Pompeii

In the distance, behind Vesuvius, the sun was starting to appear.

Pliny watched the liburnian gather speed as she headed toward open water. Against the gray, her oars stroked vivid flashes of white, stirring somewhere a long-forgotten memory of the leaden Rhine at daybreak—at Vetera, this must have been, thirty years ago—and the troop ferry of Legion V “The Larks” taking his cavalry to the far bank. Such times! What he would not give to embark again on a voyage at first light, or better still to command the fleet in action, a thing he had never done in his two years as admiral. But the effort of simply coming out of his library and onto the terrace to see theMinerva go—of rising from his chair and taking a few short steps—had left him breathless, and when he lifted his arm to acknowledge the wave of the engineer he felt as if he were hoisting an exercise weight.

“Nature has granted man no better gift than the shortness of life. The senses grow dull, the limbs are numb, sight, hearing, gait, even the teeth and alimentary organs die before we do, and yet this period is reckoned a portion of life.”

Brave words. Easy to write when one was young and death was still skulking over a distant hill somewhere; less easy when one was fifty-six and the enemy was advancing in full view across the plain.

He leaned his fat belly against the balustrade, hoping that neither of his secretaries had noticed his weakness, then pushed himself away and shuffled back inside.

He had always had a fondness for young men of Attilius’s kind. Not in the filthy Greek way, of course—he had never had time for any of that malarkey, although he had seen plenty of it in the army—but rather spiritually, as the embodiment of the muscular Roman virtues. Senators might dream of empires; soldiers might conquer them; but it was the engineers, the fellows who laid down the roads and dug out the aqueducts, who actuallybuilt them, and who gave to Rome her global reach. He promised himself that when the aquarius returned he would summon him to dinner and pick his brains to discover exactly what had happened to the Augusta. And then together they would consult some of the texts in the admiral’s library and he would teach him a few of the mysteries of nature, whose surprises were never-ending. These intermittent, harmonic tremors, for example—what were they? He should record the phenomenon and include it in the next edition of theNatural History . Every month he discovered something new that required explanation.

His two Greek slaves stood waiting patiently beside the table—Alcman for reading aloud, Alexion for dictation. They had been in attendance since soon after midnight, for the admiral had long ago disciplined himself to function without much rest. “To be awake is to be alive,” that was his motto. The only man he had ever known who could get by on less sleep was the late emperor Vespasian. They used to meet in Rome in the middle of the night to transact their official business. That was why Vespasian had put him in charge of the fleet: “my ever-vigilant Pliny,” he had called him, in that country bumpkin’s accent of his, and had pinched his cheek.

He glanced around the room at the treasures accumulated during his journeys across the empire. One hundred sixty notebooks, in which he had recorded every interesting fact he had ever read or heard (Larcius Licinius, the governor of Hispania Tarraconensis, had offered him four hundred thousand sesterces for the lot, but he had not been tempted). Two pieces of magnetite, mined in Dacia, and locked together by their mysterious magic. A lump of shiny gray rock from Macedonia, reputed to have fallen from the stars. Some German amber with an ancient mosquito imprisoned inside its translucent cell. A piece of concave glass, picked up in Africa, that gathered together the sun’s rays and aimed them to a point of such concentrated heat it would cause the hardest wood to darken and smoulder. And his water clock, the most accurate in Rome, built according to the specifications of Ctesibius of Alexandria, inventor of the water organ, its apertures bored through gold and gems to prevent corrosion and plugging.

The clock was what he needed. It was said that clocks were like philosophers: you could never find two that agreed. But a clock by Ctesibius was the Plato of timepieces.

“Alcman, fetch me a bowl of water. No—” He changed his mind when the slave was halfway to the door, for had not the geographer Strabo described the luxurious Bay of Neapolis as “the wine bowl”? “On second thoughts, wine would be more appropriate. But something cheap. A Surrentum, perhaps.” He sat down heavily. “All right, Alexion—where were we?”

“Drafting a signal to the emperor, admiral.”

“Ah yes. Just so.”

Now that it was light, he would have to send a dispatch by flash to the new emperor, Titus, to alert him to the problem on the aqueduct. It would shoot, from signal tower to signal tower, all the way up to Rome, and be in the emperor’s hands by noon. And what would the new Master of the World make of that?

“We shall signal the emperor, and after we have done that, I think we shall start a new notebook and record some scientific observations. Would that interest you?”

“Yes, admiral.” The slave picked up his stylus and wax tablet, struggling to suppress a yawn. Pliny pretended not to see it. He tapped his finger against his lips. He knew Titus well. They had served in Germania together. Charming, cultivated, clever—and completely ruthless. News that a quarter of a million people were without water could easily tip him over the edge into one of his lethal rages. This would require some careful phrasing.

“To His Most Eminent Highness, the Emperor Titus, from the Commander in Chief, Misenum,” he began. “Greetings!”

TheMinerva passed between the great concrete moles that protected the entrance to the harbor and out into the expanse of the bay. The lemony light of early morning glittered on the water. Beyond the thicket of poles that marked the oyster beds, where the seagulls swooped and cried, Attilius could see the fishery of the Villa Hortensia. He got to his feet for a better view, bracing himself against the motion of the boat. The terraces, the garden paths, the slope where Ampliatus had set up his chair to watch the execution, the ramps along the shoreline, the gantries between the fish pens, the big eel pond set away from the rest—all deserted. The villa’s crimson-and-gold cruiser was no longer moored at the end of the jetty.

It was exactly as Atia had said: they had gone.

The old woman had still not recovered her senses when he left the reservoir before dawn. He had laid her on a straw mattress in one of the rooms beside the kitchen, and had told the domestic slave, Phylo, to summon a doctor and to see that she was cared for. Phylo had made a face, but Attilius had told him gruffly to do as he was told. If she died—well, that might be a merciful release. If she recovered—then, as far as he was concerned, she could stay. He would have to buy another slave in any case, to look after his food and clothes. His needs were few; the work would be light. He had never paid much attention to such matters. Sabina had looked after the household when he was married; after she had gone, his mother had taken over.

The great villa looked dark and shuttered, as though for a funeral; the screams of the gulls were like the cries of mourners.

Musa said, “I hear he paid ten million for it.”

Attilius acknowledged the remark with a grunt, without taking his eyes off the house. “Well, he’s not there now.”

“Ampliatus? Of course he’s not. He never is. He has houses everywhere, that one. Mostly, he’s in Pompeii.”

“Pompeii?”

Now the engineer looked round. Musa was sitting cross-legged, his back propped against the tools, eating a fig. He always seemed to be eating. His wife sent him to work each day with enough food to feed half a dozen. He stuffed the last of the fruit into his mouth and sucked his fingers. “That’s where he comes from. Pompeii’s where he made his money.”

“And yet he was born a slave.”

“So it goes these days,” said Musa bitterly. “Your slave dines off silver plate, while your honest, freeborn citizen works from dawn till nightfall for a pittance.”

The other men were sitting toward the stern, gathered around Corax, who had his head hunched forward and was talking quietly—telling some story that required a lot of emphatic hand gestures and much heavy shaking of his head. Attilius guessed he was describing the previous night’s meeting with Pliny.

Musa uncorked his waterskin and took a swig, then wiped the top and offered it up to Attilius. The engineer took it and squatted beside him. The water had a vaguely bitter taste. Sulfur. He swallowed a little, more to be friendly than because he was thirsty, wiped it in return, and handed it back.

“You’re right, Musa,” he said carefully. “How old is Ampliatus? Not even fifty. Yet he’s gone from slave to master of the Villa Hortensia in the time it would take you or me to scrape together enough to buy some bug-infested apartment. How could any man do that honestly?”

“An honest millionaire? As rare as hen’s teeth! The way I hear it,” said Musa, looking over his shoulder and lowering his voice, “he really started coining it just after the earthquake. He’d been left his freedom in old man Popidius’s will. He was a good-looking lad, Ampliatus, and there was nothing he wouldn’t do for his master. The old man was a lecher—I don’t think he’d leave the dog alone. And Ampliatus looked after his wife for him, too, if you know what I mean.” Musa winked. “Anyway, Ampliatus got his freedom, and a bit of money from somewhere, and then Jupiter decided to shake things up a bit. This was back in Nero’s time. It was a very bad quake—the worst anyone could remember. I was in Nola, and I thought my days were up, I can tell you.” He kissed his lucky amulet—a prick and balls, made of bronze, that hung from a leather thong around his neck. “But you know what they say: one man’s loss is another’s gain. Pompeii caught it worst of all. But while everyone else was getting out, talking about the town being finished, Ampliatus was going round, buying up the ruins. Got hold of some of those big villas for next to nothing, fixed them up, divided them into three or four, then sold them off for a fortune.”

“Nothing illegal about that, though.”

“Maybe not. But did he really own them when he sold them? That’s the thing.” Musa tapped the side of his nose. “Owners dead. Owners missing. Legal heirs on the other side of the empire. Half the town was rubble, don’t forget. The emperor sent a commissioner down from Rome to sort out who owned what. Suedius Clemens was his name.”

“And Ampliatus bribed him?”

“Let’s just say Suedius left a richer man than he arrived. Or so they say.”

“And what about Exomnius? He was the aquarius at the time of the earthquake—he must have known Ampliatus.”

Attilius could see at once that he had made a mistake. The eager light of gossip was immediately extinguished in Musa’s eyes. “I don’t know anything about that,” he muttered, and busied himself with his bag of food. “He was a fine man, Exomnius. He was good to work for.”

Was,thought Attilius.Was a fine man.Was good to work for. He tried to make a joke of it. “You mean he didn’t keep dragging you out of bed before dawn?”

“No. I mean he was straight and would never try to trick an honest man into saying more than he ought.”

“Hey, Musa!” shouted Corax. “What are you going on about over there? You gossip like a woman! Come and have a drink!”

Musa was on his feet at once, swaying down the deck to join the others. As Corax threw him the wineskin, Torquatus jumped down from the stern and made his way toward the center of the deck, where the mast and sails were stowed.

“We’ll have no need of those, I fear.” He was a big man. Arms akimbo he scanned the sky. The fresh, sharp sun glinted on his breastplate; already it was hot. “Right, engineer. Let’s see what my oxen can do.” He swung his feet onto the ladder and descended down the hatch to the lower deck. A moment later, the tempo of the drum increased and Attilius felt the ship lurch slightly. The oars flashed. The silent Villa Hortensia dwindled farther in the distance behind them.

TheMinerva pushed on steadily as the heat of the morning settled over the bay. For two hours the oarsmen kept up the same remorseless pace. Clouds of steam curled from the terraces of the open-air baths in Baiae. In the hills above Puteoli, the fires of the sulfur mines burned pale green.

The engineer sat apart, his hands clasped around his knees, his hat pulled low to shield his eyes, watching the coast slide by, searching the landscape for some clue as to what had happened on the Augusta.

Everything about this part of Italy was strange, he thought. Even the rust-red soil around Puteoli possessed some quality of magic, so that when it was mixed with lime and flung into the sea it turned to rock. This puteolanum, as they called it, in honor of its birthplace, was the discovery that had transformed Rome. And it had also given his family their profession, for what had once needed laborious construction in stone and brick could now be thrown up overnight. With shuttering and cement Agrippa had sunk the great wharves of Misenum, and had irrigated the empire with aqueducts—the Augusta here in Campania, the Julia and the Virgo in Rome, the Nemausus in southern Gaul. The world had been remade.

But nowhere had this hydraulic cement been used to greater effect than in the land where it was discovered. Piers and jetties, terraces and embankments, breakwaters and fish farms had transformed the Bay of Neapolis. Whole villas seemed to thrust themselves up from the waves and to float offshore. What had once been the realm of the super-rich—Caesar, Crassus, Pompey—had been flooded by a new class of millionaires, men like Ampliatus. Attilius wondered how many of the owners, relaxed and torpid as this sweltering August stretched and yawned and settled itself into its fourth week, would be aware by now of the failure of the aqueduct. Not many, he would guess. Water was something that was carried in by slaves, or which appeared miraculously from the nozzle of one of Sergius Orata’s shower-baths. But they would know soon enough. They would know once they had to start drinking their swimming pools.

The farther east they rowed, the more Vesuvius dominated the bay. Her lower slopes were a mosaic of cultivated fields and villas, but from her halfway point rose dark green, virgin forest. A few wisps of cloud hung motionless around her tapering peak. Torquatus declared that the hunting up there was excellent—boar, deer, hare. He had been out many times with his dogs and net, and also with his bow. But one had to look out for the wolves. In winter, the top was snowcapped.

Squatting next to Attilius he took off his helmet and wiped his forehead. “Hard to imagine,” he said, “snow in this heat.”

“And is she easy to climb?”

“Not too hard. Easier than she looks. The top’s fairly flat when you get up there. Spartacus made it the camp for his rebel army. Some natural fortress that must have been. No wonder the scum were able to hold off the legions for so long. When the skies are clear you can see for fifty miles.”

They had passed the city of Neapolis and were parallel with a smaller town that Torquatus said was Herculaneum, although the coast was such a continuous ribbon of development—ocher walls and red roofs, occasionally pierced by the dark green spear-thrusts of cypresses—that it was not always possible to tell where one town ended and another began. Herculaneum looked stately and well pleased with herself at the foot of the luxuriant mountain, her windows facing out to sea. Brightly colored pleasure craft, some shaped like sea creatures, bobbed in the shallows. There were parasols on the beaches, people casting fishing lines from the jetties. Music, and the shouts of children playing ball, wafted across the placid water.

