Pompeii

by Harris, Robert

  When Musa came back Attilius handed him the torch. He tied one end of the rope around his waist and sat on the edge of the open manhole. He muttered, ‘Theseus in the labyrinth.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Never mind. Just make sure you don’t let go of the other end, there’s a good fellow.’

  Three feet of earth, thought Attilius, then two of masonry and then six of nothing from the top of the tunnel roof to the floor. Eleven feet in all. I had better land well. He turned and lowered himself into the narrow shaft, his fingers holding tight to the lip of the manhole, and hung there for a moment, suspended. How many times had he done this? And yet never in more than a decade had he lost the sense of panic at finding himself entombed beneath the earth. It was his secret dread, never confessed to anyone, not even to his father. Especially not to his father. He shut his eyes and let himself drop, bending his knees as he landed to absorb the shock. He crouched there for a moment, recovering his balance, the stink of sulphur in his nostrils, then cautiously felt outwards with his hands. The tunnel was only three feet wide. Dry cement beneath his fingers. Darkness when he opened his eyes – as dark as when they were closed. He stood, squeezed himself back a pace and shouted up to Musa, ‘Throw down the torch!’

  The flame guttered as it fell and for a moment he feared it had gone out, but when he bent to take the handle it flared again, lighting the walls. The lower part was encrusted with lime deposited by the water over the years. Its roughened, bulging surface looked more like the wall of a cave than anything man-made and he thought how quickly Nature seized back what She had yielded – brickwork was crumbled by rain and frost, roads were buried under green drifts of weeds, aqueducts were clogged by the very water they were built to carry. Civilisation was a relentless war which Man was doomed to lose eventually. He picked at the lime with his thumbnail. Here was another example of Exomnius’s idleness. The lime was almost as thick as his finger. It ought to have been scraped back every couple of years. No maintenance work had been done on this stretch for at least a decade.

  He turned awkwardly in the confined space, holding the torch in front of him, and strained his eyes into the darkness. He could see nothing. He began to walk, counting each pace, and when he reached eighteen he gave a murmur of surprise. It was not simply that the tunnel was entirely blocked – he had expected that – but rather it seemed as if the floor had been driven upwards, pushed from below by some irresistible force. The thick concrete bed on which the channel rested had been sheared and a section of it sloped towards the roof. He heard Musa’s muffled shout behind him: ‘Can you see it?’

  ‘Yes, I see it!’

  The tunnel narrowed dramatically. He had to get down on his knees and shuffle forwards. The fracturing of the base had, in turn, buckled the walls and collapsed the roof. Water was seeping through a compressed mass of bricks and earth and lumps of concrete. He scraped at it with his free hand, but the stench of sulphur was at its strongest here and the flames of his torch began to dwindle. He backed away quickly, reversing all the way to the shaft of the manhole. Looking up he could just make out the faces of Musa and Corvinus framed by the evening sky. He leaned his torch against the tunnel wall.

  ‘Hold the rope fast. I’m coming out.’ He untied it from around his waist and gave it a sharp pull. The faces of the men had vanished. ‘Ready?’

  ‘Yes!’

  He tried not to think of what might happen if they let him fall. He grasped the rope with his right hand and hauled himself up, then grabbed it with his left and hauled again. The rope swung wildly. He got his head and shoulders into the inspection shaft and for a moment he thought his strength would let him down but another heave with each hand brought his knees into contact with the aperture and he was able to wedge his back against the side of the shaft. He decided it was easier to let go of the rope and to work himself up, pushing his body up with his knees and then with his back, until his arms were over the side of the manhole and he was able to eject himself into the fresh night air.

  He lay on the ground, recovering his breath as Musa and Corvinus watched him. A full moon was rising.

  ‘Well?’ said Musa. ‘What did you make of it?’

  The engineer shook his head. ‘I’ve never come across anything like it. I’ve seen roof falls and I’ve seen land slips on the sides of mountains. But this? This looks as though an entire section of the floor has just been shifted upwards. That’s new to me.’

