Curses and Smoke (21 page)

T
ag ran toward the house. “
Apa. Apa!
Where are you?” he called.

His heart dropped when he saw thick black smoke billowing from the herbal room. His father often worked by oil lamp, even during daytime. Stuffed with dried herbs and papyrus sheaves, the room was particularly vulnerable to fire.

He burst in. “Father?
Apa?
” Flames crackled over the worktable where the oil lamp had spilled. He could barely see, and the noxious smell of the burning herbs made him cough. He squinted. There! His father had fallen. Putting his tunic over his nose, he ran to the corner of the room.

“
Apa?
” Tag shook him. No response.

The smoke was starting to choke him, and his eyes stung with the acrid smell. He dragged his father out of the room by the armpits. Slaves ran past him into the herbal room, carrying buckets of water and blankets. Once safely in the courtyard, Tag turned Damocles over and gave a strangled cry at the sight of his father’s empty open eyes. His mind divided. One part turned medical as he noticed the gash on his father’s crown. He felt his chest — no pulse.
The patient appears to have fallen and struck his head on a sharp surface. The trauma, combined with the toxic smoke from the herbs — some poisonous — caused his heart to stop beating
….

But the other part was so young it couldn’t even form words. All it could do was cry for the one constant force in his life — his
apa
.

Tag became aware that someone was shaking him. “Healer! Healer! You must help us.” Through wet eyes, he saw one of the house slaves, wide-eyed and panicked. “In the kitchens. Boiling water everywhere. You must come!”

Tag stood. “My supplies are in there,” he said, stupidly pointing to the still-smoldering herb room. How could he help anyone without salve and bandages and needles and flax to stitch up gashes? And his father! His father!

“Please come!” the man cried as he pulled Tag’s tunic desperately.

“Let me cover him,” Tag said. With a shaking hand, he shut Damocles’s eyes, grabbed a discarded cloak nearby, and placed it over his father’s face. He appealed to Februus, the Etruscan god of purification, asking that his father’s spirit be cleansed even though he couldn’t treat his body in the ancient ways.

At another insistent call, Tag turned to follow the desperate slave. A dog howled in terror nearby, and he thought of Minos. He should free Minos. Lucia wouldn’t want him hurt. He would save Minos for Lucia….

But before he could act on that thought, they were in the small brick kitchen. The hearth with the iron cauldron had toppled in the earthquake. An old woman stared with shocked yet vacant eyes at the bright red skin that peeled from her arms like the casing off of a boiled sausage. A girl crouched under a broken wooden chair, her arm dangling at a strange angle.

Tag felt paralyzed. Who should he help first? Pontius had released him so that he could treat the gladiators, but so many people seemed hurt. He could hear moans and keening throughout the courtyard. How could he do any of this without his father?

Grief and fear tightened his throat. Someone tugged on his tunic. Castor stared up at him. “Are you all right?” Tag asked the child.

Castor nodded. He looked terrified, but at least he wasn’t injured.

“Can you help me? As my assistant?”

The boy nodded again, the thought of having something to do seeming to strengthen him.

“Good. I need you to find wine. Bring up as many amphorae as you can. Then have her drink as much undiluted wine as she can manage,” he said, indicating the burned woman. “This will help dull her pain. But you must hold the cup for her, do you understand?” Castor nodded a third time. “Then bring me as much clean water as you can find. We need to wash the cuts and burns.”

The boy scampered toward the cellar and Tag looked again at the old lady. He’d never seen anybody with such deep burns survive the pain and fever that would inevitably follow. But he had to try. He went over to the old woman, who had begun shivering, and found some flour sacks to wrap around her shoulders. She wailed when she tried to put her hands down on her lap. He murmured platitudes, but what could he do until some pain relief came? How would he treat her?

He caught the eye of the young teen girl still crouching under the chair. “My
mater
,” she said, pointing behind her. “Can you help my
mater
?”

With a sense of dread, he looked into the corner of the ruined room. A woman lay crushed under a large wooden beam, eyes open in death. He recognized the face. It was Castor’s aunt.

“I am sorry,” he said softly, crouching to face the girl. “Your
mater
is gone.”

The girl, although about twelve or thirteen, sounded like a little child. “No, she is not! She is right here!” She began to cry.