“Now, that’s the greatest villa on the bay,” said Torquatus. He nodded toward an immense colonnaded property that sprawled along the shoreline and rose in terraces above the sea. “That’s the Villa Calpurnia. I had the honor to take the new emperor there last month, on a visit to the former consul, Pedius Cascus.”

“Cascus?” Attilius pictured the lizard-like senator from the previous evening, swaddled in his purple-striped toga. “I had no idea he was so rich.”

“Inherited through his wife, Rectina. She had some connection with the Piso clan. The admiral comes here often, to use the library. Do you see that group of figures, reading in the shade beside the pool? They are philosophers.” Torquatus found this very funny. “Some men breed birds as a pastime, others have dogs. The senator keeps philosophers!”

“And what species are these philosophers?”

“Followers of Epicurus. According to Cascus, they hold that man is mortal, the gods are indifferent to his fate, and therefore the only thing to do in life is enjoy oneself.”

“I could have told him that for nothing.”

Torquatus laughed again, then put on his helmet and tightened the chin strap. “Not long to Pompeii now, engineer. Another half hour should do it.”

He walked back toward the stern.

Attilius shielded his eyes and contemplated the villa. He had never had much use for philosophy. Why one human being should inherit such a palace, and another be torn apart by eels, and a third break his back in the stifling darkness rowing a liburnian—a man could go mad trying to reason why the world was so arranged. Why had he had to watch his wife die in front of him when she was barely older than a girl? Show him the philosophers who could answer that and he would start to see the point of them.

She had always wanted to come on holiday to the Bay of Neapolis, and he had always put her off, saying he was too busy. And now it was too late. Grief at what he had lost and regret at what he had failed to do, his twin assailants, caught him unawares again, and hollowed him, as they always did. He felt a physical emptiness in the pit of his stomach. Looking at the coast he remembered the letter a friend had shown him on the day of Sabina’s funeral. The jurist Servius Sulpicus, more than a century earlier, had been sailing back from Asia to Rome, lost in grief, when he found himself contemplating the Mediterranean shore. Afterward he described his feelings to Cicero, who had also just lost his daughter: “There behind me was Aegina, in front of me Megara, to the right Piraeus, to the left Corinth; once flourishing towns, now lying low in ruins before one’s eyes, and I began to think to myself: ‘How can we complain if one of us dies or is killed, ephemeral creatures as we are, when the corpses of so many towns lie abandoned in a single spot? Check yourself, Servius, and remember that you were born a mortal man. Can you be so greatly moved by the loss of one poor little woman’s frail spirit?’ ”

To which, for Attilius, the answer still remained, more than two years later: yes.

He let the warmth soak his body and face for a while, and despite himself he must have floated off to sleep, for when he next opened his eyes the town had gone, and there was yet another huge villa slumbering beneath the shade of its giant umbrella pines, with slaves watering the lawn and scooping leaves from the surface of the swimming pool. He shook his head to clear his mind, and reached for the leather sack in which he carried what he needed—Pliny’s letter to the aediles of Pompeii, a small bag of gold coins, and the map of the Augusta.

Work was always his consolation. He unrolled the plan, resting it against his knees, and felt an immediate stir of anxiety. The proportions of the sketch, he realized, were not at all accurate. It failed to convey the immensity of Vesuvius, which still they had not passed, and which must surely, now he looked at it, be seven or eight miles across. What had seemed a mere thumb’s-width on the map was in reality half a morning’s dusty trek in the boiling heat of the sun. He reproached himself for his naÏveté—boasting to a client, in the comfort of his library, of what could be done, without first checking the actual lie of the land. The rookie’s classic error.

He pushed himself to his feet and made his way over to the men, who were crouched in a circle, playing dice. Corax had his hand cupped over the beaker and was shaking it hard. He did not look up as Attilius’s shadow fell across him. “Come on, Fortuna, you old whore,” he muttered and rolled the dice. He threw all aces—a dog—and groaned. Becco gave a cry of joy and scooped up the pile of copper coins.

“My luck was good,” said Corax, “until he appeared.” He jabbed his finger at Attilius. “He’s worse than a raven, lads. You mark my words—he’ll lead us all to our deaths.”

“Not like Exomnius,” said the engineer, squatting beside them. “I bet he always won.” He picked up the dice. “Whose are these?”

“Mine,” said Musa.

“I’ll tell you what. Let’s play a different game. When we get to Pompeii, Corax is going out first to the far side of Vesuvius, to find the break on the Augusta. Someone must go with him. Why don’t you throw for the privilege?”

“Whoever wins goes with Corax!” exclaimed Musa.

“No,” said Attilius. “Whoever loses.”

Everyone laughed, except Corax.

“Whoever loses!” repeated Becco. “That’s a good one!”

They took it in turns to roll the dice, each man clasping his hands around the cup as he shook it, each whispering his own particular prayer for luck.

Musa went last, and threw a dog. He looked crestfallen.

“You lose!” chanted Becco. “Musa the loser!”

“All right,” said Attilius, “the dice settle it. Corax and Musa will locate the fault.”

“And what about the others?” grumbled Musa.

“Becco and Corvinus will ride to Abellinum and close the sluices.”

“I don’t see why it takes two of them to go to Abellinum. And what’s the Greek kid going to do?”

“Polites stays with me in Pompeii and organizes the tools and transport.”

“Oh, that’s fair!” said Musa, bitterly. “The free man sweats out his guts on the mountain, while the slave gets to screw the whores in Pompeii!” He snatched up his dice and hurled them into the sea. “That’s what I think of my luck!”

From the pilot at the front of the ship came a warning shout—“Pompeii ahead!”—and six heads turned as one to face her.

She came into view slowly from behind a headland, and she was not at all what the engineer had expected—no sprawling resort like Baiae or Neapolis, strung out along the coastline of the bay, but a fortress-city, built to withstand a siege, set back a quarter of a mile from the sea, on higher ground, her port spread out beneath her.

It was only as they drew closer that Attilius saw that her walls were no longer continuous—that the long years of the Roman peace had persuaded the city fathers to drop their guard. Houses had been allowed to emerge above the ramparts, and to spill, in widening, palm-shaded terraces, down toward the docks. Dominating the line of flat roofs was a temple, looking out to sea. Gleaming marble pillars were surmounted by what at first appeared to be a frieze of ebony figures. But the frieze, he realized, was alive. Craftsmen, almost naked and blackened by the sun, were moving back and forth against the white stone—working, even though it was a public holiday. The ring of chisels on stone and the rasp of saws carried clear in the warm air.

Activity everywhere. People walking along the top of the wall and working in the gardens that looked out to sea. People swarming along the road in front of the town—on foot, on horseback, in chariots, and on the backs of wagons—throwing up a haze of dust and clogging the steep paths that led up from the port to the two big city gates. As theMinerva turned into the narrow entrance of the harbor the din of the crowd grew louder—a holiday crowd, by the look of it, coming into town from the countryside to celebrate the festival of Vulcan. Attilius scanned the dockside for fountains but could see none.

The men were all silent, standing in line, each with his own thoughts.

He turned to Corax. “Where does the water come into the town?”

“On the other side of the city,” said Corax, staring intently at the town. “Beside the Vesuvius Gate.If ”—he gave heavy emphasis to the word—“it’s still flowing.”

That would be a joke, thought Attilius, if it turned out the water was not running after all and he had brought them all this way merely on the word of some old fool of an augur.

“Who works there?”

“Just some town slave. You won’t find him much help.”

“Why not?”

Corax grinned and shook his head. He would not say. A private joke.

“All right. Then the Vesuvius Gate is where we’ll start from.” Attilius clapped his hands. “Come on, lads. You’ve seen a town before. The cruise is over.”

They were inside the harbor now. Warehouses and cranes crowded against the water’s edge. Beyond them was a river—the Sarnus, according to Attilius’s map—choked with barges waiting to be unloaded. Torquatus, shouting orders, strode down the length of the ship. The drumbeats slowed and ceased. The oars were shipped. The helmsman turned the rudder slightly and they glided alongside the wharf at walking pace, no more than a foot of clear water between the deck and the quay. Two groups of sailors carrying mooring cables jumped ashore and wound them quickly around the stone posts. A moment later the ropes snapped taut and, with a jerk that almost knocked Attilius off his feet, theMinerva came to rest.

He saw it as he was recovering his balance. A big, plain stone plinth with a head of Neptune gushing water from his mouth into a bowl that was shaped like an oyster shell, and the bowloverflowing —this was what he would never forget—cascading down to rinse the cobbles, and wash, unregarded, into the sea. Nobody was lining up to drink. Nobody was paying it any attention. Why should they? It was just an ordinary miracle. He vaulted over the low side of the warship and swayed toward it, feeling the strange solidity of the ground after the voyage across the bay. He dropped his sack and put his hands into the clear arc of water, cupped them, raised them to his lips. It tasted sweet and pure and he almost laughed aloud with pleasure and relief, then plunged his head beneath the pipe, and let the water run everywhere—into his mouth and nostrils, his ears, down the back of his neck—heedless of the people staring at him as if he had gone insane.

HORA QUARTA

[09:48 hours]

Isotope studies of Neapolitan volcanic magma show signs of significant mixing with the surrounding rock, suggesting that the reservoir isn’t one continuous molten body. Instead, the reservoir might look more like a sponge, with the magma seeping through numerous fractures in the rock. The massive magma layer may feed into several smaller reservoirs that are closer to the surface and too small to identify with seismic techniques . . .

—AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE,

NEWS BULLETIN, “MASSIVE MAGMA LAYER FEEDS

MT. VESUVIUS,” NOVEMBER 16, 2001

A man could buy anything he needed in the harbor of Pompeii. An Indian parrot, a Nubian slave, nitrum salt from the pools near Cairo, Chinese cinnamon, an African monkey, Oriental slave girls famed for their sexual tricks . . . Horses were as easy to come by as flies. Half a dozen dealers hung around outside the customs shed. The nearest sat on a stool beneath a crudely drawn sign of the winged Pegasus, bearing the sloganBACULUS: HORSES SWIFT ENOUGH FOR THE GODS.

“I need five,” Attilius told the dealer. “And none of your clapped-out nags. I want good, strong beasts, capable of working all day. And I need them now.”

“That’s no problem, citizen.” Baculus was a small, bald man, with the brick-red face and glassy eyes of a heavy drinker. He wore an iron ring too large for his finger, which he twisted nervously, around and around. “Nothing’s a problem in Pompeii, provided you’ve the money. Mind you, I’ll require a deposit. One of my horses was stolen the other week.”

“And I also want oxen. Two teams and two wagons.”

“On a public holiday?” He clicked his tongue. “That, I think, will take longer.”

“How long?”

“Let me see.” Baculus squinted at the sun. The more difficult he made it sound, the more he could charge. “Two hours. Maybe three.”

“Agreed.”

They haggled over the price, the dealer demanding an outrageous sum that Attilius immediately divided by ten. Even so, when eventually they shook hands, he was sure he had been swindled and it irritated him, as any kind of waste always did. But he had no time to seek out a better bargain. He told the dealer to bring round four of the horses immediately to the Vesuvius Gate and then pushed his way back through the traders toward theMinerva.

By now the crew had been allowed up on deck. Most had peeled off their sodden tunics and the stench of sweat from the sprawled bodies was strong enough to compete with the stink of the nearby fish-sauce factory, where liquefying offal was decomposing in vats in the sunshine. Corvinus and Becco were picking their way among the oarsmen, carrying the tools, throwing them over the side to Musa and Polites. Corax stood with his back to the boat, peering toward the town, occasionally rising on tiptoe to see over the heads of the crowd.

He noticed Attilius and stopped. “So the water runs,” he said, and folded his arms. There was something almost heroic about his stubbornness, his unwillingness to concede he had been wrong. It was then that Attilius knew, beyond question, that once all this was over he would have to get rid of him.

“Yes, she runs,” he agreed. He waved to the others to stop what they were doing and to gather round. It was settled that they would leave Polites to finish the unloading and to guard the tools on the dockside; Attilius would send word to him about where to meet up later. Then the remaining five set off toward the nearest gate, Corax trailing behind, and whenever Attilius looked back it seemed that he was searching for someone, his head craning from side to side.

The engineer led them up the ramp from the harbor toward the city wall, beneath the half-finished temple of Venus and into the dark tunnel of the gate. A customs official gave them a cursory glance to check they were not carrying anything they might sell, then nodded them into the town.

The street beyond the gate was not as steep as the ramp outside, or as slippery, but it was narrower, so that they were almost crushed by the weight of bodies surging into Pompeii. Attilius found himself borne along past shops and another big temple—this one dedicated to Apollo—and into the blinding open space and swarming activity of the forum.

It was imposing for a provincial town: basilica, covered market, more temples, a public library—all brilliantly colored and shimmering in the sunlight; three or four dozen statues of emperors and local worthies high up on their pedestals. Not all of it was finished. A webwork of wooden scaffolding covered some of the large buildings. The high walls acted to trap the noise of the crowd and reflect it back at them—the flutes and drums of the buskers, the cries of the beggars and hawkers, the sizzle of cooking food. Fruit-sellers were offering green figs and pink slices of melon. Wine merchants crouched beside rows of red amphorae propped in nests of yellow straw. At the foot of a nearby statue a snake charmer sat cross-legged, playing a pipe, a gray serpent rising groggily from the mat in front of him, another draped round his neck. Small pieces of fish were frying on an open range. Slaves, bowed under the weight of bundles of wood, were hurrying in relays to pile them onto the big bonfire being built in the center of the forum for the evening sacrifice to Vulcan. A barber advertised himself as an expert in pulling teeth and had a foot-high pile of gray and black stumps to prove it.

