A Day of Fire: A Novel of Pompeii (26 page)

“I told you I was not leaving this city.”

“And I told you I would not leave you.”

“So, we’re back to that.”

“We are.”

They stared at each other; Marcus sitting stubbornly upright, no matter how much he hurt, Diana on her knees before him with no subservience at all in those narrowed eyes. The first time they had looked at each other like this, back in the whorehouse, he had thought all he had to do was wait until she lost her nerve and bolted.

He knew better now than to assume Diana of the Cornelii would ever lose her nerve.

Then find another way.

“We’ve come to the end of this story.” Marcus felt his own heart thudding. “This is the part where you leave me behind.”

Her chin jerked up. “And as I said before, I won’t leave you. I need your eyes to watch my back, I—”

“Through Pompeii, perhaps. But now I will only slow you down.” Marcus found a rag hanging off the end of the trunk, began wiping off his hands. “That horse will carry two, but slowly. By yourself, you will be in Herculaneum within hours. Safe. And I want you safe, Diana. I owe you that much.”

She shook her head stubbornly, hair flying. “No.”

“Yes.” He began to wipe his face unhurriedly. “It’s time for you to save yourself. So kiss a dying man goodbye and gallop off like Diana the Huntress, and I will smile and open my wrists. Because there is one thing upon which you have persuaded me, and that is that a Roman should not simply wait for death to roll over him. I’ll move toward mine—” giving her a half-bow where he sat “—as I promised.”

A tired, gray-haired man dying so a bright-burning young woman could live. It was at least a better reason to seek oblivion than simple despair.

Diana sat back on her heels, her gaze burning fury. “You’ll open a vein, then.”

“Yes,” Marcus stated.

“You know how?”

“Oh, yes.” All those nights in the darkness back in Rome, tracing a dagger up and down the raised lines in his wrist … It had been hypnotic; a lulling, comforting dream. He could find his own vein even if he were blind.

“Takes a while, though, bleeding out. Who knows how long the mountain’s going to give you? Try something faster.” She was up and standing, dagger unsheathed in one hand. “Under the breastbone, straight and fast to the heart. That’s the way to do it, Marcus Norbanus.” She tossed it to the straw between his feet.

He felt his brows quirk. “How would you know such a thing?”

“Patrician women know how to die, too.” She gazed at him a moment longer, then turned back to the horse. “The Year of the Four Emperors,” she said, reaching for the bridle. “My cousins and I hid from a raging mob in the Temple of Vesta, with one knife between the four of us. We all knew how to commit suicide honorably, and we all knew it was a better end than being torn to pieces by rioting Praetorians.” She drew the bridle over the stallion’s ears, fastening straps and buckles. “It didn’t come to that. But we’d have done it.”

Marcus gave a single nod. “Of course. I would expect no less.”

“There’s another reason women take their lives, and that’s when they’re dishonored.” Diana turned back to him, reins looped over her arm and her eyes glittering. “I was dishonored that year, Marcus. I was fifteen, and I was dishonored against an alley wall. Should I have opened my veins after that?”

It took Marcus a moment to speak. He suddenly had a tide of rage and nothing at all to spend it on—her gaze utterly rejected anger and pity both.

“Well?” she challenged. “How many men in Rome would have said I should take my own life to end the shame?”

“Not I,” he said quietly. “But—many.”

“Well, piss on them. The man in that alley wasn’t worth my shame. He didn’t last long enough inside me to boil an egg, and I’ve been sorer after long horseback rides. I spat on the ground and walked away, and I never thought
once
about taking a knife to my wrist. I have rarely even bothered thinking about that man these past ten years. Because my life is worth more than what’s between my legs.” She dropped the stallion’s reins over the rail and stalked toward him, two savage steps. “And your life is worth more than a habit of despair.”

He rose. “Diana—”

She reached out, grabbed him by his gray ash-clotted hair and hauled his head down. She kissed as ferociously as she did anything else. Pain bloomed suddenly in his lip as she sank her teeth deep, and he swore into her mouth. She yanked away, her mouth red as a rose with his blood, and she gave a swipe of her hand across her own lips, leaving her fingers scarlet. “There.” She slapped him on the chest, leaving a red mark just below the breastbone. “That’s where you drive the knife in.”

