“Oh, my darling daughter.” Father closes the space between us and tries to tug me into his embrace.
“No.” I pull away, standing up, and my belly tightens painfully as my labor resumes its pains.
“I care about the ones left in that room, too, Lilla. They are my children.”
I lower my head in sorrow and shame. “I haven’t forgotten.” And then I hug my father. There is no hope now. All is lost. The gods have forsaken us.
Father pulls back, his hands on my shoulders and nods. “You were my firstborn child, Lilla, and I am so proud to call you daughter.”
I reach up, wrapping my fingers around his and refusing to think about the child alone and scared, curled up beside my dead siblings and slave. I pray to any of the gods who will listen that they take him swiftly. The pain eating me up is grief or labor pangs. Perhaps it is both. I can’t bear it. I’m ready for it all to end. “I am proud to call you Father.”
Another pain strikes me hard in the middle and I stumble backward.
“Lilla,” Father says, settling me on the couch. “You have a strong constitution, daughter. Stronger than your mother’s and I think even stronger than mine.”
I grit my teeth at the pain and stare up at him. “I do not think any of us should have much longer to endure it.”
His silence confirms that we are not long for this life.
“I need to comfort the little ones,” he finally says. “The two I have left.”
I nod and glance over at Titus who kneels in defeat by the pile of rubble between our two rooms.
“Titus,” I murmur, closing my eyes as another wave hits me, only this time it burns as I feel the babe inside me descend into my birth canal. I have put off his entrance long enough, somehow enduring the pains and hiding them from all. My child wants to see what is left of this world. But I cannot let him.
“Lilla.” Titus faces me, his eyes resigned, and his mouth flat.
“He is coming,” I whisper, sweat beading my brow. “I cannot do it, Titus. I cannot bring him into this world.”
Titus shakes his head. “You must.”
“No.” I reach into the pouch at my side, filled with coin and something else. The vial. I am ashamed to admit the thought of using it crosses my mind before I am even certain that death will come. “I have something.” I pull out the vial I never wanted to use. “A way for us to make this end all the sooner.”
“No, Lilla. I forbid it!” Titus is adamant, anger creasing his brow. “Where did you get this?”
I shake my head. It is not important where I got it, only that I have it and I intend to use it. Titus grabs for the bottle, and I tighten my hold.
Our gazes lock and an internal battle between us both takes place. It is then, I feel the gush of warmth burst from my womb, pooling between my thighs and soaking the couch. My bag of waters has broken.
I shake my head, begging Titus with my gaze to let me do this.
Misery clouds us both. Pain fills my entire body, my very soul. I want a way to end it. A way to take control of my life. A way to choose. Vesuvius may have taken away my siblings, but it will not take my child. That is my choice. It will not kill me. The great mountain will not be triumphant. I shall prevail. I shall take away the one thing it seeks to destroy—us all. For I am one that will not wait. In what little time I have left, I will take charge of my fate, and that of my unborn child.
Titus grits his teeth, presses his forehead to mine. A sob escapes him, but then he says, “What say you, Lilla? Shall we share one last drink together?”
POLYBIUS
A father will die for his children. A soldier pledges his life to his emperor. He knows that with every last breath he has, every last stroke of his sword on his enemy, death will be an honor he gladly accepts. Even a lowly gladiator fights in an arena, risking his life and winning the great glory of breath when he is champion, but also gladly accepts an honorable death. Romans are fighters. We are honorable.
I am honorable. I would gladly trade my life for my wife and my children.
But I have been robbed of that choice.
I mourn the loss of four of my children. Two of my slaves. Sitting around me were future soldiers, politicians, wives of great men.
My wife. My daughter. All of them doomed to die with me.
“Decima,” I murmur against my wife’s ear. “Wake, Decima.”
She stirs. Her eyes blinking open. “Gaius?”
“We must …” I clear my throat, for how do you tell a woman to say goodbye to her two remaining children? She does not yet know about Julius, Little Bird, or Quintus.