The engineer took off his hat and wiped his forehead. Already there was something about the place he did not much like. A hustler’s town, he thought. Full of people on the make. She would welcome a visitor for exactly as long as it took to fleece him. He beckoned to Corax to ask him where he would find the aediles—he had to cup his hand to the man’s ear to make himself heard—and the overseer pointed toward a row of three small offices lining the southern edge of the square, all closed for the holiday. A long notice board was covered in proclamations, evidence of a thriving bureaucracy. Attilius cursed to himself. Nothing was ever easy.

“You know the way to the Vesuvius Gate,” he shouted to Corax. “You lead.”

Water was pumping through the city. As they fought their way toward the far end of the forum he could hear it washing clear the big public latrine beside the Temple of Jupiter and bubbling in the streets beyond. He kept in close behind Corax, and once or twice he found himself splashing through the little torrents that were running in the gutters, bearing away the dust and rubbish down the slope toward the sea. He counted seven fountains, all overflowing. The Augusta’s loss was clearly Pompeii’s gain. The whole force of the aqueduct had nowhere to run except here. So while the other towns around the bay were baking dry in the heat, the children of Pompeii paddled in the streets.

It was hard work, toiling up the hill. The press of people was mainly moving in the opposite direction, down toward the attractions of the forum, and by the time they reached the big northern gate Baculus was already waiting for them with their horses. He had hitched them to a post beside a small building that backed onto the city wall. Attilius said, “The castellum aquae?” and Corax nodded.

The engineer took it in at a glance—the same redbrick construction as the Piscina Mirabilis, the same muffled sound of rushing water. It looked to be the highest point in the town and that made sense: invariably an aqueduct entered beneath a city’s walls where the elevation was greatest. Gazing back down the hill he could see the water towers that regulated the pressure of the flow. He sent Musa inside the castellum to fetch out the water-slave while he turned his attention to the horses. They did not appear too bad. You would not want to enter them for a race at the Circus Maximus, but they would do the job. He counted out a small pile of gold coins and gave them to Baculus, who tested each one with his teeth. “And the oxen?”

These, Baculus promised, with much solemn pressing of his hands to his heart and rolling of his eyes to heaven, would be ready by the seventh hour. He would attend to it immediately. He wished them all the blessings of Mercury on their journey, and took his leave—but only as far, Attilius noticed, as the bar across the street.

He assigned the horses on the basis of their strength. The best he gave to Becco and Corvinus, on the grounds that they would have the most riding to do, and he was still explaining his reasons to an aggrieved Corax when Musa reappeared to announce that the castellum aquae was deserted.

“What?” Attilius wheeled round. “Nobody there at all?”

“It’s Vulcanalia, remember?”

Corax said, “I told you he’d be no help.”

“Public holidays!” Attilius could have punched the brickwork in frustration. “Somewhere in this town there had better be people willing to work.” He regarded his puny expedition uneasily, and thought again how unwise he had been in the admiral’s library, confusing what was theoretically possible with what actually could be achieved. But there was nothing else for it now. He cleared his throat. “All right. You all know what you have to do? Becco, Corvinus—have either of you ever been up to Abellinum before?”

“I have,” said Becco.

“What’s the setup?”

“The springs rise beneath a temple dedicated to the water goddesses, and flow into a basin within the nymphaeum. The aquarius in charge is Probus, who also serves as priest.”

“An aquarius as priest!” Attilius laughed bitterly and shook his head. “Well, you can tell this heavenly engineer, whoever he is, that the goddesses, in their celestial wisdom, require him to close his main sluice and divert all his water to Beneventum. Make sure it’s done the moment you arrive. Becco—you are to remain behind in Abellinum and see it stays closed for twelve hours. Then you open it again. Twelve hours—as near exact as you can make it. Have you got that?”

Becco nodded.

“And if, by any remote chance, we can’t make the repairs in twelve hours,” said Corax sarcastically, “what then?”

“I’ve thought of that. As soon as the water is closed off, Corvinus leaves Becco at the basin and follows the course of the Augusta back down the mountains until he reaches the rest of us northeast of Vesuvius. By that time it will be clear how much work needs to be done. If we can’t fix the problem in twelve hours, he can take word back to Becco to keep the sluice gate closed until we’ve finished. That’s a lot of riding, Corvinus. Are you up to it?”

“Yes, aquarius.”

“Good man.”

“Twelve hours!” repeated Corax, shaking his head. “That’s going to mean working through the night.”

“What’s the matter, Corax? Scared of the dark?” Once again, he managed to coax a laugh from the other men. “When you locate the problem, make an assessment of how much material we’ll need for the repair job, and how much labor. You stay there and send Musa back with a report. I’ll make sure I requisition enough torches along with everything else we need from the aediles. Once I’ve loaded up the wagons, I’ll wait here at the castellum aquae to hear from you.”

“And what if I don’t locate the problem?”

It occurred to Atillius that the overseer, in his bitterness, might even try to sabotage the entire mission. “Then we’ll set out anyway, and get to you before nightfall.” He smiled. “So don’t try to screw me around.”

“I’m sure there are plenty who’d like to screw you, pretty boy, but I’m not one of them.” Corax leered back at him. “You’re a long way from home, young Marcus Attilius. Take my advice. In this town—watch your back. If you know what I mean.”

And he thrust his groin back and forth in the same obscene gesture he had made out on the hillside the previous day, when Attilius had been prospecting for the spring.

He saw them off from the pomerium, the sacred boundary just beyond the Vesuvius Gate, kept clear of buildings in honor of the city’s guardian deities.

The road ran around the town like a racetrack, passing beside a bronze works and through a big cemetery. As the men mounted their horses Attilius felt he ought to say something—some speech like Caesar’s on the eve of battle—but he could never find those kinds of words. “When this is done, I’ll buy wine for everyone. In the finest place in Pompeii,” he added lamely.

“And a woman,” said Musa, pointing at him. “Don’t forget the women, aquarius!”

“The women you can pay for yourself.”

“If he can find a whore who’ll have him!”

“Screw you, Becco. See you later, cocksuckers!”

And before Attilius could think of anything else to say they were kicking their heels into the sides of their horses and wheeling away through the crowds thronging into the city—Corax and Musa to the left, to pick up the trail to Nola; Becco and Corvinus right, toward Nuceria and Abellinum. As they trotted into the necropolis, only Corax looked back—not at Attilius, but over his head, toward the walls of the city. His glance swept along the ramparts and watchtowers for a final time, then he planted himself more firmly in the saddle and turned in the direction of Vesuvius.

The engineer followed the progress of the riders as they disappeared behind the tombs, leaving only a blur of brown dust above the white sarcophagi to show where they had passed. He stood for a few moments—he barely knew them, yet so many of his hopes, so much of his future went with them!—then he retraced his steps toward the city gate.

It was only as he joined the line of pedestrians queuing at the gate that he noticed the slight hump in the ground where the tunnel of the aqueduct passed beneath the city wall. He stopped and swiveled, following the line of it toward the nearest manhole, and saw to his surprise that its course pointed directly at the summit of Vesuvius. Through the haze of dust and heat the mountain loomed even more massively over the countryside than it had above the sea, but less distinctly; more bluish-gray than green. It was impossible that the spur should actually run all the way on to Vesuvius itself. He guessed it must swerve off to the east at the edge of the lower slopes and travel inland to join up with the Augusta’s mainline. He wondered where exactly. He wished he knew the shape of the land, the quality of rock and soil. But Campania was a mystery to him.

He went back through the shadowy gate and into the glare of the small square, acutely aware suddenly of being alone in a strange town. What did Pompeii know or care of the crisis beyond its walls? The heedless activity of the place seemed deliberately to mock him. He walked around the side of the castellum aquae and along the short alley that led to its entrance. “Is anyone there?”

No answer. He could hear the rush of the aqueduct much more clearly here, and when he pushed open the low wooden door he was hit at once by the drenching spray and that sharp, coarse, sweet smell—the smell that had pursued him all his life—of freshwater on warm stone.

He went inside. Fingers of light from two small windows set high above his head pierced the cool darkness. But he did not need light to know how the castellum was arranged, for he had seen dozens of them over the years—all identical, all laid out according to the principles of Vitruvius. The tunnel of the Pompeii spur was smaller than the Augusta’s main matrix, but still big enough for a man to squeeze along it to make repairs. The water jetted from its mouth through a bronze mesh screen into a shallow concrete reservoir divided by wooden gates, which in turn fed a set of three big lead pipes. The central conduit would carry the supply for the drinking fountains; that to its left would be for private houses; that to its right for the public baths and theaters. What was unusual was the force of the flow. It was not only drenching the walls. It had also swept a mass of debris along the tunnel, trapping it against the metal screen. He could make out leaves and twigs and even a few small rocks. Slovenly maintenance. No wonder Corax had said the water-slave was useless.

He swung one leg over the concrete wall of the reservoir and then the other, and lowered himself into the swirling pool. The water came up almost to his waist. It was like stepping into warm silk. He waded the few paces to the grille and ran his hands underwater, around the edge of the mesh frame, feeling for its fastenings. When he found them, he unscrewed them. There were two more at the top. He undid those as well, lifted away the grille, and stood aside to let the rubbish swirl past him.

“Is somebody there?”

The voice startled him. A young man stood in the doorway. “Of course there’s somebody here, you fool. What does it look like?”

“What are you doing?”

“You’re the water-slave? Then I’m doing your fucking job for you—that’s what I’m doing. Wait there.” Attilius swung the grille back into place and refastened it, waded over to the side of the reservoir, and hauled himself out. “I’m Marcus Attilius. The new aquarius of the Augusta. And what do they call you, apart from a lazy idiot?”

“Tiro, aquarius.” The boy’s eyes were open wide in alarm, his pupils darting from side to side. “Forgive me.” He dropped to his knees. “The public holiday, aquarius—I slept late. I—”

“All right. Never mind that.” The boy was only about sixteen—a scrap of humanity, as thin as a stray dog—and Attilius regretted his roughness. “Come on. Get up off the floor. I need you to take me to the magistrates.” He held out his hand but the slave ignored it, his eyes still flickering wildly back and forth. Attilius waved his palm in front of Tiro’s face. “You’re blind?”

“Yes, aquarius.”

A blind guide. No wonder Corax had smiled when Attilius had asked about him. A blind guide in an unfriendly city! “But how do you perform your duties if you can’t see?”

“I can hear better than any man.” Despite his nervousness, Tiro spoke with a trace of pride. “I can tell by the sound of the water how well it flows and if it’s obstructed. I can smell it. I can taste it for impurities.” He lifted his head, sniffing the air. “This morning there’s no need for me to adjust the gates. I’ve never heard the flow so strong.”

“That’s true.” The engineer nodded: he had underestimated the boy. “The mainline is blocked somewhere between here and Nola. That’s why I’ve come, to get help to repair it. You’re the property of the town?” Tiro nodded. “Who are the magistrates?”

“Marcus Holconius and Quintus Brittius,” said Tiro promptly. “The aediles are Lucius Popidius and Gaius Cuspius.”

“Which is in charge of the water supply?”

“Popidius.”

“Where will I find him?”

“It’s a holiday—”

“Where’s his house, then?”

“Straight down the hill, aquarius, toward the Stabian Gate. On the left. Just past the big crossroads.” Tiro scrambled to his feet eagerly. “I can show you if you like.”

“Surely I can find it by myself?”

“No, no.” Tiro was already in the alley, anxious to prove himself. “I can take you there. You’ll see.”

They descended into the town together. It tumbled away below them, a jumble of terra-cotta roofs sloping down to a sparkling sea. Framing the view to the left was the blue ridge of the Surrentum peninsula; to the right was the tree-covered flank of Vesuvius. Attilius found it hard to imagine a more perfect spot in which to build a city, high enough above the bay to be wafted by the occasional breeze, close enough to the shore to enjoy the benefits of the Mediterranean trade. No wonder it had risen again so quickly after the earthquake.

The street was lined with houses, not the sprawling apartment blocks of Rome, but narrow-fronted, windowless dwellings that seemed to have turned their backs on the crowded traffic and to be looking inward upon themselves. Open doors revealed an occasional flash of what lay beyond—cool mosaic hallways, a sunny garden, a fountain—but apart from these glimpses, the only relief from the monotony of the drab walls were election slogans daubed in red paint.

THE ENTIRE MASS HAVE APPROVED THE CANDIDACY OF CUSPIUS FOR THE OFFICE OF AEDILE.

THE FRUIT DEALERS TOGETHER WITH HELVIUS

VESTALIS UNANIMOUSLY URGE THE ELECTION OF

MARCUS HOLCONIUS PRISCUS AS MAGISTRATE

WITH JUDICIAL POWER.

THE WORSHIPPERS OF ISIS UNANIMOUSLY URGE THE ELECTION OF LUCIUS POPIDIUS SECUNDUS AS AEDILE.

“Your whole town appears to be obsessed with elections, Tiro. It’s worse than Rome.”

“The free men vote for the new magistrates each March, aquarius.”

They were walking quickly, Tiro keeping a little ahead of Attilius, threading along the crowded pavement, occasionally stepping into the gutter to splash through the running stream. The engineer had to ask him to slow down. Tiro apologized. He had been blind from birth, he said cheerfully—dumped on the refuse tip outside the city walls and left to die. But someone had picked him up and he’d lived by running errands for the town since he was six years old. He knew his way by instinct.

