Death in the Ashes

by Albert A. Bell, Jr.

  “There’s a time problem, too,” Tacitus reminded me. “Pompeia’s case was postponed, but not for long. You have to get to Naples, do whatever you can for Aurelia, and get back in ten days or so.”

  I got out of the pool, picked up a clean towel, and gave myself an invigorating rub. One of my servants was ready with a fresh tunic. “I know that’s a problem. Travel alone will take a couple of days in each direction, even with the fastest horses I can find. But I won’t ask for another postponement. I won’t give Regulus that satisfaction.”

  “We can get there faster if we go by ship.”

  “ ‘We’?”

  “Of course. If nothing else, I want to see what Vesuvius did.”

  My shoulders slumped. “Do we really have to go by ship?”

  “If we can find one leaving Ostia tomorrow morning, we can be in Naples by sundown.” The prospect—of a voyage or of my discomfort—seemed to make Tacitus quite happy.

  “Really? That fast?”

  “With the wind behind us. Even if the wind’s not favorable, we’ll make it by the middle of the next day at the latest. And it’s so much less tiring than going by horse or carriage.”

  Tacitus knows how much I hate being in boats. I have a scar on my head from the last time I was in one. It throbs occasionally to remind me of my aversion to things nautical. “That will mean going down to Ostia this afternoon and staying in an inn so we can be ready to leave at dawn.”

  “Do you know anyone in Ostia that we could stay with?”

  I shook my head.

  “Nor do I, unfortunately. Well, it’ll be for only one night.”

  “I’ll send a couple of servants down there to find us rooms and to see if there’s a ship sailing for Naples tomorrow.”

  The servant who brought me the clean tunic began to gather up my soiled clothing. Suddenly I remembered the Tyche ring.

  “Wait,” I told the servant. “Shake the toga.” I thought that would relieve me of the necessity of touching the filthy garments again.

  He shook it, but the ring didn’t fall out.

  “What are you looking for?” Tacitus asked.

  “A…a personal item. I suspect it’s hung up on something.” The ring is large and the image of Tyche is raised, with a couple of rough spots on it, so it could easily have gotten caught in the cloth. As much as I hated to touch the garments, I had to find the ring. So much for being cleaned up. I took one end of the toga and told my servant to move back and straighten the material out.

  “There’s something,” Tacitus said, pointing to an object.

  “That has to be it.” We put the toga down and, without touching anything else, I managed to lean over and reach the ring, which was caught in the cloth. I untangled it and rinsed it off in the pool.

  “What have you got?” Tacitus, with his feet still in the pool, reached for the ring, but I wouldn’t let him touch it.

  “It’s a ring. A talisman, I guess you’d say. Something…precious.” I put it on the little finger of my left hand, the only finger it will fit on.

  “Now that’s something I didn’t know about you. You believe in magic charms? That wouldn’t happen to be the ring of Gyges, would it? The one that Plato talks about?”

  “No, it doesn’t make me invisible.” I twisted the ring around, as Plato says Gyges did to render himself invisible.

  Tacitus gasped and looked around, waving his hands like a man trying to find something in the dark. “Gaius Pliny! Where are you?”

  I laughed in spite of myself. “I wish it would make me invisible, so I could walk out of here without having to tell my mother we’re going to Naples.”

  “Why would she object? You’re helping a friend, and the brother of a friend of hers. It’s what we’re expected to do.”

  “She’s planning all sorts of things for the rest of the month to announce my engagement.”

  Tacitus got up from his seat on the edge of the pool and a servant dried his feet. “I know you said ‘engagement,’ but it sounded like you meant ‘execution.’ ” He stepped into his sandals. “Marriage isn’t the end of the world, my friend.”

  “Oh, and this comes from the man who, just a few months ago, was quoting Hipponax: ‘A woman makes a man happy on two days—when he marries her and when he buries her.’ ”

  “My wife was having a particularly difficult day. Oh, wait!” Tacitus clapped his hands in glee. “By the gods! You’re in love with somebody.”