Her gaze roves around the room, landing on our younger daughter and son. She closes her eyes again, and I feel her pulse kick up on my fingers where I graze her neck. She did not ask where her other children were. When her gaze centered on the collapsed door, she must have guessed. But then she responds.
“We must.” Her voice is strong, determined. She sits up, her lips firm. Stronger now than I’ve ever seen her before.
I nod. Decima presses her lips to mine, desperately, and I cannot help but sink against her, clutching her warm body to mine. A body that once comforted. A body that grew and nurtured our many children. I want it to last forever, to keep our breaths mingled until the entire house falls on our heads and the mountain’s wrath stops our hearts. But Decima pushes against me. Her eyes lock on mine and she nods.
“Children,” she croons and beckons them forward.
Our young ones come to us, their eyes wide and scared. They’ve seen more death and misery this day than any child should. A war from the gods brought to their feet.
“Time for bed, my loves, we must rest,” Decima says in a soothing voice.
The children nod and climb onto the couch, their arms wrapped around each other. Decima and I kiss them each, hug them tight and whisper a prayer. Then we turn to Lilla, a look a similar determination on her face.
“I love you, Lilla,” Decima says. “I pray Isis enfolds you in her grasp.”
“May the gods be with you, Mother, Father.” Her voice is strained, and the veins in her neck are protruding. She is in pain. Her hands clutch her belly and her breaths come quick.
I’ve seen this before. She is in full labor. Decima’s eyes widen as she takes in the sight of her daughter, and I know she realizes this, too.
“May the gods protect you,” my wife says on a breath and kneels before our eldest daughter. “May the gods protect your child.”
“I will protect my child,” Lilla grinds out.
Titus holds tight to his wife’s hand and kisses her knuckles. He glances up at me with a curt nod. “We shall see you soon, Polybius, in the Elysian Fields.”
I nod, because my throat is closed tight with emotion, stealing what little breath I’m able to draw. Decima presses a kiss to her daughter’s head and then pulls me toward our couch where she lies down and tugs me to join her.
“The gods await us,” Decima says.
I nod. “I’ll be forever at your side.”
My wife closes her eyes, her fingers curling into my shirt, knuckles white. The lights flicker. Of the three lanterns we had, only one remains, and it, too, will soon die.
JULILLA
“TOGETHER.”
I nod, and he bends to press his lips to my belly. While his face is turned away I scream silently to the shadowed ceiling. I cannot go on much longer. I’m being ripped in two. I feel like I’m already dying. I run my fingers through his hair as I’ve done many times, reliving every moment we’ve spent together, good, bad, and wonderful. I pant to keep the pain at bay and to keep from bearing down. We shall travel this next path together as we’d tread the last several years. Hand in hand.
Titus leans up, presses a kiss to my heart and grasps my hand in his. He touches the bottle wrapped in my grasp, its blown glass, blue and transparent.
He gazes into my eyes and I whisper a prayer I’ve heard many times before when death came to those close to us: I approa
ched the confines of death, and having trod on the threshold of Proserpine, I returned therefrom, being borne through all the elements. At midnight I saw the sun shining with its brilliant light; and I approached the presence of the Gods beneath, and the Gods of heaven, and stood near, and worshipped them.
I pray to the gods within our home, within Pompeii, and in Rome. I whisper the words. I think them when the pain becomes too much, and then I grasp tight to the vial, uncork it, and pull it to my lips. I gaze into Titus’ eyes.
He nods. “I will follow you,” he says. And I believe him. For once, I am taking the lead in what path we follow.
My pain will be gone. This darkened tomb will be gone. I will be with my babies. With Titus. With my brothers and sisters and my parents.
That is enough of a certainty to me. To spend whatever the walking afterlife is in peace and happiness, surrounded by those I loved. For the pain and torment to end here and now.
“I love you,” I whisper.
Before I take a sip, Titus jolts up and presses his mouth hard to mine. “I love you so much, my darling,” he says. “I had wished for so much more in this life for us.”
