Robert Harris: Pompeii

Ampliatus took off his straw hat, fanned his face, looked around at his son. Celsinus at first appeared to be staring straight ahead, but when you looked again you saw his eyes were closed, which was typical of the boy. He always seemed to be doing what you wanted. But then you realized he was only obeying mechanically, with his body: his attention was elsewhere. Ampliatus gave him a poke in the ribs with his finger and Celsinus’s eyes jerked open.

What was in his mind? Some Eastern rubbish, presumably. He blamed himself. When the boy was six—this was twelve years ago—Ampliatus had built a temple in Pompeii, at his own expense, dedicated to the cult of Isis. As a former slave, he would not have been encouraged to build a temple to Jupiter, Best and Greatest, or to Mother Venus, or to any of the other most sacred guardian deities. But Isis was Egyptian, a goddess suitable for women, hairdressers, actors, perfume-makers, and the like. He had presented the building in Celsinus’s name, with the aim of getting the boy onto Pompeii’s ruling council. And it had worked. What he had not anticipated was that Celsinus would take it seriously. But he did and that was what he would be brooding about now, no doubt—about Osiris, the sun god, husband to Isis, who is slain each evening at sundown by his treacherous brother, Set, the bringer of darkness. And how all men, when they die, are judged by the Ruler of the Kingdom of the Dead, and if found worthy are granted eternal life, to rise again in the morning like Horus, heir of Osiris, the avenging new sun, bringer of light. Did Celsinus really believe all this girlish twaddle? Did he really think that this half-eaten slave, for example, might return from his death at sundown to wreak his revenge at dawn?

Ampliatus was turning to ask him exactly that when he was distracted by a shout from behind him. There was a stir among the assembled slaves and Ampliatus shifted further round in his chair. A man whom he did not recognize was striding down the steps from the villa, waving his arm above his head and calling out.

The principles of engineering were simple, universal, impersonal—in Rome, in Gaul, in Campania—which was what Attilius liked about them. Even as he ran, he was envisaging what he could not see. The mainline of the aqueduct would be up in that hill at the back of the villa, buried a yard beneath the surface, running on an axis north to south, from Baiae down to the Piscina Mirabilis. And whoever had owned the villa when the Aqua Augusta was built, more than a century ago, would almost certainly have run two spurs off it. One would disgorge into a big cistern to feed the house, the swimming pool, the garden fountains: if there was contamination on the matrix, it might take as long as a day for it to work through the system, depending on the size of the tank. But the other spur would channel a share of the Augusta’s water directly down to the fishery to wash through the various ponds: any problem with the aqueduct and the impact there would be immediate.

Ahead of him, the tableau of the kill was beginning to assume an equally clear shape: the master of the household—Ampliatus, presumably—rising in astonishment from his chair, the spectators now with their backs turned to the pool, all eyes on him as he sprinted down the final flight of steps. He ran onto the concrete ramp of the fishery, slowing as he approached Ampliatus but not stopping.

“Pull him out!” he said as he ran past him.

Ampliatus, his thin face livid, shouted something at his back and Attilius turned, still running, trotting backward now, holding up his palms: “Please. Just pull him out.”

Ampliatus’s mouth gaped open, but then, still staring intently at Attilius, he slowly raised his hand—an enigmatic gesture, which nevertheless set off a chain of activity, as though everyone had been waiting for exactly such a signal. The steward of the household put two fingers to his mouth and whistled at the slave with the boat hook, and made an upward motion with his hand, at which the slave swung round and flung the end of his pole toward the surface of the eel pond, hooked something, and began to drag it in.

Attilius was almost at the pipes. Closer to, they were larger than they had looked from the terrace. Terra-cotta. A pair. More than a foot in diameter. They emerged from the slope, traversed the ramp together, parted company at the edge of the water, then ran in opposite directions along the side of the fishery. A crude inspection plate was set into each—a loose piece of pipe, two feet long, cut crossways—and as he reached them he could see that one had been disturbed and not replaced properly. A chisel lay nearby, as if whoever had been using it had been disturbed.

Attilius knelt and jammed the tool into the gap, working it up and down until it had penetrated most of the way, then twisted it, so that the flat edge gave him enough space to fit his fingers underneath the cover and lever it off. He lifted it away and pushed it over, not caring how heavily it fell. His face was directly over the running water and he smelled it at once. Released from the confined space of the pipe, it was strong enough to make him want to retch. An unmistakable smell of rottenness. Of rotten eggs.

The breath of Hades.

Sulfur.

The slave was dead. That much was obvious, even from a distance. Attilius, crouching beside the open pipe, saw the remains hauled out of the eel pond and covered with a sack. He saw the audience disperse and begin traipsing back up to the villa, at the same time as the gray-headed slave woman threaded her way between them, heading in the opposite direction, down toward the sea. The others avoided looking at her, left a space around her, as if she had some virulent disease. As she reached the dead man she flung up her hands to the sky and began rocking silently from side to side. Ampliatus did not notice her. He was walking purposefully toward Attilius. Corelia was behind him and a young man who looked just like her—her brother, presumably—and a few others. A couple of the men had knives at their belts.

The engineer returned his attention to the water. Was it his imagination or was the pressure slackening? The smell was certainly much less obvious now that the surface was open to the air. He plunged his hands into the flow, frowning, trying to gauge the strength of it, as it twisted and flexed beneath his fingers, like a muscle, like a living thing. Once, when he was a boy, he had seen an elephant killed at the Games—hunted down by archers and by spearmen dressed in leopard skins. But what he remembered chiefly was not the hunt but rather the way the elephant’s trainer, who had presumably accompanied the giant beast from Africa, had crouched at its ear as it lay dying in the dust, whispering to it. That was how he felt now. The aqueduct, the immense Aqua Augusta, seemed to be dying in his hands.

A voice said, “You are on my property.”

He looked up to find Ampliatus staring down at him. The villa’s owner was in his middle fifties. Short, but broad-shouldered and powerful. “My property,” Ampliatus repeated.

“Your property, yes. But the emperor’s water.” Attilius stood, wiping his hands on his tunic. The waste of so much precious liquid, in the middle of a drought, to pamper a rich man’s fish, made him angry. “You need to close the sluices to the aqueduct. There’s sulfur in the matrix and red mullet abominate all impurities. That ”—he emphasized the word—“is what killed your precious fish.”

Ampliatus tilted his head back slightly, sniffing the insult. He had a fine, rather handsome face. His eyes were the same shade of blue as his daughter’s. “And you are who, exactly?”

“Marcus Attilius. Aquarius of the Aqua Augusta.”

“Attilius?” The millionaire frowned. “What happened to Exomnius?”