  ‘Corax said exactly the same.’

  Attilius got to his feet and peered down the shaft. His torch was still burning on the tunnel floor. ‘This land,’ he said bitterly. ‘It looks solid enough. But it’s no more firm than water.’ He started walking, retracing his steps along the course of the Augusta. He counted off eighteen paces and stopped. Now that he studied the ground more closely he saw that it was bulging slightly. He scraped a mark with the edge of his foot and walked on, counting again. The swollen section did not seem very wide. Six yards, perhaps, or eight. It was difficult to be precise. He made another mark. Away to his left, Ampliatus’s men were still clowning around in the lake.

  He experienced a sudden rush of optimism. Actually, it wasn’t too big, this blockage. The more he pondered it, the less likely it seemed to him to have been the work of an earthquake, which could easily have shaken the roof down along an entire section – now that would have been a disaster. But this was much more localised: more as if the land, for some strange reason, had risen a yard or two along a narrow line.

  He turned in a full circle. Yes, he could see it now. The ground had heaved. The matrix had been obstructed. At the same time the pressure of the movement had opened a crack in the tunnel wall. The water had escaped into the depression and formed a lake. But if they could clear the blockage and let the Augusta drain . . .

  He decided at that moment that he would not send Corvinus back to Abellinum. He would try to fix the Augusta overnight. To confront the impossible: that was the Roman way! He cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted to the men. ‘All right, gentlemen! The baths are closing! Let’s get to work!’

  Women did not often travel alone along the public highways of Campania and, as Corelia passed them, the peasants working in the dried-up, narrow fields turned to stare at her. Even some brawny farmer’s wife, as broad as she was tall and armed with a stout hoe, might have hesitated to venture out unprotected at vespera. But an obviously rich young girl? On a fine-looking horse? How juicy a prize was that? Twice men stepped out into the road and attempted to block her path or grab at the reins, but each time she spurred her mount onwards and after a few hundred paces they gave up trying to chase her.

  She knew the route the aquarius had taken from her eavesdropping that afternoon. But what had sounded a simple enough journey in a sunlit garden – following the line of the Pompeii aqueduct to the point where it joined the Augusta – was a terrifying undertaking when actually attempted at dusk and by the time she reached the vineyards on the foothills of Vesuvius she was wishing she had never come. It was true what her father said of her – headstrong, disobedient, foolish, that she acted first and thought about it afterwards. These were the familiar charges he had flung at her the previous evening in Misenum, after the death of the slave, as they were embarking to return to Pompeii. But it was too late to turn back now.

  Work was ending for the day and lines of exhausted, silent slaves, shackled together at the ankle, were shuffling beside the road in the twilight. The clank of their chains against the stones and the flick of the overseer’s whip across their backs were the only sounds. She had heard about such wretches, crammed into the prison blocks attached to the larger farms and worked to death within a year or two: she had never actually seen them close up. Occasionally a slave found the energy to raise his eyes from the dirt and meet her glance; it was like staring through a hole into hell.

  And yet she would not give in, even as nightfall emptied the road of traffic and the line of the aqueduct became harder to follow. The reassu
ring sight of the villas on the lower slopes of the mountain gradually dissolved, to be replaced by isolated points of torch-light and lamplight, winking in the darkness. Her horse slowed to a walk and she swayed in the saddle in time with its plodding motion.

  It was hot. She was thirsty. (Naturally, she had forgotten to bring any water: that was something the slaves always carried for her.) She was sore where her clothes chafed against her sweating skin. Only the thought of the aquarius and the danger he was in kept her moving. Perhaps she would be too late? Perhaps he had been murdered already? She was just beginning to wonder whether she would ever catch up with him when the heavy air seemed to turn solid and to hum around her, and an instant later, from deep inside the mountain to her left, came a loud crack. Her horse reared, pitching her backwards, and she was almost thrown, the reins snapping through her sweaty fingers, her damp legs failing to grip its heaving flanks. When it plunged forwards again and set off at a gallop she only saved herself by wrapping her fingers tightly in its thick mane and clinging for her life.

