Tag found the small leather pouch inside a burned terra-cotta jar. The money had miraculously survived. He took a coin out and then tied the small leather bag to his belt. It occurred to him then that there might be other useful things that escaped the blaze, including bandages, herbs, and potions. He dug around the rubble, rescuing what he could.
That’s when the world exploded.
At the unearthly boom, Castor ran to him and buried his face in his hip. Tag bent low, covering the boy’s head with his body, sure that the remaining walls were about to come crashing down around them. The roar that followed vibrated in his bones. Castor wouldn’t release him, so Tag picked him up and ran into the courtyard.
Where had the mountain gone?
The top of it seemed to have shot into the air in a flashing column of smoke and fire. It roared, rumbled, and spit like a gigantic, furious beast. Some of the slaves dropped to their knees, wailing that it was the end of the world. Others ran in terror, calling for those they loved. Tag could only stand and watch, awed by the force and horror of the display. Castor trembled in his arms.
After a while, the massive column slowed its ascent and began spreading like a thickening storm cloud. Tag remembered the coin for his father. He went over to Damocles, but Castor refused to budge when he tried to put him down. Tag sighed and bent with the boy to wedge the coin between his father’s cold lips. Castor put his small hand on Tag’s wrist as if to help him. After, he replaced the tattered cloak over Damocles’s head and said a silent prayer over his body.
“Is … is the world ending?” the boy finally managed between hiccups.
“I don’t know,” Tag said, and realized that had been the wrong answer when the boy’s trembling increased. “I mean, no, no. Of course not. It is … it looks like there is a fire inside the mountain,” he said, trying to sound bland and unconcerned. “That is all. Soon it will burn itself out.”
He remembered his discussions with Lucia about the “earth-born” fires in Phrygia. She had been unnaturally preoccupied with that passage of Strabo. Had some part of her sensed that Vesuvius was like that black mountain? He and everyone around her had told her it was impossible.
Lucia was gone. His father was dead. Tag had been sentenced to die. And now the mountain was turning itself inside out. He would just stay here by his father until the end. What was left for him anyway?
Castor still clung to him. He patted the child’s back. “We need to find your people,” he said.
The boy shook his head. “My auntie died in the kitchen.”
Right. Tag groaned. “There are other women who have helped take care of you. We need to find them.”
“No, no, no. I stay with you.”
Tag closed his eyes wearily. When he opened them, he saw that the giant plume rocketing from the mountain had spread its ash-brown cloudy fingers wide across the sky. Day began turning into night as the strange mass blotted out the sun. People screamed. Newly lit torches hissed. Somewhere, a baby wailed.
With the darkening sky came the pinging of what sounded like hail on the villa’s terra-cotta roof shingles. Hail? Tag caught a handful in his palm. It stung but did not hurt, and it looked less like ice and more like tiny pieces of frothy, gray, pitted rock. Impossible. The sky did not rain rocks!
Castor began to cry again, so Tag ducked under the eaves of the courtyard. He caught sight of an abandoned water jar. The little rocks floated.
“What is happening?” the boy cried.
He had no answer.
Soon, larger black rocks began crashing onto the roof and ground. They came out of the sky with such force, it was as if Jupiter himself was hurling them. Somewhere nearby, a dog yelped. Minos!
“I’ve got to untie the dog,” Tag said. “You stay here. I’ll only be a minute.”
“No, no, no!” Castor cried, plastering himself even harder against Tag.
“Fine, but we’re going to feel the rocks.”
“I don’t care,” wailed the child.
Tag ran as fast as he could to where Minos was still chained up. The poor animal looked terrified and was panting heavily. “Good boy, good boy,” Tag murmured as he unchained him, crouching over Castor as he did so to shield the child from the rocks pelting his back. Minos bolted as soon as he was free.
“We have to leave! This place is cursed!” a woman cried.
“The stables,” someone yelled. “The master’s horses should get us to Puteoli!”
