A Day of Fire: A Novel of Pompeii (37 page)

He shakes his head, clearly dizzied and torn. The Nile water is not meant to slake the thirst of the uninitiated, but the priests have given it freely. Having already made this exception, will it enrage the goddess if he grants to me access to the cistern? When he sees my anklet of
ankh
charms, it seems to decide him. He hands over the keys on an iron loop, saying, “Pray to Isis for mercy … and before you go down the stairs, tie your shawl between your breasts in her sacred knot.”

“Capella, don’t be stupid,” my sister hisses, trying to dash the keys from my hand. “We must go.”

“Help me,” I say, already unfastening my once brightly colored shawl, the fringes of which are now grayed and stained with soot. It isn’t linen, a thing I hope Isis will forgive. But my fingers know the knot of the
tiet
in which all the mysteries of the goddess are held secure. And so I tie it between my breasts while my sister brims with fear and fury. “You’re not a priestess,” she says with a snarl. “And I’m not braving falling bricks and tiles and rocks for some strangers. If we dash from under the shelter of this roof, we do it to escape. We’re almost to the gate. You said there’d be boats in the harbor. That the navy will come to our rescue. And sailors will do anything for even a promise of a pretty girl’s body.”

It pains me to hear her repeat these words in the holy place that has given us sanctuary. Prima is only repeating
my
words, but it seems as if I spoke them a lifetime ago. As if someone else said them.

“I’ll get more water from the cistern,” I promise the priest.

My sister glares at me, her black eyes burning. “If you do, you’ll do it alone.”

“I’ll be right back,” I vow to her, pulling my sister into an embrace.

At first she surrenders to it, grasping me tightly. But then her fear and fury get the best of her and she wrestles away. “I won’t be here when you return,” Prima warns. “I’ll leave
you
this time. How will you like that? I’ll leave you behind and be better off for it.”

I touch her cheek and make her look at me. “The
purgatorium
isn’t far. Just a few steps and I’ll be back for you before you know it.”

She shudders. “Come with me now or don’t come at all. I don’t care one way or the other. You’ll only be a pretty burden like you’ve always been—”

“Prima—”

“You’re wrong about the sailors,” she raves. “Pretty means
nothing
out there in this darkness. You’re going to get lost and get your skull smashed in by some falling rock. But why should I care? I hate you—”

“
Prima
,” I say, with an authority in my voice I’ve never heard before. It silences her. She stares at me, her chest heaving, her shoulders trembling. “Prima, you’re braver and more beautiful than you know. And I love you. I have loved you from my first breath; I will love you to my last. I’m not going to get lost, because you always know where to find me.”

PRIMA

One
, two, three …

Prima told herself that her sister would follow. She need only frighten Capella a little. If she pretended to abandon her, surely her sister would come to her senses. And so Prima counted her steps. Twelve steps away from the temple before she would turn around and go back for Capella.

Four, five, six …

It was more like wading, really, than walking, because the stones were now much more than ankle deep. When she looked in the direction of the mountain to see flames leaping up like lizards, she wasn’t sure she would have the nerve to take six more steps without Capella.

She strained to hear if her sister was calling her. Surely, she would call out!

Seven, eight, nine …

Stubborn cow. Prima would have to go back. She’d have to give in. She’d have to go back and say that she was sorry, sorry about more than Capella could ever know. She’d have to plead with her. She’d have to beg her forgiveness. She’d have to promise anything, anything at all …

Ten, eleven—

Prima stopped abruptly at the sight of a tall figure standing like an imposing statue of Hercules in the middle of the Stabian road. There was only one man in the city so good-looking that the ashes of Vesuvius would render him a beautiful unpainted Greek sculpture, pretty eyelashes and all. Even so, it took Prima a moment to recognize the
aedile
because she’d never seen him without his perfectly pressed toga, chalked so white it gleamed.

More importantly, she had never seen Gaius Cuspius Pansa
alone
before. As a junior magistrate, an entourage of attendants and slaves always trailed him. But more importantly, he’d been born into a wealthy and influential family; the Cuspii Pansae could count upon a small army of clients in any crisis. Which is why Prima could make no sense of finding this one alone—completely alone—the press of humanity having already passed through.

He ought to have been fleeing. Instead, he was looking back at the city in flames. Rooftops burning. Sparks lighting the dark air. Watching it, he murmured to himself, repeating the words in numb shock as if the devastating news had only just been told to him. “Pompeii is ruined …”

She’d never known Pansa to feel a moment’s sentiment for any living person. It almost made her laugh that he could feel it for a
city
. He didn’t see her. He didn’t seem to see anything but his wealth and power burning up before his eyes. If she had only turned back in that moment to return to Capella—if only she had not taken that twelfth step …

Twelve
.

Pansa blinked those long lashes of his. Then he blinked again, shuddering with recognition. “My skinny little slut,” he said, which was what he always called her. But there was a strangeness to the way he said it now, without any of the usual contempt. And a curious emotion twisted the features of his face just before he reached for her, his hand closing around her wrist like a manacle.

She was caught.
Prima’s heart couldn’t hammer any harder in her chest than it already was, but it leaped to her throat at the realization. She was a runaway slave and a murderer, and she’d been caught by the
aedile
who would not have mercy on her even though she had killed on one of his errands.

To her surprise, Pansa only said, “Get away from the mountain. Do not stop. Go now to get to safety.”

