City on Fire

by Tracy L. Higley

  Maius wavered on his feet, took a step backward.

  “‘The wicked are like chaff that the wind blows away. For the Lord watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.’”

  The words were not his own. Never had he even heard them spoken. He was a mouthpiece only, a willing tool in the hands of a mighty God.

  This is what it means to be a champion for God.

  “Nigidia.” He looked into the girl’s frightened eyes, her gaze skittering around the room in terror. “Nigidia, look at me.” She focused on him at last.

  “We are leaving now. Come to me.”

  Maius’s lips drew back from his teeth and a hiss like that of a snake rushed from him. The unnatural sound filled the room, but the man did not move.

  “Nigidia, now.” He spoke to the girl as a father to a daughter. Her own father did not release his grip on the girl.

  “What are you doing, Portius Cato?”

  “I am taking the only good thing you have, Maius. And I am leaving you to the demons you worship, to be judged along with them.”

  Nigidia did not take her eyes from him.

  He nodded slowly, passing his strength to her, willing her to move. And then he saw something shift in her blue eyes, saw freedom unfold in her expression, and knew that she had passed through the unseen veil herself, into the arms of a Savior, mighty to deliver.

  Her head lifted to the beams above her for a moment, and a smile broke across her face like the coming of dawn in this impossibly long night.

  She stepped aside, Maius’s hold on her broken.

  Maius flailed out to grab her, but did not move toward her. She sidestepped his clutching hand, staring at it as though it were a foreign object.

  Cato held his sword outstretched, pinning Maius to the ground. “‘You lifted praise to the gods of silver and gold, of bronze, iron, wood, and stone, which do not see and cannot hear or understand. You have not honored the God who carries your life and all your ways in His hand.’”

  Nigidia seemed to float across the room until she reached his side.

  He nudged her to stand at his back.

  Maius’s chest heaved, and flecks of white dotted his mouth. He glanced back and forth between Cato and his daughter. “You think you have defeated me?”

  The election. Cato smiled. Such matters seemed to belong to another world. There would be no election now. And yet it had never been about the election, had it? He had always been meant to defeat the evil that Maius represented, and this he had done, here in the man’s own villa, through a power not his own.

  “Not I, Maius. The One True God has defeated you. You and your gods.” Again the words that were from elsewhere. “Your gods hold sway over the hearts of the Empire now. But it will not always be thus. A day is coming when even the names of those you worship will be forgotten. Even then, the One God will make His name great, and His people will remain!”

  Beside him, Cato felt Nigidia draw herself up, his ally against the evil she had known. Maius saw it too, and the loss of her seemed to steal whatever arrogance remained. His knees buckled, and he lurched forward onto a couch.

  Cato pulled Nigidia with him, away from the triclinium and toward the hall that led to freedom.

  And behind them, Maius began to scream.

  48

  Ariella ducked through the opening to Maius’s private cells, leaving Cato to contend with Maius in the triclinium above.

  Would she face guards at the bottom? She adjusted her grip on her sword and moved downward on silent feet into the darkness.

  The cells were nothing more than a mud hole beneath the house, but the fact that Maius kept such a place spoke much about his character.

  Little light filtered down the steps, and no torch extended from the wall socket at the bottom. Ariella felt her way along the narrow channel, tracing the wall with her left hand, while her sword hand remained extended.

  There appeared to be no guard. Small wonder, given the destruction that reigned above. If Maius had not dismissed them, they likely fled their posts.

  “Portia?” She whispered the name, unsure why she felt the need for stealth, except that the place seemed unholy, as though she trod in the domain of Rome’s underworld. She breathed a prayer to HaShem once more and felt His presence.

  No answer returned to her. She called for the woman again, then paused to listen for any sign of life. A rattled breathing sounded from beyond.

  Ariella edged forward. She had been insensible with rage when Maius had consigned her to his cells and barely remembered the arrangement of them. That there was no latrine she remembered well, and the smell disgusted and angered her.

  She reached a small barred gate, its post anchored in nothing more than solid dirt. The latch would require a key, but she saw none about.

  So Maius would leave Portia to die. Not surprising. His grudge against Portia’s brother had become much more than personal or even political.

  “Portia, are you there?” She drew up close to the gate and tried to discern something in the dim light. A whitish form on the ground. Ariella heard again the labored breath.

  Whether it was the woman she sought she could not be certain, but whoever it was would perish if Ariella did not open the gate.

  She searched the murk for a tool, found nothing, and set to work on the dirt around the latch with her sword. Pity about the dullness it would cause, but in the past hours she had needed a shovel more than a sword, and it was the best she had.

  The dirt gave way with difficulty, and Ariella felt her neck dampen with the effort. In the end, it was thoughts of Maius, his feast with Valerius, and the beliefs the two men shared that gave her the furious energy to hack without mercy at the latch and the earth that held it. The latch became to her the bondage the two men forced upon others, and her sword the instrument of freedom. A frenzy of redemption swept her and she drove at the dirt again and again, until her hands blistered and her muscles ached.