With the child still clinging to him, Tag rushed back under the porticus for coverage from the rock fall. Already, his feet sank to the ankle in the accumulation of lightweight stones. He dragged his father’s body under the eaves to protect it from the pelting rain of rock.
A group of slaves with torches saw him and the boy. “Come with us! We are going to the marina to escape by sea!” one of the men called out to him. “The roads out of the city are too crowded!”
“Can you take the boy with you?” he called back.
“No!” Castor cried.
Tag followed the bobbing lights of the group heading to the marina. Once there, he decided, he would hand the boy over and head back to keep vigil by his father’s body. And if the mountain wanted to take him, it could, but at least Castor would be safe. He felt a measure of peace at the thought.
The group entered the street and began moving along the cut-through to the marina almost in single file. Everyone’s arms but Tag’s were laden with possessions. Some carried pillows or cloaks over their heads for protection. As the rain of rocks increased, Tag hunched his shoulders and put his arms up, trying to keep the worst of the deluge off his and Castor’s heads. It did little good. His face was coated in ash, and he had to keep blinking to stop the strange powder in the air from burning his eyes. His lungs blazed as if they were being singed from the inside. Occasional bursts of sulfurous air — which he guessed came with the rain of rocks — made his stomach roil, and he fought against the hot bile that climbed up his throat.
He pushed on, wondering about Lucia. Where was she? Had she made it to Herculaneum? His chest clenched with a familiar ache at the thought of losing her forever. The earth and sky both seemed to reflect how he felt on the inside — black and bitter and hopeless.
A large rock bounced off a roof and tripped an elderly man in front of him. The woman with him fell to her knees beside him.
“I’m fine. I’m fine,” the man said, looking more embarrassed than hurt as Tag helped him up. “I’m fine.” The woman gave a half sob of relief as she clutched the man’s arm.
“Come, we must catch up,” Tag told the pair. “I can still see the torches.” But were the lights he saw those of their group? Many others had streamed into the streets carrying lamps and torches too. Either way, they were headed in the right direction, he figured.
“Thank you,” the woman said. She looked vaguely familiar, but he couldn’t tell exactly who she was in the darkness with her face covered with ash. “Here,” she continued, handing him a blanket. “Cover your head!”
He accepted the blanket. As soon as he threw it over himself and the boy, the scent of it almost made him lose his footing — lemons and flowers and woods.
The woman turned back to him. “Come,” she said. “We must keep moving.”
“This is Lucia’s,” he said hoarsely.
“Yes!” the woman said, sounding exasperated. “But no matter how much I begged, the young domina would not come with us!”
Tag blinked. “What do you mean, you begged …? You talked to her? She is here? In Pompeii?”
The woman pulled him by the elbow. “Yes, she returned for some reason. She would have been safer far away from this place. Foolish girl!”
Tag stopped. “I have to go back.”
Again the woman grabbed his arm. “No, you must come with us. It is certain death at the villa! Don’t you see the mountain falling on us?”
“You must take the boy,” he said. “Please.”
“Nooooo!” Castor cried.
“I’m going back,” he said to the child. “You’ll be safer on the boats with these people.”
“No, no! I want to stay with you!”
“I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “This is safer for you.” Roughly, he pried the boy off of his side and shoved him at the woman. The child thrashed and screamed. Gods, he hated the look of terror and betrayal the boy gave him. But he wasn’t abandoning him — he was putting him in the hands of people who could take care of him. He had to keep telling himself that.
“Keep him safe, please,” he yelled as they continued toward the marina. He was going back for Lucia.
She saw a body under the eaves covered by an ashen cloak, and the words of the laundress repeated in her head: “He died in the fire.” It isn’t Tag, it can’t be Tag, she chanted as she approached it, as if her fervent wishing could make it true.
The mountain roared in her ears — along with her thundering heart — as she lifted a corner and peeked. She sobbed in relief, releasing the cloth. It wasn’t Tag, but his father. She gulped acrid air until she could calm herself, and then prayed to Damocles’s shade for forgiveness for the insult of her reaction. He’d understand, she knew. She also prayed to him for help in finding his son.
