All manner of fish were kept, at vast expense, along the shoreline of the house – sea bass, with their woolly-white flesh; grey mullet, that required high walls around their pond to prevent them leaping to freedom; flatfish and parrot fish and giltheads; lampreys and congers and hake.
But by far the most expensive of Ampliatus’s aquatic treasures – he trembled to think how much he had paid for them, and he did not even much like fish – were the red mullet, the delicate and whiskered goatfish, notoriously difficult to keep, whose colours ran from pale pink to orange. And it was these that the slave had killed. Whether by malice or incompetence, Ampliatus did not know, nor care, but there they were: clustered together in death as they had been in life, a multi-hued carpet floating on the surface of their pond, discovered earlier that afternoon. A few had still been alive when Ampliatus was shown the scene, but they had died even as he watched, turning like leaves in the depths of the pool and rising to join the others. Poisoned, every one. They would have fetched six thousand apiece at current market prices – one mullet being worth five times as much as the miserable slave who was supposed to look after them – and now they were fit only for the fire. Ampliatus had pronounced sentence immediately: ‘Throw him to the eels!’
The slave was screaming as they dragged and prodded him towards the edge of the pool. It was not his fault, he was shouting. It was not the food. It was the water. They should fetch the aquarius.
The aquarius!
Ampliatus screwed up his eyes against the glare of the sea. It was hard to make out the shapes of the writhing slave and of the two others holding him, or of the fourth, who held a boat-hook like a lance and was jabbing it into the doomed man’s back – mere stick-figures, all of them, in the haze of the heat and the sparkling waves. He raised his arm in the manner of an emperor, his fist clenched, his thumb parallel with the ground. He felt godlike in his power, yet full of simple human curiosity. For a moment he waited, tasting the sensation, then abruptly he twisted his wrist and jammed his thumb upward. Let him have it!
The piercing cries of the slave teetering on the edge of the eel-pond carried up from the seafront, across the terraces, over the swimming pool and into the silent house where the women were hiding.
Corelia Ampliata had run to her bedroom, thrown herself down on the mattress, and pulled her pillow over her head, but there was no escaping the sound. Unlike her father, she knew the slave’s name – Hipponax, a Greek – and also the name of his mother, Atia, who worked in the kitchens, and whose lamentations, once they started, were even more terrible than his. Unable to bear the screams for more than a few moments, she sprang up again and ran through the deserted villa to find the wailing woman, who had sunk against a column in the cloistered garden.
Seeing Corelia, Atia clutched at her young mistress’s hem and began weeping at her slippered feet, repeating over and over that her son was innocent, that he had shouted to her as he was being carried away – it was the water, the water, there was something wrong with the water. Why would nobody listen to him?
Corelia stroked Atia’s grey hair and tried to make such soothing noises as she could. There was little else that she could do. Useless to appeal to her father for clemency – she knew that. He listened to nobody, least of all to a woman, and least of all women to his daughter, from whom he expected an unquestioning obedience – an intervention from her would only make the death of the slave doubly certain. To Atia’s pleas she could only reply that there was nothing she could do.
At this, the old woman – in truth she was in her forties, but Corelia thought of slave years as being like dog years, and she appeared at least sixty – suddenly broke away and roughly dried her eyes on her arm.
‘I must find help.’
‘Atia, Atia,’ said Corelia gently, ‘who will give it?’
‘He shouted for the aquarius. Didn’t you hear him? I shall fetch the aquarius.’
‘And where is he?’
‘He may be at the aqueduct down the hill, where the watermen work.’
She was on her feet now, trembling but determined, looking around her wildly. Her eyes were red, her dress and hair disordered. She looked like a madwoman and Corelia saw at once that no one would pay her any attention. They would laugh at her, or drive her off with stones.
‘I’ll come with you,’ she said, and as another terrible scream rose from the waterfront Corelia gathered up her skirts with one hand, grabbed the old woman’s wrist with the other and together they fled through the garden, past the empty porter’s stool, out of the side door, and into the dazzling heat of the public road.
