It was impossible to be gloomy in Pompeii in August. While the more inland towns sweltered in the summer sun, the cool salt breeze from the bay took the edge off the heat in Pompeii. The streets were thronged with holiday crowds – nurses with droves of small children out for their daily airing, mothers shopping for essence of roses in the perfume stalls, and fathers earnestly talking politics with cronies under awnings in front of the bread-and-soup bars. Officers on leave from Misenum mingled with parties of theatergoers and processions of the hopeful going to sacrifice at the flower-garlanded Temple of Fortune. There was a smell of fresh fruit and wine in the air, mingled with the salt scent of ocean and the heady odor of the perfume factories. And everyone in Pompeii was turned out in his best: light summer gowns and tunics like a pastel flower garden against the white togas and bright splashes of army scarlet and naval green.
Flavius seemed to have sunk into the summer indolence like a cat, Correus thought, coming into the rose-tiled court. He looked like he was asleep, his chin on his chest and his helmet pulled over his eyes. There was a green beetle walking up his sandal laces. Correus prodded Flavius with his foot, and the beetle fell off.
“You couldn’t be asleep. The innkeeper was just talking to you.”
Flavius opened his eyes and grinned at him. “Ah, I see you got my message. I was just thinking,” he added with dignity, “whether we should have oysters with dinner.”
“It’s not the season for them. You’ll poison yourself. Yes, I got your message. From old Plinius at Misenum when I reported in. He told me you were over here lolling about on a mound of lobster shells and cherry pits, drinking yourself into a stupor.”
“No, he didn’t. He told you, quite politely, to come and have dinner with me.”
“I drew my own conclusions. Are you responsible for my being here?”
Flavius sat up straight. “I might have happened to mention to the emperor that I had a brother who was obviously destined for great things and was unfortunately wasting away in Britain.”
“I had a good posting in the best campaign that’s come along in years!” Correus snapped. He glowered at Flavius and sat down.
“You had a posting in a campaign that isn’t going to reap any glory for anyone but Julius Agricola,” Flavius said. “You wouldn’t have got so much as a bronze torque out of it. Tell me I lie.”
“Agricola halfway said the same,” Correus said grudgingly. “Damn it, Flavius, I was happy where I was. Take care of your own career.”
“You were hiding where you were,” Flavius said. “You can’t go on mourning that woman for the rest of your life. And don’t tell me I didn’t like her, because I did… sort of. And if you won’t listen to me, ask Lucius Paulinus. He’s the one who suggested I put in my oar in the first place. Thought of it myself, too, though.”
“I’m surprised Lucius didn’t do it himself,” Correus said. “A man can have too much well-intentioned family.”
“I was in a better spot,” Flavius said. “Titus is still deciding if Lucius is going to be useful to him, or if he was too much Vespasian’s man. He’s had him cooling his heels in Rome since Vespasian died.”
“What does Lucius think? About Titus, not me.”
“He thinks we have a good man,” Flavius said. “So do I. So I expect they’ll get on well enough. Titus has settled down considerably. It’s a bit wearing being the heir apparent. He used to take a lot of it out in wine and dancing girls, but he sobered up overnight when his father died.”
“What’s he doing with Lucius?”
“He called him back to see if he knew anything Vespasian hadn’t been telling,” Flavius said. “I expect he did, but I don’t think Titus will hold it against him.” Vespasian had trusted no one completely. Even his spies didn’t know what his other spies were doing~.~ It was more than likely that there would be a few gaps in his heir’s knowledge, as well.
“We’ve got off the subject,” Correus said, but it was hard to stay irritated when Flavius was plying him with wine and figs and was so patently glad to see him.
“Have a fig,” Flavius said. “Are you going home?”
“Yes, in a couple of days. I’ve got some leave, but it feels odd.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Flavius said, biting into a fig and flicking the stem into the pomegranates. “You’ve got a son who thinks Lucius is his father, and you don’t know how he’s going to take to you.”