But his father’s shade gave her no message, so she retraced her steps back through the house, stopping in every room and calling for him, just in case he’d been released to treat the injured. Not surprisingly, most of the rooms were empty. As she passed a hallway, though, a slave popped his head out and called to her. “In here, girl! We are in the cellar. You will be safe with us!”
She shook her head. “Is the young medicus in there?”
The slave’s eyes widened as he recognized Lucia. “No, Domina. Last I saw, he was treating the injured in the kitchen.”
Her heart soared. That meant he was free and unhurt. But where? “And Metrodona? She is safe in there?”
He nodded. “Yes, but she worries for you.”
“Tell her I am fine,” she said, and continued going room to room. Could Tag have returned to the barracks? Perhaps that was where he had taken the injured. She headed toward the gladiator complex.
A flickering light in one of the cells in the stone barracks told her it was occupied. She called out, “Tag. Tag! Where are you?”
A door opened and light spilled out into the thick, sulfurous blackness. “Lucia?”
Her heart leapt. But as she ran toward him, she saw it wasn’t Tag calling her name at all. It was her father.
She slid to a stop amidst the growing accumulation of rocks.
“Get in here now!” Lucius Titurius ordered. “I have been searching for you!”
“Is … Tag in there?” she asked. “Is he all right?”
There was a pause, then, “Yes, he is here. Come inside.”
“The medicus is not here, miss,” someone with a thick African accent yelled from inside the building. “He is lying!”
“He has chained us all!” another man yelled. “He is going to make us all die in here!”
“Shut up!” her father yelled, his face red with fury as he turned toward the men inside and made a threatening gesture.
She stopped. “Father, you have chained them? Why?”
“The ungrateful sots were running away! I will not lose my investments. Not now.” He held up a sword with blood on the blade. Had he attacked his own weaponless fighters?
“Is Tag in there or not?” she said.
“By the gods, you get in here!” he roared. “Or I swear, I will hunt you down and drag you in!”
Tag wasn’t there. Lucia turned and ran. Her father roared after her in frustration, and it was as if the mountain itself spewed her name.
Tag had barely turned away from the couple taking Castor before he was swallowed up by blackness. He needed a torch. He spied a lit one across the via and headed toward it. But his hands shook as he struggled with its rusted pins. How could the mountain continue its unholy roaring? How could it be night in the middle of the day?
Once he finally freed the torch, he looked around him, trying to understand where he was. He knew the city well, but suddenly everything looked foreign and strange. And, as if in a nightmare, he heard the disembodied wails of hurt and frightened people.
“Fulvia!” cried one man. “Fulvia, where are you?”
Someone coughed between wracking sobs.
“Have you seen my baby?” a woman wailed. “I can’t find my baby!”
He couldn’t see them, couldn’t help anyone. Children cried out for their mothers. Sometimes he heard them being comforted, but one cry reverberated in his chest.
“Don’t leave me! Wait for me! Please, wait!”
It was a boy’s hoarse, pleading voice. Tag thought of Castor’s wild-eyed thrashing when he’d foisted him on the slave woman, and he closed his eyes against the guilt. But he had to do it. He hadn’t abandoned Castor! He’d left him with people who would take care of him. Yet the sound of the boy’s anguished cries seemed to follow him through the streets.
Maybe he was imagining it. Still, he turned around, peering into the darkness. “Where are you?” he called out. “Tell me where you are, and I will help you!”
“I’m here! I’m here,” sobbed a familiar voice that made his heart sink into his belly. “Wait for me! Wait for me!”
It was not possible. Not possible. But there it was again.
“Healer! Wait!”
“Where are you?” Tag cried. “Can you run to me?”