So he didn’t know what she’d done. A delicious hope was born in her breast. How many bodies had Prima stumbled over in the streets, felled by falling roof tiles or the rain of stones? Could not a Roman senator perish the same way? She might get away with it. Perhaps she and Capella really could escape the city and find a patch of sunlight. She had, after all, just been given a command by the
aedile
to do so. And as a lowly slave, who was she to disobey?

“Yes,” Prima said, trying to pull free of his iron grip. “I’ll get my sister and go.”

Pansa didn’t release her. Instead, his eyes narrowed in a most unsettling way, lit up in half-mad zeal by the distant fires. “Didn’t you hear me? We have to leave Pompeii.”

He shoved her forward, forcefully, with such strength she might have been flung into the air if he had not had such a tight hold on her wrist. And she protested, “My sister! Just let me get my sister.”

“We go now,” Pansa said, striding forward with such purposeful steps that Prima was forced into a stumbling run.

Suddenly it didn’t matter to her that he was an
aedile
. That he could have her killed. It only mattered that he was carrying her off. “What are you doing?” Prima howled, trying to wrench herself away. But he was too big, too strong. “Let go of me.”

Pansa did not answer or so much as look at her. Instead, his eyes fixed in the direction of the gate with a fierce determination. He dragged her toward the archway ahead, even as she beat on his arm with her fist. In the distance, she thought she heard someone call her name, and she was seized with a terror darker than the shadow of Vesuvius. Trying to make her body dead weight, she shrieked in answer, “Capella!”

Prima was too small to escape the
aedile
. After a lifetime of trying to sate her hunger, she was
still
of no weight, no substance. So when she dragged her legs and went down to the ground, Pansa simply hefted her under his arm like sack of grain and carried her out the Stabian Gate.

CAPELLA

“
Prima
!” I scream again into the now empty street.

Never did I believe she would go. Not truly. I do not even believe it now. It was only a few steps to the
purgatorium
, down the stairway and into the sacred cistern. Then back again. Now I stand by the doorway to the street with a jug full of water and a heart full of despair.

How could she go? How could I have let her? I thought she was bluffing—trying to scare me into coming with her. And now I have let Prima go off by herself into the world, frightened and alone. Just like the nameless boy who spent himself inside me when the mountain exploded. And a daughter whose name I will never know.

Please, merciful goddess. Please help me find her.
“Prima!”

I listen for her voice, but I am answered only by thunder on the mountain, and by the stones falling faster and heavier, rolling from the curb into the street so that it’s all level now. A flood swiftly rising to my knees.

I am bereft. Prima cannot be gone. She cannot be. I don’t know how far she could have gotten, but fear I will never find her in this storm! I start to go after her anyway, though I’m nearly blinded by the ash.

But from the dark of the alleyway, a man stops me. “Help! Help me, priestess.”

Priestess?
In the dim light, with my shawl tied in the
tiet
, I suppose even a whore might be mistaken for a priestess. The man moves closer and the fires in the street reveal a child in the cradle of his arms. I cannot guess her age. Two or three? A cloth has been draped over the little girl’s mouth to protect her from the ash, but it is caked and she’s choking for breath.

“Get her inside for shelter,” I say, nearly twitching with eagerness to run after Prima. “Here is water.”

But he can’t manage the child and the water jug on his own. I have to help him. And so we stumble back into the temple courtyard, until we are beneath the roof of the portico. Then the man lays the child down, clears the ash from her mouth and makes her drink from my jug.

That is when I realize that I know him. I know this man with the little girl.

It’s my friend Sabinus—the one my sister calls
the lonely engineer
.

He, too, is surprised. “Capella? Thank the gods. As soon as I could be sure of this little one’s safety, I was coming for you.”

“For me?” I feel a rush of warm gratitude. Vindication, too, in having proof that he
is
my friend, no matter what Prima says. But Sabinus is a man of wealth and status; there is a city filled with people he could call friend. “Why would you come for me?”

“I once told you if the worst happened, the men of the city would do their duty. Gods help us,” he lowers his eyes for a moment. “The things I have seen today …” His voice trails off as he looks at the little girl. “I told you I would look out for you and I meant it.”

My sister would doubt him. She would look for some hidden motive. But at this moment, in this dark temple courtyard, I don’t hear the voice of Sabinus speaking these words, but the voice of Isis speaking through him. Words of compassion, and kindness, and goodness. And here, where priests have looked after all of us, I
believe
.

“Then help me look for my sister,” I say. Before I finish the words, a stream of ash pours onto us from the battered roof over our heads where the tiles have chipped away. “Isis, have Mercy! Is it going to come down?”

In Pompeii, we know to go out into the open during earthquakes. We’ve been taught to beware buildings shaking apart over our heads. But none of us know what to do in a shower of missiles from the sky. If anyone does know, it would be Sabinus. So I watch him lift the lamp to look, his soulful eyes cutting a path along the colonnade, inspecting the pillars for cracks and weaknesses. “It should hold,” Sabinus says, kneeling beside me over the girl. “It’s the newest roof in Pompeii and Ampliatus paid a fortune for it. It was built to last.”

The temple was finally rebuilt, seventeen years after Nero’s quake, thanks to the patronage of a freedman, as a legacy to his goddess and to his family, and for the salvation of the city. I pray now that this temple is the salvation of the little girl who struggles for breath. Because I must go; I must leave them to find my sister. But then I am sure my eyes are playing tricks on me. Because when the little girl sips again from the jug and smiles weakly in gratitude, I see that there is a gap between her teeth.

She has Prima’s crooked smile. That rarest and most precious of smiles.