“This aedile, Popidius,” said Attilius, as they passed his name for the third time, “his must have been the family that once had Ampliatus as a slave.”

But Tiro, despite the keenness of his ears, seemed for once not to have heard.

They came to a big crossroads, dominated by an enormous triumphal arch, resting on four marble pillars. A team of four horses, frozen in stone, plunged and reared against the brilliant blue sky, hauling the figure of Victory in her golden chariot. The monument was dedicated to yet another Holconius—Marcus Holconius Rufus, dead these past sixty years—and Attilius paused long enough to read the inscription: military tribune, priest of Augustus, five times magistrate, patron of the town.

Always the same few names, he thought. Holconius, Popidius, Cuspius . . . The ordinary citizens might put on their togas every spring, turn out to listen to the speeches, throw their tablets into the urns and elect a new set of magistrates. But still the familiar faces came round again and again. The engineer had almost as little time for politicians as he had for the gods.

He was about to put his foot down to cross the street when he suddenly pulled it back. It appeared to him that the large stepping-stones were rippling slightly. A great dry wave was passing through the town. An instant later he lurched, as he had done when theMinerva was moored, and he had to grab at Tiro’s arm to stop himself falling. A few people screamed; a horse shied. On the opposite corner of the crossroads a tile slid down a steep-pitched roof and shattered on the pavement. For a few moments the center of Pompeii was almost silent. And then, gradually, activity began again. Breath was exhaled. Conversations resumed. The driver flicked his whip over the back of his frantic horse and the cart jumped forward.

Tiro took advantage of the lull in the traffic to dart across to the opposite side and, after a brief hesitation, Attilius followed, half expecting the big raised stones to give way again beneath his leather soles. The sensation made him jumpier than he cared to admit. If you couldn’t trust the ground you trod on, what could you trust?

The slave waited for him. His blank eyes, endlessly searching for what he could not see, gave him a look of constant unease. “Don’t worry, aquarius. It’s been happening all the time this summer. Five times, ten times, even, in the past two days. The ground is complaining of the heat!”

He offered his hand but Attilius ignored it—he found it demeaning, the blind man reassuring the sighted—and mounted the high pavement unaided. He said irritably, “Where’s this damn house?” and Tiro gestured vaguely to a doorway across the street, a little way down.

It did not look much. The usual blank walls. A bakery on one side, with a line of customers waiting to enter a confectionary shop. A stink of urine from the laundry opposite, with pots left on the pavement for passersby to piss in (nothing cleaned clothes as well as human piss). Next to the laundry, a theater. Above the big door of the house was another of the ubiquitous, red-painted slogans:HIS NEIGHBORS URGE THE ELECTION OF LUCIUS POPIDIUS SECUNDUS AS AEDILE. HE WILL PROVE WORTHY. Attilius would never have found the place on his own.

“Aquarius, may I ask you something?”

“What?”

“Where is Exomnius?”

“Nobody knows, Tiro. He’s vanished.”

The slave absorbed this, nodding slowly. “Exomnius was like you. He could not get used to the shaking, either. He said it reminded him of the time before the big earthquake, many years ago. The year I was born.”

He seemed to be on the edge of tears. Attilius put a hand on his shoulder and studied him intently. “Exomnius was in Pompeii recently?”

“Of course. He lived here.”

Attilius tightened his grip. “He livedhere ? In Pompeii?”

He felt bewildered and yet he also grasped immediately that it must be true. It explained why Exomnius’s quarters at Misenum had been so devoid of personal possessions, why Corax had not wanted him to come here, and why the overseer had behaved so strangely in Pompeii—all that looking around, searching the crowds for a familiar face.

“He had rooms at Africanus’s place,” said Tiro. “He was not here all the time. But often.”

“And how long ago did you speak to him?”

“I can’t remember.” The youth really was beginning to seem frightened now. He turned his head as though trying to look at Attilius’s hand on his shoulder. The engineer quickly released him and patted his arm reassuringly.

“Try to remember, Tiro. It could be important.”

“I don’t know.”

“After the Festival of Neptune or before?” Neptunalia was on the twenty-third day of July: the most sacred date in the calendar for the men of the aqueducts.

“After. Definitely. Perhaps two weeks ago.”

“Two weeks? Then you must have been one of the last to talk to him. And he was worried about the tremors?” Tiro nodded again. “And Ampliatus? He was a great friend of Ampliatus, was he not? Were they often together?”

The slave gestured to his eyes. “I cannot see—”

No,thought Attilius,but I bet you heard them: not much escapes those ears of yours. He glanced across the street at the house of Popidius. “All right, Tiro. You can go back to the castellum. Do your day’s work. I’m grateful for your help.”

“Thank you, aquarius.” Tiro gave a little bow and took Attilius’s hand and kissed it. Then he turned and began climbing back up the hill toward the Vesuvius Gate, dancing from side to side through the holiday crowd.

HORA QUINTA

[11:07 hours]

Injections of new magma can also trigger eruptions by upsetting

the thermal, chemical, or mechanical equilibrium of older magma

in a shallow reservoir. New magmas coming from deeper, hotter

sources can suddenly raise the temperature of the cooler

resident magma, causing it to convect and vesiculate.

—VOLCANOLOGY(SECOND EDITION)

The house had a double door—heavy-studded, bronze-hinged, firmly closed. Attilius hammered on it a couple of times with his fist. The noise he made seemed too feeble to be heard above the racket of the street. But almost at once it opened slightly and the porter appeared—a Nubian, immensely tall and broad in a sleeveless, crimson tunic. His thick black arms and neck, as solid as tree trunks, glistened with oil, like some polished African hardwood.

Attilius said lightly, “A keeper worthy of his gate, I see.”

The porter did not smile. “State your business.”

“Marcus Attilius, aquarius of the Aqua Augusta, wishes to present his compliments to Lucius Popidius Secundus.”

“It’s a public holiday. He’s not at home.”

Attilius put his foot against the door. “He is now.” He opened his bag and pulled out the admiral’s letter. “Do you see this seal? Give it to him. Tell him it’s from the commander in chief at Misenum. Tell him I need to see him on the emperor’s business.”

The porter looked down at Attilius’s foot. If he had slammed the door he would have snapped it like a twig. A man’s voice behind him cut in: “The emperor’s business, did he just say, Massavo? You had better let him in.” The Nubian hesitated—Massavo: that was the right name for him,thought Attilius—then stepped backward, and the engineer slipped quickly through the opening. The door was closed and locked behind him; the sounds of the city were extinguished.

The man who had spoken wore the same crimson uniform as the porter. He had a bunch of keys attached to his belt—the household steward, presumably. He took the letter and ran his thumb across the seal, checking to see if it was broken. Satisfied, he studied Attilius. “Lucius Popidius is entertaining guests for Vulcanalia. But I shall see that he receives it.”

“No,” said Attilius. “I shall give it to him myself. Immediately.”

He held out his hand. The steward tapped the cylinder of papyrus against his teeth, trying to decide what to do. “Very well.” He gave Attilius the letter. “Follow me.”

He led the way down the narrow corridor of the vestibule toward a sunlit atrium, and for the first time Attilius began to appreciate the immensity of the old house. The narrow facade was an illusion. He could see beyond the shoulder of the steward straight through into the interior, a hundred fifty feet or more, successive vistas of light and color—the shaded passageway with its black-and-white mosaic floor; the dazzling brilliance of the atrium with its marble fountain; a tablinum for receiving visitors, guarded by two bronze busts; and then a colonnaded swimming pool, its pillars wrapped with vines. He could hear finches chirruping in an aviary somewhere, and women’s voices, laughing.

They came into the atrium and the steward said, brusquely, “Wait here,” before disappearing to the left, behind a curtain that screened a narrow passageway. Attilius glanced around. Here was money, old money, used to buy absolute privacy in the middle of the busy town. The sun was almost directly overhead, shining through the square aperture in the atrium’s roof, and the air was warm and sweet with the scent of roses. From this position he could see most of the swimming pool. Elaborate bronze statues decorated the steps at the nearest end—a wild boar, a lion, a snake rising from its coils, and Apollo playing the cithara. At the far end, four women reclined on couches, fanning themselves, each with her own maid standing behind her. They noticed Attilius staring and there was a little flutter of laughter from behind their fans. He felt himself redden with embarrassment and he quickly turned his back on them, just as the curtain parted and the steward reappeared, beckoning.

Attilius knew at once, by the humidity and by the smell of oil, that he was being shown into the house’s private baths. And of course, he thought, it was bound to have its own suite, for with money such as this, why mix with the common herd? The steward took him into the changing room and told him to remove his shoes, then they went back out into the passageway and into the tepidarium, where an immensely fat old man lay facedown, naked, on a table, being worked on by a young masseur. His white buttocks vibrated as the masseur made chopping motions up and down his spine. He turned his head slightly as Attilius passed by, regarded him with a single, bloodshot gray eye, then closed it again.

The steward slid open a door, releasing a billow of fragrant vapor from the dim interior, then stood aside to let the engineer pass through.

It was hard at first to see very much in the caldarium. The only light came from a couple of torches mounted on the wall and from the glowing coals of a brazier, the source of the steam that filled the room. Gradually Attilius made out a large sunken bath with three dark heads of hair, seemingly disembodied, floating in the grayness. There was a ripple of water as one of the heads moved and a splash as a hand was raised and gently waved.

“Over here, aquarius,” said a languid voice. “You have a message for me, I believe, from the emperor? I don’t know these Flavians. Descended from a tax collector, I believe. But Nero was a great friend of mine.”

Another head was stirring. “Fetch us a torch!” it commanded. “Let us at least see who disturbs us on a feast day.”

A slave in the corner of the room, whom Attilius had not noticed, took down one of the torches from the wall and held it close to the engineer’s face so that he could be inspected. All three heads were now turned toward him. Attilius could feel the pores of his skin opening, the sweat running freely down his body. The mosaic floor was baking hot beneath his bare feet—a hypocaust, he realized. Luxury was certainly piled upon luxury in the house of the Popidii. He wondered if Ampliatus, in the days when he was a slave here, had ever been made to sweat over the furnace in midsummer.

The heat of the torch on his cheek was unbearable. “This is no place to conduct the emperor’s business,” he said and pushed the slave’s arm away. “To whom am I speaking?”

“He’s certainly a rude enough fellow,” declared the third head.

“I am Lucius Popidius,” said the languid voice, “and these gentlemen are Gaius Cuspius and Marcus Holconius. And our esteemed friend in the tepidarium is Quintus Brittius. Now do you know who we are?”

“You’re the four elected magistrates of Pompeii.”

“Correct,” said Popidius. “And this is our town, aquarius, so guard your tongue.”

Attilius knew how the system worked. As aediles, Popidius and Cuspius would hand out the licenses for all the businesses, from the brothels to the baths; they were responsible for keeping the streets clean, the water flowing, the temples open. Holconius and Brittius were the duoviri—the commission of two men—who presided over the court in the basilica and dispensed the emperor’s justice: a flogging here, a crucifixion there, and no doubt a fine to fill the city’s coffers whenever possible. He would not be able to accomplish much without them, so he forced himself to stand quietly, waiting for them to speak.Time, he thought:I am losing so much time.

“Well,” said Popidius after a while. “I suppose I have cooked for long enough.” He sighed and stood, a ghostly figure in the steam, and held out his hand for a towel. The slave replaced the torch in its holder, knelt before his master, and wrapped a cloth around his waist. “All right. Where’s this letter?” He took it and padded into the adjoining room. Attilius followed.

Brittius was on his back and the young slave had obviously been giving him more than a massage for his penis was red and engorged and pointing hard against the fat slope of his belly. The old man batted away the slave’s hands and reached for a towel. His face was scarlet. He scowled at Attilius. “Who’s this then, Popi?”

“The new aquarius of the Augusta. Exomnius’s replacement. He’s come from Misenum.” Popidius broke open the seal and unrolled the letter. He was in his early forties, delicately handsome. The dark hair slicked back over his small ears emphasized his aquiline profile as he bent forward to read; the skin of his body was white, smooth, hairless.He has had it plucked, thought Attilius with disgust.

The others were now coming in from the caldarium, curious to find out what was happening, slopping water over the black-and-white floor. Around the walls ran a fresco of a garden, enclosed inside a wooden fence. In an alcove, on a pedestal carved to resemble a water nymph, stood a circular marble basin.

Brittius propped himself up on his elbow. “Read it out, Popi. What’s it say?”

A frown creased Popidius’s smooth skin. “It’s from Pliny. ‘In the name of the Emperor Titus Caesar Vespasianus Augustus, and in accordance with the power vested in me by the Senate and People of Rome—’ ”

“Skip the blather!” said Brittius. “Get to the meat of it.” He rubbed his thumb and middle finger together, counting money. “What’s he after?”

“It seems the aqueduct has failed somewhere near Vesuvius. All the towns from Nola westward are dry. He says he wants us—‘orders’ us, he says—to ‘provide immediately sufficient men and materials from the colony of Pompeii to effect repairs to the Aqua Augusta, under the command of Marcus Attilius Primus, engineer, of the Department of the Curator Aquarum, Rome.’ ”

“Does he indeed? And who foots the bill, might I ask?”

“He doesn’t say.”

Attilius cut in: “Money is not an issue. I can assure your honors that the Curator Aquarum will reimburse any costs.”

“Really? You have the authority to make that promise, do you?”

Attilius hesitated. “You have my word.”

