Pompeii

by Harris, Robert

  ‘Never. You’ve brought us all bad luck.’

  Keeping one hand on the wall, Attilius made his way cautiously down the remaining steps to the reservoir’s edge. The splash of water falling from the mouth of the Augusta, together with the smell and the melancholy light of the day’s last hour, made him feel as if he were descending into hell. There was even a rowing boat moored at his feet: a suitable ferry to carry him across the Styx.

  He tried to make a joke of it, to disguise the panic that was fastening hold of him. ‘You can be my Charon,’ he said to Corax, ‘but I don’t have a coin to pay you.’

  ‘Well, then – you are doomed to wander in hell for ever.’

  That was funny. Attilius tapped his fist against his chest, his habit when thinking, then shouted back up towards the yard, ‘Polites! Get a move on!’

  ‘Coming, aquarius!’

  The slim outline of the slave appeared in the doorway, holding a taper and a torch. He ran down and handed them to Attilius, who touched the glowing tip to the mass of tow and pitch. It ignited with a wumph and a gust of oily heat. Their shadows danced on the concrete walls.

  Attilius stepped carefully into the boat, holding the torch aloft, then turned to collect the rolled-up plans and the glass bottle. The boat was light and shallow-bottomed, used for maintenance work in the reservoir, and when Corax climbed aboard it dipped low in the water.

  I must fight my panic, thought Attilius. I must be the master.

  ‘If this had happened when Exomnius was here, what would he have done?’

  ‘I don’t know. But I tell you one thing. He knew this water better than any man alive. He would have seen this coming.’

  ‘Perhaps he did, and that was why he ran away.’

  ‘Exomnius was no coward. He didn’t run anywhere.’

  ‘Then where is he, Corax?’

  ‘I’ve told you, pretty boy, a hundred times: I don’t know.’

  The overseer leaned across, untied the rope from its mooring ring and pushed them away from the steps, then turned to sit facing Attilius and took up the oars. His face in the torchlight was swarthy, guileful, older than his forty years. He had a wife and a brood of children crammed into an apartment across the street from the reservoir. Attilius wondered why Corax hated him so much. Was it simply that he had coveted the post of aquarius for himself and resented the arrival of a younger man from Rome? Or was there something more?

  He told Corax to row them towards the centre of the Piscina and when they reached it he handed him the torch, uncorked the bottle and rolled up the sleeves of his tunic. How often had he seen his father do this, in the subterranean reservoir of the Claudia and the Anio Novus on the Esquiline Hill? The old man had shown him how each of the matrices had its own flavour, as distinct from another as different vintages of wine. The Aqua Marcia was the sweetest-tasting, drawn from the three clear springs of the River Anio; the Aqua Alsietina the foulest, a gritty lakewater, fit only for irrigating gardens; the Aqua Julia, soft and tepid; and so on. A good aquarius, his father had said, should know more than just the solid laws of architecture and hydraulics – he should have a taste, a nose, a feel for water, and for the rocks and soils through which it had passed on its journey to the surface. Lives might depend on this skill.

  An image of his father flashed into his mind. Killed before he was fifty by the lead he had worked with all his life, leaving Attilius, a teenager, as head of the family. There had not been much left of him by the end. Just a thin shroud of white skin stretched taut over sharp bone.

  His father would have known what to do.

  Holding the bottle so that its top was face down to the water, Attilius stretched over the side and plunged it in as far as he could, then slowly turned it underwater, letting the air escape in a stream of bubbles. He recorked it and withdrew it.

  Settled back in the boat, he opened the bottle again and passed it back and forth beneath his nose. He took a mouthful, gargled and swallowed. Bitter, but drinkable, just about. He passed it to Corax who swapped it for the torch and gulped the whole lot down in one go. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘It’ll do,’ he said, ‘if you mix it with enough wine.’

  The boat bumped against a pillar and Attilius noticed the widening line between the dry and damp concrete – sharply defined, already a foot above the surface of the reservoir. She was draining away faster than the Augusta could fill her.

  Panic again. Fight it.

  ‘What’s the capacity of the Piscina?’

  ‘Two hundred and eighty quinariae.’

