A Day of Fire: A Novel of Pompeii (34 page)

I no longer have control of my body.

The lamp light flickers in and out. I am dizzy. Spinning.

I am floating, numb. No longer in pain. No longer tormented, but a peace surrounds me.

I blink and blink again. I cannot see.

Darkness consumes me.

And then the darkness is gone and I am surrounded by light.

PART SIX

THE WHORE

Stephanie Dray

"There were no gods left anywhere ... the last and eternal night had come upon the world.”

—Pliny the Younger

CAPELLA

Darkness
. We are born from darkness. We perish in darkness. And then we are born again.
That is the promise of Isis. It’s a promise of salvation I once whispered to an empress whose death I foretold. Now I murmur that same promise to comfort the terrified boy in my arms—a man, in truth, with a downy beard upon his chin. Or at least he thought to
make
himself from a boy to a man when he parted the red curtain of the cubicle on the street outside the
caupona
where I ply my trade.

When the city began to shake again, other men fled, stopping in the
caupona
only to fill their sacks with bread or their flasks with wine for the journey. But this young man was desperate for something else, and he pressed more shiny coins into my hand than the price for me scrawled upon the tavern wall. Needing solace of the spirit, he bought solace of my body. I suppose because there is, in touch, an affirmation of life, of immortality. Which is why men pay for touch even when the earth isn’t quaking beneath their feet.

When the rush to the city gates began, my master and his wife watched over the
caupona
, intent upon squeezing every copper coin from passersby. I am their property, and my body is bought and sold anew most every day, so I was told to follow the young man to the cubicle on the street where I let him grasp me roughly, hitching up his tunic only far enough to get between my thighs.

And he was inside me, rudely thrusting, when we heard the deafening roar of the mountain like a god in carnal ecstasy, releasing the hot, pent-up life force of a hero’s age.

It was no god or hero who spent himself in me, though. Just a scared boy who then pinned me with his terrified weight. Together we could make no sense of the booms, the screams, the braying donkeys, the howling dogs, or the mountain’s bellow. We’d disentangled from one another only long enough to peek out the curtain, but at the horrifying sight of a billowing plume spewing forth from the mountain, we had fallen back together in terror upon the stone bed where I have held so many other men. And here we are, still huddled, while darkness envelops the city, too frightened to move, not even knowing how much time has passed.

I don’t know his name and, of course, he doesn’t know mine. Prostitutes are called by a thousand names.
Lupae
,
fornices
,
meretrices, prostibulae
… but we are still somehow nameless. The young man and I are strangers, even though I am covered in his cooling seed and he, with the most intimate scent of me. But it’s the intimacy of our
terror
that turns us from strangers to lovers.

We cling to one another. He clings to me as to life, gibbering in his fear, and I cling to him because his flesh has somehow become as precious to me as my own. Because his flesh, tears, and need are the only things that make sense to me under a midday sun blotted out in a sky that has begun to rain ash.

I foresaw this. An onyx sky denser and darker than any ordinary night. A black swelling rain that would become a river, to be followed by a dark sea of violent power. A coming flood to wash our spirits clean of flesh and blood. And then, an ethereal blaze of fire. Like a lighthouse burning so bright that it could lead an entire city to eternal salvation.

Whatever is happening in Pompeii, I have seen it before in the pool at the Temple of Isis—a goddess of sailors and seductresses and all who fear they might lose their way.

But my sister says that visions are for priestesses, not prostitutes.

Perhaps she’s right, because my faith is shaken. Instead of feeling awe and wonder for the goddess whose promises of salvation I keep repeating, I am consumed with fear. As I hear the cracks and clatter of hail falling from the sky onto terra cotta rooftops, I do not reach to touch my anklet with its jingling
ankh
charms. Nor do I yearn for my goddess. I want only the older sister who has been more of a mother to me than the woman who gave birth to us.