  It must have charged for a mile or more and when at last it began to slow and she was able to raise her head she found that they had left the road and were cantering over open ground. She could hear water somewhere near and the horse must have heard it, too, or smelled it, because it turned and began walking towards the sound. Her cheek had been pressed close to the horse’s neck, her eyes shut tight, but now, as she raised her head, she could make out white heaps of stone and a low brick wall that seemed to enclose an enormous well. The horse bent to drink. She whispered to it, and gently, so as not to alarm it, dismounted. She was trembling with shock.

  Her feet sank into mud. Far in the distance she could see the lights of camp fires.

  Attilius’s first objective was to remove the debris from underground: no easy task. The tunnel was only wide enough for one man at a time to confront the obstruction, to swing a pick-axe and dig with a shovel, and once a basket was filled it had to be passed along the matrix from hand to hand until it reached the bottom of the inspection shaft, then attached to a rope and hauled to the surface, emptied, and sent back again, by which time a second basket had already been loaded and dispatched on its way.

  Attilius, in his usual way, had taken the first turn with the pick. He tore a strip from his tunic and tied it round his mouth and nose to try to reduce the smell of the sulphur. Hacking away at the brick and earth and then shovelling it into the basket was bad enough. But trying to wield the axe in the cramped space and still find the force to smash the concrete into manageable lumps was a labour fit for Hercules. Some of the fragments took two men to carry and before long he had scraped his elbows raw against the walls of the tunnel. As for the heat, compounded by the sweltering night, the sweating bodies and the burning torches – that was worse than he imagined it could be even in the gold mines of Hispania. But still, Attilius had a sense of progress, and that gave him extra strength. He had found the spot where the Augusta was choked. All his problems would be overcome if he could clear these few narrow yards.

  After a while, Brebix tapped him on the shoulder and offered to take over. Attilius gratefully handed him the pick and watched in admiration as the big man, despite the fact that his bulk completely filled the tunnel, swung it as easily as if it were a toy. The engineer squeezed back along the line and the others shifted to make room for him. They were working as a team now, like a single body: the Roman way again. And whether it was the restorative effects of their bathe, or relief at having a specific task to occupy their thoughts, the mood of the men appeared transformed. He began to think that perhaps they were not such bad fellows after all. You could say what you liked about Ampliatus: at least he knew how to train a slave-gang. He took the heavy basket from the man beside him – the same man, he noticed, whose wine he had kicked away – turned and shuffled with it to the next in the line.

  Gradually he lost track of time, his world restricted to this narrow few feet of tunnel, his sensations to the ache of his arms and back, the cuts on his hands from the sharp debris, the pain of his skinned elbows, the suffocating heat. He was so absorbed that at first he did not hear Brebix shouting to him.

  ‘Aquarius! Aquarius!’

  ‘Yes?’ He flattened himself against the wall and edged past the men, aware for the first time that the water in the tunnel was up to his ankles. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Look for yourself.’ Attilius took a torch from the man behind him and held it up close to the compacted mass of the blockage. At first glance it looked solid enough, but then he saw that it was seeping water everywhere. Tiny rivulets were running down the oozing bulk, as if it had broken into a sweat. ‘See what I mean?’ Brebix prodded it with the axe. ‘If this lot goes, we’ll be drowned like rats in a sewer.’

  Attilius was aware of the silence behind him. The slaves had all stopped work and were listening. Looking back he saw that they had already cleared four or five yards of debris. So what was left to hold back the weight of the Augusta? A few feet? He did not want to stop. But he did not want to kill them all, either.

  ‘All right,’ he said, reluctantly. ‘Clear the tunnel.’

  They needed no second telling, leaning the torches up against the walls, dropping their tools and baskets and lining up for the rope. No sooner had one man climbed it, his feet disappearing into the inspection shaft, than another had it in his hands and was hauling himself to safety. Attilius followed Brebix up the tunnel and by the time they reached the manhole they were the only ones left below ground.