  At last, the latch gave way with a thwack. She kicked at the gate. Inside the cell she heard the scuttle of rats and made out a prone body. She bent to the form, felt leg and arm and face, chilled with a fine sheen of sweat. “Portia, I am Ariella. A friend of your brother.”

  “Hmm.” The woman stirred and shook her head.

  “Can you stand?” She switched her sword to the other hand and slipped her free arm under Portia’s body.

  Portia struggled in her grasp and moaned. “Leave me be.” The voice was cracked and hoarse, the flesh too warm. A fever, perhaps. Could she carry the half-conscious woman up the steps?

  “Portia!” she whispered harshly into her ear, trying to rouse her. “It is time to leave. Quintus waits for you.”

  “Quintus?”

  In the darkness, Ariella saw the woman’s eyes flutter open. “Yes, he is aboveground. You must stand. It is time to leave this place. Time to go home.”

  “Home.”

  The word was uttered with heartbreaking simplicity. Ariella cradled her body. “Come, Portia. Let me take you home.”

  She succeeded in getting the woman to her feet, pulling her through the cell door and toward the steps. The light that drifted down from the torches above shadowed Portia’s face, but still Ariella saw a reflection of Cato’s features there and her heart swelled with a love for the woman, because she was his sister. She felt the pain of Portia’s imprisonment in her own body.

  The steps were steep and painstaking, with Portia propped on her. Above them, she could make out angry words, but not their meaning.

  They reached the head of the steps where the light was stronger, and Ariella looked over Portia’s chalky face and bloodless lips. Even if they should escape Maius, how would she make it from the northern outskirts of the city, all the way to the south wall?

  She saw Cato at once, exactly where she had left him, feet planted at the entrance to the triclinium. Had he not moved?

  Maius yelled to him, something about defeat, and Nigidia drifted
across the feast room, away from her father. Portia bent her head to Ariella’s shoulder as though she would sleep.

  She watched as Cato drew himself up and delivered words that sounded to her ears more like prophecy than argument, a denouncing of Maius’s gods, indeed of all the Roman idols, and the pledge that the Holy One would ultimately triumph.

  He spoke as a Jew. And yet more than a countryman. She could see it in the set of his jaw, read it in the corded muscles of his outstretched arm, hear it in the force of his voice. He had become a follower of the Jewish Messiah, had given his heart and his allegiance.

  What did this mean for them? No slave or free. No Jew or Roman.

  There would be time enough to think on it later. For now, Cato was leaving.

  And Maius was screaming.

  49

  Against logic, Cato left Maius in the triclinium and left Ariella underground. His newly heightened sense of God’s word spoken over him said, Go now. Trust now. And so he did. With a hand at Nigidia’s elbow, he sped through the inner halls, toward the devastated atrium, filled with a strength and confidence unknown since the mountain exploded over their heads.

  Maius’s screams followed them, echoing through corridor and mind with a demonic shriek. Had he rooted the man to the floor through the power of God?

  However it had happened, the duovir was alone, bereft of that which he most prized.

  They twisted through the halls when Cato heard footsteps behind. He turned, still holding Nigidia. Ariella gave him a half smile from the end of the hall. Supported by her arm, but alive and upright, was his sister Portia. His heart leaped with the sight of her. Of them both.

  They met in the middle of the hall, and Cato took Portia from her, bore the weight of his sister’s feeble body with his own.

  “Maius saw us outside the triclinium.” Ariella’s voice held wonder. “We walked right past him. He shrieked at us but did not move.”

  Cato shifted forward and led them again, helping Portia. “It is an act of your God.”

  “And yours?”

  He glanced at her. Of course she would somehow see the change in his heart.

  Portia stumbled, and the group slowed.

  “She is a bit feverish, I believe.” Ariella touched Portia’s face gently. “But I think most of all she needs food and water.”

  Cato dared not ask his sister about the child she carried. Not now.

  Beside him, Nigidia stirred to life. “Follow me.” She turned and left them swiftly.

  Cato did not favor the idea of staying any longer than necessary in this evil place, but it was clear that Portia needed strength for the fearsome journey ahead. He pulled her along.

  Ariella hastened to support her on the other side. They followed Nigidia’s disappearing figure through the night-dark house.

  The villa had suffered. Cato heard the shudders and creaks that signaled the stress of rock and ash on the roof. It might hold longer than the poorer houses in the city, but not forever. Nor for long. He had grown so accustomed to expecting rocks to fall from the sky that it seemed little had changed indoors, as he waited for the roof to collapse.

  They trailed Nigidia to the back rooms of the house, undecorated and deserted. Maius’s slaves and staff had fled.

  Nigidia lit a torch from a smoldering cookfire, mounted it, then hastened around the kitchen, gathering small loaves of fine bread, cups, and jugs of wine.

  She tossed her finds onto a table. “Eat. I have no need of anything. I will pack more food for our passage.”

  A sudden hunger swept Cato. He could not remember when he had last eaten. Cold porridge in the atrium, a lifetime ago?

  Ariella tore a small piece from one of the loaves and held it to Portia’s lips.

  Cato inhaled sharply, touched by the tender act.

  Portia was unwell, she was weak, and she seemed unable to focus on her present situation. The night was dark and dangerous. He chewed his lip. How could they bring her safely across the city?