The sobbing was different this time. More hopeful. Tag moved in the direction of the noise. Then he saw him in the small light of his torch. Castor was stuck up to his thighs in the drifts of pumice, tears carving black furrows through a layer of ash on his face. He held his arms up to Tag like an infant.
“Castor! You foolish boy! What have you done?” Tag picked him up, the rocks reluctant to release their hold. The boy wept into his neck. “You followed me this whole way?” he asked. “Gods! Gods!”
“I’m with you,” Castor repeated in between hiccups. “I’m with you. I’m not with those people, I’m with you.”
Tag closed his eyes and tightened his grip on the boy, relief flooding through his entire body to have him back. “It’s all right. It’s all right now. Listen. We are going to find Lucia. You will help me find Lucia, yes?”
Tag could feel the boy trying to nod. But exhaustion seemed to have overwhelmed him, and he fell asleep on Tag, grasping at his tunic with hands and toes as he always did — like a little monkey.
Tag tried not to panic at the slower pace he had to take with the boy in his arms. He sank deeper with every step into the layered rocks and ash. But he had a torch, and Castor was safe. He just needed to concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other, following the streets — corner fountain by corner fountain — until he got home.
Lucia had come back. She was here. They could escape together. She had returned for him. This was their chance. He sang it to himself like a chant.
The compound was quiet when he finally made it back. He needed water, and so did the boy. He spied a terra-cotta water jar abandoned under a half-fallen roof, jammed the torch into the accumulated rock, and grabbed the jar. A layer of pumice floated on top, but it was probably all right to drink. He scooped out the top layer and woke the boy.
“Come, Castor, drink this,” he said.
The boy fussed but drank when the cool water hit his cracked lips. Tag drank heartily too. He realized the boy needed food as well. Should he risk trying to scrounge up some bread? He slogged toward the demolished kitchen, hoping he could find something.
He found a round loaf someone must have dropped. It tasted of ash, but it gave them both sustenance. Outside again, he grabbed a large garden pillow and handed it to Castor. “Help me hold this over our heads,” he told the boy.
At the cellar entrance, the slave guarding the stairs pointed toward the barracks when he asked about Lucia. “She ran that way.” The door slammed before h
e could learn anything more. But he had confirmation…. She really was there!
As he neared the barracks, he saw light flooding out from an open door. A man stood there, brandishing a bloody gladius.
“Pontius?” Tag shouted. “Is that you? Is Lucia with you?”
“Who’s there?” the voice roared as Tag came closer.
His heart sank. Not Pontius. Titurius — the last person he wanted to see. He must have returned to Pompeii in search of Lucia. Did that mean she was in there with him?
Tag put Castor down. “Listen to me. Do not tell him I am here. But ask him if Domina is in there. We must find out.”
Castor scrabbled over the pumice toward the light spilling from the open door. “Master, is Domina in with you?” he called. “We are looking for Domina.”
“Who is ‘we’?’ ” Titurius responded.
The boy looked confused. “I mean, just me. I am looking for Domina.”
Castor froze in fear as the master looked out at the boy with a face like thunder. The child took a step backward.
Tag moved forward from under the eaves. “Do not hurt him,” he shouted. “It is me, Tag. I am looking for your daughter.”
“Tages?” Titurius shouted. “I should have crucified you myself!”
“Where is Lucia?” he yelled back.
“In here,” the master called. “Come inside and see.”
But something wasn’t right. “Have her call out to me so I know you are telling the truth,” he shouted.
Titurius raised his gladius. “You dare disobey me, slave?!”
“Lucia,” Tag yelled. “Are you there?”
No answer.
To his amazement, Lucia’s purple-faced father stepped out onto the shifting ground toward him. “I will cut your heart out, boy. I swear it!”
“Go inside with the other men,” Tag said to Castor. “Now. They will keep you safe.” He needed to run, but not without first knowing Castor was secure.
“Go!” he shouted to the boy again, but Castor could only stare with wide, terrified eyes at the master approaching. Thankfully, the layers of light rock slowed his progress.
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