“But what we—” Pain steals my breath, my body seizes, ready to push my child into the world. I cannot allow it to happen. I squeeze my thighs tight, refusing to breathe. I won’t allow my body to push this child into the world. To push him into death. Better that he die cocooned within my womb: safe, comforted.
A sob threatens, but I squeeze my eyes tightly closed afraid even that little bit of motion will propel my baby out of me. I wanted this child. Prayed for him. Made certain I was healthy. Grew him. Felt him move within me. Dreamed for him. Planned for his future, and now I was going to take that away. But what choice did I have? To be born within this tomb would only mean he’d die within an hour. There is only one choice. To save him the pain of living.
I tip the potion and drink. The liquid inside burns a path down my throat, and I choke, sputter, can barely breathe. Where it settles in my belly, burning, and I gag. I clutch at my throat, forcing myself not to vomit. I thrust the glass toward Titus. This death will be quick, and I want him to hear what I have to say. “We had a good life, Titus.”
“We did, Lilla. I have no regrets.” He tips the vial, draining whatever is left in it.
I have plenty of regrets. But what good does it do to dwell on them? Our fates are sealed. “We’ll not look back,” I gasp. The pain of the poison is not as bad as the pain of my child pushing into the birth canal.
Titus climbs onto the bed, his eyes red and bulging as he lies beside me. His hard body is warm and gives me comfort. My mouth starts to tingle, my tongue going thick and numb. I want a drink of wine desperately, feeling a thirst that will never be quenched. Titus lays his head beside me, his arm resting over my abdomen, cradling our baby. I want to wrap my arms around him, but already my hands and feet are tingling, my arms growing numb and I can’t move them. I feel myself sweating. The pain of birth no longer grips me. I choke a sob. My baby. My baby! Please forgive me. There was no other way.
I gasp for breath, unable to draw it in. Titus moans beside me, and I feel his pain inside me. I am being flayed alive inside. But I go to my death knowing that I chose this way to leave Pompeii, this world. Knowing that I did not bring a child into this world only to have it suffer.
I no longer have control of my body.
The lamp light flickers in and out. I am dizzy. Spinning.
I am floating, numb. No longer in pain. No longer tormented, but a peace surrounds me.
I blink and blink again. I cannot see.
Darkness consumes me.
And then the darkness is gone and I am surrounded by light.
PART SIX
THE WHORE
Stephanie Dray
"There were no gods left anywhere ... the last and eternal night had come upon the world.”
—Pliny the Younger
CAPELLA
DARKNESS. We are born from darkness. We perish in darkness. And then we are born again. That is the promise of Isis. It’s a promise of salvation I once whispered to an empress whose death I foretold. Now I murmur that same promise to comfort the terrified boy in my arms—a man, in truth, with a downy beard upon his chin. Or at least he thought to make himself from a boy to a man when he parted the red curtain of the cubicle on the street outside the caupona where I ply my trade.
When the city began to shake again, other men fled, stopping in the caupona only to fill their sacks with bread or their flasks with wine for the journey. But this young man was desperate for something else, and he pressed more shiny coins into my hand than the price for me scrawled upon the tavern wall. Needing solace of the spirit, he bought solace of my body. I suppose because there is, in touch, an affirmation of life, of immortality. Which is why men pay for touch even when the earth isn’t quaking beneath their feet.
When the rush to the city gates began, my master and his wife watched over the caupona, intent upon squeezing every copper coin from passersby. I am their property, and my body is bought and sold anew most every day, so I was told to follow the young man to the cubicle on the street where I let him grasp me roughly, hitching up his tunic only far enough to get between my thighs.
And he was inside me, rudely thrusting, when we heard the deafening roar of the mountain like a god in carnal ecstasy, releasing the hot, pent-up life force of a hero’s age.
It was no god or hero who spent himself in me, though. Just a scared boy who then pinned me with his terrified weight. Together we could make no sense of the booms, the screams, the braying donkeys, the howling dogs, or the mountain’s bellow. We’d disentangled from one another only long enough to peek out the curtain, but at the horrifying sight of a billowing plume spewing forth from the mountain, we had fallen back together in terror upon the stone bed where I have held so many other men. And here we are, still huddled, while darkness envelops the city, too frightened to move, not even knowing how much time has passed.
