Pompeii

by Harris, Robert

  Popidius said, ‘This is the new aquarius of the aqueduct.’

  ‘I know Marcus Attilius. We’ve met, haven’t we, aquarius? May I see that?’ He took Pliny’s letter from Popidius and scanned it quickly, then glanced at Attilius. He was wearing a tunic bordered in gold, his hair was glossy, and there was the same smell of expensive unguents that the engineer had noticed the previous day.

  ‘What is your plan?’

  ‘To follow the spur from Pompeii back to its junction with the Augusta, then to work my way along the main line towards Nola until I find the break.’

  ‘And what is it you need?’

  ‘I don’t know yet exactly.’ Attilius hesitated. The appearance of Ampliatus had disconcerted him. ‘Quicklime. Puteolanum. Bricks. Timber. Torches. Men.’

  ‘How much of each?’

  ‘Perhaps six amphorae of lime to start with. A dozen baskets of puteolanum. Fifty paces of timber and five hundred bricks. As many torches as you can spare. Ten strong pairs of hands. I may need less, I may need more. It depends how badly the aqueduct is damaged.’

  ‘How soon will you know?’

  ‘One of my men will report back this afternoon.’

  Ampliatus nodded. ‘Well, if you want my opinion, your honours, I think we should do all in our power to help. Never let it be said that the ancient colony of Pompeii turned its back on an appeal from the Emperor. Besides, I have a fishery in Misenum that drinks water like Brittius here drinks wine. I want that aqueduct running again as soon as possible. What do you say?’

  The magistrates exchanged uneasy glances. Eventually Popidius said, ‘It may be that we were overhasty.’

  Only Cuspius risked a show of defiance. ‘I still think this ought to be Nola’s responsibility –’

  Ampliatus cut him off. ‘That’s settled then. I can let you have all you need, Marcus Attilius, if you’ll just be so good as to wait outside.’ He shouted over his shoulder to the steward. ‘Scutarius! Give the aquarius his shoes!’

  None of the others spoke to Attilius or looked at him. They were like naughty schoolboys discovered fighting by their master.

  The engineer collected his shoes and walked out of the tepidarium, into the gloomy passageway. The curtain was quickly drawn behind him. He leaned against the wall to pull on his shoes, trying to listen to what was being said, but he could make out nothing. From the direction of the atrium he heard a splash as someone dived into the swimming pool. This reminder that the house was busy for the holiday made up his mind for him. He dared not risk being caught eaves-dropping. He opened the second curtain and stepped back out into the dazzling sunlight. Across the atrium, beyond the tablinum, the surface of the pool was rocking from the impact of the dive. The wives of the magistrates were still gossiping at the other end, where they had been joined by a dowdy middle-aged matron who sat demurely apart, her hands folded in her lap. A couple of slaves carrying trays laden with dishes passed behind them. There was a smell of cooking. A huge feast was clearly in preparation.

  His eye was caught by a flash of darkness beneath the glittering water and an instant later the swimmer broke the surface.

  ‘Corelia Ampliata!’

  He said her name aloud, unintentionally. She did not hear him. She shook her head, and stroked her black hair away from her closed eyes, gathering it behind her with both hands. Her elbows were spread wide, her pale face tilted towards the sun, oblivious to his watching her.

  ‘Corelia!’ He whispered it, not wanting to attract the attention of the other women, and this time she turned. It took a moment for her to search him out against the glare of the atrium, but when she found him she began wading towards him. She was wearing a shift of thin material that came down almost to her knees and as her body emerged from the water she placed one dripping arm across her breasts and the other between her thighs, like some modest Venus arising from the waves. He stepped into the tablinum and walked towards the pool, past the funeral masks of the Popidii clan. Red ribbons linked the images of the dead, showing who was related to whom, in a criss-cross pattern of power stretching back for generations.

  ‘Aquarius,’ she hissed, ‘you must leave this place!’ She was standing on the circular steps that led out of the pool. ‘Get out! Go! My father is here, and if he sees you –’

  ‘Too late for that. We’ve met.’ But he drew back slightly, so that he was hidden from the view of the women at the other end of the pool. I ought to look away, he thought. It would be the honourable thing to do. But he could not take his eyes off her. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘What am I doing here?’ She regarded him as if he were an idiot and leaned toward him. ‘Where else should I be? My father owns this house.’

