Robert Harris - Pompeii

POMPEII

ROBERT HARRIS

Random House N ew York

AUTHORS NOTE

The Romans divided the day into twelve hours. The first, hora prima, began at sunrise. The last, hora duodecima, ended at sunset.

The night was divided into eight watches Vespera, Prima fax, Concubia, and Intempesta before midnight; Inclinatio, Gallicinium, Conticinium, and Diluculum after it.

The days of the week were Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn, and Sun.

Pompeii takes place over four days.

Sunrise on the Bay of Naples in the fourth week of AugustA.D. 79 was at approximately 06:20 hours.

MARS

22 August Two days before the eruption

CONTICINIUM

[04:21 hours]

A strong correlation has been found between the magnitude of eruptions and the length of the preceding interval of repose. Almost all very large, historic eruptions have come from volcanoes that have been dormant for centuries.

JACQUES-MARIE BARDINTZEFF, ALEXANDER R. McBIRNEY VOLCANOLOGY (SECOND EDITION)

They left the aqueduct two hours before dawn, climbing by moonlight into the hills overlooking the portsix men in single file, the engineer leading. He had turned them out of their beds himselfall stiff limbs and sullen, bleary facesand now he could hear them complaining about him behind his back, their voices carrying louder than they realized in the warm, still air.

A fools errand, somebody muttered.

Boys should stick to their books, said another.

He lengthened his stride.

Let them prattle, he thought.

Already he could feel the heat of the morning beginning to build, the promise of another day without rain. He was younger than most of his work gang, and shorter than any of them: a compact, muscled figure with cropped brown hair. The shafts of the tools he carried slung across his shouldera heavy, bronze-headed axe and a wooden shovelchafed against his sunburned neck. Still, he forced himself to stretch his bare legs as far as they would reach, mounting swiftly from foothold to foothold, and only when he was high above Misenum, at a place where the track forked, did he set down his burdens and wait for the others to catch up.

He wiped the sweat from his eyes on the sleeve of his tunic. Such shimmering, feverish heavens they had here in the south! Even this close to daybreak, a great hemisphere of stars swept down to the horizon. He could see the horns of Taurus, and the belt and sword of the Hunter; there was Saturn, and also the Bear, and the constellation they called the Vintager, which always rose for Caesar on the twenty-second day of August, following the Festival of Vinalia, and signaled that it was time to harvest the wine. Tomorrow night the moon would be full. He raised his hand to the sky, his blunt-tipped fingers black and sharp against the glittering constellationsspread them, clenched them, spread them againand for a moment it seemed to him that he was the shadow, the nothing; the light was the substance.

From down in the harbor came the splash of oars as the night watch rowed between the moored triremes. The yellow lanterns of a couple of fishing boats winked across the bay. A dog barked and another answered. And then the voices of the laborers slowly climbing the path beneath him: the harsh local accent of Corax, the overseerLook, our new aquarius is waving at the stars!and the slaves and the free men, equals, for once, in their resentment if nothing else, panting for breath and sniggering.

The engineer dropped his hand. At least, he said, with such a sky, we have no need of torches. Suddenly he was vigorous again, stooping to collect his tools, hoisting them back onto his shoulder. We must keep moving. He frowned into the darkness. One path would take them westward, skirting the edge of the naval base. The other led north, toward the seaside resort of Baiae. I think this is where we turn.

He thinks, sneered Corax.

The engineer had decided the previous day that the best way to treat the overseer was to ignore him. Without a word he put his back to the sea and the stars, and began ascending the black mass of the hillside. What was leadership, after all, but the blind choice of one route over another and the confident pretense that the decision was based on reason?

The path here was steeper. He had to scramble up it sideways, sometimes using his free hand to pull himself along, his feet skidding, sending showers of loose stones rattling away in the darkness. People stared at these brown hills, scorched by summer brushfires, and thought they were as dry as deserts, but the engineer knew different. Even so, he felt his earlier assurance beginning to weaken, and he tried to remember how the path had appeared in the glare of yesterday afternoon, when he had first reconnoitered it. The twisting track, barely wide enough for a mule. The swaths of scorched grass. And then, at a place where the ground leveled out, flecks of pale green in the blacknesssigns of life that turned out to be shoots of ivy reaching toward a boulder.

After going halfway up an incline and then coming down again, he stopped and turned slowly in a full circle. Either his eyes were getting used to it, or dawn was close now, in which case they were almost out of time. The others had halted behind him. He could hear their heavy breathing. Here was another story for them to take back to Misenumhow their new young aquarius had dragged them from their beds and marched them into the hills in the middle of the night, and all on a fools errand . There was a taste of ash in his mouth.

Are we lost, pretty boy?

Coraxs mocking voice again.

He made the mistake of rising to the bait: Im looking for a rock.

This time they did not even try to hide their laughter.

Hes running around like a mouse in a pisspot!

I know its here somewhere. I marked it with chalk.

More laughterand at that he wheeled on them: the squat and broad-shouldered Corax; Becco, the long-nose, who was a plasterer; the chubby one, Musa, whose skill was laying bricks; and the two slaves, Polites and Corvinus. Even their indistinct shapes seemed to mock him. Laugh. Good. But I promise you this: either we find it before dawn or we shall all be back here tomorrow night. Including you, Gavius Corax. Only next time make sure youre sober.

Silence. Then Corax spat and took a half step forward and the engineer braced himself for a fight. They had been building up to this for three days now, ever since he had arrived in Misenum. Not an hour had passed without Corax trying to undermine him in front of the men.

And if we fight, thought the engineer, he will winits five against oneand they will throw my body over the cliff and say I slipped in the darkness. But how will that go down in Romeif a second aquarius of the Aqua Augustais lost in less than a fortnight?

For a long instant they faced each other, no more than a pace between them, so close that the engineer could smell the stale wine on the older mans breath. But then one of the othersit was Beccogave an excited shout and pointed.

Just visible behind Coraxs shoulder was a rock, marked neatly in its center by a thick white cross.

Attilius was the engineers nameMarcus Attilius Primus, to lay it out in full, but plain Attilius would have satisfied him. A practical man, he had never had much time for all these fancy handles his fellow countrymen went in for. (Lupus, Panthera, PulcherWolf, Leopard, Beautywho in hell did they think they were kidding?) Besides, what name was more honorable in the history of his profession than that of the gens Attilia, aqueduct engineers for four generations? His great-grandfather had been recruited by Marcus Agrippa from the ballista section of Legion XII Fulminata and set to work building Romes Aqua Julia. His grandfather had planned the Anio Novus. His father had completed the Aqua Claudia, bringing her into the Esquiline Hill over seven miles of arches, and laying her, on the day of her dedication, like a silver carpet at the feet of the emperor. Now he, at twenty-seven, had been sent south to Campania and given command of the Aqua Augusta.