“Probably scream and dive under the bed,” Correus said, “but I don’t know what to do about it. And he knows who his father is.”
“I spoke figuratively. Has he ever seen you? Since he was old enough to notice?”
“How often did we see our father?”
“He came home on leave,” Flavius pointed out. “Where have you been spending yours?”
Correus was silent. There was a lot in that. “I’m afraid to go back now, I think.”
“In case Felix runs under the bed? Well, if you wait much longer, you won’t need to bother. But you’re lucky you can catch up with them at all, this trip. Julia trails those babies around after Lucius every place he goes, unless she’s pregnant. Come to think of it, I think Aemelia said Julia was, last letter, so maybe she’ll stay put for a bit.”
Correus looked at his reflection in his wine cup. There didn’t seem to be much to see there but a centurion’s helmet. “You have a baby yourself now, don’t you?”
“Three months old now,” Flavius said proudly. “Looks like a monkey, but I’m told that wears off. Aemelia assures me I’ll find her vastly improved when I get home. We call her Appia. For Father, of course.”
“Of course.” Flavius wouldn’t have dared not, even with a daughter, and they both knew it.
“You should get married,” Flavius said. “Have another fig. You aren’t cut out to be a bachelor any more than I am.”
“I tried once, if you will recall,” Correus said shortly.
“If you still had Freita, I wouldn’t be telling you that,” Flavius said. “But you don’t, and you wouldn’t have Freita now, even if you’d married her. It wasn’t lack of a marriage that got her killed.”
“I know that,” Correus said. “Flavius… don’t.”
Flavius gave him a long look and closed his mouth. He wished he had closed it a sentence sooner. “Come and have dinner,” he said cheerfully. “I’ve got just the girl lined up for you. She swears like a Tiber bargeman and dances like a snake. You’ll love her.”
The dancing twins proved to be Syrians, bronze-skinned with long black braids knotted with beads, and both wore diaphanous gold trousers that would have made Venus blush. One played the cithara while the other writhed her way around the floor, shaking the hip belt of coins and lapis lazuli that appeared to be all that kept her trousers from imminent descent. She fluttered her dark lashes at Correus, and an overpowering smell of oil of jasmine drifted past.
Flavius grinned and watched him, but if he was hoping for his brother’s discomfiture, he was disappointed. Correus followed her progress appreciatively, and when her swaying hips moved close enough, he tucked a silver coin into her belt. It slipped down the inside of her trouser leg to where the gauzy folds were drawn tight at the ankle and jingled there with Flavius’s offering. After a while she changed places with her sister, her long nails picking the music from the cithara while the other girl wove her way about the room, inviting similar largesse.
The food was extraordinarily good: lobsters in their shells cooked with garum and spices, a basket of pears, stuffed hare in white sauce, spiced raw lamb, wild lettuces, and bowls of the sweet fresh fruit for which Pompeiian farms were famous, four courses of wine, and, at intervals, baskets of small hot rolls with which to wipe their plates.
“I begin to see the attractions of Pompeii,” Correus said sleepily over his fourth cup of wine, and Flavius laughed and they toasted each other and then toasted the dancing girls for good measure. By the time the last course had been cleared away, Correus somehow found that one of the
dancing twins was sharing his couch, feeding him cherries. He laughed and put an arm around her waist and saw that Flavius had progressed somewhat further with the other twin. The thought of Aemelia dutifully awaiting him in Rome would probably be irrelevant, Correus thought. Flavius kept his life neatly compartmentalized. And in any case, it was easier to lie here on the couch while the dancing Syrian rubbed his neck and shoulders than to tell this nice girl he didn’t want her.
Somehow they progressed to the bedchambers upstairs – it was all very hazy in his mind – and the experience was so pleasant that he and Flavius kept the girls as sort of pets for the next few days, exploring the amusements of Pompeii by daylight and the dancers’ talents by night. They were running up an awful bill, Correus thought, but Flavius said grandly that it was a welcome-home present, and he could do his penance by behaving himself in Rome. As a sop to his conscience, Correus sent Julius on to Rome with most of the baggage, so Flavius wouldn’t find himself entertaining him as well.