  At first he did not fully take in what she was saying. ‘But I was told that Lucius Popidius lived here –’

  ‘He does.’

  He was still confused. ‘Then – ?’

  ‘We are to be married.’ She said it flatly and shrugged, and there was something terrible in the gesture, an utter hopelessness, and suddenly all was clear to him – the reason for Ampliatus’s unannounced appearance, Popidius’s deference to him, the way the others had followed his lead. Somehow Ampliatus had contrived to buy the roof from over Popidius’s head and now he was going to extend his ownership completely, by marrying off his daughter to his former master. The thought of that ageing playboy, with his plucked and hairless body, sharing a bed with Corelia filled him with an unexpected anger, even though he told himself it was none of his business.

  ‘But surely a man as old as Popidius is already married?’

  ‘He was. He’s been forced to divorce.’

  ‘And what does Popidius think of such an arrangement?’

  ‘He thinks it is contemptible, of course, to make a match so far beneath him – as you do, clearly.’

  ‘Not at all, Corelia,’ he said quickly. He saw that she had tears in her eyes. ‘On the contrary. I should say you were worth a hundred Popidii. A thousand.’

  ‘I hate him,’ she said. But whether she meant Popidius or her father he could not tell.

  From the passage came the sound of rapid footsteps and Ampliatus’s voice, yelling, ‘Aquarius!’

  She shuddered. ‘Please leave, I beg you. You were a good man to have tried to help me yesterday. But don’t let him trap you, as he’s trapped the rest of us.’

  Attilius said stiffly, ‘I am a freeborn Roman citizen, on the staff of the Curator Aquarum, in the service of the Emperor, here on official business to repair the imperial aqueduct – not some slave, to be fed to his eels. Or an elderly woman, for that matter, to be beaten half to death.’

  It was her turn to be shocked. She put her hands to her mouth. ‘Atia?’

  ‘Atia, yes – is that her name? Last night I found her lying in the street and took her back to my quarters. She had been whipped senseless and left out to die like an old dog.’

  ‘Monster!’ Corelia stepped backwards, her hands still pressed to her face, and sank into the water.

  ‘You take advantage of my good nature, aquarius!’ said Ampliatus. He was advancing across the tablinum. ‘I told you to wait for me, that was all.’ He glared at Corelia – ‘You should know better, after what I told you yesterday!’ – then shouted across the pool – ‘Celsia!’ – and the mousy woman Attilius had noticed earlier jerked up in her chair. ‘Get our daughter out of the pool! It’s unseemly for her to show her tits in public!’ He turned to Attilius. ‘Look at them over there, like a lot of fat hens on their nests!’ He flapped his arms at them, emitting a series of squawks – cluuuuck, cluck-cluck-cluck! – and the women raised their fans in distaste. ‘They won’t fly, though. Oh no. One thing I’ve learned about our Roman aristocrat – he’ll go anywhere for a free meal. And his women are even worse.’ He called out: ‘I’ll be back in an hour! Don’t dish up without me!’ And with a gesture to Attilius that he should fall in behind him, the new master of the House of the Popidii turned on his heel and strode towards t
he door.

  As they passed through the atrium, Attilius glanced back at the pool where Corelia was still submerged, as if she thought that by completely immersing herself she could wash away what was happening.

  Hora Sexta

  [12:00 hours]

  ‘As magma rises from depth, it undergoes a large pressure decrease. At a 10-kilometre depth, for example, pressures are about 300 megapascals (MPa), or 3000 times the atmospheric pressure. Such a large pressure change has many consequences for the physical properties and flow of magma.’

  Encyclopaedia of Volcanoes

  Ampliatus had a litter and eight slaves waiting outside on the pavement, dressed in the same crimson livery as the porter and steward. They scrambled to attention as their master appeared but he walked straight past them, just as he ignored the small crowd of petitioners squatting in the shade of the wall across the street, despite the public holiday, who called out his name in a ragged chorus.

