The widow’s house needed maintenance more than it had showed. With the weight of fallen cinders, its roof began to creak; rafter batons bowed, on the verge of failing; a loose tile slipped and fell. This heavy terracotta pantile smashed down on Erodion, gashing his head open. As he started from his trance at last, bemused by being struck so painfully, he tried to staunch the pouring blood.
Nonius picked up the heavy tile from the road. He jumped up on the cart. There, he smote the woozy market gardener again and again, holding the rooftile two-handed to batter his skull, until his victim stopped moving.
It was irrelevant now whether Erodion had fathered Nymphe’s baby. Nonius had killed him.
Nonius heaved the lifeless body off the cart, then quickly fetched his sacks of treasure and drove off. When Larius came out of the house with his daughter, who was carrying her precious basket, they saw their neighbour lying in the street. Erodion was already partly buried by a thin blanket of pumice. A pantile covered with brains lay beside his corpse.
‘He is dead,’ Marciana pronounced, hard of heart. ‘Don’t cry, dollies; he’s no loss!’ Larius had been dithering but he stopped and gazed down at her. He loved her at this age: old enough to be cheeky, though still young enough to sometimes need him. The cart they were relying on to save them had vanished yet she seemed insouciant. ‘Someone took the horsey. They won’t get far.’ Of her own accord, Marciana spun away quickly inside the house, returning without her basket. ‘Less to carry. Maybe we can come back for them … So, Father, the old lady is hiding in her pantry. It’s just you and me – time for us to get out of here!’
Chapter 8
Ollia acts.
Slowly, slowly, the painter’s wife reached her decision. She recognised that she must not rely on Larius. She had to deal with this herself.
In Herculaneum, they did not have, or not yet, the constant fall of pumice that had been landing further south. With the wind still blowing away from them, only a light covering of ash lay here. But there was alarming geological activity, with swirling clouds of noxious gas and violent underground shudders, accompanied by constant loud noises. Ollia had always hated earthquakes. This was more extreme than anything she had ever known; it made buildings sway and threaten to come crashing down. Vesuvius was in such flux that the mountain itself was re-shaping, while the land heaved under huge pressures. Although the sky-high column of debris still held up in its enormous cloud, Ollia became terrified.
The noises were unearthly. When they lessened, her neighbourhood had an eerie quiet. Most people had left. Only invalids, the old, or the very pregnant had remained this long in their houses. Even they, if they could, had begun shuffling slowly to what they prayed was safety. Very soon the whole town would be empty. Ollia must go too.
Her sudden sense of isolation scared her. Normally people were working, singing, chattering. Wheels creaked. Donkey bells rang. In this unsettling absence of daily clamour, her few chickens in the yard that passed for a garden were audibly agitated. With the children’s help she collected her anxiously fluttering hens, penning them in the coop. While she was outside, she dug up her cache of emergency coins. Dealing with this gave her a last chance to consider what to do. In Herculaneum that day, a woman with small children and no transport had few options.
She put an amulet on each child to avert the evil eye. Subdued, they complied.
‘You may take one toy each. Varius, I said one; bring your chariot. That’s your favourite.’ Though innately disobedient, Varius clutched his miniature quadriga, with its mad-eyed driver; it had moving wheels, well sort of, though Ollia often had to fiddle with eyebrow tweezers to get them to go again for him, when they seized up. Lolliana and Galliana had collected a doll each; Ollia was a conventional mother. Lolliana really yearned for a toy sword but Ollia had pooh-poohed that. Ollius brought his pottery pig moneybox. He liked to persuade his siblings to put any coppers they had into his box through the slot, then would not let them have their money back. The family all joked he would grow up to be a banker.
‘Now everyone use the potty.’
‘Everyone use the potty,’ they mimicked, though without malice. ‘Tinkle, tinkle!’ Chorusing Mother’s instructions had become a new routine lately. When they went on an expedition it was a joke they enjoyed, including Ollia in their glee. To look after this large group of children, she had to be organised; they accepted her methods, were even proud of how she managed.
Now she tried not to let them see how fraught she felt, while they pretended not to notice, which was their way of helping. They lined up and weed as much as they could. She gave each a kiss for being good. Then Ollia took the younger twins each by the hand, while the elder twins went on the outside, grasping their younger siblings’ free fists.
‘Stay together.’
‘Stay together!’
‘Are we going to the seaside?’ For them that meant Oplontis.
‘Wait and see. It’s a surprise.’
How true. She had no idea where they should go. To safety – but where was safe?
Automatically, Ollia set out in the direction she had seen her neighbours hurrying earlier, which was downhill along one of the main roads, towards the shore. Escape by boat. That made her nervous, for even after living near the ocean for almost a decade, Ollia could not swim, nor could these children. Larius, whose oarsman father on the Tiber in Rome had long ago taught him, was himself teaching Marciana, but he never saw enough of the others; he promised, but it never happened. Ollia wouldn’t let them go on boats, except the fishing smack owned by Vitalis when it was safely hauled up on dry land.