Neither one of them, they admitted, watching the famous actor Paris at a performance in the Large Theater, much wanted to go home. It was easier to be friends in Pompeii than in the house of Appius, where the old rivalry lingered in the shadows and almost certainly, in the persons of their respective mothers. And each admitted the lurking suspicion that maturity somehow vanished at the gates of their father’s house. Here in Pompeii they were up-and-coming officers, equals and gentlemen. At home they were Appius Julianus’s boys. It made it very pleasant to be in Pompeii.
“All the same,” Flavius said finally, as Paris in a gold wig declaimed the tragic ending of The Medea, “we are going to have to go home. You’ll use up all your leave if you don’t, and the emperor’s going to start wondering what I’m doing.”
“And conclude that it’s not much,” Correus said. Paris, in the white tragic mask of Medea, was making his last bow, while boys in the sponsor’s house colors ran up and down the tiers with programs of the musical and pantomime to follow. It was getting hot, especially in the front rows where the bowl of the theater blocked the sea breeze, and the theater crew began to run out the red and white canvas awning over the audience. The rigging rumbled as the awning unfurled, and the audience was clapping and stamping and calling compliments to Paris, and it took a moment before anyone felt the other tremor that underlay the rest.
Correus and Flavius jerked upright in their seats and looked nervously first at each other and then at the heavy scaffolding of the awning over their heads. They could feel it through the stone seats of the theater, a vibration in the ground and then the sudden sickening sensation of having the earth lurch out from under them. The rest of the audience was noticing it now, too, but they seemed calm enough. Tremors were a part of life in Campania. The inhabitants were used to them and simply got out from under anything heavy and waited for it all to settle down again. Paris had made his bow and had gone with care for his dignity slowly out the stage exit, and his audience was preparing to follow. Correus noted that the holiday visitors among them didn’t seem quite so unconcerned, but the audience made an orderly progress through the theater’s main doors into the courtyard of the Gladiators’ School beyond. The ground lurched again, and those still inside began to push. Above the rumbling in the earth, the shrill voice of panic had crept in.
Correus and Flavius stumbled out into the courtyard and stopped to catch their breath. Being buried alive was not a fate either of them looked for eagerly, and theaters had been known to fall inward during an earthquake. The ground shivered again and then was still. The silence was uncanny. There were no bird notes, no sound of human voices, nothing but the shrill, hysterical barking of a dog in the distance, barking frantically on and on at some unknown terror it could feel but not see. Then the silence broke in a spate of question and exclamation, a counting up of bruised ribs and sprained ankles from the mass exit, a sigh of relief and nervous laughter as the normal noise of the city came back with no greater damage to show for the tremor than a few toppled statues in the Colonnade.
Pompeii went back about its business, but Flavius looked dubious. “Maybe it’s because I don’t live here,” he said, pacing and fidgeting about their room at the inn. “Nobody else seems to be worrying, but I didn’t like the feel of that.”
“Neither did I,” Correus said fervently, and they both laughed. “Do you think there’ll be more?” he added seriously.
Flavius shrugged. “There was a bad one in Nero’s reign that wrecked half the city. It can always happen again. I’m wondering now if I ought to leave. If we’re going to have a civil disaster on our hands, the emperor will just send me back again to help mop up. It might make more sense if I stayed put.”
“And got squashed in the wreckage, I suppose,” Correus said.
“Don’t worry, I’ll watch my step. Panic and crowded buildings kill more people than the earthquake, usually.” He rummaged around in his traveling kit and fished out a message tablet of thin wooden leaves, a pen, and dry ink. He poured the ink in a wine cup and added water from the jug on the table.
“Whom are you writing?”
“The emperor,” Flavius said. “Don’t distract me. This is my only tablet, and I don’t want to have to buy another one.”