“Your word? Your word won’t put gold back in our treasury once it’s gone.”

“And look at this,” said one of the other men. He was in his middle twenties, well-muscled but with a small head: Attilius guessed he must be the second junior magistrate, the aedile, Cuspius. He turned the tap above the circular basin and water gushed out. “There’s no drought here—d’you see? So I say this: What’s it to do with us? You want men and materials? Go to one of these towns that has no water. Go to Nola. We’re swimming in it! Look!” And to make his point he opened the tap wider and left it running.

“Besides,” said Brittius craftily, “it’s good for business. Anybody on the bay who wants a bath, or a drink for that matter—he has to come to Pompeii. And on a public holiday, too. What do you say, Holconius?”

The oldest magistrate adjusted his towel around him like a toga. “It’s offensive to the priests to see men working on a holy day,” he announced judiciously. “People should do as we are doing—they should gather with their friends and families to observe the religious rites. I vote we tell this young fellow, with all due respect to Admiral Pliny, to fuck off out of here.”

Brittius roared with laughter, banging on the side of the table in approval. Popidius smiled and rolled up the papyrus. “I think you have our answer, aquarius. Why don’t you come back tomorrow and we’ll see what we can do?”

He tried to hand the letter back but Attilius reached past him and firmly closed the tap. What a picture they looked, the three of them, dripping with water—hiswater—and Brittius, with his puny hard-on, now lost in the flabby folds of his lap. The sickly-scented heat was unbearable. He wiped his face on the sleeve of his tunic.

“Now listen to me, your honors. From midnight tonight, Pompeii will also lose her water. The whole supply is being diverted to Beneventum, so we can get inside the tunnel of the aqueduct to repair it. I’ve already sent my men into the mountains to close the sluices.” There was a mutter of anger. He held up his hand. “Surely it’s in the interests of all citizens on the bay to cooperate?” He looked at Cuspius. “Yes, all right—I could go to Nola for assistance. But at the cost of at least a day. And that’s an extra day you’ll be without water, as well as they.”

“Yes, but with one difference,” said Cuspius. “We’ll have some notice. How about this for an idea, Popidius? We could issue a proclamation, telling our citizens to fill every container they possess and in that way ours will still be the only town on the bay with a reserve of water.”

“We could even sell it,” said Brittius. “And the longer the drought goes on, the better the price we could get for it.”

“It’s not yours to sell!” Attilius was finding it hard to keep his temper. “If you refuse to help me, I swear that the first thing I’ll do after the mainline is repaired is to see to it that the spur to Pompeii is closed.” He had no authority to issue such a threat, but he swept on anyway, jabbing his finger in Cuspius’s chest. “And I’ll send to Rome for a commissioner to come down and investigate the abuse of the imperial aqueduct. I’ll make you pay for every extra cupful you’ve taken beyond your proper share!”

“Such insolence!” shouted Brittius.

“He touched me!” said Cuspius, outraged. “You all saw that? This piece of scum actually laid his filthy hand on me!” He stuck out his chin and stepped up close to Attilius, ready for a fight, and the engineer might have retaliated, which would have been disastrous—for him, for his mission—if the curtain had not been swished aside to reveal another man, who had obviously been standing in the passageway listening to their conversation.

Attilius had only met him once, but he was not about to forget him in a hurry: Numerius Popidius Ampliatus.

What most astonished Attilius, once he had recovered from the shock of seeing him again, was how much they all deferred to him. Even Brittius swung his plump legs over the side of the table and straightened his back, as if it was somehow disrespectful to be caught lying down in the presence of this former slave. Ampliatus put a restraining hand on Cuspius’s shoulder, whispered a few words in his ear, winked, tousled his hair, and all the while he kept his eyes on Attilius.

The engineer remembered the bloody remains of the slave in the eel pool, the lacerated back of the slave woman.

“So what’s all this, gentlemen?” Ampliatus suddenly grinned and pointed at Attilius. “Arguing in the baths? On a religious festival? That’s unseemly. Where were you all brought up?”

Popidius said, “This is the new aquarius of the aqueduct.”

“I know Marcus Attilius. We’ve met, haven’t we, aquarius? May I see that?” He took Pliny’s letter from Popidius and scanned it quickly, then glanced at Attilius. He was wearing a tunic bordered in gold, his hair was glossy, and there was the same smell of expensive unguents that the engineer had noticed the previous day.

“What is your plan?”

“To follow the spur from Pompeii back to its junction with the Augusta, then to work my way along the mainline toward Nola until I find the break.”

“And what is it you need?”

“I don’t know yet exactly.” Attilius hesitated. The appearance of Ampliatus had disconcerted him. “Quicklime. Puteolanum. Bricks. Timber. Torches. Men.”

“How much of each?”

“Perhaps six amphorae of lime to start with. A dozen baskets of puteolanum. Fifty paces of timber and five hundred bricks. As many torches as you can spare. Ten strong pairs of hands. I may need less, I may need more. It depends how badly the aqueduct is damaged.”

“How soon will you know?”

“One of my men will report back this afternoon.”

Ampliatus nodded. “Well, if you want my opinion, your honors, I think we should do all in our power to help. Never let it be said that the ancient colony of Pompeii turned its back on an appeal from the emperor. Besides, I have a fishery in Misenum that drinks water like Brittius here drinks wine. I want that aqueduct running again as soon as possible. What do you say?”

The magistrates exchanged uneasy glances. Eventually Popidius said, “It may be that we were over-hasty.”

Only Cuspius risked a show of defiance. “I still think this ought to be Nola’s responsibility—”

Ampliatus cut him off. “That’s settled, then. I can let you have all you need, Marcus Attilius, if you’ll just be so good as to wait outside.” He shouted over his shoulder to the steward. “Scutarius! Give the aquarius his shoes!”

None of the others spoke to Attilius or looked at him. They were like naughty schoolboys discovered fighting by their master.

The engineer collected his shoes and walked out of the tepidarium into the gloomy passageway. The curtain was quickly drawn behind him. He leaned against the wall to pull on his shoes, trying to listen to what was being said, but he could make out nothing. From the direction of the atrium he heard a splash as someone dived into the swimming pool. This reminder that the house was busy for the holiday made up his mind for him. He dared not risk being caught eavesdropping. He opened the second curtain and stepped back out into the dazzling sunlight. Across the atrium, beyond the tablinum, the surface of the pool was rocking from the impact of the dive. The wives of the magistrates were still gossiping at the other end, where they had been joined by a dowdy middle-aged matron who sat demurely apart, her hands folded in her lap. A couple of slaves carrying trays laden with dishes passed behind them. There was a smell of cooking. A huge feast was clearly in preparation.

His eye was caught by a flash of darkness beneath the glittering water and an instant later the swimmer broke the surface.

“Corelia Ampliata!”

He said her name aloud, unintentionally. She did not hear him. She shook her head and stroked her black hair away from her closed eyes, gathering it behind her with both hands. Her elbows were spread wide, her pale face tilted toward the sun, oblivious to his watching her.

“Corelia!” He whispered it, not wanting to attract the attention of the other women, and this time she turned. It took a moment for her to search him out against the glare of the atrium, but when she found him she began wading toward him. She was wearing a shift of thin material that came down almost to her knees and as her body emerged from the water she placed one dripping arm across her breasts and the other between her thighs, like some modest Venus arising from the waves. He stepped into the tablinum and walked toward the pool, past the funeral masks of the Popidii clan. Red ribbons linked the images of the dead, showing who was related to whom, in a crisscross pattern of power stretching back for generations.

“Aquarius,” she hissed, “you must leave this place!” She was standing on the circular steps that led out of the pool. “Get out! Go! My father is here, and if he sees you—”

“Too late for that. We’ve met.” But he drew back slightly, so that he was hidden from the view of the women at the other end of the pool.I ought to look away, he thought. It would be the honorable thing to do. But he could not take his eyes off her. “What are you doing here?”

“What am I doing here?” She regarded him as if he were an idiot and leaned toward him. “Where else should I be? My father owns this house.”

At first he did not fully take in what she was saying. “But I was told that Lucius Popidius lived here.”

“He does.”

He was still confused. “Then—?”

“We are to be married.” She said it flatly and shrugged, and there was something terrible in the gesture, an utter hopelessness, and suddenly all was clear to him—the reason for Ampliatus’s unannounced appearance, Popidius’s deference to him, the way the others had followed his lead. Somehow Ampliatus had contrived to buy the roof from over Popidius’s head and now he was going to extend his ownership completely, by marrying off his daughter to his former master. The thought of that aging playboy, with his plucked and hairless body, sharing a bed with Corelia, filled him with an unexpected anger, even though he told himself it was none of his business.

“But surely a man as old as Popidius is already married?”

“He was. He’s been forced to divorce.”

“And what does Popidius think of such an arrangement?”

“He thinks it is contemptible, of course, to make a match so far beneath him—as you do, clearly.”

“Not at all, Corelia,” he said quickly. He saw that she had tears in her eyes. “On the contrary. I should say you were worth a hundred Popidii. A thousand.”

“I hate him,” she said. But whether she meant Popidius or her father he could not tell.

From the passage came the sound of rapid footsteps and Ampliatus’s voice, yelling, “Aquarius!”

She shuddered. “Please leave, I beg you. You were a good man to have tried to help me yesterday. But don’t let him trap you, as he’s trapped the rest of us.”

Attilius said stiffly, “I am a freeborn Roman citizen, on the staff of the Curator Aquarum, in the service of the emperor, here on official business to repair the imperial aqueduct—not some slave to be fed to his eels. Or an elderly woman, for that matter, to be beaten half to death.”

It was her turn to be shocked. She put her hands to her mouth. “Atia?”

“Atia, yes—is that her name? Last night I found her lying in the street and took her back to my quarters. She had been whipped senseless and left out to die like an old dog.”

“Monster!” Corelia stepped backward, her hands still pressed to her face, and sank into the water.

“You take advantage of my good nature, aquarius!” said Ampliatus. He was advancing across the tablinium. “I told you to wait for me, that was all.” He glared at Corelia. “You should know better, after what I told you yesterday!” Then he shouted across the pool—“Celsia!”—and the mousy woman Attilius had noticed earlier jerked up in her chair. “Get our daughter out of the pool! It’s unseemly for her to show her tits in public!” He turned to Attilius. “Look at them over there, like a lot of fat hens on their nests!” He flapped his arms at them, emitting a series of squawks—cluuuuck, cluck-cluck-cluck!—and the women raised their fans in distaste. “They won’t fly, though. Oh, no. One thing I’ve learned about our Roman aristocrat—he’ll go anywhere for a free meal. And his women are even worse.” He called out: “I’ll be back in an hour! Don’t start without me!” And with a gesture to Attilius that he should fall in behind him, the new master of the House of the Popidii turned on his heel and strode toward the door.

As they passed through the atrium, Attilius glanced back at the pool where Corelia was still submerged, as if she thought that by completely immersing herself she could wash away what was happening.

HORA SEXTA

[12:00 hours]

As magma rises from depth, it undergoes a large pressure decrease. At a

10-meter depth, for example, pressures are about 300 megapascals (MPa), or 3,000 times the atmospheric pressure. Such a large pressure change has many consequences for the physical properties and flow of magma.

—ENCYCLOPEDIA OF VOLCANOES

Ampliatus had a litter and eight slaves waiting outside on the pavement, dressed in the same crimson livery as the porter and steward. They scrambled to attention as their master appeared but he walked straight past them, just as he ignored the small crowd of petitioners squatting in the shade of the wall across the street, despite the public holiday, who called out his name in a ragged chorus.

“We’ll walk,” he said, and set off up the slope toward the crossroads, maintaining the same fast pace as he had in the house. Attilius followed at his shoulder. It was noon, the air scalding, the roads quiet. The few pedestrians who were about mostly hopped into the gutter as Ampliatus approached or drew back into the shop doorways. He hummed to himself as he walked, nodding an occasional greeting, and when the engineer looked back he saw that they were trailing a retinue that would have done credit to a senator—first, at a discreet distance, the slaves with the litter, and behind them the little straggle of supplicants: men with the dejected, exhausted look that came from dancing attendance on a great man since before dawn and knowing themselves doomed to disappointment.

About halfway up the hill to the Vesuvius Gate—the engineer counted three city blocks—Ampliatus turned right, crossed the street, and opened a little wooden door set into a wall. He put his hand on Attilius’s shoulder to usher him inside and Attilius felt his flesh recoil at the millionaire’s touch.

“Don’t let him trap you as he’s trapped the rest of us.”

He eased himself clear of the grasping fingers. Ampliatus closed the door behind them and he found himself standing in a big, deserted space, a building site, occupying the best part of the entire block. To the left was a brick wall surmounted by a sloping red-tiled roof—the back of a row of shops—with a pair of high wooden gates set into the middle; to the right, a complex of new buildings, very nearly finished, with large modern windows looking out across the expanse of scrub and rubble. A rectangular tank was being excavated directly beneath the windows.

Ampliatus had his hands on his hips and was studying the engineer’s reaction. “So then. What do you think I’m building? I’ll give you one guess.”

“Baths.”

“That’s it. What do you think?”

“It’s impressive,” said Attilius. And it was; at least as good as anything he had seen under construction in Rome in the past ten years. The brickwork and the columns were beautifully finished. There was a sense of tranquility—of space, and peace, and light. The high windows faced southwest to take advantage of the afternoon sun, which was just beginning to flood into the interior. “I congratulate you.”