She stood there all over ash and rage, and he thought her splendid.
A splendid final kiss,
he thought. Even if it hurt, it was still a kiss. It had been a long time since a woman kissed him.

“You’re right,” he acknowledged, dabbing at his lip. “My life
is
worth more than a habit of despair. My life is worth yours.”

“Marcus—”

He stooped and picked up the dagger lying in the straw between their feet. “You are correct that a blade to the heart is fastest. However, it requires a certain degree of strength, and the same unfortunate Year of Four Emperors that took your virtue also took most of the strength from my arm. Consequences of imprisonment, and a beating that never healed. So—” he slashed deep and calmly down one wrist “—the opening of a vein will have to do.”

The blood leapt out as though waiting to leave the vein, pattering on the straw. Marcus felt no pain at all. It was Diana who shouted, lunging for his wrist, but he had already plunged his hand into her hair and held her at arm’s length. That he
was
strong enough to do.

“I know you better than I did a few hours ago,” he said, blood sliding down his arm. “You’re too stubborn and too brave to leave me, even if you should. Even to save yourself. So I am removing the choice from you.”

“You
ass
.” She wrenched away, lunging back toward the water trough where she’d left the unwound length of toga. She tore at the filthy purple border. “If we get you bandaged tight enough—”

“Don’t make me fend you off with a blade.” Marcus still held the dagger, and he hated to think of pointing it at a woman, but he feared it might be necessary.

“
I am not leaving you to die
,” Diana roared, flinging the toga down with a blistering curse and diving into the stall with the horse. “A rein, a length of leather, something to tie your arm off with—”

Marcus considered making another slash just to hurry himself along—the first wouldn’t be deep enough to finish the job at all quickly—but there was a loud and very sudden creak. His eyes flashed up to see the other side of the stable doors wrenched wide, and suddenly they were not alone.

Two men stood in the straw, shaking themselves loose of cloaks and padding, swearing in loud, shaking voices. Marcus had always prided himself on being able to evaluate any Roman’s status by his bearing, his face, the quality of his clothes, all before a word was spoken—a useful trick from his days of arguing legal cases—but he could determine nothing about these men. Not the color of their skins, not the fabric of their tunics, not the accents in their incoherent words. One was big and the other was bigger; they had blood on their arms and blood on their shins; they had rough voices and white around their eyes. They might have been porters or fullers; legionaries or farmers; citizens or slaves—there were no such defined differences between men anymore, not now. In Pompeii there were only the dead, the dying, and the desperate.

And there could be no doubt into which category these men fell. It came off them like the smell of a rotting corpse.

They saw him and they froze. Marcus moved first, lifting his bleeding hand very slowly. “I mean no harm.” He was careful not to look in Diana’s direction. She stood in the stall on the far side of the big stallion, blocked from the doorway by its tall neck, but in another instant—“There is nothing for you here,” Marcus said with all the authority he had ever mustered giving a speech at the
Rostra
, but the men were already looking past him. One let out a rough cheer at the sight of the stallion.

“A horse! Gods be damned, some luck—”

“For one of us,” the other scowled, and raked Marcus with his eyes. “You got any coin on you?”

“You are welcome to it.” Using only his bloody hand, he loosened his belt and let the pouch drop. He still had his dagger in the other hand, concealed at his side.
You have not used a blade against another soul since your tribune days twenty years ago,
he reminded himself,
and even then it was only in drills.
But he still didn’t drop the dagger. Every instinct he had was shrieking at him, shouting danger—he dared not look at the stall, the nervously snorting stallion. Diana had surely dropped down behind the stall’s wall; perhaps she could slide out into the back of the stables unseen—

His knee gave a shriek of agony as the bigger of the two men crossed the stable to topple him with a casual shove. Marcus managed to fall on his side, hiding his dagger in the straw beneath him, as the giant picked up his pouch and went rifling through it.