Prima
. Surely she will find me. Even in this darkness. She will find me and protect me as she always does because she is never afraid, never cries, and never lets any man grasp her too roughly. I am determined to fly to her as soon as I can quiet the young man in my arms, who keeps murmuring of death and giants and the end of the world.

Then I hear my sister’s voice pierce through the shroud of darkness. “Capella!”

Prima shrieks my name, pushing from the street into the small chamber in which I am huddled with the boy, the glow of her lantern breaking the paralyzing spell of the darkness. Prima’s saffron-colored toga—worn by registered prostitutes—has somehow turned a whitish gray; a powder covers her hair and bony shoulders, but the pallor of her normally swarthy face is even paler. Her black eyes fall upon me with some mixture of relief and horror. “Capella! I have been looking everywhere in the
caupona
for you.”

“What’s happening?” I ask. Because Prima will know. She always looks for danger. She understands the terrible things in this world. She sees in people the evil that I prefer to be blind to.

But now, when I am desperate for her to make sense of the roaring mountain, she only answers, “
What’s happening?
The sky is falling and you have some limp-pricked blubberer between your legs.”

Something about the boy’s tears, his youth, and the down on his chin seem to infuriate her even more. She shouts at him, “Get off my sister. Pay your money and go!”

“No, don’t.” I hold him tighter. I feel as if I must know his name.

But my sister digs her nails into his arms, wrenching him away.

Prima hates the men who buy us. She hates everyone. Prima is good at hate. Good at anger. And I’ve never seen her angrier than she is now. She beats on the young man with both fists and though I call after him in protest, he runs off, alone and nameless, into the black rain of ash.

“Why did you do that?” I demand. “He was afraid. He was just afraid!”

“Let him piss himself somewhere else,” Prima says, breathless from her efforts to drive him off. “Now squat and sneeze, or do you want another misbegotten whelp?”

After three years, I am nearly numb to the reminder of the child I gave birth to. But not numb enough. Prima’s question makes me wonder where my child is in all this madness. Where is the nameless little girl that
Dominus
ripped from my arms and sold away?
Home-bred slaves fetch good prices
, he said, but is my daughter here in the panicking city or did some cruel master leave her to die on a bluff over the sea years ago?

When I don’t answer, nor squat, nor sneeze, Prima snaps, “Never mind. Let’s get back into the
caupona
before someone thinks you’ve run away again.”

There it is. She thought I’d run away again. That old scar of our childhood throbbing anew. That’s why she’s so angry. It ought to shame me, but it doesn’t. Not now. Not when I see, in this destruction, the moment I have been waiting for all my life. Standing up from the bed, making myself tall, I say, “Prima, we
should
run. Everyone else is fleeing the city. No one will stop us. Not even the most fearsome
fugitivarii
can capture runaway slaves in this stampede. Let’s escape together and be free. Let’s go. Let’s run!”

Her lower lip trembles.

Then she slaps me so hard that I fall to the shaking ground.

PRIMA

She
had never struck her sister before. Not in anger. Not for any other reason. Perhaps she should have done it sooner. With a round moon face and dreamy blue eyes, Capella had a childlike sense of hopefulness about her. But if ever there were a time for Prima’s sister to grow up, it was now. “Do you want them to press a hot brand into your pretty forehead this time?” Prima asked as tiny pebbles bounced from the street onto the stone floor alongside the shards of tiles that had fallen earlier in the quake. “That’s what they do to runaway slaves. Or are you just so eager to run out into a hailstorm with these other fools?”

Capella held one hand to her reddening cheek as those dreamy blue eyes filled with defiant tears. “It’s a hailstorm of
little rocks
. We’ve never seen a storm such as this. There’s never
been
such a storm as this—”

Prima’s hands went to her bony hips. “And there may be giants coming up from the earth to make war on the gods. Didn’t you hear their trumpets? I don’t want to hear about gods or your visions and madness!
Dominus
said to close the
caupona
against looters and take shelter under the stairs, so that’s what we’re going to do.”