  ‘We’ll walk,’ he said, and set off up the slope towards the crossroads, maintaining the same fast pace as he had in the house. Attilius followed at his shoulder. It was noon, the air scalding, the roads quiet. The few pedestrians who were about mostly hopped into the gutter as Ampliatus approached or drew back into the shop doorways. He hummed to himself as he walked, nodding an occasional greeting, and when the engineer looked back he saw that they were trailing a retinue that would have done credit to a senator – first, at a discreet distance, the slaves with the letter, and behind them the little straggle of supplicants: men with the dejected, exhausted look that came from dancing attendance on a great man since before dawn and knowing themselves doomed to disappointment.

  About halfway up the hill to the Vesuvius Gate – the engineer counted three city blocks – Ampliatus turned right, crossed the street, and opened a little wooden door set into a wall. He put his hand on Attilius’s shoulder to usher him inside and Attilius felt his flesh recoil at the millionaire’s touch.

  ‘Don’t let him trap you, as he’s trapped the rest of us.’

  He eased himself clear of the grasping fingers. Ampliatus closed the door behind them and he found himself standing in a big, deserted space, a building site, occupying the best part of the entire block. To the left was a brick wall surmounted by a sloping, red-tiled roof – the back of a row of shops – with a pair of high wooden gates set into the middle; to the right, a complex of new buildings, very nearly finished, with large modern windows looking out across the expanse of scrub and rubble. A rectangular tank was being excavated directly beneath the windows.

  Ampliatus had his hands on his hips and was studying the engineer’s reaction. ‘So then. What do you think I’m building? I’ll give you one guess.’

  ‘Baths.’

  ‘That’s it. What do you think?’

  ‘It’s impressive,’ said Attilius. And it was, he thought. At least as good as anything he had seen under construction in Rome in the past ten years. The brickwork and the columns were beautifully finished. There was a sense of tranquillity – of space, and peace, and light. The high windows faced south-west to take advantage of the afternoon sun, which was just beginning to flood into the interior. ‘I congratulate you.’

  ‘We had to demolish almost the whole block to make way for it,’ said Ampliatus, ‘and that was unpopular. But it will be worth it. It will be the finest baths outside Rome. And more modern than anything you’ve got up there.’ He looked around, proudly. ‘We provincials, you know, when we put our minds to it, we can still show you big city men from Rome a thing or two.’ He cupped his hands to his mouth and bellowed, ‘Januarius!’

  From the other side of the yard came an answering shout, and a tall man appeared at the top of a flight of stairs. He recognised his master and ran down the steps and across the yard, wiping his hands on his tunic, bobbing his head in a series of bows as he came closer.

  ‘Januarius – this is my friend, the aquarius of the Augusta. He works for the Emperor!’

  ‘Honoured,’ said Januarius, and gave Attilius another bow.

  ‘Januarius is one of my foremen. Where are the lads?’

  ‘In the barracks, sir.’ He looked terrified, as if he had been caught idling. ‘It’s the holiday –’

  ‘Forget the holiday! We need them here now. Ten did you say you needed, aquarius? Better make it a dozen. Januarius, send for a dozen of the strongest men we have. Brebix’s gang. Tell them they’re to bring food and drink for a day. What else was it you needed?’

  ‘Quicklime,’ began Attilius, ‘puteolanum –’

  ‘That’s it. All that stuff. Timber. Bricks. Torches – don’t forget torches. He’s to have everything he needs. And you’ll require transport, won’t you? A couple of teams of oxen?’

  ‘I’ve already hired them.’

  ‘But you’ll have mine – I insist.’

  ‘No.’ Ampliatus’s generosity was starting to make the engineer uneasy. First would come the gift, then the gift would turn out to be a loan, and then the loan would prove a debt impossible to pay back. That was no doubt how Popidius had ended up losing his house. A hustler’s town. He glanced at the sky. ‘It’s noon. The oxen should be arriving down at the harbour by now. I have a slave waiting there with our tools.’

  ‘Who did you hire from?’

  ‘Baculus.’

  ‘Baculus! That drunken thief! My oxen would be better. At least let me have a word with him. I’ll get you a fat discount.’

  Attilius shrugged. ‘If you insist.’

  ‘I do. Fetch the men from the barracks, Januarius, and send a boy to the docks to have the aquarius’s wagons brought here for loading. I’ll show you around while we’re waiting, aquarius.’ And again his hand fell upon the engineer’s shoulder. ‘Come.’

