamber back up onto the perimeter roof and drop down into the street. For an instant they must have been dimly visible on the roof—long enough, at least, for one of the slaves to see them and shout a warning. Attilius felt a sharp pain in his ankle as he landed. He took Corelia’s arm and limped a little way farther up the hill and then they both drew back into the shadow of the wall as the torches of Ampliatus’s men appeared in the road behind them. Their line of escape to the Stabian Gate was cut off.

He thought then that it was hopeless. They were trapped between two sets of fire—the flames of the torches and the flames on Vesuvius—and even as he looked wildly from one to the other he detected a faint gleam beginning to form in the same place high up on the mountain as before, where the surges had been born. An idea came to him in his desperation—absurd: he dismissed it—but it would not go away, and suddenly he wondered if it had not been in the back of his mind all along. What had he done, after all, except head toward Vesuvius while everyone else had either stayed put or run away—first along the coastal road from Stabiae to Pompeii, and then up the hill from the south of the city toward the north? Perhaps it had been waiting for him from the start: his destiny.

He peered toward the mountain. No doubt about it. The worm of light was growing. He whispered to Corelia, “Can you run?”

“Yes.”

“Then run as you’ve never run before.”

They edged out from the cover of the wall. Ampliatus’s men had their backs to them and were staring into the murk toward the Stabian Gate. He heard Ampliatus issuing more orders—“You two take the side street, you three down the hill”—and then there was nothing for it but to start thrashing their way through the pumice again. He had to grind his teeth against the agony in his leg and she was quicker than he was, as she had been when she had darted up the hill in Misenum, her skirts all gathered in one hand around her thighs, her long pale legs flashing in the dark. He stumbled after her, aware of fresh shouting from Ampliatus—“There they go! Follow me!”—but when they reached the end of the block and he risked a glance over his shoulder he could only see one torch swaying after them. “Cowards!” Ampliatus was shrieking. “What are you afraid of?”