“We had to demolish almost the whole block to make way for it,” said Ampliatus, “and that was unpopular. But it will be worth it. It will be the finest baths outside Rome. And more modern than anything you’ve got up there.” He looked around, proudly. “We provincials, you know, when we put our minds to it, we can still show you big-city men from Rome a thing or two.” He cupped his hands to his mouth and bellowed, “Januarius!”

From the other side of the yard came an answering shout, and a tall man appeared at the top of a flight of stairs. He recognized his master and ran down the steps and across the yard, wiping his hands on his tunic, bobbing his head in a series of bows as he came closer.

“Januarius—this is my friend, the aquarius of the Augusta. He works for the emperor!”

“Honored,” said Januarius, and gave Attilius another bow.

“Januarius is one of my foremen. Where are the lads?”

“In the barracks, sir.” He looked terrified, as if he had been caught idling. “It’s the holiday—”

“Forget the holiday! We need them here now. Ten, did you say you needed, aquarius? Better make it a dozen. Januarius, send for a dozen of the strongest men we have. Brebix’s gang. Tell them they’re to bring food and drink for a day. What else was it you needed?”

“Quicklime,” began Attilius, “puteolanum—”

“That’s it. All that stuff. Timber. Bricks. Torches—don’t forget torches. He’s to have everything he needs. And you’ll require transport, won’t you? A couple of teams of oxen?”

“I’ve already hired them.”

“But you’ll have mine—I insist.”

“No.” Ampliatus’s generosity was starting to make the engineer uneasy. First would come the gift, then the gift would turn out to be a loan, and then the loan would prove a debt impossible to pay back. That was no doubt how Popidius had ended up losing his house.A hustler’s town. He glanced at the sky. “It’s noon. The oxen should be arriving down at the harbor by now. I have a slave waiting there with our tools.”

“Who did you hire from?”

“Baculus.”

“Baculus! That drunken thief! My oxen would be better. At least let me have a word with him. I’ll get you a fat discount.”

Attilius shrugged. “If you insist.”

“I do. Fetch the men from the barracks, Januarius, and send a boy to the docks to have the aquarius’s wagons brought here for loading. I’ll show you around while we’re waiting, aquarius.” And again his hand fell upon the engineer’s shoulder. “Come.”

Baths were not a luxury. Baths were the foundation of civilization. Baths were what raised even the meanest citizen of Rome above the level of the wealthiest hairy-assed barbarian. Baths instilled the triple disciplines of cleanliness, healthfulness, and strict routine. Was it not to feed the baths that the aqueducts had been invented in the first place? Had not the baths spread the Roman ethos across Europe, Africa, and Asia as effectively as the legions, so that in whatever town in this far-flung empire a man might find himself, he could at least be sure of finding this one precious piece of home?

Such was the essence of Ampliatus’s lecture as he conducted Attilius around the empty shell of his dream. The rooms were unfurnished and smelled strongly of fresh paint and stucco and their footsteps echoed as they passed through the cubicles and exercise rooms into the main part of the building. Here, the frescoes were already in place. Views of the green Nile, studded with basking crocodiles, flowed into scenes from the lives of the gods. Triton swam beside the Argonauts and led them back to safety. Neptune transformed his son into a swan. Perseus saved Andromeda from the sea monster sent to attack the Ethiopians. The pool in the caldarium was built to take twenty-eight paying customers at a time, and as the bathers lay on their backs they would gaze up at a sapphire ceiling, lit by five hundred lamps and swimming with every species of marine life, and believe themselves to be floating in an undersea grotto.

To attain the luxury he demanded, Ampliatus was employing the most modern techniques, the best materials, the most skillful craftsmen in Italy. There were Neapolitan glass windows in the dome of the laconicum—the sweating room—as thick as a man’s finger. The floors and the walls and the ceilings were hollow, the furnace that heated the cavities so powerful that even if snow lay on the ground, the air inside would be sweltering enough to melt a man’s flesh. It was built to withstand an earthquake. All the main fittings—pipes, drains, grilles, vents, taps, stopcocks, shower nozzles, even the handles to flush the latrines—were of brass. The lavatory seats were Phrygian marble, with elbow rests carved in the shape of dolphins and chimeras. Hot and cold running water throughout.Civilization.

Attilius had to admire the vision of the man. Ampliatus took so much pride in showing him everything that it was almost as if he was soliciting an investment. And the truth was that if the engineer had had any money—if most of his salary had not already been sent back home to his mother and sister—he might well have given him every last coin, for he had never encountered a more persuasive salesman than Numerius Popidius Ampliatus.

“How soon before you’re finished?”

“I should say a month. I need to bring in the carpenters. I want some shelves, a few cupboards. I thought of putting down sprung wood floors in the changing room. I was considering pine.”

“No,” said Attilius. “Use alder.”

“Alder? Why?”

“It won’t rot in contact with water. I’d use pine—or perhaps cypress—for the shutters. But it would need to be something from the lowlands, where the sun shines. Don’t touch pine from the mountains. Not for a building of this quality.”

“Any other advice?”

“Always use timber cut in the autumn, not the spring. Trees are pregnant in the spring and the wood is weaker. For clamping, use olive wood, scorched—it will last for a century. But you probably know all that.”

“Not at all. I’ve built a lot, it’s true, but I’ve never understood much about wood and stone. It’s money I understand. And the great thing about money is that it doesn’t matter when you harvest it. It’s a year-round crop.” He laughed at his own joke and turned to look at the engineer. There was something unnerving about the intensity of his gaze, which was not steady, but which shifted, as if he were constantly measuring different aspects of whomever he addressed, and Attilius thought,No, it’s not money you understand, it’s men—their strengths and their weaknesses; when to flatter, when to frighten.

“And you, aquarius?” Ampliatus said quietly, “What it is that you know?”

“Water.”

“Well, that’s an important thing to know. Water is at least as valuable as money.”

“Is it? Then why aren’t I a rich man?”

“Perhaps you could be.” He made the remark lightly, left it floating for a moment beneath the massive dome, and then went on, his voice echoing off the walls: “Do you ever stop to think how curiously the world is ordered, aquarius? When this place is open, I shall make another fortune. And then I shall use that fortune to make another, and another. But without your aqueduct, I could not build my baths. That’s a thought, is it not? Without Attilius, no Ampliatus.”

“Except that it’s not my aqueduct. I didn’t build it—the emperor did.”

“True. And at a cost of two million a mile! ‘The late lamented Augustus’—was ever a man more justly proclaimed a deity? Give me the Divine Augustus over Jupiter any time. I say my prayers to him every day.” He sniffed the air. “This wet paint makes my head ache. Let me show you my plans for the grounds.”

He led them back the way they had come. The sun was shining fully now through the large open windows. The gods on the opposite walls seemed alive with color. Yet there was something haunted about the empty rooms—the drowsy stillness, the dust floating in the shafts of light, the cooing of the pigeons in the builders’ yard. One bird must have flown into the laconicum and become trapped. The sudden flapping of its wings against the dome made the engineer’s heart jump.

Outside, the luminous air felt almost solid with the heat, like melted glass, but Ampliatus did not appear to feel it. He climbed the open staircase easily and stepped onto the small sundeck. From here he had a commanding view of his little kingdom. That would be the exercise yard, he said. He would plant plane trees around it for shade. He was experimenting with a method of heating the water in the outdoor pool. He patted the stone parapet. “This was the site of my first property. Seventeen years ago I bought it. If I told you how little I paid for it, you wouldn’t believe me. Mark you, there was not much left of it after the earthquake. No roof, just the walls. I was twenty-eight. Never been so happy, before or since. Repaired it, rented it out, bought another, rented that. Some of these big old houses from the time of the republic were huge. I split them up and fitted ten families into them. I’ve gone on doing it ever since. Here’s a piece of advice for you, my friend: there’s no safer investment than property in Pompeii.”

He swatted a fly on the back of his neck and inspected its pulpy corpse between his fingers. He flicked it away. Attilius could imagine him as a young man—brutal, energetic, remorseless. “You had been freed by the Popidii by then?”

Ampliatus shot him a look.However hard he tries to be affable, thought Attilius,those eyes will always betray him.

“If that was meant as an insult, aquarius, forget it. Everyone knows Numerius Popidius Ampliatus was born a slave and he’s not ashamed of it. Yes, I was free. I was manumitted in my master’s will when I was twenty. Lucius, his son—the one you just met—made me his household steward. Then I did some debt-collecting for an old moneylender called Jucundus, and he taught me a lot. But I never would have been rich if it hadn’t been for the earthquake.” He looked fondly toward Vesuvius. His voice softened. “It came down from the mountain one morning in February like a wind beneath the earth. I watched it coming, the trees bowing as it passed, and by the time it had finished this town was rubble. It didn’t matter then who had been born a free man and who had been born a slave. The place was empty. You could walk the streets for an hour and meet no one except for the dead.”

“Who was in charge of rebuilding the town?”

“Nobody! That was the disgrace of it. All the richest families ran away to their country estates. They were all convinced there was going to be another earthquake.”

“Including Popidius?”

“Especially Popidius!” He wrung his hands, and whined, “ ‘Oh, Ampliatus, the gods have forsaken us! Oh, Ampliatus, the gods are punishing us!’ The gods! I ask you! As if the gods could care less who or what we fuck or how we live. As if earthquakes aren’t as much a part of living in Campania as hot springs and summer droughts! They came creeping back, of course, once they saw it was safe, but by then things had started to change.Salve lucrum! ‘Hail profit!’ That’s the motto of the new Pompeii. You’ll see it all over the town.Lucrum gaudium! ’Profit is joy!’ Not money, mark you—any fool can inherit money. Profit. That takes skill.” He spat over the low wall into the street below. “Lucius Popidius! What skill does he have? He can drink in cold water and piss out hot, and that’s about the limit of it. Whereas you”—and again Attilius felt himself being sized up—“you, I think, are a man of some ability. I see myself in you, when I was your age. I could use a fellow like you.”

“Use me?”

“Here, for a start. These baths could do with a man who understands water. In return for your advice, I could cut you in. A share of the profits.”

Attilius shook his head, smiling. “I don’t think so.”

Ampliatus smiled back. “Ah, you drive a hard bargain! I admire that in a man. Very well—a share of the ownership, too.”

“No. Thank you. I’m flattered. But my family has worked the imperial aqueducts for a century. I was born to be an engineer on the matrices, and I shall die doing it.”

“Why not do both?”

“What?”

“Run the aqueduct, and advise me as well. No one need ever know.”

Attilius looked at him closely, at his crafty, eager face. Beneath the money, the violence, and the lust for power, he was really nothing bigger than a small-town crook. “No,” he said coldly, “that would be impossible.”

The contempt must have shown in his face because Ampliatus retreated at once. “You’re right,” he said, nodding. “Forget I even mentioned it. I’m a rough fellow sometimes. I have these ideas without always thinking them through.”

“Like executing a slave before finding out if he’s telling the truth?”

Ampliatus grinned and pointed at Attilius. “Very good! That’s right. But how can you expect a man like me to know how to behave? You can have all the money in the empire but it doesn’t make you a gentleman, right? You may think you’re copying the aristocracy, showing a bit of class, but then it turns out you’re a monster. Isn’t that what Corelia called me? A monster?”

“And Exomnius?” Attilius blurted out the question. “Did you have an arrangement with him that nobody ever knew about?”

Ampliatus’s smile did not waver. From down in the street came a rumble of heavy wooden wheels on stone. “Listen—I think I can hear your wagons coming. We’d better go down and let them in.”

The conversation might never have happened. Humming to himself again, Ampliatus dodged across the rubble-strewn yard. He swung open the heavy gates and as Polites led the first team of oxen into the site he made a formal bow. A man Attilius did not recognize was leading the second team; a couple more sat on the back of the empty cart, their legs dangling over the side. They jumped down immediately when they noticed Ampliatus and stood looking respectfully at the ground.

“Well done, lads,” said Ampliatus. “I’ll see you’re rewarded for working a holiday. But it’s an emergency and we’ve all got to rally round and help fix the aqueduct. For the common good—isn’t that right, aquarius?” He pinched the cheek of the nearest man. “You’re under his command now. Serve him well. Aquarius: take as much as you want. It’s all in the yard. Torches are inside in the storeroom. Is there anything more I can do for you?” He was obviously eager to go.

“I shall make an inventory of what we use,” said Attilius formally. “You will be compensated.”

“There’s no need. But as you wish. I wouldn’t want to be accused of trying to corrupt you!” He laughed, and pointed again. “I’d stay and help you load myself—nobody ever said that Numerius Popidius Ampliatus was afraid of getting his hands dirty!—but you know how it is. We’re dining early because of the festival and I mustn’t show my low birth by keeping all those fine gentlemen and their ladies waiting.” He held out his hand. “So! I wish you luck, aquarius.”

Attilius took it. The grip was dry and firm; the palm and fingers, like his own, callused by hard work. He nodded. “Thank you.”

Ampliatus grunted and turned away. Outside in the quiet street his litter was waiting for him and this time he clambered straight into it. The slaves ran around to take up their positions, four men on either side. Ampliatus clicked his fingers and they hoisted the bronze-capped poles—first to waist height, and then, grimacing with the strain, up onto their shoulders. Their master settled himself back on his cushions, staring straight ahead—unseeing, brooding. He reached behind his shoulder, unfastened the curtain and let it fall. Attilius stood in the gateway and watched him go, the crimson canopy swaying as it moved off down the hill, the little crowd of weary petitioners trudging after it.

He went back into the yard.