  I felt myself getting warm. “No, I’m not.”

  “Yes, you are. Is it—”

  I held up my hand to silence him and turned to my dilatory servant. “I believe you have some clothes to burn.”

  “Yes, my lord. At once.” He bundled up my stained toga and tunic and hustled toward the door of the bath.

  I drew Tacitus into a corner, under a mosaic of Diana and her nymphs bathing, with Actaeon’s face barely showing in the brush behind them. It’s hard to have a private conversation in a bath when every sound bounces around as though you’re talking in a cave. The presence of a pool of water doesn’t help.

  “It’s Aurora, isn’t it?” Tacitus said in a whisper. “You’re in love with your slave.”

  “No… Yes… I don’t know.” I twisted the Tyche ring. “All I do know is that I don’t want to marry this girl my mother has chosen.” For the life of me, I couldn’t remember her name at that moment.

  “You’re eventually going to marry.” Tacitus put a hand on my shoulder, the way a man encourages a wavering comrade as they’re about to go into battle, knowing that one of them might not return.

  “My uncle never married.”

  “There are exceptions to almost every rule. He had you to carry on the family name. You have no siblings and thus no nephews. If you don’t want your family to die out, you have to marry someone. And it’s not likely to be one of your servants.”

  “I realize that. Right now I’m not ready to marry anyone. And my mother has nothing but a wedding on her mind.”

  “Then going to Naples can be your escape.”

  “Nothing will change by the time I get back.”

  Tacitus slapped me on the back. “Who knows? The whole world could change by then. You saw the eruption of Vesuvius. On the day before it happened, did anybody suspect anything?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “I’m sure at least one poor bugger down there was dreading something he’d have to do in a day or two. But he didn’t.”

  I threw up my hands. “I don’t want to die just to get out of marrying.”

  “That’s not my point. All I’m saying is that you never know what’s going to happen tomorrow, so why worry about it? The lady Aurelia needs your help. That’s all you need to know right now. Let’s go talk to your mother.”

  “That can be a daunting prospect,” I said.

  “My friend, you have a pair of balls. I’ve just seen them. That suggests that you’re a man. Now act like one.”

  IV

  We found my mother in the garden, selecting herbs and discussing a menu with our cook. As forthrightly as I could, I explained to her what I was going to do and reminded her of her friendship with Calpurnius’ sister, Calpurnia Hispulla.

  “Naples?” She screwed up her face. “But, Gaius, I’m planning a ­dinner with Pompeia Celerina and Livia.”

  “Livia?”

  “Your betrothed,” she said through clenched teeth. “The dinner is to introduce them to our friends. It’s tomorrow night.”

  “And you invited Martial to read tonight,” Tacitus reminded me.

  Mother groaned. “Why did you invite that dreadful man to dinner?”

  “He amuses me,” I said. “Just feed him and send him on his way.”

  “I don’t want to insult him. He might write something salacious about us.”

  “Mother, you can’t insult Martial. Stick him in a corner somewhere. That’s what I was going to do.”

  She straightened her shoulders into what I call her legionary s
tance. “Gaius, I think you must be here tomorrow night.”

  “My friends already know me, so it won’t matter if I’m not here.” I rubbed the Tyche ring, disappointed that it could not, in fact, make me invisible.

  “But everyone needs to see you with Livia, to let them know this engagement has been settled and the marriage will happen.”

  I couldn’t look at my mother while I struggled with myself. Aurora knows the marriage is going to happen, I wanted to say. You don’t have to keep waving it in front of her like some trophy you’ve taken from a fallen enemy.

  “Aren’t you satisfied with this arrangement?” Mother asked.

  I turned toward my room. “I have to go to Naples, Mother, to help your friend’s brother.” It wouldn’t hurt to reinforce that point.