By now only a scatter of fugitives still made their way along the streets. She glimpsed a few dark figures down side alleys, but the place was ghostly. The civic area lay behind her, the basilica and theatre. They passed through pleasant residential parts of this well-ordered town, until they reached the area where rich people had commandeered the seaward approach for enormous coastal residences, fabulous second homes with swimming pools, libraries, breezy terraces to walk on while gazing out at grand views. Below those high-end resort properties, a row of vaulted sheds had been hacked into the cliff, sometimes used for laid-up boats, sometimes for storage. Ollia and her now frightened group of infants ended up among a crowd there.
She had done the right thing, clearly. She had chosen what hundreds of others also thought best. Nobody could criticise her. Mothers are so often afraid of being blamed.
Someone said the fishing fleet had gone out at dawn and not returned, but other boats were coming. It was unclear where this information originated, though for the desperate it had a ring of truth. Standing at the choppy water’s edge they looked out to sea and wanted to believe.
Tension was high, yet people stood there patiently. Everyone was frightened, but they did not know what else to do. They would wait to be rescued, and if no boats came by nightfall, they would all shelter in the boatsheds.
A fishing smack rocked in. It was empty, no catch today from those teeming waters. The man said shoals of fish were floating out in the bay, all dead, as if the sea had poisoned them.
The crowd surged forwards, but the fisherman waved an oar aggressively so they pulled back. He took off a small group, people he knew, though when he plied the oars again his boatload seemed to lack direction, he himself rowing with an air of hopelessness.
Herculaneum grew dark very early, and it was very dark indeed. All afternoon people stood waiting, in a kind of ghastly twilight. Nobody spoke much. Behind the town, loud terrible sounds continued from deep within the earth, which seemed no longer solid but boiling. As the mountain kept hurling molten rocks and ash ever skywards, people eventually began to move under cover.
‘When can we go home?’ pleaded a sad, scared child.
‘Not yet,’ said Ollia. She did not know that they might as well have done.
Chapter 9
Larius and his daughter fleeing.
Earth tremors shook Pompeii too, with nois
e and clouds of sulphur. The ash lay so deep, Marciana was tiring by the minute; she had no hope of wading far through the filthy material, which had landed in such quantities that roads showed only as dips, making the mounded walkways featureless deathtraps. The famous Pompeii stepping-stones, the bollards protecting fountains and altars, the worn ruts in the road surface now lay treacherously buried.
Ash and small lapilli kept falling. Doorways were blocked. Balconies held piles of the grey-white stuff. Some frightening alteration meant the debris shower now contained larger lumps of rock. These cinders were three times as big as when the eruption started, and they felt hotter. Larius saw someone struck so hard they fell and could not continue. A child might be killed outright. He was afraid he would be killed and his child left to fend for herself in this nightmare.
The terrible darkness was increasing. Ash coated them so they felt sticky with it, tasting grit, breathing in particles that clogged their lungs. Every few moments they had to shake themselves, to ease their clothes.
This was not going to work. Nobody who tried to escape on foot would make it. They had left it too late. They had too far to go.
Larius started considering whether to take shelter and simply wait for the emissions to finish. He did not like the idea.
They reached the house with the bakery; the baker was just coming out, bringing a panniered donkey. He was about to lock in his others. They were valuable animals. He used them to turn the flour mills or for deliveries. He still imagined he was coming back, to continue with his thriving business.
Frantic, Larius caught at his tunic sleeve. ‘Lend me one! I’ll pay for it. I’ll give you anything …’ He gestured wildly to his struggling daughter. The baker liked her. Marciana looked up at the man, a natural little actress, putting it on. I am young; it is your choice, but please save me, kind soft-hearted sir …
It worked. ‘Have the hinny. You’d bloody well better bring him back for me, Larius!’
Each animal was desperate to leave the stable anyway. They could hear whinnying and kicking. When the loaned beast came crashing out of doors, Larius had to jump to hold him before he bolted. This one was wild, tall though, part donkey, part small horse. Larius put Marciana up in front of him so he could hold her, dug in his heels heartlessly and rode. He rode for some time behind the baker himself, who had also decided to mount his delivery beast, until they became separated, losing each other; in those terrible streets full of dangerous blackness and flying debris nobody would expect a friend to stop and search.
Larius stayed up on the pavements, because of the roads’ hidden potholes and stepping-stones. At every side street he had to encourage their mount to drop down its front hooves and cross, unable to tell where the road was, or how high the next pavement up which it had to scramble. The hinny panicked; he panicked, but they had to go on.
In places they forced their way through groups of other fugitives, but sometimes there was no one about, and they felt they were the last people on earth. Their hinny, fearful and keen to escape, was wading, sliding, staggering. Larius leaned forwards, over Marciana, talking in its hairy ears, encouraging, soothing. Hell, he was soothing all of them. He and the child were equally scared.
‘Are we going to die?’
He made a reassuring noise. With neither saddle nor stirrups, he was constantly struggling for balance. Any father knows how to pretend he is concentrating on the job in hand too much to answer a hard question.
Any daughter knows how to interpret that. At least we are together, thought Marciana. Doggedly brave, she would not have wanted her loved papa to be here in trouble on his own.
Still fairly innocent, she wondered what this adventure would be like. Larius, whose heart had never stopped sinking since the crisis kicked off, did not want to find out.
