A Day of Fire: A Novel of Pompeii (35 page)

Prima supposed she had no one to blame but herself. She had always coddled her younger sister. A pinched sweet here, a few stolen coins there, the false piety of a bowed head. Keep Capella from grieving over her child being taken from her; keep her from being registered as a whore. Anything to keep her from running away again. Anything to make Capella smile. Because Prima lived for that smile. Her own gap-toothed smile was crooked and ugly. But her sister’s rosy-cheeked smile was the only truly beautiful thing in the whole crooked and ugly world.

That’s why Prima had agreed to do the bidding of the
aedile
, Gaius Cuspius Pansa.

Keep my sister’s name off the roll of prostitutes, Pansa, and I promise to do your bidding.

She hadn’t known, when she made that promise, that it would be her doom. She was a dead woman now, even if the city didn’t swallow her up in its blackness. She had done something terrible because of the handsome but loathsome
aedile
. Something that would probably see her crucified.

That is what they did to slaves who murdered senators, wasn’t it? They would torture her first, she was sure. She’d seen slaves whose lips, ears, and noses were cut off before their eyes were gouged out and
then
they were nailed to a cross. Prima pushed the horrifying memory away, and said, “You’ll like the bread better with some oil and olives. You’ve always liked that since you were a little girl. I’ll open the casks in the back. Maybe we’ll find half a spicy sausage left in the pan. We’ll make a meal of it.”

Capella shook her head violently. “I said I don’t want to eat.”

“Well, food is all I can give you!” Without warning, a lifetime’s worth of bile rose into Prima’s throat. She had been swallowing it down for her sister’s sake. Swallowing and swallowing, until her belly ought to have been filled with it. But she was never full and couldn’t swallow it anymore. “Eating is all there is. It’s all the freedom you’re ever going to have. Right here, right now, in this moment before we die.”

Capella trembled. “What are you saying?”

“Do I need to say it? Are you too blind to see the truth? Of course you are. You’ve always been too soft for the truth. Our mother’s soft and sweet baby. Empress Poppaea Sabina’s favorite pet.
Such a special, mystical little girl.”
Prima mimicked.
“
Everyone pampers you—even that lonely engineer who pretends to befriend you. What’s his name?”

“You know his name,” Capella said, silent tears streaming down her cheeks. “It’s Sabinus. And he’s not an engineer, but he
is
my friend.”

“No, he pays you to be
his
friend! He only gives you wine to wash the taste of him from your mouth so he can forget you’re a whore.” Why couldn’t Prima stop the cruel words from tumbling from her mouth? They came out in a rush, scalding her tongue. “Where is your adoring mother now? Dead. Where is your empress now? Dead. Where is your ‘friend’ Sabinus? Likely dead, too. So maybe now you’ll realize that your salvation cult is folly and the only thing special about you is that long ribbon of golden hair and the pillowy tits men pay to squeeze and suck. That is the truth. We eat, we shit, we fuck, and we die. That’s all there is. I tell you this all the time, but maybe now you’ll believe it. That’s all there is for anyone, and I’m tired of pretending otherwise. This is who we are and all we’re ever going to be.”

CAPELLA

My
sister is afraid, I realize. Prima is
terrified
.

It has always been a joke between us that, whatever the birth order, I am the
big
sister and she is the
little
one because she is tiny, much smaller than me. But I have always relied upon her sharp elbows to make way for us in a crowd, the lash of her vicious tongue to fend off abusive men, her unsavory schemes to keep us fed. I have marveled at the way she never,
ever
cries—not even when she’s being beaten.

But now I see that my sister is a hissing alley cat that I somehow mistook for a
gladiatrix
.

How have I never realized before that the source of all her anger is fear?

“You think we’re going to die,” I whisper. “Say it, if that’s what you mean, Prima. We’re going to die.”

She cannot look at me. She just sits there tearing bits of bread from the loaf. She crams them into her mouth and chews, but she has clearly lost her taste for it. And when she answers, her voice is quiet and far away. “The whole world is dying and we’re dying with it.”

It is a horrible thing to say. But, day has become night and rocks have become rain, so maybe it’s true. Strangely, I take solace in this. In the togetherness of the world ending in its entirety, if that’s what is happening. I find strength in it, even. Strength enough to take my sister by her narrow shoulders and ask, “If we’re dying, what does it matter if we die here or out on the streets, at least struggling for a chance?”

“Are you deaf, you stubborn cow? I’m telling you there’s no chance for us and I’m tired of struggling. We’ve been struggling our whole lives.” Prima’s arm steals around my waist in something akin to a hug. “I’d rather we die with full bellies, on a soft bed, with a roof over our heads than”—Prima waves in the direction of the street—“out there.”

“I’m going,” I say, resolutely.

“Of course you are,” she answers bitterly, letting her arm fall away. “You always run away. And look at the good it’s done us.”

Prima blames me—and she is right to. We were not born to squalor and infamy. No, we were born in the fabulously luxurious
insula
belonging to the family of Poppaea Sabina, a girl who rose to be empress of Rome. Our mother was that girl’s slave. Long before Nero fell in love with Poppaea. Long before Poppaea convinced Nero to divorce his wife and make her his bride. Long before he killed her …

And though I could have been no more than three years old when Poppaea Sabina became empress, I remember her well. The fiery-haired empress loved my golden ringlets and delighted in dressing me as a winged cupid to amuse her friends. The empress lived in unimaginable luxury, bathing every day in milk, but she considered herself to be a deeply religious woman.