  Brebix offered him the rope. Attilius refused it. ‘No. You go. I’ll stay down and see what else can be done.’ He realised Brebix was looking at him as if he were mad. ‘I’ll fasten the rope around me for safety. When you get to the top, untie it from the wagon and pay out enough for me to reach the end of the tunnel. Keep a firm hold.’

  Brebix shrugged. ‘Your choice.’

  As he turned to climb, Attilius caught his arm. ‘You are strong enough to hold me, Brebix?’

  The gladiator grinned briefly. ‘You – and your fucking mother!’

  Despite his weight, Brebix ascended the rope as nimbly as a monkey, and then Attilius was alone. As he knotted the rope around his waist for a second time he thought that perhaps he was mad, but there seemed no alternative, for until the tunnel was drained they could not repair it, and he did not have the time to wait for all the water to seep through the obstruction. He tugged on the rope. ‘All right, Brebix?’

  ‘Ready!’

  He picked up his torch and began moving back along the tunnel, the water above his ankles now, sloshing around his shins as he stepped over the abandoned tools and baskets. He moved slowly, so that Brebix could pay out the rope, and by the time he reached the debris he was sweating, from nerves as much as from the heat. He could sense the weight of the Augusta behind it. He transferred the torch into his left hand and with his right began pulling at the exposed end of a brick that was level with his face, working it up and down and from side to side. A small gap was what he needed: a controlled release of pressure from somewhere near the top. At first the brick wouldn’t budge. Then water started to bubble around it and suddenly it shot through his fingers, propelled by a jet that fired it past his head, so close that it grazed his ear.

  He cried out and backed away as the area around the leak bulged then sprang apart, peeling outwards and downwards in a V – all of this occurring in an instant, yet somehow slowly enough for him to register each individual stage of the collapse – before a wall of water descended over him, smashing him backwards, knocking the torch out of his hand and submerging him in darkness. He hurtled underwater very fast – on his back, head-first – swept along the tunnel, scrabbling for a purchase on the smooth cement render of the matrix, but there was nothing he could grip. The surging current rolled him, flipped him over on to his stomach, and he felt a flash of pain as the rope snapped tight beneath his ribs, folding him and jerking him upwards, grazing his back against the roof. For a momen
t he thought he was saved, only for the rope to go slack again and for him to plunge to the bottom of the tunnel, the current sweeping him on – on like a leaf in a gutter – on into the darkness.

  Nocte Concubia

  [22:07 hours]

  ‘Many observers have commented on the tendency for eruptions to be initiated or become stronger at times of full moon when the tidal stresses in the crust are greatest.’

  Volcanology (second edition)

  Ampliatus had never cared much for Vulcanalia. The festival marked that point in the calendar when nights fell noticeably earlier and mornings had to start by candlelight: the end of the promise of summer and the start of the long, melancholy decline into winter. And the ceremony itself was distasteful. Vulcan dwelt in a cave beneath a mountain and spread devouring fire across the earth. All creatures went in fear of him, except for fish, and so – on the principle that gods, like humans, desire most that which is least attainable – he had to be appeased by a sacrifice of fish thrown alive on to a burning pyre.

  It was not that Ampliatus was entirely lacking in religious feeling. He always liked to see a good-looking animal slaughtered – the placid manner of a bull, say, as it plodded towards the altar, and the way it stared at the priest so bemusedly; then the stunning and unexpected blow from the assistant’s hammer and the flash of the knife as its throat was cut; the way it fell, as stiff as a table, with its legs sticking out; the crimson gouts of blood congealing in the dust and the yellow sac of guts boiling from its slit belly for inspection by the haruspices. Now that was religious. But to see hundreds of small fish tossed into the flames by the superstitious citizenry as they filed past the sacred fire, to watch the silvery bodies writhing and springing in the heat: there was nothing noble in it as far as he was concerned.