The terminus of the Aqua Augusta was a vast underground reservoir, a few hundred paces south of the Villa Hortensia, hewn into the slope overlooking the port and known, for as long as anyone could remember, as the Piscina Mirabilis – The Pool of Wonders.
Viewed from the outside, there was nothing particularly wonderful about her and most of the citizens of Misenum passed her without a second glance. She appeared on the surface as a low, flat-roofed building of red brick, festooned with pale-green ivy, a city block long and half a block wide, surrounded by shops and storerooms, bars and apartments, hidden away in the dusty back streets above the naval base.
Only at night, when the noise of the traffic and the shouts of the tradesmen had fallen silent, was it possible to hear the low, subterranean thunder of falling water, and only if you went into the yard, unlocked the narrow wooden door and descended a few steps into the Piscina itself was it possible to appreciate the reservoir’s full glory. The vaulted roof was supported by forty-eight pillars, each more than fifty feet high – although most of their length was submerged by the waters of the reservoir – and the echo of the aqueduct hammering into the surface was enough to shake your bones.
The engineer could stand here, listening and lost in thought, for hours. The percussion of the Augusta sounded in his ears not as a dull and continuous roar but as the notes of a gigantic water-organ: the music of civilisation. There were air shafts in the Piscina’s roof, and in the afternoons, when the foaming spray leapt in the sunlight and rainbows danced between the pillars – or in the evenings, when he locked up for the night and the flame of his torch shone across the smooth black surface like gold splashed on ebony – in those moments, he felt himself to be not in a reservoir at all, but in a temple dedicated to the only god worth believing in.
Attilius’s first impulse on coming down from the hills and into the yard at the end of that afternoon was to check the level of the reservoir. It had become his obsession. But when he tried the door he found it was locked and then he remembered that Corax was carrying the key on his belt. He was so tired that for once he thought no more about it. He could hear the distant rumble of the Augusta – she was running: that was all that counted – and later, when he came to analyse his actions, he decided he could not really reproach himself for any dereliction of duty. There was nothing he could have done. Events would have worked out differently for him personally, that was true – but that hardly mattered in the larger context of the crisis.
So he turned away from the Piscina and glanced around the deserted yard. The previous evening he had ordered that the space be tidied and swept while he was away, and he was pleased to see that this had been done. There was something reassuring to him about a well-ordered yard. The neat stacks of lead sheets, the amphorae of lime, the sacks of puteolanum, the ruddy lengths of terracotta pipe – these were the sights of his childhood. The smells, too – the sharpness of the lime; the dustiness of fired clay left out all day in the sun.
He went into the stores, dropped his tools on the earth floor and rotated his aching shoulder, then wiped his face on the sleeve of his tunic and re-entered the yard just as the others trooped in. They headed straight for the drinking fountain without bothering to acknowledge him, taking turns to gulp the water and splash their heads and bodies – Corax, then Musa, then Becco. The two slaves squatted patiently in the shade, waiting until the free m
en had finished. Attilius knew he had lost face during the course of the day. But still, he could live with their hostility. He had lived with worse things.
He shouted to Corax that the men could finish work for the day, and was rewarded with a mocking bow, then started to climb the narrow wooden staircase to his living quarters.
The yard was a quadrangle. Its northern side was taken up by the wall of the Piscina Mirabilis. To the west and south were storerooms and the administrative offices of the aqueduct. To the east was the living accommodation: a barracks for the slaves on the ground floor, and an apartment for the aquarius above it. Corax and the other free men lived in the town with their families.
Attilius, who had left his mother and sister behind in Rome, thought that in due course he would probably move them down to Misenum as well and rent a house, which his mother could keep for him. But for the time being he was sleeping in the cramped bachelor accommodation of his predecessor, Exomnius, whose few possessions he had had moved into the small spare room at the end of the passage.
