“You did get away.” The senator nodded gravely. “And in truth, I am rather extraordinarily glad to see that you got away, little Prima.”
He was glad, she saw. It startled her: a senator in a fine toga, glad that a slave girl had survived the mountain. It startled her so much that the words tumbled out. “My sister is dead.”
It was the first time Prima had spoken the words aloud.
And now that she had, she sobbed and could not seem to stop sobbing.
The senator issued some orders in a quiet voice, and someone gave Prima a stool so she could sink down and cry her eyes out. The senator crouched down next to her, waving his people away. He didn’t ask her how Capella had met her end. Maybe he knew Prima couldn’t bear it. He just drew a fold of his toga over his head in mourning and said something brief and beautiful.
“Who did you lose in the rubble?” she asked, assuming that must be why he was here in the smoking ruins.
“I had the good fortune not to lose anyone. Well—myself, nearly.” He traced a bandage around his wrist with a small, private, bittersweet expression that did not invite Prima to ask. “The emperor ordered me to return when the ash cooled, to make assessment of the damage.”
A man with the emperor’s ear. “So, I’m definitely going to be crucified, then,” Prima blurted. “A slave can’t …” she trailed off, knowing that no matter how kind he was to her, no slave could ever strike such an important man and live to tell the tale.
“A slave can’t nearly cripple a senator?” He stretched out his knee, and Prima winced to see the knob of bandages under his toga’s folds. “Correct. But Prima of Pompeii is no slave, is she? She is a freedwoman now.”
Prima eyed him warily, but not too warily. In truth, she was too heartsick to beware tricks. “How do you mean? I don’t know where my master is, but even if he’s dead, I’m sure he has a designated heir—”
“No one can claim among his inheritance slaves illegally used in prostitution.”
So he remembered. “But I can’t prove—I don’t have our bill of sale.”
He swept a hand out at the still-smoking expanse of ash and rock; the vents of steam like a giant’s slumbering breath. “My dear girl, the evidence is buried along with the rolls upon which you were registered. Who is to naysay you? Or,” he added with more authority, “me?”
She blinked. “You?” The chance her master or his heir might take on Senator Marcus Norbanus was exceedingly slim. “Why would you vouch for me?”
“Because Roman law says you are free,” he answered. “And Roman law is for all of us. You did not believe me last time I told you that—perhaps you will believe me now.”
Prima nodded. He was offering to help; it didn’t matter if she understood his reasons. Only the price required. “What do you want in exchange?”
“A little trust.” He rose, brushing off his snowy toga with its rich purple border. “I shall be near the ruins of Pompeii a great deal in the months to come, overseeing relief funds. As a surviving freedwoman, you would be eligible for some assistance. Will you trust my word enough to rely on it?”
Trust. It was like faith. The faith her sister had. The faith Prima never had. But now, in this moment, she wanted it. She hungered for it. So she not only believed the senator would keep his word, but found herself wishing she could give aid or comfort to other survivors. “Could I help in some way?”
“Naturally.” He didn’t sound surprised at the offer. Perhaps he simply expected better from her from now on. “You can start by remembering the people in this city. Their hopes and dreams. The things that mattered most to them. Too many of those lost will never have death masks or eulogies or mausoleums. So be a living monument to the nameless dead.” With that, he gave her a nod, the kind of nod a citizen of Rome gave to a free woman, and disappeared into his entourage, wound in smoke.
Watching him go, Prima wasn’t sure it had happened. Perhaps it had all been a vision. A message from her sister from beyond. If there was a beyond. Prima had said, again and again, that there was nothing but this.
We eat, we shit, we fuck, and we die. That’s all there is.
But she was wrong. There was human connection. There was love of family. Love of friends. Love of enemies and even nameless strangers. Love that endured beyond life. Love beyond death. The proof of that was all around her, in the few survivors still searching the rubble of what had once seemed like a big city, but was now made quite small. Slaves, free citizens, and the high-born, all asking the same painful questions.
Have you seen him? Have you seen her? Have you seen the one I love?