  But Ariella’s ministrations seemed to help. Portia took a cup in her own hands and drained it, chewed some bread and asked for more. Some color already had returned to her face.

  Nigidia handed pouches to each of them, filled with more bread, some cheeses, and dried fruit. To Cato she held out a wineskin. “It will not last us long, but we cannot carry much more.”

  “Thank you, Nigidia.” The girl had grown much since he had first encountered her.

  A glance at Ariella and Portia. “Are we ready?” It seemed impossible that Maius had not yet sought them out. They should be away from here.

  Ariella strapped the pouch over her head, picked up her sword once more, and nodded. Cato turned from the sight. She had done nothing but fight since they had met, and even now the battle was not over.

  They sped along the colonnaded walkway that bordered the atrium, through the side entrance, and out onto the covered peristyle.

  It was a shock once again. The ash and rock alongside the empty porch now piled higher than the heads of the women, higher than his own head. It drifted down to the terrace level, a gravelly ramp. They scrambled upward, sinking knee-deep or worse and fighting to reach the upper level and move forward.

  It had to be midnight. No moon, no stars brightened their way. Only the fantastic orange glow on the underside of the dense cloud. He looked backward at the mountain, still churning out fragments of itself with that great whooshing sound that had dogged them all through the day’s living nightmare.

  The women moved on ahead of him, and he pushed forward to lead. Portia was walking in her own strength now, thank God. They headed once more toward the town. From the hilly rise of Maius’s estate, what should have been a lovely view of the town below, with torches carried through streets and candlelight streaming from windows, appeared a dead and frightening thing. In the hours since they had left, few roofs could have survived. Between the accumulation in the streets and the crushing load on houses, the city’s residents would be underground, praying for deliverance. Or dead already.

  The difficulty of crossing the landscape wearied his legs within minutes. The long hours of climbing through it had taken their toll. There were fewer orange streaks hurtling death from the sky now. They could be thankful for that. He looked backward at the mountain once more. Had something changed to save them from the fiery fallout?

  And in that moment, something did change. He could not at first identify it.

  The women also stopped, and Ariella was at his side in a moment. “What is that sound?”

  But it was not a sound. It was the lack of sound that had arrested their attention. The familiar roar of ash and rock surging upward had suddenly ceased, as though the mountain had run out of breath, as though a mighty hand had shut off the gushing upward fountain.

  They watched, open-mouthed, as the entire trunk-like gray column supporting the massive cloud-branches collapsed upon itself with a shuddering groan and the sky above the mountain rained down.

  Where would it flow—all that poisonous, torrential weight? The decapitated summit of the mountain bubbled orange and black.

  Cato turned from the mountain and set his eyes toward the south, toward the impossible trek before them. It would take all night to cross the city.

  “Come.” He struck out ahead. “There is not much time.”

  The unceasing upward surge could not last forever, and when at last Vesuvius had expelled all the madness within, the tower of death collapsed.

  But there was still so much destruction to come.

  The hours of spewed ash and rock now tumbled downward, a molten river, mixed with water, and became an avalanche of fiery mud, surging downward at speeds no human could outrun.

  All day, as the lethal cloud spread across the sky, many of the people of Herculaneum had thought themselves safe. They had watched the winds blow the poisonous ash toward Pompeii and believed that they were spared. The mountain was a curiosity to them, nothing more.

  And in less than four
minutes, they were all dead.

  They had seen it coming, the surging river of melted rock. Some had fled toward the beach, as if the water could save them.

  Rich and poor, slave and freedman, they fell first in the death throes of the noxious air.

  And then the burning river incinerated them where they fell.

  When the glowing cloud of death subsided, all of Herculaneum lay in its grave, buried under forty cubits of burning mud.

  But Vesuvius was not finished.

  50

  How long had he stood in this room, his feet weighted to the floor, as though an anchor were fixed to his ankles and dropped through the mosaic tiles?

  He gave up struggling, gave up screaming, as the night wore on. There was no one to hear him, no one to help him.

  He was alone.

  When at last his legs were freed, he fell upon the triclinium floor, exhausted.

  The torch had burned itself out. The food had grown stale. He could not see his beautiful frescoes any longer, could not drink in the truth of them. He dragged his bulk to the couch, climbed upon it, and collapsed.

  Did he sleep?

  The night was unnatural, the darkness odd and perplexing. Unreadable.

  He felt strength had returned to his legs and pulled himself to standing. He stumbled from the triclinium, calling for Nigidia. It was useless to search for her but he did it anyway. Through the halls and rooms, the hidden recesses of the villa and the buried gardens.

  He slowed at the back garden. How long had his birds lived as the ash piled around them in a smothering silence?

  The steps to his veranda were partially covered by a roof. The first few lay bare, but the rest had become a steep incline, covered with rubble. He climbed, and the porous little rocks cut his hands and knees.

  He reached the veranda, though it was now foreign to him. The level of the terrace had risen more than his own height, and the half wall where he had stood and gazed on the lovely mountain for so many evenings lay somewhere far beneath. He stood as on a cliff, overlooking the valley that had made him a wealthy man.