What had happened to Exomnius? Naturally, that had been Attilius’s first question when he arrived in the port. But nobody had had an answer, or, if they had, they weren’t about to pass it on to him. His enquiries were met by sullen silence. It seemed that old Exomnius, a Sicilian who had run the Augusta for nearly twenty years, had simply walked out one morning more than two weeks ago and had not been heard of since.
Ordinarily, the department of the Curator Aquarum in Rome which administered the aqueducts in regions one and two (Latium and Campania) would have been willing to let matters lie for a while. But given the drought, and the strategic importance of the Augusta, and the fact that the Senate had risen for its summer recess in the third week of July and half its members were at their holiday villas around the bay, it had been thought prudent to dispatch an immediate replacement. Attilius had received the summons on the Ides of August, at dusk, just as he was finishing off some routine maintenance work on the Anio Novus. Conducted into the presence of the Curator Aquarum himself, Acilius Aviola, at his official residence on the Palatine Hill, he had been offered the commission. Attilius was bright, energetic, dedicated – the senator knew how to flatter a man when he wanted something – with no wife or children to detain him in Rome. Could he leave the next day? And, of course, Attilius had accepted at once, for this was a great opportunity to advance his career. He had said farewell to his family and had caught the daily ferry from Ostia.
He had started to write a letter to them. It lay on the nightstand next to the hard wooden bed. He was not very good at letters. Routine information – I have arrived, the journey was good, the weather is hot – written out in his schoolboy’s hand was the best he could manage. It gave no hint of the turmoil he felt within: the pressing sense of responsibility, his fears about the water shortage, the isolation of his position. But they were women – what did they know? – and besides, he had been taught to live his life according to the Stoic school: to waste no time on nonsense, to do one’s job without whining, to be the same in all circumstances – intense pain, bereavement, illness – and to keep one’s lifestyle simple: the camp-bed and the cloak.
He sat on the edge of the mattress. His household slave, Phylo, had put out a jug of water and a basin, some fruit, a loaf, a pitcher of wine and a slice of hard white cheese. He washed himself carefully, ate all the food, mixed some wine into the water and drank. Then, too exhausted even to remove his shoes and tunic, he lay down on the bed, closed his eyes and slipped at once into that hinterland between sleeping and waking which his dead wife endlessly roamed, her voice calling out to him – pleading, urgent: ‘Aquarius! Aquarius!’
His wife had been just twenty-two when he watched her body consigned to the flames of her funeral pyre. This woman was younger – eighteen, perhaps. Still, there was enough of the dream that lingered in his mind, and enough of Sabina about the girl in the yard for his heart to jump. The same darkness of hair. The same whiteness of skin. The same voluptuousness of figure. She was standing beneath his window and shouting up.
‘Aquarius!’
The sound of raised voices had drawn some of the men from the shadows and by the time he reached the bottom of the stairs they had formed a gawping half-circle around her. She was wearing a loose white tunica, open wide at the neck and sleeves – a dress to be worn in private, which showed a little more of the milky plumpness of her bare white arms and breasts than a respectable lady would have risked in public. He saw now that she was not alone. A slave attended her – a skinny, trembling, elderly woman, whose thin grey hair was half pinned up, half tumbling down her back.
She was breathless, gabbling – something about a pool of red mullet that had died that afternoon in her father’s fish ponds, and poison in the water, and a man who was being fed to the eels, and how he must come at once. It was hard to catch all her words.
He held up his hand to interrupt her and asked her name.
‘I am Corelia Ampliata, daughter of Numerius Popidius Ampliatus, of the Villa Hortensia.’ She announced herself impatiently and, at the mention of her father, Attilius noticed Corax and some of the men exchange looks. ‘Are you the aquarius?’
Corax said, ‘The aquarius isn’t here.’
The engineer waved him away. ‘I am in charge of the aqueduct, yes.’
‘Then come with me.’
She began walking towards the gate and seemed surprised when Attilius did not immediately follow. The men were starting to laugh at her now. Musa did an impersonation of her swaying hips, tossing his head grandly: “‘Oh aquarius, come with me . . . !”’
She turned, with tears of frustration glinting in her eyes.
