Seneca started forward. “What has happened?” His brow furrowed deeply. “They have not come for your family?”
Cato scanned the room, feeling as though invaders had arrived. “Who?”
“Maius. His soldiers. They are sweeping the town for the Christ followers.”
Cato breathed deeply, trying to free his chest from the pressure of this latest news. “No. I knew nothing about it. Except that he has identified me along with you.”
Seneca said nothing. No doubt he weighed whether such an honor were justified.
“Seneca, I—I need to speak with Jeremiah.”
The man’s lips twitched into a sad smile. “Remain here.”
Seneca disappeared, and Cato waited in the chair until he was drawn to the doorway by a lilting voice in the atrium.
Flora worked in the garden, plucking blood-red blooms, clipping stray green stems, and singing of her Savior. Curious girl. Her uneven gait from shrub to shrub was unfortunate, for otherwise she was lovely. He rode a wave of guilt once more, as he did when he had seen her last. Was there not something wrong with a world that would have disposed of this infant, simply because she would never walk correctly? And was there not something extraordinarily fine about Seneca and Europa, who had saved her?
Jeremiah limped across the atrium, carrying a tray. He drew a smile from Flora, who must have seen in him a strange reflection of herself, as their disability was much the same. Cato crossed the open space to take the tray of bread and wine from Jeremiah.
“Haven’t spilled any yet.” The old man’s usual quick smile welcomed.
Cato tried to return the smile. “Nor shall you.”
They retreated to the receiving room once more. The food and drink were hospitable, though they only brought more guilt at his imposition. He did not come to have Jeremiah serve him.
Or perhaps he did, but not his physical needs.
“You are troubled.” Jeremiah sat beside him, his eyes sparkling with that inner light.
Where did one find such a light? “I have lost everything, Jeremiah.”
The slave nodded. “That is good.”
Only Jeremiah would speak cryptic and wise nonsense.
The man gripped Cato’s hand with his own strong one, skin like soft leather.
The touch made Cato want to weep.
“Emptiness always precedes filling, son.”
Cato could do nothing but look at those hands.
“Eat something.” Jeremiah released him and offered a cup of diluted wine.
The tray had been filled with small loaves of a grainy bread, a bowl of oranges, and a small pile of walnuts, their wrinkled brown shells again reminding him of Jeremiah’s hands. He took the wine and sipped at it, from courtesy rather than thirst. “Maius is spreading word about my involvement with your sect, which will cost me the election. And with it, my sister’s freedom.”
“What else?”
Those eyes, they could read his very soul. “Ariella.”
The name ruffled the old man’s peace. “She is in danger?”
Cato nodded, swallowing at the tightness of his throat. “Her former owner—Clovius Valerius of Rome—has claimed she ran away and has taken her back.”
Jeremiah sighed deeply.
Cato shuddered in response. Had he hoped the old man would offer some reassurance?
The slave shifted in his chair, perhaps to relieve the pressure on his hip. “The election. Your sister. Ariella. These are those whom you have lost?”
“What else is there?”
“There is hope.”
“Then I have lost that as well. Evil has triumphed once more, and I have done nothing.”
Jeremiah smiled, a sad and wise smile. Would that he could read every thought in the man’s heart.
“Tell me what to do, Jeremiah.” Ludicrous statement, given their positions. And the only words that made sense.
“What do you want to do?”
He stood and paced, too restless to remain in one place. “Destroy Maius! Free my sister. And Ariella.”
“Champion of the weak.”
Those words again, yet they were untrue. “It is I who am weak, Jeremiah!”
“His strength is made perfect in weakness.”
More paradox. “How can I be both weak and victorious?”
“How indeed? Do you ask in earnest, or do you only wish simple answers?”
He came to Jeremiah then, kneeled before him as he had before, and opened his heart, bruised and bloody. “I seek the truth, Jeremiah. Tell me only the truth.”
“There is so much more for you, Quintus. Abundant life, a life of His calling and your responding to do the work He has prepared for you.”
“I don’t know how, or what, He wills.”
“You have been set free from your sin, my boy. Freed for a battle yet to come, if you will join it. But first, before there can ever be victory, there must be complete surrender. His battle, His fight, not your own.”
Again, talk of surrender. Cato struggled against this paradox. Called to fight, asked to yield. Like any true warrior, under his general’s orders.
The room fell silent, as all of Pompeii had been silent today, waiting. Waiting for his decision, for his will to flow in one direction or another.
He dropped his head again and felt Jeremiah’s holy hands on him. There was a power there, and it seemed to pulse through him, to set his body trembling. But no, there was more than Jeremiah’s power at work here. The very ground beneath him shook, as it had in the theater when he had given his speech.
He lifted his eyes to Jeremiah, saw the confirmation. The earth again convulsed. He stood and gripped Jeremiah’s shoulder. “Stay here.”
In the atrium, Flora had suspended her gardening, her hand still raised above a flowering rosebush, as though she had turned to stone. Her eyes followed Cato as he ran through the courtyard to the doorway.