  Attilius raised the torch towards the roof, which disappeared into the shadows about fifteen feet above them. So that meant the water was perhaps thirty-five feet deep, the reservoir two-thirds full. Suppose it now held two hundred quinariae. At Rome, they worked on the basis that one quinaria was roughly the daily requirement of two hundred people. The naval garrison at Misenum was ten thousand strong, plus, say, another ten thousand civilians.

  A simple enough calculation.

  They had water for two days. Assuming they could ration the flow to perhaps an hour at dawn and another at dusk. And assuming the concentration of sulphur at the bottom of the Piscina was as weak as it was at the top. He tried to think. Sulphur in a natural spring was warm, and therefore rose to the surface. But sulphur when it had cooled to the same temperature as the surrounding water – what did that do? Did it disperse? Or float? Or sink?

  Attilius glanced towards the northern end of the reservoir, where the Augusta emerged. ‘We should check the pressure.’

  Corax began to row with powerful strokes, steering them expertly around the labyrinth of pillars towards the falling water. Attilius held the torch in one hand and with the other he unrolled the plans, flattening them out across his knees with his forearm.

  The whole of the western end of the bay, from Neapolis to Cumae, was sulphurous – he knew that much. Green translucent lumps of sulphur were dug from the mines in the Leucogaei Hills, two miles north of the aqueduct’s main line. Then there were the hot sulphur springs around Baiae, to which convalescents came from across the Empire. There was a pool called Posidian, named after a freedman of Claudius, that was hot enough to cook meat. Even the sea at Baiae occasionally steamed with sulphur, the sick wallowing in its shallows in the hope of relief. It must be somewhere in this smouldering region – where the Sibyl had her cave and the burning holes gave access to the Underworld – that the Augusta had become polluted.

  They had reached the aqueduct’s tunnel. Corax let the boat glide for a moment, then rowed a few deft strokes in the opposite direction, bringing them to halt precisely beside a pillar. Attilius laid aside the plans and raised the torch. It flashed on an emerald sheen of green mould, then lit the giant head of Neptune, carved in stone, from whose mouth the Augusta normally gushed in a jet-black torrent. But even in the time it had taken to row from the steps the flow had dwindled. It was scarcely more than a trickle.

  Corax gave a soft whistle. ‘I never thought I’d live to see the Augusta dry. You were right to be worried, pretty boy.’ He looked at Attilius and for the first time there was a flash of fear across his face. ‘So what stars were you born under, that you’ve brought this down on us?’

  The engineer was finding it difficult to breathe. He pressed his hand to his nose again and moved the torch above the surface of the reservoir. The reflection of the light on the still black water suggested a fire in the depths.

  It was not possible, he thought. Aqueducts did not just fail – not like this, not in a matter of hours. The matrices were walled with brick, rendered with waterproof cement, and surrounded by a concrete casing a foot and a half thick. The usual problems – structural flaws, leaks, lime deposits that narrowed the channel – all these needed months, even years to develop. It had taken the Claudia a full decade gradually to close down.

  He was interrupted by a shout from the slave, Polites: ‘Aquarius!’

  He half turned his head. He could not see t
he steps for the pillars, which seemed to rise like petrified oaks from some dark and foul-smelling swamp. ‘What is it?’

  ‘There’s a rider in the yard, aquarius! He has a message that the aqueduct has failed!’

  Corax muttered, ‘We can see that for ourselves, you Greek fool.’

  Attilius reached for the plans again. ‘Which town has he come from?’ He expected the slave to shout back Baiae or Cumae. Puteoli at the very worst. Neapolis would be a disaster.

  But the reply was like a punch in the stomach: ‘Nola!’

  The messenger was so rimed with dust he looked more ghost than man. And even as he told his story – of how the water had failed in Nola’s reservoir at dawn and of how the failure had been preceded by a sharp smell of sulphur that had started in the middle of the night – a fresh sound of hooves was heard in the road outside and a second horse trotted into the yard.

  The rider dismounted smartly and offered a rolled papyrus. A message from the city fathers at Neapolis. The Augusta had gone down there at noon.