I think she went to Stabiae, to Herculaneum, to Misenum, to Nuceria …
Did he leave the city before the mountain blew apart? Did she stay behind?
The stillness gave no answers … but still they asked, drawn together in grief. So unmoored from all that had once separated them that Prima and a wealthy girl might stand shoulder to shoulder.
The girl had asphodel flowers in her hand and hair as red as flame. She bent to put the white flowers on the stones for the man she said would have made her his wife. Though she was not married, the girl was draped in a dark stola of mourning as if she were his widow in truth. “He promised to come to Nuceria and find me,” she explained, fingering a bunch of keys strung from her girdle the way Prima’s sister used to finger her ankh charms. “I cannot find where his house stood, and this is as close to the city as we can climb, but I think maybe he would have been somewhere near here. He would have tried to come to me—his name was Sabinus.”
Then, perhaps seeing recognition in Prima’s expression, the girl asked, “Did you know him?”
For Prima, the name Sabinus no longer dredged up anger or contempt. Her sister had liked the man and counted him a friend. Perhaps he was a friend to her in the end. Prima liked to imagine it that way.
And so she said, “I’m afraid I didn’t know him at all.”
“Neither did I. Or rather, I knew him all my life without appreciating him—” The girl broke off, too well-born to sob. But her voice lowered, thick with emotion. “He thought me worthy of him. I would like to be.”
“I understand,” Prima said, because she did.
The wealthy girl narrowed her eyes, perhaps realizing for the first time that she was confiding in a stranger. “Should I know you? Who are you?”
The wind seemed to echo her question.
Who are you?
Prima wondered how anyone could answer such a question amid the shattered remains. The world she knew had died, and a part of her with it. And yet, when she reached inside herself for an answer, her heart swelled, giving her a weight and substance she’d never had before.
“Who am I?” Prima asked, brushing tears from her eyes. “I don’t know yet.”
But she was hungry to find out.
Hungrier than any child ever born.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
WE are indebted to our readers for their encouragement and support of this project; Michelle Moran for writing such a lovely introduction; Simon Scarrow for his kind words of praise; Margaret George for suggesting the possible connection of Nero’s empress to Pompeii; Kevan Lyon for her support and encouragement; Adam Dray for his tireless but cheerful fact-checking, nitpicking and proofreading; Lea Nolan for beta-reading; our talented cover designer, Kim Killion; Giorgio for giving us logos; former fire marshal Brandon Rice for help with fire, deadly vapors, and asphyxiation; Edna Russell for consulting with us on the laws and customs surrounding prostitution in ancient Rome; Kelly Quinn for researching relevant quotes from the writings of Pliny the Younger and doing some last-minute proofreading; Ginger Emshoff for providing help with Latin and supplying us with fantastic information about graffiti. Also helpful was Pompeii: The Living City, by Alex Butterworth and Ray Laurence; The Complete Pompeii by Joanne Berry; and Mary Beard’s multiple volumes of scholarship about the eruption, the town, and the population of Pompeii.
NOTES FROM THE AUTHORS
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ARCHAEOLOGICAL evidence indicates that the eruption took place sometime in late September or October. Physical evidence includes the presence of autumnal fruits including pomegranates (which ripen in late September and October in Italy), as well as dried dates, prunes, and figs, typically harvested in late summer. Also, jars with fermenting wine were found, indicating that the grapes had been harvested and wine production was well underway. The most compelling evidence is the presence of a Roman coin printed after September 7 or 8 of the year 79 found in a stratification that would rule out looters or investigators dropping it there later.
Another choice we made was to present the volcano as an unprecedented event. Astounding as it may seem, the citizens of Pompeii apparently had no idea that the mountain looming over their town was a volcano. There were plenty of warning signs of an imminent volcanic eruption, and although incomplete archaeology suggests the city may have emptied, the first person account by Pliny the Younger suggests that the catastrophe caught the city and its surrounds largely unwarned. We elected to favor his eyes-on-the-ground account. Our epigraph quotes are largely lifted from his famous letters to Tacitus, though some are tweaked for easier reading.