In the street, a roar began. Like a rumbling thunder that did not lessen, like the hoofbeats of a thousand bulls pounding through the cobbled streets, the sound rolled onward, shot upward through the soles of his feet to shake his very core.
This was no minor quake.
The incident on the day of his speech had been swift, over before he had realized what occurred. But this tremor was different. It reverberated through the street and buildings like an evil warning from the underworld, on and on. Did the spirits released from the mundus pit this morning bring destruction with them?
Cato’s gaze traveled the length of the street, saw the panic of townspeople as they turned on each other, unsure where to flee. Stone walls cracked. A column splintered and crashed to the pavement, knocking a woman to the stones. At the end of the street, he could see the mountain.
Vesuvius.
Something ominous hung above its peak. Gray and thick, like a storm cloud that had collapsed inward, condensed and threatening.
A cloud of death.
The time had come at last.
Under the rocky depths, one shifting plate at last gave way to the other, and as the victor hurtled over the vanquished, escaping gases shot upward with unrivaled force.
In the rivers below, turtles jumped out of the water. Animals were often quicker than humans at sensing doom.
Vesuvius garnered strength as the poison flowed upward within it, gathering debris, rock, ash, all it could consume on its way. The pulsing flow bulged the sloping sides impossibly, as though it would give birth to a hideous monster of death.
Above the peak, a roiling cloud of ash and rock signaled that the birth pangs had begun.
42
The dawn did not reach into the cells deep under the countryside estate of Nigidius Maius. Ariella stirred with the vague awareness that the night had passed and stretched her limbs, grown stiff with the chill of the brown muck in which she spent the hours.
She stood and walked off the numbness, willing her body and her spirit to be ready for what should come next.
But it was hours
before she saw or heard another. Had Valerius forgotten her, underground and out of sight? More likely he was sleeping off the excesses of last night. Best not to think about her brother, and what Valerius’s celebrations may have included.
Micah. The momentary joy of finding him washed over her once again. Damaged, yes. But alive. And once they were away from the stench that was Clovius Valerius, she would love Micah back to health. They would be a family. She swiped at the unbidden tears with her palm. Later. She could give way to emotion when they were safe.
For today, for this moment, she would be Scorpion Fish once again.
They came at last, two of Valerius’s slaves, with the news that her master prepared already to leave Pompeii, to return to Rome via the ship that had brought him. The two brutes seemed to enjoy dragging her upward to the daylight, though she would have come willingly, her singular focus driving her to face the vile man.
When to kill him? And how? She indulged a moment of imagination, of her trident in her hand once more, of Valerius on the ground, three prongs driven through his empty chest.
The wagon sat ready outside Maius’s villa, and a muscular horse had been harnessed to a two-wheeled gilded cart. Slaves loaded Valerius’s belongings into the wagon, his prime slave shouting directions and insults. The two who had brought her from the cell yanked her forward and lashed her wrists with a lead-rope that trailed from the wagon. The late-summer sun beat without pity on her face, and the day was still, silently watching her shame.
Micah appeared moments later to be tied to the rope beside her.
She drank in the sight of his tanned face, even his wide, white eyes, and lifted her roped hands to touch his cheek. She sent him encouragement with her eyes, but dared not speak.
He nodded, the only indication that hope also lived in him.
Perhaps Valerius meant to humiliate them with the forced march through the town, but they were together, and that was a blessing.
Blessing. Had the Creator brought them together? Or was it chance, and the evil hand of Valerius? Could she accept their reunion as His gift? Would He also bless her hand as she raised it against the evil? Unknowable.
The voices of Maius and Valerius emerged from the villa behind them. She did not turn, but fixed her eyes on the winding gravel path that led downward from the estate, into the town. Their route to the sea would not pass through much of Pompeii, and she was unlikely to see many she knew.
Unlikely to see Cato.
She inhaled against the tightness of her chest and blinked away the sting of the sun.
She let them have their laughter and their fond good-byes.
Yes, say good-bye, Maius.
Her limbs trembled with fury and tension and she coached herself to remember her training. She had only to secure a weapon somehow and find opportunity. There would be no difficulty in the task itself.
But she must also be wise. She desired more than vengeance, more than his death. She fought for freedom, as she always had. But now it would be freedom for them both. She could not risk capture or death in the pursuit of freedom, for that would be to once more abandon Micah.
A cool shadow fell against her face. She lifted her chin, eyes still trained forward.
“Rather worse for your night in the mud, I see.” Valerius’s voice mocked, but in a low and familiar whisper at her ear. “No matter. We shall make you pretty once we are at sea.”
She turned her face to his, focused on his grinning mouth, yellowed teeth, those blood-red lips. “You shall find me dead before your vile hands touch me again.”
He slapped her. His delicate fingers stung her cheek.
She tasted blood inside her mouth, swung her face back to his, and let her hatred pour from her eyes.
His nostrils flared and he shoved her backward into Micah, who kept her upright with his roped hands.
“You have grown uglier during your holiday.”
He mounted the gilded cart with a wave to Maius, and the entourage jolted forward. Ariella and Micah struggled to keep pace with the wagon. Its wheels churned dust into her lungs and her eyes burned.