  Attilius read it carefully, managing to keep his face expressionless. There was quite a crowd in the yard by now. Two horses, a pair of riders, surrounded by the gang of aqueduct workers who had abandoned their evening meal to listen to what was happening. The commotion was beginning to attract the attention of passers-by in the street, as well as some of the local shopkeepers. ‘Hey, waterman!’ shouted the owner of the snack bar opposite. ‘What’s going on?’

  It would not take much, thought Attilius – merely the slightest breath of wind – for panic to take hold like a hillside fire. He could feel a fresh spark of it within himself. He called to a couple of slaves to close the gates to the yard and told Polites to see to it that the two messengers were given food and drink. ‘Musa, Becco – get hold of a cart and start loading it. Quicklime, puteolanum, tools – everything we might need to repair the matrix. As much as a couple of oxen can pull.’

  The two men looked at one another. ‘But we don’t know what the damage is,’ objected Musa. ‘One cartload may not be enough.’

  ‘Then we’ll pick up extra material as we pass through Nola.’

  He strode towards the aqueduct’s office, the messenger from Nola at his heels.

  ‘But what am I to tell the aediles?’ The rider was scarcely more than a boy. The hollows of his eyes were the only part of his face not caked with dirt, the soft pink discs emphasising his fearful look. ‘The priests want to sacrifice to Neptune. They say the sulphur is a terrible omen.’

  ‘Tell them we are aware of the problem.’ Attilius gestured vaguely with the plans. ‘Tell them we are organising repairs.’

  He ducked through the low entrance into the small cubicle. Exomnius had left the Augusta’s records in chaos. Bills of sale, receipts and invoices, promissory notes, legal stipulations and opinions, engineers’ reports and storeroom inventories, letters from the department of the Curator Aquarum and orders from the naval commander in Misenum – some of them twenty or thirty years old – spilled out of chests, across a table and over the concrete floor. Attilius swept the table clear with his elbow and unrolled the plans.

  Nola! How was this possible? Nola was a big town, thirty miles to the east of Misenum, and nowhere near the sulphur fields. He used his thumb to mark out the distances. With a cart and oxen it would take them the best part of two days merely to reach it. The map showed him as clearly as a painting how the calamity must have spread, the matrix emptying with mathematical precision. He traced it with his finger, his lips moving silently. Two and a half miles per hour! If Nola had gone down at dawn, then Acerrae and Atella would have followed in the middle of the morning. If Neapolis, twelve miles round the coast from Misenum, had lost its supply at noon, then Puteoli’s must have gone at the eighth hour, Cumae’s at the ninth, Baiae’s at the tenth. And now, at last, inevitably, at the twelfth, it was their turn.

  Eight towns down. Only Pompeii, a few miles upstream from Nola, so far unaccounted for. But even without it: more than two hundred thousand people without water.

  He was aware of the entrance behind him darkening, of Corax coming up and leaning against the door frame, watching him.

  He rolled up the map and tucked it under his arm. ‘Give me the key to the sluices.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Isn’t it obvious? I’m going to shut off the reservoir.’

  ‘But that’s the Navy’s water. You can’t do that. Not without the authority of the admiral.’

  ‘Then why don’t you get the authority of the admiral? I’m closing those sluices.’ For the second time that day, their faces were barely a hand’s breadth apart. ‘Listen to me, Corax. The Piscina Mirabilis is a strategic reserve. Understand? That’s what it’s there for – to be shut off in an emergency – and every moment we waste arguing we lose more water. Now give me the key, or you’ll answer for it in Rome.’

  ‘Very well. Have it your way, pretty boy.’ Without taking his eyes from Attilius’s face, he removed the key from the ring on his belt. ‘I’ll go and see the admiral all right. I’ll tell him what’s been going on. And then we’ll see who answers for what.’

  Attilius grabbed the key and pushed sideways past him, out into the yard. He shouted to the nearest slave, ‘Close the gates after me, Polites. No one is to be let in without my permission.’

  ‘Yes, aquarius.’

  There was still a crowd of curious onlookers in the street but they cleared a path to let him through. He took no notice of their questions. He turned left, then left again, down a steep flight of steps. The water organ was still piping away in the distance. Washing hung above his head, strung between the walls. People turned to stare at him as he jostled them out of his way. A girl prostitute in a saffron dress, ten years old at most, clutched at his arm and wouldn’t let go until he dug into the pouch on his belt and gave her a couple of copper coins. He saw her dart through the crowd and hand them to a fat Cappadocian – her owner, obviously – and as he hurried on he cursed his gullibility.