Astute readers will notice that the locations of some buildings, such as the caupona where several characters work or take a drink or meal, have been shifted slightly for fictional convenience. And while all graffiti mentioned in the stories come from the walls of Pompeii, the exact locations of that scrawl may vary. The freshness of the election graffiti in ancient Pompeii suggested to us the names of important city officials, but did not tell us who prevailed. Because we wanted to involve historical figures rather than make them up out of whole cloth, we chose the winners and had them begin their terms of office.
And now for your individual notes...
THE SON
PLINY the Younger was not Pliny the Elder’s son, but his nephew, adopted at seventeen when the elder died in year 79 during the eruption of Vesuvius. The younger Pliny provides us with the only eyewitness account of the disaster. Named Gaius Caecilius Secundus for his father, his mother Plinia was Pliny the Elder’s sister. Caecilius’ father died when he was young. Although posthumous adoptions were common, it was also common for Roman men who did not have male heirs to adopt during their lifetimes—which left me wondering, why didn’t Pliny the Elder adopt his young nephew while he was alive? And how might this have affected the young man?
I was also fascinated by that fact that Pliny the Younger had the opportunity to join his uncle in the investigation of the eruption. So why didn’t he go? At seventeen, he most likely had completed his manhood ceremony. The Roman code of manly virtus demanded stoic fearlessness and bravery in the face of danger. And what was his excuse for not joining his uncle? He said he had to study: “He offered me the opportunity of going along,” Pliny the Younger wrote twenty-five years later to his friend Tacitus. “But I preferred to study—he himself [meaning Pliny the Elder] happened to have set me a writing exercise.”
Really? He stayed away from the most fascinating natural phenomenon anyone had ever seen (they didn’t know it was killer yet) because he had to study? I found the excuse flimsy. What if, I wondered, there was another deeper, possibly more embarrassing reason he declined? And what if his elderly uncle understood the reason and therefore didn’t push him, as one might think he otherwise would? And what if this reason was so private, he covered it up a quarter of a century later with a lame excuse about hitting the books?
From those questions, this story was born. Historically, all we know is that Pliny the Younger did not join his uncle and that he was adopted posthumously in his uncle’s will. Everything else preceding his description of events is conjecture. But as historical fiction writers like to say, “It could’ve happened this way!”
—Vicky Alvear Shecter
THE HEIRESS
THERE is more that is mysterious at the Villa of the Mysteries than the famous murals lending the ruins their name. Located just outside the Herculaneum gate, it is uncertain who owned the villa. A seal found during its excavation bears the name of a freedman from the powerful Istacidii family, and some scholars have proposed him as a possible owner. Others posit he may have been an overseer during the property’s reconstruction (ongoing for years) after Nero’s quake. For narrative purposes, I chose to associate the seal with such an overseer—one who does not appear in my story. Three bodies were uncovered at the villa: two women and a child. These victims may have been members of the household or, alternately, individuals seeking to escape the city who took shelter in the villa during their failed flight. I choose to imagine one in particular, a woman who clawed and scrambled to stay atop the growing pile of falling lapilli for hours before succumbing, as Aemilia’s faithful nurse.
Since Aemilia and her family are fictional, I might have selected any setting for their story. Why the Villa of the Mysteries? Like the many tourists who flock to the site, I was drawn to the villa by its significant collection of decorative frescoes. Many of these artworks were already very old (the most famous date to the first century BCE) at the time Pompeii was lost. As a writer, I was more interested in imagining who might have dwelt among such masterpieces than in describing them (pictures are readily available for readers who want to look more closely), but any art I do depict actually exists. For example, the statue of Livia mentioned was found, missing fingers, during the villa’s excavations. Of course the most compelling feature of the villa is the murals that give it its name. These are located in its rich, red triclinium. Often described as portraying the rights of the cult of Bacchus, for The Heiress I have adopted the less popular explanation of the artwork as a metaphor for a young bride’s transition into marriage. Thus interpreted, the murals echo the development of my central character, Aemilia, who changes from a headstrong girl to a confident woman during the course of my story.