Away from one despicable man, on the heels of another, they trotted downward, through the Street of Tombs and past the towering north wall of the city that separated Maius and his estate from the common man. Valerius kept to the inner east wall of the city, choosing the most direct route to the harbor. The noonday town seemed peaceful, and she remembered the strange pagan holiday.
They passed through the Marina Gate, leaving the town once again.
Good-bye, Pompeii.
One foot caught against the other, and she nearly went down. The rope bit against her wrists, bringing tears.
Boats clogged the harbor, more than Ariella would have expected. They bobbed in the sapphire-blue water, their white masts a reflection of the white sand. She inhaled the sharp tang of salt and fish, letting it purge the road dust from her chest.
Valerius’s cart was met at the beach by more slaves, perhaps his ship’s captain and oarsmen. She heard the words ill wind pass between them.
So that was the reason for the excess of ships. The current did not favor setting sail. How would this affect her plan? Would they return to Maius’s villa? When would her opportunity arrive?
They would wait, Valerius announced peevishly, though not long. He desired to reach Ostia Antica, the port of Rome, before nightfall.
Ariella and Micah were left where they stood, though the other slaves ranged themselves in the sand, shadowed by the wagon. Valerius paced the waterfront, as though his petulance would drive away the winds.
She surveyed the beach. Was this her chance? It seemed unlikely that she could free them both, find a weapon, deliver the blow, and escape unhindered. Did she need a weapon? She had been trained to kill without one.
Into her musings came a throaty growl, like a mighty beast trapped beneath the sand. Micah’s eyes met her own. “The wind?”
But it was not the wind.
On the beach, slave and sailor alike stood in silence, every head inclined to the sound.
And then came the tremors.
The sand shifted beneath their feet, but this was a deeper shifting, she could sense. She had felt it weeks ago, when Cato had been giving his speech in the theater.
One of Valerius’s slaves stood beside her. She turned on him. “Untie us. You must free us.”
He glanced at her face, her bound wrists.
“Have mercy, man. Where would we go?”
He threw a furtive look toward Valerius’s back. Their master stood at the shoreline, his stance wide and his arms extended, as though he balanced on a racing chariot. With a burst of decision, the slave released the loop of rope from the wagon’s back and freed Ariella. She did not wait for him to free Micah. She could do it herself.
The underground snarl became a roar and the tremor turned to heaving. The sea swelled and those at its edge fled backward.
Were they not safe here on the beach? No columns or statues to crush them, no roofs to collapse on their heads. They needed only to ride it out. Micah wrapped his arm around her shoulder and she pressed into his strength.
Ariella lifted her eyes to the mountain. How did it fare under the earth’s treachery?
With the question and its answer above, her courage failed.
Micah followed her gaze, and they watched as a gray-black cloud, darker than any storm cloud, churned and swirled above the mountain’s summit.
And then, then—impossible yet undeniable—with the force of a cork blown off the top of the world . . . the peak of the mountain exploded.
The noise was a thousand dragons breathing fire, a million bonfires roaring, the screaming shriek of the end of the world.
Every person on the beach fell away from its force, knocked to their backs to watch the inky gray column shoot upward from the mountain like a massive tree trunk sprouted before their eyes. The malevolent tree spread outward in branches of fury.
Lying in the sand, Arie
lla could not tear her eyes away. Her muscles had turned to water and her mouth hung slack. Shock numbed her mind. She was a rag doll thrown at the feet of a goddess and she lay nearly senseless as the wicked storm raged in the sky above the mountain.
Vesuvius’s spewing went on and on. The tree grew, like a mighty umbrella pine, impossibly high, until the spreading branches must have scraped against the floor of heaven itself.
On the beach, astonishment had turned to terror. Slaves, sailors, and townspeople scrambled to their feet, dashed left and right, bawled instructions and questions and fear.
Micah and Ariella linked arms and stood against the side of the wagon. Was this their chance? In the chaos, they could run. Was she willing to forfeit her vengeance and simply have freedom?
But where did one run while the world came to its end?
Valerius was yelling, directing his slaves on the docked ship to send the dinghy to the shore so that he could board and sail away from the disaster. Even Ariella could see the angry waves chasing each other to the sand, each one outpacing the one before.
Valerius was a fool.
But it would seem the town was full of fools, for a screaming horde of them poured from the town’s gate, seeking refuge by escaping into the Bay of Napoli.
She and Micah were caught between the sea and the masses, and chaos erupted on the beach as those without boats begged and bribed to be rescued.
She held tight to Micah in the press of people. “We must run.” Her voice was lost in the roar of the earth and the continued belching of the mountain. She pulled Micah’s head to her own. “We must run!”
He turned wide eyes on her, but she could see that he was ready.
At the water’s edge, Valerius still shouted to be put out. They would leave him to his folly.
She waited a few moments, with measured glances at the other slaves, none of whom seemed interested in anything but their own safety, then grabbed Micah’s hand and nodded.
But impossibly, Valerius was beside them, his long fingers wrapped around her upper arm, dragging her backward toward the sea. “We must sail now!” His voice was pitched toward hysteria.
She tried to shake off his death grip.
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