“I am sorry,” he whispered again, and felt hot tears prick his eyes. “My
apa
is gone too. Perhaps they are together, chatting as they always did in the afternoons.”

The girl sobbed.

Time disappeared as Tag and Castor tried to treat the old woman, who vacillated between screaming in another language and passing out. After wrapping her arms as best he could with wet bean sacks, Tag turned to the girl.

“Now I need to see your arm,” he said, looking around at what he could use for a splint. A broken wooden stool leg looked about right. As he bound the girl’s arm, he heard Pontius bellowing for him.

“
Medicus!
Where are you? We need you!”

He froze. Pontius didn’t know where he had gone or what he was doing. In the chaos, Tag could run. But where? Did he really want to go to Thurii without Lucia? Maybe he could find her on the road to Herculaneum … but then Castor decided for him.

“He is here!” Castor yelled. “The healer is in here!”

Tag groaned and closed his eyes.

“Come out here right now!” Pontius ordered. “I’ve got men for you to treat.”

“I’m coming,” Tag called with a resigned sigh.

L
ucia prayed the horse wouldn’t lose its footing as it flew away back toward Pompeii. She heard yells commanding her to stop, but she couldn’t have halted the beast if she wanted. The horse seemed wild with terror as its hooves thundered along. She held on, barely breathing, begging the horse not to throw her.

Had her father followed? Even if he unhitched the wagon, that old nag wouldn’t be able to match the stallion’s speed. Still, she was too terrified to look behind her. She prayed to the goddess of the hunt for help —
Let me escape, let me go free
….

She felt the horse slowing as they approached Pompeii. The clog of people seemed overwhelming at the Stabian Gate, so she steered it around the perimeter road, heading for the Vesuvian Gate.

The horse had dropped to a walk by the time she could see the gate at a distance. People streamed out of the city there as well. She slid off and began leading the stallion through the knot of people.

The horse was sweating and huffing with its head lowered, and Lucia wondered if she’d hurt it somehow. Then the horse made a frightened sound and began rearing in terror. She looked down to see what had set him off. When she saw it, she gasped and pulled the horse back with her.

A swarm of snakes — gods, she didn’t know snakes
swarmed
! — slithered out of their nests in what seemed like a mad panic. Ribbons of black and yellow moved past them and disappeared under a brush of dry, dusty leaves. And they continued slithering farther from there, the leaves moving like small waves rushing toward some unknown shore.

Gods! What could scare
snakes
?

A sense of dread filled her belly. Maybe something worse still was going to happen. At least she could find Tag first. She resumed walking the nervous, exhausted horse toward the crowded gate.

“Where is everyone going?” she asked a group of slaves and freedmen streaming out of the city. Some of the faces looked familiar, but she couldn’t place them.

“My patron’s farmhouse in the vineyards,” said one man.

“The countryside is safer than the city right now,” another one said. “We are getting out before more walls collapse.”

Animals brayed, and carts loaded with crying children and squawking chickens in wicker baskets pushed past her. One woman balanced a woven basket of goods on her head. Another man carried an elderly man on his back.

She recognized a man who sold figs and grapes at the market. “Sir,” she cried. “You are going back to your farm?”

He nodded, squinting at her.

“Can you take this horse with you?” She held out the reins. “It is the property of Lucius Titurius, and if you keep it safe for him in your stable, there will be a reward for you. You can bring it down to him when it is safe again.”

He nodded again and took the reins.

People jostled, elbowed, cursed, and kicked her as she pushed against the flow to enter the city. But she did not care. Once inside the gate, she skirted around the knot of people waiting their turn to exit and went along the stuccoed wall to the left. Within a block, the crowd thinned. She lifted her
tunica
and ran.

Even as scared as she was for Tag, she noticed a new strangeness in the air: The world had gone silent. The dogs that had been howling moments before had quieted. Even the ragged chickens in the streets had stopped their infernal clucking and squawking. Her sandaled feet slapping on the cobblestones and her rapid breaths sounded unnaturally loud.

Then a boom erupted around her, through her —
in
her — with such ferocity she fell to the ground in a crouch, covering her ears. The force of the explosion rattled her teeth and bones. She felt a blast of sudden heat, like someone had opened an immense kiln in her face.