‘Corelia Ampliata,’ said Attilius patiently and not unkindly, ‘I may not be able to afford to eat red mullet, but I believe them to be sea-water fish. And I have no responsibility for the sea.’
Corax grinned and pointed. ‘Do you hear that? She thinks you’re Neptune!’
There was more laughter. Attilius told them sharply to be quiet.
‘My father is putting a man to death. The slave was screaming for the aquarius. That is all I know. You are his only hope. Will you come or not?’
‘Wait,’ said Attilius. He nodded towards the older woman, who had her hands pressed to her face and was crying, her head bowed. ‘Who is this?’
‘She’s his mother.’
The men were quiet now.
‘Do you see?’ Corelia reached out and touched his arm. ‘Come,’ she said quietly. ‘Please.’
‘Does your father know where you are?’
‘No.’
‘Don’t interfere,’ said Corax. ‘That’s my advice.’
And wise advice, thought Attilius, for if a man were to take a hand every time he heard of a slave being cruelly treated, he would have no time to eat or sleep. A sea-water pool full of dead mullet? That was nothing to do with him. He looked at Corelia. But then again, if the poor wretch was actually asking for him.
Omens, portents, auspices –
Vapour that jerked like a fishing line. Springs that ran backward into the earth. An aquarius who vanished into the hot air. On the pastured lower slopes of Mount Vesuvius, shepherds had reported seeing giants. In Herculaneum, according to the men, a woman had given birth to a baby with fins instead of feet. And now an entire pool of red mullet had died in Misenum, in the space of a single afternoon, of no apparent cause.
A man must make such sense of it as he could.
He scratched his ear. ‘How far away is this villa?’
‘Please. A few hundred paces. No distance at all.’ She tugged at his arm, and he allowed himself to be pulled along. She was not an easy woman to resist, this Corelia Ampliata. Perhaps he ought at least to walk her back to her family? It was hardly safe for a woman of her age and class to be out in the streets of a naval town. He shouted over his shoulder to Corax to follow, but Corax shrugged – ‘Don’t interfere!’ he repeated – and then Attilius, almost before h
e realised what was happening, was out of the gate and into the street, and the others were lost from sight.
It was that time of day, an hour or so before dusk, when the people of the Mediterranean begin emerging from their houses. Not that the town had lost much of its heat. The stones were like bricks from a kiln. Old women sat on stools beside their porches, fanning themselves, while the men stood at the bars, drinking and talking. Thickly bearded Bessians and Dalmatians, Egyptians with gold rings in their ears, red-headed Germans, olive-skinned Greeks and Cilicians, great muscled Nubians as black as charcoal and with eyes bloodshot by wine – men from every country of the Empire, all of them desperate enough, or ambitious enough, or stupid enough, to be willing to trade twenty-five years of their lives at the oars in return for Roman citizenship. From somewhere down in the town, near the harbour front, came the piping notes of a water organ.
Corelia was mounting the steps quickly, her skirts gathered up in either hand, her slippers soft and soundless on the stone, the slave woman running on ahead. Attilius loped behind them. ‘“A few hundred paces,”’ he muttered to himself, ‘“no distance at all” – aye, but every foot of the way uphill!’ His tunic was glued to his back by sweat.
They came at last to level ground and before them was a long high wall, dun-coloured, with an arched gate set into it, surmounted by two wrought-iron dolphins leaping to exchange a kiss. The women hurried through the unguarded entrance, and Attilius, after a glance around, followed – plunging at once from noisy, dusty reality into a silent world of blue that knocked away his breath. Turquoise, lapis lazuli, indigo, sapphire – every jewelled blue that Mother Nature had ever bestowed – rose in layers before him, from crystal shallows, to deep water, to sharp horizon, to sky. The villa itself sprawled below on a series of terraces, its back to the hillside, its face to the bay, built solely for this sublime panorama. Moored to a jetty was a twenty-oared luxury cruiser, painted crimson and gold, with a carpeted deck to match.
Pompeii Page 3