Vesuvius by Night

Chapter 9

Earth tremors shook Pompeii too, with noise and clouds of sulphur. The ash lay so deep, Marciana was tiring by the minute; she had no hope of wading far through the filthy material, which had landed in such quantities that roads showed only as dips, making the mounded walkways featureless deathtraps. The famous Pompeii stepping-stones, the bollards protecting fountains and altars, the worn ruts in the road surface now lay treacherously buried.

Ash and small lapilli kept falling. Doorways were blocked. Balconies held piles of the grey-white stuff. Some frightening alteration meant the debris shower now contained larger lumps of rock. These cinders were three times as big as when the eruption started, and they felt hotter. Larius saw someone struck so hard they fell and could not continue. A child might be killed outright. He was afraid he would be killed and his child left to fend for herself in this nightmare.

The terrible darkness was increasing. Ash coated them so they felt sticky with it, tasting grit, breathing in particles that clogged their lungs. Every few moments they had to shake themselves, to ease their clothes.

This was not going to work. Nobody who tried to escape on foot would make it. They had left it too late. They had too far to go.

Larius started considering whether to take shelter and simply wait for the emissions to finish. He did not like the idea.

They reached the house with the bakery; the baker was just coming out, bringing a panniered donkey. He was about to lock in his others. They were valuable animals. He used them to turn the flour mills or for deliveries. He still imagined he was coming back, to continue with his thriving business.

Frantic, Larius caught at his tunic sleeve. ‘Lend me one! I’ll pay for it. I’ll give you anything…’ He gestured wildly to his struggling daughter. The baker liked her. Marciana looked up at the man, a natural little actress, putting it on. I am young; it is your choice, but please save me, kind soft-hearted sir…

It worked. ‘Have the hinny. You’d bloody well better bring him back for me, Larius!’

Each animal was desperate to leave the stable anyway. They could hear whinnying and kicking. When the loaned beast came crashing out of doors, Larius had to jump to hold him before he bolted. This one was wild, tall though, part donkey, part small horse. Larius put Marciana up in front of him so he could hold her, dug in his heels heartlessly and rode. He rode for some time behind the baker himself, who had also decided to mount his delivery beast, until they became separated, losing each other; in those terrible streets full of dangerous blackness and flying debris nobody would expect a friend to stop and search.

Larius stayed up on the pavements, because of the roads’ hidden potholes and stepping-stones. At every side street he had to encourage their mount to drop down its front hooves and cross, unable to tell where the road was, or how high the next pavement up which it had to scramble. The hinny panicked; he panicked, but they had to go on.

In places they forced their way through groups of other fugitives, but sometimes there was no one about, and they felt they were the last people on earth. Their hinny, fearful and keen to escape, was wading, sliding, staggering. Larius leaned forwards, over Marciana, talking in its hairy ears, encouraging, soothing. Hell, he was soothing all of them. He and the child were equally scared.

‘Are we going to die?’

He made a reassuring noise. With neither saddle nor stirrups, he was constantly struggling for balance. Any father knows how to pretend he is concentrating on the job in hand too much to answer a hard question.

Any daughter knows how to interpret that. At least we are together, thought Marciana. Doggedly brave, she would not have wanted her loved papa to be here in trouble on his own.

Still fairly innocent, she wondered what this adventure would be like. Larius, whose heart had never stopped sinking since the crisis kicked off, did not want to find out.

His first idea had been to follow his mates, travelling down to the Marine Gate. He and Marciana were starting from the very centre of the town. No direction would be quicker than any other, except that if they continued towards the water they would be on the main street, which was wider and more familiar, then eventually pass through the Forum. That would be a clear open space for the hinny to cross on level ground. Though Larius wrestled with the idea, he decided against it. Most of the civic buildings were in a state of renovation. Pompeii was in the throes of a really big rebuilding project: a huge new temple of Venus half completed, the old Temple of Jupiter decommissioned and its statuary dismantled, bath complexes under repair, markets being reorganised. He knew the Forum had been obstructed with building materials which must now be partly hidden under erupted detritus, hard-edged clutter that would be tricky to manoeuvre around. It could bring the horse down.

Besides, people had rushed towards the sea. Pompeii had disgorged a multitude, who would be clogging the jetties and the roads to the south. He envisaged chaos. If there were any boats, they would be full. And, Larius guessed, maybe there were none. People might hope in vain. If there turned out to be no sea transport, everyone would rush away hysterically overland, causing hideous congestion on the roads.

No one would regulate an evacuation. Larius did not know, but it wouldn’t have surprised him, that even the commander of the fleet at Misenum only rowed over to help a personal friend, with no apparent thought for the ordinary populace. A managed fleet of triremes and local shipping could have achieved something. No such plan was initiated.

Save the rich and sod the poor. What changes?

Still thinking, Larius knew where one possible boat existed, a boat owned by a crack-brain so bone idle he would probably be sitting on the beach right now, watching the mountain’s pyrotechnics, dimly chewing an anchovy. Vitalis.

Larius made up his mind. He would struggle up to Oplontis, then make Vitalis row him up the coast. If not, he’d pinch the boat and row it himself. So Larius turned off before the Forum, then rode the hinny out by the Herculaneum Gate.

He was heading towards the volcano, but also to the town where his wife and other children were. He had a ridiculous hope that he might somehow collect them. Ollia, he knew, would trust him to try. Dear gods, they were both barmy; he hoped Ollia had had the sense to get away without waiting.

Even so, he was going there. He felt an unexpected focus; his wife and the twins seemed oddly remote from his own immediate predicament, yet they were tugging at his heart. A desperate concern was the daughter in his arms. Always prone to sickness, she had begun coughing and spluttering scarily. Marciana might boss him like an adult, but now Larius felt acutely aware of how slight her body was, a father’s dread of how a young child’s hold on life can suddenly become fragile.

Ollia must have experienced this many times when her children were sick in their feckless father’s absence. For the first time, Larius felt genuine sympathy for her troubles.

You are helpless. You do all you can for them, but nature ignores your desperation. You cannot let your own burden fall on them, or your fear communicate; you must conceal your pain. They may live or die; you are unable to do anything except watch as they stay or go from you.

Now it was his turn to cope. Now Larius was alone with it. Jupiter, this was a disaster.