  The building that housed the sluice-gate was a small redbrick cube, barely taller than a man. A statue of Egeria, goddess of the water-spring, was set in a niche beside the door. At her feet lay a few stems of withered flowers and some mouldy lumps of bread and fruit – offerings left by pregnant women who believed that Egeria, consort of Numa, the Prince of Peace, would ease their delivery when their time came. Another worthless superstition. A waste of food.

  He turned the key in the lock and tugged angrily at the heavy wooden door.

  He was level now with the floor of the Piscina Mirabilis. Water from the reservoir poured under pressure down a tunnel in the wall, through a bronze grille, swirled in the open conduit at his feet, and then was channelled into three pipes that fanned out and disappeared under the flagstones behind him, carrying the supply down to the port and town of Misenum. The flow was controlled by a sluice-gate, set flush with the wall, worked by a wooden handle attached to an iron wheel. It was stiff from lack of use. He had to pound it with the heel of his hand to loosen it, but when he put his back into it, it began to turn. He wound the handle as fast as he could. The gate descended, rattling like a portcullis, gradually choking off the flow of water until at last it ceased altogether, leaving a smell of moist dust.

  Only a puddle remained in the stone channel, evaporating so rapidly in the heat he could see it shrinking. He bent down and dabbed his fingers in the wet patch, then touched them to his tongue. No taste of sulphur.

  He had done it now, he thought. Deprived the Navy of its water, in a drought, without authority, three days into his first command. Men had been stripped of their rank and sent to the treadmills for lesser crimes. It occurred to him that he had been a fool to let Corax be the first to get to the admiral. There was certain to be a court of inquiry. Even now the overseer would be making sure who got the blame.

  Locking the door to the sluice chamber, he glanced up and down the busy street. Nobody was paying him any attention. They did not know what
was about to happen. He felt himself to be in possession of some immense secret and the knowledge made him furtive. He headed down a narrow alley towards the harbour, keeping close to the wall, eyes on the gutter, avoiding people’s gaze.

  The admiral’s villa was on the far side of Misenum and to reach it the engineer had to travel the best part of half a mile – walking, mostly, with occasional panicky bursts of running – across the narrow causeway and over the revolving wooden bridge which separated the two natural harbours of the naval base.

  He had been warned about the admiral before he left Rome. ‘The commander-in-chief is Gaius Plinius,’ said the Curator Aquarum. ‘Pliny. You’ll come across him sooner or later. He thinks he knows everything about everything. Perhaps he does. He will need careful stroking. You should take a look at his latest book. The Natural History. Every known fact about Mother Nature in thirty-seven volumes.’

  There was a copy in the public library at the Porticus of Octavia. The engineer had time to read no further than the table of contents.

  ‘The world, its shape, its motion. Eclipses, solar and lunar. Thunderbolts. Music from the stars. Sky portents, recorded instances. Sky-beams, sky-yawning colours of the sky, sky-flames, Sky-wreaths, sudden rings. Eclipses. Showers of stones . . .’

  There were other books by Pliny in the library. Six volumes on oratory. Eight on grammar. Twenty volumes on the war in Germany, in which he had commanded a cavalry unit. Thirty volumes on the recent history of the Empire, which he had served as procurator in Spain and Belgian Gaul. Attilius wondered how he managed to write so much and rise so high in the imperial administration at the same time. The Curator said, ‘Because he doesn’t have a wife.’ He laughed at his own joke. ‘And he doesn’t sleep, either. You watch he doesn’t catch you out.’

  The sky was red with the setting sun and the large lagoon to his right, where the warships were built and repaired, was deserted for the evening; a few seabirds called mournfully among the reeds. To his left, in the outer harbour, a passenger ferry was approaching through the golden glow, her sails furled, a dozen oars on either side dipping slowly in unison as she steered between the anchored triremes of the imperial fleet. She was too late to be the nightly arrival from Ostia, which meant she was probably a local service. The weight of the passengers crammed on her open deck was pressing her low to the surface.