Prima grabbed hold of Capella’s plump wrist and dragged her up off the floor and out onto the street where they braved a shower of charred, feather-light stones. They ducked under the awning of the
caupona
, retreating inside amid overturned stools, scattered wooden bowls, and an abandoned loaf of bread still warm from the oven. At this time of day the
caupona
ought to have been filled with drunk, groping patrons waiting for hot food to be ladled out of the jars set into the colorfully tiled countertop. It ought to have been filled with the sound of laughter, the scattering of dice, and big hands slapping coins down on tables. Even when night fell and Prima slid the wooden panels in place at the front of the street to lock up, the
caupona
was noisy with the arguments of drunken men in adjacent alleys. And long after the drunks found their beds, while Prima counted the earnings, she could still hear the wheels of wagons in the street … and her sister’s murmured prayers to a goddess who supposedly cared about the plight of whores.

But now the
caupona
was empty as it was never empty and, except for the roar of the mountain, quiet as it was never quiet. “Where is everyone?” Prima’s sister asked, with a gasp. “
Dominus
left us, didn’t he? Everyone has run off. Everyone but us!”

“I’m sure the master and his wife have only gone next door to shelter with the rich neighbors,” Prima said without meeting Capella’s eyes, trying not to frighten her. There had been a water shortage in the city for some time, so when the jug of wine set into the counter shimmered in the glow of her lamp, it beckoned to Prima’s parched throat. Since she was already sure to be whipped for doing worse than stealing wine, Prima pulled the jug to her lips and gulped at it greedily. That reminded her of the gnawing hunger in her belly, and she tore off a fragrant triangle of bread from the abandoned loaf.

“What in the name of all the gods are you doing?” Capella asked, hugging herself with those fleshy arms that were so seldom empty. “You call
me
a madwoman, but you’re drinking wine and eating bread when we should be running for our lives.”

“It’s good bread,” Prima said, grateful for the burst of fennel, parsley, and coriander on her tongue. It was a special combination of those spices that made customers look for the stamp of their master’s baker on the loaf. Prima enjoyed it all the more because it helped mask the scent and taste of rotten eggs that now permeated the air. “And I’m hungry.”

Prima had been born hungry. Hungrier than any other child ever born, with a hole in her center that could never be filled. So hungry that she had to be pried off the nipple for fear she would suck her mother dry of life. Or so her mother said. It was one of the few things Prima remembered about the Gallic slave woman who had given birth to her. Prima couldn’t remember how her mother looked, except that she was round and rosy and fair like Capella.

Prima looked nothing like either of them.

She’d come out all dark and bony, the get of a different father. Probably a Greek, the red-haired empress once said, holding Prima’s chin between thumb and forefinger.
“Unfortunate. I can’t have your daughter as my cupbearer. Greeks are clever, but they’re also sneaky little liars …”

Prima poured a cup of wine for her sister and tore off a chunk of bread for her, too. “Here. Eat.”

“
No
.” Capella refused with a shake of her head. “We need to go, Prima. I know it. I know it in my soul.”

Prima snorted. “Your
soul
?” She didn’t believe in things she couldn’t see, touch, or eat. Except maybe shades and
lemures
, those angry spirits of the dead. Because anger made more sense to her than all the spirit bodies and mysteries the Isiacs ranted about.

“Yes, I know it in my
soul,
” Capella insisted, gripping the countertop. “I’ve foreseen it. We’re meant to be free.”

Free
. What use was freedom unless you were rich enough to buy it? And even then, what use unless you were a man? Prima was an
infamis
—a status not easily escaped once your name was on the roll of registered prostitutes, from which it could never be removed. Like slavery,
infamia
meant no voice, no legal status, and few protections of any kind. Better to be a disreputable but well-fed slave girl than a disreputable and starving freedwoman, Prima thought. Most of them ended up whoring themselves anyway, to survive. A master in Pompeii was good protection, and their master was no worse than any other. And yet, Capella had been prattling on about freedom her whole life.