Finally, a note about Sabinus. Unlike Aemilia, I did not create Sabinus out of whole cloth. In The Fires of Vesuvius, Mary Beard identifies the candidates for the office of aedile in 79. Yes, Cuspius Pansa is on that list, and so is a man named Gnaeus Helvius Sabinus. Graffiti in the city suggests that candidate Sabinus was supported both by followers of the Isis cult and by his grandmother. For the purposes of our novel, the assumption was made that Sabinus ran unsuccessfully.
—Sophie Perinot
THE SOLDIER
WHO wouldn’t jump at the chance to write a tale set in Pompeii at the time of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius? I owe big thanks to Kate Quinn for inviting me, and to the other authors, with whom it has been an absolute pleasure to work. Part of the appeal to me was that I could write the tale of a retired soldier, a guy who’d survived a lifetime of war. My novels are usually set during wars or rebellions, and it’s a little frustrating never to be able to find out what happens to my main characters.
A few interesting details about my story: Satrius Rufus was a Pompeian home-owner, whose nameplate survives and tells us that he was a retired Imperial secretary; his son, my hero, is a fictional character. Pugnax the gladiator is mentioned in Pompeian graffiti, and Jucundus was a Pompeian banker whose name was well documented in the town.
Gladiators often fought in multiple pairs, however this was by no means universal—hence my depiction of Pugnax fighting his bout against one opponent.
It’s possible that no lions/big cats fought in Pompeii’s amphitheater, as the safety parapet was probably not high enough to contain them, so the portrayal of lions there was my decision.
Odd as it sounds, the giant “wine carrier” made of leather is depicted in artwork found in Pompeii.
The mosaic with the crouching black dog, and the famous warning, “CAVE CANEM,” is famous throughout the world. I hope readers will forgive me using it in my story—it was too much to resist, even though the poor, savage dog didn’t make it.
—Ben Kane
THE SENATOR
SENATOR Marcus Norbanus and Diana of the Cornelii have appeared in several
other novels of mine, starting with Daughters of Rome where they struggle through the infamous Year of Four Emperors referenced in their story here. Marcus is fictional, therefore both his terms as consul and his descent from the line of Augustus are invented. Diana is also fictional, though the horse breeding business, chariot racing, and the various circus factions (including the Reds) were an obsession in ancient Rome among patrician and plebeian classes alike. The level of freedom Diana enjoys as an unmarried woman is unusual for her time, but not impossible—Roman law gave fathers the right to manage their daughters’ lives (as Diana herself points out to Sophie Perinot’s Aemilia), but despite the traditional image of the stern paterfamilias, historical records are full of indulgent or absentee fathers who did not rule their women with such an iron fist. As a result there were Roman women who seized startling freedom of movement, travel, and financial independence.
The brothel (lupanar) where Marcus and Diana take shelter is a real building, with some of the most notorious erotic frescoes and filthy graffiti to survive in Pompeii. The villa where Diana retrieves her horse is the Villa of Mysteries featured earlier in Sophie’s story.
Marcus and Diana’s appearance in this collection was a surprise to me. I had never planned for any of my old characters to cross paths in Pompeii, much less these two, but around the time this project was conceived, Marcus’ polite voice and Diana’s ruder one piped up in the back of my head informing me that they were present when Vesuvius erupted. The pairing of opposites has been a classic trope for a long time—think buddy-cop movies—but in Marcus and Diana I had the ultimate comic juxtaposition of brain vs. brawn, with the added twist that for once the girl was the brawn—and the rescuer instead of the rescuee. The resulting possibilities for comedy delighted me, though it’s probably irreverent to say that I enjoyed finding opportunities for humor in an epic disaster like Pompeii. I don’t feel too guilty, however, since my fellow collaborators explained that it was my job to give the readers a few laughs before they got their hearts ripped out by the ending. I hope I made you chuckle, whether at Marcus and Diana’s bickering or at the rephrased line from Bastille’s chart-topping song “Pompeii,” which I couldn’t resist slipping into the story. Readers interested in Marcus and Diana’s future should take a look at Mistress of Rome, which picks up two years after the eruption of Vesuvius.
A Day of Fire: a novel of Pompeii Page 31