His first idea had been to follow his mates, travelling down to the Marine Gate. He and Marciana were starting from the very centre of the town. No direction would be quicker than any other, except that if they continued towards the water they would be on the main street, which was wider and more familiar, then eventually pass through the Forum. That would be a clear open space for the hinny to cross on level ground. Though Larius wrestled with the idea, he decided against it. Most of the civic buildings were in a state of renovation. Pompeii was in the throes of a really big rebuilding project: a huge new temple of Venus half completed, the old Temple of Jupiter decommissioned and its statuary dismantled, bath complexes under repair, markets being reorganised. He knew the Forum had been obstructed with building materials which must now be partly hidden under erupted detritus, hard-edged clutter that would be tricky to manoeuvre around. It could bring the horse down.
Besides, people had rushed towards the sea. Pompeii had disgorged a multitude, who would be clogging the jetties and the roads to the south. He envisaged chaos. If there were any boats, they would be full. And, Larius guessed, maybe there were none. People might hope in vain. If there turned out to be no sea transport, everyone would rush away hysterically overland, causing hideous congestion on the roads.
No one would regulate an evacuation. Larius did not know, but it wouldn’t have surprised him, that even the commander of the fleet at Misenum only rowed over to help a personal friend, with no apparent thought for the ordinary populace. A managed fleet of triremes and local shipping could have achieved something. No such plan was initiated.
Save the rich and sod the poor. What changes?
Still thinking, Larius knew where one possible boat existed, a boat owned by a crack-brain so bone idle he would probably be sitting on the beach right now, watching the mountain’s pyrotechnics, dimly chewing an anchovy. Vitalis.
Larius made up his mind. He would struggle up to Oplontis, then make Vitalis row him up the coast. If not, he’d pinch the boat and row it himself. So Larius turned off before the Forum, then rode the hinny out by the Herculaneum Gate.
He was heading towards the volcano, but also to the town where his wife and other children were. He had a ridiculous hope that he might somehow collect them. Ollia, he knew, would trust him to try. Dear gods, they were both barmy; he hoped Ollia had had the sense to get away without waiting.
Even so, he was going there. He felt an unexpected focus; his wife and the twins seemed oddly remote from his own immediate predicament, yet they were tugging at his heart. A desperate concern was the daughter in his arms. Always prone to sickness, she had begun coughing and spluttering scarily. Marciana might boss him like an adult, but now Larius felt acutely aware of how slight her body was, a father’s dread of how a young child’s hold on life can suddenly become fragile.
Ollia must have experienced this many times when her children were sick in their feckless father’s absence. For the first time, Larius felt genuine sympathy for her troubles.
You are helpless. You do all you can for them, but nature ignores your desperation. You cannot let your own burden fall on them, or your fear communicate; you must conceal your pain. They may live or die; you are unable to do anything except watch as they stay or go from you.
Now it was his turn to cope. Now Larius was alone with it. Jupiter, this was a disaster.
Chapter 10
In the boatsheds.
‘It’s smelly! I don’t want to go in there.’
‘Just a bit of seaside pong. Don’t make a fuss.’
‘When will it be over?’
‘I don’t know, it’s no use asking me. We all have to be patient. Just be a good girl, will you?’
A soldier was directing the crowd taking shelter. ‘Let’s keep it civilised – put the women and children right inside. The young men can stay out on the beach, if there’s a shortage of space …’ Ollia felt grateful for his guidance, grateful for any. ‘Come further along, there will be more room in the next shed.’
Aged about forty, he was in uniform, armed and carrying a toolbag. Had he been on leave or on a mission? He was making himself useful. He helped Ollia, lifting one of the younger twins against his
shoulder, scooping the other under his free arm as they found a shed that still had room. ‘Are these all yours?’
‘All mine, and another on its way,’ she answered firmly. She could see him eyeing her up, hoping she was just their nurse. Ollia made it clear she was a married woman, respectable, unavailable. Larius wouldn’t want her getting friendly with a soldier. Anyway – for heavens’ sake!
Ollia had long ago learned to complain about Campanian men, overlooking what those in her home city had been like. She let him help, but only because suspicion of a stranger kept Varius quiet. Ollius was staring at the man’s sword. So was Lolliana, but the girls shrank against their mother shyly.
Once inside the dark boatshed, the soldier subtly moved on, taking his unwelcome overtures. Probably he just wanted a companion to take his mind off his own fear. Maybe he would be lucky, find some other young woman to flirt with.
After she rebuffed the soldier, Ollia listened and was surprised by how freely her companions were talking to strangers in this shared nightmare. ‘I was just fetching in my bedcovers from airing as if it was any ordinary day! Then this happened. It’s terrible …’
‘Terrible,’ Ollia sympathised automatically, not wanting to be reminded how bad it all was. More than usual, she was conscious of being from Rome where people were brusque and private. Ollia needed to see what was going to happen before she commented on any of it.
She was hungry. They all were. She had brought no food. They must do without – she would have to find something tomorrow for them. She was tired too, desperately weary after this awful day and her fear of what was yet to happen.
Vesuvius by Night Page 6