  She started to follow me. “What about Pompeia’s case? Aren’t you going to defend her?”

  “I’ll be back by the Ides, regardless of how things stand in Naples. I promise you that,” I said over my shoulder. “I wouldn’t want to miss the October Horse.” I had no intention of watching one of the most inane, barbaric rituals we Romans practice. No one even knows what it means, if it ever meant anything.

  I dispatched three servants to Ostia to find us rooms and to see if any ships would be sailing for Naples the next morning. Tacitus sent his servants to his house to get him packed for the trip. He oversaw the packing of our provisions while Aurora helped me get ready. I found it particularly difficult to talk to her.

  “It’s very noble of you to go to all this trouble to assist the lady Aurelia,” she said breaking the silence as she folded several tunics and placed them in my bag. “Especially after everything you’ve already done for her.”

  Most people would say I had no obligation to help Aurelia any more than I already had. Her husband might very well be guilty of murdering the freedwoman. With only a badly decayed body to examine and with the spot where she was found trampled by any number of people by now, I had little hope of determining what had happened. But I felt an obligation to try.

  †

  We hired horses and a cart and took the Via Ostiensis down to the port. Thamyras came with us to direct us when we landed because he knew where Calpurnius’ villa was. Our progress was slow, since the road was as heavily traveled as any street in Rome. About the tenth hour of the day we met my servants in the forum in Ostia, as we had arranged to do. They showed us to the inn where they had found rooms.

  “These will be…serviceable,” Tacitus said.

  “They’ve got four walls, a door, and a bed,” I said. “For tonight that’s all we need.” I would have liked beds that smelled a little cleaner and plaster that wasn’t so cracked, but I wasn’t going to upbraid my servants in front of Tacitus.

  We left an order for our evening meal and headed down to the docks. The innkeeper had told us several ships were tied up there, ­notably a trireme from Misenum, the Jupiter. “Quite a sight to see, that is.”

  “Too bad we can’t book passage on it,” Tacitus said. “With sails and oars, we’d make Misenum by late afternoon. We could stay at your villa there.”

  “But I know that ship,” I said. “That was the name of the ship my uncle took when he went to rescue people during the eruption.”

  Our inn was only three blocks from the harbor, which, in the late afternoon, was bustling with activity. Some ships were being loaded and prepared for their departure the next morning while the crews of others, just arriving, hurried to get their cargo unloaded before dark. A crowd had gathered to watch one transport ship unload animals bound for the amphitheater in Rome. My uncle had described many of them—lions, giraffes, apes—in his Natural History, but, recalling some of his descriptions, I don’t think he had ever observed the animals themselves.

  “This is something you don’t see every day,” Tacitus said, craning to look over the woman in front of him.

  While the crowd oohed and ahhed as each cage was set on the dock, the sight of the magnificent beasts, lethargic from a long voyage or frightened by the noise engulfing them, filled me with a sense of pity. “They’ll all be dead within a few days,” I said.

  “You’re right,” Tacitus conceded, “but it’ll be quite a show. Too bad we’ll miss it.”

  “We need to be more concerned about booking passage on a ship,” I reminded him. The shows in the arena repulse me. Watching a helpless animal—or person—being butchered while the crowd went insane was a sight I would gladly miss. Tacitus revels in it.

  Leaving our servants to gawk at the spectacle, we walked along the wharves, looking for someone we could talk to on a ship. I glanced over my shoulder, trying to look like I was just taking in my surroundings.

  “What’s the matter?” Tacitus asked.

  “I think somebody’s following us.”

  “In a port town I’d be surprised if somebody wasn’t. The place is crawling with thieves and cutthroats. The stripes on our tunics are practically a challenge to those lowlifes.”

  “But I think somebody has been following us since we left Rome.”

  “Well, you think Regulus has a spy behind every tree and door.”

  “Not more than every other one.”