I don’t know his name and, of course, he doesn’t know mine. Prostitutes are called by a thousand names. Lupae, fornices, meretrices, prostibulae … but we are still somehow nameless. The young man and I are strangers, even though I am covered in his cooling seed and he, with the most intimate scent of me. But it’s the intimacy of our terror that turns us from strangers to lovers.
We cling to one another. He clings to me as to life, gibbering in his fear, and I cling to him because his flesh has somehow become as precious to me as my own. Because his flesh, tears, and need are the only things that make sense to me under a midday sun blotted out in a sky that has begun to rain ash.
I foresaw this. An onyx sky denser and darker than any ordinary night. A black swelling rain that would become a river, to be followed by a dark sea of violent power. A coming flood to wash our spirits clean of flesh and blood. And then, an ethereal blaze of fire. Like a lighthouse burning so bright that it could lead an entire city to eternal salvation.
Whatever is happening in Pompeii, I have seen it before in the pool at the Temple of Isis—a goddess of sailors and seductresses and all who fear they might lose their way.
But my sister says that visions are for priestesses, not prostitutes.
Perhaps she’s right, because my faith is shaken. Instead of feeling awe and wonder for the goddess whose promises of salvation I keep repeating, I am consumed with fear. As I hear the cracks and clatter of hail falling from the sky onto terra cotta rooftops, I do not reach to touch my anklet with its jingling ankh charms. Nor do I yearn for my goddess. I want only the older sister who has been more of a mother to me than the woman who gave birth to us.
Prima. Surely she will find me. Even in this darkness. She will find me and protect me as she always does because she is never afraid, never cries, and never lets any man grasp her too roughly. I am determined to fly to her as soon as I can quiet the young man in my arms, who keeps murmuring of death and giants and the end of the world.
Then I
hear my sister’s voice pierce through the shroud of darkness. “Capella!”
Prima shrieks my name, pushing from the street into the small chamber in which I am huddled with the boy, the glow of her lantern breaking the paralyzing spell of the darkness. Prima’s saffron-colored toga—worn by registered prostitutes—has somehow turned a whitish gray; a powder covers her hair and bony shoulders, but the pallor of her normally swarthy face is even paler. Her black eyes fall upon me with some mixture of relief and horror. “Capella! I have been looking everywhere in the caupona for you.”
“What’s happening?” I ask. Because Prima will know. She always looks for danger. She understands the terrible things in this world. She sees in people the evil that I prefer to be blind to.
But now, when I am desperate for her to make sense of the roaring mountain, she only answers, “What’s happening? The sky is falling and you have some limp-pricked blubberer between your legs.”
Something about the boy’s tears, his youth, and the down on his chin seem to infuriate her even more. She shouts at him, “Get off my sister. Pay your money and go!”
“No, don’t.” I hold him tighter. I feel as if I must know his name.
But my sister digs her nails into his arms, wrenching him away.
Prima hates the men who buy us. She hates everyone. Prima is good at hate. Good at anger. And I’ve never seen her angrier than she is now. She beats on the young man with both fists and though I call after him in protest, he runs off, alone and nameless, into the black rain of ash.
“Why did you do that?” I demand. “He was afraid. He was just afraid!”
“Let him piss himself somewhere else,” Prima says, breathless from her efforts to drive him off. “Now squat and sneeze, or do you want another misbegotten whelp?”
After three years, I am nearly numb to the reminder of the child I gave birth to. But not numb enough. Prima’s question makes me wonder where my child is in all this madness. Where is the nameless little girl that Dominus ripped from my arms and sold away? Home-bred slaves fetch good prices, he said, but is my daughter here in the panicking city or did some cruel master leave her to die on a bluff over the sea years ago?
A Day of Fire: a novel of Pompeii Page 25