Correus stretched himself out on his bed and kept quiet. Flavius’s handwriting was better than anyone’s in the family (being left-handed always made Correus’s scrawl a little sideways) but for reasons unknown to anyone, he hated to write. Letters could only be pried out of him in times of dire emergency and then were achieved after much agonizing and revision. Flavius bent a look of great concentration on his tablet and finally sat back with a sigh of relief. “There. Bericus can take that. I can live without him a few days, I suppose. I’ve told the emperor we’re getting tremors, and I’m going to stay until I’m sure they aren’t getting worse. Subject to his orders, of course.”
“I’ll stay, too,” Correus said.
“Oh, no. You have business at home. And no business nursemaiding me. Remember?”
“All right.” Correus really didn’t see what he could do, except follow Flavius around to pull him out from under falling rocks, which was a little silly when he thought about it. And it was clear that Flavius didn’t want him to. “I’ll take a few days to settle in at Misenum, and then head home. Don’t stand under any statues, will you?”
* * *
In the morning he rode around the curving edge of the bay, through the cities of Oplontis, Herculaneum, and Neapolis, to the naval base that perched on the northern tip of the crescent that formed the bay of Neapolis. It was a full day’s ride and would have been shorter by ship, but he was shortly going to be spending more time than he wanted to on ships, and it was a pleasant ride by – cool with the salt breeze and enlivened by the coastal traffic of farm wagons loaded with their market wares and by vacationers out for a day’s airing. The ground shivered under them once or twice and Antaeus pricked up his gold ears and snorted, but the sky was bright and the sun warm on the rolling farmland to their right and calm on the sea to the left. No omens there.
In Misenum no one had noticed the tremors at all. Correus stabled Antaeus and made his respects to Gaius Plinius, the elderly fleet commander, and was promptly invited to dine with the commander and his nephew and sister, who appeared to be semipermanent residents of the Praetorium. The tremors reached Misenum with the second course, and the commander smiled wryly at Correus’s expression and told him genially that he would get used to them.
“Does this go on all the time, sir?”
“No, not as to say all the time. But Campanian earthquakes are like Pompeiian cabbages. A specialty of the district. You get so you sleep right through anything less than a real shocker.”
“I don’t,” the sister said firmly, “and furthermore I am sure I never shall. But one does get accustomed.”
Two days later Correus had decided that the human body was, after all, remarkably adaptive. He would never get entirely used to having the gr
ound wiggle under his feet, but he had got so that he didn’t look wildly around him and jump like a startled cat every time it happened. It would all die down in a day or two, everyone said, going about his business. In the face of all this aplomb, Correus went about his own, acquainting himself with the men who would be under his command and the ships’ captains with whom they would sail. Misenum was a mixed base of sailors and marines, and the niceties of etiquette between the ships’ captains and the marine commanders could get a bit tricky. At sea, the captain was the ultimate master. It was his business to take the marine commander where he wanted to go, unless the captain deemed it dangerous or downright impossible. When the ship was beached, authority shifted to the commander of marines. While the men under them might regard each other with something less than love, it behooved their officers to get along. Correus spent some time laying the groundwork, drinking and swapping lies with the marine and naval officers and getting himself invited to dine with Caritius – captain of the Merope, flagship of the Misenum Fleet – and his pretty Neapolitan wife. She proved to be the sister of an old comrade from the Rhenus days, and Correus enjoyed himself hugely while Caritius gave him a rundown on life at Misenum.
“We’re mostly chasing pirates these days,” the captain said. “Not very glamorous work, but it keeps us all busy.”
“They are really a menace,” his wife said. “The minute we slacken up on patrols, they’re out again like sharks, and some of them aren’t above raiding the coastal towns if they think they can get away with it.”
“We’re due to make another sweep in a couple of days,” Caritius said. “That is, if the whole damned base doesn’t fall in the sea,” he added as the floor began to shake again. “Oh, Typhon!”
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