  Baths were not a luxury. Baths were the foundation of civilisation. Baths were what raised even the meanest citizen of Rome above the level of the wealthiest hairy-arsed barbarian. Baths instilled the triple disciplines of cleanliness, healthfulness and strict routine. Was it not to feed the baths that the aqueducts had been invented in the first place? Had not the baths spread the Roman ethos across Europe, Africa and Asia as effectively as the legions, so that in whatever town in this far-flung empire a man might find himself, he could at least be sure of finding this one precious piece of home?

  Such was the essence of Ampliatus’s lecture as he conducted Attilius around the empty shell of his dream. The rooms were unfurnished and smelled strongly of fresh paint and stucco and their footsteps echoed as they passed through the cubicles and exercise rooms into the main part of the building. Here, the frescoes were already in place. Views of the green Nile, studded with basking crocodiles, flowed into scenes from the lives of the gods. Triton swam beside the Argonauts and led them back to safety. Neptune transformed his son into a swan. Perseus saved Andromeda from the sea-monster sent to attack the Ethiopians. The pool in the caldarium was built to take twenty-eight paying customers at a time, and as the bathers lay on their backs they would gaze up at a sapphire ceiling, lit by five hundred lamps and swimming with every species of marine life, and believe themselves to be floating in an undersea grotto.

  To attain the luxury he demanded, Ampliatus was employing the most modern techniques, the best materials, the most skilful craftsmen in Italy. There were Neapolitan glass windows in the dome of the laconium – the sweating-room – as thick as a man’s finger. The floors and the walls and the ceilings were hollow, the furnace that heated the cavities so powerful that even if snow lay on the ground, the air inside would be sweltering enough to melt a man’s flesh. It was built to withstand an earthquake. All the main fittings – pipes, drains, grills, vents, taps, stop-cocks, shower-nozzles, even the handles to flush the latrines – were of brass. The lavatory seats were Phrygian marble, with elbow rests carved in the shape of dolphins and chimeras. Hot and cold running water throughout. Civilisation.

  Attilius had to admire the vision of the man. Ampliatus took so much pride in showing him everythi
ng it was almost as if he was soliciting an investment. And the truth was that if the engineer had had any money – if most of his salary had not already been sent back home to his mother and sister – he might well have given him every last coin, for he had never encountered a more persuasive salesman than Numerius Popidius Ampliatus.

  ‘How soon before you’re finished?’

  ‘I should say a month. I need to bring in the carpenters. I want some shelves, a few cupboards. I thought of putting down sprung wood floors in the changing room. I was considering pine.’

  ‘No,’ said Attilius. ‘Use alder.’

  ‘Alder? Why?’

  ‘It won’t rot in contact with water. I’d use pine – or perhaps a cypress – for the shutters. But it would need to be something from the lowlands, where the sun shines. Don’t touch pine from the mountains. Not for a building of this quality.’

  ‘Any other advice?’

  ‘Always use timber cut in the autumn, not the spring. Trees are pregnant in the spring and the wood is weaker. For clamping, use olive wood, scorched – it will last for a century. But you probably know all that.’

  ‘Not at all. I’ve built a lot, it’s true, but I’ve never understood much about wood and stone. It’s money I understand. And the great thing about money is that it doesn’t matter when you harvest it. It’s an all-year crop.’ He laughed at his own joke and turned to look at the engineer. There was something unnerving about the intensity of his gaze, which was not steady, but which shifted, as if he were constantly measuring different aspects of whomever he addressed, and Attilius thought, No, it’s not money you understand, it’s men – their strengths and their weaknesses; when to flatter, when to frighten. ‘And you, aquarius?’ Ampliatus said quietly. ‘What is it that you know?’

  ‘Water.’

  ‘Well, that’s an important thing to know. Water is at least as valuable as money.’

  ‘Is it? Then why aren’t I a rich man?’

  ‘Perhaps you could be.’ He made the remark lightly, left it floating for a moment beneath the massive dome, and then went on: ‘Do you ever stop to think how curiously the world is ordered, aquarius? When this place is open, I shall make another fortune. And then I shall use that fortune to make another, and another. But without your aqueduct, I could not build my baths. That’s a thought, is it not? Without Attilius: no Ampliatus.’