It was all there, as Ampliatus had promised, and for a while Attilius was able to lose himself in the simple effort of physical work. It was comforting to handle the materials of his craft again—the weighty, sharp-edged bricks, just big enough to fit a man’s grasp, and their familiar brittle clink as they were stacked on the back of the cart; the baskets of powdery red puteolanum, always heavier and denser than you expected, sliding across the rough boards of the wagon; the feel of the timber, warm and smooth against his cheek as he carried it across the yard; and finally the quicklime, in its bulbous clay amphorae—difficult to grasp and heave up onto the cart.

He worked steadily with the other men and had a sense at last that he was making progress. Ampliatus was undeniably cruel and ruthless and the gods alone knew what else besides, but his stuff was good and in honest hands it would serve a better purpose. He had asked for six amphorae of lime but when it came to it he decided to take a dozen and increased the amount of puteolanum in proportion, to twenty baskets. He did not want to come back to Ampliatus to ask for more; what he did not use he could return.

He went into the bathhouse to look for the torches and found them in the largest storeroom. Even these were of a superior sort—tightly wadded flax and resin impregnated with tar; good, solid wooden handles bound with rope. Next to them lay open wooden crates of oil lamps, mostly terra-cotta, but some of brass, and candles enough to light a temple. Quality, as Ampliatus said: you couldn’t beat it. Clearly, this was going to be a most luxurious establishment.

“It will be the finest baths outside Rome . . .”

He was suddenly curious and with his arms full of torches he looked into some of the other storerooms. Piles of towels in one, jars of scented massage oil in another, lead exercise weights, coils of rope and leather balls in a third. Everything ready and waiting for use; everything here except chattering, sweating humanity to bring it all to life. And water, of course. He peered through the open door into the succession of rooms. It would use a lot of water, this place. Four or five pools, showers, flush latrines, a steam room . . . Only public facilities, such as the fountains, were connected to the aqueduct free of charge, as the gift of the emperor. But private baths like these would cost a small fortune in water taxes. And if Ampliatus had made his money by buying big properties, subdividing them, and renting them out, then his overall consumption of water must be huge. He wondered how much he was paying for it. Presumably he could find out once he returned to Misenum and tried to bring some order to the chaos in which Exomnius had left the Augusta’s records.

Perhaps he wasn’t paying anything at all.

He stood there in the sunlight, in the echoing bathhouse, listening to the cooing pigeons, turning the possibility over in his mind. The aqueducts had always been wide open to corruption. Farmers tapped into the mainlines where they crossed their land. Citizens ran an extra pipe or two and paid the water inspectors to look the other way. Public work was awarded to private contractors and bills were paid for jobs that were never done. Materials went missing. Attilius suspected that the rottenness went right to the top—even Acilius Aviola, the Curator Aquarum himself, was rumored to insist on a percentage of the take. The engineer had never had anything to do with it. But an honest man was a rare man in Rome; an honest man was a fool.

The weight of the torches was making his arms ache. He went outside and stacked them on one of the wagons, then leaned against it, thinking. More of Ampliatus’s men had arrived. The loading had finished and they were sprawled in the shade, waiting for orders. The oxen stood placidly, flicking their tails, their heads in clouds of swarming flies.

If the Augusta’s accounts, back at the Piscina Mirabilis, were in such a mess, might it be because they had been tampered with?

He glanced up at the cloudless sky. The sun had passed its zenith. Becco and Corvinus should have reached Abellinum by now. The sluice gates might already be closed, the Augusta starting to drain dry. He felt the pressure of time again. Nevertheless, he made up his mind and beckoned to Polites. “Go into the baths,” he ordered, “and fetch another dozen torches, a dozen lamps, and a jar of olive oil. And a coil of rope, while you’re at it. But no more, mind. Then, when you’ve finished here, take the wagons and the men up to the castellum aquae, next to the Vesuvius Gate, and wait for me. Corax should be coming back soon. And while you’re at it, see if you can buy some food for us.” He gave the slave his bag. “There’s money in there. Look after it for me. I shan’t be long.”

He brushed the residue of brick dust and puteolanum from the front of his tunic and walked out the open gate.

HORA SEPTA

[14:10 hours]

If magma is ready to be tapped in a high-level reservoir, even a small

change of regional stress, usually associated with an earthquake, can

disturb the stability of the system and bring about an eruption.

—VOLCANOLOGY(SECOND EDITION)

Ampliatus’s banquet was just entering its second hour, and of the twelve guests reclining around the table only one showed signs of truly enjoying it, and that was Ampliatus himself. It was stiflingly hot for a start, even with one wall of the dining room entirely open to the air, even with three slaves in their crimson livery stationed around the table waving fans of peacock feathers. A harpist beside the swimming pool plucked mournfully at some formless tune.

And four diners to each couch! This was at least one too many, in the judgment of Lucius Popidius, who groaned to himself as each fresh course was set before them. He held to the rule of Varro, that the number of guests at a dinner party ought not to be less than that of the Graces (three), nor to exceed that of the Muses (nine). It meant that one was too close to one’s fellow diners. Popidius, for example, reclined between Ampliatus’s dreary wife, Celsia, and his own mother, Taedia Secunda—close enough to feel the heat of their bodies. Disgusting. And when he propped himself on his left elbow and reached out with his right hand to take some food from the table, the back of his head would brush Celsia’s shallow bosom and—worse—his ring occasionally become entangled with his mother’s blond hairpiece, shorn from the head of some German slave girl and now disguising the elderly lady’s thin gray locks.

And the food! Did Ampliatus not understand that hot weather called for simple, cold dishes, and that all these sauces, all this elaboration, had gone out of fashion back in Claudius’s time? The first of the hors d’oeuvres had not been too bad—oysters bred in Brundisium then shipped two hundred miles round the coast for fattening in the Lucrine Lake, so that the flavors of the two varieties could be tasted at once. Olives and sardines, and eggs seasoned with chopped anchovies—altogether acceptable. But then had come lobster, sea urchins, and, finally, mice rolled in honey and poppy seeds. Popidius had felt obliged to swallow at least one mouse to please his host and the crunch of those tiny bones had made him break out in a sweat of nausea.

Sow’s udder stuffed with kidneys, with the sow’s vulva served as a side dish, grinning up toothlessly at the diners. Roast wild boar filled with live thrushes that flapped helplessly across the table as the belly was carved open, shitting as they went. (Ampliatus had clapped his hands and roared with laughter at that.) Then the delicacies: the tongues of storks and flamingos (not too bad), but the tongue of a talking parrot had always looked to Popidius like nothing so much as a maggot and it had indeed tasted much as he imagined a maggot might taste if it had been doused in vinegar. Then a stew of nightingales’ livers . . .

He glanced around at the flushed faces of his fellow guests. Even fat Brittius, who once boasted that he had eaten the entire trunk of an elephant, and whose motto was Seneca’s—“eat to vomit, vomit to eat”—was starting to look green. He caught Popidius’s eye and mouthed something at him. Popidius could not quite make it out. He cupped his ear and Brittius repeated it, shielding his mouth from Ampliatus with his napkin and emphasizing every syllable: “Tri-mal-chi-o.”

Popidius almost burst out laughing. Trimalchio! Very good! The freed slave of monstrous wealth in the satire by Titus Petronius, who subjects his guests to exactly such a meal and cannot see how vulgar and ridiculous he is showing himself. Ha ha! Trimalchio! For a moment, Popidius slipped back twenty years to his time as a young aristocrat at Nero’s court, when Petronius, that arbiter of good taste, would keep the table amused for hours by his merciless lampooning of the nouveau riche.

He felt suddenly maudlin. Poor old Petronius. Too funny and stylish for his own good. In the end, Nero, suspecting his own imperial majesty was being subtly mocked, had eyed him for one last time through his emerald monocle and had ordered him to kill himself. But Petronius had succeeded in turning even that into a joke—opening his veins at the start of a dinner in his house at Cumae, then binding them to eat and to gossip with his friends, then opening them again, then binding them, and so on, as he gradually ebbed away. His last conscious act had been to break a fluorspar wine-dipper, worth three hundred thousand sesterces, which the emperor had been expecting to inherit.That was style.That was taste.

And what would he have made of me, thought Popidius bitterly. That I—a Popidius, who played and sang with the Master of the World—should have come to this, at the age of forty-five: the prisoner of Trimalchio!

He looked across at his former slave, presiding at the head of the table. He was still not entirely sure how it had happened. There had been the earthquake, of course. And then, a few years later, the death of Nero. Then civil war, a mule-dealer as emperor, and Popidius’s world had turned upside down. Suddenly Ampliatus was everywhere—rebuilding the town, erecting a temple, worming his infant son onto the town council, controlling the elections, even buying the house next door. Popidius had never had a head for figures, so when Ampliatus had told him he could make some money, too, he had signed the contracts without even reading them. And somehow the money had been lost, and then it turned out that the family house was surety, and his only escape from the humiliation of eviction was to marry Ampliatus’s daughter. Imagine: his own ex-slave as his father-in-law! He thought the shame of it would kill his mother. She had barely spoken since, her face haggard with sleeplessness and worry.

Not that he would mind sharing a bed with Corelia. He watched her hungrily. She was stretched out with her back to Cuspius, whispering to her brother. He wouldn’t mind screwing the boy, either. He felt his prick begin to stiffen. Perhaps he might suggest a threesome? No—she would never go for it. She was a cold bitch. But he would soon be warming her up. His gaze met Brittius’s once more. What a funny fellow. He winked and gestured with his eyes to Ampliatus and mouthed in agreement, “Trimalchio!”

“What’s that you’re saying, Popidius?”

Ampliatus’s voice cut across the table like a whip. Popidius cringed.

“He was saying, ‘What a feast!’ ” Brittius raised his glass. “That’s what we’re all saying, Ampliatus. What a magnificent feast.” A murmur of assent went round the table.

“And the best is yet to come,” said Ampliatus. He clapped and one of the slaves hurried out of the dining room in the direction of the kitchen.

Popidius managed to force a smile. “I for one have left room for dessert, Ampliatus.” In truth he felt like vomiting, and he would not have needed the usual cup of warm brine and mustard to do it, either. “What is it to be, then? A basket of plums from Mount Damascus? Or has that pastry chef of yours made a pie of Attican honey?” Ampliatus’s cook was the great Gargilius, bought for a quarter of a million, recipe books and all. That was how it was along the Bay of Neapolis these days. The chefs were more celebrated than the people they fed. Prices had been pushed into the realms of insanity. The wrong sort of people had the money.

“Oh, it’s not yet time for dessert, my dear Popidius. Or may I—if it’s not too premature—call you ‘son’?” Ampliatus grinned and pointed and by a superhuman effort, Popidius succeeded in hiding his revulsion.O, Trimalchio, he thought,Trimalchio . . .

There was a sound of scuffling footsteps and then four slaves appeared, bearing on their shoulders a model trireme, as long as a man and cast in silver, surfing a sea of encrusted sapphires. The diners broke into applause. The slaves approached the table on their knees and with difficulty slid the trireme, prow first, across the table. It was entirely filled by an enormous eel. Its eyes had been removed and replaced by rubies. Its jaws were propped open and filled with ivory. Clipped to its dorsal fin was a thick gold ring.

Popidius was the first to speak. “I say, Ampliatus—that’s a whopper.”

“From my own fishery at Misenum,” said Ampliatus proudly. “A moray. It must be thirty years old if it’s a day. I had it caught last night. You see the ring? I do believe, Popidius, that this is the creature your friend Nero used to sing to.” He picked up a large silver knife. “Now, who will have the first slice? You, Corelia—I think you should try it first.”

Now, that was a nice gesture,thought Popidius. Up till this point, her father had conspicuously ignored her, and he had begun to suspect ill-feeling between them, but here was a mark of favor. So it was with some astonishment that he saw the girl flash a look of undiluted hatred at her father, throw down her napkin, rise from her couch, and run sobbing from the table.

The first couple of pedestrians Attilius approached swore they had never heard of Africanus’s place. But at the crowded bar of Hercules, a little farther down the street, the man behind the counter gave him a shifty look and then provided directions in a quiet voice—walk down the hill for another block, turn right, then first left, then ask again: “But be careful who you talk to, citizen.”

Attilius could guess what that meant and sure enough, from the moment he left the main road, the street curved and narrowed, the houses became meaner and more crowded. Carved in stone beside several of the squalid entrances was the sign of the prick and balls. The brightly colored dresses of the prostitutes bloomed in the gloom like blue and yellow flowers. So this was where Exomnius had chosen to spend his time! Attilius’s footsteps slowed. He wondered if he should turn back. Nothing could be allowed to jeopardize the main priority of the day. But then he thought again of his father, dying on his mattress in the corner of their little house—another honest fool, whose stubborn rectitude had left his widow poor—and he resumed his walk, but faster, angry now.

At the end of the street, a heavy first-floor balcony jutted over the pavement, reducing the road to scarcely more than a passageway. He shouldered his way past a group of loitering men, their faces flushed by heat and wine, through the nearest open door, and into a dingy vestibule. There was a sharp, almost feral stink of sweat and semen. “Lupanars” they called these places, after the howl of the lupa, the she-wolf, in heat. And “lupa” was the street word for a harlot—a meretrix. The business sickened him. From upstairs came the sound of a flute, a thump on the floorboards, male laughter. On either side, from curtained cubicles, came the noises of the night—grunts, whispers, a child’s whimper.