As if in a dream, she watched the cobblestone street ripple at the top of the lane, then hurtle toward her like an ocean wave. The ground heaved as the wave passed under her, and she fought for balance, still trying to cover her ears against the immense roar that filled the skies. Weblike fissures crackled on the city’s stucco wall, following the wave like a fisherman’s net being dragged through sand. The roaring was so otherworldly, so shocking, she curled her head into her body in an instinctual crouch of protection. Her breathing came in gasps as she scrunched her eyes tight against whatever evil was hurtling down upon the city to destroy them all.

After a time — she could not say how long — she raised her head and saw a naked toddler wandering alone in the street, wailing with a wide-open mouth. But she could not hear the child. Everything was dreamlike and strange. Even the light had changed, growing somehow thicker, browner. Something had happened. But what?

Slowly, she stood, looking around her. People stepped out of their homes and shops. Lucia saw the people across the
via
look up at the mountain, which was hidden from her view by the city wall. They registered wonder, then a horror so intense, it was as if their faces were melting into grotesque tragedy masks before her eyes.

Haltingly, with a sense of heavy dread, she moved toward them and tipped her head back to see.

Vulcan had punched a hole through the mountaintop with his anvil. The top half of the mountain had disappeared, and a towering column of living, breathing gas, smoke, earth, and rock shot into the heavens. Within the monstrous column, red lightning bolts tore up and down the great, swirling mass, illuminating what seemed to be the enraged faces of demons ready to burst out of the plume and attack the city.

Lucia stared stupidly up at the roiling tower, remembering her theory about a new life erupting into being. But this didn’t look like life. It looked like pure destruction. It sounded like death.

Well, if death was coming for them all, she was not going to spend her last moments with strangers in the street gawping at the sky. She
had
to find Tag. She lifted the hem of her
tunica
and sprinted toward home.

By the time she reached the compound, the sky was black and raining ash and rock. She protected her head with an abandoned cloak she found on the road. If Tag had been crucified, he would likely be in the training arena near the barracks, to remind the other slaves and gladiators that they should fear their master. He would be stripped and probably beaten, hanging defenseless against the rain of rocks….

Please, Diana, Jupiter, Mercury, let him be alive
.

In the middle of the arena’s sandpit, she whirled around, her eyes taking in everything around her — the crumbled walls, the fallen wooden supports. But no crossbeams. No Tag.

What did that mean? Would he have been hung someplace else? The courtyard, maybe? No, she’d be able to see the cross soaring over the roofs. So perhaps in the chaos, Pontius hadn’t gotten to him yet. Or maybe he never intended to carry out her father’s orders. Her heart leapt with hope. It would be much easier for them to escape without having to figure out how to get Tag down.

The rocks started coming down more heavily from the sky. She ran for cover under the eaves of a crumbling roof. When she last saw Tag, he had been chained. Could he still be in the cell?

She turned toward the holding cells, but then hesitated. She would have to find the keys to unshackle him, and then they’d need to run.
Think, think
. The best thing for her to do would be to salvage the money she’d put away earlier in preparation for their escape. Then, once she freed him, they could take off. They’d have to find Damocles too and convince him to run with them. The chaos of the explosion would provide cover.

She raced to her
cubiculum
. It was only then that she thought about Metrodona. Poor Metrodona! She must be terrified.

“Have you seen Metrodona?” she asked one of the slaves running past.

“Hiding in the cellar,” the woman said as she clung to a man Lucia did not recognize. “
Domina!
I thought you were in Herculaneum,” she cried, stopping to stare at her with wide eyes.

Lucia recognized her — the head laundress. “I came back. I am looking for the
medicus
. Do you know where he is?”

“His body is with the other dead in the courtyard,” the laundress said, making the sign against evil. “He died in the fire.”

Lucia swayed.

“Lady, you must come with us! We are going to the marina to escape by boat. Come. We must leave now!”

“No,” Lucia managed when she could breathe again. The old slave was mistaken. She’d just grab her things so they could run as soon as she found him. And she would find him. He had to be alive. He
had
to.

The slave followed her into her room, still begging Lucia to come with her. Lucia grabbed a blanket off her bed and threw it at the woman in a fury. “Leave me! Save yourself! I am not going until I find him!”

The woman clutched the blanket, shook her head, and left.