“Ten
denarii,
” he snorted. “You talk like a senator; don’t you have any more than this?”

“Let it be,” the other man interjected, stalking for the horse. “There’ll be time to get money later. You see how many there are on the coastal road? Every rich man in Pompeii is off with his cash-box and his wife’s jewels under one arm. Kill this one if you want, and let’s get moving. We’ll take turns on the horse—”

“I get first turn.” The big man dropped a knee on Marcus’ chest, unsheathing a blunt knife in a matter-of-fact yank.

“Don’t kill me,” Marcus blurted out, and his heart hammered in his chest. “There’s no need. You have my coin, and I’m already dying—” holding up his bleeding arm. “Don’t kill me.”

The man considered for a moment. “Everyone’s dying today,” he shrugged. “And I hate patrician pricks. Always wanted to cut a purple throat like yours.”

No,
Marcus thought as the knife drew closer and horror expanded in his chest.
Oh, no.
Not because the thought of death didn’t still croon sweet dark appeal, but because he knew what would happen if the thug’s knife continued toward his throat.
Don’t—

The stallion screamed and came bursting out of its stall, sending both men spinning around. Diana was only halfway onto its back, ash-red skirts and ash-pale hair flying, but her teeth were bared as she whipped a stray length of rein across the horse’s neck. It charged forward, knocking one of the men on his back into the straw, and the way before her opened as wide as a first-place finish in the Circus Maximus. She had only to kick the horse straight ahead, Marcus thought—straight out through the stable doors and she’d be gone to safety, or as much safety as this world still held.

But she didn’t kick the horse ahead, and he knew she wouldn’t. She brought it whirling around in another yank of rein, sending it straight at the man who half-knelt over Marcus.

The man scrambled, shielding his head. The stallion half-reared under the low roof, mane flying, and Diana leaned perilously low to slash at the huge man with the length of rein that was her only weapon. “
Bastard,
” she screamed, laying on those hunched shoulders like a whip, and the man made a grab for her arm, but missed. The horse was still whirling, all motion and flying hooves in the confined space, and Diana aimed another slash—but the man on the far side had risen, risen with a shout and re-entered the fray, and now she had men crouched and closing in on both sides.

“
Ride clear
!” Marcus shouted from the straw, but she didn’t have so much as a glance for him. She was still whirling the horse, reins doubled in her fist, trying to herd the two men away from him as she laid about her with her makeshift whip, but one of the men risked a slash across the face and got close enough to make a grab. He had her by the ankle and then she was being dragged off the horse, shrieking curses.

“A horse
and
a girl,” the man grinned, slapping Diana flat into the straw and holding her there by the throat. She writhed, clawing at his wrist, but he was as huge and ash-covered as one of Vulcan’s giants, and she was such a little thing when you saw past the swagger and the mouth full of curses and the cool courage.
So small,
Marcus thought, dragging himself upright. His leg was utterly useless, nothing but a dead limb screaming pain, but he hardly felt it. He just saw a girl in the straw—and the same girl at fifteen, up against an alley wall gritting her teeth and spitting curses the way she was now, even as her skirts were being hauled up.

“You can have first turn on the horse if I get first turn on the girl,” the bigger man was saying, turning away from Marcus toward Diana. Neither of them noticed Marcus as he struggled to his feet, and why would they? Just a useless purple-throat senator: a soft-handed, gray-haired desk-man who was swaying on his feet. Marcus didn’t stop, just limped up behind the ash-covered giant and stabbed: one short blow of the dagger sliding up beneath the ribs. The man gave a curiously girlish gasp, half-turning, and Marcus twisted the blade deeper, deeper, teeth gritting so hard he feared they’d shatter, blood thundering in his own ears. The man was turning, trying to clutch at him—Marcus lifted his free hand, shoving the man’s head back, and saw the blood slide down his own arm from his opened wrist. He felt suddenly giddy, and wondered if now was the moment he was going to collapse and die.
Not yet,
he thought grimly,
not yet—
and he dug his thumb into the ash giant’s eye socket and heard the scream, felt the eye burst wetly even as he dug the dagger in deeper under those ribs—