In the semidarkness, a woman in a short green dress sat on a stool with her legs wide apart. She stood as she heard him enter and came toward him eagerly, arms outstretched in welcome, vermilion lips cracked into a smile. She had used antimony to blacken her eyebrows, stretching the lines so that they met across the bridge of her nose, a mark which some men prized as beauty, but which reminded Attilius of the death masks of the Popidii. She was ageless—fifteen or fifty, he could not tell in the weak light.

He said, “Africanus?”

“Who?” She had a thick accent. Cilician, perhaps. “Not here,” she said quickly.

“What about Exomnius?” At the mention of his name her painted mouth split wide. She tried to block his path, but he moved her out of his way, gently, his hands on her bare shoulders, and pulled back the curtain behind her. A naked man was squatting over an open latrine, his thighs bluish-white and bony in the darkness. He looked up, startled. “Africanus?” asked Attilius. The man’s expression was uncomprehending. “Forgive me, citizen.” Attilius let the curtain fall and moved toward one of the cubicles on the opposite side of the vestibule, but the whore beat him to it, extending her arms to block his way.

“No,” she said. “No trouble. He not here.”

“Where, then?”

She hesitated. “Above.” She gestured with her chin toward the ceiling.

Attilius looked around. He could see no stairs.

“How do I get up there? Show me.”

She did not move so he lunged toward another curtain, but again she beat him to it. “I show,” she said. “This way.”

She ushered him toward a second door. From the cubicle beside it, a man cried out in ecstasy. Attilius stepped into the street. She followed. In the daylight he could see that her elaborately piled-up hair was streaked with gray. Rivulets of sweat had carved furrows down her sunken, powdered cheeks. She would be lucky to earn a living here much longer. Her owner would throw her out and then she’d be living in the necropolis beyond the Vesuvius Gate, spreading her legs for the beggars behind the tombs.

She put her hand to her turkey-throat, as if she had guessed what was in his mind, and pointed to the staircase a few paces further on, then hurried back inside. As he started to mount the stone steps he heard her give a low whistle.I am like Theseus in the labyrinth, he thought,but without the ball of thread from Ariadne to guide me back to safety. If an attacker appeared above him and another blocked off his escape, he would not stand a chance. When he reached the top of the staircase he did not bother to knock but flung open the door.

His quarry was already halfway out of the window, presumably tipped off by the whistle from the elderly whore. But the engineer was across the room and had him by his belt before he could drop down to the flat roof below. He was light and scrawny and Attilius hauled him in as easily as an owner might drag a dog back by his collar. He deposited him on the carpet.

He had disturbed a party. Two men lay on couches. A Negro boy was clutching a flute to his naked chest. An olive-skinned girl, no more than twelve or thirteen, and also naked, with silver-painted nipples, stood on a table, frozen in mid-dance. For a moment, nobody moved. Oil lamps flickered against crudely painted erotic scenes—a woman astride a man, a man mounting a woman from behind, two men lying with their fingers on each other’s cocks. One of the reclining clients began trailing his hand slowly beneath the couch, patting the floor, feeling toward a knife that lay beside a plate of peeled fruit. Attilius planted his foot firmly in the middle of Africanus’s back, Africanus groaned, and the man quickly withdrew his hand.

“Good.” Attilius nodded. He smiled. He bent and grabbed Africanus by his belt again and dragged him out of the door.

“Teenage girls!” said Ampliatus, as the sound of Corelia’s footsteps died away. “It’s all just nerves before her wedding. Frankly, I’ll be glad, Popidius, when she’s your responsibility and not mine.” He saw his wife rise to follow her. “No, woman! Leave her!” Celsia lay down meekly, smiling apologetically to the other guests. Ampliatus frowned at her. He wished she would not do that. Why should she defer to her so-called betters? He could buy and sell them all!

He stuck his knife into the side of the eel and twisted it, then gestured irritably to the nearest slave to take over the carving. The fish stared up at him with blank red eyes.The emperor’s pet, he thought:a prince in its own little pond. Not anymore.

He dunked his bread in a bowl of vinegar and sucked it, watching the dexterous hand of the slave as he piled their plates with lumps of bony gray meat. Nobody wanted to eat it yet nobody wanted to be the first to refuse. An atmosphere of dyspeptic dread descended, as heavy as the air around the table, hot and stale with the smell of food. Ampliatus allowed the silence to hang. Why should he set them at their ease? When he was a slave at table, he had been forbidden to speak in the dining room in the presence of guests.

He was served first but he waited until the others had all had their golden dishes set in front of them before reaching out and breaking off a piece of fish. He raised it to his lips, paused, and glanced around the table, until, one by one, beginning with Popidius, they reluctantly followed his example.

He had been anticipating this moment all day. Vedius Pollio had thrown his slaves to his eels not only to enjoy the novelty of seeing a man torn apart underwater rather than by beasts in the arena, but also because, as a gourmet, he maintained that human flesh gave the morays a more piquant flavor. Ampliatus chewed carefully yet he tasted nothing. The meat was bland and leathery—inedible—and he felt the same sense of disappointment that he had experienced the previous afternoon by the seashore. Once again, he had reached out for the ultimate experience and once more he had grasped—nothing.

He scooped the fish out of his mouth with his fingers and threw it back on his plate in disgust. He tried to make light of it—“So, then! It seems that eels, like women, taste best when young!”—and grabbed for his wine to wash away the taste. But there was no disguising the fact that the pleasure had gone out of the afternoon. His guests were coughing politely into their napkins or picking the tiny bones out of their teeth and he knew they would all be laughing about him for days afterward, just as soon as they could get away, especially Holconius and that fat pederast, Brittius.

“My dear fellow, have you heard the latest about Ampliatus? He thinks that fish, like wine, improves with age!”

He drank more wine, swilling it around in his mouth, and was just contemplating getting up to propose a toast—to the emperor! to the army!—when he noticed his steward approaching the dining room carrying a small box. Scutarius hesitated, clearly not wanting to disturb his master with a business matter during a meal, and Ampliatus would indeed have told him to go to blazes, but there was something about the man’s expression . . .

He screwed up his napkin, got to his feet, nodded curtly to his guests, and beckoned to Scutarius to follow him into the tablinum. Once they were out of sight he flexed his fingers. “What is it? Give it here.”

It was acapsa, a cheap beechwood document case, covered in rawhide, of the sort a schoolboy might use to carry his books around in. The lock had been broken. Ampliatus flipped open the lid. Inside were a dozen small rolls of papyrus. He pulled out one at random. It was covered in columns of figures and for a moment Ampliatus squinted at it, baffled, but then the figures assumed a shape and he understood. “Where is the man who brought this?”

“Waiting in the vestibule, master.”

“Take him into the old garden. Have the kitchen serve dessert and tell my guests I shall return shortly.”

Ampliatus took the back route, behind the dining room and up the wide steps into the courtyard of his old house. This was the place he had bought ten years earlier, deliberately settling himself next door to the ancestral home of the Popidii. What a pleasure it had been to live on an equal footing with his former masters and to bide his time, knowing even then that one day, somehow, he would punch a hole in the thick garden wall and swarm through to the other side, like an avenging army capturing an enemy city.

He sat himself on the circular stone bench in the center of the garden, beneath the shade of a rose-covered pergola. This was where he liked to conduct his most private business. He could always talk here undisturbed. No one could approach him without being seen. He opened the box again and took out each of the papyri, then glanced up at the wide uncorrupted sky. He could hear Corelia’s goldfinches, chirruping in their rooftop aviary and, beyond them, the drone of the city coming back to life after the long siesta. The inns and the eating houses would be raking it in now as people poured into the streets ready for the sacrifice to Vulcan.

Salve lucrum!

Lucrum gaudium!

He did not look up as he heard his visitor approach.

“So,” he said, “it seems we have a problem.”

Corelia had been given the finches not long after the family had moved into the house, on her tenth birthday. She had fed them with scrupulous attention, tended them when they were sick, watched them hatch, mate, flourish, die, and now, whenever she wanted to be alone, it was to the aviary that she came. It occupied half the small balcony outside her room, above the cloistered garden. The top of the cage was sheeted as protection against the sun.

She was sitting, drawn up tightly in the shady corner, her arms clasped around her legs, her chin resting on her knees, when she heard someone come into the courtyard. She edged forward on her bottom and peered over the low balustrade. Her father had settled himself on the circular stone bench, a box beside him, and was reading through some papers. He laid the last one aside and stared at the sky, turning in her direction. She ducked her head back quickly. People said she resembled him: “Oh, she’s the image of her father!” And, since he was a handsome man, it used to make her proud.

She heard him say, “So, it seems we have a problem.”

She had discovered as a child that the cloisters played a peculiar trick. The walls and pillars seemed to capture the sound of voices and funnel them upward, so that even whispers, barely audible at ground level, were as distinct up here as speeches from the rostrum on election day. Naturally, this had only added to the magic of her secret place. Most of what she heard when she was growing up had meant nothing to her—contracts, boundaries, rates of interest—the thrill had simply been to have a private window on the adult world. She had never even told her brother what she knew, since it was only in the past few months that she had begun to decipher the mysterious language of her father’s affairs. And it was here, a month ago, that she had heard her own future being bargained away by her father with Popidius: so much to be discounted on the announcement of the betrothal, the full debt to be discharged once the marriage was transacted, the property to revert in the event of a failure to produce issue, said issue to inherit fully on coming of age . . .

“My little Venus,” he had used to call her. “My little brave Diana.”

. . . a premium payable on account of virginity, virginity attested by the surgeon, Pumponius Magonianus, payment waived on signing of contracts within the stipulated period . . .

“I always say,” her father had whispered, “speaking man to man here, Popidius, and not to be too legal about it—you can’t put a price on a good fuck.”

“My little Venus . . .”

“It seems we have a problem.”

A man’s voice—harsh, not one she recognized—replied, “Yes, we have a problem right enough.”

To which Ampliatus responded: “And his name is Marcus Attilius.”

She leaned forward again so as not to miss a word.

Africanus wanted no trouble. Africanus was an honest man. Attilius marched him down the staircase, only half listening to his jabbering protests, glancing over his shoulder every few steps to make sure they were not being followed. “I am an official here on the emperor’s business. I need to see where Exomnius lived. Quickly.” At the mention of the emperor, Africanus launched into a fresh round of assurances of his good name. Attilius shook him. “I haven’t the time to listen to this. Take me to his room.”

“It’s locked.”

“Where’s the key?”

“Downstairs.”

“Get it.”

When they reached the street he pushed the brothel-keeper back into the gloomy hallway and stood guard as he fetched his cashbox from its hiding place. The meretrix in the short green dress had returned to her stool: Zmyrina, Africanus called her—“Zmyrina, which is the key to Exomnius’s room?” His hands were shaking so much that when finally he managed to open the cashbox and take out the keys he dropped them and she had to stoop and retrieve them for him. She picked out a key from the bunch and held it up.

“What are you so scared of?” asked Attilius. “Why try to run away at the mention of a name?”

“I don’t want any trouble,” repeated Africanus. He took the key and led the way to the bar next door. It was a cheap place, little more than a rough stone counter with holes cut into it for the jars of wine. There was no room to sit. Most of the drinkers were outside on the pavement, propped against the wall. Attilius supposed this was where the lupanar’s customers waited their turn for a girl and then came afterward to refresh themselves and boast about their prowess. It had the same fetid smell as the brothel and he thought that Exomnius must have fallen a long way—the corruption must have really entered his soul—for him to have ended up down here.

Africanus was small and nimble, his arms and legs hairy, like a monkey’s. Perhaps that was where he had got his name—from the African monkeys in the forum, performing tricks at the ends of their chains to earn a few coins for their owners. He scuttled through the bar and up the rickety wooden staircase to the landing. He paused with the key in his hand and cocked his head to one side, looking at Attilius. “Who are you?” he said.

“Open it.”

“Nothing’s been touched. I give you my word.”

“Which is valuable, I’m sure. Now open it.”

The whoremonger turned toward the door with the key outstretched and then gave a little cry of surprise. He gestured to the lock and when Attilius stepped up next to him he saw that it was broken. The interior of the room was dark, the air stuffy with trapped smells—bedding, leather, stale food. A thin grid of brilliant light on the opposite wall showed where the shutters were closed. Africanus went in first, stumbling against something in the blackness, and unfastened the window. The afternoon light flooded a shambles of strewn clothes and upended furniture. Africanus gazed around him in dismay. “This was nothing to do with me—I swear it.”

Attilius took it all in at a glance. There had not been much in the room to start with—a bed and thin mattress with a pillow and a coarse brown blanket, a washing jug, a pisspot, a chest, a stool—but nothing had been left untouched. Even the mattress had been slashed; its stuffing of horsehair bulged out in tufts.

“I swear,” repeated Africanus.

“All right,” said Attilius. “I believe you.” He did. Africanus would hardly have broken his own lock when he had a key, or left the room in such disorder. On a little three-legged table was a lump of white-green marble that turned out, on closer inspection, to be a half-eaten loaf of bread. A knife and a rotten apple lay beside it. There was a fresh smear of fingerprints in the dust. Attilius touched the surface of the table and inspected the blackened tip of his finger. This had been done recently, he thought. The dust had not had time to resettle. Perhaps it explained why Ampliatus had been so keen to show him every last detail of the new baths—to keep him occupied while the room was searched? What a fool he had been, holding forth about lowland pine and scorched olive wood! He said, “How long had Exomnius rented this place?”

“Three years. Maybe four.”

“But he was not here all the time?”

“He came and went.”

Attilius realized he did not even know what Exomnius looked like. He was pursuing a phantom. “He had no slave?”