I was with her on the day she returned to Pompeii for the
Navigium Isidis
to celebrate the opening of the sailing season. And all of Pompeii was bedecked with colorful floral garlands, the harbor crushed with crowds of sailors, all straining to see the sacrificial ship be floated into the ocean to honor the goddess Isis, who guided them home. Enraptured by the rattling sound of the
sistrums
, I drew close to the frothing waves. As I did I saw the fate of Empress Poppaea. Though I would have other visions looking into water, this was the first. And I fell to my knees in the sand in reverence for the goddess who had touched me.

My mistress, too, was moved. Seeing me on my knees in prayer, she pledged me to the temple to serve as a priestess when I was grown. It should have been enough for me. Isis had
chosen
me and I had a mistress who would surrender me to the goddess! Mine was to be a life of the spirit, of dignity, and respect.

But I knew from my visions that the empress would never live to fulfill her pledge.

So I ran.

That first time, I sought refuge with the priests, determined to serve the goddess. Prima found me in the temple and dragged me back. She took the blame and the overseer laid a scourge across her back. She did not cry; she shed not one tear. But it was a beating from which she still has scars. Fortunately, because of our youth and the mercy of the empress, we were not branded, tattooed, or maimed, but merely forced to wear wooden signs round our necks and sent to work in her nearby pottery factory. There, working until our fingers pruned with water and caked with clay, we were meant to take a lesson in how lucky we were to serve a kind mistress in a sumptuous house where our duties were few.

But I ran away again and again to the temple until our mistress sold us to the first bidder. The sale stipulated we were never to be put to work in prostitution, but Empress Poppaea washed her hands of us.

And with it, her pledge to Isis.

So it is my fault that we came of age in a tavern, selling wine and sex. I stole from my sister a life in which she might have been happy. A life in which she might never have been hungry. A life in which her name would not have been scrawled on walls with a price, her talents illustrated in obscene detail, her name not listed on the rolls as one of the registered
meretrices
.

That’s why she blames me. It’s why I blame myself.

“I’m sorry,” I say, making Prima look at me. “I’m sorry we landed here—”

“You think that makes a difference?” she asks with a sudden snort of bitter laughter. “Feed them, fuck them, wash their clothes, clean up their piss and shit, draw their baths of milk … it doesn’t matter. It’s just work. And whoring is the easiest work there is. You just lay there if you’re lazy. Use your mouth if you want it over quick. You think I care whether some pathetic boy tries to find love by piddling his seed on my thighs, or whether, instead, some perfumed empress uses my back for a footstool? I don’t care. I don’t.”

But I care. It matters to me. It always has. My sister has a different way of seeing the world, so maybe she is telling the truth. But I don’t think she is. “If you don’t care, then why won’t you forgive me?”

At this question, Prima’s face screws up into a mask of anguish. Whatever words she is wrestling with are words she does not want to say, but she cannot seem to keep them caged and they hiss their way between the gap in her teeth. “Because you left me! I’ve always looked after you. Always. But you ran, never giving a moment’s thought about what might happen to me. You left me behind. And now, after everything, you want to leave me again.”

Her words take a savage bite from my heart and I bleed with guilt, because they’re true. All except for the last. “No, Prima. I don’t want to leave you. This time we’re going together. There will be boats in the harbor. The navy will come to rescue—”

“To rescue citizens, not us.”

To convince her, I say, “Sailors will do anything for even a promise of a pretty girl’s body. So we’re going even if I have to drag your skinny bones behind me like a bundle of sticks.”

She is indignant, jutting out her stubborn chin. “As if you could.”

I try a new approach. “If you don’t come with me, everyone will laugh at you for a fool. You saw those people out in the street running away. What if the world
isn’t
ending? What if it is only Pompeii that is wrapped in darkness? Think how everyone who escapes will laugh that Prima was smart enough to know an easy mark in an alleyway, but not clever enough to run out the gates of the city to find a patch of sunshine.”

She rears back, affronted, as I knew she would be, because my sister is fed by her contempt for others. I do not think she can bear the thought of anyone laughing at her, even in death. And she is silent so long that I am hopeful that she will give in. But then she gets up from her stool, and goes to the back room where we keep the casks of oil and olives.

So I will have to drag her
, I think. I ready myself to do it, every muscle tensed with anticipation. I’ll have to be quicker than I’ve ever been in my life, because she’s fast when she wants to be. She darts like a mouse. But she does not run from me. Instead, she snaps, “Are you just going to stand there, or are you going to fill a sack with bread?”

“What?”

Her black eyes flash with impatience as she pops an olive into her mouth. “If there’s a patch of sunshine out there for us somewhere, I’m not going to look for it without taking something to eat.”

PRIMA

Upstairs
, in the room where they slept at night, Prima rummaged through their belongings, glancing longingly at the simple palette bed they shared. She wanted to curl up on it. To curl round her sister under a blanket and drift off to sleep and let whatever would come, come. But she couldn’t bear to die in that bed
alone
.

So when Capella called up to her again, she threw down to her a fringed but threadbare cloak to help keep the sting of the hail from her sister’s bare arms. She tossed down, too, an old, torn cushion.

Capella caught the pillow with one hand and feathers puffed out and swirled round her. “What’s this for?”

“It’s for your head, you dolt. You’ve already got so little sense you can’t afford a falling rock knocking the rest of it out of you.” As for Prima, she
knew
she’d already taken leave of her own senses. If they ran, they would have to keep on running, because if ever they did find a patch of sunlight, there was sure to be an executioner waiting for her there.

She hadn’t been thinking clearly when she bashed Senator Marcus Norbanus over the head. If she’d been thinking, she would’ve realized there were probably witnesses. There were always witnesses near a brothel. And even the handsome
aedile,
for whom she’d performed so many unsavory acts, couldn’t protect her; Gaius Cuspius Pansa would turn her over in a heartbeat. The authorities would want to make an example of her. They might even cart her to Rome to do it …