  Our route took us alongside the Jupiter. It was indeed the king of the gods among the ships in the fleet stationed at Misenum, which my uncle had commanded for several years before his death. I paused on the dock beside it, falling silent, and looked up at it.

  “Is something wrong?” Tacitus asked.

  “The last time I saw my uncle alive, he was boarding this ship.”

  “That memory weighs heavily on you, doesn’t it?”

  “Sometimes it’s so vivid it doesn’t feel like a memory.”

  A man leaned over the bow of the Jupiter. “Do my eyes deceive me? Is that young Pliny?” he called.

  I looked up to see someone I recognized. “Marcus Decius. Is that really you?”

  Decius, a burly man with a long scar on his left cheek, had been captain of the ship under my uncle. He was the one who brought us the news that my uncle had been overcome by fumes and died on the shore near Stabiae. I could still see my mother collapse on the floor and hear her wail when Decius told us.

  “It most certainly is, sir,” Decius called. “Would you like to come aboard?”

  After a ladder was extended, Tacitus and I boarded the ship and I made introductions.

  “It’s such a pleasure to see you, sir,” Decius said. “What brings you to Ostia?”

  “We need to get to Naples. We’re looking for a ship that’s leaving tomorrow.”

  “Well, then, you’ve found her,” Decius said. “I just brought a load of prisoners up here. They’re headed the same place as that cargo of animals. We’ll be under sail again tomorrow at dawn. How many in your party?”

  “The two of us, and we have four servants each. And one more.”

  “Eleven.” He nodded. “That’s no problem, then.”

  “But you’re a military ship,” I said. “You’re not supposed to carry civilian passengers.”

  “Would you like to lodge a complaint with the captain of the ship?” Decius asked with a grin that raised the right side of his mouth more than the left. “I couldn’t make a special trip for you, but as long as we’re both going the same way, I’ll take whom I like on board.”

  “How long a voyage do you think it’ll be?” Tacitus asked. “Our friend here isn’t exactly an Odysseus when it comes to ships.”

  “I know, sir.” Decius was unable to suppress a smile. “He never did like to go out with us. His uncle would drag him onto the ship once in a while. Thought it would toughen him up.”

  If there was one thing for which I could not forgive my uncle, it was the memory of those humiliating voyages across the Bay of Naples. I spent most of my time vomiting over the side of the ship. The sailors couldn’t laugh at me because I was the commander’s nephew, but I knew what they were thinking and what they said after I was gone. When he was leaving to rescue su
rvivors from Vesuvius, he asked me if I wanted to go along. I declined the invitation.

  “Don’t worry, sir,” Decius said. “With any kind of wind at all, we’ll be in Naples before dark. It’ll be an easy voyage. No worse than getting bounced around in one of those litters you city folks ride in.”

  “How much will our fare be?” I asked.

  Decius snorted. “Please, sir. Don’t insult me. I’m happy to do a favor for my old commander’s heir. Just be here when the sun’s coming up.”

  We thanked him, retrieved our servants, and made our way back to the inn. I had asked for some fish, and it proved to be fresh and quite tasty, as fish should be in a port town. Tacitus had the innkeeper’s specialty, a rabbit stew. I was leery of it because I did not notice an abundance of rabbits in Ostia. I suspected the meat in the stew came from some other small animal that one finds in large numbers in any town and that resembles a rabbit only in its penchant for gnawing on things.

  When Tacitus and the servants got up to go to bed after dinner, I remained at the table.

  “Aren’t you coming?” Tacitus asked.

  “I’m going to walk around the block,” I said. “I hate eating while sitting up. It doesn’t allow a meal to settle the way reclining does. I’ll feel better after a walk, I think.”

  “You may find yourself running to keep away from the thieves and brigands.”

  “It’ll be a short walk. I’ll be fine.” When his back was turned I picked up a knife and tucked it into my belt. The weapon I’ve taken to carrying was in my room.